“That’s a shame,” Logan said.
“How about you?” the army deserter asked. “We need people. This strike is too big for the two of us. And, besides, there’s enough gold to go around. But as far away as we are from the Sioux strongholds and burial grounds and the big encampments, we should have men with sharp eyes who can help us defend our riches against the savage warriors.”
Logan Kingsbury thought, and he remembered that aunt who doted on him, who helped him take care of all of those orphans, or other unfortunate individuals, who had provided him with money for a meal when he had scarcely a copper or two in his billfold. With tears in his eyes, he thought about all that she had given him, even before he left to find his fame and fortune in the great American West. He could smell the mouthwatering aroma of her kitchen when she pulled sourdough bread out of the oven. And how she might let him steal a pie out of the pie safe, knowing that boys will be boys, and that her pies were not nearly as good as the pies baked by Mrs. Abercrombie, but probably a close second in the City on the Seven Hills.
So he wrote a letter. He told his aunt the secret. He begged her to come to Fetterman City, where he would be waiting to guide her and handpicked trusting families who were willing to sacrifice the comforts of Cincinnati and strike out west. By Martin Dansforth’s calculations, the gold they had found in the creek on the edge of the Black Hills would assay at $75 dollars a ton. Logan Kingsbury didn’t consider himself a miner, but he had been around mining camps long enough to remember that the highest grade he had ever heard of was $40 a ton.
They left the camp under the cloak of darkness, still traveling cautiously and slowly—with only one horse between them—leaving the hills and forests for the grasslands, across Lightning Creek and down south to the North Platte River and finally to Fetterman City.
Logan Kingsbury posted his letter, which brightened that wintry day of the Widow Kingsbury. And made a few handpicked families in Cincinnati delighted.
The night fell silent. Dooley waited. Waited some more. For a moment, he thought the parson had fallen asleep. At length, Dooley cleared his throat, hesitated, and said, “Well, Reverend, that’s a good story. But if the Widow’s nephew is waiting for you in Fetterman City, surely you can find that without hiring a guide. You just find the North Platte River, which is thataway, and follow it to Fort Fetterman.”
“Yes,” said the minister, who was awake. “You would be right, Dooley, except in February the Widow received the second letter.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
By then, Dooley Monahan knew he was doomed. He would not get out of Julesburg until daybreak—if the preacher had finished talking by then. He would sure hate to have to sit through one of the parson’s sermons.
Yet when the Reverend Granby reached again inside his black coat and withdrew, not another fine Cuban cigar but a weathered envelope, Dooley held out hope. More relief swept over him when the Episcopalian minister pulled from that envelope a single piece of paper. At least it would be a short letter, unless Logan Kingsbury had really dainty, small handwriting.
After clearing his throat, the parson said, “No date,” and began to read:
My dearest Auntie—
I take pencil in hand in hopes that you are in fine health & received the letter I wrote to you a few months back. With the help of our Lord God Above in Highest Heaven, you & the Reverend R. J.—I forget his last name—
Here, the preacher stopped reading, folded the paper slightly so he could look Dooley in the eye as he explained.
“The boy never paid attention. In church. In school. It has been six years since he left Cincinnati, so that might explain his lapse in memory, but I always found him a hopeless cause. However, our Lord works in mysterious ways.
“The rest of the letter is tougher to read, as if written in a rush, which, as you’ll hear, is exactly how it was written.”
He continued reading the letter.
. . . have found some men who have experience in mining, or at least can hold a pan in cold water, build a sluice, swing a pick-axe but mostly know how 2 keep their mouths shut. No. Mostly they should be able 2 shoot a gun. Have them bring their weapons. & plenty of powder & lead.
There is 1 change in plans from my previous correspondence. Instead of meeting me in Fetterman City, I am enclosing a map 2 my gold strike. Follow it when U reach Wyoming Ty. Don’t come 2 Fetterman City. Don’t show anyone the map. Don’t tell anyone U know me, or King Logan, or Logan King, or John Smith or John Logan Smith, or John Smith King. Don’t mention my name, or any of the other names, except, possibly, John Smith.
