Sidewinders

by William W. Johnstone

  “I don’t know! Everybody hold on for a minute!”

  Keeping a tight grip on the reins, he swung down from the saddle and walked forward, taking each step slowly and carefully. After a couple of strides, when his booted foot came down it didn’t find anything except empty air. Quickly, Bo backed up a step.

  He handed his reins to Scratch, then reached into his coat to fish out a match. He cupped the lucifer in his hands and struck it with a flick of his thumbnail, but the wind snatched out the flame immediately. Muttering to himself, Bo got another match and tried again.

  It took three tries before he was able to get a match to stay lit long enough for him to see anything. But that time the feeble glow revealed a snowy brink with black nothingness beyond it.

  “We almost rode off a cliff,” Bo reported to the others. He felt his heart sink as he continued. “We can’t go on! It’s too dangerous! We’ll wind up falling into a canyon or a ravine!”

  “What should we do?” Gustaffson asked, lifting his voice to be heard over the icy wind.

  “Find a place to camp, maybe where we can build a fire and thaw out a little!”

  “But what about the Devils and that bank robbery?”

  Bo hated to say it, but the weather left them with no choice.

  “I reckon the people of Deadwood are on their own.”

  CHAPTER 21

  Finding a suitable place to camp wasn’t easy. Bo led the way on foot now, with Scratch’s lasso tied around his chest under his arms in case he fell. He made his way carefully, sliding his feet along the ground through the snow. The flakes stung his face, and he knew that he and the other men risked frostbite on any exposed skin.

  After an unknowable time, Bo bumped into something hard and unyielding. He tipped his head back and saw something dark looming over him. Resting his gloved hands on the surface, he explored it until he was convinced it was a huge slab of rock. If they could get on the side of the rock where it blocked the wind, they might be able to build a fire and thaw out a little.

  Bo worked his way along the rock. For all he knew, it was a cliff that ran for miles. But luck was with him, and after only a few yards he felt the surface curving under his hands. He followed it, and gradually the wind died down as the rock blocked the icy gusts. Bo kept moving until he couldn’t feel the wind at all. He tugged on the rope to signal Scratch that the rest of the group should follow him.

  Moments later, Scratch and the troopers arrived. Bo was already feeling around, searching for something that would burn. He found some brush and broke off a few of the bare branches. Huddling next to the rock, he arranged the branches. Scratch gave him a sheet of newspaper. The Texans always carried a few old newspapers in their saddlebags to use for kindling. Bo tore the sheet into strips, piled them under the branches, and struck a match. Blocked by the rock, the wind didn’t blow out the flame. A welcome glow rose, bringing with it a little heat, as the kindling caught. After a moment the branches began to burn as well.

  Bo worked patiently with the fire until he had a nice little blaze going. The men crowded around it and held out half-frozen hands. The face of the rock slab leaned out a little, which helped to trap and reflect the heat onto the men.

  “My teeth were chatterin’ so bad, I thought they were gonna wear themselves down to little nubs,” Scratch said. “Feel a mite better now.”

  “We lost a lot of our supplies in that avalanche,” Gustaffson said, “but I think we have some coffee and jerky left.”

  “Sounds good,” Bo said.

  Half an hour later, after drinking some hot coffee and gnawing on strips of jerky, the men felt considerably better. They hunkered around the fire, which Bo kept going by judiciously feeding branches into the flames.

  Now that they weren’t in immediate danger of falling off a cliff or freezing to death, Gustaffson scowled and said, “I sure wish we could’ve made it back to Deadwood in time to stop that robbery.”

  “So do I,” Bo said, “but I’ve been thinking. The Devils left the loot from their other robberies in that cabin Scratch and I found. I heard their leader say that they’re going back there to collect the rest of the gold before they leave this part of the country. We’re between them and that loot.”

  “Son of a gun!” Scratch said. “You’re right, Bo. Maybe we can ambush them for a change.”

  “That’s what I was thinking.”

  Gustaffson nodded. “It’s a good idea. By then they’ll think they’re free and clear. They won’t be expecting us to be waiting for them. I say we do it.”

