“The stories will probably be picked up by other papers, too,” Armbruster had told Mendoza. “People all across the country will read about you.”
Armbruster was fairly young, but he had been a journalist long enough to know how to appeal to a person’s vanity. Most people would say whatever a skillful reporter wanted them to say and could even be manipulated into doing things that would make for a good story.
And, of course, any journalist worth his wages could always just make something up if he needed to. The gullible public would eat up any load of malarkey the newspapers fed to them. That had been proven over and over again.
The increasing heat didn’t help matters when it came to the potential split brewing among the group. The men were on edge. But Mendoza didn’t seem to care. He stood at the edge of the butte facing the trail, with a pair of field glasses in his hands, waiting for the wagon to come by.
Mendoza’s voice had an impatient note in it when he turned his head long enough to call, “Howie! Come over here.”
Howie Barton had been tossing a bowie knife so that it pierced the ground then retrieving it and throwing it again. When Mendoza summoned him, he picked up the knife and slipped it back into its sheath. He ambled toward the edge of the butte.
Curious, Armbruster followed the youthful-looking gringo.
“What can I do for you, boss?” Howie asked as he came up to Mendoza.
Looking intently at him, Mendoza said, “You are certain those men with the wagon said they were going to Silverhill?”
This wasn’t the first time Mendoza had asked that question.
“That’s right. I wouldn’t have made a mistake about that. They said they were takin’ those gals to Silverhill.” Howie grinned. “I figured right then and there that they must be doves the hombres plan on puttin’ to work. Why else would anybody haul a wagonload of gals to a boomtown?”
“Perhaps,” Mendoza said, nodding slowly. “But why have they not passed by? That is the only trail through this part of the territory that leads to Silverhill.”
“Couldn’t say, boss,” Howie responded with a shrug of his shoulders. “Maybe they got a late start this mornin’, or maybe they’re just not in a hurry.”
While talking to Howie, Mendoza wasn’t paying as close attention to the trail as he had been a few minutes earlier. Armbruster caught sight of something moving in the distance, though, and pointed to the east as he said, “Señor Mendoza, is that them?”
Mendoza turned sharply and peered through the field glasses as the broad brim of his sombrero shaded his eyes. After a moment he said, “That is the wagon, but those damned gringo vaqueros are still with it!”
No one in Mendoza’s bunch knew why the American cowboys had happened to come along when they did and ruin everything. All they knew was that they had been forced to flee, or risk being wiped out by staying and fighting.
Mendoza and the other men had hoped that the cowboys would have pressing business elsewhere and would have to leave the wagon to continue the journey to Silverhill alone.
Armbruster had believed all along that this was too much to hope for . . . although, as had happened numerous times since he had joined Mendoza’s force, he wasn’t exactly sure of what he himself hoped for.
He considered himself an honorable man, and what Mendoza and his cohorts had in mind for the women was hardly honorable. In fact, it was just the opposite.
But Armbruster also valued his own skin, and he knew that if he protested too much, Mendoza or one of the other bandits might lose patience and shoot him. He would be just one more luckless gringo who vanished into the vast, empty stretches of the border country.
So he had kept his mouth shut about the situation so far, other than telling those two old gringos what Mendoza had told him to say when they approached the butte under the white flag. It would have been nice if Mendoza had just forgotten about the women, but it seemed certain now that that wasn’t going to be the case.
Mendoza turned abruptly and thrust the field glasses into Armbruster’s hands.
“Look,” the bandit chief ordered. “Look at the wagon.”
Armbruster lifted the glasses to his eyes and peered through them. He had never been good at such things, but after a minute of the view he saw through the glasses jumping around all over the landscape, he located the wagon and the men riding around it. He focused on the vehicle itself.
One of the older men was on the seat, handling the reins. Next to him sat a young woman with hair dark as midnight under the broad-brimmed hat she wore and a lovely faintly olive-skinned face. She was beautiful enough that Armbruster’s heart suddenly gave a funny little thump in his chest.
