They hadn’t all gone the same way.
One cut sharply into the trees. Two others had raced away north on a track parallel to the one Conn and the posse had just ridden.
We probably rode right past them in the dark,he thought with burgeoning frustration.
The rest of the killers, four in number, had ridden south as a pack.
This was the gunfire they’d heard, then. The outlaws had argued among themselves, fought, and left at least one man dead.
Unless this man hadn’t been one of them. Maybe he’d been an innocent victim, a man staying in the abandoned cabin when they’d shown up.
Maybe.
But Conn doubted it.
He went back around the house and kicked in the door. There was nobody inside. He felt a wave of disappointment.
“What’s the situation?” McKay asked. He looked tired but unafraid, a good man pushed to his limit.
“I’ll show you the situation,” Conn said. “Come around back, all of you.”
They followed him.
“That’s Danny Bump,” Sheffield said.
Conn glanced again at the dead man, happy to learn it was one of his brother’s killers.
Four down, seven to go.
“I always said he’d come to a bad end,” one of the other men said, looking more than a little queasy.
“Well, he’s arrived,” Conn said. “Looks like these boys argued among themselves, shot it out, and then split into three parties.”
The clouds were heavier now, and you couldn’t even see the tracks. Conn went back to the gelding and took out his lantern and struck a match and got the lamp going and walked back around behind the cabin. It was a risk, toting a light in all this darkness, but he didn’t reckon any of the bad men had hungaround after the fight. He figured they’d gone their separate ways at a clip.
Loud noises, like those of a gunfight, always seem louder to men doing something they don’t want to be caught at. Conn figured these men, even the victors, had run out of here as fast as their horses would carry them.
Which wasn’t all that fast, probably, given the current state of pitch blackness. But they’d still had time to put a distance between them and this place.
They were probably high up there now, riding the mountain pass.
Whatever the case, nobody took a shot at him as he walked over and swept the lantern back and forth, showing the others where the riders had split into three groups: one solo rider, a pair, and five horses, only four of them with a man in the saddle.
“I’m not surprised they fought among themselves,” Sheffield said. His face was lost in the darkness, but Conn recognized his voice by now. “They’re nothing but a pack of mad dogs.”
At that moment, a light tapping sounded on the tin roof of the cabin. The tapping grew louder and spread across the area, rain sweeping in, pattering against the men’s hats and jackets.
Rain struck the back of Conn’s neck and rolled down under the collar of his shirt, cold as melting snow.
“What do you want to do, Mr. Sullivan?” one of the men asked.
Conn swung the lantern around. In its light, their faces were obscure, almost ghostly. He saw deep fatigue and worry and detected a sagging of the general will to continue the hunt.
These men had sobered up. They had answered the call valiantly and come here through the darkness, risking life and limb to help a man they did not know avenge his brother, another stranger to them.
Some of them undoubtedly had women and children at home, waiting on them, depending on them. Now, it was well past midnight, and the men were tired and ready to head home.
They had done their duty, given it a try, and come up short. Now, it was pitch black. Ahead, the mountains promised only danger. And on the ground before them was a man most of them had known for years, now dead, like a scapegoat sacrifice, suggesting that they had in some way wrought at least a passing justice.
