Blood and Gold

Chapter 1

I had thirty thousand dollars in paper money and gold coin in my saddlebags and now the rain had settled the dust on my back trail that had been nagging at me for the past two days.

Maybe the dust meant nothing.

It could have been kicked up by a puncher like me, heading back to Texas broke and hungover, vowing never to come up the trail again and wishing mightily he’d steered well clear of the bright lights and easy sin of Dodge.

But dust could mean something else.

It could mean I was dancing with the devil and they were playing his tune.

Me, I was eighteen years old that summer of 1880 and still kind of green, even though I’d been up the trail three times. I had twice tangled with Comanche and once, the spring before, had shot it out with three rustlers south of the Washita.

After the smoke cleared, big Bob Collins, the trail boss, had slapped me on the back and said I’d done good, though I doubted that I’d hit anybody, being no great shakes with the long gun, though I’m a fair to middling hand with the Colt.

But that was then, and this was now.

Since I’d crossed the Cimarron and ridden into the Indian territory, I’d tried not to pay any mind to the dust. I’d been a-singing to my pony, mostly sappy love songs that I’d heard in Dodge and a dozen other cow towns. The paint didn’t like my singing none, shaking his head, his bit jangling, every time I murdered a high note.

But having such a disapproving audience didn’t bother me, on account I knew I’d soon be seeing my best gal again. Sally Coleman, with her blond hair and blue eyes, lived on her pa’s ranch about a hundred miles south of the Red. A gal as pretty as Sally had her choice of men, but it was in my mind that I’d marry her someday and raise up a passel of kids with her.

Hanging on my saddle horn, covered up by my slicker, was a straw bonnet, all tied around with blue ribbons, that I’d bought for Sally in Dodge. That bonnet cost me a week’s wages, but I reckoned just to see her wear it would be worth the money, and then some.

Before the rain started, I could tell that the dust behind me was a ways off and not getting any closer.

But now there was nothing to see and I was fast becoming uneasy.

It was no secret in Dodge that I’d ridden out of town with thirty thousand dollars. That was money enough to tempt a man, especially the shifty border trash, gamblers, dance hall loungers, goldbrick artists and the like, who migrated north with the herds every spring to Dodge and Caldwell and Wichita, eager to separate a drover from his hard-earned wages.

And there were others, much more dangerous, dry, hard-eyed men who wore their guns like they were born to them, lean riders who haunted moon-shadowed trails and never looked at a thing directly, but saw everything. When such men went to the gun, they were almighty sudden and certain and I wanted no part of them.

Was it men like those who rode behind me?

When you’re eighteen, you figure you can’t be killed. I’d seen plenty of dying on the Western Trail: punchers trampled in stampedes, drowned in river crossings, snakebit, dragged by runaway ponies. But death always chose some other poor feller and seemed content to tiptoe around me.

But now I couldn’t shake the feeling that danger was dogging my trail and maybe, just maybe, I wasn’t as immortal as I thought. Being eighteen doesn’t make a man bulletproof, and, looking back, I realize them’s words of wisdom.

The rain had started that morning just after sunup, driven by a gusting south wind that hammered cold drops against my slicker and drummed on my hat.

I was riding through the Gypsum Hills country west of the Red Bed Plains, a series of rolling hills, buttes and red mesas some 150 to two hundred feet high, all cut through by narrow gullies. The hills are capped by fifteen- to twenty-foot layers of gypsum that sparkle in the sun—the reason the Indians called them the Glass Hills.

Here and there grew stands of red cedar, blackjack and post oak, some of them lightning-blasted and dead, and under my horse’s feet primroses, black-eyed Susans and tiny violets peeped out from among the grama grass.

I kept turning my head, checking behind me, and saw nothing but the rain-lashed landscape, iron gray clouds so low I reckoned I could reach up and grab a handful and I figured it would be like clutching at wood smoke.

I rode on, heading due south. A hundred or so miles to my west lay the majestic Black Mesa and directly in front of me, but still a long ways off, rose the weathered crags of the Wichita and Arbuckle mountains.

There was no letup in the rain, a steady, hissing downpour that ran off my hat brim like a waterfall and beat steadily on the shoulders of my slicker.

It was getting close to noon and I was becoming needful of coffee and a smoke. I’d tried to roll a cigarette earlier, but the rain had battered tobacco and paper from my fingers, scattering brown shreds over the front of my slicker. I’d given vent to a few choice cuss words, I can tell you, even though I knew if Sally heard me she’d be real annoyed. That little gal was dead set against cussing and she’d made that plain to me a time or two.

