Читать книгу TY HOLT-TEXAS RANGER - Aubrey Smith - Страница 7

“Come on, men, let’s ride,” Ty shouted as he grabbed Blaze’s reins from Matt Franklin and leaped into the saddle. The crowd stepped aside to expose an open lane to the north when Ty spurred the big sorrel. Blaze jumped to the command, and Ty had to grab the saddle horn as the horse kicked clods of dirt and rocketed after the bank robber and his hostage, Sarah Thompson.

Oh, my God, if something has happened to Sarah, I don’t know if I can stand it, Ty thought, spurring Blaze on. It’s my fault. If I’d stayed in Utopia, none of this would have happened.

Ty glanced over his shoulder as he passed Adolph’s Blacksmith Shop and saw only Dog, Ben, and Matt behind him. He cussed under his breath and decided right then and there that when this mess was over he was getting out of the law business.

I’ve had about all I want of taking care of a chicken-livered bunch that doesn’t care enough about things to form a decent posse.

Two miles north, the river made a sharp bend at Taylor Crossing. Here, the land opened up into five miles of open prairie before the canyon walls narrowed and limestone cliffs once again reached for blue sky. The sun hung white-hot in the west. Sweat ran in streams from Ty’s forehead and down his neck. They had traversed the river at the crossing and headed north when he began to feel Blaze slow. Ty knew he couldn’t run Blaze any more in the searing heat. He’d already pushed him as far as he could with the hard ride from Shine Barrow’s cabin to Utopia earlier in the day.

I’ll kill him if I don’t hold back, Ty thought, reining Blaze in.

“What’s the matter?” Ben shouted as he and Matt slid their horses to a bone-jolting stop beside him.

“Blaze has had all he can take. Look, you can see five miles up the canyon. No one’s in sight, no dust, nothing. Two riders couldn’t be ahead of us and we not see some sign of them.” Blaze was gulping in air. Dog made a beeline back to the cool, spring-fed waters of the river to wait until Ty moved one way or the other. “Ben, ride up the road a little and see if there are any fresh tracks up ahead.”

Ben nodded and jiggled the reins. The brown gelding he rode stepped out in a smooth gait. Ben leaned to his left, studying the ground as he guided the horse along the road. Ty and Matt watched from the shade of a live oak tree. Suddenly and without warning, the gelding shied then crow-hopped sideways from something in the grass. Ben reined in the horse and motioned for them to join him.

By the time Ty and Matt arrived, Ben had dismounted and was standing in the tall dry grass beside the wagon ruts that formed the northbound road to Vanderpool.

“Over here,” he called as they approached. “Someone’s had their head ‘bout blowed off. Dead for sure,” Ben said, and pointed to a body crumpled in a heap about twenty feet east of the road. “There’s a horse over there,” Ben continued, nodding his head toward a stand of sycamore trees near the river.

Ty swung his leg over the saddle horn and dropped to the ground. He didn’t want to look. From where he stood, he couldn’t tell who it was.

“God in heaven, don’t let it be Sarah,” he prayed.

Ben’s voice was a whisper when he spoke. “I saw the horse first and thought it was going to be the outlaw waiting to ambush me.”

Ty pushed past Ben and walked toward the body. “Keep a watch,” he said and edged closer. His heart was pounding and his stomach churning. He thought he was going to be sick, but he continued forward. “From what I’ve already seen of this man’s shooting, he could be anywhere and pick us off one by one out here in an opening like this.”

The boys pulled their horses together, forming a wall between them and anyone who might be hiding in ambush. Matt reached for Blaze’s bridle, and all three men slowly eased toward the body.

“You don’t think it’s Sarah, do ya?” Matt asked, his voice a hoarse, nervous sigh.

“I hope not,” Ben answered.

“It’s not Sarah,” Ty muttered. He was close enough to recognize the body. “It’s Paul Tant.”

“Holt? That you?” Tant wasn’t dead, at least not yet. The bullet had taken the left half of his face away, but he was still alive.

A hot southeast wind whipped at the three-man posse, bending the prairie grass in waves. Ty knelt beside Tant as Ben and Matt reached for their carbines. They scanned the horizons for danger.

