by John Legg
He put on the frock coat. Inside were two pockets, one on each side, over the breast. Into each, Rhodes slid one of the Colts. Then he buttoned the coat, which since Mrs. Kimball had added a warm lining of fur, was a little snug, but not too uncomfortable or confining.
Hickman glanced out through the window. “They’re comin’.”
Rhodes nodded. He slapped his hat on and held out his hand. “I’m obliged for all you’ve done, Fin,” he said as they shook hands.
“It’s me who’s grateful, Travis.” He paused. “God go with you.”
“He’d be welcome company, though I’m not sure He’d be happy with the quest He’d be accompanying me on.”
“It’s a just cause, Travis. Never doubt that.” Rhodes nodded. He pulled on his gloves, picked up the extra boxes of shells, and went outside. No one said anything as Rhodes put the cartridges into his saddlebags. He pulled himself into the saddle. He looked at Hickman, Flake, and Andy St. John. He started to say something to them, but realized he had nothing to say. He touched the brim of his hat, and turned the horse’s head. Then he began the long, tortuous walk through Intolerance.
Once outside of town, he stopped and pulled off his gloves. He tied one bandanna around the top of his hat and under his chin, covering his ears. He tied smother around his face, just under the eyes.
It was colder than anything Rhodes had ever experienced; a cold that reached down inside a man and drew out the marrow of his bones. It was a raw cold, too, that lay damp and wicked on a man, sucking the life out by inches.
He looked up at the heavens. “Do your worst, Lord,” he said, breath clouding before his face despite the bandanna, “’cause you’re the only one’s going to stop me from findin’ those men.”
He pushed on and in short time he was at the fork again. He stopped, for no other reason than to take a look around. The landscape was bleak, barren. Even the rocks seemed frozen. There was no question about which way he could go. He had been up the road to Berthoud Pass when the bank was robbed, and no one had come by him. That meant Turlow’s men had to have gone the other way.
Rhodes clucked to get the horse started again, and within an instant jerked back on the reins. “Son of a bitch,” he breathed.
All—well, most—of the questions that had been preying on his mind now had been answered. If the gang had robbed the bank that morning after he had left, and he had passed no one on the road, then they must have been in Intolerance already. Or hiding near enough that word could be gotten to them within a short time.
It also meant that someone in Intolerance was in cahoots with them. There was a goodly number of roughnecks, scalawags, and outlaws in Intolerance, but it would have to be someone who knew what was going on throughout town; someone with connections. Someone like Logan Macmillan. Rhodes could not believe, though, that Logan Macmillan would be involved in any of this. It just did not make sense. It did make sense, however, that someone like Hamilton Macmillan might be involved. He often spent time in saloons that could be considered low places, and he was an arrogant young man who had been forced to live under his uncle’s hard thumb. Such a thing might make a prideful man want to lash out at those he considered were keeping him down. Someone like his uncle, Logan Macmillan, and the Ludwig and Macmillan Mining and Mineral Company. And revenge on the marshal wouldn’t hurt, either.
“That snot-nose bastard,” Rhodes muttered. He turned the horse down the smaller road that led to...he was not sure where. He only knew that it had to be where the robbers had gone.
Only one question remained for him now: Logan Macmillan had said that a posse was formed and chased after the outlaws. Three of the men in the posse had been killed by the outlaws. They could not have gotten far or Rhodes would’ve heard the gunplay.
He shrugged and rode on. It was not important now, and there could be any number of explanations. He knew enough to raise some hell when he got back to Intolerance. He smiled grimly as snow began falling again. Now he had one good reason for going back to Intolerance.
“Come on, there, horse,” he said, suddenly eager to be on the move. It was not so much that he felt pressure; it was more that he just wanted to get this part of things over with and then go finish it off back in Intolerance.