Reining in the paint, I glanced around, looking for a likely spot to hole up for an hour. If the riders behind me were honest men, they’d likely be sheltering from the downpour, and outlaws don’t much care for getting wet either, come to that.

It seemed to me, I could stop and brew up some coffee and then be on my way again, and nobody the wiser.

Like I said, that was how it seemed to me. But as things turned out, I was about to lead my ducks to the wrong pond.

About a hundred yards ahead of where I sat my horse, the gypsum crowning one of the hills slanted sharply downward to about thirty feet above the level. A narrow creek ran along the bottom of the hill under the gypsum shelf and the slope had been undercut, eroded away by wind and floodwaters, forming a natural, shallow cave about ten feet deep, twice that much high and maybe forty or fifty feet long.

A few stunted juniper grew higher up the hillside, where there might be fallen branches, at least enough to boil up some coffee.

I kneed the paint forward and rode up to the cave. Now I was closer, it was pretty much as I’ve described and I saw traces of previous fires, built small, the way Indians do. A goodly supply of dry wood, mostly pine and hickory branches, was scattered around and I was glad I didn’t have to depend on the wet, slow-burning juniper.

I swung out of the saddle, eased the girth on the paint and led him to a patch of good grass close enough to the overhang that he’d be out of the worst of the rain.

The saddlebags I took with me back to the cave. When a man you regard as a friend as well as a boss gives that much money into your trust, you take care of it real well. That was what I thought anyway, and I believe I had the right of it.

I started a fire, and when it was burning good, I went to the creek and filled the coffeepot. Then I fetched Sally’s bonnet and my sack of supplies back to the cave and laid them in a dry spot. That done, I threw a handful of coffee into the pot and set the pot on the coals to boil.

I shrugged out of my wet slicker and laid it on the ground, then adjusted the cartridge belt and holster around my hips. The faded blue shirt I wore was damp at the collar, and from the knees down, my brown canvas pants were soaked.

I was an inch above middle height that year, skinny as the shadow of a barbed wire fence, but most of the beef I did have was in my arms and shoulders, so that when I had a mind to push or pull something, it usually moved.

My hair was auburn, tinting red in places, and my eyes were gray. Bob Collins told me one time that when I was riled, my eyes shaded to the coldest gray he’d ever seen in all his born days.

Well, I didn’t get riled often. If folks let me be, then I did the same for them. I was a peace-loving man with nothing to prove, and now I turned eighteen and was almost man grown, I didn’t see much sense in fighting and feuding just for the hell of it.

Of course, as I stood there waiting for the coffee to boil, I’d no way of knowing that I’d soon be getting into plenty of both. And looking back, I think maybe that’s just as well. A man needs a few quiet moments when he can be at peace with himself and the world. I reckon a wise man is never less alone than when he’s alone.

I stepped to the mouth of the cave, looking out at the lashing rain, enjoying the solitude of that wild, beautiful country and the smell of boiling coffee and wood smoke and the sweet, fresh tang of wet grass and sage.

As was my habit recently, my fingers absently strayed to my top lip, where I hoped to grow a man’s mustache. But to my disappointment, all I felt was downy fuzz, the same fuzz I’d been feeling every day since I’d left Texas close to four months before.

Back in Dodge, I’d envied Sheriff Bat Masterson his fine mustache and the way it set female hearts to fluttering when he tipped his hat and cut a dash. Me, I’d hoped to ride back to pretty Sally with a fine mustache of my own and cut a few dashes my ownself. But the way my whiskers were progressing, or rather how they weren’t progressing, made that possibility more and more unlikely.

I sighed kind of deep and sad, dropped my hand and went back to the fire. I kneeled and picked up the coffeepot, ready to fill my cup. Then I froze real still when I heard a voice behind me.

“Rise up easy, Dusty Hannah, and when you turn, make sure the only damn thing in your hand is the coffeepot.”

I recognized that voice, and I did what it told me.

“Howdy, Clem,” I said, turning mighty careful, slow as molasses. “Thought you’d be across the Red by this time. That’s what I thought.”

Clem Kennedy shrugged his narrow shoulders. “You thought wrong, Dusty. You know how it is. Man stays in Dodge until his wages is gone. Trouble is, good whiskey and bad women don’t come cheap.”

“I don’t know how it is, Clem,” I said. “I still have my wages, at least most of them, in my pocket.”

