Sidewinders

by William W. Johnstone

  “Several of them. Do you want to have a look?”

  “I wouldn’t mind.”

  Scratch said, “You go ahead, Bo. I’ll tend to the horses and make sure they get watered.”

  “You’ll have to break the ice in the trough,” Keefer warned. “It keeps freezing over.”

  Scratch nodded and led the mounts toward the corral. Sergeant Gustaffson was already making sure the enlisted men cared for their horses.

  Bo went into the superintendent’s office with Keefer. Lieutenant Holbrook followed. Bo would have preferred to study the maps without Holbrook being there, but he couldn’t very well send the officer away. Even though he and Scratch were civilians, technically they were under Holbrook’s command at the moment.

  Keefer cleared off his desk, took several maps from a map case on the wall, and unrolled one of them on top of the desk. All three men gathered around it. It was a topographical map, and Bo had no trouble picking out Deadwood Gulch, Whitewood Gulch, and the numerous smaller canyons.

  “Where are all the big mines?” Bo asked.

  Keefer pointed them out with a blunt finger. “The Homestake . . . the Father De Smet . . . the Argosy . . . the Golden Queen right here, of course . . .” He named off half a dozen others and tapped their locations on the map.

  “All the mines are located in the gulches instead of on top of the ridges,” Bo said.

  “Well, yes,” Keefer agreed. “It’s not necessarily easier to dig a shaft horizontally than it is to sink one vertically, but it’s easier to get the ore out of the horizontal shafts. Plus the pockets of gold-bearing quartz tend to run horizontally, although they can take off at strange angles in some cases.”

  Bo leaned over the map and paid particular attention to the locations of the Argosy and the Golden Queen relative to each other. The Argosy was on the southern slope of Deadwood Gulch, while the Golden Queen was on the northern side of the smaller canyon. That meant there was nothing between the two mines except a ridge that was about a mile wide.

  He filed that information away in his head and used a finger to trace one of the ridges. “What’s up here?” he asked.

  Keefer frowned. “You mean on top of that ridge?”

  “I mean on top of all the ridges.”

  “Not much of anything, as far as I know. Trees and a lot of rocks.”

  “So there’s no reason for any of the miners to go up there.”

  Keefer shook his head. “No. All our work is down in the gulches.”

  Lieutenant Holbrook said excitedly, “I know what you’re thinking, Creel. You believe that the outlaws are hiding on top of one of these ridges.”

  “It’s a possibility,” Bo said. “The gulches are pretty heavily traveled, or at least they were until the Devils started, well, raising hell.”

  “Most of the slopes around here are pretty steep,” Keefer pointed out. “It would be hard getting horses up and down them. A lot of places it would be impossible.”

  “There wouldn’t have to be a lot of places you could reach the top on horseback,” Bo said. “Just one good one.”

  “Then that’s where we’ll start,” Holbrook declared. Bo tapped the map and asked Keefer, “Any chance we can take this with us?”

  The superintendent nodded. “I’ve got others, so you’re welcome to that one.”

  “Is there a place around here where we can get up on the ridge? I didn’t see any between here and Deadwood Gulch.”

  “Keep going up the canyon,” Keefer said. “The slope gets a little easier after about a mile.”

  “Excellent,” Holbrook said with a nod. “Thank you, Mr. Keefer.”

  “My pleasure. I hope you find the scoundrels and deal harshly with them when you do.”

  “You can rest assured of that, sir,” Holbrook said, “on both counts.”

  Bo still thought they should wait until morning to begin the search, but Holbrook wouldn’t hear of it. He liked Bo’s idea that the outlaw hideout was located somewhere on top of one of the ridges and wanted to put it to the test.

  As the troops got ready to move out, Chloride came up to Bo and Scratch and said quietly, “You fellas be careful out there. I’ve seen men like that lieutenant before. They think they know everything, and before you know it, they’re neck-deep in trouble. Don’t let him get you killed.”

  “We’ll try not to,” Scratch said.

  Bo added, “I’ve got a hunch Sergeant Gustaffson knows what he’s doing. He can steer the lieutenant in the right direction.”

