Ransom (7 page)

“Got to get 'em back,” Taylor said.

Hahn bobbed his head in agreement. “Got to.”

“My wife,” Taylor said. “My kid.”

Hahn grunted but did not bother to refute the claim.

“Bastard,” Taylor snarled.

Hahn pretended not to know who Taylor was talking about when he said that.

“Get them.”

“Yes. Got to,” Hahn said.

“Tomorrow. Get the damn money. Give it to them.”

“I'd go to jail.”

“Who gives a shit?”

“Can't go to jail. Ruin everything. Gonna be big man someday. Rich. Governor maybe. Big, big man.”

“You'd let Jessie be killed so you can be governor, you bastard?”

“Anyway, can't get that much money.”

“You said you could.”

“That was . . . technically maybe I could. Been thinking, though. It wouldn't”—Hahn belched—“wouldn't work. The bank would need . . . would need ap . . . approval from Randy Bonner. He wouldn't . . . sure he wouldn't agree without, um, knowing why. Been thinking. And anyway don't want to go to jail. No, got to go find them and get them back.”

“From a whole gang of armed men?”

Hahn nodded solemnly. “Yes. From the whole stinking, son-of-a-bitch gang.”

“The hell you say!”

“The hell I don't.” Hahn slid down onto the floor, stretched out, and within seconds was peacefully asleep. John Taylor shrugged and reached for the whiskey bottle. Hahn might be a son of a bitch, he reflected, but the man bought good whiskey.

 

Louise Taylor

If she weren't so frightened, this would be terribly romantic. How was it that the fairy tales she loved to read failed to tell what was really so? She was supposed to be enchanted by a handsome brigand. Instead the huge man was ugly and scary and, well, smelly. He smelled sour and sweaty and filthy dirty. She knew she was close to him when he blindfolded her and put her onto the horse and tied her hands to the saddle horn thing.

This was no fairy tale and the man was no Prince Charming.

Loozy was mounted on the last horse in the procession, the farthest away from the man. If she managed to get her hands loose from the saddle and to slip down to the ground, the man might not notice for, she hoped, miles and miles.

She could hide in the bushes and find her way back to town and everyone would say what a hero she was to give the alarm and then Daddy would go and rescue Mama and things would be all right again. They would be a family again, the way it used to be.

Dick was nice enough. She even sort of liked him. But Daddy was, well, Daddy. Daddy teased her and he played with her and he loved her. Really, really loved her. She knew that. And she knew he would come for her. No matter what and no matter where, he would come for her.

In the meantime she had to think about getting loose
so she could go tell the town and, more important, tell Daddy and he would ride out and find the man and get Mama back and, oh, things would be right and good and fun once again.

Chapter 5

“Good Lord, Taylor. What are you doing here?” Dick Hahn rolled onto his side and struggled into a sitting position. He was on the floor in his own parlor. His head was throbbing and his mouth felt like it was packed with cotton wool. Used cotton wool. “Jesus,” he blurted, the name a rarity coming from his dry lips.

“D' you say somethin'?” Taylor looked to be in little better condition than Dick was this morning. His hair was wildly disarranged and he needed a shave, but he did not look to be as gut-sour as Dick felt at that particular moment.

Morning. Right. So it was. There was strong sunlight streaming through the front window. Jessica's tray and cut glass decanter were sitting on the coffee table. That was all right. But there was a whiskey bottle—empty it appeared—lying on the rug between Dick and John Taylor. Taylor was stretched out on the sofa, his boots hanging over at one end and his greasy hair propped on one of Jessica's lovely pillows. Taylor looked as befuddled as Dick felt. But then to Dick the ignoramus always looked like a big, befuddled, dumb brute.

The man sat up, swayed just a little—Dick could well imagine how dizzy he must be—and mumbled, “What th' hell 'm I doing here?”

“That's what I just asked.”

The man shook his head, tried to stand up but thought
better of that, and settled back onto the sofa. “Tied one on last night, did'n we?”

“Yes.” Dick mouthed the vile fruits of a night of drinking, licked his lips, and then observed, “Yes, I would say that we did.”

