Part Eleven

"You don't want to talk to the sheriff," the man from the saloon repeated, his voice soft and urgent. "He's more likely to believe that poster than you."

"What poster? Do I know you?" His heart was racing, and he had to force himself to not grab the front of the man's shirt. "Do you know me?"

The man looked puzzled, worried. "It's me. Danny. Daniel Lansing. You and me met up in Reno, rode together, oh, nearly a year. Then a couple months ago—" Lansing tipped back his hat and pushed his dark hair off his forehead. "Well, a couple months ago, you and me got bushwhacked out on the trail. I thought you was killed and lit out. When I saw you just now, I figured it had to be somebody else, especially when you didn't know me." Lansing looked him up and down. "You look some thinner now. Kinda peaky. You musta been hurt bad."

"Yeah." He rubbed the fresh scar in his side. "Yeah, I was."

"We'd better get someplace and talk." Lansing looked up and down the street, and then he nodded toward the hitching rail. "I got a camp down the road a piece."

"Why not go back into—"

"Look, I heard what you told the barkeep in there. I guess you weren't lying when you said you don't remember what happened to you. There's a bounty hunter on your tail, boy. If you're smart, you'll get off the street and out of town and you won't stop to talk about it."

A bounty hunter. What had he done?

"But—"

Lansing jerked his chin toward the hitching rail. "One of those jugheads yours?"

He nodded, his thoughts swirling inside his head and crashing wildly into each other. "But I don't— You know me?"

"I tell you, we rode trail together." Lansing's words were quick and urgent. "Then this bounty hunter started dogging us. All the way from Reno. He wouldn't let up."

"Wh-why? What's he after me for?"

"Look, boy, there's no time. You head out. Take this road south till you get to a double oak alongside an old, broke-down wagon and then turn east into the hills. I got a little camp out there. You'll see it. In a grove of oaks near a creek."

"But you—"

"I'd better go back inside and tell the bartender I thought you were a pal of mine but I was wrong. Then I'll leave out the other way so, if anybody asks, folks can say we went our separate ways. This bounty hunter, he knows we been friends awhile. Nobody here knows your name, but they know mine. If the bounty hunter asks after me in there, I want him to hear I lit out a different way than where I'm going."

His heart was running like a locomotive on a steep downgrade, and now he did grab the front of Lansing's shirt. "But what's my name? For the love of God, what's my name?"

"You really don't know, Coop? You really don't know me? Think hard."

He searched the man's face, but there was nothing there for him to know. He had to know. "Please."

Lansing gave his hand a sympathetic pat and gently released himself. "You're Mike Cooper."

Mike Cooper. Coop. The name meant nothing. Nothing at all. No more than Matthew Hazlett or that Barkley name the bartender had mentioned. Coop. He had a name at last, and he was a stranger to it still.

"You have to tell me—"

"Not here," Lansing hissed. "Not now. You go on. I'll meet you where I said. I don't want anybody thinking that's where I'm headed. I'll catch up to you, on the road or in camp."

He stood there for a moment with Lansing waiting expectantly, and then he finally exhaled. "We'll play it your way then."

He needed answers. He was so close now, he had to know something. Anything. Lansing had been his friend. He would know something, about the bounty hunter, about the reward, maybe about the money that was hidden in the chest back at the Hazlett place and the armband, too. Still, this wasn't the place to discuss it.

"I'll be waiting," he said. "But make it quick. Please. I've gotta know."

"Don't worry. I'm not losing you now that I finally found you." Lansing looked him up and down, and one side of his mouth turned up in the barest hint of a cool grin. "We have a lot to talk about, you and me. Now get going."

He got going.

OOOOO

The man Jarrod had been trailing had gone east out of Ironwater. In a little place called Campaign City, Jarrod found that the same man had spent the night in the hotel and then had ridden east again. Following the man would take him back into Tin Cup. If it was Clinton, why would he be going there, unless it was to get back to the camp where he had shot Nick?