  Chloride grunted. “If Holbrook will listen to him. I’m bettin’ the odds are against that.”

  “Don’t worry about us, old-timer,” Scratch said with a grin. “We can take care of ourselves.”

  Chloride snatched his hat off his head and said, “There you go again with that old-timer business! I swear—” He stopped short and shrugged. “What the hell. I am older than you. Probably ain’t many who can say that!” He clapped his hat back on his head and stuck out his hand. “Good luck, boys.”

  The Texans both shook with him, then mounted up. Gustaffson had the troopers ready to ride. Holbrook said, “Give the order, Sergeant.”

  Gustaffson bellowed the command and waved the men forward as Holbrook, Bo, and Scratch led the way. Some of the miners turned out to watch. They waved their caps over their heads as the cavalrymen trotted away, moving deeper into the canyon.

  As Keefer had said, after the riders had gone about a mile, the slope of the canyon to their right fell away at a gentler angle. It was still covered with trees and rocks, but Bo thought that if the troopers dismounted, they might be able to lead their horses to the top. He pointed that out to Holbrook and suggested, “Let Scratch and me try it first.”

  “Very well,” the lieutenant agreed. He signaled a halt.

  The Texans rode to the base of the slope and swung down from their saddles. Holding tight to the reins, they started up. The horses balked a little at first but soon came on, climbing the slope with relative ease. Bo and Scratch tried to pick the route that would give the animals the least trouble.

  When they made it to the top of the ridge, they found themselves with a spectacular view spread out before them. The late afternoon sun washed over the Black Hills in all their rugged glory. Down in the gulches, people got used to being closed in with dark slopes all around them and only a strip of sky above. Up here a man could breathe better, it seemed to Bo.

  “Do we have to go back down there and fetch that stiff-necked lieutenant?” Scratch asked.

  Bo chuckled. “I reckon we’d better. He and those troopers will come in handy when we find the Devils.”

  “You don’t figure we could handle that bunch of owlhoots by ourselves?”

  “Well, maybe. But I’d rather have the cavalry on our side, too.” Bo handed Scratch his reins. “I’ll go back down. You take a look around up here.”

  Going down the hill was almost as painful for stiff joints as climbing up it, but Bo was soon back on the floor of the canyon with Lieutenant Holbrook, Sergeant Gustaffson, and the rest of the patrol. Bo told them that the way up was manageable, then said, “Follow me.”

  The soldiers led their mounts by the reins like Bo and Scratch had. It was slow going, since they had to proceed single file, but eventually all the troopers made it to the top of the ridge.

  By that time the sun had sunk considerably lower. Bo said, “If we keep going, Lieutenant, we run the risk of falling off a cliff in the bad light. It would be better to make camp here.”

  He could tell that Holbrook wanted to squeeze out every minute of the day, but after a moment the young officer nodded. “All right,” Holbrook said. “Sergeant, tell the men to make camp. There’s enough level ground here to pitch the tents.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  It was true. The ridge was almost a mile wide, Bo knew from studying the map in Andrew Keefer’s office, and while it was covered with thick stands of trees and a jumble of boulders, it was fairly level, unlike some of the
ridges that came to an almost razor-like crest. This one twisted off to the southwest for several miles before rising into higher, even more rugged terrain.

  As Gustaffson ordered the men to pitch their tents and build cook fires, Scratch advised, “It might be a good idea to keep those fires small, Sergeant. Hide ’em amongst the rocks, too.”

  Holbrook overheard the advice and said, “Why would we want to do that?”

  “Build big fires and you’re telling the world where you are,” Bo said.

  “You mean we’ll be announcing our position to the enemy.”

  “That’s what he just said,” Scratch drawled.

  “It’s cold up here. The men need hot food, and they need warmth from the fires as well. Sergeant, have the men build their fires as big as they can.”

  “Lieutenant—” Bo began.

  “Really, Mr. Creel,” Holbrook interrupted, “if these so-called Devils are as cunning as everyone seems to believe they are, don’t you think they already know we’re out here looking for them?”