“Didn't accomplish much, did we?”

“No, I would say we did not.”

Taylor stood, almost fell but righted himself. “Where's your whiskey? I need a hair o' the dog.”

“I think we drank it all last night. There was only the one bottle in the house.” He pointed to the empty that was lying on the floor between them. “I think that was it.”

“Ain't that just hell? Rich man like you an' he only has one bottle in the place. Ain't that the shits?”

“Last night,” Dick said slowly, trying to think past the fog that invaded his brain and made his thoughts fuzzy and indistinct. “Last night we talked about getting Jessica and Louise back where they belong. Didn't we?”

“Yeah. We did. We need t' get them back where they belong. Which is with me, by the way. They're my family, not yours.”

“Never mind that,” Dick snapped. “This isn't a time to be arguing about who belongs where. Whoever they belong to, they are in grave danger. The note says they will be killed if we tell the marshal or call in the sheriff and his deputies. So how are we going to get them back? And don't tell me to pay the ransom. You know I can't do that. Even if I wanted to, and I have mixed feelings about that, I couldn't.”

Taylor ignored Dick's comment. “You got anything to eat in this house?”

“How can you think about food at a time like this?” The very thought was enough to make Dick want to puke.
Right at that moment food would be just about the last thing on his mind.

“I think better on a full stomach,” Taylor said, yawning. He made a face, scratched his belly, and sat down again.

“If we have anything . . . I don't know. Jessie always took care of things like that.” Dick fluttered his hands in futility.

“Come on, then. We'll go over to the café and get something. Maybe a hair of the dog after we eat.”

“No drinking. No more until we get the girls back,” Dick said.

Taylor gave him a dirty look. “Who died an' made you boss?” he demanded.

“It's just . . . we need to keep our heads clear from now on. If you don't want to help me, though, just say so. I'll go get them on my own.”

Taylor snorted derisively. “Go where? Get them how?”

“I haven't figured that out yet. We'll talk about it after breakfast.”

Taylor looked around, spotted his hat lying upside down on a chair, and retrieved it. “Ready?”

Dick felt grubby. He desperately needed to change his underthings and put on a fresh shirt. Taylor did not seem to care about such things. The hell with it, Dick thought. He pulled his wrinkled suit coat over his belly and buttoned it, that being all the sartorial preparation he made for the day. “Let's go,” he said.

* * *

Dick carefully buttered a bit of biscuit, spooned a tiny portion of wild strawberry jam onto the biscuit, and ate it. He peered across the table with distaste at the sight of Taylor wolfing down a plate of pork chops and fried
potatoes. The oaf had no manners whatsoever. Dick could not for the life of him understand why sweet, delicate, ladylike Jessica agreed to marry the man in the first place. The day when a divorce was granted and Dick was free to make Jessica his wife could not arrive too soon.

Jessica Hahn, Mrs. Richard Hahn, those had a very nice sound, he thought.

Soon. Just as soon as they could get Taylor out of their lives. Well, mostly out. The man would always be Louise's father and Dick would never knowingly do anything to hurt Loozy. He could not care for that little girl any more if she were his own flesh and blood.

Blood! God, the thought of Jessica and Loozy being harmed by that horrid gang of cutthroats . . . if he could he would be tempted to steal from the bank and pay the vicious bastards their ransom.

It did not escape Dick's attention that he could steal some of the bank's investment funds and palm that off as the total. Surely the gang would not know how much of the bank's capital was placed for investment.

Or could they?

Might they have someone actually inside the bank who already told them what to expect and how it could be gotten? That was not impossible, he supposed. They could have bribed one of the bank's employees to provide them with that information. For that matter, a bank employee might well be a member of the gang.

He had not seen the actual books, of course, but he had a sense of the bank's finances. He knew there was not a great deal of money allocated to employee salaries. One of them might be tempted to steal, especially if they were in financial straits. Gambling debt. A note coming due. Something on that order of things.

No, it was not impossible. Improbable, true, but not
impossible. And would he want to wager Jessica's life on it? Never. He sighed.

