When Harry Brandon stepped into the brush fringing the rocky plateau, he paused and looked back. Starbuck and the drunk were moving up to where they could see the coulee where Ollie Kastman and Snow were waiting. They had a moment’s conversation and then Starbuck fired his pistol, drawing reply from the rifles below.
Brandon grinned, bobbed his head in satisfaction. So far his plan had worked perfectly except for that one little error—his putting a bullet in Charlie Cole and killing him. That hadn’t been just exactly the way he’d set it up, but he guessed it didn’t matter; it all worked out to the same end.
Moving on, he began to pick his route down the steep slope. Within a dozen strides he was soaking wet from the waterlogged brush and the still dripping trees, but he gave it no thought. Soon it would all be behind him. He’d be a rich man, taking it easy, enjoying life.
Abruptly his feet went out from under him as he trod upon an unusually slippery patch of soil. He went down hard, jarring a curse from his lips, but he was unhurt, only thoroughly muddied, and he quickly resumed the descent.
He’d fooled them all—the town, the mining company, the posse, and he was about to top it off by outsmarting his own partners. No one would ever know what really had happened there in the rocks and the coulee they overlooked, and while the search party that would eventually come upon the scene was trying to puzzle it out, he’d be somewhere deep in Mexico soaking up sunshine, rolling in luxury and living the sort of life he’d often dreamed of but had entertained small hope of ever achieving.
Halting to catch his breath, he steadied himself against a juniper. Gunshots racketed again across the slope. The sound revived the smile on his lips and, pleased, he spent a few moments smoothing his heavy mustache. Starbuck and Gilder were following his orders to the letter, and Kastman and Ben Snow were shooting back just as he’d instructed them to do.
He continued on, mind turning now to the past. He’d had plans then, too, big plans to make something of his life, of stepping up from a lowly town marshal in a place such as Wolf Crossing to a position of wearing the badge in a larger settlement.
From there he would go on to take over the star in an even larger town, become a sheriff with power reaching throughout an entire county. And then it would be a U.S. Marshal’s job and he’d be a federal officer.
But it hadn’t worked out that way, and piece by piece, he’d lost the dream. He could never seem to rise above the little one-horse dumps like Wolf Crossing and take that first, long step up to a bigger, more important position.
Then one day he realized it was too late. He’d become too old and deep inside him was a voice saying that he wasn’t good enough anymore to do the job that even a small town expected.
Harry Brandon had made up his mind at that point; he couldn’t reach the goal he’d set for himself, no matter how hard he tried, by doing it one way, so he’d turn his efforts toward attaining it in another. The opportunity presented itself not too long after he had come to that decision.
Word had come to him privately from the Paradise Mine authorities of a special shipment of gold being transported secretly to Dodge City by four men who would be posing as engineers; he, as a lawman, was asked to see to any needs they might develop.
He’d seen to needs, all right—his own. He’d sent word to Dodge, where he knew Ollie Kastman was dealing faro in one of the saloons, instructed him to recruit two or three dependable partners and meet him at a deserted cabin not far out of Wolf Crossing. Ollie had been a shotgun rider for one of the stage coach lines and more or less understood the problems and drawbacks of packing a star, only he’d been smart enough to chuck it all and take up a more lucrative way of making a living.
Kastman had shown up with two friends, as directed, and he’d outlined his plan, it being that they were to ambush the four supposed engineers, relieve them of the gold and flee southward on the trail that cut through the mountains. To make it look good and to circumvent the entry of any outside law forces, he would follow with a small posse, lead them into a second ambush, after which the four of them would split the gold and go their separate ways.
They would have plenty of time to make an escape because it would likely be a week, perhaps even two, before someone finally decided to organize a search party and go looking for the posse.
Everything worked out just as he’d planned, even to the posse. The town had played right into his hands; he’d asked for help, and feeling as they did about him and the Paradise Mine people, they’d turned their backs on him and there’d been no volunteers except the black man, the greenhorn and Dave Gilder, who’d do anything for the price of a drink.
At that point he’d acted on a hunch. The three who had agreed to ride with him weren’t impressive enough; he needed someone in the party with a little higher standing. Starbuck, who had the look of a gunslinger and the manner of a straight-down-the-line sort of U.S. Marshal he’d once hoped to be, came drifting into town at that moment and he’d persuaded him to join up.
But now he was thinking that could be his one mistake. Starbuck was pretty much living up to the impression he gave. He was no ordinary saddlebum and he wasn’t going to be fooled easily, but so far he’d posed no big problem. There’d been some opposition on his part, none of which was serious—and in a few more minutes it wouldn’t make any difference. He’d be dead just like all the others.
Two down and two to go—insofar as the posse was concerned. The nigra had been cut down by Kastman and Snow when held tried to cross the ridge—no thanks to Starbuck. And too bad it hadn’t been him, but he was too smart to fall for that order. It would have been comforting to get the tall rider out of the way.
And that damned fool greenhorn, as loco as they get for some reason, had obliged by trying to reach the black and drag him off the ridge—thus there were only Gilder and Starbuck to account for. Gilder would be a cinch, but Starbuck—
Brandon halted again, once more listened to a rattling exchange of gunshots. He was fairly near the coulee now, judging from the sound of the outlaws’ rifles ... Outlaws ... He sleeved away the water dashed onto his face by swinging branches and reckoned he belonged in that category. But what the hell, better to be a rich, fat outlaw than an old, worn-out lawman that nobody cared a rap about.
He pushed on, moving with greater care, endeavoring to make his approach as quiet as possible. Kastman and Snow were expecting him, after which the idea was for him to signal down whatever remained of the posse—in this case Starbuck and Gilder—with the word that he had captured the outlaws and they were his prisoners.
They would all wait quietly there in the coulee until Starbuck and Dave Gilder, coming down the slope, got in range and then he and his partners would open up on them. That would mark the end of the posse.
Days—or maybe weeks—later when the search party came upon their dead bodies, it would appear to have been a showdown fight in which the forces of the law had come out second best. The fact that Charlie Cole now would be found there also would lend credence to the affair.
As for himself, the fact that his body was missing would lead to the conclusion that he had attempted to pursue the fleeing outlaws farther and was probably killed somewhere in the vast wilderness that stretched around them. They would decide it was useless to look for his body.
That was the general plan—the one concocted by him and Kastman and the two others. But Harry Brandon had a scheme of his own.