Chapter Thirty-Two
It took Rhodes eight days to find the outlaws. It wasn’t that they had moved so far, it was because Rhodes had had to check every canyon, draw, and forest he came across that would be big enough to allow in two heavily loaded wagons. That and the off-and-on snow served to slow him considerably.
Even worse, though, he thought frequently, was the cold. It was bone-numbing. He hated making camp at night because of it, but even more, he hated waking up in it. Each day, it seemed as if his bones and joints had frozen overnight, and they creaked and groaned with each movement. He even came to appreciate the snow that fell more often at night, since when it covered his bedroll some, it held out the cold a little.
In another interminable canyon—this one cutting southwest off the trail—Rhodes became more alert. He felt somehow that his quest was almost over. As he had in each place he had checked, he moved forward slowly, inching around bends, stopping to survey each little clearing for what might lie beyond, waiting in trees beside the trail to see if anyone was coming.
Rhodes could not tell from the trail if anyone had been this way in a while. In the eight days since he had left Intolerance on his latest quest, it had snowed at least some every day. Plus there had been some sleet, which crusted over the top of the snow. Still, for some reason, he was sure he would find who he was looking for somewhere in this long, jagged gash in the earth.
The ragged, rough trail looked off into nothingness to his right, but the path was certainly wide enough to allow a freight wagon down into the canyon. The trail began to flatten, though it still went up and down hills. Rhodes was sure he was getting near the bottom of the canyon, and he had begun to doubt his hunch that this was the place, when he came around another bend in the trail and stopped. He was on a hillside, looking down into a snow-covered mountain meadow. At the far end of the meadow were three buildings—a cabin with a thin plume of smoke curling out of the chimney, what looked to have been a barn, and a side less shed. The shed had two large wagons, their backs covered with canvas.
Rhodes stayed there a few moments, looking around. To his right—roughly west—the side of the mountain ran steeply from the meadow to an unseen peak. Pines clung with stubborn obstinacy to the rocky mountainside. To his left, the mountainside was less sheer, and in some places flattened into small plateaus.
Rhodes pulled off the trail to his left and wound his way through the pines. Twenty yards on, he found a small flat spot. Boulders were piled in jumbled confusion on all sides but the mountain one. Rhodes stopped, looked around and then nodded grimly. It would do well for his base of operations. He dismounted, legs protesting from the cold, and tied the horse and mule to a tree. He knew he had to care for the animals soon, but first he had to see to a fire.
Rhodes gathered firewood quickly. He would need more of it soon, but this would get him going. He started a fire in a miniature tunnel in the boulders. It was situated so that it could not be seen either from the cabin or the trail. If someone down in the meadow saw the smoke, Rhodes figured, he would think it was nothing more than clouds or mist clinging to trees and hugging the mountainside.
Once the fire was going, he put on his coffeepot. Food could wait, but he needed some hot liquid in his belly. While the coffee was heating, he unsaddled the horse and unloaded the mule. He quickly but thoroughly curried each animal and made sure they could find some feed among the trees. Then he went and had a cup of coffee while food cooked.
Done, he moved around the boulders until he was in a spot bare of trees and boulders, which gave him an unimpeded look down at the outlaws’ hideout.
The meadow that spread out from the base of the hill was only about fifty yards across from his position. The meadow was longer to his
left and right than it was straight ahead, but not by much. Rhodes thought he could see the trail leave the meadow slightly to the left of the barn, but he could not be sure. A stream tumbled down off the rocks in a small waterfall to the right of an empty corral just to the right of the house. Scattered about the grounds near the house were gold rockers, and other mining equipment. A falling-down sluice box ran from the creek toward the house.
As Rhodes watched, a man came out of the house. Rubbing his hands together against the chill, he hurried to the barn and went inside. Though the man was bundled up in a bright wool coat, Rhodes thought he looked at least a little familiar. He reached through the buttons of his coat and pulled a sheaf of papers from the coat’s breast pocket. He looked at the pictures drawn on the wanted posters, nodding when he came on one he thought was the man who had just gone into the barn—Charley Bartlett, a small-time cardsharp and gunman. Rhodes put the papers away. Minutes later, Bartlett came out of the barn and half-ran back to the house and inside.
