Deadwood Gulch

CHAPTER 24

Bardwell stared at Bo in apparent shock. For a moment he didn’t seem able to speak. When he got that ability back, he burst out angrily, “What in blazes are you talkin’ about? By God, Creel, I’m gettin’ tired of you pointin’ a gun at me!”

Coolly, Bo said, “You don’t have much room to complain, considering that just a little while ago, your brother and his men were doing their best to kill us. They did kill three of those troopers, and we don’t know yet if the women are still all right.”

“My brother!” Bardwell repeated. “You’re crazy. My brother’s dead. He was killed in a shootout with marshals down in Kansas.”

“Then you don’t deny he’s an outlaw?”

“Why should I? Sheriff Manning already knows about it. He’s seen the wanted poster on Tom. I never lied about it to anybody who was man enough to come up and ask me.” Bardwell’s lip curled in a sneer. “Most people would rather just sneak around and spread gossip, though.”

“Just how sure are you that Tom Bardwell is dead?”

The ridge above Reese Bardwell’s eyes became even more prominent as he frowned. “I heard that he was badly wounded when a posse chased down him and his gang. He dropped out of sight after that, and everybody figured he was dead . . .”

“But you don’t know that for certain,” Bo said when Bardwell’s voice trailed off. “I saw him with my own eyes this afternoon. He matches the description and the drawing on the wanted poster, right down to the missing finger on his left hand.”

Bardwell grimaced. “You know how he lost that finger?”

“I don’t have any idea,” Bo said.

“I cut it off with an ax. I didn’t mean to. We were just kids, and I was trying to split some wood for the fireplace. I was havin’ trouble with it, so Tom went to grab the chunk of wood and steady it. The ax slipped . . . Lord, I never will forget seeing that finger go flyin’ in the air . . .”

“Put your gun away, Creel,” Sheriff Manning said. “I believe Bardwell. Maybe his brother is the leader of the Devils, but if that’s true, Bardwell didn’t know anything about it.”

Bo lowered the Colt but didn’t holster it. “You’re betting a lot on a hunch, Sheriff.”

“Don’t you do the same thing sometimes?” Manning snapped.

Bo had to admit that he did.

Phillip Ramsey spoke up, saying, “Far be it from me to defend the man, but if you’d seen how he was carrying on when he heard that Marty had been taken prisoner, you’d believe him, Mr. Creel.”

Bardwell’s head snapped toward Ramsey. “I’ve got just as much right to be worried about her as you do, Ramsey. What are you doing here, anyway? And don’t call her Marty.”

Bo and Scratch glanced at each other in surprise. What they had just heard in that exchange was the unmistakable sound of two men who both were in love with the same woman. So Bardwell and Ramsey, both employees of Martha Sutton’s biggest rival, wanted to court her?

Romance usually didn’t pay any attention to business or much of anything else, Bo reminded himself. A fella’s heart did what it wanted, sometimes to his great regret.

Ramsey was saying, “I have just as much right to call her Marty as you do, Bardwell. A woman like that needs a man with culture and intelligence.”

“I’m smart enough to run a blasted mine, and not sit around all day scribbling numbers in a book,” Bardwell shot back with a sneer.

Chloride moved his horse over next to Bo and Scratch and said, “It’s mighty good to see you boys again. I reckon you’ve figured out by now them two are both moonin’ over the same gal.”

“Yeah, and it don’t seem likely Bardwell would feel like that if he was mixed up with his brother robbin’ the gold wagons,” Scratch said.

Bardwell looked at them and said, “I know we haven’t gotten along, but I give you my word, this is the first I’ve heard about Tom being anywhere in this part of the country. I was in Deadwood this morning, but I didn’t see the robbery take place. Even if I had, I might not have recognized him since he was masked. It’s been years since we’ve seen each other.”

Scratch looked over at Bo and asked, “Are we gonna believe him?”

Bo slid his revolver back in its holster. “I reckon. We ought to let the horses rest for a few minutes longer. While we’re waiting, how about somebody telling us exactly what happened in town this morning ?”

“We’ve already wasted enough time,” Ramsey objected. “I think we should push on after them right now.”

Manning shook his head. “Creel’s right. We’ve ridden hard all the way from Deadwood. I don’t like letting them get any farther ahead of us than you do, Ramsey, but if we kill these horses, the bastards will get away, and there’s no doubt about that.”

“What about the robbery?” Bo prodded as they all dismounted.

“They must have gotten into town just before dawn and broken into the bank somehow. The first anyone knew something was going on was when they blew the door off the vault. There was no way to hide that. I was in my office when I heard the blast. I grabbed a shotgun and headed toward the bank. Figured that was where the explosion had to come from.”

“I was in my room at the boarding house,” Ramsey said. “I heard the explosion, too, and came out to see what was going on. I had to dive for cover a minute later, because when the outlaws came out of the bank, they came out shooting.”

