North of Laramie. William W. Johnstone

the burro. “I’ve made sure we have enough provisions. We have the horses of our assailants to use as fresh mounts when we need them and the will to proceed at a rapid pace. Since we’re not going to Dodge City, our trail will end for them there and they’ll think we most likely headed south. No one in Wichita knows I’m from Wyoming, so Bowman and his men will assume we headed back south to different climes. Maybe to Denver or New Orleans. If we keep moving and stay clear of people, we should be able to slip into Wyoming unnoticed. Once there, word of our arrival will take a year or more to reach them, if ever.”

      It sounded like a reasonable plan to Trammel. Maybe too reasonable. “And your father will just greet you with open arms?”

      Hagen sipped his coffee. “Hopefully.”

      “Wyoming’s a hell of a long way to ride on the promise of ‘hopefully.’” Trammel may not have been a lawman for quite a while, but he still had the same instincts. Something about Hagen’s story didn’t fit. “He doesn’t like you, does he? If he did, you wouldn’t be in a place like Wichita, would you?”

      “We haven’t always seen eye to eye, but my brothers were young when I left, so I doubt they bear the same resentment toward me as my father does. Though Father has had an awful long time to poison their minds against me. That would be unfortunate, wouldn’t it?”

      “Unfortunate? Riding over a thousand miles to have a door slammed in my face isn’t unfortunate. It’s crazy!”

      “It’s barely over seven hundred miles from here,” Hagen pointed out.

      Trammel knew he had lived a city man’s life, but seven hundred miles was a pretty long distance for a man who had almost been killed by riding about one hundred and fifty miles.

      Hagen continued. “And I doubt my brothers could hold on to a grudge as long as Father has. Charles Hagen is the only man I know who can raise holding a grudge to an art form.”

      “Remind me to introduce you to some of my family sometime.” Trammel drank more coffee. “You’d be surprised.”

      Hagen made no sign of hearing as he ate his biscuit. “Besides, you don’t have to come with me, you know. There’s something to be said for us splitting up right here and now, though I still wouldn’t recommend you go to Dodge City for all of the reasons I mentioned earlier. If you want to go your own way, I would suggest you ride to Denver. I’m sure you’ve picked up enough from me to manage the journey by yourself in relative comfort. I’ll even stake you to half of my provisions, free of charge, and you can head out after we finish breakfast.”

      Trammel had never considered himself to be a smart man, but he’d never been anybody’s fool, either. He knew the trip to the outskirts of Dodge City would have been much worse if it hadn’t been for Hagen’s direction. And if they had gone straight on to Newton, they may have been tracked down and killed once they got there. Trammel may have gotten Hagen out of Wichita alive, but it was Hagen who had kept him alive.

      A journey to Wyoming with Hagen would be much more than Trammel had bargained for, but it was better than taking his chances of being spotted in Dodge City, much less riding alone to Denver.

      And both of them knew it.

      Trammel looked over at his companion, who seemed to be grinning as he thoroughly enjoyed a biscuit. “You’re a real mean-spirited rattlesnake, you know that Hagen?”

      “One of my finer qualities.” He held out the pan to him. “Here. Have some bacon.”

      CHAPTER 10

      Lefty Hanover ignored Matt Bowman as he led the men north to Newton.

      But that didn’t prevent the rancher from talking anyway. “I don’t know why we’re headed north like this. The boy at the livery said Trammel and Hagen were headed south toward Texas.”

      “Liverymen ain’t known for always being reliable,” Lefty said. “It’s all that time they spend in the stables, see? Makes ’em loco. Besides, these here tracks we’ve been following say otherwise. Chico says otherwise, too. Best tracker I ever seen, and I’ve seen a bunch.”

      But Matt persisted. “I had two men tracking them as they left town, but I don’t know where they went. I think we should split up and at least take a look.”

      “Chico took a look at the tracks from The Gilded Lilly. They headed north, not south. Neither Trammel nor the gambler’s got any call to head south along the cattle trail because neither of them are cowpunchers. They’d stick out in that crowd. Too many stragglers could see us comin’ and tell us where they went. They headed north, and so are we.”

      But Lefty’s logic failed to reach Bowman, and the old cowhand tuned him out. He and his bunch had dealt with men like Matt Bowman their entire lives; men accustomed to giving orders and not taking them. Men who thought the purse strings they held were like reins to the men they paid.

      Men like Bowman just couldn’t understand that they only held power for as long as the men who worked for them gave it to them. Lefty and the others hadn’t ridden back down to Texas with the rest of the boys because they didn’t want to, not because they didn’t have a place with any of the cattle companies. They were top hands, every one of them, and better than the three Bowman had brought with him from the BF. Tending horses and cattle in a field was one thing. Driving them hundreds of miles to market took a special sort. The sort of man that Bowman thought he was, but wasn’t.

      And even though he hadn’t been paying attention to what Bowman was saying, the noise was beginning to bother him. He could tell it was beginning to bother Skinner and the others, too, so he decided to put an end to it.

      “If you want to head south, Mr. Bowman, feel free to do so, but me and mine’ll continue north the way the tracks lead us. Chico’s got a good bead on them, and I’m given to trusting his instinct. But before you go, you’ll pay us that money you claim to have.”

      “Like hell I will,” Bowman said. “If we split up, you’ll get paid when you bring back Trammel and Hagen to the BF. Dead or alive makes no difference to us, so long as we can see they’re dead with our own eyes.”

      Lefty looked behind him at his men. They were riding in one group, while the three BF hands brought up the rear. Walt the cousin was in between the two groups.

      His men looked at him, silently telling him they’d back his play no matter what. The only one missing was Chico, who’d ridden ahead of the group a few miles to scout for them. He knew Chico wasn’t the independent sort. He’d support Lefty whatever he decided to do.

      “If we split,” Lefty said, “we’ll need money for expenses. For outfitting, see? We’re out here on your dime and your say-so. You’ve told us you’ve got the money, but we ain’t seen a cent of it yet. Layin’ eyes on it could go a long way to settling our nerves.”

      “Settlin’ nerves,” Parrot said. “Long way.”

      Matt Bowman brought his horse alongside Lefty’s. “Are you calling me a liar, sir?”

      Lefty wouldn’t look at the man and kept his pace. “Just said we ain’t seen the money you claim to have is all. Layin’ eyes on it would go a long way to puttin’ my men at ease, not to mention makin’ your talkin’ that much easier to tolerate on as long a trail as this one’s turning out to be.”

      “I’ve got the money, by God,” Bowman said. “Right here with me. No man has ever questioned my word before and I’ll be damned if I’ll allow the likes of a saddle tramp like you to question it now.”

      Lefty had heard just about as much as he could stand of the rancher. “Then be damned.”

      He drew his Colt from his belly holster and fired into Matt Bowman’s chest at point-blank range.

      The rancher tumbled backward off his horse, his shirt aflame, and landed on the ground.

      The three Bowman ranch hands at the