Wanted: Sam Bass

by Paul Colt

  Where did two men go with twenty thousand in gold? Where did they go to enjoy it? Deadwood said north. No law up there either. The nearest law was two hundred sixty miles south. That made for another reason to go north. Everything pointed to Deadwood, everything except two things. A couple of men spending a good time’s worth of gold might get noticed in a place like Deadwood that had just taken a big loss. A man might also go south if he was to do the least expected thing. If they were to send a posse out of Cheyenne, heading south would have the effect of doubling back on them. If you stayed off the stage road and didn’t run smack into them, you could put a lot of miles behind them before they figured out what happened, if they ever did figure it out.

  His eyes followed the stage road back south. He noticed a break in the rocks along the east wall. He led his horse to the opening and ground tied him. Horse sign said someone had waited here. They’d waited for the stage here out of sight. Cheyenne lay off to the southwest. If it was him, what would he do? Southeast, he’d double back southeast. He collected his horse, toed a stirrup and swung down the road far enough to clear the gulch wall and left the road southeast in a lazy circle.

  Within a half hour he crossed a faint sign. He drew rein and stepped down. He prowled around a partial print, then two, then another. It wasn’t a trail a man could follow. No one could bank on a week-old trail that might lead a hundred fifty miles from here and more. That said, this trail had to be the bandits’. Anyone else headed south would follow the stage road. Why wouldn’t you, unless you were avoiding detection? They were headed south by southeast. He wasn’t about to catch them by following this trail that far. Where would two men with twenty thousand dollars in gold go? That was the question. He smiled. He had a couple of days to think that one through.

  He boarded the Cheyenne & Deadwood southbound the next day for the two-day run back to Cheyenne. He’d cover two hundred sixty miles in a day and a half. He reckoned it the fastest way to make up ground on the men he was after. He’d find them east of Cheyenne, somewhere east, but where?

  Shady Grove

  The colonel paused. His head nodded. I put down my pad and pencil. An attendant appeared at my side. She was dressed in a pale blue dress with a clean white apron. The soft form of a woman’s figure could not be denied by the severity of her uniform. She had a kind face, pert lips and short curled black hair crowned by a nurse’s cap. Her eyes were as soft as melted chocolates filled with caramel. She nodded to the colonel.

  “I believe he’s ready for his nap.”

  She sounded as soft as her caramel eyes. The colonel glanced awake.

  “She’s come to take me away. It’s the only good part of goin’.”

  She blushed.

  “Tomorrow’s Saturday, young feller. If you’ve nothing better to do, come back and I’ll tell you more of the story.”

  “I’d like that,” I said. I couldn’t help a glance at the girl. She smiled a smile fit to give the Mona Lisa mirth. “One more question before I go if I may. Do you mean to tell me that Cane deduced a week-old trail out of the robbery scene?”

  His eyes crinkled. “I knew a lot about Briscoe Cane when I hired him. There was a lot I didn’t know. The man saw things. He sensed things. I swear he could follow a fart in a snowstorm.” Mona Lisa blushed.

  “That and he had an uncanny capacity for devious thinking. You’ll see.”

  She wheeled him away. I watched them go. Well to be honest, I watched her hips.

  I presented myself at the reception desk the following morning. I was told to meet the colonel out on the veranda. It seemed we would spend another day in the crisp fall air. I waited, soaking up as much warmth as the sunshine promised. My fingers reddened with the chill. Mona Lisa wheeled him out to his place in the sun. I’ll admit I forgot about the cold. She smiled. I must have too. The colonel looked me up and down.

  “Came back for more I see.”

  “Good morning, Colonel. I did.”

  “I suppose you’ll want to hear more of the story in the bargain.”

  “Why yes, of course. That’s the point.”

  “Is it?”

  THREE

  Sydney, Nebraska

  Sydney made a rough and tumble base camp on the gold road to Deadwood. It sprang up to provision miners hoping to find their fortune in the Black Hills. It flourished under the protection of Camp Robinson, the army post charged with protecting the passage to Deadwood. Hostile Indians had mostly been driven north after the Custer massacre. The army presence intended to remind any that might forget that the treaty giving the tribes the Black Hills had been broken.