  “We’ll have to wait for morning, so we can see where we are. There’s no telling where we wandered during that storm. We’ll need to find the canyon where the hideout is.”

  “Shouldn’t be too far off,” Scratch said. “It seemed like we slogged a long way, but I don’t reckon we really covered all that much ground.”

  “That’s what I think, too,” Bo agreed. “For now, we need to get some rest. Scratch, you and I will take turns standing guard.”

  Gustaffson said, “Some of us could do that.”

  Bo shook his head. He thought it was highly unlikely any of the outlaws would be coming back this way tonight, but it didn’t pay to take chances. Somebody had to keep the fire going, too. He didn’t figure it was a good idea to trust their safety to a bunch of young, inexperienced cavalrymen.

  “That’s all right, we’re used to it,” Bo said. “You and your men get some sleep if you can, Sergeant.”

  He could tell that Gustaffson knew what he was thinking. The non-com nodded and said, “All right, but if you need somebody to lend a hand, wake me up. I don’t mind.”

  “I might do that,” Bo said.

  The troopers rolled up in their blankets. So did Scratch, as Bo stood the first watch. As he knelt next to the fire and fed branches and twigs into it, he was careful not to look directly into the flames. That ruined a man’s night vision quicker than anything. Instead he peered off into the snowy night.

  The leader of the Devils had mentioned their boss, and Bo couldn’t help but wonder who that was. Lawrence Nicholson? Reese Bardwell? Someone else he hadn’t even thought of? Who else in Deadwood had a reason to strike at the mines using the Devils?

  Anybody who wanted to collect a fortune in gold, of course. That was the simplest and most likely answer. But something stirred in the back of Bo’s mind, something he had seen or heard that might mean something, even though he couldn’t figure out what it was.

  After a while he put those thoughts out of his mind without coming up with any answers. It was too cold to think, he told himself with a faint smile. His brain just didn’t want to work in this weather. Instead he concentrated on keeping the fire going and listening for the sounds of anyone approaching the camp. It was hard to hear with the wind blowing like that, of course, but depending on what direction somebody was coming from, it might also carry the sound of hoofbeats to him.

  That didn’t happen. There was just the wind and the snow and the cold, and as Bo hunkered there next to the fire, he felt like he and his companions were the last living souls in a vast, icy wasteland.

  The wind died down sometime during the night, and the snow stopped, too. The sky was still overcast the next morning, but it lightened enough with dawn to reveal that the storm had dumped about a foot of snow on the Black Hills. Certainly not a great amount for this area, where the drifts could be twenty feet deep at times, but it was early in the season for such a snowfall.

  There was something Bo had forgotten, too, but Scratch reminded him of it. When Scratch nudged Bo’s shoulder to wake him, he said, “Happy Thanksgivin’ .”

  Bo sat up and yawned. “You’re right. It is Thanksgiving, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, and I’d sure be givin’ thanks right now if I was back in Deadwood gnawin’ on a drumstick from a big ol’ turkey Sue Beth cooked.”

  “Deadwood,” Bo muttered. The Devils would be there by now. They might even be robbing the bank at this very moment. It wou
ldn’t matter to them that the bank wasn’t open on a holiday like this. They would kick down the door anyway and probably blow the vault open with dynamite. The citizens of Deadwood probably wouldn’t have much to be thankful for this morning.

  The men had a skimpy breakfast of coffee and jerky, then Bo, Scratch, and Gustaffson held another council of war. “We need to backtrack,” Gustaffson suggested. “That ought to take us to the hideout.”

  “That won’t be as easy as it sounds,” Bo pointed out. “The wind blotted out all our tracks, and the snow’s covered up some of the landmarks. We know the right general direction, though, so we can head that way.”

  “And at least we’ll be able to see well enough we won’t have to worry about fallin’ off a cliff,” Scratch added.

  They gave the horses a little grain from the supply carried by the troopers in their saddlebags and melted some snow in the coffeepot so the animals could drink. Then it was time to saddle up and see if they could find a good place to ambush the gang when the Devils came back this way to retrieve the rest of their loot.