“You see her?” Mendoza asked. “The woman sitting next to the viejo driving the wagon?”
“I see her,” Armbruster said.
“That woman is going to be my wife,” Jaime Mendoza declared.
* * *
Rose didn’t like giving up her seat on the driver’s box, but she had agreed—grudgingly—to let the other young women take turns riding up there with Scratch. Luella was on the seat at the moment, sitting close enough to the silver-haired Texan that he felt it when she shivered suddenly.
“Something wrong?” he asked.
“You know that old saying about how people feel a cold chill go through them when somebody walks over the ground that will be their grave?”
“Yep, I’ve heard folks say that many a time.”
“So have I, but I never really believed there was anything to it.” Luella paused. “Until now. But now I’m not so sure, because I just felt the oddest sensation. I don’t know how else to explain it. Almost like . . . something evil was watching me. Something that intends a terrible fate for me.”
“Don’t you worry about that,” Scratch told her, trying to sound reassuring. “Bo and me are gonna see to it that nothin’ bad happens to any of you ladies. And now we’ve got Plummer and those cowboys helpin’, too, so I reckon you and the other gals are just as safe as if you were in your folks’ parlors back in Four Corners, Iowa.”
Scratch hoped she believed that. He wished he felt as absolutely certain of it as he sounded....
* * *
Despite Luella’s premonition, if one wanted to call it that, which Scratch told Bo about later, nothing happened that day except that the wagon rolled on and put more miles behind it on the way to Silverhill.
Bo hadn’t been over this particular trail before. The last time he and Scratch were in this part of New Mexico Territory, the trail hadn’t been there, because Silverhill itself hadn’t existed.
So he didn’t know exactly how close they were to the boomtown or how much longer it would take to get there. He hoped they might arrive the next day, but he supposed they would have to wait and see.
While riding out ahead of the wagon, he experienced a similar feeling to what Luella had reported, like someone was watching them. Bo’s eyes scanned the surrounding landscape constantly, all the way out to the horizons, searching for any signs of lurking danger.
But if it was out there, it was staying well hidden.
The cowboys camped a short distance from the wagon that night, as they had the previous night. Rance Plummer came over and shared a cup of coffee with Bo and Scratch.
“Those boys of yours are behavin’ themselves,” Scratch commented.
“Of course they are,” the foreman said, sounding a little offended. “I only hire good hombres, and I trust my judgment in pickin’ ’em. Oh, sure, they’re cowboys through and through, which means they like to head to town and do some hell-raisin’ on payday, but I run off anybody who gets too rowdy . . . and that includes disrespectin’ decent women. You don’t have to worry about them.”
“At least as long as we don’t put too much temptation in their path, right?” Bo said.
Plummer chuckled and nodded. “Well, a little discretion sure won’t hurt nothin’,” he agreed.
Bo sipped his coffee and said, “You know this pa
rt of the country better than we do. Do you think we’ll reach Silverhill tomorrow?”
Plummer considered the question and nodded. “Ought to pull into town late tomorrow afternoon, if nothin’ happens to delay us.”
“I’m lookin’ forward to it,” Scratch said. “It’ll be nice to get the ladies there and have the job over with.”
“What are you boys gonna do after that?” Plummer asked. “Do you have to take that wagon back to El Paso?”
Bo shook his head. “The man we rented it from told us to turn it over to the office of his freight company in Silverhill. They’ll probably load some sort of cargo in it and send it back. But Scratch and I won’t have to worry about it.”
“There ain’t a telegraph line into the settlement yet, is there?” Scratch asked.
“Nope,” Plummer said. “It’ll come in if and when the railroad runs that spur line down there, I reckon. Got mail service twice a week on the stagecoach, though.”
Bo said, “We’ll write to Cyrus Keegan in Fort Worth and let him know the ladies arrived safely. He runs the matrimonial agency that set this trip up.”
