Sidewinders

“Yeah, for a day or two, anyway, I expect. Where are you boys stayin’?”

“Hanson’s Livery,” Scratch said with a grin.

“The penthouse suite,” Bo added.

Chloride laughed. “Beddin’ down in the loft, eh? Well, I can’t say I never did the same. So long!”

He went on in the Black Hills Bonanza office while the Texans headed along the street toward the office of the Golden Queen.

“You reckon there’s any point in this, if the mine’s as bad off as Chloride said?” Scratch asked.

“It might not be as bad as he thinks,” Bo said. “Anyway, it won’t hurt to go in there and ask.”

When they reached the small, one-story clapboard building with the simple legend GOLDEN QUEEN MINING COMPANY painted on its front window, Scratch frowned and said, “Don’t look too promisin’. This place ain’t near as fancy as the Argosy or some of the other minin’ companies.”

“You can’t always tell by looking,” Bo said as he grasped the doorknob and turned.

They stepped inside, and Bo was somewhat surprised to see a young woman sitting at a desk, writing in a ledger. Blond curls fell loosely around her shoulders. Without looking up from what she was doing, she asked, “Yes?”

Bo took his hat off and said, “Pardon me, miss, we’re looking for whoever’s in charge of the Golden Queen Mining Company.”

That made her lift her head so that Bo could see her face. It was a mighty attractive face, too, with a faintly exotic cast to it, highlighted by a small beauty mark on her cheek near the right corner of her mouth.

“That would be me,” she said. “I am the Golden Queen Mining Company.”

CHAPTER 5

Bo managed to keep the surprise off his face, although Scratch stared a little. “You own the company ?” Bo asked.

“That’s right,” the young woman said. “I’m Martha Sutton. What can I do for you?”

“Well, I, uh, beg your pardon, miss, but we weren’t expecting—”

“Weren’t expecting to find a girl in charge of a mining company?” she broke in. “You’re not the only one. Some other people in this town seem to have a problem with that, too. That’s just too bad.”

“I never said we had a problem with it,” Bo went on quickly. “It’s just a little surprising, that’s all. My name’s Bo Creel, and this is my friend Scratch Morton.”

Scratch snatched his hat off and nodded politely. “Pleased to meet you, ma’am,” he said.

The look of irritation on Martha Sutton’s face eased a bit. She said, “Mr. Creel, Mr. Morton . . . I ask again, what can I do for you?”

“We’re new in town, and we’ve been hearing about the Deadwood Devils and how they’ve been holding up gold shipments from the mines around here,” Bo explained. “Has that happened to your outfit?”

Martha set down the pencil she had been using and leaned back in her chair. “Not that it’s any of your business, Mr. Creel, but yes, the Golden Queen has been robbed. Several times, in fact. The Devils have hit us probably more than any of the other mining operations around here.”

“Us?” Bo repeated.

“My father founded the Golden Queen and ran it until about a month ago. That was when he died suddenly. His heart gave out, the doctor said, possibly from worrying about the holdups.”

“We’re sorry to hear that,” Scratch said. “That’ll happen sometimes when you’ve got a bum ticker.”

“At any rate, that’s why I’m running the company now,” Martha said. “Our shipments have been hijacked several times since then, to the point that no one wants to drive for me anymore or hire on as guards because the others have been killed. The company is on the verge of collapse. Is that what you wanted to know?”

With all the bad luck that had befallen her, Bo couldn’t blame Martha Sutton for being a little short-tempered. He said, “You’ve got us wrong, Miss Sutton. We’d like to help you.”

“How are you going to do that?” she asked, wanting to know.

“If somebody could track down the Deadwood Devils and maybe even find all the loot they’ve stolen, I imagine it would make things look a lot more promising for the Golden Queen, wouldn’t it?”

She regarded the Texans intently for a moment, then said, “If you’re angling for me to hire you and your friend as some sort of troubleshooters, Mr. Creel, I can’t afford it. Right now I can’t even pay the men working in the mine. I owe them a month’s back wages, and it’s all I can do to continue feeding them.”

“If we were able to recover some of the gold you lost, how would you feel about cutting us in for a share?” Bo suggested.

Martha didn’t reject the idea out of hand. Instead she considered it for a moment before finally nodding. “We could probably come to an arrangement like that,” she said. “Ten percent of the value of whatever gold you recover.”

Bo didn’t like the idea of haggling with a woman, but he said, “I was thinking more along the lines of twenty percent.”

“Ten’s all I can afford,” Martha said flatly.