Frontier Justice by Tabor Evans

Author:Tabor Evans
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2011-03-21T00:00:00+00:00

Longarm’s offhand observation turned out to be remarkably accurate. The sandgrass wasn’t plentiful, but it grew abundantly enough in scattered patches for the gelding’s hunger to be satisfied, as long as it was moved from one patch of sandgrass to the next. For the first two days, Longarm moved only enough to provide for the horse’s grazing, His own hunger remained, a constant gnawing that the few shavings of jerky and the crumbs of hardtack he allowed himself did very little to ease. To make matters worse, he’d smoked his last cheroot. By midmorning of the third day, the horse showed signs of suffering from lack of water. The small quantities that Longarm could splash into the animal’s mouth were never enough to satisfy its thirst. Now the canteen was nearly empty. Both he and the horse needed water.

During the long, hot hours while the sun beat down and sucked the moisture from both animal and man, Longarm tried to put himself in Cass Sterret’s boots. He decided that if he were the outlaw chief, he’d first have sent one group of his men south along the railroad tracks, and the others to the north, to find out where Longarm had left the railbed. That, he thought, would use up the better part of two days. By the third morning, Sterret’s crew would have found the place at which Longarm had entered the sandhills. With no trail to follow in the shifting sand, Sterret wouldn’t be able to tell whether Longarm had moved directly across the dunes or had stayed among them. Cass would have split his bunch, Longarm decided. He’d have sent one man across the sand to see if he could pick up a trail where the prairie began beyond the dunes. At the same time, he’d probably have sent two parties out, one to start from Wolf Creek, the other from the Canadian, to zigzag through the dunes and try to flush Longarm out, if he’d taken refuge in them.

About the most unlikely place Sterret would expect him to come out of the dunes, Longarm decided, was the same place he’d gone in. As the sun dropped low on the afternoon of his third day in the sandhills, Longarm swung onto the back of the weakening gelding and started the animal at a slow walk back toward the west edge of the wasteland.

He saw the glow of the campfire while he was still deep enough in the dunes to avoid it. Longarm turned the gelding’s head north. Wolf Creek was a more logical place to head for than the river. He rode parallel to the edge of the sand, the gelding plodding wearily up over the small round humps, until the fire’s glow was a faint yellow line behind him. Then he headed for the prairie to the west.

He hadn’t counted on Sterret posting guards along the edge of the sandhills. Longarm swore at himself for having failed to spend the time and energy required to scout the campfire, and count the number of men around it.

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