Chapter 1 #2
When they reached a ridge at the top of the wide gulley, Caleb signaled to his partner.
They moved past a grove of cottonwood trees until they reached a small rise that afforded a good view.
They were eighty yards from the edge of a wide pond below.
In front of them the terrain dropped off steeply.
The sun was still high overhead. Between their vantage point and the creek, the grassy hillside was dotted with boulders and brush.
Lying on their bellies, they peered down into the gulley.
Below them, in a clearing on the near side of the wide creek, a slovenly camp had been thrown together. A few tarps had been hung over lines stretched between yellow-leafed cottonwood trees. Saddles and bed rolls lay beneath them. Smoke from a smoldering fire hung like a cloud over the camp.
Henry nudged him and held up four fingers. Caleb nodded.
Three tough-looking fellows were working with pans in the shallows.
Shovels were stuck into the gravel at the edge of the pond.
The fourth, stripped down to his breeches but wearing a pair of Remington six-shooters strapped to his hips, was busily starting to butcher one of his and Henry’s stray steers by the edge of the camp.
It must have been the steer that took the two slugs they heard being fired.
“Not too neighborly,” Caleb said under his breath.
Saddlebags and gear lay in heaps by the fire, and Caleb spotted a pair of Winchester ‘73s, a Henry Yellow Boy, and a seven-shot Spencer carbine.
Two more braces of Remingtons and a pair of short-barreled Colts lay in bundled coils close to the shoreline.
In a wide grassy spot just to the south of the camp, four horses were grazing contentedly by as many saddles. Good horses, from the look of them.
Caleb only needed a glance to know these fellas were not typical prospectors.
The pans and shovels they were using were still shiny, undented, and new.
These chuckleheads weren’t greenhorns, though.
In fact, from the shooting irons they were packing, he’d bet his last dollar they were road agents laying low and hoping to strike it rich while they were doing it.
Their one mistake was trying to do it on his and Henry’s land.
And Caleb had every intention of explaining that fact politely.
After all, Sheila was forever reminding him that not every disagreement needed to end in a gunfight.
He'd promised to make an effort.
At the moment, he was planning very hard to be reasonable with these knotheads.
One of them, big and burly and filthy as a hog, stood up, stretched his back, and threw his pan on the bank with disgust, cursing and eying his partners with disdain.
“Damn me but if that one ain’t trouble,” Henry whispered.
“They all are.”
“Let's see if we can settle this without nobody getting buried,” Caleb murmured.
“That a new philosophy?” Henry asked.
“Maybe.”
Henry snorted. “Got a name for it?”
Caleb ignored him. That was answer enough.
The big man’s wide-brimmed hat was battered and had an ornate, beaded band at the base of the crown.
He took it off and squinted at the sun. In spite of the cool bite to the air, sweat glistened off his not-so-recently shaved scalp.
Stomping out of the shallows, he threw himself down in the gravel next to the Colts, propping himself up on one elbow.
The other two in the water noticed him and straightened up.
“You lazy shit, Dog,” one of them scoffed. He was the shortest of the bunch, stocky and grizzled-looking with a ratty wisp of beard. “Not even one full day we been at this, and you’re already quitting.”
“Weren’t this your idea?” the other huffed. He was tall and lanky, and his moustache drooped over this mouth, rendering his lips practically invisible.
“That’s right,” Rat Beard groused. “If you ain’t kilt that lawman up north, we wouldn’t even be here in Colorado.”
Henry and Caleb exchanged a look.
Dog drew one of the short-barreled Colts from its holster and sat up, cocking the hammer and pointing it first at one of his partners and then at the other.
The two men stiffened, edging backward into deeper water, and Caleb saw the fellow butchering the steer had moved one hand cautiously to the grip of his Remington revolver.
Dog’s Colt barked twice, and water splashed up between the men, who dove to the side, away from the line of fire. The gunhawk guffawed and slid the Colt back into its holster.
The men came to their feet, soaked through, cursing under their breaths, and sending evil looks at the shooter.
“Whadja do that fer?” Moustache shouted angrily, wiping water from his long, thin face.
“Reckoned you needed a bath,” Dog sneered.
“You had no call fer drawing on us.”
Dog stood, strapping on his gun belt, silencing the men. “Who’s the chief of this here outfit, Humboldt?”
The gaunt-faced man stared a moment, then averted his eyes. “You, Mad Dog.”
“That’s right.” Dog swiveled his gaze to the stocky little man. “Unless you think you’re boss man, Rivers.”
Henry had edged away to his right, where a tuft of grass made a good rest for the muzzle of his rifle. He knew how to position himself for a fight. The cottonwoods and pine and a jumbled stack of boulders behind them offered added protection.
Rivers shook his head.
“That’s right,” Dog crowed. “Then, do you no-account shit-for-brains got anything else you wanna say?”
The men stood still as rocks, and Caleb could practically see their frustrated anger—and fear—rippling across the surface of the water.
After a moment, the one called Rivers found his tongue, grumbling, “Just meant that this’ll be easier once we get a long-tom set up, so’s we can sluice this gravel.”
“If you know so damn much about prospecting, you little shit, how come you ain’t rich already?”
“Knowing how to do it ain’t the same as being lucky.”
“Well, you better hope your luck overall ain’t running out.”
Rivers scowled but said nothing. As he retrieved his pan from the shallows, Caleb saw him glance up at his gun belt a few feet away.
If that fella’s fool enough to go for his gun, Caleb thought, he’s a dead man.
Mad Dog saw the look too. “Two things, John Rivers. One, anytime you think you can take me, you’d best remember I can outdraw you any day of the week. And two, I got eyes in the back of my head, so if you think you can plug me in the back, think again.”
The names suddenly rang a bell. Caleb knew them. John Rivers. Gustav Humboldt. And Mad Dog McCord. That would make the fellow butchering his steer either Lenny Smith or Slim Basher.
He’d heard of them when he was wearing a tin star up north.
That was over two years ago. He’d found himself roped into serving as a lawman in Greeley after making a name for himself scouting and hunting with Old Jake Bell and leading folks across the western frontier from the Bighorn Mountains to the Calabasas.
This gang never ventured into his town, though.
And after the army conscripted him to work for them as a scout for a year, he didn’t figure he’d ever cross gun barrels with the likes of Mad Dog and Rivers.
They were tough hombres. They’d made a name for themselves hitting rail depots, Wells Fargo stagecoaches, and the occasional solitary homesteader wagon making its way through the Black Hills of Wyoming. Stone-cold killers, every one of them.
Caleb nudged his partner, whispering, “Stay here. Watch the butcher, in particular.”
“And let's see if we can get through this without filling Boot Hill,” Caleb added.
Henry quirked a crooked grin at him. “You been spending too much time with Miss Burnett, partner.”
“Just watch the butcher.”