Keeping to his room, though, left him little to occupy himself with, other than rereading the file he had on the men wanted by the law west of the Missouri line. The Dalton gang and all of their known members had been in that file. There were more members than had actually shown up to rob the Coffeyville banks, but at least the three Dalton brothers wouldn’t be appearing in any more files.
Damian also did a lot of thinking while he was recuperating from his “trail” ordeal. He was sorry, after he thought about it, that he and Casey had parted on such bad terms. He had liked the kid. Casey had given him his final advice that day of the robberies, then simply walked away. Damian hadn’t seen him since. Not that he was taking the advice to heart and trying to avoid the boy. He just hadn’t been out of his hotel to notice whether Casey was still in town or not.
However, Damian was feeling guilty, all things considered. Casey had helped him when he’d desperately needed it. He’d thanked him, yes, but then he’d also come damn close to beating him to a pulp. Hardly the way to treat a person who’d probably saved his life.
And one remark kept repeating itself in Damian’s mind. I track, hunt, and capture outlaws, while they do their best to avoid it.
Damian had already owned up to the fact that he personally knew next to nothing about hunting down Henry Curruthers. All he had was the name of the town Curruthers had last been seen in. But someone like Casey would know how to proceed from there to find the man. That was what the kid did for a living.
The idea to hire the boy came to him soon after that, but he didn’t act on it immediately. And the reason he procrastinated was that he was used to getting what he wanted from people, yet he fully expected a flat refusal from Casey. He simply didn’t feel like facing rejection right now, after everything else he’d gone through.
Yet his common sense won out. Casey could save him weeks, months even, of wasted time. And it wouldn’t hurt to ask. If he got turned down, he could always find another bounty hunter. But he would prefer the kid, already being familiar with him and having witnessed firsthand his capabilities. He also trusted Casey, though he couldn’t exactly say why, whereas someone he didn’t know…
Having made the decision, he was then afraid that he’d lost his chance, that the kid would have moved on by now. But he made an effort to find him anyway. And he got lucky.
It was a rundown boardinghouse on the edge of town, the cheapest accommodations to be found. The slovenly owner steered Damian to the first door upstairs. He was worried that his weight was going to cave a few of the steps in, they creaked so loudly on his way up. And there was no answer to his knock. Surprisingly, the door was open, so he stepped inside to wait.
Damian wasn’t expecting the kid to be there at that point, yet he was. He came out of a tiny, closetlike bathroom rubbing a towel to the side of his head, having just washed his hair—which was undoubtedly why he hadn’t heard the knock. The poncho had been removed. It was the first time Damian had seen him without it.
For a boy of around fifteen or sixteen years, the kid was skinnier than Damian had thought, with very narrow shoulders. The too-big-for-him, white cotton shirt was tucked into his jeans, showing a waist small enough to be envied by most females. Even his feet were small and delicate-looking, noticeable without his moccasins on.
Actually, cleaned up as he was now, Casey looked damn near like a girl, and a pretty one at that. Perhaps Damian would have been doing him a favor to have landed that punch the other day. A permanently disfigured nose would have detracted a bit from that prettiness.
The boy went perfectly still, except for the narrowing of those golden brown eyes, when he noticed Damian by the bed. “How the hell did you get in here?”
“The door wasn’t locked.”
“Did it have a sign on it that said ‘Walk Right In’?” Casey replied sarcastically as he draped the towel around his neck to hang down his chest, keeping a grasp on each end. “Or have you taken to breaking into other people’s rooms now, Damian?”
Damian flushed. “The woman downstairs said you were in. When you didn’t answer my knock—I was just making sure you were all right.”
“I’m fine. But I’ll be even better—just as soon as you leave.”
“That isn’t very hospitable, Casey.”
“Sure it is. At least I’m not shooting you.”
Damian smiled. He couldn’t help it. Casey, disgruntled, was worse than a pouting female.
“I’d like to apologize for my behavior the other morning. I’ll admit, my anger got out of hand.”
“I noticed.”
“It won’t happen again,” Damian assured him.
Casey shrugged. “It don’t make me no nevermind if you fly off the handle. I won’t be around to see it. Now you’ve apologized. I’ll restrain myself from doing the same. The door is behind you.”
Damian sighed. The kid was not making this easy. And he’d switched to his inscrutable expression, the one that hid his emotions so effectively, and had caused Damian more than a little nervousness on several occasions. This wasn’t one of those times, though, since the kid was presently unarmed, his gun and holster hanging over the back of the only chair, which was on Damian’s side of the room.
“Before I leave, I have a proposal to make to you,” Damian said.
“I’m not interested.”
“It will be worth your while to at least hear me out before you decline the offer.”
“Now just how do you figure that, when I said I’m not interested?”
Damian ignored that comment. “I’d like to hire you to help me find a murderer.”
Casey sighed at that point. “Do I look like I’m for hire, Damian? I’m not. I do the picking and choosing of the men I want to go after. Clean and simple, with no one trying to give me orders, or pushing me to get the job done, or complaining that I’m not doing things the way they think I should.”
