“You?” Big Ole leaned back on his bucket and stretched his powerful arms. “You leave farm . . . farm like . . . that?”
Dooley tried to focus on the big Norwegian. Liquor made from potatoes packed quite the wallop. “I didn’t actually leave it.”
The farmer studied Dooley. “Then . . . why . . . here . . . you be?”
Dooley smiled and slid his right hand into the trousers pocket on his hip. Carefully, he withdrew the clipping and held it across the table, careful not to let it fall into the bacon grease or dregs of coffee.
“Gold,” he said. “A fortune. Just for the taking in the Black Hills.”
The man did not touch the worn piece of paper, but did lean his head close to the eight-point type. Dooley didn’t know if the man could read English. For all he knew, Ole’s Bible was printed in Norwegian. But in about the time it would take most people to read the article of six paragraphs and six decks of headline, Ole leaned back and shrugged.
“And . . . farm?”
Dooley thought he understood what the Norwegian meant, and Dooley felt a little bit shamed. He hadn’t meant to brag about those just a tad under two hundred acres north of Des Moines. After all, a farm that size was a dwarf compared to most of the neighbors Dooley had grown up around. Farming might have taken hold of Dooley had his father not sent him down toward Corydon to buy that Jersey cow and bring her home, but instead Dooley had become affixed to things like wandering and drifting and cowboying and chasing after gold.
“There was a blackberry patch,” Dooley told Ole. “That was the best thing. But the blackberries were usually bitter.”
The farmer nodded.
“It was hard work,” Dooley began, but stopped. Hard work? Some dust drifted from Ole’s roof and settled into Dooley’s cup of potato whiskey.
“Didn’t mean to be bragging,” Dooley said. “It wasn’t brag. It wasn’t much of a farm, really, and I certainly wasn’t cut out to be a farmer.”
“No,” the big man said. “You brag no. You talk of home just. Talk home . . . is . . . good thing. No?”
“I guess so.” Dooley felt relaxed again. “I guess Iowa was my first home. And . . .” He started counting. Kansas. Arkansas. Texas. Kansas again. Texas again. Kansas again. New Mexico Territory. Colorado. Utah. Nevada. Utah again. Idaho. Montana. Dakota. Iowa. Kansas again. New Mexico again. Arizona Territory. And even a few stops, though usually just riding the grub line or helping mend or fix or chopping wood in California and Nevada again, and Wyoming, and Kansas again, and Arkansas once more, and back on the farm in Iowa. Now he was bound for the Black Hills of Dakota. He wouldn’t count Nebraska as one of his homes, even if Mr. Something-another-dorf asked him to chop some firewood. There was no firewood to chop, unless one walked down to the Platte and happened to find some scrub. That might have explained why the coffee and the bacon and even the potatoes tasted slightly of dried buffalo droppings.
A lot of the money he had found on his person after he had lost his memory in San Francisco had gone to pay the back taxes he owed to the state of Iowa to get his farm out of receivership. He had wised up, though, after two years of farming almost two hundred acres. This time, he had offered Mr. Cahill and his twelve sons the opportunity to lease his farmland and take over his pig and cow operation, while Dooley was off to the Black Hills. They had shaken hands on it.
“I work . . . hard,” Ole told Dooley.
“Farmers do,” Dooley agreed, “but I don’t think anyone I’ve ever met—especially not Mr. Cahill, because the littlest of his brood is barely smaller than an ox—works as hard as you do, Ole. Takes a lot of work to make a place like this go. It’s going to be a fine farm one day.”
“Fine now,” said Ole. “Home it be.”
Dooley laughed. “It is fine. And it is home now.”
He took another slug of potato whiskey, all the while trying to think of how he would get to Omaha or Dutch Bluff. How he would ever catch up with Dobbs and Handley and that fine bay gelding named General Grant.
