“That leaves mining.”
“Yep, and I think there were some shafts dug and a little color found, enough to start a boom that petered out almost as fast as it started. But it lasted long enough for a town to be established.”
Brice peered closely at the map again and said, “Painted Post?”
“That’s it.”
“An old ghost town like that would be a good place for a gang of bank robbers to hole up.”
“You think so?”
“There would be shelter if all the buildings haven’t rotted and collapsed. And it’s possible there could even be some usable supplies left in the stores, airtights and such, if they’re not too old.”
Monte shrugged, then nodded.
“Sounds like it might be worth checking out, anyway,” he said. “It’s a couple of days’ ride north of here. Are you going to take a posse with you?”
Brice didn’t have to think about that. He shook his head.
“It might be a wild-goose chase. I’ll check it out myself first, and if that gang is there, I can ride on to Burnley and round up some help there.”
“Just don’t try to capture them by yourself. You’d probably be outnumbered eight or ten to one.” Monte blew out a breath. “Anybody who went up against odds like that wouldn’t stand a chance.”
“Except maybe Smoke Jensen, right?” Brice said with a smile.
“Well . . . yeah. But Smoke’s a special case. He’s dang near supernatural when it comes to fighting.”
That was Brice’s opinion, too. He had plenty of confidence in his own abilities, but he knew better than to think that he was anywhere near Smoke Jensen’s league.
“I’ll start putting together some supplies,” he said. “And I’d better rent a packhorse from Patterson.”
“Good luck. I’m still not sure about you going by yourself.” Monte paused, then went on, “You know, years ago, when he was still a young man, Smoke was a deputy marshal, too. You should swear him in as a temporary deputy and take him along.”
Brice shook his head and said, “No, this is my job. And I aim to do it. If those bank robbers are there, I’ll bring them in . . . one way or another.”
* * *
Monte Carson was still in his office, muttering over the paperwork that had cluttered up what was once a nice, simple job, when the door opened again and Smoke Jensen came in this time.
“Well, speak of the devil,” Monte said.
Smoke frowned, looked behind him for a second, and then said, “Are you talking about me?”
“Yeah, your name came up a while ago when Brice Rogers was here. Were your ears burning?”
“Not really. What did Brice have to say about me?”
“Nothing, come to think of it. He just asked if you or Denny had been in to see me this morning.” The sheriff’s eyes narrowed shrewdly. “Did that have anything to do with the incident at Longmont’s last night?”
“Yeah, but it’s nothing we can prove.”
“Well, get yourself a cup of coffee, then light and set and tell me about it.”
Smoke did so, concluding by saying, “Denny and I are both convinced Malatesta put the Sutton girl up to it, but we can’t prove it. Brice pointed out that without proof, we can’t really ask you to run Malatesta out of town.”
“I’d do it, though, if that’s what you wanted.”
“It’s not.” Smoke took a sip of coffee. “I’ve taken the law into my own hands plenty of times, when I thought it needed doing. You know that, Monte.”
“Yeah, I helped you a few of those times.”
Smoke grinned and said, “I know you did. But I guess I’m getting law-abiding in my old age.” He paused. “Mostly law-abiding, anyway.”
“Getting old is a pathetic state of affairs, isn’t it?”
“Reckon the only thing worse is the alternative,” Smoke said. “What was Brice doing here, anyway?”
“Marshal Long in Denver told him to track down a gang of bank robbers that seems to be drifting in this direction. Brice finally got a lead on them. Based on the way they were heading when they made their getaway, there’s a chance that after their last job, they holed up in an old mining town called Painted Post. He’s going up there to find out.”
“Up in the Prophets,” Smoke said, nodding. “I’ve been there. I think it’s a ghost town these days.”
“So it would make a good hideout, wouldn’t it?”
“Yeah. Brice went to check it out by himself, you said?”
“That’s right.”
“He could be riding right into trouble,” Smoke said.
“Yeah. But he’s a lawman. That’s his job. I suggested he take some help with him. He flat-out refused. Which makes me think he wouldn’t take it kindly if somebody tried to horn in, well-intentioned or not.”
“It won’t be me. I have several business deals brewing that could come to a head at any time.” Smoke shrugged. “Brice is a smart young fella. I’ve never known him to do anything that’s too reckless. Maybe he won’t this time, either.”
“You haven’t said what brings you by this morning, Smoke.”
“Those business deals I mentioned. I need to send some telegrams of my own.” Smoke drained the last of the coffee in the cup. “And I’d better get at it.” He raised a hand in farewell as he left the office. “See you, Monte.”
“See you,” the lawman said.
He went back to the paperwork, but he hadn’t been at it very long when the door opened again. This was turning into a busy morning, he thought as he looked up and set aside the pencil he had been using to enter figures on a sheet of paper.
Claude Brown hesitated in the doorway.
“Come on in, Claude,” Monte told him. He and the saloonkeeper weren’t close, by any means, but as two longtime residents of Big Rock, they shared a certain bond. “What can I do for you?”
“I’m, uh, sort of worried about one of my girls, Sheriff,” Brown told him.
“One of the girls who works for you?”
“That’s right. Rosemarie Sutton.”