  If they hadn’t been facing a deadly shootout with a gang of killers and thieves, it would have been easier to appreciate the snow-covered beauty of the rugged terrain around them. The dark, pine-covered hills provided a vivid contrast to the sweeping vistas of snow. Growing up in Texas, Bo and Scratch had seldom seen sights like this, and even though in their years of wandering they had looked out over many snow-covered landscapes, they were still impressed by the spectacular scenery.

  “Don’t get me wrong,” Scratch said. “I’d still rather be in Mexico or some other warm place right now, but this ain’t bad, Bo.”

  “No, it’s not,” Bo agreed. “You can see why the Sioux believe these hills are a sacred place. It’s sort of a shame folks ever found gold up here.”

  “The hills will still be here when the gold is gone,” Gustaffson put in. “They may even be here when all the people are gone. We’ll never know.”

  Scratch looked over at the sergeant. “Sorta philosophical for an old three-striper, ain’t you, Sarge?”

  Gustaffson scowled. “You figure I never think about anything except the army?”

  “No offense meant,” Scratch said with a grin. Bo interrupted the exchange by pointing and asking, “Do those twin pines on that knob look familiar?”

  “I think so,” Scratch replied. “Did we see ’em when we were tryin’ to follow the gang yesterday?”

  “That’s what I’m thinking.” Bo turned slowly from side to side in the saddle, studying the countryside around them. He pointed again, this time to the left. “I think the canyon where the hideout is should be over that way.”

  “Let’s take a look,” Scratch suggested.

  About a quarter of an hour later, Bo spotted a thin tendril of smoke climbing into the sky ahead of them. Scratch saw it at the same time and said, “I’ll bet that’s comin’ from the chimney of that old cabin.”

  “I won’t take that bet,” Bo said. “I think you’re right. That gives us something to aim for.”

  The ten men headed for the smoke. As they drew closer, Scratch said, “The fella they left behind to get the gold ready to go probably found that dead hombre by now.”

  Bo nodded. “Yeah, when Lowell didn’t show up from guard duty this morning, I’m sure the other man went looking for him. So he knows by now that something’s wrong.”

  “It’d be a good idea to get our hands on him so he can’t warn the rest of the bunch.”

  “That’s just what I was thinking,” Bo said.

  Gustaffson asked, “How would it be if we forted up in that cabin you told me about? We could hide the horses and make it look like everything was normal, and the Devils would come riding right up to it. They’ll want the rest of that gold.”

  Bo thought about it and nodded. “That’s not a bad idea. We don’t want to put everybody inside the cabin, though. Unless we got all of the outlaws on the first try, they could bottle us up in there. It would be better if we had a couple of men in the cabin and the rest up here on the ridge. There are plenty of rocks to provide cover.”

  “That sounds like it could work,” Gustaffson said. “God rest the lieutenant’s soul, but I don’t reckon he knew near as much about tactics as he thought he did.”

  Scratch said, “The only way you live through as many fights as Bo and me have is to learn a few things along the way. Either that, or be the luckiest hombres on the face of the earth.”

  “A little of both isn’t bad,” Bo added with a smile.

  They reined in and dismounted a hundred yards from the edge of the canyon. The Texans and Gustaffson went forward on foot while the rest of the troopers stayed with the horses. The body of Lowell, the unlucky guard, was gone, indicating that the other man left behind had found it, although it was possible that wolves could have dragged it off. There was no sign of that, however.

  “The fella’s gonna know something’s wrong,” Scratch said. “He’ll be ready for trouble. Might be keepin’ an eye on the trail through a chink in the wall right now.”

  “That’s why we’re not going down that ledge,” Bo said. “You feel like climbing down a rope again?”

  Scratch grinned. “Sure. We’ll come up behind the cabin?”

  “That’s what I had in mind.”

  “What do you need me to do?” Gustaffson asked.

  “Wait for Scratch and me to give you the all-clear,” Bo said. When Gustaffson scowled, Bo went on. “I know you want to be in the middle of this, Olaf, but it’s a two-man job, at most.”

