Gil grunted. “We didn’t strip the paint off on purpose. The sun and the dust and the wind in this godforsaken country took care of that for us.”
“We?” Bo repeated.
“My father was the one who started the stage line. It runs from Cottonwood to Chino Valley and on over to Red Butte, where the headquarters are. There’s another line that runs from Flagstaff down to Cottonwood and then on south, but there was no transportation from Cottonwood west to the Santa Marias until my father came along. Chino Valley and Red Butte were growing fast because of all the ranching and mining in the area, so he thought it would be a good gamble that they’d need a stage line. He figured some other settlements might spring up along the way, too.”
“Sounds like a worthwhile gamble,” Bo said with a nod. “How’s it working out?”
Gil scowled and shook his head. “Not so good.”
“Because of those outlaws? Folks are too scared of being held up to ride the stage?”
“Well, it didn’t help when Judson and his bunch started raising hell, but that’s not all of it. Those other settlements never sprang up. There’s just Chino Valley and Red Butte. And the mines played out, for the most part. There’s only one still operating at a good level.”
“So there’s not as much business as your pa thought there would be.”
“That’s right. It’s been a struggle to make ends meet.” Gil’s voice caught a little. “It didn’t help matters when my father got sick and died.”
Bo looked over at the young man with a frown. “You’re running the stage line now?”
Gil shook his head again. “My mother’s in charge. I do what I can to help, just like when my father was still alive. I’ve got a younger brother, too, but he—” Gil stopped and drew in a breath. “Let’s just say that he’s not much for hard work and leave it at that.”
Bo didn’t say anything in response to that. Clearly, there were some hard feelings between Gil Sutherland and his little brother, and they might well be justified. But Bo knew it usually didn’t pay for a fella to stick his nose into family squabbles.
Gil drove on in silence for a few minutes, then said, “Thanks for pitching in back there. Judson’s bunch would have caught us in another minute or two, and there’s no telling what they might have done, especially when they found out they weren’t going to get much in the way of loot.”
“It looked like you were about to stop and let them catch up,” Bo said.
“That’s right, I was. I knew we couldn’t outrun them, and the way Ponderosa was only half-conscious and bouncing around on the seat, I was afraid he might get pitched off and break his neck. I was hoping they’d just take the mail pouch and let us go.”
“Is Judson in the habit of doing things like that?”
Gil shrugged. “They’ve killed a few men during their holdups, but only when somebody tried to fight back. Like when they hit the bank over in Chino Valley last month.”
“They’re not just stagecoach robbers then.”
“No, they’ve rustled cattle and run them south across the border into Mexico, they robbed the bank like I said, and they raided the Pitchfork Mine and stole an ore shipment that was about to go out. They’ve stopped the stage half-a-dozen times, I guess, even though they’ve never made a very big haul at it. Killed a driver and a guard, though, so nobody wants to work for us anymore. Ponderosa and I have been taking all the runs ourselves lately. Now he’s going to be laid up for a while, more than likely.” Gil sighed. “I don’t know what we’ll do. Shut down, I guess.”
Bo didn’t say anything to that either. He had some thoughts on the matter, but he kept them to himself for the time being.
The creek that Bo and Scratch had seen from the top of the hill turned out to be a narrow, shallow stream, not much more than a twisting thread of water in a gravelly bed. As Gil drove across it at a ford, he said, “This is Hell Creek. Not much to look at, but it’s the only water this side of the Santa Marias and it never dries up, no matter how hot the weather gets.”
“Spring-fed, I reckon,” Bo said.
Gil nodded. “That’s right. North of here, in the ranching country, it’s bigger.”
Bo sniffed the air. “Sulfur springs, too, unless I miss my guess.”
“That’s how it got its name,” Gil said. “From the smell of brimstone. Not very pleasant, but the water doesn’t taste too bad. You get used to it after a while, I suppose.”
The terrain began to rise a little once they were on the other side of Hell Creek. The slope was very gradual at first, but became more pronounced. More tufts of grass appeared, and even some small bushes. Bo saw trees up ahead, where the foothills of the Santa Maria Mountains began.
A little over an hour after they left the site of the attempted holdup, the stagecoach arrived at Red Butte. Bo and Scratch saw why the settlement had gotten its name. A copper-colored sandstone mesa jutted up from the ground about half a mile north of the town, which had a main street, half-a-dozen cross streets, and a couple of streets paralleling the main drag. The buildings were a mixture of adobe, lumber from the trees growing in the foothills, and brick that must have been freighted in from Flagstaff or some other big town.
“Not a bad-lookin’ place,” Scratch commented. “Wouldn’t exactly say that it’s boomin’, but it don’t look like it’s about to dry up and blow away either.”
“There are enough ranches along the Santa Marias, both north and south of town, to support quite a few businesses,” Gil said. “Throw in the Pitchfork, too, and folks do all right. They just don’t have much need of a stage line except to deliver the mail.” His mouth twisted. “And we probably won’t have that contract much longer.”
“What do you mean by that, son?” Bo asked, but Gil didn’t answer. The young man was busy bringing the stagecoach to a halt at the edge of the settlement, in front of a neatly kept adobe building with a wooden barn and some corrals behind it. Someone had planted cactus roses on either side of the three steps that led up to the