Do not mention Martin Dansforth’s name, either. Please.
2 quickly explain, Dansforth was no partner 2 trust, & I regret having joined his expedition. Last night, he caught me in an ambuscade in an attempt 2 murder me—God have mercy on his poor, misguided soul—so that he might have the fortune in gold for his own nefarious designs. As God as my witness, Aunt, I had no recourse but 2 defend myself, & Christ in Heaven guided my bullets N2 that scoundrel’s back . . . body. As Dansforth has many friends in this town, I must depart in haste. I will return 2 Slim Pickings, & living off the land & what food I have manage 2 procure, until U & the Rev. & those gallant men come 2 my rescue.
Hurry, Aunt, please hurry.
Go with God & go 2 Slim Pickings as fast as U can.
Tarry not,
Logan Kingsbury,
your most loving nephew
“His handwriting is quite small, but among the most legible I have ever seen,” the Reverend Granby said as he returned the letter to the envelope. “What do you think?”
Dooley hesitated, but you didn’t lie to a man of God.
“I don’t think I’d trust the Widow’s nephew,” he said.
The smile that spread across the reverend’s face surprised Dooley. “Nor would I.” The letter disappeared in the inside pocket of the long black coat, but the hand returned with two more cigars, one of which was offered to Dooley.
He shook his head, and both cigars vanished inside the coat.
“That’s the story, Dooley,” the preacher said. “That’s what brought us to Julesburg.”
“Did you tell that fellow that was . . . sort of . . . smitten to . . . your . . .”
“Jefferson Chatfield,” Granby said. “Probably as nefarious a scoundrel as the Widow’s nephew. No, Dooley, we might be Eastern tenderfeet, greenhorns from one of the jewel cities of our glorious United States, but we are not fools. Chatfield’s job was to get us to Fetterman City. Perhaps he would have done that had he not been lured astray by those four other men you shot dead.”
“Three,” Dooley said. “The other one I shot dead before those boys tried to bushwhack me. And, actually, I didn’t shoot him. He sort of shot himself. Dobbs, I mean. I . . .” He was overtired, talking too much, bantering like a gabbing drunkard.
“So all you want is for me to take you to this mining camp?”
The parson’s head nodded.
“For which we will pay you in gold.”
“A mining camp nobody’s ever heard of.” He was thinking out loud, but Granby nodded again.
“And nobody knows where it is.”
Another affirmation. “Except some dead men, and dead men tell no tales.”
Dooley fell silent and looked into the darkness. The moon was not overly bright, but it allowed Dooley to see the outlines of the Conestogas and various farm wagons. A train like that might make ten miles a day, perhaps twelve, and that seemed like mighty slow going when Doc Watson, Zee Dobbs, Frank Handley, and several killers and thieves were on your trail.
But they likely would not expect Dooley Monahan to be guiding a bunch of families from Cincinnati, Ohio, into Indian country. Would they?
“Those Sioux and Cheyenne could jump us,” Dooley tossed out.
“General Custer, General Crook, and more soldiers than I commanded during the late War against the Rebellion should be taking the field to end the red menace, Doole
y,” the preacher said. “Don’t worry about any Indians, lad.”
“You commanded a regiment during the war?”
“Well, it wasn’t exactly a regiment.”
“You saw the elephant?”
“At a circus once.”
Dooley groaned. To see the elephant, back in those days, meant to have experienced battle. These days, cowboys said it to mean to see what was over the rise.
“I was with the Queen City Home Guard, son,” the preacher said. “My rank was my belief in God Almighty. My command was fifteen volunteers. Don’t think us useless, boy, for though we did not fight at Chancellorsville or Gettysburg or Shiloh or Perryville or Bull Run, Cincinnati was just above the Ohio River from Kentucky, and the Confederates were just below Kentucky in Tennessee, and John Hunt Morgan took his rebel horse soldiers out of Tennessee, through Kentucky, and into Indiana and Ohio. By thunder, they rode right through Harrison, and that’s just above Cincinnati. No, sir. We were tested. Well, we would have been tested if only—”
“It doesn’t matter, sir,” Dooley said, regretting that he had brought it up. Wouldn’t people say that he was turning yellow, running from Frank Handley and the remnants of the Dobbs-Handley Gang? Probably. They just didn’t know that Dooley Monahan didn’t like killing people, even murdering outlaws who were wanted dead or alive. It just happened that somehow that was one thing Dooley was quite good at.
