“You heard me,” Seamus said in disgust. “You should be back in Dodge sleeping your latest binge off, not out after a killer and a kidnapper.”
“The sheriff needed a tracker.”
“The sheriff has a hole in his head,” Seamus countered. “In your condition, you couldn’t track a Conestoga if you were tied to the tailboard.”
“That was mean,” Coombs criticized.
“It is the truth and you know it,” Seamus said. “Do us all a favor and head back. I will tell Hinkle you came down sick. There will be no hard feelings.”
Jack Coombs tugged at the scraggily gray wisps that hung from his chin. “I reckon I will stick with it.”
“Damn you, you are slowing us down.”
“I will help plenty once the sun comes up and I can track,” Coombs said. “Just you wait and watch.”
“Sunrise is hours away yet,” Seamus noted. “You can’t stay in the saddle that long.”
“In my prime I could go three days without rest or food,” Coombs said. “The white Comanche, folks called me.”
Seamus sighed. “You are no more a Comanche than I am the Queen of England. And in case you have not made use of a mirror lately, your prime was as many years ago as you have wrinkles.”
Coombs sniffed and looked away. “You think you are clever but you are not. Those like you always think they are so clever, but they bleed the same as everybody else.”
“Was that a threat?” Seamus bristled.
The old scout snickered. “You said it yourself. In the condition I’m in, I couldn’t stomp a flea. So I’m hardly likely to threaten a fire-eater like you.”
“Keep it up, old man.”
“Why must you pester me? I have never done you no hurt,” Jack Coombs said.
“You are an aggravation I do not need,” Seamus told him. “You were inflicted on me against my wishes.”
“I can track,” Coomb said.
Part of Seamus urged him to let it be, but he couldn’t. “What is going to happen come morning when you start to dry out? You will be a wreck. How much tracking can you do when the shakes strike?”
“One bridge at a time,” Coomb said, and then stiffened and rose in the stirrups. “That feller you sent on ahead is on his way back, and he is riding hell-for leather.”
Seamus gazed to the north. All he saw was grass and dark. All he heard was the sigh of the wind. “You are loco. I don’t see or hear anything.”
“You will in a bit,” Coombs said. “Maybe I do have whiskey oozing out my pores, but I still have the ears of a wolf and the eyes of an eagle.”
“You are lucky if you have the ears of an earthworm,” Seamus said.
“Shows how much you know. Worms don’t have ears.”
Seamus sighed again. If being stupid was ever made a crime, the scout would be one of the first thrown behind bars. He was about convinced he should have two posse members escort Coombs back to Dodge, by force if need be, when his horse pricked its ears and snorted, and a few seconds later he pricked his own ears, and swore.
“So the old man was right,” Frank Lafferty said. He had been behind them the whole time, listening.
“Don’t you have anything better to do than listen to others talk?” Seamus irritably demanded.
“I am a journalist. Listening is what I do best.”
The rider Seamus had sent ahead was Lawrence Fisch, the son of the president of the First Bank of Dodge City. For the posse Lawrence, always one to suit his clothes to the occasion, had donned new store-bought overalls, boots with big Mexican spurs, a flannel shirt more suitable for winter, chaps, of all things, a high-crowned Stetson that could pass for a butte, and not one but two nickel-plated Remingtons he had never fired a day in his life. “You will never guess!” he breathlessly declared as he reined to a halt.
“I won’t even try,” Seamus said. “What has you so flustered?”
“Bodies,” Lawrence Fisch said. “Bodies everywhere.”
“What? Where?”
“Between here and Coffin Varnish. About a mile or more, as the grouse flies.”
That was another thing about the banker’s son that got Seamus’s goat. Lawrence Fisch had a habit of mangling figures of speech. “As the crow flies,” he amended. “And you saw these bodies with your own eyes?”
“Would I have raced like hell to tell you if I hadn’t?” Lawrence rebutted. “My horse nearly stepped on one. It was prancing and acting up, and then I smelled the blood. God, the blood.”
“Did you see Jeeter Frost or the schoolmarm?”
“No. Just the bodies. Strangers, although I have the feeling I have seen them around Dodge.”
“Show us,” Seamus directed. Shifting in the saddle, he bellowed at the posse members, “Dead people ahead! Keep your eyes skinned!”
To the creak of leather and the ratchet of rifle levers being worked, the posse broke into a trot. Seamus was in front next to Fisch, Coombs, and Lafferty right behind them.
The bodies resembled peculiar dark humps until Seamus got close. He came to a stop and the others followed suit, then came up on either side so they could see the bodies, too. Bodies were always interesting. Bodies were something to talk about because people were always fascinated by them.
Seamus dismounted and was again imitated.