The man with Kennedy sneered and spoke up for the first time. “Well, well, well, Clem, ain’t he the reg’lar little do-gooder? Why, I reckon if’n he was a dog, somebody would’ve stolen him when he were just a pup.”

“Let it go, Luke.” Kennedy smiled. “This boy knows why we’re here, so we’ll get right to it.” The smile slipped, then vanished into a tight-lipped grimace. “We want the money, Dusty.”

I was conscious of the coffeepot in my right hand. If it came to gunplay, I’d have to drop it before I went for my Colt, and that would cost me time, more time than these two would allow.

I knew Clem Kennedy, a thin, sour man with hard blue eyes, a ragged, tobacco-stained mustache hanging under his nose like a dead rat. He’d come up the trail with us, and before we’d even reached the Red, he’d complained to Simon Prather, the owner of the herd, that he was a top hand and shouldn’t be riding drag.

“Let the kid eat dust, Mr. Prather,” Kennedy had whined. “He’s still got plenty to learn.”

Now Simon and Ma Prather had taken me in when I was a homeless youngster just fourteen years old, and I knew he considered me a top hand. But rather than be accused of favoritism, he’d asked me, head down, digging into the dirt with the toe of his boot the way he did when he was embarrassed, if I’d keep the peace and ride the drag.

Of course, I’d agreed, knowing what kind of fix Simon was in for experienced riders. And that was how come I’d eaten dust all the way from Doan’s Crossing to Dodge, though Simon later paid me top hand wages.

The man called Luke I didn’t know. But he looked hard and mean and the walnut handle of the Colt at his waist was plenty worn from hard use.

Slowly, I kneeled and set the coffeepot down, surprised that it had not occurred to either man that I’d done it to save time on the draw.

Were they that confident?

The way they looked at me, their eyes filled with amusement not unmixed with contempt, I reckoned they were. To these two, I was just a half-grown boy without a mustache and mighty green, and they didn’t think I counted for much.

Kennedy had killed a man in El Paso and a drover in Wichita, and he was real slick with the Colt. Luke would be just as good and, on account of how he looked like a man who hard wintered, I figured maybe even a shade better.

I swallowed the lump in my throat and said, “Clem, the money belongs to Mr. Prather. He told me to give it to Ma.”

Kennedy snorted. “Old lady Prather ain’t my ma. Besides, we need that thirty thousand more than she does.” The man’s hand was very close to his gun, his slicker brushed back. “Now do you hand it over or do we just take it?”

I was cursing myself for letting these two get the sneak on me. They must have left their horses somewhere back in the hills and walked up on me quiet as thieves in a dark alley.

I played for time, trying to hold on to my hair a bit longer. “Clem, you know how much Mr. Prather needs that money. After the three bad years he’s had, the boss is in hock to the banks up to his ears. The money will pay his way.”

All this was true. Simon Prather didn’t trust banks, but he’d borrowed heavily from them, and there was a twenty-five thousand dollar lien on the ranch. The thirty thousand dollars in my saddlebags represented his last chance of getting out from under all that debt and holding on to the SP Connected.

The man called Luke twisted his lips in a sneer. “Don’t you worry none about Prather, boy,” he said. “He’s already a half-dead man. He’s dead from”—his hand went to the middle of his chest and swept across to his left shoulder—“from here to here, an’ his mouth is so twisted he can’t even sup his soup.” Luke’s hand dropped to his gun again. “Don’t you be worrying none about that half-dead man on account of how in a few weeks’ time he’ll be beyond caring about his ranch. Just hand over those damn saddlebags.”

It came to me then that Kennedy and his companion were sure-thing killers and that was the only reason I was still alive. We were standing only a few feet apart, and they knew if lead started flying I could get a bullet into at least one of them before they dropped me.

I guessed they had figured the odds and had decided it was better to take the money without gunplay and put a bullet in my back later.

“Listen, boy,” Kennedy said, his voice real soft and reasonable, “we can split the wampum in those saddlebags three ways. That’s ten thousand for you, Dusty, more money than you could make in a lifetime punching cows.” Kennedy turned to his companion. “Ain’t that right, Luke, a three-way split, fair and honest as the day is long.”

“Oh sure,” Luke said, smiling real thin. “Share and share alike is what I always say.” He stretched out his arm. “Here’s my hand on it, boy, and I’ll surely be offended if’n you don’t take it, me trying my best to mend fences an’ all.”

