The big mercantile down the street was owned and operated by Seth Bullock and Sol Star, Bo knew. He remembered both men from the previous visit he and Scratch had paid to Deadwood. At that time, Bullock and Star had only recently arrived from Montana and were selling their stock of goods out of a tent. Since then, they had built a big, prosperous-looking establishment that took up most of a block.
Sol Star ran the place for the most part. His partner Seth Bullock had been the marshal of Deadwood for a while and done a fine job of it from what Bo had heard, bringing law and order to the raw mining camp and continuing to serve after Deadwood had become an actual town. Sol Star was something of a civic leader, too, having been elected as Deadwood’s mayor several times. Star might still be mayor, for all Bo knew. All he cared about at the moment was the fact that the store was already open and Martha Sutton had gone over there, evidently to arrange for the supplies they were supposed to load on the wagon to take back to the mine.
Martha stepped out onto the store’s porch as Bo, Scratch, and Chloride approached. She was bundled in a heavy coat this morning, her breath fogging in the air in front of her, but her blond curls hung free around her shoulders as usual. She smiled and said, “Good morning. Mr. Star and his clerks have the supplies ready, and they can load them as soon as you bring the wagon over.”
Chloride nodded and said, “I’ll go fetch it.”
As the old-timer hurried off, Martha went on to Bo and Scratch. “I hope you don’t mind, but Mr. Star had some good saddles, and I took the liberty of buying a couple of them, along with everything else you’ll need.”
Bo and Scratch glanced at each other. As veteran horsemen, they would have preferred to pick out their own saddles. Every rider had his own likes and dislikes, and they were usually different. But Martha’s heart was in the right place, so Bo said, “I’m sure they’ll be fine. We appreciate it, Miss Sutton.”
“There hasn’t been any more trouble since Mr. Coleman’s cabin burned down, has there? I haven’t heard about anything.”
Scratch said, “The rest of the night was plumb peaceful.”
“You think you’ll be back tomorrow with the other load of gold?”
“We should be,” Bo said.
“What will you do after that?”
Bo shrugged. “Keep poking around, I guess. We’d still like to find where the Devils stashed all the loot from those earlier robberies.”
“If it’s even still around here,” Scratch added.
“But we’ll stay in touch, and whenever Andrew Keefer and the men at the mine have another load ready to bring down the gulch, we’ll handle that chore for you,” Bo went on. “As long as you want us to, that is.”
Martha laughed. “I think you can count on that, Mr. Creel,” she said. “You and Mr. Morton are the only ones who’ve had any luck at all stopping the Devils. The way things were going, the mining business in this whole area was going to be ruined. Digging the gold out of the hills doesn’t do any good if you can’t get it into the bank.”
Bo nodded and said, “That’s true. And I reckon the way the Devils had everybody so scared was almost as bad as losing all that gold.”
“Worse, maybe,” Martha said. “If things had kept on, Deadwood might have been a ghost town in another year. Now, though, people have hope again. And they have you two to thank for that.”
“And Chloride,” Scratch added with a grin. “That old-timer gets a mite touchy when he’s left out of anything.”
“I heard that, dadblast it!” Chloride called out from the street in front of the store where he had just brought the wagon to a stop. “I ain’t that much older’n you, you danged Texas roadrunner!”
CHAPTER 14
The trip back up the gulch and the side canyon to the Golden Queen mine was uneventful. Even the saddles that Martha had bought for the Texans turned out to be all right. Bo and Scratch were alert the entire way, watchful for even the tiniest hint of trouble, but nothing happened except the wagon reached the mine with its load of supplies intact. The supplies were very welcome, too, as provisions were starting to run a little low in the cook shack.
Andrew Keefer wanted to hear all about the journey to Deadwood. He was suitably impressed when the Texans and Chloride told him about fighting off the Devils, and he was livid with anger when he heard about how Chloride’s cabin had been destroyed.
“I’m sure Miss Sutton will offer to make good your losses as best she can,” the superintendent said.
“She already said she would,” Chloride replied. “She’s got bigger worries on her plate right now, though.”
“Such as that next load of gold,” Bo said. “Do you still think there’s enough on hand to justify another shipment right away, Mr. Keefer?”
“There certainly is,” Keefer said with a nod. “No dust this time, but plenty of bars. I’ll have the men start packing and loading it this afternoon, if you’re willing to make the trip to Deadwood again so quickly.”
“No point in waitin’,” Scratch said. “For all we know, those owlhoots are a mite confused right now, and we ought to take advantage of that if we can.”
Keefer agreed and issued the orders. By nightfall, the gold wagon was loaded and ready to go, and once again Keefer picked out some men to stand guard over it all night.
“The Devils have never robbed any of the mines themselves, have they?” Bo asked that evening as he, Scratch, and Chloride stood with the superintendent on the porch of the building that housed Keefer’s office and living quarters.
“No,” Keefer replied. “Only stagecoaches starting out, and then the gold shipments.”
“And they’ve hijacked shipments from all the mines?”
