Thief of My Heart (Watty Awards Finalist 2012)

Chapter 39

Sherman McMaster watched the trail of smoke he had just exhaled drift slowly towards the heavens and disappear into the blackness of the starless sky.  He held the cigar between his teeth while he stretched  his hands out towards the fire.    Why had it turned so blasted cold?  He hated the cold.  That's why he had come to the southwest in the first place. It wasn't supposed to get this cold in Texas, he thought.  But then again,  Mother Nature could do as she pleased, he reckoned.  He had been born and raised in Chicago where the winters were especially cruel.  But since coming out west he'd forgotten how much he hated the cold.   And the further north Heyes and Curry led them, the colder it got.  But he didn't figure on it turning into much of a chase.  According to that blacksmith who'd pegged them they weren't wearing any coats and didn't appear to be carrying gear for traveling.   A man could only go so far in the cold without food before his mind started getting fuzzy.  His senses dulled and his reaction time was delayed.  Not even Kid Curry was a real threat when he was shivering from hypothermia and half starved to death. 

They must have  been expecting to return right away to wherever they were calling home these day.  And that place must have been close by.  That smithy was pretty sure they'd come north from Red Rock.  He'd sent a few men that way just in case they doubled back.  But he didn't see Heyes and Curry making an amateur's mistake like that.  And he had no doubt it was Heyes and Curry.  The smithy's description was too spot on.  It had to be them.  No other outlaws he'd ever come across were as slippery as those two.  And he'd know plenty of outlaws.  Some he'd called his enemy and some he'd called his friend.  He'd even helped a few escape the clutches of the law when he was supposed to be the law.  But these two wouldn't be escaping.  Not this time.  He'd made sure the word got out real quick that they'd been spotted and in which direction their trail was headed.  It would be in all the newspapers as far north as Denver by tomorrow night.  They wouldn't be able to find refuge in an outhouse by then.  And finding someone to give them refuge was their only hope. How they'd gotten out of that saloon and out of town today without anybody noticing was beyond him,  but it didn't matter.  He was patient.  He could wait. 

The sounds of snoring from one of the men in the posse shook him momentarily from his reveries.  Heyes and Curry would travel on through the night most likely.  But he and his men could afford a little rest stop.  Because once hunger, fatigue and exposure began to take their toll, catching up would be as easy as pie.  He hadn't needed a posse this size.  Just a couple of men to watch his back would have sufficed.  But he wanted to have plenty of eye witnesses there when he took down the two big fish that had gotten away once before.  He'd taken such a ribbing from Doc Holliday and the Earps after he let them get away two years ago that he'd finally left Tombstone.  Well, we'd see who was laughing this time.  They'd all be laughing on the other sides of their faces when they saw the photographs of Heyes' and Curry's dead bodies.

Amos' young greenhorn deputy, Jesse Horton, had asked him if he thought they were headed back to Devil's Hole.  McMaster had only laughed at that.   They wouldn't be this far from Devil's Hole this late in the year if they were still staying there.  Too much risk of getting caught in inclement weather, like the weather they were experiencing now.  They were holing up somewhere near Cold Springs.  He'd heard rumors of Heyes and Curry trying to play it straight.  He wondered now if those rumors were true.  Why else would they be so far from an impenetrable fortress like Devil's Hole?     In fact, now that he thought about it, he hadn't heard of any crimes being committed by Heyes and the Kid in quite a while.  He'd heard about a few minor altercations involving the Devil's Hole Gang, but the gang had been led by Wheat Carlson, not Hannibal Heyes.

And so what if they were playing it straight these days?  It didn't erase all the crimes they'd committed in the past.  And didn't change the fact that he had a score to settle with them.  And it certainly didn't make him any less eager to see those two laying cold on slabs with several bullet holes from his Colt Peacemaker decorating their bodies.

He crushed the butt of his cigar under his boot heel.  He leaned back against the trunk of the felled tree that lay behind him and closed his eyes, though he doubted if sleep would come.  A slow, lazy grin spread across his otherwise emotionless face.  He was just too blamed excited to sleep.


*Author's Note*
Sherman W. McMaster was a real person.  He did ride with the Texas Rangers and he knew the famous Earps.  He was thought to be on both sides of the law at different times in his life.