“You are familiar with Wyoming, aren’t you, Dooley?”
Familiar? That was a good description. Since he left Monty’s Raiders, and after he had shot dead Jason Baylor, Dooley had become familiar with quite a few places in the West. He had been a drifting cowboy, working for a season at one ranch, and then riding the grub line until he found another job breaking chuckleheaded horses or roping steers or branding calves. And he had worked his way up from riding drag—eating dust behind a herd of two thousand or sometimes even more Texas longhorns—on cattle drives to Kansas, or other places. He had ridden on the Goodnight-Loving Trail twice—not with either Charles Goodnight or Oliver Loving, but that didn’t matter—and that had brought him to Cheyenne, Wyoming Territory, to help feed the Union Pacific workers one time, and the steak-loving population another. And he had killed Jason Baylor’s first cousin in Cheyenne, too.
“Yeah, I’m familiar with it,” he said, which was no lie.
He had seen the Sweetwater River country, the North Platte, Casper, and the Medicine Bow. He had been across the Red Desert, through Devil’s Gate, had stopped at Independence Rock to look at the names of those forty-niners and other wayfarers who had journeyed across this wild country. He had broken some army remounts at Fort Laramie, and once he had thought about even going to Fetterman City but the wind was blowing hard from the north so he had put the wind to his back and drifted back into Colorado.
He knew parts of Wyoming, but he could not honestly say he had ever been too far north of the Platte River. After all, that seemed to be pretty much Sioux country.
“What about the map?” Dooley asked.
The reverend studied Dooley for a long while before at last he pulled a pewter flask from another coat pocket. He unscrewed the lid, had a snort, and offered Dooley the whiskey. Again, Dooley declined.
“Tell me how we get near Fetterman first,” the preacher said. “Let me see if you know that territory better than Jefferson Chatfield.”
That seemed fair.
“You’ll head north from here. Straight north. Two days should put you on the North Platte. Then follow the river to Scottsbluff. That’s probably four more days. From there, just keep on the river until you get near Fort Fetterman, or wherever you want to head to Slim Pickings.”
“Why not just head along the U.P. tracks awhile, then turn north straight for Scottsbluff?”
“Better water my way. More game, too, to eat. The railroad scares off buffalo and antelope.”
“That makes sense.”
Dooley waited. “The map?”
Now the preacher smiled. “I don’t think you’re as low-down as Chatfield, Dooley, but I will show you parts of the map when the time is right. There was one paragraph in Logan’s letter to his aunt that I omitted while I read.”
That made Dooley decide that the minister wasn’t so much a greenhorn after all. He trusted nobody, probably not even the Widow Kingsbury, and maybe that was a good thing. Gold had a funny way with people, and it struck Dooley that all those times when he had set out to make his fortune in mining camps, he had never actually got to those mining camps. Alaska back in ’72. And maybe Deadwood this year. Although, well, he had said he was going to the Black Hills, and Slim Pickings might not be Deadwood, but it was in the Black Hills, barely, at least according to Logan Kingsbury.
“When,” the Reverend Granby continued, “we get to Rawhide Creek—that’s what Logan told the Widow—you will receive part of the map, but just part. Until you’ve brought us to the end of that map, I shall give you another piece. We shall parcel it out, so to speak, so greed does not get the better of you. I won’t have you abandon us the way Chatfield did.”
You’d be in a lot worse shape if that happens, Dooley thought, because being left in Julesburg is one thing. Being left alone on the north side of the North Platte River is really bad.
Then he thought: I would never leave Miss Sabrina Granby behind, alone, in Indian country.
And next he thought: Where the hell is Rawhide Creek?
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
After combing the hay out of his hair and brushing some more off his clothes, Dooley found his hat, pulled it on his head, and stood in the stall of the Julesburg Livery. He had slept in the stall. Beside him, Blue raised his head, and in the neighboring stall, General Grant began his breakfast of grain and water.