  “All right,” Gustaffson replied grudgingly. “I suppose there’ll be plenty of fighting later.”

  “I think you can count on that,” Bo said.

  They fetched Scratch’s rope from his horse and tied one end of it around the trunk of a scrub pine growing fairly close to the edge of the canyon. When Scratch dropped the rest of the lariat over the edge, it fell to within a few feet of the canyon floor. He looked at Bo and asked, “You ready?”

  “Yeah. Who’s going first?”

  In answer to that, Scratch grasped the rope, sat down on the edge, and turned to lower himself over the brink. He dropped out of sight as he went down the rope hand over hand.

  “Keep an eye on that lasso,” Bo told Gustaffson. “We don’t want it starting to fray where it goes over the edge.”

  “I’ll watch it,” the non-com promised.

  Bo looked over the edge and watched Scratch make the descent. As soon as the silver-haired Texan’s feet were back on the ground, Bo swung himself over the brink and started down. He had never been overly fond of heights and wondered why in blazes he had to be climbing up and down rock walls and ropes all of a sudden like some sort of ape. He didn’t like heights, and he didn’t like boats, either. Solid ground, that was what he wanted under his feet.

  It didn’t take long to lower himself to the canyon floor. Scratch waited behind a rock with both of his Remingtons drawn. Bo pulled in a deep breath to steady his nerves and drew his Colt from its holster.

  “Let’s go,” he said quietly.

  They trotted across the snowy ground toward the cabin. They were behind the old shack and there were no windows on this side, but the outlaw inside might still catch a glimpse of them through gaps between the logs.

  Half a dozen horses were in the corral next to the cabin. Two of them would belong to Lowell and the other man, and the others were probably spare mounts. The Texans were about twenty feet from the cabin when Bo noticed that one of the horses was already saddled, and a couple of others had heavy-looking packs slung over their backs. Instantly, Bo knew what that meant.

  Spooked by Lowell’s death, the outlaw who’d been left behind was running out on the Devils, and he was double-crossing them and taking as much of the loot as he could carry, too.

  That thought had just gone through Bo’s mind when the man stepped around the front corner of the cabin, staggering a little under the weight of the pack full of gold bar
s he was carrying. He started toward the corral gate but stopped short at the sight of the Texans.

  “Hold it!” Bo shouted.

  The outlaw ignored the command. Instead he dropped the pack at his feet and sent his hand stabbing toward the gun on his hip.

  CHAPTER 22

  That wasn’t a smart thing to do.

  The outlaw had barely cleared leather when Bo and Scratch both fired. The Texans hadn’t hesitated because they had any doubts about what needed to be done. This man was part of a gang that had murdered, stolen, and terrorized an entire region. Plain and simple, he deserved to die.

  But he deserved to die with a gun in his hand.

  Two slugs from Scratch’s Remingtons and a round from Bo’s Colt punched into the man’s chest. The impact lifted him and threw him backward. His revolver went spinning out of his fingers unfired. It thudded to the ground at the same time he did. One leg jerked and kicked and his back arched as blood spouted from the holes in his chest. The blood diminished to trickles as the outlaw sagged and went still. Death had finished claiming him.

  “Well, we were probably gonna have to kill him anyway,” Scratch said into the silence that descended on the canyon as the echoes of the shots died away.

  “Yeah,” Bo said. “He made sure of it.”

  The gunfire had spooked the horses in the corral. They milled around nervously. Bo went on. “We can let them calm down, then we’ll need to get that gold off of them. We don’t want the others riding up and suspecting that something’s wrong.”

  Scratch picked up the dead outlaw’s gun and tucked it inside his coat, behind his belt. “I’ll bet Olaf ’s lookin’ down from up yonder and worryin’ about those shots. Better let him know that everything’s all right.”

  Bo nodded and moved out into the middle of the canyon where Gustaffson couldn’t help but see him. He took his hat off and waved it over his head, then motioned for the sergeant and the rest of the troopers to come on down the trail that followed the ledge.