Hempen Jig (Black Flag Book 6) by Rachel Ford

Author:Rachel Ford [Ford, Rachel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-04-15T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nineteen

They put out their respective calls. Trent got some hits, and a few helpful clerks who promised they’d be in touch as soon as the sheriff or marshal returned. His hits looked moderately promising, though nothing jumped out as a given.

There was Phineas ‘Glass-Eye’ Labrow out of New Dodge, a notorious card shark wanted on various fraud charges. His appearance proved to be as distinctive as his name, because he did indeed have a very obvious glass-eye. He had a history of crimes spanning two decades from provinces and towns all over the moon. But all of them involved relieving unwary strangers of their credits. The only accusations of assault stemmed from plying his marks with too much alcohol before leading them to the card table. Trent shook his head. “A guy like that, everyone’d remember seeing. And he sees a body? He’s going to do what he always does: run.”

Then there was Mary Beth Geitz from Yellow Springs, wanted on charges of drunken disorderliness, assaulting a lawman and stealing a horse at gunpoint. “She sounds like a right peach. But she was last spotted riding for Dead Valley two days ago,” Trent said. “So unless that horse sprouted wings, she ain’t our polecat.”

Rueben Trumbull, also out of Yellow Springs, sounded like a better match. He had a history of domestic violence, bloody brawls and bar fights, moonshine running, and an attempted murder charge that didn’t stick. “On account of his sister and nephew swearing he was at their cabin the night of. I don’t know about you, but I smell a polecat there.”

“Maybe our polecat?” Sydney wondered.

“Maybe,” Trent nodded. He read through Ruben’s file. He’d gone missing about a month and a half ago, heading for parts unknown. “Plenty of time to mosey on up here.”

He was armed, and the local officer’s notes warned that he should be considered extremely dangerous. Wicked temper, drunk or sober.

He hadn’t been spotted since disappearing. So Trent put his name in our possibilities stack – a stack of exactly one, at the moment.

Then he moved on. There were four more names waiting, two from Yellow Springs and one each from Snakeshead and Bitter Water.

The remaining Yellow Springs offenders were a couple, Reese and Daisy Young. Like Phineas the card shark, they were wanted on financial crimes. Apparently, they’d bilked a bunch of tourists out of money, promising the Old West adventure of a lifetime – only to lead their marks a few miles out of town on rental ponies, rob them at gunpoint, and ride off into the sunset with their ill-gotten gains in tow. In addition to the criminal charges, most of the tourists had civil suits pending, and so did Lucky’s Corral, where they’d got the rentals. Apparently, Reese and Daisy had taken the tourist’s horses with them for a ways to prevent anyone from following them. Then, they set them free, which cost Lucky’s in lost rentals, and extra manpower to round up the missing horses.

Trent added them to a new pile: the unlikely-but-possible stack.

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