Rhodes kept watch throughout the gloomy afternoon, taking frequent short breaks to go around the boulders to warm himself at the fire. Occasionally, too, he would grab more wood and toss it on the pile near his fire.
Throughout his watch, he wondered what he would do. He had no certainty that all the robbers were here, but after having spotted Bartlett, he knew at least some of them were. Whether they were all here or not, Rhodes knew he was vastly outnumbered. His first task, he decided, would be to see just how many men he faced. For all he knew, Turlow had taken most of his men to go rob someplace else, leaving only a couple of men here. Rhodes didn’t think that likely, but it was a possibility that if true would simplify his task considerably.
Another major problem he would have to overcome was finding a way for him to sneak up on the house. He could see no easy way to do it. Behind it was the creek, which tumbled along the base of a short, sheer cliff. Rhodes could see no way to get up on the cliff and maybe ease his way down on a rope. To his right was a waterfall, cutting off access to that side of the house. On the other side, the mountain crowded hard by the meadow. Rhodes figured he might be able to make his way down there that way, using the barn to partially hide his descent, but that was a chancy proposition. The mountainside there was steep and covered with broken rock that was coated by snow and slick ice.
He figured his best bet would be to wait for dark and then move across the open meadow. But that, too, presented problems. For one, if the clouds broke, allowing the moon to provide some light, he could be seen from the cabin. In addition, if he went when it wasn’t snowing, his tracks would be seen through the snow as soon as it got to be light. If he went while it was snowing to cover his tracks, he might not be able to see anything.
He pondered his dilemma over another cup of coffee near evening. It was almost full dark now. He finished the coffee, and then stood, mind made up. He grabbed his shotgun and checked it. He wrapped the triggers and hammers in a small piece of fur to keep the powder dry and to make sure the gunlock did not freeze up. Then he headed toward the trail. He worried a little about his tracks leading into and out of the forest at the side of the trail, but he figured no one would be using the trail now. Besides, the tracks should be covered up quickly if it started snowing again, which seemed probable.
He moved along the side of the trail as it dipped down toward the meadow. As it flattened, he slipped off to the right, along the base of the mountain. He followed that as it curved around toward the waterfall and the house. He thought he would freeze to death as he felt the spray of the waterfall on his face, and he moved as fast as he dared, trying to build up a little body heat. The stream down on the flat behind the house was frozen over the top. All the while, Rhodes could see odd lines of yellow light thrown across the snow field by the light shining through the gaps in the cabin’s log walls.
Rhodes finally flattened himself against a back corner of the cabin. His face was still freezing, but under his coat he was sweating. He turned and peered through a crack in the wall. He could see very little of the inside of the cabin, but he counted at least six men. He moved along the back wall of the cabin, stopping to peer inside at each opportunity. At the other end of the cabin from which he had started, he stopped again. Altogether, he had counted fifteen men, and he figured there were a few more he hadn’t been able to pick out.
He slid across the small open space between the cabin and the shed and barn. Inside the shed, he looked under the tarpaulin of each of the two wagons. Sure enough, they were filled with gold bullion. He checked the barn, too, and found sixteen mules and almost two dozen horses. He also spotted some grain. With a mischievous grin, he grabbed a burlap sack and filled it from the barrel of grain.
He moved out, back the way he had come, carrying the shotgun in his right hand, and the sack of grain over his left shoulder. It took a while to get back to the trail, since he was still moving slowly and deliberately. It was snowing again, but not heavily, and down here the wind was quite a bit less ferocious.
As Rhodes turned off the trail toward his camp, he stopped. Something didn’t seem right to him, but he could not figure out what. He leaned against a tree to give himself time to catch his breath—and to think.
