Mark of the Hunter by Charles G. West

looked at Cord for his reaction, which was nothing more than an indifferent shrug. “No,” Lem told Hughes, “I reckon me and Cord will ride along with you.” So the posse set out following the train robbers’ tracks with eight of their number heading back to Ogallala.
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    They were fortunate to have no rain for the two and a half days it took them to follow the gang’s tracks from Big Springs. The robbers seemed to take no real efforts to hide their trail. On the morning of the third day, the posse struck the Republican River, and from the signs they found, it appeared Bass and his gang had camped there for a couple of days. That meant the posse had gained a day on them, which would have been encouraging news except for one thing. After they’d studied the tracks around the camp, it was obvious that the gang had split up in three pairs when they left the river, heading out in three separate directions. The decision had to be made as to how to split the posse. Hughes suggested that he should follow the trail leading southeast, and invited Lem and Cord to ride with him. The other posse men seemed reluctant to continue deeper into Kansas, their numbers reduced by the three-way split. A couple of them grumbled that they should have turned back with the others at Big Springs. When it became clear that any enthusiasm they might have had for capturing the train robbers was now waning, Lem asked Cord if he was still willing to stay in the hunt. “Ol’ Hughes seems to have his mind set on catchin’ some of these outlaws, so I figured somebody oughta go along to keep him outta trouble.” He cast a broad grin in Hughes’s direction, knowing the sheriff could hear his remark.
    â€œIt’s all right by me,” Cord said. “We told Mike we’d most likely be gone a week.”
    â€œâ€™Preciate it, Cord,” Hughes said, looking at him while aiming his next comment at Lem. “I might need your help to keep Lem from fallin’ off his horse.”
    Lem chuckled. “Hell, you’re lucky to have me along on this little picnic.”
    While the others turned back north, the three lone posse men followed the trail left by the two outlaws heading southeast. “I hope to hell one of these riders is Sam Bass,” Hughes remarked.

Chapter 4
    After almost four days following a trail left by two horses, losing it half a dozen times before finding it again, the three-man posse pushed their horses close to a hundred miles over flat Kansas prairie. Finally Lem asked Hughes just how far he was planning to follow the outlaws. “Hell, them boys is long gone. If we ain’t caught up with ’em after this long, we ain’t likely to catch ’em before they get clean to Texas.”
    â€œWe’ll call it quits if we don’t overtake ’em before they get to Buffalo Station,” Hughes said. He was reluctant to end the chase, since a reward of ten thousand dollars had been offered by Union Pacific for the capture of the robbers and recovery of the money, a small detail he had neglected to tell any of his volunteer posse.
    Late in the afternoon of the fourth day, they spotted a strange object on the distant horizon looming up from the flat landscape. “Look yonder,” Lem exclaimed. “What the hell is that?”
    â€œBuffalo Station,” Hughes said, “couldn’t be nothin’ else. That’s gotta be the water tank at Buffalo Station—train stops there. I heard that water tank is a hundred and twenty feet high, so we’re still a long way from the station.”
    â€œI just hope they’ve got a saloon there,” Lem said. “My throat’s a little dusty.”
    â€œThey got a general store with a saloon built on the back,” Hughes told him. “Least they did the last time I was there. They may have more’n that by now. That was over four years ago, but