“Not yet,” Bo replied. “I was too busy getting out of the way of those bullets.”
“Yeah, me, too.”
“How about that deadfall on the other side of the trail?” Chloride suggested. “Just because they weren’t there yesterday, that don’t mean they ain’t today!”
Bo considered the idea and said, “No, I don’t think so. We’ve been within a couple of hundred yards of that big log for at least half an hour, searching the place where the wagon crashed and then here in these trees. Nobody could have snuck up behind it without us noticing them.”
“Maybe some Apaches could have,” Scratch said, “but those varmints shootin’ at us ain’t Apaches. And I reckon they couldn’t have been hidin’ there before we got here, because they didn’t have no way of knowin’ we were comin’ out here today.”
Bo thought about that for a moment as the firing continued. “That’s not strictly true,” he said. “We talked to quite a few people in town about how we wanted to try tracking down that gang of thieves. This would be the most likely place for us to start.”
“Yeah,” Scratch admitted, “but we only talked to folks at the various minin’ companies.”
“Word could have gotten around. Or maybe the Devils are connected to one of the companies.”
“Hell’s fire!” Chloride exclaimed. “That don’t make no sense. All the big companies have been hit at least once. The robbers couldn’t be workin’ for any of ’em.”
“Unless that’s what whoever is behind the Devils wants everybody to think,” Bo said. He looked over at Scratch, who frowned in thought for a moment before nodding.
“You might be on to something there, Bo,” he said. “But we won’t ever know if we get ourselves shot full of holes out here. Got any ideas about how we can turn the tables on them varmints?”
Bo took his hat off and edged his head out far enough from behind the tree trunk to get a look at the terrain across the creek. Now was the time to figure out where the bushwhackers were hidden.
That didn’t take long. He spotted tendrils of gun-smoke curling from behind some rocks about halfway up the steeply sloping side of the gulch. The riflemen could have ridden along the top of the ridge, then worked their way unseen through the brush and the trees until they reached the rocks.
Bo told Scratch and Chloride what he had discovered. “Yeah, I see ’em now,” Scratch said. “Sort of long range for a handgun, but we might be able to get a little lead up there.”
“That old cap-and-ball of mine won’t carry that far,” Chloride said. “It’ll blow a big hole through a fella at close range, but it ain’t much good over twenty feet.”
“Scratch, toss one of your Remingtons over to Chloride along with some ammunition,” Bo suggested. “That way the two of you can keep them occupied.”
“What’re you gonna do?” Scratch asked as he looked over at his old friend.
Bo waved a hand toward Deadwood. “I thought I’d work my way downstream through the trees until the trail goes around the next bend. Then I can cross the creek and start back in this direction.”
“Maybe get behind the varmints, eh?” Scratch nodded. “That might work. You know how to work one of these Remingtons, Chloride?”
The old-timer snorted. “There ain’t a gun I can’t fire.”
“Well, just be careful with it,” Scratch said as he gripped one of the revolvers by its long barrel and got ready to toss it over to Chloride. “I’m mighty fond of these hoglegs.”
He made sure the hammer was resting on an empty chamber and sent the gun sailing through the air to land near Chloride’s feet. Chloride scooped it up. Scratch tied a dozen rounds in his bandana and threw them over to the old-timer as well.
When Bo saw that his companions were ready, he said, “Space out your shots to make your bullets last longer. And if you could actually hit one or two of those bushwhackers, that would be good, too.”
“You just tend to your part of the deal,” Scratch said as he drew a bead on the rocks with his remaining gun. “We’ll tend to ours.”
The Remington roared as Scratch squeezed the trigger. A second later, the gun Chloride was using blasted, too.
Bo darted out of cover and ran deeper into the grove of trees. The bushwhackers were still keeping up a steady fire. He heard several bullets thud into the trunks around him.
He didn’t know if they could see what he was doing. If they spotted him, they would be ready for him when he worked his way back on the opposite side of the gulch. His only real chance was to take them by surprise, so he hoped they were just firing blindly into the trees on this side of the creek.
Bo used every bit of cover he could find to conceal what he was doing. He moved swiftly but carefully, and the site of the ambush soon fell behind him. Scratch and Chloride might have been able to slip away like this, too, but the three of them would have been left afoot if they had done that, and if the men who wanted them dead had come looking for them, they would be easy prey.
Besides, Bo wanted to get a look at the bushwhackers. He strongly suspected that the men were members of the Deadwood Devils. If he was lucky, he might even be able to take one of them prisoner.
The sound of the firing diminished somewhat, although the reports still echoed back and forth between the walls of the gulch. The men at some of the mines in the area probably heard the shooting, but if Chloride was right about how spooked everybody was, they probably wouldn’t come to investigate. They would just think the Devils had struck again—and more than likely they would be right.
The trees thinned out before Bo reached the bend in the trail. All he could do now was make a run for it and hope they didn’t notice him. He broke out from cover and ran around the bend. No bullets whistled after him, and he took that as a good sign. After splashing across the creek, he stopped to lean against a slab-like boulder for a second and catch his breath. Not for the first time, he thought that he was getting too old for dust-ups like this.