* * *
With a belly full of potato liquor, fried taters, fried bacon, and potato bread, Dooley Monahan slept soundly. Even Ole’s deafening snores did not disturb his sleep. One typically slept well when he was fairly drunk and had spent the past three or more days walking in the Nebraska sun and Great Plains wind with nothing to eat but one bit of taffy candy and some quail eggs.
He did not dream that night, so that plump blonde from Omaha was not barking like a dog when he awakened. It was Blue that was barking, growling, backing up from the door the big farmer had left open to catch a breeze and cool off this furnace he called home. Dooley rolled off the dirt that was his bed onto more dirt that was the floor, and reached for the Colt that he did not have.
From the glowing embers in the fireplace, Dooley could just make out Blue, so while he could not see that the dog’s hair shot out like bristles, he heard the dog barking again and scratching hard against the floor of dirt.
On his bed, Ole Something-another-dorf just snored.
Dooley carefully came to his feet, inched his way to the right side of the open door, and groped against the wall until he found Ole’s grubbing hoe. That was the only weapon in the house.
“Come here,” he said in a tight whisper, and Blue obeyed, dropping onto his belly at Dooley’s feet.
Dooley listened, waited for Ole to stop snoring, and as soon as silence filled the sod hut, he strained toward the darkness. Someone . . . or some thing . . . was outside, clopping around. Ole resumed his snores. Dooley tensed, waited, and when Ole fell silent again, he listened. A second before Ole started sawing logs once more, Dooley caught something deep and throaty and natural. The snorting of a horse.
He picked up the hoe, and waited.
There wasn’t anything he could do until the sky began to lighten and the sun started to rise.
“Hell,” he said as he twisted the handle of the hoe in his hands. “When it gets full light, there still won’t be nothing I can do.”
CHAPTER SIX
Ole Something-another-dorf stared long and hard at Dooley and the grubbing hoe and shook his head when Dooley mentioned the clopping of the hooves in the pitch-blackness of night.
“Mule,” Ole explained.
Dooley shook his head. “Not unless your mule got out of that corral. Listen.”
Frowning, the big farmer bent forward toward the door that remained open. The mule brayed. Dooley nodded. “That come from your corral. Now listen . . .”
They waited. The horse snorted again, then clopped along a couple of steps, blew a long, loud fart, and began munching on the potato peels the farmer had dumped on the side of his sod home last night after supper.
“Ack,” said Ole, and he stormed out of the house. Dooley quickly followed, holding the hoe like a war club, and Blue darted out between Dooley’s legs, no longer growling, but yapping happily. The farmer stopped quickly, and stared, but said nothing. The dog danced around the horse.
Dooley lowered the grubbing hoe, and a moment later leaned it against the hillside that served as the farmer’s south wall.
“General Grant,” Dooley said, blinked his eyes, then wiped them, then even tested the subsiding knot on the top of his head.
The farmer turned back and studied Dooley with some suspicion.
“That’s my horse,” Dooley said.
Ole decided to reach for the grubbing hoe, just to play everything safe.
“I swear,” Dooley said, “I don’t know how he got here. Or how he found me. Or how he escaped from the Dobbs-Handley Gang.”
* * *
The saddle—Dooley’s saddle—lay askew, bringing the Navajo saddle blanket Dooley had won in a poker game near Fort Wingate over to the side, as well. A hard lope, and most likely the saddle would be hanging underneath the bay’s belly. Dooley saw the shotgun’s butt sticking out of the scabbard. Dooley’s Winchester carbine was gone, and the butt of the shotgun had blood and hair on one corner.
Which is
how Dooley determined that the man who had hit him from behind and dropped him to the grass a few days ago on the other side of the Platte River had used a shotgun’s stock to almost shatter his skull.
Slowly Dooley withdrew the shotgun, and, seeing the fear in the farmer’s eyes, he opened the breech, pulled out both shells—buckshot, twelve gauge—and slid those into the nearest vest pocket. After snapping the breech shut, he tossed the scattergun to Ole, who caught it and studied it.
That farmer was so big, the shotgun—a sawed-off Greener—resembled a toothpick.