  As much as Bo hated to admit it, Holbrook had a point. Everybody in Deadwood had heard about how the cavalry was riding out today to look for the outlaws and their hideout. At the very least, the Devils had spies in the settlement. If Bo’s hunch was correct, some of the gang even lived there. No doubt the word had already long since gone out to the members of the gang at the hideout.

  Still, having the Devils know that they were somewhere in the Black Hills was a heap different from making their exact location obvious to anybody with eyes for miles around. Bo could only hope that Holbrook’s stubbornness wouldn’t come back to cause trouble for them.

  As night fell and the Texans tended to their horses, Scratch looked at the campfires blazing brightly and murmured, “I’m startin’ to wonder if this is such a good place to spend the night after all, Bo.”

  “Yeah, the same thought occurred to me,” Bo said. “Those fires are pretty much an engraved invitation to an ambush. I think Olaf knows it, too. I saw him talking to the lieutenant a few minutes ago, and Holbrook didn’t look happy about it. Looked like he chewed out the sarge and told him to mind his own business.”

  “Gustaffson ain’t the type to disobey an order, either, even when he knows it’s loco.”

  “No,” Bo agreed, “he’s not. But we’re civilians, and if we want to slip off a ways and find a place to hole up for the night that’s not right out in the open, Holbrook can’t stop us.”

  Scratch nodded. “Maybe someplace where we can keep an eye on those soldier boys without them knowin’ it.”

  “That’s what I had in mind.”

  “Better tell Gustaffson, so if the shavetail comes lookin’ for us, somebody’ll know where to find us.”

  “Yeah, but we won’t tell Holbrook. No need for him to know about it unless there’s trouble.”

  “Right.” Scratch patted his horse’s shoulder. “You know, some folks say that devils like to roam around in the darkness. Tonight, I got a hunch they’re right.”

  CHAPTER 17

  The Texans made their camp in some trees about a quarter of a mile from the spot where the troopers had pitched their tents and built those big cook fires. Scratch arranged some rocks in a circle and kindled a tiny blaze just large enough to boil coffee and fry up some bacon. No one outside the trees would be able to see the flames. It was going to be a very cold night, Bo sensed, and a big fire would have felt mighty good, but every instinct in his body warned him against such a thing.

  After they had eaten, Scratch put out the fire, but they lingered next to its ashes, sipping the last of the coffee. They could hear the troopers moving around, talking loudly, and laughing.

  “Those fellas better hope the army never sends ’em to Arizona to fight the Apaches,” Scratch commented. “If there were any ’Paches skulkin’ around, some of those soldier boys would be dead by now.”

  “I expect you’re right,” Bo agreed. “Between the fires and the racket, the Devils probably know right where they are.”

  “Question is, what are they gonna do about it?”

  Bo took a sip of his coffee. “Reckon we’ll have to wait and see.”

  The Texans sat there in companionable silence for a few more minutes, then Scratch said, “It’s time you tell me what you been ponderin’ about these past few days, Bo. You got some ideas that the Devils ain’t regular road agents, don’t you?”

  “The thought crossed my mind,” Bo admitted. “As soon as Marty Sutton said something about the Argosy wanting to buy her out, I got to wondering about Nicholson.”

  “All the other big mines lost gold shipments before the Argosy did,” Scratch said. “And the Golden Queen wasn’t the only one.”

  “Yeah, but if the goal was to make Miss Sutton so desperate that she’d sell, what better way to disguise that than to hit all the other outfits, too, including your own.”

  Scratch thought it over and then nodded slowly in the gathering darkness. “That makes sense, I reckon. As much sense as you could expect from a snake-blooded varmint so ruthless he’d have some of his own men murdered and carved up just to keep suspicion from fallin’ on him.”

  “That’s not all,” Bo said. “When we first rode up Deadwood Gulch with Chloride and I got a look at the terrain, I realized that it’s not really very far as the crow flies from the Golden Queen to the Argosy. I confirmed that by looking at the map in Keefer’s office this afternoon. You know how a pocket of gold-bearing quartz can run for a long way sometimes.”