“How’d they wind up with the women?” Scratch asked.

Manning said, “Some of them must have gone across the street to the Red Top earlier to grab some hostages. I had taken cover behind a parked wagon and was trading shots with them by then, but I had to hold my fire when they came out dragging Mrs. Pendleton and Miss Sutton.”

One of Reese Bardwell’s hands clenched into a massive fist. “I saw that, too,” he said. “I rode into town last night to talk to Mr. Nicholson, and it was so late when we finished up, I spent the night on a cot in the back room of the office. The explosion and the shooting woke me up. I wasn’t armed then, so there was nothing I could do, but when I saw they had Marty, I wanted to charge them anyway.”

“How gallant,” Ramsey said with a sneer.

Bardwell turned toward him and might have swung that big fist if Manning hadn’t stepped between them. “Fighting each other isn’t going to accomplish anything,” the lawman said sharply. He turned back to Bo and Scratch. “Some of the townspeople had joined in the fight, but once the Devils had the two women as hostages, everyone had to hold their fire. They made it to their horses, stole a couple of mounts from a hitch rack for the women, and galloped out of town. I put together a posse and came after them as fast as I could, but it took a little while.”

Bo looked at the five men and said, “No offense, Sheriff, but this isn’t much of a posse.”

“People are still afraid of the Devils, some of them even more so now that they’ve dared to invade the town itself. I had more men with me when we left, but they dropped out during the day, one or two at a time, and headed back. It’s cold and it’s going to be dark after a while, and like I said . . . people are afraid of the Devils.”

“But the trail went past the Golden Queen,” Chloride put in, “so me and Andy here joined up when the posse came through.”

“You didn’t see that the outlaws had Miss Sutton with them?” Bo asked.

“We didn’t actually see ’em,” Chloride explained. “Heard some horses this mornin’, but they were on the other side of the canyon, out of sight of the mine.”

“We didn’t know what had happened until Sheriff Manning stopped to tell us,” Keefer added.

“We followed the trail on up here, ran into Sergeant Gustaffson, and then caught up to you two,” Manning told the Texans. “Now you know as much as we do. We’d better mount up and get after them again.”

Bo nodded. “You’re right, Sheriff. We don’t need to push the horses too hard, though. Save something for a hard run later if we need it.”

“Makes sense,” Manning agreed. “Let’s go.”

They swung up into their saddles and set off after the Devils. The posse was seven men strong now, which matched exactly the number of outlaws who had fled from the hideout. It would be an even fight once they caught up.

Except for the fact that the Devils still had two hostages, and as much as the members of the posse wanted the gold back and wanted to bring the outlaws to justice, they wanted to save the lives of Sue Beth Pendleton and Martha Sutton even more.

The wind began to pick up late in the afternoon, which added to Bo’s worries. “If it starts to snow again, those tracks we’ve been following could fill up,” he said quietly to Scratch as they rode side by side just behind Henry Manning, who continued to lead the posse.

“Yeah, I thought of that, too. We need to get in front of ’em somehow. I wonder how well Chloride knows this part of the country.”

“Let’s ask him,” Bo suggested.

The old-timer was bringing up the rear on his mule. Bo and Scratch dropped back, letting Gustaffson, Bardwell, Ramsey, and Keefer go past them, and fell in on either side of Chloride.

He looked back and forth at them with narrowed eyes. “You boys got somethin’ in mind,” he said. “I can tell by lookin’ at you.”

“You have any idea where those varmints might be headin’?” Scratch asked.

“How should I know? Do I look like a bandit to you?”

“We thought maybe you’d know a good place for them to set up an ambush,” Bo said. “They’ve got to have a pretty good idea that we’re on their trail, and they’re bound to want to get rid of us.”

“Well . . .” Chloride scratched at his beard. “Back in my prospectin’ days, I wandered up and down a bunch of these canyons and climbed some of the mountains, includin’ that one it looks like they’re headin’ for. There’s a place called Wolf Head Rock that got the name because—”

“It’s shaped like a wolf ’s head,” Scratch guessed.

Chloride glared at him. “Are you tellin’ this story, or am I?”

“Go ahead, Chloride,” Bo told him.

The old-timer snorted and said, “Well, anyway . . . There’s a pass on the south side of the mountain that’s the easiest way to get through to the other side, especially now with this snow. The other passes are narrow enough they’re gonna be drifted up so’s it’d be hard to make it through ’em, even though this wasn’t that bad of a storm. Thing of it is, Wolf Head Rock sorta sits there overlookin’ the trail to the pass, so you can’t get up there without ridin’ by it. Once you go past there’s a trail that loops back around to the top.”

“And some riflemen hidden up there could pick off anybody who rode past,” Bo said.