He buckled on his gun belt, rinsed his mouth out with warmish water from his canteen, and heard the commotion out on the streets of the town. Dooley said, “Come on, Blue,” and the dog followed him as Dooley made his way to the daylight shining through the open broad doors of the livery.
The liveryman stood just outside, holding a file in his big left hand, staring as the Conestogas, Studebakers, and other ox-drawn wagons headed toward the trail that paralleled the Union Pacific rails. The Reverend Granby, the Widow Kingsbury, Mr. Franco, Mrs. Abercrombie, and all the other Cincinnatians—including beautiful Miss Sabrina Granby—were leaving town. Riding away. Without Dooley.
“What’s happening?” Dooley asked the liveryman who had done most of the burying of the five dead men he had brought to town the previous day.
“They’s pullin’ out,” the barrel-chested, iron-armed man said. “’Em miners.”
“Thought they were sodbusters,” Dooley said.
The big man, whose arms might have been just smaller than Hercules’, shrugged. “Don’t make no difference. Green as they is, they’ll be back in Ohio come next summer—if they ain’t buried somewhere out here.”
“I thought they were from Rhode Island,” Dooley said.
The liveryman studied Dooley for a second, and without a scowl or any more scrutiny, walked back inside to start shoeing a horse.
“Come on, Blue,” Dooley said. “Let’s see if we can scare up some breakfast.”
He tipped his hat to a woman carrying a basket filled with eggs, and watched the dust settle from the wagons and oxen. The party had no outrider, no guide, no one on horseback—just wagons and mules—and about a half-dozen goats tethered behind the last wagon. The preacher and his niece led the procession in the biggest of the three Conestogas. Dooley stopped to watch. Granby turned his wagon east, not west, which likely meant he would take the trail north and head directly toward the North Platte River.
The parson had decided to follow Dooley’s advice.
Stiff and dirty and still covered with hay that had been resistant to his brushing and wiping and slapping, Dooley felt oddly refreshed. He had left the parson at the dying campfire at perhaps midnight or maybe one in the morning, made it to the livery,
and slept without bedroll or blanket. Sun rose in these parts at around five o’clock, and the scents of a town around breakfast, and of cook fires at the camp of emigrants, and the stench of goat pee roused Dooley from his slumbers, but he had waited in the hay beside a good dog that was running in his sleep. He had thought about the previous night, and all that the reverend had told him. He had considered his decision, and the question gnawed at him. Had he done the right thing?
The other wagons followed the Conestoga, and before Dooley realized it, the goats had disappeared in the dust and the sage-dotted prairie had swallowed up those tenderfeet seeking gold in the edge of the Black Hills.
Dooley knew he should be getting out of Julesburg, too. He had wasted one night, but he felt that he had a plan now, and that the surviving members of the Dobbs-Handley Gang would not be coming after him until tomorrow night at the earliest. Besides, he didn’t know when he might eat again, so he moved down the street, maneuvering across treacherous boardwalks until he slipped inside the Julesburg Café. He told Blue to wait on the boardwalk.
After removing his hat and hanging it on a rack near the entrance, Dooley spied Marshal Maximilian working on a plate of bacon, fried potatoes, and eggs over easy at a corner table. The chair opposite the lawman remained unoccupied, so Dooley moved toward it.
The lawman had just forked a ton of greasy potatoes into his mouth. He stopped chewing and stared in disbelief as Dooley said, “Mind if I join you, Marshal?”
Dooley took the lack of movement as not a rejection, so he pulled out the chair and sat down.
When the lawman still did not move, Dooley opened the Denver newspaper, only three months old, which had been lying beside the cream, and began reading. Out of the corner of his eye, Dooley saw Maximilian’s jaws working. The Adam’s apple bobbed, and the lawman reached for his coffee cup. After a sip, he said, “Thought you was leaving yesterday.”
“So . . .” Dooley stopped. The waitress stood beside him, and Dooley kept his order simple. He pointed at the plate and coffee cup and said, “Same as Marshal Max, please.”
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