Part Seven

"Escaped!"

The sheriff took Heath's arm and pulled him back into the doctor's office. "No need telling the whole town just yet."

"What happened?"

There was cold fury in the sheriff's eyes. "I went back to my office a little while ago and found Hyatt's cell open and my deputy lying there dead."

That young kid with a deputy badge pinned to his red shirt. Dead.

"He'd been strangled with a length of cord. Fool kid. I told him to check everything. Everything every single time. I told him with the kind of men we usually had in the cells, it took only a second to get dead. I told him—" The sheriff broke off, looking upward for a taut moment. Then he exhaled. "I got some men together. It looks like two men rode out of here north, not an hour ago. Carter said Hyatt's brother came to see him earlier today, and the brother has a place north of here. Looks like they're headed there."

"A little too obvious, isn't it?" Heath asked.

"Maybe so, but we've got nothing else to go on."

Heath thought for a moment. "Could be the brother got a second horse and is leading it, just to make you think Cass is with him while Cass heads out the opposite direction."

"Got somebody checking as many possibilities as I can. He did buy a horse today at the livery, but there's somebody riding it. A riderless horse doesn't weigh the same, doesn't track the same."

Heath shrugged. "Guess not."

"Anyway, I need to see the doc. I need him to look after Carter. I don't want him just lying there on the floor."

"Dr. Saxton's gone to one of the ranches out of town," Heath said. "I can't remember what name they said, but there was a pretty bad fire, and they needed Doc to tend to the injured."

"All right. You tell him when he comes back."

Heath nodded.

"For now," the sheriff said, "I've got to get moving. I know night tracking isn't usually very helpful, but I'm hoping we'll get lucky and catch Hyatt before he gets far."

"If you're leaving town, sheriff, I'd like my gun back. I don't much like being without it."

Fain looked at Heath for a good long minute. "You ever been deputized?"

"A few times."

"Take an oath on it?" Fain asked.

"Yes, sir."

The sheriff looked at Heath again. "Ever break one of those oaths?"

"No, sir, never."

"Hold up your right hand."

The sheriff swore Heath in quickly, then he hurried back to the jail. When he came back, he handed Heath his gun and some handcuffs.

"I'm leaving you with my prisoner there. It's your duty to see he stays put till I get back."

Heath thought of Jarrod in his laudanum-and-exhaustion-induced sleep. "I don't think he could go anywhere even if he wanted to. And I see you're not leaving me the key to those leg irons."

"I saw him when he tried to kill Hyatt. I wouldn't make the mistake of thinking he won't carry on trying. You use those cuffs if you need to."

Heath nodded.

"All right then." The sheriff clasped Heath's shoulder. "I don't like leaving you here with the doc gone, but there's not too much I can do about that. My best advice would be you hunker down here and wait until we get back. I don't think Hyatt would be fool enough to come back here, no matter how much he wants to pay your brother off, but I've learned to never count on folks to do the logical thing. Keep your eyes open."

Heath followed the sheriff out onto Dr. Saxton's front porch and watched him walk into the darkness. A few seconds later, he heard the sounds of horses and men a little ways down the street. In a few seconds more, the street was quiet.

Heath strapped his gun around his hips, glad for the familiar comfort of it, and then leaned against a post, watching. Hyatt was loose again. It would be insane for him to come after Jarrod now. Maybe he'd come a few weeks from now. A few months or years even. But now he'd have to get out of Rimfire as quick as he could. He'd murdered that deputy, and there was nothing that'd save him from a noose after that. Nonetheless, as the sheriff had said, you never could tell.

Still, the street was quiet, and he knew he ought to go back inside and hunker down as the sheriff had advised. He needed to check on Nick and Jarrod anyway. Jarrod would be waking up before long, and there wasn't a Chinaman's chance he'd wake up in an agreeable mood.

Heath turned to go back inside when he heard something at the side of the house. It wasn't much. Maybe a stray cat or something. Maybe not. He put his hand on his gun and squinted into the darkness.

"Barkley," someone hissed behind him.

Heath spun, but before his gun cleared the holster, everything went black.

OOOOO

Jarrod struggled against the images that swirled in his head. Beth lying in his arms the first night they were married. Beth lying in his arms in the bloody grass up at Isla de Cielo. Nick lying on the floor of the gun room at home and lying in a narrow bed in the back room of a two-bit doctor's office, sweating and bleeding his life out. And Hyatt, always Hyatt, taunting him from someplace he couldn't see. "Barkley. Hey, Barkley! That woman wouldn't have died if she hadn't been yours. A man who's gut-shot dies slow and painful. Now you're the murderer. Isn't that right, Barkley? Barkley! Hey, Barkley!"

He shook his head, realizing someone was patting his cheek.

"Hey, Barkley."

A hard slap made the room spin around him. With a gasp, he tried to lunge to his feet but he was pulled back by the handcuffs that bound his wrists to the arm of his chair. Cass Hyatt was sitting on the edge of Nick's bed with the barrel of Heath's gun an inch or so away from Jarrod's nose. And he was smirking.

"Wakey, wakey."