“Take it easy, boy,” Dooley whispered, to the horse and not the farmer. He went to work, removing the saddle and placing it in the sun and placing the blanket on top so it would dry out. The saddlebags he laid near the doorway. He led the horse to the corral, introduced General Grant to the mule, which he called “Mule,” opened the gate, and brought the tired gelding to the trough. He rubbed down the animal, checked over his head and hoofs but saw no signs of abuse, removed the bridle, and left the corral.
Ole just stared at the empty Greener in his big hands.
“So . . . ?” Ole began.
“I don’t know.” He hoped the saddlebags might hold an answer. “How about some coffee while we sort out this puzzle?”
“Coffee.” The big farmer leaned the empty shotgun against the hillside wall and went through the doorway first.
Inside, Dooley opened one of the bags, hoping he would find his spare clothes and shaving kit. He did. He also found his .45 Peacemaker, with all six chambers filled with bullets. Naturally, thinking about his own safety, he pushed out one bullet so the chamber would be under the hammer.
The big farmer stared hard as he began getting the fire going again.
“My pistol,” Dooley said. He laid the Colt on the table and opened the other bag. That side should have held his grub and cookware, but he knew that wasn’t the case because the handle of the skillet wasn’t sticking out from the leather and the cup he used to make his one cup of coffee did not rattle. What he found inside, however, caused him to blink.
“Well,” he said softly, and smiled. “I guess whoever stole my horse decided he didn’t like my skillet and bacon and taste.”
He dropped the saddlebags by his boots, wet his lips, and looked at the big farmer.
Dooley sighed. He couldn’t lie.
“I don’t know how much greenbacks there are in there, but it’s a right smart of money,” he said. He added, “I did not steal it.”
“Greenbacks?” Ole asked.
“Money,” Dooley explained. He reminded the Norwegian about the bank robbery in Omaha that had started all of this, including how Dooley had wound up outside Ole’s front—only—door.
“But how horse here come?” Ole asked.
“That’s the question, ain’t it?” Dooley slid out from the chair and came over to the fireplace. “I think better with coffee in the morning,” he said. “Don’t you?”
With a wide grin, Ole Something-another-dorf poured Dooley Monahan a snootful.
Blue fell asleep at their feet, but Dooley couldn’t blame the dog for that. That old shepherd had spent the whole night growling and barking—which never had shortened the farmer’s sleep or stopped his snores—at the horse outside. Although Dooley wondered why the dog had not recognized the gelding’s scent.
No matter, Dooley had been reunited with his horse.
“The way it might have happened,” Dooley said after his second cup of coffee, “is that General Grant tossed his rider and took off back to find me.”
Ole slurped, wiped his lips, and nodded.
“Smart horse.”
“Smart indeed.”
Dooley sipped, and thought some more.
“It wouldn’t have taken that much brains, though,” Dooley said. “Just backtrack his way here. Here?” He looked at the farmer. “Did you see a gang of riders come by here a few days ago? Riding hard? One man on a big black stallion? A real skinny gent, more cadaver than rider, on a pinto mustang? And a mean hombre—well, every mother’s son of them is a mean hombre—on a buckskin mare? And I don’t know how many other men on other mounts, but a lot of them. And one guy with a shotgun who was riding that there bay of mine?”
Ole did not have to think for more than a second.
“Sure. They ride. I wave. Not notice your horse, though. Much dust. Much dust. No wave back them men.”
Dooley lowered his cup and stared with incredulity at the big man.
“Why didn’t you mention that to me before?” he asked.
Ole did not answer. Because something else took his attention, and Dooley’s, too. Blue woke up and began growling.
“Easy,” Dooley said urgently. “Stay, Blue. Stay still and shut up.”
A man in dirty clothes with a bandage over his right ear and a brown leather patch over his left eye stood inside the sod hut. He held the shotgun at his waist, those two cannonlike barrels trained in the general direction of Dooley Monahan and Ole Something-another-dorf.
