Without Words by Ellen O'Connell Page B

town took half the day.
    Satisfied, he slid back down the hill to where he’d left Jasper. Mrs. Petty and the horses could stay in this hollow behind the hill while he kept watch. Pulling a thief out of a nest of thieves would take a little planning, but he’d done it a time or two before in the last six years.
     
    A T FIRST H ASSIE was glad to move closer to where Bret had set up his observation post. As each hour of waiting passed more slowly than the one before, the necessity of staying in the small hollow between the hills began to chafe.
    She read for a while, groomed each horse and gave it some grazing time on a lead rope, made Yel—Gunner a necklace of grass and flowers. The sun had barely moved from the eastern to western sky when she finished all those things and looked around for something else to alleviate the boredom.
    Her searching eyes lit on the panniers. Bret had amazing things squirreled away in there, and she hadn’t seen everything yet. Taking inventory would keep her busy for a while.
    The first curious thing she unearthed was a tin box, a shallow rectangle. She turned it over, gave it a little shake.
    Whatever Bret kept in there was none of her business. Photographs of his family maybe. Or letters. Temptation proved too much. She wouldn’t read any letters. Would just take a peek at photographs.
    The box didn’t contain photographs or letters. It contained wanted posters. Sheet after sheet of descriptions of men and their crimes. Some of the posters had penciled notes in the margins or on the reverse side, Bret’s notes, written in exactly the neat, strong hand she would expect.
    The poster on top, Moses Jensen, was the man Bret hoped to find in this ugly little town. Jensen had been one of five men who robbed a Missouri-Pacific train, and the only one of the five identified. The Missouri-Pacific Railroad Company was willing to pay three hundred dollars to see Mr. Jensen brought to justice.
    Her restless boredom evaporated. Hassie sat and read about one criminal after another. Most were thieves. Some, like Rufus, had through intent or happenstance killed during a robbery. They had stolen from stage companies, railroads, and businesses. They had killed in order to steal, in order to get away, and from the descriptions, out of pure meanness.
    By the time she finished reading about each man, the light was almost gone. She wiped the black smudges of ink from her hands on tufts of grass, but what she really wanted to scrub was her mind. Fascinating as the descriptions were, so much evil was overwhelming.
    Bret didn’t come down from the hill until it was too dark to see words on her slate. Confessing to going through the box would have to wait until tomorrow.
    “Not a sign of him,” Bret said. “Either he’s not there, or I didn’t start watching early enough. We’ll stay here tonight, and I’ll start at first light tomorrow.”
    The thought of sleeping so close to men like the ones on the posters made Hassie shiver. Gunner would growl if strangers approached, but sometimes his growl wasn’t very loud.
    “I’m going to keep watch,” Bret said as if he sensed her uneasiness. “You get some sleep.”
    She didn’t need the slate to tell him how she felt about that. She pointed to herself, to her eyes.
    “All right,” he said. “I’ll wake you in a few hours, and you can take second shift.”
    But he didn’t wake her.
     
    B Y THE SMALL hours of the night, Bret’s eyes grated in the sockets every time he blinked or moved. He’d gone without sleep a lot longer during the war, but fear kept a man on his toes better than the thought of dragging one more thief to jail, collecting one more reward.
    He should let Mrs. Petty keep watch for at least a few hours, but that idea grated worse than his eyes. He’d rest after sunset today, and he’d worry about what Mrs. Petty would think of his plan for Jensen’s transportation once he had to tell her.
    She was still asleep when he crawled up the