  The town was little more than a collection of tent tops and log construction. Valentine’s General Store and a small blacksmith shop were the only finished structures. A hand-lettered sign beside the largest tent top proclaimed Last Stop Saloon. Jake McCoy, the proprietor, intended to name the place Last Stop Before Prosperity, but he couldn’t find a signboard of suitable size for such an auspicious name. It didn’t matter. The Last Stop had whiskey, gambling and whore cribs next door.

  The evening crowd made a raucous din even with the tent sides rolled up on a pleasant evening. Kerosene lanterns hung on ropes strung between the tent poles created islands of light over the shadowy crowd. Oily black smoke, mingled with clouds of tobacco smoke trapped under the canvas top, stained the fabric a yellowish gray. A piano man in a misshapen bowler plunked out an indistinct tune that gave the place a ring familiar to saloons from Saint Louis to Sacramento.

  Bass and Collins sat at a corner table in the company of three tough-cut characters, Tom Nixon, Bill Heffridge and Jim Berry. Bass had a passing acquaintance with Nixon and knew him for the sort that might come in handy for the job he had on his mind. One he and Collins couldn’t pull off alone. He invited them for a drink.

  “So Tom, where you boys headed?”

  “Up Deadwood way.”

  “Taken to the gold business?”

  “Not diggin’ if that’s what you mean.”

  “I didn’t think so. You may be thinkin’ about the Cheyenne & Deadwood stage.”

  Nixon nodded.

  “Joel here and me know some about the Cheyenne & Deadwood stage.”

  “Do tell.” Nixon seemed to be the leader. He was more interested in Bass’s offer of a drink than his opinion of the stage business.

  “If you boys is thinkin’ about that bit of gold business, I gotta tell you there’s better ways to play the game. Joel and I been up there. Things is, shall we say, crowded. You not only gotta contend with guards on the shipment, you gotta deal with other gangs beatin’ you to the take or shootin’ you up for gettin’ to it first.”

  Nixon tossed his drink and poured another. “So if pickin’s up there is poor and troublesome, I ’spect you got a better idea.”

  “I tell you boys, if we get this right it’ll be bigger than cleanin’ out most any bank in the territory.”

  Nixon smoothed his mustache in the web between his thumb and forefinger. “Yeah? All right you got our attention. What’s the play?”

  “Eastbound shipments out of the San Francisco mint roll by train.”

  Nixon’s eyes narrowed. He leaned into the scarred tabletop, with Heffridge and Berry at each elbow. “You plannin’ on hittin’ a train?”

  “Damn right.”

  Berry tilted his chin toward Bass, a shadow of doubt in his eye. “How you gonna know which train’s carryin’ a shipment?”

  “I got a way. I’m workin’ on it now.”

  Heffridge aimed a stream of tobacco juice at a nearby spittoon. Bass hoped he was a better shot with a gun. He shifted the chew to his right cheek.

  “What kinda guard they put on a shipment like that?”

  “Not as big as you’d think and not near big enough where we’re concerned.”

  Nixon knocked back his drink and elbowed Heffridge for the bottle. He poured another and passed it to Berry. “When you figure you’ll be ready?”

  “That depends o
n the shipping schedule. I should know in a day or two.”

  Berry knit his bushy brows. “Where you fixin’ to hit this train?”

  “At a two o’clock in the morning watering station. You boys got all the information you need. You in or out?”

  Nixon sat back. He glanced from Berry to Heffridge. He cut his eyes back to Bass. “We’re in.”

  Bass ambled down to the depot in the gloom gathering around early evening. Prairie wind threw a bouncing sage ball across the tracks as he climbed the deserted platform. The next train wasn’t due for three hours. He stepped into the passenger lounge. A rumpled bundle in a wool coat and britches stretched out snoring softly on a wooden bench. A second man sat beneath a sputtering oil lamp reading a thumb-worn Bible. Bass checked the schedule board long enough for his contact to notice him. He went back out to the platform, sidled down to the end and leaned against the wall to wait.