“Tant, it’s me, Ty Holt.”

“Holt.”

“Paul, what happened? Who did this to you?”

“Deek … Deek-a …”

“Who? Tant, who shot you?”

“Sumbitch, Holt, he shot me …”

“Did he have Sarah with him?”

Tant died as Ty leaned closer, trying to hear his voice.

“Tant, Tant, did the man have Sarah with him?”

It was too late. Tant had stopped breathing. With a low, agonized moan, he gave up the ghost.

“Is he dead?” Matt asked.

“He’s dead,” Ty answered, standing up. “Matt, get his horse and be careful not to spook him. I don’t want to spend half the day chasing him. Ben, why don’t you circle a little farther north? Cut a trail from the river, about a mile or so.”

“Yes, sir,” Ben said. “We took off so fast … I wish I’d paid more attention to those hoofprints.”

“Ben,” Matt spoke up as he pulled himself into his saddle. “I took a good look in front of the bank. Let me see if I can cut their signs. You catch Tant’s horse, okay?”

Ben nodded and slowly walked his horse toward the sycamore trees where Tant’s horse was still grazing. As Matt loped up the wagon road, Ty backtracked along the road toward town. He had walked about half a mile before Ben caught up with him. He was leading Tant’s horse, with the dead man tied face down over the saddle.

“Find anything?” he asked.

“No.”

“You sure you’d recognize the tracks?” Ben asked as he dismounted.

“I would,” Ty said. There’s a notch cut dead center along the back edge of one shoe. If I see that track again, I guarantee you, I’ll know it.”

“How about the other horse, Mr. Holt, the one Miss Thompson was on?”

“Unshod, small hoof, slings his right forefoot,” Ty answered.

“Lookie there. Here comes Matt,” Ben said pointing to his brother, who was trotting his horse toward them. Matt’s eyes were to the ground as he approached.

When he got closer, he shouted, “I’m going to go back upstream to where I started. I’ll meet you all at the big Y.”

Ty nodded in agreement as he continued searching for signs along the trail. He and Ben had backtracked nearly to the Y before Matt caught up with them.

“I’m sure they didn’t go north,” Matt told them.

At the fork in the road, Ty spent several minutes walking the roads in all three directions. He found no hoofprints that matched the kidnapper’s or Sarah’s horse. He told the boys to check out the Bandera road to Tarpley Pass, giving them instructions to be careful.

Ty took Tant and moved on toward town. He rode slowly, keeping his eyes cast on the road. Once he found a print of the robber’s horse but lost it quickly in some rocks. He spent more than an hour trying to find it again. It looked as if they had left the road almost as soon as they were out of sight of town and circled back. When he couldn’t find the tracks again, he rode on to Utopia with Tant’s body.

After delivering Tant to Benny Stout, part-time undertaker and full-time carpenter, Ty went back to the bank and started once again to retrace the north road. He knew that before he could do anything, he had to find the direction the riders had taken out of town. Ty noticed several strange stares from people who were still milling around the main street.

The sun had begun to sink behind the mountains in the west when Ben and Matt Franklin found him scouring the north road for the fifth time. Matt was the first to speak. “Mr. Holt, we didn’t find a thing. I’m positive they didn’t go north or east. We’ve looped all over that road and even along both the Little Creek and the Seco Rivers.”

“There ain’t no robber’s tracks to be found anywhere,” Ben added.

Sending them home to supper, Ty thanked the boys. “We can’t do any good after dark,” he told them.

When they were gone, Ty rode around the Davenport place and behind Luke Miller’s house. That was where he spotted the chipped horseshoe print and the flipped-out track of the Indian pony.

They did circle back, Ty thought. He stopped and once again locked the picture of the tracks into his memory. Ty knew he had only twenty minutes at the most before total darkness would halt his search for the night. He put Dog on the scent, realizing that by morning, the scent and any remaining signs of the hoofprints could be gone.

Dog kept up a steady trot as he continued to circle Utopia. The tracks quickly began to disappear as the sun set. Ty followed the yellow dog past the Jackson place and around the Sweeten’s garden before he realized Dog and the tracks were heading straight toward the Thompson’s house.