Chloride nodded. “If I was on the run and tryin’ to get shut of a posse, that’s the way I’d go, sure enough.”

“The Devils ride past the rock and leave plenty of tracks so the posse has to follow ’em,” Scratch mused, “then they circle around, get above the trail, and wait to bushwhack whoever’s followin’ ’em.”

“Yep,” Chloride said. “It’s just a guess, mind you, but if the trail we’re followin’ goes past Wolf Head Rock, I’d bet my last dime those varmints’ll be up there layin’ for us.”

Bo thought about it for a moment and then asked, “Is there any way to get up to the rock without going past it and then doubling back?”

“Yeah,” Chloride said. “If you’re a—”

“Don’t say mountain goat,” Bo interrupted. “Please.”

Chloride frowned at him. “How’d you know that’s what I was gonna say?”

Bo sighed. “Because I keep having to climb, and I don’t like it much.”

“But you could climb down to Wolf Head Rock from the back side of it?” Scratch persisted.

“Maybe,” Chloride said. “With this cold and snow and the fact it’ll be gettin’ dark soon . . . I don’t know. Sounds to me like a good way to get killed.”

“There are a lot of good ways to get killed out here,” Bo said. “Do you know a shortcut that might get us there before the gang, so we can be waiting for them?”

“I can get you there, but not before the Devils. They’ve got too big a start on us.”

Scratch looked across the old-timer at Bo. “It’s gonna be dark soon. If the posse makes camp, the Devils’ll have to wait for ’em to come along in the mornin’. That’d give us time to slip in the back and maybe get those gals outta there.”

“You mean to take the women back up that rock wall you’d have to climb down?” Chloride shook his head. “You can’t do it. They’d never have a chance.”

“Then we could take the Devils by surprise while they’re waiting for the others,” Bo suggested. “We’ll hit them from behind and distract them while the rest of you gallop past, circle around on that trail, and come at them from that direction. We can cut down the odds, grab the hostages, and get them out of harm’s way while the rest of you charge up there and finish off the outlaws.”

“Yeah, that’s a mighty fine plan . . . if it works,” Chloride said.

“All plans are fine when they work,” Scratch said. “You got any better ideas, old-timer?”

Chloride squinted at him. “I ain’t gonna sink to your level and dignify that with an answer.” He looked over at Bo. “I reckon if you want to give it a try, I can show you where to go.”

Bo nodded. “Let’s talk to Manning and the others.”

He rode forward and asked the sheriff to call a halt while they discussed the plan. Manning did so, and Bo laid out the idea.

“You’ll just get Marty and Mrs. Pendleton killed,” Bardwell protested.

“That’s if you even get there,” Ramsey said. “You’ll probably fall and break your necks.”

Manning asked Chloride, “Have you ever been to the top of this Wolf Head Rock, Coleman?”

“Yeah, I been up there,” Chloride said. “The rock sticks out in front and narrows down so it looks like a wolf’s snout. There are a couple of spires, one on each side, that form the ears. Back of that is the open ground that’s at the top of the trail from down below, and back of that is an even bigger rock that forms a cliff.” He looked at Bo and Scratch. “I been thinkin’ about it. That rock sorta pooches out. You can’t climb down it. Not even a mountain goat could. You’d have to be a fly to make it.”

“How about lowering us on ropes?” Bo asked.

Chloride thought about it. “Maybe. You can’t get horses up there. You’d have to make it on foot and find places to tie the ropes. I reckon it could be done. But one slip and you’re a dead man.”

“We’re willing to take that chance.” Bo looked at Manning. “What do you think, Sheriff?”

“We don’t even know for sure they’ll be up there to try to ambush us,” Manning said.

“The Devils love to bushwhack folks,” Chloride pointed out. “They’ve done it over and over again.”

Manning thought it over and slowly nodded. “If you’re wrong, though, we’ve lost some time and let them get even farther ahead of us. That could turn out to be fatal for those women.”

“It’s a chance we have to take,” Bo said. “If the Devils wipe us out, Sue Beth and Marty are done for.”

“We can’t let that happen,” Bardwell said.

“I agree,” Ramsey added. “We have to try it, Sheriff.”

“All right,” Manning said. “The rest of us will find a place to camp, and the three of you—” He looked at Bo, Scratch, and Chloride.

“We’d better get goin’,” the old-timer said. “There ain’t no time to waste.”

Manning gave them a curt nod. “Just remember that more than the safety of the women depends on you. We’ll be riding past Wolf Head Rock in the morning, and if you’re not up there to hit the Devils from behind, we’ll be right in their sights. It’ll be like they’re taking target practice on us.”

“Then you’d better wish us luck,” Bo said with a faint smile.

“And a happy day after Thanksgivin’,” Scratch added, “because otherwise it’s liable to be a black Friday for all of us.”