“Until we hear back from him, though,” Scratch said, “we won’t know if he has any more work for us.” He grinned. “I reckon that gives us a mighty good excuse to hang around Silverhill for that fandango you talked about, Rance.”
“It’ll be a good one,” Plummer said.
Again, Bo was curious what the ranch foreman wasn’t telling them, but he supposed they would find out soon enough, if they reached Silverhill the next day.
The night passed peacefully, and the wagon, still accompanied by the SJ crew, got an early start the next morning. Scratch handled the team and kept the horses moving at a steady pace as the miles unrolled behind them.
Small mountain ranges began to appear during the day. These peaks were more substantial than the buttes rising to the east but nowhere near as tall as the Sangre de Cristos to the north and the majestic Rockies beyond them. The ranges ran roughly north and south, with wide, flat valleys between them. Bo knew the silver mines that were the reason for Silverhill’s existence were located in the mountains, with the town being in a nearby valley.
The trail curved to the southwest, into the bootheel-shaped region that extended down between Mexico and Arizona. The route followed easy passes between the scattered mountain ranges.
When Cecilia was riding on the wagon seat next to Scratch, she commented, “This is beautiful country, in a stark sort of way.”
“Yes, ma’am. A hard land, but a mighty good one if you know how to get by in it. And a land where a man can make his fortune if he’s tough and smart enough.”
“It’s nothing like the agricultural region we come from.”
Rose, riding inside the wagon, just behind the seat, said, “There’s nothing but fields to look at around there. I like this better.”
The rougher terrain meant that the wagon couldn’t travel quite as fast. Late that afternoon, the two cowboys Plummer had sent ahead to serve as scouts hurried back to join the foreman, who was riding out ahead of the wagon with Bo. They were moving at a pretty good clip, which made Bo stiffen in the saddle.
Out here on the frontier, especially in the hotter regions like this, if anybody got in a hurry, it usually meant trouble.
But not in this case. The young punchers reined in and grinned. One of them said, “Silverhill’s just on the other side of that gap up there. Not more’n two miles away.”
“I knew we were gettin’ close,” Plummer said, “but it’s been a while since I was in these parts.”
Bo was relieved to hear the news. After the run-in with Mendoza’s bandits, he had expected more trouble before they reached the boomtown, but now they were practically in spitting distance and nothing else had happened.
Better be careful, he warned himself. He didn’t want to jinx things by getting too overconfident.
He half turned in the saddle and waved Scratch and the wagon on; then he and Plummer rode ahead, urging their mounts to a trot, which carried them through the pass. They stopped at the far end, at the top of a fairly gentle slope, where the trail led down into the valley.
At the end of that trail lay Silverhill.
And the settlement was booming, all right.
CHAPTER 22
The valley was about two miles wide, with Silverhill sitting in the middle, where a small creek bordered by scrubby trees and bushes meandered along. The mountains on the far side were slightly smaller and more rounded than the more rugged range to the east, where Bo, Scratch, and their companions were moving through the pass.
Smoke rose from the smelter located at the base of those western mountains. Even from here, Bo could see the wide, rutted trail formed by the wheels of ore wagons as they made hundreds, maybe even thousands, of trips back and forth between the smelter and the settlement.
The trail they had followed from El Paso turned into Silverhill’s broad, dusty main street. Two smaller streets ran parallel with it, one on each side. Half a dozen cross streets intersected the three longer streets. All these were laid out in a neat grid, although the adobe houses around the edges of the settlement were arranged in a more haphazard pattern, as the outlying residents had built wherever struck their fancy.
Businesses lined the main street. Many of these were made of adobe, too, but Bo saw frame buildings, as well, some of them false fronted and even a few with actual second stories. Lumber would be expensive in a mostly treeless region like this, although some timber grew on the mountain slopes. Most of the lumber used in the town’s construction would have been hauled in by wagons from forests far to the north.
