Love on the Range (Brothers in Arms #3)(61)
“It makes sense, I guess.” Molly tried to fit it all together. “If this madness could ever make sense.”
“Communicating with homing pigeons explains how Kingston knew which trail Rachel would be on,” John said. “I’ll bet the Hunt family talked about it at the house the night before they left. Someone overheard it and let Hawkins know. He sent a message to Kingston.”
“Homing pigeons?” Molly scratched her head. “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
“We sometimes called them war pigeons.”
“War pigeons?”
“Yes, they were used in the war,” John said. “The Pinkertons have used them to communicate over long distances when there’s no telegraph available.”
“If we let them out, you say they’ll fly to some hideout, but won’t they fly to Casper instead?” Molly asked.
“My guess is these men have trained some to do one thing, some another.” John kept feeding the birds. “You let them nest somewhere for a while, and they claim it as their home, then you take them a great distance away and release them. They’ll fly back and forth. I’m not sure of all the training because I never did that part, but once they are trained, you can tie a small message to their legs. They can fly a message as far as a hundred miles, and they can make the trips more than once a day, depending on how far they have to travel. I spent a lot of time at sea, and we could take the pigeons and send messages to headquarters. No matter where the ship went to that pigeon would go home to headquarters.”
Molly came to his side and started helping toss handfuls of grain in the coop. “Six of them. You think we can follow them?”
“Yes, I hope so, if we release one at a time. Watch it, do our best to keep up, then if we lose it, we release another one. Most likely there are pigeons in Kingston’s house, too. We’ll need to go to Casper and take care of them.”
“Falcon can probably figure out which direction Hawkins headed.”
Falcon came in just as Wyatt offered his services, Cheyenne right behind. “We’ll get started searching out which tracks are Hawkins’s.”
The sheriff looked skeptically at the pigeons and said, “I’m a fair hand at tracking. I’ll help find Hawkins’s trail.”
“Let’s take all of the birds. We even have something to haul them in.” John pointed to a small wooden crate in one corner. “We’ll let the sheriff and Falcon lead us down Hawkins’s trail for as long as we can follow it, then let one pigeon go and just see. If they all head straight for Casper, then I don’t suppose they’ll be of any use. But if some go another direction, we’ll follow until we lose sight of it. If there are enough pigeons, we can keep releasing them until we reach our man.”
“Wyatt, is there a wagon here?” Falcon asked. “We can haul the crate more easily in that. If he’s got horses and livestock and he’s on the run, we’ll need to tend his critters.”
“He’s got chickens and a few pigs besides the horses and cattle. It doesn’t look like there’s a hired man on the place. Either they left when they realized Hawkins did, or he fired them all and abandoned his animals to starve in their pens.” Wyatt scowled. “I’ll see to a wagon, and Hawkins favors a chestnut mare. I should be able to tell if he chose that horse and can pick out her tracks.”
Wyatt, Cheyenne, and Falcon followed the sheriff as he left the attic, leaving Molly alone with John.
“A man like that, who hurts women”—Molly crouched down to pet one of the hungry birds—“he’s not going to be concerned with the animals God gave him to care for. Just the opposite. He may enjoy knowing he left them behind to suffer.”
“We’ve got work to do, and we need to be on our way soon.” John opened the crate and caught the pigeon that’d been loose. It was frantically pecking at the grain he’d tossed on the floor. He caged it and dropped in more grain. Though he closed the lid of the crate, Molly felt certain the tame and hungry bird would have stayed in the cage, lid open or not.
Gently, he transferred each of the birds from their neatly built coop to the crate. And with the bottom of the crate solid, he could pick it up and let them eat. A couple of them fluttered their wings, and there were some of the pigeons’ familiar coos. But they were more pets than wild, and they accepted the transfer as if it’d happened many times before.
Molly grabbed the other end of the crate.
Every few steps, Molly squeaked, but she kept coming. They went down three flights of stairs.
“Are the pigeons pecking your fingers?” John did the hard part, backing down the stairs, bearing most of the weight, though it was more awkward than heavy.
Molly grinned. “I’ve been ignoring it the best I can. I’m sorry about the squeaking. But my first reaction was to drop the crate, and I didn’t. Consider yourself lucky.”
“I wanted to drop it, too,” John said with a smile. “But I managed not to drop it or squeak so I’m feeling pretty good about myself.”
Molly laughed. She liked the Pinkerton agent and wondered about his family. How did they all manage such an unusual career?
They got outside just as Wyatt pulled a small buckboard up in front of the door.
Falcon came running in from the north, silent in his handmade moccasins. “The chestnut mare Wyatt mentioned headed northwest. Away from Bear Claw Pass and Casper. We can follow Hawkins’s tracks for now and only release the pigeons if we lose the trail.”