Chloride’s beard bristled belligerently as he exclaimed, “Why, you goldurn—”
Bo put out a hand to stop him as the old-timer took a step forward. “Take it easy, Chloride,” he said. To Bardwell, he went on, “I reckon you haven’t heard. We’ve got jobs. We’re working for Miss Martha Sutton at the Golden Queen.”
Bardwell frowned in surprise. “Marty? Why would she—Wait a minute. She didn’t hire the three of you to get her gold to town, did she?”
“That’s right,” Bo said. Bardwell probably would have heard that news in Deadwood anyway, and Bo was interested in the man’s reaction.
“I knew she was getting desperate, but I didn’t know she had turned into a fool,” Bardwell snapped. “It’s all over this part of the country about how Coleman’s tied in with the Devils, and for all anybody knows, you two are part of the gang yourselves!”
Chloride shook a gnarled fist at him. “By jingo, if I was twenty years younger, I’d hand you your needin’s, you overgrowed varmint! I never had no truck with outlaws, and that’s more’n you can say!”
Bardwell’s face darkened again as he said, “What’re you talkin’ about, you old pelican?”
“You know dang good an’ well what I’m talkin’ about! That no-good brother of yours!”
Fury mottled Bardwell’s face. His hands clenched into massive fists for a second before he started to swing down from his horse. But before he could dismount, one of the men with him edged his horse up alongside and said, “Probably ought to forget it, boss. Mr. Nicholson’s expecting you, and he won’t like it if you’re late.”
Bardwell eased back into his saddle. “I suppose you’re right,” he rumbled. He pointed a thick, blunt finger at Chloride. “But you just watch your mouth, old man. Keep runnin’ it and you’re liable to be sorry.”
Chloride just snorted in contempt.
Bardwell and the men with him rode past and headed on down the gulch toward the settlement. Bardwell glanced back one last time to glare at the Texans and Chloride. The other men didn’t pay any more attention to them, which reinforced Bo’s hunch that they were hired guns. Men like that didn’t care about anything unless they were paid to.
Chloride swiped the back of a hand across his mouth. “Sorry about that, boys,” he said. “Almost talked my way into a ruckus, didn’t I?”
“We couldn’t have stopped Bardwell if he’d gone after you,” Bo pointed out. “Not with our fists, anyway. That means guns would have had to be involved, and then those other hombres would have taken a hand.”
“Could’ve been bullets flyin’ everywhere, Chloride,” Scratch added.
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” the old-timer said. “I’m a mite too touchy. Always have been. Bardwell just rubs me the wrong way, though.”
“I understand the feeling,” Bo said as he put his foot in the stirrup. He swung up and went on, “Let’s get going.”
They forded the creek and headed up the narrow, twisting side canyon toward the Golden Queen. As they rode, Bo asked, “What was that about Bardwell’s brother?”
“There was a rumor goin’ around the camp that he had a brother who was an owlhoot down Kansas way. Nobody would ask him about it to his face—”
“I reckon not,” Scratch said. “That hombre’s fists are big enough he could knock down a door with ’em.”
“Anyway,” Chloride continued, “some folks said that the law finally caught up to Bardwell’s brother and hanged him, whilst others claimed him and his gang got away and disappeared. I don’t know which is true, or if Bardwell even had an owlhoot brother to start with. I was just tryin’ to stick a burr under his saddle.”
Bo nodded. “I saw the look on his face when you brought up his brother. I’d say you succeeded, Chloride. And I’d say there must be something to the story, too, otherwise it wouldn’t have bothered him so much.”
“I reckon you’re right. If it was a lie, he wouldn’t have got so durned mad.”
“That’s sort of interestin’,” Scratch mused.
“You mean the way a gang of outlaws shows up and starts raising hell in the same area where Bardwell’s working as a mine superintendent?” Bo asked. “Yeah, interesting is the word for it, all right.” He looked over at Chloride as they rode along the canyon. “How come you didn’t say anything about Bardwell’s brother before now?”
The old-timer grunted. “Nobody asked me, now did they?”
Bo had to chuckle. He said, “No, I reckon not.”
They rode on, and a few minutes later Bo began to hear the steady, pounding thump of a donkey engine. “That’s coming from the mine?” he asked Chloride.
“Yeah, they’re probably usin’ it to haul ore cars outta the shaft. All the mines in these parts started out as placer outfits, since the first prospectors panned for gold in the creeks just like the fellas did in the California rivers back in forty-nine. The bigger operators come in, bought up claims, and built flumes and long toms to wash more gravel from the stream beds. But at the same time, they were startin’ to dig into the slopes, too, hopin’ to find the quartz lodes those flecks o’ gold in the creeks came from.”
Bo nodded. “That’s the usual pattern when there’s a gold strike, all right.”
“But the lodes here in the Black Hills ain’t like the ones anywheres else,” Chloride said. “Most places, if you find a pocket of gold-bearin’ ore, you can make a pretty good guess which way it’s gonna run. Not around here. A pocket or a ledge can run any which- a-way around here, which is why you got tunnels branchin’ ever’ which way underground. The placer gold’s just about played out now. There’s just enough left so that most of the outfits keep a sluice goin’ to get as much dust as they can, but mostly they’re after ore now.”
“And it takes a big company to do that effectively,” Bo said. “A lone miner with a shovel and a pickax can’t dig out enough gold to make the effort worth his while.”