“I’ll pay you ten thousand dollars.”
That took care of the inscrutable expression. Casey was clearly incredulous. And the amount Damian had settled on wasn’t arbitrary, it was the figure Casey had claimed to have just lost out on.
“Are you crazy?” was the first response.
“No, just very rich.”
“That’s throwing away good money.”
“That depends on how you look at it. This man murdered my father, Casey, and it drives me crazy each day that he continues to elude justice. And I’ve already spent thousands of dollars on private detectives, who at least traced him as far as Fort Worth, Texas. But they lost him from there, which is why I’m on my way to Texas, trying to look for him myself. If your help can find him sooner than I could on my own, then what I pay you will be worth every penny to me.”
Casey moved to sit down on the edge of the bed. He stared at the floor for several long minutes. Damian didn’t say another word, letting him mull it over, hoping his own sense of justice would influence his final decision.
When he looked up, he said, “I have to be honest with you. I can think of a dozen men off the top of my head who would take on this job for a fraction of what you’re willing to pay. All good trackers, too. And then there are dozens of others if you know where to inquire, guns for hire that do this sort of thing for a living.”
“Your pointing that out, Casey, is the very reason I want you for the job. I trust you not to steer me wrong or take advantage of my lack of knowledge about this part of the country. Anyone else I wouldn’t know or trust, so the offer is being made to you and you alone.”
Several more minutes of silence passed, more excruciating than before, since Casey wasn’t giving any indication at all of what he was thinking. Damian knew the boy would prefer not to deal with him anymore. But he also knew the money was important to him, or he wouldn’t have gotten so upset over missing out on the Dalton gang’s rewards.
Casey finally said, “All right, tell me everything you know about the man.”
Damian gave an inward sigh of relief. “
I’ll tell you on the way.”
“You’ll what?”
“I’ll be going with you.”
“Like hell you will.”
“That’s part of the deal, Casey. I have to be there, to make a positive identification—”
“And then kill him?” Casey cut in, eyes narrowing. “I do recall you saying that was your intention. But if you think I’ll just stand there and let you shoot this man in cold blood, think again.”
“Isn’t that an unwritten rule in your own profession?” Damian pointed out. “‘Dead or alive,’ all those Wanted posters read, but without any fine print that tells you how to go about seeing to the ‘dead’ part.”
“I go by my own rules, Damian, and death doesn’t show up in them.”
“Yes, I’d already gathered that about the way you do business. So don’t worry about it. I’m not going to kill him without provocation. I might be hoping for provocation, but I’ll settle for his spending the rest of his life in prison. Some men might consider that a worse punishment than death.”
“I have your word on that?”
“If you must.”
“Very well, we’ll ride out in the morning. Get you a horse—”
Damian cut in. “We’ll take the train to save time, at least until it’s no longer going in the same direction we are. I’ll pick up the tickets, since I will also be covering all travel expenses.”
The kid was now giving him a look that clearly said Orders already? but all he replied was, “It’s been my experience that trains aren’t always faster, but suit yourself.”
Chapter 11
Casey spent the rest of that day castigating herself for succumbing to temptation. She never should have agreed to “stick” herself with Damian Rutledge again. Finding this killer for him was one thing, but taking him along to do it…she knew better. She’d already dealt with the difficulties of having him around.
Half the time, he made her feel like a mother with a young child, needing to do everything for him because he couldn’t do for himself. But then she’d look at him and not feel that way at all. He jumbled her emotions too much. He made her feel things she wasn’t used to. Hell, even after she’d thought she’d seen the last of him, she had still been thinking about him way too much.
But ten thousand dollars for one job—there was just no way she could turn that down, when she could then go home as soon as the job was done. The money offered for a wanted man usually correlated to his dangerousness, but in this case she didn’t think so. The killer was an Easterner, after all, so how dangerous could he be?
It would be an easy job, too easy for the kind of money being offered. But it didn’t make her no nevermind if Damian wanted to throw away good money. She would just have to deal with the negative aspects of it, though…which began the very next day.
Casey showed up at the train depot at the time Damian’s message to her that morning had stated. He was easy to find. Dressed in his fine suit, wearing a silly-looking hat that wouldn’t do a bit of good to keep the sun off his face, he stood out like a sore thumb.
He was carrying a rifle case along with his travel bag. She really hoped there wasn’t a weapon in it, because if he intended to do any shooting, she imagined she’d have to tend to shot-off toes.
“You’re late,” he said by way of greeting as soon as she came up beside him.
“I’m right on time,” she disagreed.
He didn’t argue the point. Instead, he walked off toward the train that was already boarding, expecting her to follow. She didn’t.
Casey took one look at it and called out, “I don’t see a stock car on this train.”
He stopped, turning around to raise a brow at her. “A stock car?”
She gave him a pointed look. “You think I’m leaving my horse behind, tenderfoot?”