  Several minutes later the depot door opened. A slight silhouette appeared in the lighted doorway and disappeared with the closing. The contact glanced around until he located Bass. He shuffled down the platform. Little could be made of his features save the glare of low light on his spectacles and a shine on his bald pate. He paused beside Bass his eyes darting nervously.

  “Have you got it?”

  His head bobbed. “You have what we agreed?”

  Bass released a stack of twenty-dollar gold pieces, letting them clatter from one hand to the other in reply.

  The contact held out his hand.

  “You first.”

  “The two fifteen out of San Francisco on the eighteenth.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Sure as the Union Pacific schedule.”

  Bass let ten twenty-dollar gold pieces clatter into the telegrapher’s outstretched hand.

  Nebraska

  Two days east of Cheyenne Cane struck a creek. It meandered out of the northwest slow and muddy, winding its way southeast through rolling hills of prairie grass burnished golden brown by the late-summer sun. He drew rein and let his long striding gray gelding Smoke have his head to drink. Water. If they passed this way they’d stop at least to water the horses, maybe even camp. It fit the general direction he figured they were on. This was one of those cases where either he was right, or it didn’t matter. Smoke lifted his head and blew his nose. He reckoned to follow the stream as long as it suited his purpose. He couldn’t be any more wrong and maybe, just maybe he’d catch a break.

  Hours passed through midday. The streambed showed no trail sign. As the sun began to sink toward the western horizon he spotted a place along the north bank. Stone gathered to bed a fire. He drew rein and stepped down to examine the bank. His boots crunched the stony bank as he examined the site. Sunlight glittered yellow on the surface of muddy water.

  The sound was more hiss than rattle, though instantly recognizable for the jolt that grabbed a man’s gut on hearing it. Smoke bolted. The frightened animal shrieked, reared and backed up the bank pawing the air, its nostrils flared.

  The snake coiled on the rocky bank, too close to rule out a strike. Cane froze. The snake’s eyes glittered. Its tongue flicked at the air tasting the scent of him. As luck had it, his body blocked the snake’s view of his right hand. He eased it up to the Bull Dog’s smooth ivory grips. He eased the hammer back, estimating the distance the snake might reach in a strike. He drew, stepped back and fired in one lightning-like motion. His shot missed the rattling coil, exploding in a sharp spray of stone chips. The snake lashed out, falling just short of his boot. He fired again. The shot nicked a long diamond marking behind the head. The snake recoiled. A third shot cut the coiled mass in half. Powder smoke drifted away. He let out his breath with it.

  That was close. He holstered his gun. Smoke stood up the creek bank, ears pulled back, eyes wide, nostrils flared, his powerful chest heaving. Cane started toward the terrified animal slowly. “Easy now.” The gray tossed his head and stomped nervously. A quiver of tension rippled his withers. Cane stroked his neck, gentling his nerves as he gathered his reins. He led him back down to the creek and let him settle. When the horse was quietly cropping river grass, he left him and circled the area around the fire sign.

  It was a campsite all right. He found sign of one or two horses hobbled to graze. The sign he read to be a week or more old. That could be about right. If this was their trail where did they go from here? He waded across the creek and walked the south bank. A faint trail of crushed sage and partial hoofprints whispered a southerly direction. Nothing new, though it served to agree with his working deduction. Where do two men with pockets full of gold go from here? He’d posed that question before. This time his working theory suggested an answer. By his reckoning he was a day’s ride from Sydney, Nebraska. Sydney was an established stop on the gold road to Deadwood. It made sense. Just the sort of town a man with money might go to have a good time.

  He pitched camp and spent the night, growing a powerful hunch he was on the right track. Next morning he toed a stirrup, swung into the saddle and nudged Smoke into the stream. At the far bank he eased him south.

