Jake picked out a box of thin cigars. “That’s the one. Four or five days, you say?”
“Yes. You just might be able to catch up with them, since you’re traveling with just horses. That bunch has wagons, and those supply wagons especially won’t be moving too fast. I pity them when they get to the mountains.”
Jake turned to take inventory of where the other two men were standing. He looked back at Nemus, who was rearranging some items under the counter that Jake figured didn’t need rearranging. He had a feeling the man was nervously trying to keep busy, wanted to keep from having to look directly at Jake.
“How about flour, sugar?” Nemus was asking. “I know anyone traveling who stops by here around noon like you have are usually in a hurry to get in some more miles before sunset. I’ll get your supplies together right fast. Just tell me what you need.”
Jake moved to a wall of shelves where boxes of ammunition were kept, turning so that he could see all three men. “You seem in a big hurry to get me out of here, Nemus,” he told the trader.
He watched the other two men straighten to an alert position. Nemus himself slowly lowered his hand from where he had reached up to take down a sack of flour. The man turned to face Jake. Again came the nervous smile. “Well, it’s like I said. Most travelers this time of day are in a hurry. I’m just trying to get you what you need, Mr. Turner. Hell, if you want to stay and rest a while, that’s fine too. The men outside are cooking up a hindquarter of beef. You’re welcome to stay and eat with us.”
Jake eyed all three of them, taking a cheroot from his shirt pocket and lighting it. He smoked quietly for a moment. “There’s one lady in particular I’m looking for,” he finally spoke up. “A widow woman, named Miranda Hayes.” Again Nemus looked away. The other two men glanced at each other, and Jake knew something was terribly wrong. Was Randy here? Why? And why were these men hiding her? “Any of you remember if she was with the Jennings group?”
One of the other two men cleared his throat. “Don’t rightly remember, mister.”
Jake studied the man a moment, taking a drag on the cheroot. “Oh, I think you’d remember. Men out in a lonely place like this don’t soon forget a single woman as pretty as this one.”
“Lots of women come through here, single and married,” Nemus put in, his friendly, nervous attitude now changing to one of hostility. “Hell, hundreds of people come through here, probably thousands. How are we supposed to remember one in particular?”
“You remembered the Jennings party. If you remembered them, you’d remember Mrs. Hayes.” Jake kept the cheroot between his teeth, and a look of dark fury came into his eyes. “You were right, Nemus. I do know how to use these guns,” he said, his voice low and threatening. “And believe me, you don’t want to test me out. Why don’t you just tell me the truth about what you know about Mrs. Hayes?” All three men eyed each other, none of them looking willing to talk. Jake threw down the cheroot, stepping it out. “One of you is going to get his goddamn kneecaps shot out if somebody doesn’t tell me what the hell is going on here,” he seethed. “That’s Mrs. Hayes’s trunk sitting out there by that sod hut, isn’t it?”
“She’s dead,” Nemus spoke up quickly. “She got snakebit, and Jennings didn’t know what to do with her. They left her off here and we tried to help her, but she died on us.”
The first words brought a wrenching pain to Jake’s chest, and it felt like knives were moving through his blood. Dead! Why did it bother him so to think that could be true? He had known Randy for such a little while.
The thought stabbed at him only for a moment. Something in Nemus’s eyes and the quick way he had answered told him the man was lying. He had to be lying! For some reason, he felt like he didn’t even want to live himself if Randy was really dead. “Show me the grave,” he told Nemus.
Before any of the three men could even blink, Jake had drawn one of his revolvers and was aiming it at Nemus. The movement had been sleek and instant, the click of the gun as he cocked it, the determined look in his eyes…it gave all three men the shivers. He moved his arm to point the gun at the other two men.
“Wait a minute,” one of them spoke up, backing away. “I don’t want no part of this, Nemus. I ain’t dyin’ for no woman just because you want to keep her for yourself!”
“Shut up, Stanton!”
“She’s over in Nemus’s shack next door,” the one called Stanton told Jake. “She really did get snakebit, and she’s awful sick. Nemus, he’s been takin’ care of her.”