In Parkerville, Jarrod had made the mistake of reminding Clinton that Nick could identify him. It was likely that, since Clinton was coming from this direction now, he had circled around after he had left Parkerville, meaning to come back to that camp and track Nick down from there. Jarrod had to find Nick first. The only advantage he had was that, judging by the obvious tracks Clinton was leaving, he didn't know anyone was trailing him. That is, if it turned out to be Clinton in the first place.

The tracks went straight into Tin Cup. Jarrod lost them in the rest of the hoofprints and wagon-wheel marks that ran down the main street, but at least he knew whoever he was tracking was in town. He considered going straight to the sheriff's office, but that hadn't proved helpful in Parkerville or much anyplace else. He headed for the saloon instead.

"Well, speak of the devil and doesn't he walk right in the door?"

Jarrod raised his eyebrows at the large Irish bartender who stood grinning at him from behind the bar.

"It is Mr. Barkley, isn't it?"

Jarrod nodded and took the beer he offered. "I'm surprised you'd remember me."

"To tell the truth, I hadn't thought about you till, oh, an hour ago, more or less. I was just telling someone you'd come through here a while back. Did you ever find that Nick you were looking for?"

Jarrod shook his head.

"I'm sorry for it," the bartender said. "What brings you back this way?"

"Still looking. I'm on the trail of the man who might be trailing him. Have you had any strangers in today or yesterday?"

"Two, as a matter of fact. One of them was the young fella who I told about you. I thought he and the other one might have been friends, but it turned out they weren't acquainted."

"Either of them tall, dark haired, young twenties?"

"Well now, it seems you're a seer. Both of them were."

Jarrod clenched one fist, forcing his expression to stay cool. "Both of them?"

"Not that they looked alike, mind you, but as you say, both were young, dark, and taller than most."

"Where'd they go from here?" Jarrod asked as calmly as he could manage. "Did you see?"

"As it happens, I did. They took the main road out of town."

Nick knew Clinton. He would never ride out with him, not of his own free will.

"They rode out together?"

"Nah," the bartender said, leaning one elbow on the bar. "The one I told about you left first. The other one followed him out to see if they were acquainted and then came back in, finished his whiskey, and then left a few minutes later."

None of that made sense. Maybe Clinton would have come back into the bar, waited a while, and then trailed Nick to find a convenient place to ambush him. But if Nick had seen and talked to Clinton, he would, at his most restrained, have hauled him at gunpoint to the local sheriff. None of that had happened. From what the bartender said, they hadn't recognized each other.

Jarrod clenched his jaw. Maybe he was on the wrong trail after all. But two of them fitting Nick's description? Right here together? It was too much of a coincidence to imagine that at least one of them wasn't someone he was trying to find.

"Which way did they ride?"

"Which one?" the barkeep asked.

"They went separate ways?"

Of course they went separate ways. Having only one direction to track them would be far too simple.

"Oh, yes. The first one went south. The other went north."

Jarrod frowned at the man. "And you hadn't seen him before?"

The bartender shook his head.

"Or the other one?"

"Never."

Jarrod took a deep drink and thought for a moment. He could head north and end up in Purity Creek again just as empty as he had been the first time. Or he could head south back the camp where he'd started from. But that was where he expected Clinton to be heading. Maybe the first man who'd been here in the saloon had been Clinton. Maybe, as hard to fathom as it seemed, that second one had merely been someone passing through. Someone who thought he knew Clinton but hadn't. Someone who wasn't Nick but, through pure coincidence, happened to be six-foot-two, dark haired and twenty-two years old. Jarrod could think of no other way to explain it. It didn't matter anyway. The important thing was to track down Clinton and keep him from getting at Nick.

He paid the bartender generously. "If someone comes in fitting my brother's description, tell him to stay put till I get back. I'll make it worth his while."

The bartender smiled at the money before he tucked it into the pocket of his waistcoat. "I certainly shall, Mr. Barkley."

Jarrod thanked him and went out to the street. He took a quick look around and then mounted the pinto and headed south.

OOOOO

He hadn't gotten very far out of town when he saw Lansing coming up behind him.

"You made good time," he said, pulling up his horse.

