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“Do you believe Joshua’s threat?” Murphy asked after they’d been riding along for an hour.
“As Caldwell kept reminding me, I don’t know these people,” Lincoln said and then gestured at the trailing rider. “So do you reckon Joshua is as uncompromising as the sheriff seems to think he is?”
Murphy shrugged. “I’ve never had no reason to speak to him before, and I never saw him harass the women in the Lucky Horseshoe saloon. In fact, I reckon they enjoyed talking to him.”
“Did you gather that from your friend, Mary?”
“I did.” Murphy frowned. “She really was my friend and she didn’t do what you think she did. She was a bartender, nothing more.”
“I’m not making no judgments on anyone. I’m just heading north in the hope that I can find a missing woman, and hopefully that’ll help me work out if other women have gone missing, too.”
Murphy sighed. “All these disappearances have to be connected, don’t they?”
“They don’t. The women and their circumstances are all different. Salvadora was a saloon-girl who ended up living with Aaron, while Mary tended bar and Chastity dallied with passing prospectors.”
“Except there’s a connection with the Lucky Horseshoe saloon. Joshua and Chastity stood outside the saloon berating people as they went in about the evils of liquor, and then berating them when they left about the evils of looking for gold. Except his daughter wasn’t as enthusiastic about the message as he was.”
Lincoln nodded. “Maybe if Caldwell hadn’t stopped me from talking to Meredith I’d have learned if his saloon was important, but luckily from now on I can investigate in places where Caldwell can’t intervene.”
Murphy nodded. “My orders are to make sure you leave. Beyond that, I won’t stop you questioning anyone and I won’t tell Caldwell what you’ve done.”
Lincoln smiled, accepting he was unlikely to get any trouble from Murphy, which he couldn’t say about his other companion. So Lincoln slowed to ensure that Joshua rode with them, but he didn’t acknowledge them.
“Have you got any ideas where I should start looking?” Lincoln asked.
“The prospectors never listened to my message,” Joshua said after riding along in silence for a while. “They would have chosen the wrong path.”
“What about your daughter?” He waited, but Joshua didn’t reply. “Were there any prospectors Chastity was especially friendly with?”
Joshua sneered. “They were all the same, godless and heading for Hell’s Gate.”
After Joshua’s longest speech since they’d left Russell Creek, he set his jaw firm. Then, with a crack of the reins, he hurried his horse on to take the lead.
“So I guess he doesn’t know anything either,” Murphy said, making Lincoln smile.
“Except for the direction I have to take,” Lincoln said. “It seems I’ll have to follow the prospectors to the very gates of hell.”
With that thought they rode on quietly for the rest of the day. Even when they made camp that night and sat around a roaring fire, Joshua didn’t join them in conversation, preferring to sit on his own and read his Bible.
His somber attitude appeared to affect Murphy as he withdrew into himself. So when they rode on the next day, aside from the occasional brief word to discuss the route ahead, the journey was silent.
The higher ground that they were heading toward appeared no nearer than it had done in Russell Creek, making Lincoln revise his opinion on when he could begin his search in earnest. He figured he wouldn’t come across people for several days so he had settled into the dull routine of the long journey when two riders appeared.
The riders were a half-mile ahead and the same distance to their left. They were moving on a course that skirted along the base of a higher stretch of land, adopting a route that would pass by them.
Lincoln got his companions’ attention and then pointed, making Murphy smile at this change in routine while Joshua didn’t react. They were riding on open ground and the moment they set off toward the newcomers it became apparent that the riders had spotted them first, as they stopped and turned to them.
The men adopted defensive postures with the high ground at their backs while spreading apart so they could flee in either direction. Lincoln reckoned there was nothing wrong with these men being cautious. They were heading back from the Scorched Land, so they were prospectors and they had probably been lucky.
“You men have nothing to fear,” Lincoln shouted when they were still fifty yards away. “I just want to ask you a few questions.”
He had barely finished his encouraging words when the men turned away and scooted back along the route they’d taken.
“Perhaps you should have mentioned that we were lawmen,” Murphy said.
“If I had, they’re so spooked, they’d have probably started shooting.” Lincoln sped up. “Come on. Let’s find out what’s worried them.”
By the time they reached the spot where the men had stopped, the riders were galloping around the end of the rise to disappear from view. With Lincoln leading they followed. Murphy tucked in behind him and Joshua adopted a steadier pace that ensured that he soon fell behind.
When they swung around the end of the rise, they faced the entrance to a gulch. High ground was on either side and the men were no longer visible, so they were forced to adopt a cautious pace.
Lincoln and Murphy spread apart to take either side of the entrance, but they still failed to locate the men. As the end of the gulch was steep, they would show themselves if they tried to leave using a route other than the entrance.
