To Reap and to Sow (13 page)

Clint had to be quick to keep up with the young man. Once he saw where the man was going, Clint realized that most of the locals he'd seen were headed that way as well. He barely needed to take half a dozen steps before he could feel himself being swept up into the frantic pace of the crowd.

Before he got too far, Clint stopped and took a look behind him. Compared to what lay ahead, the seamstress's shop seemed calm and peaceful. If the owner of the shop and customers inside were as panicked as everyone else, Clint doubted they would stay in the place. Even so, he figured Tina would be more than happy to be alone to stroll through the shop, looking at the dresses, lingerie, and other items of feminine apparel.

With that in mind, Clint decided to have a word with the town's sheriff and catch up with Tina afterward. From what he'd last seen of Mark Rowlett, Clint wasn't too concerned about that one paying another visit to Thickett anytime soon. In fact, it seemed Mark even had enough on his plate to keep him away from Wes's farm for a good while.

Fortunately, Clint didn't have very far to walk. All he needed to do was round the closest corner before getting a good look at the center of the storm that had been brewing in town. At least two dozen people were gathered around a pair of men who looked as if they were trying to talk to every one of them at once.

Like smaller clouds swirling around the main storm, several other locals talked to one another and vied for attention from the two in the middle of it all. These two men had their hands full, but one of them in particular seemed to be getting pulled in different directions.

As Clint got closer, he could see the badge pinned to the two men's chests. As he'd expected, the busier of the two was the sheriff and the other one was a deputy. Now that Clint was a part of the crowd, he was able to get close enough to make out what some of these folks were saying.

“Where's my money?” someone asked. “It can't just be gone!”

Another voice chimed in. “Yeah! There's got to be a way to get it back! What are you doing here when those men rode off?”

“Men were killed, Sheriff! What're you doing about that?”

“First I need someone to tell me where they went!” the sheriff replied.

“I already told you where they went! They headed east!”

“The hell they did,” someone else replied. “They headed north. I seen 'em!”

“They went northwest.”

“No, Sheriff! They went southeast!”

In the space of a few seconds, Clint felt as if he was the one being pulled apart by the crowd. At the very least, he could understand why the lawman looked so frazzled.

“Sheriff Copeland will go after those men when he knows where they're headed,” the deputy shouted. “That's why we're here to try and figure out where to start.”

“They were headed east.” Clint said.

Since he wasn't one of the people who'd been shouting before, Clint's voice caught the attention of both lawmen. When they looked at him and found an unfamiliar face, they kept their attention on him for a bit longer.

“Who might you be, mister?” the sheriff asked.

Clint shoved his way through the crowd so he could get close enough to speak without shouting. “The name's Clint Adams, and I crossed paths with the men you're after on my way into town. At least, I'm pretty sure it was them. Two wore long coats and the rest had guns. They were in a mighty big hurry and took a few shots at me before riding off.”

“Sounds like them,” the sheriff said as he pushed through the folks standing between him and Clint. Without slowing down, the lawman took hold of Clint's shoulder and guided him to the other end of the crowd.

As he and Clint emerged from the middle of the crowd of people, Sheriff Copeland was snagged by a few who started to fight to regain his attention. All the lawman had to do was nod toward his deputy in order to get the younger lawman moving.

“All right,” the deputy said. “That's all for now. The sheriff can talk to the rest of you in his office.”

Even though the deputy was keeping them back with a pair of thickly muscled, outstretched arms, some of the crowd wouldn't be dissuaded. None of them got more than a few words out before the deputy raised his voice to an authoritative bark.

“I told you all to clear out!” the deputy said. “And I mean it!”

Although they were anxious to be heard, none of the members of the crowd were anxious to cross the deputy. They backed away and grumbled to one another. That was good enough for Clint and the sheriff to walk down the boardwalk in some semblance of peace.

For the next few steps, the sheriff seemed to be more interested in taking a few uninterrupted breaths than in speaking with Clint. Copeland was a tall fellow who wore his jeans and plain white shirt as if they'd been specially tailored just for him. Every hair on his head was in place and every whisker in his pencil-thin mustache was perfectly aligned. All in all, he looked like the ideal sheriff for a town like Thickett.

“So you say you saw these robbers?” the sheriff asked.

Clint nodded. “Yes, sir. They were riding east.”

“Do you know where they were headed?”

“Not exactly, no. But you might want to know that one of the nearby farmers may be in a bit of trouble since—”

“Farmers aren't my concern,” Sheriff Copeland interrupted. “Right now, I've got more than enough on my plate without worrying about farmers.”

“Actually, those men might come after this farmer.”

“And they might come after anyone else. What I need to do is form a posse and get those men into my jail. Once that's done, they won't be bothering anyone, farmers or otherwise. Unless you want to ride on a posse, you'll have to save whatever else you wanted to say for another time.”

Clint hooked a thumb over his gun belt and stood so that he forced the sheriff to stop and listen when he said, “All you need to do is swear me in.”