  Julesburg, Colorado

  Julesburg sat on the north bank of the South Platte River, south of the Union Pacific rail line. A dilapidated depot, platform, privy and watering station made up the last comfort stop before the roll into Cheyenne. The town consisted of a ramshackle collection of adobe houses, a stable, stores and saloons. Once an end-of-track boomtown on the road to Denver, Julesburg missed its ticket to wealth and prosperity when Grenville Dodge took the Union Pacific line north to Cheyenne. A Denver spur and a small stockyard, serving western Nebraska and northeastern Colorado, eventually provided some commercial enterprise, though little more than a hollow echo of the once great promise.

  Bass, Collins and the boys rode out of a shimmering expanse of Nebraska plain on a hot dusty afternoon. Bass drew rein northwest of the depot. Prairie wind whipped out of the west, hurling sage balls before it chased by sheets of sand and dust.

  Heffridge spat a stream of tobacco juice into the dried sage at his horse’s hoof. Berry wiped his parched lips with the back of his hand. He unfastened the canteen tied to the cantle of his saddle, pulled the cork and took a swallow.

  Nixon slacked his reins, resting a gloved hand on the saddle horn. “Sure don’t look like much.”

  Bass’s blue roan stomped and shifted hip-shot. “That’s the point. This here’s the nearest town and there ain’t no law. The nearest law’s in Cheyenne. We’ll hit that train and be long gone before anybody knows what happened.” He squeezed up a jog toward the west end of town.

  He pulled them down to a walk as they approached the depot, preparing to cross the tracks. The depot looked to be a one-room, rough-cut log construction. A plank platform ran along the building trackside. The watering station with its rusted filling trough stood west of the depot, deserted stock pens and loading chutes stood off to the east. A careful observer might have recognized the dark-eyed stranger’s interest in the depot for something more than casual. No one did.

  Up close Julesburg looked more threadbare than it had from a distance. The few log and rough-cut wood buildings scattered among the adobe offered a spectacle of disrepair. A paint drummer might have done a good business in town if there were any cash money for such purposes. Bass drew rein at the hitch rack out front of the first saloon they came to. A badly weathered hand-lettered sign proclaimed it the Rusty Spike. Somebody had a sense of humor. He stepped down.

  “Joel, you and Heffridge head over to that general store yonder.” He pointed down the block and across the dusty ruts that passed for a street. “We’re gonna need trail supplies when this is over. We’ll be splittin’ up so buy sharp. Meet us back here when you’re done.”

  Collins started to protest. Why should he have to wait his thirst on something the new men could do? A second look from Bass put up the thought. Things were testy with him since Deadwood. He looped a rein over the splintered rack rail and stalked off down the street
, trailing the lumbering Heffridge behind.

  Bass clumped the boardwalk, followed by Nixon and Berry. Inside he paused to let his eyes adjust to the dim light able to make its way through the dirt-streaked windows. Familiar smells of stale beer, tobacco smoke and sawdust resolved into a thirst. He headed for a corner table, signaling the bartender in a soiled apron for a bottle and glasses. Chairs scraped rough floor planks. Burns from carelessly placed smokes scarred the cracked tabletop. The bartender arrived with a bottle and glasses. Bass tossed an eagle on the table. “We’re expectin’ a couple more.” The bartender scooped up the coin and left them.

  Nixon poured. He picked up his glass. His eyes cut to Bass. “So how do you see it?”

  “Pretty simple I reckon. We ride out to Big Springs and take over the station an hour or so before she’s due in. One of us replaces the stationmaster. That way we get close enough to get a drop on the engineer. The shipment will be in the mail car.”

  “What about guards?”

  Bass shrugged. “Pinkerton, two of ’em most likely. They’ll take a privy break. We take out the first one and jump the second in the mail car.”

  “So far no noise if we’re lucky.”

  “Likely they ship in a safe or strongbox. Cain’t help the noise for that. Afterward we divide the gold and split up. We use the river to cover our tracks.”

  “You got it all figured out, ain’t ya Bass?”