Mankiller, Colorado

damned Deverys!”

“It would seem that you’re no friend to them, either.”

“You could say that.”

“Well, neither are we,” Bo said, “and like Scratch told you, if we don’t get cleaned up, the smell of this stuff is likely to kill us.”

Francis Xavier O’Hanrahan grunted. “It won’t kill you, but it might make you so sick you’d wish you were dead.” He lowered the rifle’s barrel. “Maybe I can help you. Come with me, if you want. Just don’t try any tricks.”

“Mister,” Scratch said, “we ain’t got any tricks left to try, even if we wanted to.”

That was the truth, Bo thought. He had already realized that his gun was gone, and so were Scratch’s Remingtons, along with the gun belt and holsters. Bo could tell as well that the money belt that was supposed to be under his shirt was gone. He would have been willing to bet—if he’d had anything left to wager—that the part of their stake Scratch had been carrying had vanished, as well.

O’Hanrahan motioned again with the rifle barrel and said, “Just walk on down the bank here. I’ll be behind you with this Spencer, so don’t get any funny ideas.”

They did as the burly Irishman said, trudging along the bank until they rounded a bend and came in sight of a rough dugout sunk in the side of the hill. A hundred yards or so up the slope yawned the open mouth of a mine shaft. Bo knew this had to be O’Hanrahan’s claim.

O’Hanrahan stopped them and said, “Wait right here.” He went to the dugout, stepped inside, and came back a moment later carrying a bucket in one hand and the rifle in the other. He laid the rifle across the top of a barrel and went to the river with the bucket.

“You intend to dump that over our heads, Mr. O’Hanrahan?” Bo asked.

“Take it or leave it,” O’Hanrahan said around the unlit cigar still clenched between his teeth. “It’ll be cold, but it’ll wash some of that muck off.”

“We’ll take it,” Scratch said. “I reckon I’d rather freeze to death than keep on smellin’ like this.”

O’Hanrahan filled the bucket in the stream, then carried it over to the Texans. “Who’s first?”

“It doesn’t really matter,” Bo said. “It’s going to take several buckets for each of us, at the very least.”

“You’re right about that.” With that, O’Hanrahan lifted the bucket and upended it over Bo’s head. The river water poured down and washed over Bo, dislodging some of the mud. It was just a start, though.

By the time half an hour had gone by, both of the Texans were soaking wet and shivering. Their teeth chattered. The ground around them was muddy from all the water O’Hanrahan had poured over them.

As the man stepped back after dumping a bucket of water over Scratch, he motioned toward the Animas and said, “All right, I reckon you’re clean enough now you can jump in the river and finish the job. Take those clothes off and leave them on the bank. They’ll have to be soaked and scrubbed, and even that may not be enough to get them clean. When you’re done, come inside. I’ll have a fire going in the stove and some blankets ready for you.”

“Th-th-thank you,” Bo managed to say through chattering teeth. It wasn’t all that cold. The sun was even a little warm as it shone down over the hillside. But the water from the snowmelt-fed stream had leached all the heat out of the Texans.

They hurried over to the river, stripping off their wet, filthy clothes, and dropped them on the bank before wading out into the stream. Scratch cursed as the cold water rose on his legs. Bo just took a deep breath and went under.

They scrubbed away at themselves for long minutes before they felt clean enough to come out again. Circling around the dirty clothes and dripping river water, they headed for the dugout.

O’Hanrahan met them at the doorway with blankets, which they gratefully wrapped around themselves as they stepped inside. The dugout was made of stone and logs and had a thatched roof. The floor was dirt. It was simply furnished with a potbellied stove, a rough-hewn table, a couple of chairs, and a low-slung bunk with a straw mattress. A man could eat and sleep here when he wasn’t working on his mine, but that was about all.

“Sit down at the table,” O’Hanrahan told Bo and Scratch. “I’ve got coffee on the stove. I imagine that sounds pretty good right about now.”

“You don’t know the half of it, Mr. O’Hanrahan,” Scratch said.

“Call me Francis.” He brought the coffee to them as they sat down. “If you’re enemies of the Deverys, then you’re friends with just about everybody else in this part of the country.”

“‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend,’” Bo quoted. “Is that about the size of it?”

Francis grinned. “Aye. The Deverys are well hated in these parts, except by some who try to curry favor with them. And if the truth be told, probably even they can’t stand the Deverys, either. They’re just more pragmatic about it.”

“What makes that bunch so powerful?” Scratch asked. “Just the fact that they own some land around here?”

“Not just some land,” Francis corrected. “They own the whole town and this whole side of the valley for a good five miles. In other words, all the land where that big vein of gold is located.”

Scratch stared at their host for a second before he said, “Well, hell! Why aren’t they gettin’ rich by minin’ the blasted stuff?”

Francis poured a tin cup of coffee for himself. “Because that would be too much hard work for the Deverys. They’d rather get rich by raking off fifty percent of everything the miners take out of the ground. That’s not including the hefty cut they take from all the businesses in the settlement. That arrangement is in the lease of everybody who moved in there.”

“Wait a minute,” Bo said. “How in the world did they manage to get a jump on everybody else and claim all that land after the gold strike?”