  “Son of a gun! You think the Argosy miners are followin’ a ledge that winds up smack-dab in the middle of the Golden Queen?”

  “It’s possible. And listen to this. Reese Bardwell, Nicholson’s superintendent, has a brother named Tom who led a gang of outlaws down in Kansas.”

  “Yeah, I remember Chloride tellin’ us about that rumor,” Scratch said. “He didn’t know if it was true or not, though. He was just tryin’ to get under Bardwell’s hide that day.”

  “It’s not a rumor,” Bo said. “I looked through the wanted posters in Sheriff Manning’s office and found a reward dodger on Tom Bardwell. The poster was a couple of years old, so there was nothing to indicate that he’d ever been hanged, or even caught. I’d be willing to bet he hasn’t been.”

  “So Nicholson hits on the idea of recruitin’ his superintendent’s outlaw brother to raid the gold shipments, with the idea that sooner or later he’ll force Miss Sutton to sell out to him. That way he can keep minin’ the ore that runs all the way through this ridge under us into the Golden Queen.” Scratch smacked his right fist into his left palm. “That all fits together mighty nice, Bo!”

  “Yeah,” Bo said. “There’s just one problem with it that ruins the whole thing.”

  “What’s that? I’m danged if I see it.”

  “If Nicholson’s really behind all the trouble, why would he go along with sending that letter to Washington asking that the army be sent in to deal with the Devils?”

  For a long moment, Scratch didn’t say anything. Then he muttered a curse and said, “Yeah, that don’t make sense. Unless all the other big mine owners were gonna do it anyway and Nicholson had to go along with the idea to keep anybody from gettin’ suspicious of him.”

  “Maybe,” Bo said. “I can’t help but think, though, that Nicholson’s influential enough around here that he could have talked the other owners into waiting if he’d wanted to. When he was talking to the lieutenant, Nicholson looked and sounded like he really wanted Holbrook to be successful in putting a stop to the Devils.”

  “We’ve run across hombres before who were good at actin’ all innocent-like when really they were no-good varmints.”

  “Shakespeare wrote, ‘A man may smile and smile, and be a villain,’” Bo quoted.

  “Ain’t that what I just said? And what if it ain’t Nicholson at all, but somebody else at the Argosy who’s behind it?”

  “Like Reese Bardwell,” Bo said.

  “He’s the one who�
�s got the owlhoot brother. He could be workin’ behind Nicholson’s back, tryin’ to get his hands on the Golden Queen. Or maybe he’s just out for a share of the loot.”

  Bo nodded. “Could be. Bardwell’s a troublemaker, no doubt about that. I’m not sure he’s a cold-blooded killer, though, brother or no brother.”

  “So where does that leave us?”

  “Sitting in the cold and the dark,” Bo said with a smile, “waiting to see if a bunch of outlaws are going to show up and try to kill us all.”

  The Texans took turns standing guard during the night, as they usually did in a potentially dangerous situation like this. Bo stood the first watch, and Scratch took over around midnight.

  Bo wasn’t sure how long he had been asleep when his friend touched his shoulder, but he was instantly awake. He sat up with the fog from his breath wreathing around his head and reached for the Winchester he had placed on the ground next to his bedroll.

  “What is it?” Bo asked in a whisper that couldn’t have been heard more than a few feet away.

  “Horses smelled somethin’,” Scratch replied, equally quietly.

  “Mountain lion, maybe?”

  “They ain’t spooked. I’d say it’s more horses.”

  Bo lifted his head to judge the cold wind that blew across the top of the ridge. It was from the northwest, and that meant their horses wouldn’t be able to smell the cavalry mounts, which were picketed several hundred yards away to the east.

  Here under the trees, it was too dark for the Texans to see each other, but they had ridden together for so long each of them knew what the other would be doing in these circumstances. Bo found his boots and pulled them on while Scratch ghosted through the trees to a point where he could see the camp.

  Bo joined him a moment later. The big fires the troopers had built earlier had died down quite a bit, but they were still visible. Bo saw dark shapes cross between him and the orange glows as the guards Holbrook had posted walked their picket lines.

  “You hear any horses earlier?” Bo breathed.