It was rumored that Brute had preyed on the miners in the gold camps for years, stashing away a fortune. And he had lived in Dead River for a long time, keeping mostly to himself.
But, Smoke thought, if these cruds think Brute is going to have his way with me, I’ll start this dance with or without the rest of the band.
Smoke looked from outlaw to outlaw. “This Brute fellow sounds absolutely fascinating!”
The outlaws laughed.
“Oh, he is, sweetie,” Hart told him. “You two gonna get along just fine, I’m thinkin’.”
Uh-huh, Smoke thought. We’ll get along until I stick a .44 down his throat and doctor his innards with lead.
“Oh, I’m so excited!” Smoke cried. “May we proceed onward?”
“Son of a bitch shore talks funny!” Gridley grumbled.
Smoke had killed his first man back on the plains, back when he was fifteen or sixteen; he wasn’t quite sure. And he had killed many times since then. But as accustomed as he was to the sights of brutality, he had to struggle to keep his lunch down when they passed by a line of poles and platforms and wooden crosses sunk into the ground. Men and women in various stages of death and dying were nailed to the crosses; some were hung from chains by their ankles and left to rot; some had been horse-whipped until their flesh hung in strips, and they had been left to slowly die under the sun.
Smoke had never seen anything like it in his life. He did not have to force the gasp of horror that escaped from his lips. He turned his face away from the sight.
The outlaws thought it was funny, Hart saying, “That’s what happens to people who try to cross the boss, Shirley. Or to people who come in here pretendin’ to be something they ain’t.”
Gridley pointed to a woman, blackened in rotting death, hanging by chains. “She was a slave who tried to escape. Keep that in mind, sissy-boy.”
“How hideous!” Smoke found his voice. “What kind of place is this?”
“He really don’t know,” Nappy said with a laugh. “The silly sod really don’t know. Boy, are we gonna have some fun with this dude.”
“I don’t wish to stay here!” Smoke said, putting fear and panic in his voice. “This place is disgusting!” He tried to turn Drifter.
The outlaws escorting him boxed him in, none of them noticing the firm grip Smoke held on Drifter’s reins, steadying the killer horse, preventing him from rearing up and crushing a skull or breaking a back with his steel-shod hooves.
The bonnet had worked in disguising Drifter for what he really was. Worked, so far.
“You just hold on, fancy-pants,” Hart told him. “You wanted to come in here, remember?”
“But now I want to leave! I want to leave right this instant!”
“Sorry, sweets. You’re here to stay.”
Jim Wilde looked at the late afternoon sunlight outside his office window. He sighed and returned to his chair. “He ought to be in there by now. God have mercy on his soul; I guess I got to say it.”
“Yeah,” Sheriff Mike Larsen agreed. “He’s got more guts than I got, and I’ll stand out in the middle of the damn street and admit that.”
Jim sipped his coffee. “You told your boys not a word about this to anybody, right?”
“Damn well bet I did. I told ’em if they even thought hard on it, I’d catch the vibrations and lock ’em up.”
And the marshal knew the sheriff would do just that. Mike ran a good solid straight office in a tough town.
“You got the final tally sheet of all that’s goin’ in, Mike?”
“Yep. The boys is gearin’ up now. Quietly. Three sheriffs, including myself. Twenty regular deputies. Twenty volunteers—all of them top riders and good with short gun and rifle—and you and ten marshals.”
“The other marshals will be comin’ in by train two at a time, staring tomorrow at noon. They’re goin’ to stay low. I just wish we had some way of findin’ out how many hardcases we’re gonna be up against.”
“I think that’s impossible, Jim. But if I had to make a guess on it…I’d say two hundred at the low end. We all gonna tie a white handkerchief on our left arm so’s the Injuns won’t mistake us for outlaws…that is still the plan, ain’t it?”
“Yeah. Best I can come up with. I’ve already contracted for horses to be stashed along the way. So when we start ridin’, we ain’t gonna stop until it’s over and done with. One way or the other,” he added grimly.
Mike Larsen chose not to elaborate on that last bit. He would tell his wife only at the last moment, just before he stepped into the saddle. It was not a job he looked forward to doing, but he knew it was a job that had to be done. “Where you got the horses?”
“We’ll switch to fresh at Spanish Peaks, then again at La Veta Pass. The last stop will be at Red Davis’s place. I ain’t gonna kill no good horse on that final run. Most of that is gonna be uphill.”
Both men knew the fastest way to tire a horse was riding uphill.
“Red is givin’ us the best of his line and wanted to go in with us. I thanked him but told him no. Told him he was doin’ enough by loanin’ us fresh horses.”
“He’s a tough old man. But you was right in refusin’ him. You think he took offense?”
“No. He understands. White Wolf says he’ll have at least thirty braves around that town when Jensen opens the dance. And Jensen is goin’ to start the music as soon as White Wolf signals him that we’ve left the trail and entered the pass. White Wolf says the guards along the road will be taken care of. Them Utes ain’t got no use for anybody in Dead River. And I told the boys that volunteered that the reward money will be split up amongst ’em.”
