Outlaw Moon by Charlotte Hubbard

Author:Charlotte Hubbard
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Evan Marshall Agency
Published: 2016-01-14T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 17

Watson groaned and urged his horse toward the clearing ahead, where Gideon Minnit was whooping like a crazy man, galloping his mare wildly while shooting off his pistols. The past few days on the trail from the train station had done nothing to improve his opinion of the flighty little man, and he felt his temper rising to the boil-over point at this new display of stupidity.

“Whoa, dammit!” he commanded, and to emphasize his point he fired his rifle into the air. “Get ahold of yourself, Minnit, before I grab you.”

Gideon flashed him an ecstatic grin. “We found them—their camp!” he shouted gleefully. “We’re right on their tails now, so let’s keep going!”

“And how am I supposed to see any more tracks or traces of them if you trample every square foot of earth around here?” Booth demanded.

At least the fool had the decency to look crestfallen. Gideon glanced at Felicity, imploring her support, but the woman’s black glance only withered Minnit further. They were all tired and testy. Much as he longed to keep moving, Watson knew a night’s rest was the only thing that would keep them all acting somewhat civilized.

“It’s late,” he stated, resigning himself again to the fact that he could’ve caught his man days ago if it weren’t for these two tag-alongs. “Rafferty knew a good campsite when he found one, and we’ll stay the night. Put your sharpshooting to good use and kill us some dinner, Minnit. And Mrs. Nunn, if you can tend the horses and gather some firewood, I’ll be back to help shortly. Going to check the area while there’s still some daylight.”

His clients’ frowns told him they didn’t appreciate these assignments after a long day’s ride, but he’d grown used to their peevishness. He’d warned them repeatedly: the trail might go for hundreds of miles yet, for days on end, and neither of them would be comfortable out here in the wilds. Better to stay at the boarding house where they’d gotten off the train, seedy as it was, and await his return with Rafferty and Miss LaBelle.

But they’d insisted on coming. And he, in turn, had insisted they pull their weight along the way.

Booth swung down off his mount to scour the area with a thorough eye. His two criminals had stayed more than one night, judging from the amount of ash left from their fire—a puzzling detail, for a man as smart as Rafferty. Because of the downpour the day Minnit spotted his horse, the hoofprints in the mud made that leg of the search extremely easy. It was apparent, too, that the white mare was hobbling along without a shoe now, and that the black and white dog was still with them . . . the bones of a small animal, picked cleaner than any human could gnaw it, attested to the fact that Jack’s pet was eating as well as he was.

Watson poked his head into the cave, and then followed the leaf-clogged path that led between the trees.

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