Dorian Chantry pulled up and sat his saddle, surveying the street. “No use running after shadows,” he suggested. “We have to think. Where were they going? Suppose they had it planned all along. By the time they got here, Miss Sackett would be tired. That’s a long ride and she’d be bounced around a good deal, not much chance for rest. So she would be sleepy. I think they planned it that way.
“The old lady sitting beside Echo Sackett must have been a confederate. Oats was close to the door. He helped the old lady off the stage, taking the carpetbag from her. No doubt they hoped the switch would not be discovered.
“Suppose they figured it all out, Archie. If so, they would have to have a place to go, a place they could reach quickly and where they could stay out of sight until the stage was gone.
“Also, they may have planned what to do in the event the switch was discovered. In any case, they would need a place to hide. If she followed them, and we know she did, they knew it within a few minutes. She has not returned, so two possibilities are left. She is either still following them or she is their prisoner.”
“Or she’s been killed,” Archie said. “It would be that or go to prison. Or maybe knock her on the head and leave her somewhere.”
They walked their horses along the street. “She might leave some sign,” Archie suggested.
“Why do that? She was alone.”
“She’s a Sackett. I’ve heard your uncle speak of them, and how they always hang together. Seems to me if a Sackett disappeared, somebody would come to find out how. She’s got that uncle she spoke of to Mr. Finian, the one named Regal. She’d leave some sign for him. From what Mr. Finian said, those folks needed that money mighty bad. So I think she would leave some sign.”
“If she could, and if she is still alive.”
It was not something he liked to consider. Dorian found himself suddenly worried, thinking of a young girl in the hands of Tim Oats. Or of Horst.
Yet what sign could she leave?
They reached the end of the street without seeing anything. Suddenly Archie pointed. “There’s been a rig standing there! Look at the hoof prints. Must’ve stood here for an hour or more.”
A buxom woman of perhaps fifty was sweeping the walk. Dorian walked his horse over to her.
“Ma’am?” He removed his hat. “Have you seen a rig? A horse and buggy, perhaps? I mean during the night? Or toward morning?”
“A rig, is it? Aye, that I did.” She pointed. “I sleep by the window there, and his stomping and the creakin’ of the buggy kept me awake the night long.
“Short of daybreak, though, two people came running up the street and got in, and off they went.”
“Two people? You’re sure there weren’t three?”
“There was another one, a young lady like, but she came after, just as they were pulling away around the corner. She stopped, angry she was. She stamped her foot and said something … most emphatic it was.”
“What then? Where did she go?”
“Yonder.” She pointed toward a barn with a still-lighted lantern over the door. “She went yonder. It’s a livery stable.
“Only a minute or two it was, and she was out of the stable and riding off after them. I don’t know what was happening, but she was most upset, I can tell you that.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
They sat their horses. “She’s gone after them, then. We’d better catch them.”
“Mister? You ask Pokey Joe at the livery. He can tell you about it. You tell him Martha Reardon sent you.” She paused. “Is that girl going to get in trouble?”
“I’m afraid so, ma’am. I’m afraid so.”
8
Gathering my skirts in one hand, I taken off up the street, but when I rounded the corner they were getting into a rig. This whole thing had been planned, and that team and buggy were just a-settin’ there waitin’ for them. As I rounded the corner, they got in and it taken off up the street.
Running after it would do no kind of good. A moment I stood there, my heart beating heavy. There went the money we so desperately needed — a mule to help with the farming, a new rifle for Regal, and some fixin’s I’d had in mind for myself. All of it was gone because I’d gotten sleepy and didn’t think to be suspicious of that little ol’ lady.
She had gotten aboard to steal my carpetbag. That man in the houndstooth coat had seen the color of my bag when I got off the stage, so he knew what was needed to make a substitution. Had it been ladylike, I’d have done some cussin’. Then I glimpsed that lantern and the livery sign.
Luckily I’d put some of that gold in my pockets for the necessaries, so when I ran in there and asked for a horse, I slapped a gold piece in that man’s hand before he had a chance to argue. Before he could say yes or no, I had me a horse out there and was slipping a bridle on him. That man caught fire and threw a saddle on him and cinched up. Saying I’d return the horse, I taken off after that carriage.
Chambersburg was a small city and they hadn’t far to go to a country lane. I glimpsed them turn into it and followed on. Right then I was wishful for my rifle-gun, for with it I could have stopped that buggy before it got from sight. As it was, all I had was my pick and a short-barreled pistol which I carried along with a comb and perfume in my reticule, a sort of bag on long strings that hung from the wrist, usually. Womenfolks wore flimsy, gauzy clothes, all the fashion in the cities, that would not support a pocket, so the reticules were needful. The material of my traveling dress was of sturdier material, but the reticule was the fashion.
They were headed west and had a good lead on me, but I feared to ride too fast because they might turn off and I’d miss the turnoff in the dark. Moreover, they’d leave tracks for me to see when light came, and judging by the pale lemon color in the east, that would not be long.
There was no sort of plan in my rattled-up brain. I’d simply taken off after them. Surely he would have looked back and seen he was followed. It was likely he’d not be wishful to put up with that for long, so I’d best beware of a trap.
Murder, Finian Chantry had said. Murder was what Felix Horst had done, and would be prepared to do again, and so would this man up ahead.
The road taken led through the piny woods, or woods of some kind. It was too dark to make out. The trees crowded close to the sides and there were rail fences here and there. Suddenly, after we’d gone four or five miles, the trees fell away, leaving fenced pastures and fields on both sides, and far ahead, a light.
It was growing gray, but I could make out a cluster of buildings where the light was, and the buggy I was chasing pulled up and stopped.
I touched a spur to my horse and lit out on a dead run, hoping to catch up for a showdown, but the rig started off again and I saw somebody standing there, trying the door of the stage stop, trying to get in. When it did not open, she taken a quick look toward me and scuttled around the house, me after her.
She was coming up to the other corner when I reached out and grabbed. I caught me a handful of bonnet and gray hair that came loose in my hand, and the next thing I knew, that woman had turned on me, grabbed my wrist, and pulled me loose from my horse!
We went into the dust, me on top. She grabbed a handful of hair, and I’d never been that much of a lady. I slugged her in the nose with my fist, and when she tried to tear loose, her nose bleeding, I hit her again. And then I got up and looked at what I’d hit.
It was no little ol’ lady at all, but a young, feisty woman with her makeup all scratched away and her hair pulled down around her ears. Her reticule had torn, and gold coins were spilled on the ground, two of them along with some other change. I taken up the coins. “Is this what they paid you to rob a poor girl? You ought to be ashamed!”
It was fresh new gold and I was sure it was mine. I put it in my reticule and caught up the reins of my horse.