Page 52 of Follow the Lonesome Trail
“Miss Ruby!” Frank hollered. He grabbed at her as she fell, catching her wrist—and losing his balance in the act. They bothcrashed to the ground, sliding a good ways down the slope in an ungainly tangle. They skidded to a rough stop in a heap of loose rubble.
Ruby sat up first, shaking clumps of dirt from her curls. She looked a little rumpled and sported some minor scrapes, but as she stood shakily and brushed herself off, Jimmy could see that she was largely unhurt.
Frank moved slower, and his attempt to sit up was accompanied by a long, low groan.
“You poor man!” Ruby exclaimed, dropping back to her knees beside him. “Looks like you took the worst of that fall. And to think, you got yourself all hurt just to try and save me!”
“Weren’t no trouble.” There was a note of excitement in Frank’s raspy whisper that betrayed him. Jimmy had seen this before. Frank thrived on pity. He would’ve let himself get shot if it meant a pretty lady would fuss over him.
“Oh, but it was!” Ruby insisted. “Just think of how bad off I could’ve been if you hadn’t broken my fall.”
“Come on, Frank,” Jimmy urged. “Walk it off. We’re in the middle of a hundred-dollar job, remember? We’re so close!”
“Oh, shut up, Jimmy,” Ruby snapped at him. “You’ll get your money soon enough. At least let me fix Frank up before we go on. I can clean that cut with my hankie in two shakes. Here, why don’t you have something to drink?”
Drink.
The word sent off warning bells in Jimmy’s mind. He reached reflexively for his canteen laced with the tincture of laudanum, but it wasn’t hanging at his side like it should be. He’d handed it to Frank earlier, which meant…
Frank still had it!
“Ruby, no!” Jimmy shouted at her. He started a mad charge up the hill. “Don’t touch that!”
But it was too late. With all the tender care of a mother cradling a sick child, Ruby gently tilted Frank’s head and poured the contents of Jimmy’s canteen into his parched lips.
Frank swallowed the draft reflexively. The taste must have tipped him off that something was wrong, because after the second gulp, his eyes went wide and wild for an instant. Then they rolled back in his head, and Frank went completely limp.
“Oh!” Ruby gasped, snatching the canteen away. She gave it a timid sniff and immediately gagged. “Lands, Jimmy! What on earth have you been drinking?”
“Frank!” Jimmy shouted as he dropped beside his partner. “Frank, come on, wake up!” He slapped Frank’s face back and forth, but it only made him loll limply from side to side.
“Is…is he dead?” Ruby’s wide round eyes threatened to spill over with tears. “Did I kill Frank?”
“No, but I might,” Jimmy muttered. “Dagnabbit, Frank, you just had to let her baby you? Now I’m gonna have to do this all by myself while you take a nice little nap!” Jimmy stood and kicked viciously at a pile of leaf litter, sending a spattering of dirt over Frank’s sleeping face. He shook a finger at Frank. “I’m taking a percentage of your cut, ya hear?”
Jimmy reached down and took hold of Ruby’s arm, pulling her to her feet. “Come on, we gotta go.”
“What about Frank?” Ruby protested.
“Leave him.” Jimmy shook his head. “Neither one of us can carry him like that. I’ll finish the job and come back for him. It’s anyone’s guess as to when he comes around.”
Ruby didn’t resist as Jimmy led her down the mountainside. It took only a minute more to reach the cache, but each passing moment made Jimmy feel more and more anxious to be done with the whole business.
“Down here, in the hollow,” Jimmy directed her. Ruby, for the first time since her stagecoach had been held up, seemed unsure. She hesitated, hanging back a few steps behind him.
“Look, you don’t gotta be scared of me,” Jimmy said, glancing back. “I’m not gonna bury you like a treasure. I won’t even tie you up, if you promise to stay put. I’ll wait in the trees and make sure they come get you, all right?”
Ruby didn’t answer. Jimmy couldn’t bring himself to look at her anymore. Technicality or not, thiswaskidnapping. He was about to leave a lady to an unknown fate, and pretend it was as routine as pawning a stolen watch.
He was also about to be a hundred dollars richer, he reminded himself. A hundred and twenty, if he counted the cut he intended to claim out of Frank’s share.
And that, he told himself, was worth it.
Jimmy pulled the paper from his pocket again to review how the cache would be marked. But as he unfolded the note, his heart dropped. He couldn’t even read the words; he was too focused on the rolling shape of the tiny, immaculate penmanship that blanketed the paper. The spider of dread that had been lurking in the shadows of his mind now crawled out and bared its fangs.
He knew that handwriting. It was identical to the writing on Ruby’s love letter.
Soft hands.
