“You ain’t tellin’ us anything we don’t already know,” Scratch said.
“If there’s any shooting, don’t whip up the team and try to outrun the trouble,” Bo suggested. “You couldn’t do it with an empty wagon, and you sure can’t with one loaded down heavy like this one. You’ll be better off stopping and taking cover under the wagon instead.”
“What’ll the two of you be doin’ while I’m hunkerin’ down?” Chloride wanted to know.
“That depends on the situation,” Bo said.
“But you can figure we’ll be tryin’ to kill as many of those varmints as we can,” Scratch added.
Chloride nodded and fell silent. Bo could tell from the tense look on his leathery face that the old-timer was worried. Under the circumstances, only a fool wouldn’t be a mite nervous. There were dozens of places where some owlhoot with a pair of field glasses could be hidden, watching the Golden Queen to see when the wagon left. It was possible somebody was riding to carry word of the shipment to the rest of the gang right now.
To take Chloride’s mind off the situation as they reached the end of the canyon and started down the gulch toward Deadwood, Bo asked him questions about his life and got the old-timer talking about all the places he had been and the things he had done. Chloride had been to see the elephant, no doubt about that. He had been part of the California Gold Rush and had chased after bonanzas in Nevada and Montana Territory. Much like the Texans, he’d had a host of other jobs over the years but had been too fiddle-footed to stay with any of them for very long.
There were hundreds, if not thousands, of men just like him scattered across the frontier, men who had never been able to settle down and live the sort of lives that most hombres did, men filled with a restlessness that denied them peace and stability and demanded freedom to roam. Sometimes the price of that freedom was loneliness, and when their time came to cross the divide, it would be on some freezing mountaintop or under a burning desert sun, with a bullet in their guts or a knife in their back or a sickness wasting them away from the inside out. They wouldn’t die in bed, with their loving families gathered around them, and maybe there were times when they regretted that, but deep down they knew it was the way things had to be.
Bo and Scratch had lived that same sort of life, so they knew what Chloride was talking about and recognized the wistful tone that crept into the old-timer’s voice now and then as he spun his yarns. The years rolled by in their bittersweet way for men such as them.
Even as those thoughts filled his mind, a large part of Bo’s brain was alert for trouble, and his eyes, keen despite his age, never stopped moving. His gaze roamed over the thickly wooded walls of the gulch, watching for the sun’s split-second reflection on metal, or movement where everything should be still, or any other indication that things were not as they should be.
Early that morning, as they were getting ready to go, their breath had fogged thickly in front of their faces in the cold air. By now the sun had risen high enough that the temperature had warmed a little, especially here in the middle of the gulch next to the creek. Up ahead on the left, a tall, rocky outcropping loomed up and cast a thick shadow over a brushy area at the base of the slope. The sun didn’t penetrate there.
Bo’s eyes narrowed as he spotted what looked like a tiny puff of smoke drifting over that brush. It wasn’t smoke at all, he realized. It was somebody’s breath fogging up because the air under that big slab of rock was a little colder, just cold enough to cause that telltale sign.
And there was no reason for anybody to be hiding in there unless they were up to no good.
Softly, Bo called across to his old friend. “Scratch. Up ahead on the left, under that big rock.”
“I see it,” Scratch replied, equally softly. “Chloride, get ready to move.”
The old-timer stiffened on the seat. “What in blazes—” he began.
Then the brush trembled a little, and Bo caught a glimpse of a rifle barrel poking between branches. There was no time for anything but action. He yanked his horse to the side, shouted, “Chloride, get down!” and snapped the Winchester to his shoulder. Shots roared out as he worked the rifle’s lever as fast as he could and sent a steady stream of lead into that brush.
CHAPTER 11
Bo went one way and Scratch went the other so the outlaws hidden in the bushes would have a harder time killing both of them. At the same time, Chloride yanked the team to a stop, grabbed one of the loaded shotguns from the floorboard, and slid off the seat. He ducked under the wagon and crouched there as bullets began to thud into the thick planks of the vehicle’s sideboards and whine off the iron-rimmed wheels.
Bo sent his horse at a run toward some trees. He felt the heat of a bullet as it passed close by his face. Powder smoke floated over the brush now instead of the fogging of some owlhoot’s breath. That had been a small thing, just enough to give away the gang’s hiding place before they could spring their ambush.
As the horse reached the trees, Bo kicked his feet free of the stirrups and went out of the saddle. He landed running and managed to stay upright without crashing into one of the tree trunks. A slug sent bark flying into the air as Bo ducked into cover.
He glanced around, looking for Scratch, and saw that the silver-haired Texan had splashed across the creek and gone to ground in a cluster of rocks that were big enough to offer some decent shelter. Scratch’s rifle spoke from over there, blasting bullets toward the brush where the Devils were hidden.
Bo had no doubt that it was the Deadwood Devils in there. This holdup wasn’t going the way the Devils were used to, though. Bo thrust his rifle around the tree trunk and opened fire, joining Scratch in peppering the gang’s hiding place with lead. From under the wagon, the shotgun boomed and then Chloride’s old cap-and-ball revolver began to roar as he got in on the action as well.
A grim smile touched Bo’s lips. The outlaws were accustomed to their victims trying to flee. This time they were putting up a fight instead. The thicket waved back and forth as the Texans sent lead scything through the branches from two different angles. Even though the Devils outnumbered their enemies, judging by the shots coming from the brush, they had chosen their position for concealment, not to defend. By spotting them first and not running, the Texans had turned the tables neatly on the bushwhackers.
One of the outlaws lost his nerve and made a break for it. Bo spotted him as the man lunged out of the brush and tried to duck around the rocky shoulder. Letting instinct guide his aim, Bo snapped a shot at the fleeing man and was rewarded by a howl of pain and the sight of the outlaw staggering as he clutched at a bullet-shattered
