The rain had been pouring down for the past four hours, and I was soaked to the skin. Cold as ice to top it off; I'm sure Danny felt the same. We'd made good time this morning, but once the rain started it was pretty slow going, and we weren't as close to Wilsons Corners as I'd hoped we would be by this time of the day.
We finally had to find shelter – either that or drown, and I wasn't inclined to wait for that to happen. We were real close to Gannett Peak, and I found a cave big enough to shelter us and the horses. We hadn't brought the bay mare with us, but I took about half the supplies she was carrying, and we settled in to get warm and dry. Mills gathered wood and I made the fire, and once we'd started to dry out I put on a pot of coffee. The boy wore a disgruntled look, and I figured it was only a matter of time until he began giving himself an emotional whipping for everything that happened. In mere minutes I was proven right.
"She never should have come up after me. I'd have gotten back somehow."
"Yeah? What were you gonna do, walk?"
"No." Pause. Now he turned his apparent wrath on me. "And why'd she hire you to come, if not to protect her?"
"Down boy," I reminded him. "She hired me to protect YOU, not her. I didn't think about Red grabbin' Harper. If I had . . . "
"What do we do now?"
"Dry out, get some sleep, keep goin' back to see the sheriff. Maxwell sounded awful sure that her Pa'd have the money to set her free. Somethin' I oughta know?"
Danny shrugged his shoulders. "Don't ask me. You know where I been for the last year."
I gave it some thought before I questioned, "Any chance Red knows the sheriff?"
"Could, I guess. They're about the same age."
That got me to thinking. Was Red Maxwell really after Danny Mills? Or was there something else goin' on here? Something to do with Sheriff Parish? "Red ever say where he was from?"
"Someplace in Texas, down by the Mexican border. Del Rio, I think. Why?"
"What about Sheriff Parish?"
"Don't know. Harper never said, and neither did he, come to think of it. You got somethin' particular in mind?"
No, I really didn't. I'd just gotten a funny feeling when Red told me to give the sheriff his best, and I hadn't been able to shake it. And I'd learned the hard way to pay attention when something bothered me like this did. "Nope, nothin' specific. Just curious." My clothes were almost dry by this time, and I was tired. "Let's go to sleep. We can get outta here when the rain stops."
"Alright."
I laid down and closed my eyes, and I was asleep in just a few minutes. Rather unusual for me. While I slept I dreamt all sorts of things, but nothing specific or prophetic like I would later in life. Everything was jumbled and kind of confused, but one thing did stick in my mind after I was awake – in my dreams, Sheriff Parish and Red Maxwell had some kind of a definite connection.
When I woke up the rain had stopped. It was still dark outside, but I wanted to make up some of the time we'd lost while it was storming. I got up and started the coffee, then woke Danny. "Morning already?" he muttered.
"Not quite. Thought we should get goin'. Coffee's on."
He groaned and rolled over. "Alright. I'm awake."
"We should be there today if we don't get any more rain."
He sat up and poured a cup. "What if Parish ain't got no money?"
"I'd be surprised if he did." I took another swallow of my own coffee. "I got a feelin' this is about somethin' other than money."
"Between Red and the sheriff, you mean?"
"Yeah, exactly. We'll know soon enough. You ready to go?"
Danny nodded and doused the fire, while I saddled my horse. In less than ten minutes we were on our way again. It didn't rain the rest of the day, but the sky stayed overcast and there was a distinct chill in the air. We stopped twice, once to water the horses, and by early afternoon we were within a few miles of town.
"You got someplace to wait for a while?" I asked him as we reached the outer edges of Wilsons Corners.
"Why?"
"I don't think you should come to the sheriff's with me," I responded. "Just in case."
"Don't think he'd be real happy to see me?"
"I want to talk to him alone," I explained as we rode down Main Street.
Mills nodded. "I'll go to the livery. Harper left some of her things there. I'll meet you there when you're done."
I turned off, headed to the sheriff's office; Danny kept riding towards the livery. I don't know what I was expecting when we got to the prison, but I'd been pleasantly surprised with the boy's attitude since he was released. Whatever faults he might have had before, he seemed to have his head on pretty straight now. Sure looked and sounded like he'd learned his lesson the hard way. I didn't think Harper had to worry about him deliberately breakin' the law again.
I pulled up in front of the sheriff's office and dismounted. Whether this was a straight-forward attempt on Red's part for ransom or not, I wasn't looking forward to any discussion I might have with her father. Especially since he had no idea who I was or if I was even telling him the truth. And then there was that feeling that I'd been carrying around with me for a couple days – the one that said there was something going on here I knew nothing about.
I tied up the sorrel while I was thinking about the girl we'd had to leave with Maxwell. That's all she was, a girl – still a child in many ways. I could see her face staring at me from the jail cell, her eyes pleading with me not to leave her there, all the while knowing I had no choice in the matter. I didn't want to do this, go in here and give the news to her father about what had happened to his daughter and where she was, any more than I'd wanted to take the job in the first place. What choice did I have? What would Red do to her if we didn't come back? I shook my head and shuddered; I didn't want to imagine what might happen.
I straightened my shoulders and walked across the boardwalk, pausing only long enough to open the office door. Her father was sitting at his desk, examining a stack of papers. New Wanted Posters, perhaps? He glanced up when I came in, and I was surprised. Danny had said Parish and Red were about the same age, but it was plain that Danny was wrong. The sheriff was at least ten years older than Maxwell; his hair was streaked with silver, as was the mustache he wore. And his eyes – they were Harper's eyes, but tired and melancholy, like he'd seen too many gun fights and remembered all of them.
He smiled quickly – unusual for a sheriff. "Help you?" he asked pleasantly, and at that moment I hated that I was the one that had to give him the news I carried.
"Sheriff Parish?" I asked, already knowing his answer.
"That's me. What can I do for you?"
"My name's Bart Maverick. I know your daughter, Harper. We need to have a conversation about her, sheriff." I stood in front of his desk and watched the expression in his eyes change. For just a moment there was fear; fear that she'd gotten herself entangled with an older man – me. Then there was something I couldn't identify.
That disappeared, too, and Parish's eyes were almost blank when he said to me, "What kind of trouble has she gotten herself into now?"