So Lincoln stopped and gestured to Murphy that they should get under cover and wait them out. Murphy signified a tangle of boulders twenty yards ahead and then set off for them, leaving Lincoln to cross over the gulch toward him.
He had reached the halfway point when gunfire erupted, forcing him to speed up. Without mishap he joined Murphy at a gallop and both men jumped down off their horses. Then, with their heads down, they moved on to the boulder farthest out into the gulch.
There, they hunkered down and faced the higher ground, but the men still didn’t betray their location. A tense few minutes passed, and then Joshua rode through the entrance. Lincoln gestured, urging him to seek cover, but Joshua continued riding along at the same slow pace.
In exasperation Lincoln beckoned him on, but another burst of gunfire tore out, the reports and their echoes rattling away on either side. He stayed close to the boulder, only raising his head when the gunfire died out, but again there was no gunsmoke, or rising dust that might indicate where the shooters were hiding.
“This sure is frustrating,” Murphy said while shaking his head. “I can’t even work out which side of the gulch they’re on.”
“We might get a chance, if Joshua carries on giving them something to aim at,” Lincoln said.
He gestured again at Joshua, who drew his horse to a halt. Then he leaned forward in the saddle as if he were contemplating the fact that there was no route available out of the gulch rather than that he was avoiding the gunfire.
Then, with a wince, Lincoln acknowledged that Joshua might not be acting as foolishly as he’d first thought. Testing a theory, he raised his head and when that didn’t encourage gunfire, he stood up.
Murphy backed his theory and he joined him in standing up. Then the two men moved into the open and turned on the spot.
“If we weren’t the targets, was it those riders?” Murphy said when a minute had passed without reprisals.
Lincoln shrugged and then they moved on down the gulch on foot. They walked sideways with their backs to each other so they could cover each other, revealing that Joshua was facing the gulch on his side.
He got Murphy’s attention and a few moments later Murphy pointed out a clearing ahead. Shadows were moving and they were large enough to be the men’s horses, an observation he confirmed when the full extent of the clearing came into sight.
As the horses were alone, he directed Murphy to stay in the clearing and then made his way up the side of the gulch. He moved quickly, now sure that he’d previously misunderstood the situation.
Sure enough, when he came across the two men, they weren’t moving. One man had a bloodied chest and was lying on his back and the other man was sprawled over a boulder face down with his arms dangling.
Lincoln sighed, noting that finding gold was only half the battle for prospectors. They then had to protect whatever they’d found. The rim of the gulch afforded a good view of this position, so he gestured down at Murphy and then at the higher ground, and the deputy showed he’d understood his order when he aimed at the top of the gulch.
Lincoln moved on, clambering up to the rim without incident, and then hurried over the flat top with his head down. When lower terrain came into view, dust was rising from riders beating a hasty retreat.
They were already some distance away and Lincoln couldn’t discern how many were fleeing, but he judged that there were at least six of them. He shrugged in surprise that they hadn’t stayed, as they hadn’t had enough time to get to the prospectors’ belongings and with their superior numbers they should have expected to prevail against Lincoln and Murphy.
When he’d dragged the two men back down into the gulch, Murphy confirmed that the men’s belongings appeared intact. Even stranger, he couldn’t find any gold in their saddlebags. The only items they had that were worth stealing were their surprisingly bulky supplies.
“So they’re loaded down with the tools you’d expect prospectors to have,” Lincoln said, summing up the situation, “and they were heading back from the Scorched Land. They had no gold, but they did have supplies.”
“So they must have given up searching quickly,” Murphy said. “As someone followed them and killed them, I’d guess they made enemies.”
“I’d guess that, too.” Lincoln gave Murphy an approving slap on the shoulder and then turned to Joshua, who had ridden into the clearing, but had stayed on his horse. “I’d be obliged if you’d help me find somewhere to bury these men.”
Joshua snorted. “That won’t help them now. They sought to enter hell, and that’s what they got.”
Murphy broke off from rummaging through the saddlebags to give a bemused look and then turned to Lincoln.
“I’ll help you, but what do we do then?” he said. “Find out where the dead men came from, or go after their killers?”
Lincoln smiled, noting how this incident had changed his view on both his companions. For all his sullen brooding and righteous pronouncements, Joshua had understood this situation quicker than he had. For his part, Murphy had proved he was more astute and proficient than he’d expected from a man who Sheriff Caldwell only trusted to sweep out the law office.
“The killers know this area better than we do and we’ll struggle to track them down,” Lincoln said. “So we’ll follow the prospectors’ trail back to where they came from and find out what they did to get shot up.”