Monte’s eyebrows rose. “That’s the one who had the run-in with Brice Rogers yesterday evening. Accused him of all sorts of improper things. You know anything about any of that, Claude?”
Curtly, Brown said, “If she was involved with Rogers, it’s news to me. I never saw the two of them together. As far as I recall, it’s been weeks since he’s even been in my place.”
“Why are you worried about her?” Monte didn’t offer the man coffee. The bonds of shared citizenship went only so far.
“I had her scheduled early, since she left early last night, but she didn’t show up for work today.”
“Is that unusual?”
“Very,” Brown replied with a nod. “Little Rosemarie likes money.”
Monte leaned back in his chair and folded his hands across his belly. “Yeah, but soiled doves aren’t exactly the most reliable folks in the world, Claude.”
“I know. It’s just that this doesn’t feel right to me. And after what happened last night with that deputy marshal . . . He might be holding a grudge against her, Sheriff.”
“Brice Rogers?” Monte shook his head. “If you’re thinking Brice might have hurt her, you’re way off. He’d never do that.”
“Sometimes folks will do things you’d never dream they would. Anyway, I’m worried about her, and you’re the sheriff, so I’m asking you to go down to her place on Woodrow Lane and see if she’s there.”
“You haven’t done that already?”
“No. Figured it might be law business, and I like to stay on the straight and narrow.”
Monte managed not to snort out a derisive laugh at that statement. Brown just wanted to avoid as much trouble as possible. But he supposed the saloonkeeper had a point. If a possibility of foul play existed, it was the sheriff’s job to check it out.
“All right,” he said as he heaved himself to his feet. “I’ll go have a look. On Woodrow Lane, you said?”
“Yeah, I can tell you how to find the place.” Brown looked vaguely uncomfortable. “I’ve, uh, been there a few times.”
“No need to explain yourself, Claude. Just give me the directions.”
Brown did. Monte put on his hat, settled his gun belt more comfortably around his hips, and started toward the muddy trail at the edge of town that might as well be called Shabby Street instead of Woodrow Lane.
When he got there, the area looked deserted. That was because at this time of day, everyone who lived here was still asleep after being up and working most of the night. They were inside with the curtains drawn tight against the light of day, except for the ones who had to get up to work early shifts at the saloons, such as Rosemarie Sutton.
Claude Brown had provided decent directions. Monte found the little cabin without any trouble. It had a tar paper roof and a slight lean, as if a hard-enough wind might just blow it over. When Monte knocked on the door, it was loose enough to rattle in its frame.
“Miss Sutton?” he called. “This is Sheriff Carson. Are you in there? Miss Sutton?”
No answer. Monte dropped his left hand to the knob and twisted it. The door was unlocked. No surprise there. Out of habit, he wrapped his right hand around the butt of his gun as he twisted the knob with his left. A lawman who stepped into the unknown without being ready to draw had the odds for surviving very long stacked against him.
In fact, as he opened the door and sunlight spilled into the squalid room, instinct made him pull the iron from its holster. A shape sprawled on the floor next to a small table, but as Monte looked closer, he saw that it didn’t represent any threat.
In fact, the life had long since faded from Rosemarie Sutton’s eyes as they stared in his direction, and the front of her torn dress, as well as the lacy garment underneath it, were dark with dried blood.
CHAPTER 44
Painted Post
Brice Rogers reined his horse to a stop at the edge of some pines atop a narrow ridge, rested his crossed hands on the saddle horn, and leaned forward to ease weary muscles. After a couple of days of fairly hard riding, he was glad to have reached his destination.
A steep, winding trail led down the slope in front of him, but he stayed in the shadows of the trees where he wouldn’t be as easy to see if anybody happened to look up at the ridge from the settlement below. He reached into his saddlebags to take out a pair of field glasses.
He was at the eastern end of a gulch that ran westward into the mountains for a mile before coming to an abrupt halt at the base of a towering rock wall. The steep-sided gulch was about a quarter of a mile wide, which allowed room for a main street with a smaller flanking street on each side, plus half a dozen cross streets. Painted Post had been a decent little community at one time, with close to fifty business buildings fronting the main street and at least a hundred dwellings scattered around the side and cross streets.
Just about the time those buildings had been finished, though, the gold veins in the nearby rock wall had petered out, which meant the boomtown had gone bust almost right away.
The business buildings appeared to have been sturdier to start with, since most of them were still standing, Brice saw as he studied the town through the field glasses. A few buildings had collapsed, and the roofs were rotted and falling in on several of the others.
Nearly all the windows he could see were broken. Evidently, the erstwhile citizens of Painted Post hadn’t been in a good mood when they pulled up stakes and left.
Most of the cabins were either completely or partially collapsed. They had been constructed hastily to provide basic shelter for the miners working in the tunnels dug into that rock wall at the far end of the gulch. From where he was, Brice could see the openings of those abandoned tunnels, like dark, empty eye sockets in the rock face.
Slowly, he swept his gaze over the entire settlement, searching for any sign that the bank robbers he was after might be here. He didn’t see any movement, but he did spot something that made him look again.
