Sidewinders Read online

  “But you can’t be sure of that, can you?” Sue Beth asked.

  “I reckon not. But I got a feelin’ in my bones that I’m right, and I’ve learned to trust these old bones.”

  Charlie the cook called through the opening behind the counter. “I got flapjacks and bacon ready!”

  “I’ll be right back,” Sue Beth told her customers.

  The food was as good as always. Bo, Scratch, and Chloride enjoyed their breakfast and washed the meal down with plenty of coffee. Having their bellies full helped them get over everything that had happened the night before.

  When Bo went to pay for the food, Sue Beth shook her head and said, “Marty Sutton came by here a while ago and told me that if you stopped in for breakfast, I should just add the bill to her tab.”

  “Miss Sutton’s already up and about?” Bo asked.

  Sue Beth nodded. “That’s right. She had some coffee, then said she was on her way to Bullock and Star’s. She may still be there.”

  Bo put his hat on and ticked a finger against the brim. “We’re much obliged. See you the next time we’re in town.”

  “Hopefully that won’t be too long.”

  “And maybe we’ll have that turkey for Thanksgivin’,” Scratch added.

  Sue Beth laughed. “I’ll be waiting.”

  The big mercantile down the street was owned and operated by Seth Bullock and Sol Star, Bo knew. He remembered both men from the previous visit he and Scratch had paid to Deadwood. At that time, Bullock and Star had only recently arrived from Montana and were selling their stock of goods out of a tent. Since then, they had built a big, prosperous-looking establishment that took up most of a block.

  Sol Star ran the place for the most part. His partner Seth Bullock had been the marshal of Deadwood for a while and done a fine job of it from what Bo had heard, bringing law and order to the raw mining camp and continuing to serve after Deadwood had become an actual town. Sol Star was something of a civic leader, too, having been elected as Deadwood’s mayor several times. Star might still be mayor, for all Bo knew. All he cared about at the moment was the fact that the store was already open and Martha Sutton had gone over there, evidently to arrange for the supplies they were supposed to load on the wagon to take back to the mine.

  Martha stepped out onto the store’s porch as Bo, Scratch, and Chloride approached. She was bundled in a heavy coat this morning, her breath fogging in the air in front of her, but her blond curls hung free around her shoulders as usual. She smiled and said, “Good morning. Mr. Star and his clerks have the supplies ready, and they can load them as soon as you bring the wagon over.”

  Chloride nodded and said, “I’ll go fetch it.”

  As the old-timer hurried off, Martha went on to Bo and Scratch. “I hope you don’t mind, but Mr. Star had some good saddles, and I took the liberty of buying a couple of them, along with everything else you’ll need.”

  Bo and Scratch glanced at each other. As veteran horsemen, they would have preferred to pick out their own saddles. Every rider had his own likes and dislikes, and they were usually different. But Martha’s heart was in the right place, so Bo said, “I’m sure they’ll be fine. We appreciate it, Miss Sutton.”

  “There hasn’t been any more trouble since Mr. Coleman’s cabin burned down, has there? I haven’t heard about anything.”

  Scratch said, “The rest of the night was plumb peaceful.”

  “You think you’ll be back tomorrow with the other load of gold?”

  “We should be,” Bo said.

  “What will you do after that?”

  Bo shrugged. “Keep poking around, I guess. We’d still like to find where the Devils stashed all the loot from those earlier robberies.”

  “If it’s even still around here,” Scratch added.

  “But we’ll stay in touch, and whenever Andrew Keefer and the men at the mine have another load ready to bring down the gulch, we’ll handle that chore for you,” Bo went on. “As long as you want us to, that is.”

  Martha laughed. “I think you can count on that, Mr. Creel,” she said. “You and Mr. Morton are the only ones who’ve had any luck at all stopping the Devils. The way things were going, the mining business in this whole area was going to be ruined. Digging the gold out of the hills doesn’t do any good if you can’t get it into the bank.”

  Bo nodded and said, “That’s true. And I reckon the way the Devils had everybody so scared was almost as bad as losing all that gold.”

