different from making their exact location obvious to anybody with eyes for miles around. Bo could only hope that Holbrook’s stubbornness wouldn’t come back to cause trouble for them.
As night fell and the Texans tended to their horses, Scratch looked at the campfires blazing brightly and murmured, “I’m startin’ to wonder if this is such a good place to spend the night after all, Bo.”
“Yeah, the same thought occurred to me,” Bo said. “Those fires are pretty much an engraved invitation to an ambush. I think Olaf knows it, too. I saw him talking to the lieutenant a few minutes ago, and Holbrook didn’t look happy about it. Looked like he chewed out the sarge and told him to mind his own business.”
“Gustaffson ain’t the type to disobey an order, either, even when he knows it’s loco.”
“No,” Bo agreed, “he’s not. But we’re civilians, and if we want to slip off a ways and find a place to hole up for the night that’s not right out in the open, Holbrook can’t stop us.”
Scratch nodded. “Maybe someplace where we can keep an eye on those soldier boys without them knowin’ it.”
“That’s what I had in mind.”
“Better tell Gustaffson, so if the shavetail comes lookin’ for us, somebody’ll know where to find us.”
“Yeah, but we won’t tell Holbrook. No need for him to know about it unless there’s trouble.”
“Right.” Scratch patted his horse’s shoulder. “You know, some folks say that devils like to roam around in the darkness. Tonight, I got a hunch they’re right.”
CHAPTER 17
The Texans made their camp in some trees about a quarter of a mile from the spot where the troopers had pitched their tents and built those big cook fires. Scratch arranged some rocks in a circle and kindled a tiny blaze just large enough to boil coffee and fry up some bacon. No one outside the trees would be able to see the flames. It was going to be a very cold night, Bo sensed, and a big fire would have felt mighty good, but every instinct in his body warned him against such a thing.
After they had eaten, Scratch put out the fire, but they lingered next to its ashes, sipping the last of the coffee. They could hear the troopers moving around, talking loudly, and laughing.
“Those fellas better hope the army never sends ’em to Arizona to fight the Apaches,” Scratch commented. “If there were any ’Paches skulkin’ around, some of those soldier boys would be dead by now.”
“I expect you’re right,” Bo agreed. “Between the fires and the racket, the Devils probably know right where they are.”
“Question is, what are they gonna do about it?”
Bo took a sip of his coffee. “Reckon we’ll have to wait and see.”
The Texans sat there in companionable silence for a few more minutes, then Scratch said, “It’s time you tell me what you been ponderin’ about these past few days, Bo. You got some ideas that the Devils ain’t regular road agents, don’t you?”
“The thought crossed my mind,” Bo admitted. “As soon as Marty Sutton said something about the Argosy wanting to buy her out, I got to wondering about Nicholson.”
“All the other big mines lost gold shipments before the Argosy did,” Scratch said. “And the Golden Queen wasn’t the only one.”
“Yeah, but if the goal was to make Miss Sutton so desperate that she’d sell, what better way to disguise that than to hit all the other outfits, too, including your own.”
Scratch thought it over and then nodded slowly in the gathering darkness. “That makes sense, I reckon. As much sense as you could expect from a snake-blooded varmint so ruthless he’d have some of his own men murdered and carved up just to keep suspicion from fallin’ on him.”
“That’s not all,” Bo said. “When we first rode up Deadwood Gulch with Chloride and I got a look at the terrain, I realized that it’s not really very far as the crow flies from the Golden Queen to the Argosy. I confirmed that by looking at the map in Keefer’s office this afternoon. You know how a pocket of gold-bearing quartz can run for a long way sometimes.”
“Son of a gun! You think the Argosy miners are followin’ a ledge that winds up smack-dab in the middle of the Golden Queen?”
“It’s possible. And listen to this. Reese Bardwell, Nicholson’s superintendent, has a brother named Tom who led a gang of outlaws down in Kansas.”
“Yeah, I remember Chloride tellin’ us about that rumor,” Scratch said. “He didn’t know if it was true or not, though. He was just tryin’ to get under Bardwell’s hide that day.”
“It’s not a rumor,” Bo said. “I looked through the wanted posters in Sheriff Manning’s office and found a reward dodger on Tom Bardwell. The poster was a couple of years old, so there was nothing to indicate that he’d ever been hanged, or even caught. I’d be willing to bet he hasn’t been.”
“So Nicholson hits on the idea of recruitin’ his superintendent’s outlaw brother to raid the gold shipments, with the idea that sooner or later he’ll force Miss Sutton to sell out to him. That way he can keep minin’ the ore that runs all the way through this ridge under us into the Golden Queen.” Scratch smacked his right fist into his left palm. “That all fits together mighty nice, Bo!”
“Yeah,” Bo said. “There’s just one problem with it that ruins the whole thing.”
“What’s that? I’m danged if I see it.”
“If Nicholson’s really behind all the trouble, why would he go along with sending that letter to Washington asking that the army be sent in to deal with the Devils?”
For a long moment, Scratch didn’t say anything. Then he muttered a curse and said, “Yeah, that don’t make sense. Unless all the other big mine owners were gonna do it anyway and Nicholson had to go along with the idea
