Greely nodded. He had a long face, eyes that were set a fraction too close to his nose, and a thin slash of a mouth.He rarely looked anything but grim. “That’s what Brewer thinks. Your father also.”
“Bold,” said Blue Armstrong. “Bold as the painted mouth on a whore. To walk in the hotel like he was one of the others, set the bag down, and disappear again, well, that’s bold.”
Remington wondered if that were strictly true. “He probably stayed in the hotel long enough to be certain the reticule was found and his message was delivered. He couldn’t leave it all to chance. At least I wouldn’t.”
The deputy once again adopted what passed for his most thoughtful pose, tipping his chin and scratching the underside with his fingertips. “No, you wouldn’t, by God, but then you have your daddy’s brains and a college education.” He pronounced it “edgy-cation.” “It’s my opinion these fellas aren’t that smart.”
Remington did not disagree with the deputy. He’d held that same opinion early on. He had only recently begun to revise it. There was more planning than he had originally thought, and much less happenstance. He had even come around to wondering if Mr. Shoulders might have noticed Phoebe’s breadcrumbs and let them be, and if that were so, it followed that Shoulders was not concerned that he could be caught. What the man wanted to do was set the odds in favor of Phoebe being found.
“I am going back for Miss Apple,” Remington said. “You better stay in the area, continue to scout it out, but I don’t think you’re going to come across them. Most likely they suspect a trap’s been laid. Wherever you are, they are somewhere else.”
“Then shouldn’t we go with you?” asked Mr. Washburn.
Remington shook his head. “Brewer’s expecting you to be here. So is my father. This is where I’ll return. Watch for me. For us. And for God’s sake, don’t shoot. We might be leading the horses, not riding.”
• • •
“How close do you reckon they are?” Willet Putty, one of the pair now wearing a blue kerchief around his neck, not his face, put the question to his brother.
Doyle Putty squinted hard at the hidey-hole where he’d seen a fortune being tucked away. “Can’t say.” He was lying flat on the ground with a good view of the bluff as long as he kept his eyes narrowed and his chin tucked. The tucking wasn’t difficult. He hardly had a chin to speak of. Willet was on his left; Natty Rahway was on his right but ten feet distant. “You think it’s safe to go out there, Natty?”
“You go on,” Natty said, shrugging his broad shoulders and wincing only slightly. “Give it a try. If you get shot, then Willet and I will know it’s not.”
Doyle was up on his haunches before he fully understood the consequences of what Natty was saying. He dropped back down and jabbed Willet with a sharp elbow when he heard his brother chuckle.
“Seems like we’ve been waiting an age,” said Doyle.
Natty pulled himself up on his forearms. “We all saw them split. I said then that one of us should tail each group, but you and Willet wouldn’t have any parts of that.”
Doyle’s lip curled. “Yeah, because you wanted to stay with the money. Me and Willet think it should have been one of us that followed Thaddeus Frost to the rock.”
“No point in having that argument again. Here we are. Here we’ll wait.”
“Should’ve kept the gal with us,” Doyle grumbled. “Insurance. Plus, she was prettier than you.”
“You think there is a rock they wouldn’t have turned over to find us? I sure don’t. We knew how this would go when we agreed to do it. Besides, you and Willet have plenty of spoils to split between you.”
“Sure, but we have to find buyers for everything except the cash. That ain’t easy.”
Natty was not sympathetic. “Your problem. And didn’t I offer each of you the opportunity to stay at the cabin?”
“Uh-huh, and like I said, you wanted to stay with the real money.”
“Sheisthe money, Doyle.”
Doyle spit. “The money’s the money, and it’s right over there.”
“So are three men on horseback across the way. Opposite the bluff. Go on. Look. They’re riding single file, weaving through the trees. You can just make them out. Can’t say for sure which one of them is Jeremiah Ripley, but he’s the one I was told about. The sharpshooter. The one that can put a bullet in your skull from sixty yards. He’s not quite that far now. You want to chance it?”
“No.”
“What about you, Willet? You want to go?”
“No. Never said I did.”
“Then the prudent thing is to wait.”
Watching the riders position themselves opposite Cooper’s Rock, the Putty brothers agreed that what was prudent was best.