  “Worse, maybe,” Martha said. “If things had kept on, Deadwood might have been a ghost town in another year. Now, though, people have hope again. And they have you two to thank for that.”

  “And Chloride,” Scratch added with a grin. “That old-timer gets a mite touchy when he’s left out of anything.”

  “I heard that, dadblast it!” Chloride called out from the street in front of the store where he had just brought the wagon to a stop. “I ain’t that much older’n you, you danged Texas roadrunner!”

  CHAPTER 14

  The trip back up the gulch and the side canyon to the Golden Queen mine was uneventful. Even the saddles that Martha had bought for the Texans turned out to be all right. Bo and Scratch were alert the entire way, watchful for even the tiniest hint of trouble, but nothing happened except the wagon reached the mine with its load of supplies intact. The supplies were very welcome, too, as provisions were starting to run a little low in the cook shack.

  Andrew Keefer wanted to hear all about the journey to Deadwood. He was suitably impressed when the Texans and Chloride told him about fighting off the Devils, and he was livid with anger when he heard about how Chloride’s cabin had been destroyed.

  “I’m sure Miss Sutton will offer to make good your losses as best she can,” the superintendent said.

  “She already said she would,” Chloride replied. “She’s got bigger worries on her plate right now, though.”

  “Such as that next load of gold,” Bo said. “Do you still think there’s enough on hand to justify another shipment right away, Mr. Keefer?”

  “There certainly is,” Keefer said with a nod. “No dust this time, but plenty of bars. I’ll have the men start packing and loading it this afternoon, if you’re willing to make the trip to Deadwood again so quickly.”

  “No point in waitin’,” Scratch said. “For all we know, those owlhoots are a mite confused right now, and we ought to take advantage of that if we can.”

  Keefer agreed and issued the orders. By nightfall, the gold wagon was loaded and ready to go, and once again Keefer picked out some men to stand guard over it all night.

  “The Devils have never robbed any of the mines themselves, have they?” Bo asked that evening as he, Scratch, and Chloride stood with the superintendent on the porch of the building that housed Keefer’s office and living quarters.

  “No,” Keefer replied. “Only stagecoaches starting out, and then the gold shipments.”

  “And they’ve hijacked shipments from all the mines?”

  “That’s right, now that they hit that shipment from the Argosy. At least, they’ve struck at all the bigger mines. There are still a few smaller claims scattered through the hills that don’t produce enough color to make it worthwhile to rob them.”

  “You’re still thinkin’, ain’t you, Bo?” Scratch asked.

  “Does he do that all the time?” Chloride asked.

  Bo chuckled. “Just trying to figure out a few things, that’s all. Something about the Devils doesn’t quite add up to me.”

  “What’s to figure out?” Keefer wanted to know. “They’re a bunch of no-good, greedy, murdering road agents! Seems pretty blasted simple to me.”

  “You’re probably right,” Bo told the superintendent. “Sometimes I make more out of things than they really are.”

  On that note, the men turned in for the night, and early the next morning they were up again, getting ready to roll out on the trip to Deadwood in the cold, pale dawn.

  During the morning,
clouds rolled in to obscure the weak, watery sunlight, and the temperature dropped even more. As Chloride sent the wagon rolling along the trail, he cast a wary eye toward the skies and warned, “Liable to be some snow ’fore we get to town.” He brightened slightly. “On the other hand, maybe that means them varmints’ll be more likely to leave us alone.”

  “If the Devils want to hit us again, I doubt if the weather will stop them,” Bo said.

  “I don’t plan on lettin’ my guard down,” Scratch added.

  “I never told you to do that,” Chloride said. “I was just pointin’ out that it might snow.”

  As a matter of fact, less than an hour later a few powdery flurries spat down from the gunmetal-gray heavens, and the old-timer gleefully pointed them out as evidence that he was right.

  The flurries stopped a short time after that, and those were the only flakes that fell. Chloride insisted that since technically it had snowed, his prediction had been correct.