His flush of embarrassment was immediate. Obviously he hadn’t considered her horse in his travel arrangements, but then, a man who’d never been on one until a few days ago wouldn’t. And now they’d have to wait for another train, one that transported animals as well as passengers, which could be later that day—or even next week.
Damian said, “I’ll be right back,” and he was back after only a few minutes to tell her, “They’re going to add a stock car.”
Casey almost chuckled, but settled for a grin. “That must have cost you a pretty penny.”
His nod was curt. He was still embarrassed. And the train was delayed in leaving while the extra car was hooked up to it. It had probably cost Damian even more than she figured. Train engineers prided themselves on keeping to their time schedules, after all.
But they finally did get settled, in one of the plushiest cars Casey had ever ridden in. Damian had lucked out there; this particular train had one of those fancy Eastern Pullman luxury cars attached to it, or so she thought. When no other passengers entered it, though, she found out that he’d arranged to have it delivered from one of the northern stations for his exclusive use.
He’d agreed to pay an exorbitant fifty dollars a day to rent it. But having already experienced the emigrant train cars with their hard, uncomfortable seats, he told her that he counted that a small price to pay for his comfort, especially since they still had Oklahoma Territory to pass through, as well as northern Texas.
Casey couldn’t complain. She was in complete agreement with Damian about the fact that the few trains she had ridden on in the past six months hadn’t been at all pleasant. Having been raised on a ranch, she actually preferred the outdoors and a good seat on a horse, but if she had to ride the rails, one of George Pullman’s deluxe parlor cars was definitely the next best way to travel.
“I should have thought of this when I left New York,” Damian told her. “My father owned one of these cars, which we used to travel in when business took us out of the city. It had nearly all the comforts of home, even including a large bedroom. I’m sorry to say it never occurred to me to use it to travel West in.”
“What, no beds in this one?” Casey asked him, tongue in cheek.
He missed the sarcasm. “No, but the seats look comfortable enough to sleep in if the train doesn’t stop over in a town for the night. Not all of them do, and those hard benches at the out-of-town depot stops allow about as much sleep as the cold ground does.”
“Would depend on whether you like sleeping on the ground or not, wouldn’t it?”
That remark had him slanting his eyes at her. “I suppose you do?”
Casey sank down in the thick, overstuffed, velvet-upholstered chair, her hands hooked over her belly, and just smiled. That seemed to annoy Damian no end, to go by the look of disgust he gave her. So she added a shrug.
“I was raised on a ranch, Damian. I’ve spent many a night out on a roundup, sleeping next to a campfire.”
Also, some of her fondest memories were from those times she had spent in the wilds with her father and brothers, when he was teaching them all the things he felt they should know. But she wasn’t going to mention that, since she’d told Damian she was an orphan.
Being nameless, as she’d claimed to be, sort of took it for granted that you weren’t raised by loving parents. But her real name was not something she was going to pass around, even after all this time, not when her father was likely still out there looking for her.
“So you know ranching as well as bounty hunting?” Damian asked her casually.
“I know ranching inside and out.”
“You say that like it’s something you enjoyed doing. So why did you switch to bounty hunting, which is so much more dangerous?”
“More dangerous?” Casey couldn’t help grinning. “Now that’s debatable.”
“I hardly think—”
She cut in, “Have you ever been around cattle to know, Damian? With a gunman, it’s your skill against theirs, but with cattle, it’s you against brute force. If a bull’s charging you or a stampede’s started, there’s no skill to it, you just get the hell out of the way as best you can.”
r /> “But if you prefer that…?”
Casey shrugged. “I’ll be ranching again, just as soon as I finish doing what I have to do.”
“Which is?”
“You ask too many questions, Damian.”
Damian grinned this time. “Not nearly as many as I could, but no matter. I just figured, since we were going to be spending a lot more time together, that we might as well get to know each other better.”
“The only thing you need to know about me is I can get the job done. Now, why don’t you tell me about this man you want tracked down?”
It didn’t take long. The bare facts weren’t many. But Damian also recounted all the evidence that his detectives had uncovered. Everyone who knew Henry Curruthers had been shocked to learn what he’d done—his elderly aunt, his co-workers, his neighbors. No one could believe that he would embezzle money from the company he worked for, much less resort to murder to hide his crime.
But circumstances could change people drastically. Casey knew that. She was an example of it herself. And having two confessions, as well as Curruthers’s fleeing West without telling anyone that he was leaving the city, not to mention the clear indication in the accounts, which only he kept, that the money had been stolen, were damning pieces of evidence.
“He’ll be easy enough to find with a description like his,” Casey remarked after Damian had finished speaking, though she added, “But I’d like to hear his side of it before I turn him over to the law.”
Damian frowned. “After everything I’ve told you, you can’t think that he might be innocent.”
“No, it doesn’t sound like he is. But he’s not the typical sort that I hunt either. The outlaws I hunt all have one thing in common—witnesses to their crimes. If I have to kill one of them, I won’t feel too bad about it, being assured of their guilt beforehand.”
“You’ve said that was never the case, that you haven’t had to kill any of them.”