Copeland paused for a second to look Clint over. When he saw the modified Colt at Clint's side, he nodded and told him, “You're sworn in. Now get a horse and be back at this spot within the hour.”

Glancing at the spot Copeland had mentioned, Clint saw a sign over the closest doorway, which marked the building as the sheriff's office. When Clint looked back again, Copeland was gone. Rather than try to chase after the lawman, Clint hurried to the seamstress's shop where he'd left Tina. She was still in the back of the store, poking through the finished goods as if it was just another quiet Sunday afternoon. Clint rushed up to her and started explaining what had happened.

“You're going where?” she asked once she snapped out of a daze.

“I'm riding on a posse after Mark and those gunmen,” Clint said instead of repeating the entire last half of what he'd already told her a minute ago. “Just stay here until I get back. If I'm gone past nightfall, then stay at a hotel here in town. Just don't ride all the way back to your farm by yourself.”

“But it should be perfectly safe to—”

“Do not,” Clint snapped, “ride back on your own!”

Tina shrugged and got back to her shopping as though Clint had simply disappeared from her sight.

A second later, Clint truly did disappear—through the front door of the shop.

Mark had heard about folks who had been sucked up by a twister and thrown into the air, never to be seen again. He'd heard about them just like he'd heard about folks who'd been eaten by wolves or stung to death by bees.

Heard about them, but never met one.

Now Mark knew all too well what it felt like to be picked up and tossed straight into the air. Sitting with his back pressed against a rock and his eyes clenched shut, he was getting a real good notion of what it must have felt like to be kicking and flailing in midair, not knowing where the hell he was or where the hell he was going to land.

One thing was for certain. He didn't like it.

“Ain't nothin' in the world can beat this, huh?”

The words drifted into Mark's ears like something he remembered from a dream. It was a lot of work, but Mark was eventually able to peel his eyelids apart enough for him to get a look at who'd asked that question.

The face Mark saw was mostly covered by a wild beard sprouting from it like shrubs that had taken over an abandoned yard. The eyes staring back at him from over the beard weren't much better. In fact, the eyes were even wilder.

“You got that right,” Mark wheezed.

The man with the wild eyes nodded and cleared his throat. The sound turned into a grunting laugh as he lifted his hand to bring a Spencer rifle up closer to his face. “I can feel 'em comin' just as sure as I feel this cold ground against my backside.”

Mark looked down as if to make sure the ground was underneath him as well. It sure was. There was also a large rock against his shoulders and something crawling through his hair. Even though he could feel the insect's legs grating against his scalp, he didn't dare move to swat it away.

The stranger from the saloon was on Mark's left and the man with the wild eyes was to his right. Joey and the other man in the duster were lying on their bellies in the middle of some tall grass less than ten yards away. Pressing his head against the rock, Mark was able to see the horses lying down as well. The stranger from the saloon had a tight grip on three sets of reins, forcing the animals to lie down as close to the ground as possible. The remaining horses were held by the man who was also keeping Joey in his place.

“I don't believe I caught yer name,” the wild-eyed man said.

It took a moment for Mark to realize that he was expected to answer. When he did, it was in a shaky, unsteady voice. “M-Mark Rowlett.”

“Hey there, Mark. I'm Tommy Smalls and that's Vincent.”

The stranger from the saloon nodded once to acknowledge the introduction.

“That fellow over there is John,” Smalls continued. “At least one of 'em is. Who's the other one?”

“Oh,” Mark gulped. “That's Joey.”

Smalls nodded as if that little bit of information was all he needed to know about either of the two strangers who were hiding with him behind the rock. Suddenly, Smalls twitched and stretched to look around the rock. When he settled back into his original spot, he was grinning from ear to ear.

“How many men you killed, Mark?” Smalls asked.

“I don't rightly know.”

“Sure you do. My guess has the number at somewhere between two and five. You got the look of a man who's handled a gun and has gotten into a scrap or two, but you still needed to check twice to see if you'd really done the deed when you shot that fella back in town. That means you ain't seen enough death to be comfortable with the sight of it. Am I right?”

Smalls couldn't have been more right if Mark had told him what to say beforehand. Even so, Mark did his best to keep his face calm and his voice steady when he replied, “Close, I guess.”

“You hear that, Vin? He says I was close.”

This was the first time Mark had seen the stranger from the saloon crack a smile. Being on the receiving end of that smile wasn't an enviable spot.

“You hear that, Mark?” Smalls asked, dropping his voice to a chilling whisper. “Them laws are coming just like I said they was.”

“We've been waiting here long enough,” Mark said as he started to feel his nerve return. Once the sound of approaching horses reached his ears, he shrank right back against the rock. “Jesus. You're right.”

“Damn straight, I am. Now let's see if you and your friend are worth keeping around or if we'll all be better off digging a hole and burying you in it.”

It didn't take long to form the posse. Clint had seen some sheriffs take upward of several days to a week to pull together enough men to go after a group of armed killers without getting their heads blown off in the process. Sheriff Copeland managed to gather half a dozen able-bodied men within minutes after Clint rode Eclipse back to the lawman's office.