  So was his comment about the outlaws not trying to hold them up, although it was impossible to know if the snow flurries had anything to do with the Devils’ leaving them alone. Bo was inclined to doubt it, but it didn’t matter. What was important was that late in the afternoon, the wagon rolled into Deadwood with its load of gold bars intact.

  This shipment’s arrival didn’t create as big a commotion as the first one, possibly because the cold had a lot of people indoors close to their stoves, but a small crowd did gather in front of the bank to watch the crates of gold bars being unloaded. Once again Bo watched the clerks place the gold in the vault while Scratch and Chloride kept an eye on the crates that hadn’t been unloaded yet.

  That was still going on when Scratch stuck his head inside the bank’s front door and called, “Bo, you better come take a look at this.”

  Bo heard the note of concern in his old friend’s voice. That was enough to make him hurry out of the bank and join Scratch and Chloride next to the wagon. They looked down the street toward the eastern end of the settlement, where a troop of blue-uniformed cavalry was riding into Deadwood.

  Four years earlier, with the news of the Seventh Cavalry’s massacre on the hills above the Little Big Horn River still fresh in everyone’s mind, the citizens of Deadwood had reacted with riotous celebration when a large detachment of cavalry under the command of General George Crook had ridden into town. In those days, people had been afraid constantly that the Indians were going to slaughter them in their beds some night.

  Since then, the threat of an Indian attack had diminished dramatically. But the arrival of the cavalry in town still caused quite a stir. People forgot about how cold it was and came out of their businesses and homes to watch the troopers ride in.

  It wasn’t a big patrol, about thirty men led by a lieutenant and a grizzled sergeant. They rode to the middle of town and reined in, and by that time word of what was going on had reached the sheriff’s office. Sheriff Henry Manning strode up, and as the young officer dismounted, Manning demanded, “Lieutenant, what’s going on here? Are you and your men in pursuit of hostiles? I haven’t heard anything about the Indians being on the warpath again.”

  The lieutenant didn’t answer Manning’s questions. Instead he asked one of his own. “Who are you, sir?”

  “Henry Manning,” the lawman snapped. “I’m the sheriff around here.”

  The officer came to attention and saluted. “Lieutenant Vance Holbrook reporting as ordered, sir. I’m to make myself and my men available to you.”

  Manning frowned at him, obviously baffled. “Available to me? What for?”

  A new voice said, “I’ll tell you what for, Sheriff.” Lawrence Nicholson walked up. “A number of the mine owners got together and sent a letter to Washington several weeks ago requesting assistance with the plague of lawlessness that has erupted in the Black Hills in recent months. At first the Justice Department was just going to send in a United States marshal, but we prevailed upon the authorities to reconsider that decision and assign a troop of cavalry to Deadwood instead. The problem of the Deadwood Devils is too big for one man to handle.”

  Manning glared at Nicholson. His eyes were as cold and gray as the sky as he said, “Blast it, you had no right to do that. It’s my place to request any outside help, if I determine that it’s needed.”

  “It’s also your place to stop those outlaws from ruining all the mines in the area, but you didn’t seem to be accomplishing that, did you?” Nicholson shot back.

  Bo watched with interest as Manning’s face became darkly mottled with rage. “My primary responsibility is to keep the peace in town,” the lawman said. “No one can deny that I’ve done that.”

  “Of course not, Sheriff. You’ve been exemplary at that part of your job. But the way things have been going, sooner or later you’ll be keeping the peace in a ghost town after all the mines have shut down. The other owners and I aren’t going to stand for that.” Nicholson turned to the cavalry officer. “My name is Lawrence Nicholson, Lieutenant Holbrook. I own the Argosy Mining Company. I’ll be glad to fill you in on everything that’s happened around here and will help you carry out your orders any way I can.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Holbrook said, “but I really ought to be working with the local authorities—”

  “No, that’s all right,” Manning said in a choked voice as he visibly struggled to keep his temper reined in. “If you’re here to catch the Deadwood Devils, Lieutenant, then by all means you should talk to Mr. Nicholson and the other mine owners. They can tell you what you need to know. You can operate independently as far as I’m concerned.”