"Didn't want to keep you waiting. Sure didn't expect to find you alive, much less to find out you didn't remember what happened." Lansing peered at him. "You really don't remember anything at all?"

"I remember a horse. A pinto. Don't know if it was mine or his. I remember a campfire, and somebody had died before then." He rubbed the side of his suddenly aching head. "And I knew I was hurt, but I didn't realize I'd been shot until later. That's all."

"I feel bad now, pard. I was sure you were a gonner or I'd'a come back." Lansing looked him up and down. "Yes, sir, I'd'a come back and made sure."

He waited, but Lansing didn't say anything more.

"Well, come on," he demanded finally. "You have to tell me. What happened? Why's that bounty hunter after me? What did I do?"

"One at a time, all right?" Lansing glanced back toward Tin Cup. "But we ought to ride while we talk. I don't fancy that bounty hunter catching up to us."

He nudged his horse into a canter. "So tell me."

"What do you want first?" Lansing came up beside him, picking up speed. "I guess it'd better be about that bounty hunter. None of the rest is gonna matter if we don't see to him."

He nodded grimly, unable to keep from looking down the road behind them. "What's he after me for?"

"Says you killed a man. For money. "

He gripped his reins a little tighter and tried not to be sick. It was what he'd feared the most. He could see the horror in Ma's eyes, the revulsion in Pa's, if ever they knew this was what he was. A murderer. A hired killer. He knew he didn't belong to them, but they were all he had. He loved them, and he'd sworn to come back to them. Now he never could. If this bounty hunter didn't get him, another one would. Sooner or later. He wasn't bringing that kind of trouble to their doorstep.

God, forgive me. Don't let it be true.

"Are— are you sure?" He almost couldn't get the words out. "They know for certain it was me?"

"I don't know," Lansing admitted. "I know you fit the poster, but that's all I know. That bounty hunter ain't likely to be too particular once he gets ahold of you. We gotta get you away from here."

He wanted to spur his horse and disappear into those hills the way Lansing was urging him to do. Instead, he brought his horse to a stop.

"No. I won't do it. If it wasn't me, then I want to clear my name. If it was—" His throat tightened. "If it was, I want to know for certain. I want to know what I am. If that means hanging, I expect that's what I deserve."

"Don't be a fool!" Lansing spat. "Whatever you've done is done. Get out and start over, if you want, but don't stay around here and get your head blown off for nothing. I tell you, that bounty hunter—"

He turned to see what Lansing was looking at. There was a rider behind them on the road now. A rider on a pinto.

"Who is it?"

He already knew. It was that pinto, the one he'd seen again and again in the fragments of his memory. The rider had to be the man who shot him.

Lansing grabbed his horse's bridle, pulling him along as he spurred away. "Come on!"

The rider had spotted them, and now he kicked the pinto into a gallop.

Lansing turned them off onto a trail that led up and into the hills, and the rider followed after them. When they reached the crest of one of the hills, Lansing hurried them into a thick grove of trees.

"Get down!" Lansing grabbed hold of his shirt and hauled him to the ground. "Take cover and keep quiet."

"What are you gonna do?"

"Just stay still."

When he was only a silhouette atop the hill, the rider stopped, listening now, hesitant to come closer, hesitant to go down into he didn't know what. But he paused for only a second or two and then sank down into the shadow of the hillside only to pause again. For a moment, it seemed as though he would turn around and return to the safety of the road, but he didn't. He called out instead.

"Nick? Nick! Is that you?

Nick? The man the bartender had told him about had been looking for someone called Nick. Who was Nick? Another wanted man this bounty hunter was after?

"Nick!" the rider called again. "It's Jared."

"And all the days of Jared were nine hundred sixty and two years."

Why did that name sound familiar? Why had it sounded familiar when Ma had read it out of the Book?

"What do you want?" he called back, staying out of sight. "Who are you?"

"Nick, it's me. Jared. I'm your—"

From close beside him, there was the crack of a pistol, and the rider toppled from his saddle.

"And all the days of Jared were nine hundred sixty and two years: and he died."