SIDEWINDERS: DEADWOOD GULCH
PINNACLE BOOKS
Kensington Publishing Corp.
www.kensingtonbooks.com
All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.
Table of Contents
Title Page
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
A Town Called Fury: Redemption
Copyright Page
—Isaac Watts
—Scratch Morton
CHAPTER 1
Six sturdy mules pulled the wagon along the trail that followed a winding gulch through the Black Hills of the Dakota Territory. Off to the right of the trail flowed a narrow, brawling creek lined by cottonwood, aspen, and box elders. The pine-covered sides of the gulch rose steeply and cast a pall of gloom over the trail despite the sunny day. Winter wasn’t far off, and a chill hung in the air.
Breath fogged in front of the faces of the driver and the three guards on the wagon. The guards wore sheepskin jackets, while the driver was bundled in an old mackinaw. The man on the seat next to the driver had a shotgun across his knees. The two guards in the back of the wagon, with the sacks of gold dust bound for the Stebbins & Post Bank in Deadwood, clutched Winchesters. Deadwood was four miles away along this narrow gulch, and lately every foot of the way had been dangerous. Time was, these runs from the mine to the bank had been made by just two men, a driver and a guard, but with the latest outbreak of lawlessness and violence plaguing the area, the mine owners had increased their precautions.
The driver hoped having three tough men along with him would be enough. He wasn’t in any mood to die today, and he dang sure didn’t want any devil’s pitchfork carved into his forehead.
His name was Chloride Coleman. He had followed the lure of gold and silver from one end of the frontier to the other for more than twenty-five years, after first heading for California during the Gold Rush of ’49. Since then he had been a lot of places, including the rough mining camp of Deadwood when gold seekers first flooded into the Black Hills. He had spent part of the intervening years searching for his own fortune before finally coming to the realization that he wasn’t fated to find it. He could make a living, though, working for men who had been more fortunate.
“Can’t you get those jugheads moving a little faster, Chloride?” Mitch Davis, the guard on the seat beside him, asked. “This place gives me the fantods.”
“Hold your horses,” Chloride said. He chuckled. “Of course, them ain’t horses I’m drivin’, are they?”
He turned his head to spit a stream of tobacco juice into the weeds beside the trail. Steaks of brownish-yellow in his white beard testified to the thousands of other times he had done the same thing.
“I’ll feel better when we get to Deadwood,” one of the men in the back said. Chloride didn’t know them very well. The one who had spoken was called Turley. His more taciturn companion was Berkner. Like Mitch Davis and Chloride himself, they had come to the Dakota Territory in search of their fortune, only to find that the big mining concerns had gobbled up the best claims already, squeezing out the individual miners. The days of some prospector striking it rich were as dead as Wild Bill Hickok, shot in the head from behind in the Number 10 Saloon about four years earlier.