  “There’s no need to get your nose out of joint, Sheriff,” Nicholson said.

  “I’m just trying to give you what you want,” Manning snapped. To Holbrook, he added, “Go to it, Lieutenant. You’ve got a free hand.”

  Holbrook nodded and said, “Thank you, sir.” “Come along to my office, Lieutenant,” Nicholson invited. “I’ll tell you all about it.”

  “Of course, sir.” Holbrook turned to his non-com and went on. “Sergeant, locate a suitable place to camp and have the men fall out and set up their tents.”

  The sergeant, a stocky, middle-aged man with a drooping, gray-streaked mustache, said, “Beggin’ your pardon, Lieutenant, but tents are gonna be sort of cold in weather like this.”

  “What would you have me do, put the company up at the hotel?” Holbrook snapped. “Carry out my orders, Sergeant.”

  The non-com nodded and said, “Yes, sir.” “Well, what do you think about that?” Scratch asked as he and Bo and Chloride watched the sergeant lead the troopers past the bank.

  “It’s pretty interesting,” Bo said. “Makes me think twice about some of the ideas in my head. I’ll have to ponder on it.”

  “You reckon them soldier boys’ll be able to chase down the Devils?” Chloride asked.

  Bo had his doubts about that, because he still believed at least some of the members of the gang were right here in Deadwood under their noses, masquerading as respectable citizens. Or at least semi-respectable citizens.

  But all he said was, “We’ll see. Right now, we need to make sure that the rest of this gold gets unloaded and locked in the vault, and then I want to let Miss Sutton know that we made it all right.”

  Martha Sutton was already aware of that. She looked up from her desk with a smile when the three men came in. “I was just about to head down to the bank as soon as I finished up this paperwork,” she said.

  “No need for you to do that,” Bo told her as he handed her the receipt Jerome Davenport had given him.

  Martha looked at the paper with shining eyes. “This is wonderful,” she said. “Now I can afford to pay at least some of the back wages I owe . . . including everything that I owe the three of you.”

  “We’re in no hurry—” Scratch began.

  Martha stood up and shook her head. “No, I’m going to settle up with you. I insist. If it wasn’t for the three of you, I might have been forced to giv
e up by now.”

  “What do you mean by give up?” Bo asked.

  “Well . . . I suppose I would have sold the mine. Lawrence Nicholson has been offering to buy me out practically ever since my father died. There’s been interest from some of the other companies, too.”

  “You might have been able to get enough money to live on for a long time,” Bo pointed out.

  “But not what the mine’s worth,” Martha insisted. “And giving up and selling out . . . well, my father never would have done it. I can be at least as stubborn as he would have been, can’t I?”

  Bo smiled. “I never met Mike Sutton, but I’d say you come by it honest, miss.” He tugged on the brim of his hat. “We’ll be going now. Tomorrow we’ll take the wagon back up to the mine, and then Chloride plans to stay there until the next shipment is ready to bring down.”

  “If that’s all right with you, miss,” the old-timer added.

  Martha nodded. “Of course.” She looked at the Texans. “What about the two of you?”

  “Reckon we’ll have to play that by ear,” Scratch said. “We’ll be scoutin’ around, though, tryin’ to get a line on those road agents.”

  Chloride snorted. “You mean tryin’ not to get in the way of them soldier boys.”

  “Soldiers?” Martha repeated. “What soldiers?”

  “You haven’t heard?” Bo asked, a little surprised that Martha didn’t know about the cavalry’s arrival. “A troop of cavalry rode in a little while ago. It seems that without anybody knowing about it, Nicholson and some of the other mine owners sent word to Washington asking for help cleaning things up around here. You weren’t part of that?”

  Martha smiled and shook her head. “Lawrence Nicholson and the other owners don’t confide in me, Bo. They don’t think a woman should be running a mining company in the first place, so naturally they don’t include me in their plans. But I’m a little surprised the government would send in the army to catch some outlaws, even if it is just a cavalry patrol.”