* * *
“Nice of you to take care of my horse,” the man said.
“My horse,” Dooley said softly.
“I was plumb sure I bashed out your brains, mister,” the man said. “You must have a skull harder than granite.”
“It hurt,” Dooley said.
Ole muttered something in Norwegian. It did not sound like anything from the Bible, even Genesis.
Dooley did not remember the man from the banks of the Platte River south of Omaha, but he knew he would never forget the man for the rest of his life. Of course, as he stared at the big barrels of the twelve-gauge, his life expectancy for another few minutes didn’t look promising.
The man’s face had been well chewed up with pellets from shotgun, blades of knives, knuckles, fingernails, and who knew what else. His black hat had been ripped a few times, too, and the brim hung limp over his big ear and the bandage covering where the other ear would have been. Dooley had seen junipers that weren’t as twisted and misshapen as the man’s nose. He wore black striped trousers and a blue shirt with the sleeves ripped off above the elbow to reveal his muscles. The boots the man wore, brown and rough, had been scratched up on the uppers as well as the feet, and his pants legs were coated with dirt, grime, grass, and cockleburs.
“The money?” the man said. “Where is it?”
“Saddlebags,” Dooley told him, thinking that maybe the big man would let them live if he got the saddlebags and made off with the money. Dooley tilted his jaw toward the leather pouches.
The man did not let his eyes off either man, but backed away, still training the shotgun’s barrels in the direction of his prisoner until he could see both the saddlebags and the men he held at bay.
It was hard to believe, but Dooley saw relief sweep across the man’s face, and his eye—the one not covered by the patch—appeared to even tear up.
“Thank the good Lord!” the man said, and let out a breath of utter relief. He stepped toward the bags, keeping his eyes and shotgun on the prisoners, grabbed the saddlebags, and tossed them out the door. Then, looking relaxed and confident, he studied Ole, Dooley, and the blue-eyed shepherd.
“Mister,” Dooley said, “what happened?”
“That danged horse threw me,” he cried out, no longer looking relieved but speaking as a man who had been beaten up by life and was ready to take revenge on anyone who happened to be close enough to kill. “Took off. Took off with half the money we took in Dutch Bluff.”
“Do you mean Omaha?” Dooley asked.
“I mean Dutch Bluff, you ignorant fool. We robbed it yesterday.”
Ole blinked and said, “Money much they have at Dutch Bluff bank?”
The one-eyed man stared in disbelief, trying to rearrange the words and grasp what the Norwegian had just said.
“Yeah,” he finally answered.
He straightened. “So Dobbs sends me back to fetch the money. Says if I ain’t back with what I lost, he’ll kill Artie.”
“My brother, you ignorant sodbuster!”
Dooley tried to think of something else to say, but couldn’t. Luckily, Ole had something to add to the conversation.
“Man threaten brother. Boss you like?”
“No,” the big man snapped. “No, I don’t like Dobbs. I don’t like Handley, either. Doc, well, he ain’t that bad unless he’s in his cups and cutting off some hombre’s head. Hell, I don’t even like Artie that much, but he’s my brother.”
The big man shook his head, waited a moment, and then said, “Dobbs wouldn’t even let me take a horse. Made me walk.”
And that got Dooley mad. “You walk fifteen or thirty miles in a day. Mister, I had to walk four days to get here. That’s right, mister, I’ve been chasing you. Nobody steals my horse and bashes in my head. I’m glad my horse threw you. I’m glad General Grant came back here. And I’m most glad that you got sent here. Because now I’m going to tear you from limb to limb.”
The man with the eye patch didn’t even consider the big farmer. He swung both barrels at Dooley Monahan and squeezed both triggers.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Click.
Both hammers fell simultaneously, making one sound that soon was drowned out by the roar of the man with the eye patch.
At that moment, the outlaw started to put one hand behind his back, stopped, and quickly reached for Dooley’s Colt that still lay on the table. Dooley, Ole, and Blue raced to stop him.
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