In a boomtown such as Silverhill, though, a successful business could make a lot of money in a short period of time, so some entrepreneurs likely considered the expense of a nice building to be a worthwhile investment.
As they sat there looking down at the valley, Bo wondered idly which of the buildings was the big saloon owned by Forbes Dyson, the man Rance Plummer had mentioned.
The wagon came up behind Bo and Plummer. Scratch hauled back on the reins and brought the team to a stop. Rose had reclaimed her place on the seat beside him. The other four young women clustered right behind them, looking over their shoulders.
“That’s Silverhill?” Rose asked excitedly. “That’s where we’re going?”
Bo turned his horse toward the wagon and smiled as he said, “That’s it, all right. Looks like a pretty nice settlement.”
“It’s not very big, is it?” Cecilia said.
“Bigger than some,” Scratch told her. “Bigger than a lot of settlements out here, actually. And the houses look pretty nice, most of ’em, anyway. I don’t reckon you ladies will want for much once you’ve settled down with your new husbands.”
“I see a church steeple,” Beth said. “And is that a building with some sort of bell tower attached to it, there on the north side of town?”
“That’ll be a Catholic mission,” Bo told her. “From the looks of it, it’s pretty old. Been there awhile. More than likely, it was founded on the banks of that creek long before the town was here, back in the days when Spain and then Mexico owned this part of the country. The Church scattered missions all over, trying to civilize the Indians who lived here.”
Scratch said, “If there’s a school, then you got all you need for a settlement to take root. Leastways as long as the silver holds out. If the town grows enough, it might last even if the silver veins peter out.”
Bo didn’t dispute his old friend’s statement, but he doubted if Silverhill would continue to exist for very long if the mines ever closed down. This area just didn’t have anything else that appealed to settlers. Not even the Indians had ever been able to make much out of it.
After a short delay while all the men withdrew a good distance and the ladies changed into nicer outfits, as Bo had promised them they could do before entering the town, Bo and Plummer led the way down the slope toward the settlement. Scratch follow
ed with the wagon, while the rest of the cowboys, who’d had to bunch up as they came through the pass, brought up the rear.
Bo thought this would be a good place for an ambush, but when nothing of the sort happened, he told himself that he was just worrying too much, wary of trouble erupting at the last minute, when the journey was almost over.
As they came closer, he saw how busy the town was. The several blocks of the main street that made up the principal business district were clogged with horses, mules, wagons, buckboards, buggies, and even a few fancy carriages with brightly polished trim, which probably belonged to some of the mining magnates.
The boardwalks on both sides of the street were likewise thronged with people. Bo heard a buzzing sound before they ever reached the settlement’s outskirts, and realized it was the hum of loud conversation and laughter. Silverhill sounded a little like a beehive and reminded him of one, too, the way everybody swarmed around.
“What’s everybody so worked up about?” Rose asked from the wagon seat. “I never saw quite so much excitement in Four Corners, even on the Fourth of July!”
“The town’s always like this, ma’am,” Plummer said as he hipped around in the saddle to answer the question. “Leastways it has been every time I’ve been here. I’d say that folks are maybe worked up a mite more than usual today, because they know that you ladies are supposed to be arrivin’ any day now. Fact is, somebody may have spotted us comin’ through the pass and started spreadin’ the word that you’re almost there.”
From behind the driver’s seat, Cecilia said, “Surely, the arrival of five women shouldn’t cause such a stir.”
Beth added, “Yeah, it’s not like we’re two-headed monsters or something like that!”
Plummer chuckled. “No, ma’am, far from it. But you see, young women are in short supply in these parts. Especially ladies as pretty as the five of you, who not only ain’t married, but you also ain’t . . . well, a different sort than you . . . I mean—”
Tartly, Cecilia said, “We can imagine what sort of young women are usually to be found in mining boomtowns, Mr. Plummer. But there are only five of us. I fail to see how we could actually make a significant difference in the town.”
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