Now I might have been born at night, but it wasn’t last night. I knew if I took Luke’s hand he’d pull me off-balance so Kennedy could get a bullet into me. I stood right where I was and shook my head. “I don’t shake hands with thieving trash,” I said.

Well, that tipped over the outhouse sure enough.

Luke’s smile slipped and he said, “I’m sorely disappointed in you, boy.”

And he went for his gun.

I don’t remember drawing. But suddenly the Colt was in my hand and I realized with a jolt of surprise, I was faster, a lot faster, than Luke. I fired and saw my bullet take him square in the chest, his own shot following a split second later, but flying wild.

Kennedy had his gun out and we both fired at the same time. I felt his bullet burn across my left thigh, and I hit too high, taking him in the shoulder.

My ears ringing from the sound of gunfire, I stepped out of my own powder smoke and saw Luke lying on his back, the rain battering down on his face. He was dead as he was ever going to be.

Kennedy was half bent over, groaning. He was out of the fight, his shattered right shoulder a bloody mess, gun dangling loose from a scarlet-streaked hand.

The man’s face was deathly white under his tan and he snarled a vile oath. “Damn you, boy, I never pegged you for a gunfighter.”

“There’s much you don’t know about me, Clem,” I replied, trying my hardest to make what I hoped was a grown man’s reply. “You should have steered well clear of me.” I nodded toward Luke’s body. “Ride on out of here and take that with you.”

“Hard talk, Dusty,” Kennedy said. “Mighty mean and hard.”

“You dealt the cards, Clem,” I said. “I’m just playing out the hand you gave me.”

“You think you being a gunfighter an’ all will help you get that money to Texas?” Kennedy asked, his eyes ugly.

“Clem, I’m no gunfighter,” I said. “Before today, I’d never killed a man and right now the fact that I have is troubling me plenty.”

“Well, you practice with that Colt, boy. There will be others after me and they won’t be near as trusting an’ friendly as me and Luke was.” Kennedy gasped in pain as he straightened. “No man should have thirty thousand dollars all to his ownself when poor folks are hurting.”

“The money isn’t mine,” I said. “And it isn’t yours either.”

“You’ll never make it back across the Red, Dusty,” Kennedy said. “Luke Butler was a named man and he had friends.”

I nodded. “Maybe so, but I reckon I’ll take my chances.”

Later, after he’d caught up his horses, I stood in the rain and watched Kennedy ride away, Luke Butler’s body draped facedown across the saddle of his buckskin.

Kennedy glanced over his shoulder once, with eyes that burned hot with hate, like he wanted to remember me for all time. Then he turned back and I watched him go until he was swallowed up by the hills and the shifting steel curtain of the rain.

It was still not yet one, but the afternoon had turned cheerless and dark. The clouds and hills had merged into a gloomy, uniform gray, so there was no telling where the land ended and the sky began. Off to my left, a jay fluttered among the branches of a cedar growing at the base of a low mesa, sending down a shower of water. The branches shook again for a few moments as the bird sought a new perch and then the tree returned to stillness.

The bullet that had burned across my thigh had not broken the skin, but my leg felt numb and sore as I scouted the area for a few minutes, saw no one and returned to the shelter of the cave. I teased the fire into flame and put the coffee back on to heat.

When I sat and rolled a smoke I was surprised that my hands were steady. I lit the cigarette with a brand from the fire and set to studying on what had happened.

Clem Kennedy had called me a gunfighter and that was a label I did not want to wear. Back in Dodge, I’d seen the named shootist Buck Fletcher kill a man in the Long Branch. After the smoke cleared, I’d looked into Fletcher’s eyes and seen only despair and something else . . . hopelessness maybe, like he knew he was a man caught in a trap of his own making and there was no way out.

I didn’t want to end up like that. I wanted a place of my own with a wife and kids, smoke from our cabin tying bows in the air, the white laundry fluttering on the wash line and an ugly spotted dog sleeping on the stoop.

Gunfighter.

I’d killed Luke Butler, a gunman of reputation, and where Western men gathered, that was a fact that would be noted and talked about.

Clem had been right. Others would come. Most would be motivated by the lure of easy money, but there would be a few with a completely different agenda. Those would be wild ones and they’d test me with their own lives to see how I stacked up, how I ranked in the gunfighter hierarchy.

I poured coffee into my cup and drank it strong and scalding hot.

My heart was heavy as lead, my spirits troubled, and beyond the shelter of the cave roof the raking rain rattled relentlessly as it continued to fall.

Then I heard the flat boom of a rifle shot. And another.