The confidence the sheriff inspired lasted right up until Clint followed the posse out of town and onto a trail that led up into a rocky pass.

“I don't see anyone, Sheriff,” the deputy announced. “Should we turn back?”

The question didn't bother Clint nearly as much as the answer that came soon.

After a bit of deliberation, the sheriff replied, “I don't know. Perhaps we should.”

“Perhaps we should?” Clint asked. “What did you expect to find? Those robbers standing out here waiting to be dragged into a cell?”

Sheriff Copeland glared at Clint for a few seconds and then shifted in his saddle as if he was looking for that very thing. When he didn't find it, he said, “No, but I can't exactly ride off and leave the town to fend for itself.”

“Do you folks get a lot of men like those bank robbers passing through?”

“We most certainly do not.”

“Then odds are you won't get anything much worse than them in the time it takes to do some proper tracking.”

Although it was difficult to argue with that logic, the rest of the posse sure seemed as though they wanted to try. Some of them looked away rather than look at Clint, while a few even glanced longingly back at town.

“We'll ride east for a few more miles, fan out and then head back,” Copeland announced. “If we don't find them, then they're probably gone and not coming back.”

“And what about the men who were killed?” Clint asked. “You think that's enough to answer back for those men getting shot in your jurisdiction?”

Copeland fiercely fixed his eyes on Clint. “If those men are much farther out than a few miles, they're no longer in my jurisdiction. I could hunt them down to the end of the earth, but that doesn't mean I could arrest them.”

This time, Clint was the one who was at a loss. As much as he hated to admit it, the lawman had a point. What made it so tough to swallow was how quick all the posse members were to accept it just so they could get home before their dinners got cold.

“Are we at least going to get moving again before those men get any farther away?” Clint asked.

The sheriff nodded solemnly. “Of course. That's why we're here.”

Before anyone could snap their reins, another voice made itself heard from among the posse. “They're probably already long gone by now,” it said. “We chased 'em off. Ain't that good enough?”

Sheriff Copeland turned in his saddle so he could get a good look at the man who'd spoken. “Most men know they're gonna be chased when they tear out like that. One or two of them might have even caught some lead along the way, which means they'll have to stop and lick their wounds. Either way, they could still be nearby, so shut your mouth and do the job I swore you in to do!”

After that, nobody else among the posse wanted to say a thing.

They rode ahead for a few more miles and kept on going. Even after Clint was certain they'd reached their limit, Copeland led them farther along the eastward trail. Considering they didn't have a tracker along for the ride, Clint soon began to think that there was no real reason for them to continue riding.

It was always painful to admit when the naysayers had it right, so Clint kept his mouth shut and his eyes open.

As they approached a fork in the trail that was marked by some tall grass and a cluster of large rocks, Clint came to a realization: the sheriff may have wanted to catch up with the gunmen, but his posse wanted nothing to do with them.

The men who had been sworn in barely seemed to take their eyes from the trail ahead of them. Every last one of them flinched when they caught sight of a critter scampering across the trail or of a bird been flushed from its hiding spot, but none of them made a real reach for their weapons. In fact, Clint was convinced more than half of the men would have shot off a toe or killed their own horse by accident if they'd tried to clear leather.

Sheriff Copeland led the men toward the rocks as Clint rode up alongside him.

“Hold on a moment, Sheriff,” Clint said.

Copeland signaled for the others to stop, and the posse was more than happy to oblige. “What's on your mind?” Copeland asked.

“Maybe we should fan out and circle around toward town. There's not much else this way beside more trail.”

“Yeah,” one of the posse members eagerly added. “If they was out here, we would have seen those bastards by now.”

Surveying the land in front of him, Copeland nodded slowly. “I guess you're right. Half of you men circle around to the north and the other half will circle to the south. All of us will make our way back to town and fire a few shots into the air if you spot the robbers.”

Clint led some of the men to the south as if he was herding sheep. “I'll take this group and you can take the other.”

“Fine. Let's get moving.”

 

Smalls peeked around the rock and started laughing under his breath. “Looks like them laws are dumber than I thought. They're close enough for me to spit on and they're heading back.”

“Should we finish them off?” Vincent asked.

After a bit of consideration, Smalls shook his head. “Nah. Let's just get back.”

Mark let out the breath he'd been holding and felt his heart start to beat again inside his chest. Seeing the lawmen actually turn and leave before taking the few more steps that would have sparked another gunfight made him feel like the luckiest man alive.

“What about these two?” Vincent asked as he fixed his eyes on Mark.

When Smalls looked at Mark again, he had the same coldness in his eyes as Vincent. Actually, the coldness Smalls showed was tempered with a bit of wildness that made it even more unsettling.

“They're comin' along with us,” Smalls declared. “They did a good job of covering our backs. Besides, it ain't like we can just let 'em go.”

“We could always leave them here,” Vincent offered. “That way, they won't say anything to anyone.”

“When you hear about the deal I can offer you men,” Mark sputtered, “you'll be glad to have us along.”

Smalls bared his teeth in a wolfish grin. “We'll just have to see about that.”