Dick's head was hurting. And not just from last night's excessive drinking.

If only he knew what to do.

“Pass me that ketchup, would'ja?”

Dick pushed the slim green bottle closer to Taylor and watched the man drown his fried potatoes in the stuff. Hahn did not much like ketchup. Did not much like John Taylor either for that matter. He returned his attention to the platter of biscuits and bowl of freshly churned sweet butter.

What to do? Damn it, what to do?

* * *

“By now they know that you and me are talking,” Taylor said. “The note didn't say anything about that and if they don't like it, well, too damn bad. Jess surely will've told them that she has both a husband and a boyfriend, so we oughta get away with this much, but we sure can't call in the law.”

“That states the problem,” Dick said, picking his teeth with a sliver of aspen wood that he pried off the side of the bench they were sitting on. “It does nothing to come up with a solution. If you can't do any better than that, then I—”

“Slow the hell down, will you? I'm thinking.”

“I didn't know you could,” Dick snapped.

“Maybe better'n you think I can, asshole.”

Dick started to bristle, but Taylor settled him down with a show of his palm in a “stop” motion. “What I was gonna say,” Taylor said slowly, “is that you an' me got to go after them.”

Dick gave him a look of sharp impatience. “Are you out of your damned mind, Taylor? Of course we have to bring them back. But just where in blue blazes are we supposed to look for them? Do you know where they've been taken? Do you have any earthly idea where we should start looking?”

Taylor shook his head. He settled back on the bench in front of the barbershop and crossed his legs. “‘Course I don't know. But I'm thinking we might could get a hint or two.”

“How are we supposed to do that?”

“Mister, I've trailed lost cows half my life. Deer, elk, all them. I know how to follow a trail.”

“What trail do you have it in mind to follow, cowboy?” Dick sneered.

“Don't got one yet, o' course, but think about it. They won't've rode the stagecoach outta town. Aren't likely to've showed themselves out on the public roads neither. Which means they likely cut back toward the mountains.” He gestured over his shoulder in the general direction of the snowcapped peaks that lay to the west, far higher than the relatively tame mountains that were situated east of Thom's Valley.

“Why that direction?” Dick asked.

“‘Cause it's the quickest way to get outta sight. Once they get up into the hills, they can't be seen from the flats. Once they get into those mountains, they can lose themselves for months at a time. Over that way”—he pointed to the east—“there's folks moving around. Running cows and sheep and such. No, sir, to them mountains west of here. That's sure the way I'd head if I wanted to hide somebody I wasn't supposed to have hold of.”

“All right, let's say you can find a trail. Then what?”
Dick was still skeptical, all the more so because it was John Taylor who was proposing the plan.

Taylor's eyes glinted and his lips compressed to a thin line. “Then we kill the sons of bitches.”

Dick supposed that he should object to that comment. He did not.

* * *

“I'm gonna go borrow me a horse from the livery an' start scouting around. It's best to do that before the sun gets too high.” Dick seemed to be puzzled, so Taylor added, “When the sun is shinin' on a slant, it causes shadows, makes it easier to spot tracks.”

“Oh. I . . . suppose that makes sense. You don't have a horse? I see you riding through town all the time.”

“Mister, you got a lot to learn. A working hand has got no business owning his own horse. They're convenient but they have to be sheltered and fed whether they're earning their keep or not. Cowhands ride the horses of whatever outfit they happen to be working for.”

“I never knew that.”

“There's a lot o' things you don't know, Hahn.” Taylor scowled, then said, “While I'm gone you'd best get us some supplies. You can say . . . hell, I dunno. You're the liar, not me. Make something up. Just make sure nobody ends up wondering what we're up to. You got any guns?”

“Shotguns,” Dick admitted.

“You got a spare that I can carry?” Taylor asked.

“Yes, I have my everyday shotgun and I have a rather special custom gun too. You don't have a gun? No kind of gun?”

“Mister, I do odd jobs around town that I need a hammer an' saw for and I do day work with cows. For them I need a saddle and a rope. But I don't need a gun for any of it.”