Blake Ordle's Arc

Chapter 1 of 6

Blake Ordle had worn the sheriff's star for one day when the bank got hit. He came for the outlaw no lawman before him had ever caught. Now a crowd blocked the bank steps, and their shouting drowned the town. "You're the new sheriff," a woman said. "So go get them!" A rancher grabbed Blake's sleeve. "They took the payroll. Ride now, before they reach the hills!" Blake studied the broken lock. The thieves had left an hour ago, maybe less. He didn't know these roads. He didn't know which way the hills bent. Chasing blind would only lose them for good. "Give me one minute," Blake said. The crowd pushed closer. A man spat in the dirt. "A minute's how they escape." Blake needed someone who knew the ground. He turned and found his brother already crouched at the bank door. Titus Ordle was blond and blue-eyed, nothing like Blake, but he read dirt the way other men read print. Their mother's Apache blood had made Titus the best tracker in the county. He pressed two fingers to a hoofprint and frowned. "Three horses," Titus said. "One's carrying double. That one drags. They're slow." "Which way?" Blake asked. Titus stood and pointed past the crowd, not toward the hills, but the low creek road. "Fresh mud on the boards. They went for water, not high ground. Everybody expects the hills. That's why they didn't take them." The rancher scoffed. "Nobody robs a bank and rides toward town." "They did," Titus said. He didn't look up. Blake made his choice. He raised the tin star so the crowd could see it. "Titus, I'm deputizing you. Right now." Titus grinned. "Took you long enough." They rode the creek road hard. The mud held every print. Titus called them out, one by one, until the trail bent behind a stand of trees. There the brothers found a lame horse tied loose and a saddlebag split open, empty. Blake dismounted. The thieves had switched mounts here. Fresh, fast horses. The slow trail was a trick to buy them time. He'd guessed right on the road and lost them anyway. But Titus knelt by the abandoned saddlebag. He held up a folded paper, half-buried in the mud. A hand-drawn map. On it, someone had marked the bank, the mill, and three other towns Blake didn't know. "This isn't one robbery," Titus said quietly. "They've been planning a string of them." Blake took the map. The lines were careful, drawn by a steady hand. Whoever led these men had done this before, town after town, and no lawman had ever caught him. The same ghost Blake had come to unmask. He folded the map into his coat. The thieves were gone. But now Blake knew where they'd strike next. "Ride back," Blake told his brother. "We warn the mill before dark."