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then the small notebook from his back pocket, Prine realized that the man was working the same thing Karl Tolan was.
    Twenty minutes later, Cassie appeared in his fringed buggy, heading for town. She was the prettiest sight on a morning of pretty sights.
    The man gave her a ten-minute head start and then directed his horse out from behind the jackpines and started back to town himself. Prine, in turn, gave the man the same amount of head start and then he, too, took off to town.
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    P rine did his work. He had a court appearance, he had some possible minor rustling he checked out, and he had some paperwork to catch up on.
    He spent the last hour of the day going through three stacks of old Wanted posters. Some of them were long out of date. Those he pitched. A few of the posters made him smile. The descriptions of the wanted men sounded like dime novels. "Maybe the fiercest man to draw breath since Billy the Kid." Since the man was described as fifty-three years old with one blind eye and a bum leg, Prine had his doubts.
    He came upon a poster for Karl Tolan just before quitting time.
    He was wanted on two charges of fraud. Several posters later, Prine found the man he'd seen following Cassie Neville this morning. Ted Rooney. Same charges as the Tolan character. Fraud. Not too difficult how the division of labor went with these two. Tolan the brawn, Rooney the brains. He was surprised their legal charges weren't more severe. But all that meant was that they hadn't been caught for other and more serious crimes.
    He was already getting a sense of what they were likely up to. He was surprised, in fact, that it hadn't been tried before.
    He folded the posters neatly and put them in his back pocket.
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    T hat night, he sat alone at a table in a saloon, drinking slow beers and sketching out quick ideas of how the thing would actually come off.
    Kidnapping had become one of the staple crimes in the New West, as the editorial writers now liked to call their frontier states. There was risk involved, of course, but from the criminal's point of view, the odds were in their favor.
    You take a kid and make damned sure he or she is treated well in your custody, then send a note to the robber baron or would-be robber baron detailing just how much money you want and where you want it placed. You say that if these things are done right, the kid will be dropped off at so-and-so a place at such-and-such a time.
    Now, for sure the local law will want to try and grab you, but in most cases the parents will say no, let's pay them. They look at you like these vile wild animals capable of anything. You try and cheat on them, they know damned well you'll kill their child. You think they want to be responsible for you killing their child?
    That's where this kind of operation really falls down. Doing something to the kid—that is, killing, accidentally or on purpose, him or her. If the kid gets returned sound of mind and limb, they'll come after you, but only with measured zeal. You kill the kid, they'll spend every cent they have hiring bounty hunters and assassins to hunt you down. Mexico? Canada? No matter. Plenty of lean and hungry bounty hunters and assassins there, too. If you want to live on this continent, they're going to find you. One New York millionaire sent a pair of killers to France to find the murderers of his small daughter. The avengers did as they were told. They castrated the murderers, poured oil on the open wounds, and then set them on fire.
    All the same rules would apply to twenty-two-year-old young women, too. Keep her safe. Return her in good fettle. And, in this case, resist the temptation to rape her. They won't come after you quite as hard for rape as they will for murder. But they'll still come after you.
    Karl Tolan didn't necessarily look bright enough to know all these things—subtle wasn't a word that came to mind when you looked upon the angry, busted visage of Karl Tolan—but his partner Rooney gave