“Well, we were probably gonna have to kill him anyway,” Scratch said into the silence that descended on the canyon as the echoes of the shots died away.
“Yeah,” Bo said. “He made sure of it.”
The gunfire had spooked the horses in the corral. They milled around nervously. Bo went on. “We can let them calm down, then we’ll need to get that gold off of them. We don’t want the others riding up and suspecting that something’s wrong.”
Scratch picked up the dead outlaw’s gun and tucked it inside his coat, behind his belt. “I’ll bet Olaf ’s lookin’ down from up yonder and worryin’ about those shots. Better let him know that everything’s all right.”
Bo nodded and moved out into the middle of the canyon where Gustaffson couldn’t help but see him. He took his hat off and waved it over his head, then motioned for the sergeant and the rest of the troopers to come on down the trail that followed the ledge.
Scratch looked inside the cabin and reported, “The other dead hombre’s in there. Looks like this one dragged him down here and left him inside so the wolves wouldn’t get him. He wasn’t gonna try to bury him, though. He was just gonna take as much loot as he could carry and get out of here.”
“That’s the way I figure it, too,” Bo agreed. “We’ve got time to bury both of them, though. The rest of the Devils won’t be back until later in the day, and the ground shouldn’t be frozen yet.”
“Seems like a heap of wasted effort for a couple of no-good owlhoots,” Scratch said.
“If we drag them over into the trees, that’ll attract scavengers,” Bo pointed out. “If the rest of the Devils were to see buzzards circling, that might tip them off that something was wrong. And I don’t particularly like the idea of sitting inside that cabin all day with a couple of dead outlaws.”
Scratch gave a grim chuckle. “I see what you mean. Anyway, we can get Olaf to order some of them greenhorn troopers to dig the grave.”
“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking,” Bo said with a bleak smile of his own.
Gustaffson and the other survivors from the patrol were on their way down into the canyon now, riding single file down the ledge. Bo and Scratch went to meet the sergeant when the group reached the canyon floor.
“We heard the shots,” Gustaffson said as he dismounted. “I suppose that means we don’t have to worry about the outlaw who was left here.”
“Only about burying him and the guard we took care of last night,” Bo said.
Gustaffson nodded. “I’ll handle that.” He turned his head and called to a couple of the troopers. “You’ll form a burial detail. I suppose you’ll want the graves out of sight, Bo?”
“Yeah, over in the trees would be good,” Bo said, waving toward some pines that grew along the canyon wall.
“What happened?” Gustaffson asked.
The story didn’t take long to tell. When the Texans were finished, Bo said, “We’ll take the gold back in the cabin. The men can warm up inside. You’ll need to post some sentries down the canyon, though, just in case the Devils turned back for some reason before they got to Deadwood and show up back here sooner than we expect.”
“Good idea,” Gustaffson agreed. “We’ll take shifts, so that everybody will get a chance to thaw out.”
Bo nodded. “Later, we’ll leave a couple of men in the cabin and the rest will spread out. Some up on the rimrock, maybe a few over in the trees. We’ll have the gang caught in a cross fire.”
“Are you sure you were never in the army?”
Scratch laughed. “Only the Texian army, and we was both just wet-behind-the-ears youngsters then.”
Everyone got to work. Several of the troopers carried the dead outlaws into the trees and started digging a grave big enough to hold both bodies. Some of the men looked a little queasy about handling the corpses, but the others seemed to have been hardened to sudden death by seeing so many of their comrades crushed in that avalanche.
Gustaffson sent two men down the canyon to watch for the Devils, as Bo had suggested. The Texans, with Gustaffson’s help, unloaded the packs filled with gold bars from the horses and lugged them back into the cabin. The owlhoot who had been running out on the gang had loaded less than half the gold that was stacked inside.
Gustaffson let out a whistle at the sight of it. “That gold’s worth more money than I’ll ever see in my whole life, even if I live to be a hundred.”
“Yeah, it’s quite a sight,” Scratch agreed. “You ain’t gettin’ tempted, are you, Olaf?”
“Me?” Gustaffson let out a short bark of laughter. “I’ve worked hard all my life. I wouldn’t know what to do with myself if I was a rich man. If all I had to do was lie around and take it easy, it probably wouldn’t be a month before I was so restless I couldn’t stand it.”
Bo nodded. “I know the feeling. We’ve never been interested in getting rich, have we, Scratch?”
“Speak for yourself,” the silver-haired Texan replied. “I reckon I could have me a little hacienda somewhere and be perfectly happy to do nothin’ the rest of my life.”
“Sure,” Bo said, his tone of voice making it clear that he didn’t believe that for a second.
When they had all the gold back in the cabin, they unsaddled the horse in the corral. Smoke still rose from the chimney. There were a lot of tracks in the snow, but when the outlaws returned they wouldn’t be able to tell that those tracks hadn’t been made by the men they had left here. For the most part everything looked like it had when the rest of the Devils left for Deadwood, except for the horses belonging to the cavalrymen. A couple of the troopers led the animals back up the ledge and picketed them well away from the rim, where they wouldn’t be seen.
With that done, Bo, Scratch, and Gustaffson discussed their strategy again. “Olaf, I think you should take four of the men up there in the rim and wait with them there. We’ll put three men over in the trees, and Scratch and I