It came to him slowly, but then he nodded. There was a fresh set of tracks going toward his camp. He set the grain down carefully, and moved ahead slowly, angling a little toward the mountainside. As he neared his camp, he spotted another horse, saddled, standing near his horse and mule.
He inched away from the animals and more toward the far side of the camp, from the trail. He stopped, seeing a man sitting at the fire, warming his hands and watching the path he had taken into the camp. His back was toward Rhodes.
Rhodes unwrapped the shotgun carefully and stuffed the fur into one pocket. He considered just blasting the man, but he did not want to do that. For one thing, he wasn’t sure just yet that the man was one of Turlow’s men. For another, the gunshot would alert those in the cabin, though Rhodes could get around that by using his knife. But mainly, he wanted the man alive to question him. It would be much easier gleaning information from someone who knew what was going on than in him sneaking around trying to spot things.
Rhodes watched for a few minutes, wanting to make sure someone else wasn’t around, though he had seen nothing to make him think anyone else was here. He began to step out into the small clearing but caught himself before he moved.
He rested his scattergun against a tree and pulled out the piece of fur. Holding it around the rowel of one spur, he eased the spur off and placed it down in the snow. He followed the same procedure with the other. It had riot occurred to him to do this before, but down by the cabin it had not mattered so much. With the sounds of a fire, men talking and laughing, plus the insulation of the cabin walls, he had had no fear of giving himself away then. Now, however, it was a different story.
He picked up the shotgun again. With a deep, silent, frosty breath, he moved ahead swiftly, confidently. Two yards behind the man, Rhodes said quietly, “Howdy.”
The man spun going for his holstered pistol all in the same move. He was surprised, but he covered it well. However, by the time he was halfway up and his revolver halfway out, Rhodes was only a foot and a half behind the man.
Rhodes lashed out with the scattergun, holding it in two hands, like a batter in one of those baseball games he had seen during the war. The man caught the shotgun’s two hard barrels square across the forehead. He sank down like an icicle over a fire, until he was just a pile of rumpled clothes and useless limbs.
Rhodes took the man’s gun and pitched it out of the way. Then he got some rope, which he dropped on the ground next to the man and rolled him over. “I’ll be damned,” he muttered, rage flaring suddenly and very hotly in his chest. There was no need to check the face against the wanted posters he carried. This man was not among them. He was, however, one of the men who had fled when Joe Bonner had been gunned down on the main street of Intolerance, Color
ado Territory.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Rhodes waited for the man to regain consciousness—after trussing him up and gagging him. But Rhodes was in no mood for patient waiting, so he melted some snow and dashed it on the man’s face. It took two tries, but finally the man began showing signs of regaining consciousness. The man blinked some, trying to figure out where he was, but finally he was conscious, though Rhodes figured the man must have a splitting headache.
“You fully awake, boy?” Rhodes finally asked.
The man mumbled something.
“Just nod, or shake your head, you damn fool.”
The man nodded.
“Good. Now in a minute or two, I’m going to ask you some questions. In order for you to answer, I’m going to have to take the gag off you.”
The man nodded vigorously.
“However, that also opens the possibility of you screaming for help.”
No nod this time, but Rhodes could see the hope in the man’s eyes.
“I figure that even an idiot like you can puzzle out the fact that if you scream for help, I’m going to blow a hole in you big enough to drive those wagons full of gold through it. Because by then, I won’t have any more need for secrecy.” The hope in the man’s eyes dimmed and died. “Now, if you’re cooperative, I don’t see why I can’t just haul you back to Intolerance under arrest, even if you are the son of a bitch who killed ol’ Joe Bonner.” There were times when being quiet-spoken with a calm, reasonable tone and cadence worked for Rhodes instead of against him. He was pretty sure that he had the man convinced that he could put away his sorrow at a friend’s loss—and any desire for revenge. “What happens there’ll be up to those folks. How’s that sound?”