Dark, round piles littered the ground inside a corral next to a barn. Had to be horse droppings, he thought, and although he couldn’t be sure from this distance how fresh they were, he felt like they must have been deposited there sometime in the past couple of days.
Just because somebody had been here recently and kept their horses in that corral didn’t mean they were still here. But it was possible the horses could be inside the barn now, out of sight. From where he was, he could see that the double doors on the front of the building were open but didn’t have the right angle to look inside. The fact that the doors were open didn’t mean anything, either.
But Brice was suspicious enough that he had to find out. That meant he needed to get closer. He put the field glasses away and patted his horse on the shoulder.
“Sorry, old fella. We can’t take the trail down there. It’s too much out in the open. We’ll have to find another way where there’s plenty of cover, and that means your hide will probably get scratched up some. But mine will, too, for whatever comfort that is.”
The horse didn’t seem impressed by that sentiment. Brice lifted the reins, clucked to the animal, and rode along the ridge, searching for another way down into the gulch.
* * *
Alden Simms, Curly Bannister, and Juliana Montero sat at one of the tables inside the saloon that had looked to be in the best shape when they rode into the ghost town. On the faded and peeling sign above the door, the words ACE-HIGH SALOON were still barely visible.
Painted Post had been deserted for quite a while, so none of them expected to find any liquor left in the town, but Curly, who boasted that he had a nose for booze, had uncovered a cache of whiskey bottles inside a dumbwaiter that ran up to the second floor. Clearly, at some point in the past somebody had placed those bottles in the little chamber, intending to raise them to the second floor, but for some reason they hadn’t done it and had then forgotten the bottles were there. That oversight was a blessing for the outlaws who were now the only inhabitants of Painted Post.
The three ringleaders passed one of the bottles back and forth, filling the shot glasses they had found on a shelf behind the bar. Over in a corner at another table, Childers and Billy Ray were playing blackjack for matches. Hamilton and Britt were upstairs, sleeping off the whiskey they had consumed.
Dumont was upstairs, too, but he wasn’t sleeping. With all the bullets flying around as they made their getaway from the job in Burnley, Dumont had caught a slug in the left lung. He had clung to life until they got here but crossed the divide shortly thereafter. Hamilton and Britt had promised to bury him, but they hadn’t gotten around to it yet. By now enough time had passed that it would be a mighty unpleasant chore if they did, so they might just leave him there in the room at the end of the second-floor hall when they rode away from this ghost town.
What was one more ghost in a place like this, anyway?
Juliana tossed back the whiskey in her glass and asked, “How much longer are we going to stay here? There’s nothing to do in this town except shoot rats.”
“Practicin’ your shootin’ won’t hurt none, darlin’,” Curly told her. He downed his own drink.
Juliana glared at him and said, “I’ll put my shooting up against yours any day, whether it’s target shooting . . . or the only real way to settle something like that.”
Alden chuckled, but he didn’t really sound amused.
“You two have been sniping at each other for going on four days now, ever since we got here,” he said. “I figure that any posse from Burnley would have caught up to us by now, so we’ll pull out soon. Tomorrow morning, I think.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” Juliana said.
“Aw, it ain’t been that bad,” Curly argued. “We got free whiskey and a bed that’ll do in a pinch.”
“A bed full of vermin, you mean.” Juliana shrugged. “But I reckon I should be used to that by now, shouldn’t I?”
Alden and Curly both laughed at
that comment. Curly shoved the bottle toward her, but Juliana shook her head.
“I need to get out and move around a little. Think I’ll go down to the old livery stable and check on the horses.”
“It’s broad daylight out there,” Alden objected with a frown.
“Well, barely,” Curly said, “what with all them clouds hangin’ around.”
“You know what I mean. We’ve been trying not to move around too much when it’s light.”
Juliana pushed her chair back from the table and stood up.
“Like you said,” she told Alden, “if a posse was going to catch up to us, they would have done it by now. But if it’ll ease your mind, Alden, I’ll be careful. I’ll stick to the back alley and not march right down the middle of Main Street.”
“I’d like to see that,” Curly said with a grin. “Shoot, you’re a parade all by your lonesome, gal.”
“That was almost a nice thing to say,” Juliana said. “You’d better watch it, or you might accidentally turn into a decent human being.”
Curly threw back his head and laughed. “No chance o’ that!”
Juliana left the saloon through the back door, which sagged considerably on its hinges. She followed the alley behind several other businesses.
As she moved, she listened intently. Other than animal sounds from the trees and brush along both sides of the gulch, everything was quiet and peaceful. She had to give Alden credit. He had picked a good place for them to hide out. He was smart in that way and a lot of other ways.
Sooner or later, she mused, she would have to pick between him and Curly. Both men had been remarkably tolerant about her involvement with each of them, but Juliana had never believed that that arrangement could go on forever. Alden was a lot smarter, no doubt about that, and he didn’t annoy the fire out of her like Curly so often did . . . but Alden didn’t make her feel like a woman nearly as much as Curly could. It was a dilemma, sure enough.
But she put those thoughts out of her mind as she reached the barn’s small rear doorway. The door itself was gone, leaving just the opening. A few nail heads stuck out of the frame.
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