CHAPTER 5
When Conner led his patrol back to the church the next morning, he found Donald Lewis and the three other men ready to leave. The preacher’s horses were hitched up, and the wagon was loaded with a pick and shovel as well as some food for a day or two. He hadn’t thought to offer it before, so Conner volunteered the services of his men to dig graves for the bodies of the slain Quakers. “There were some shovels and other tools packed on some of the mules,” Lewis said, “but we thought we’d bring the Reverend Bridger’s as well.”
It was a trip of about ten miles down a wagon road that led them to the farm of Adam Wylie, the farmer who took the survivors to Fort Benton after they came out of the river. As gracious as before, Wylie and his wife welcomed them back and offered to feed everyone, including the patrol of sixteen soldiers plus a scout. The offer was declined, of course, much to Mrs. Wylie’s relief, when Conner explained that they were working to save as much daylight as possible for their investigation. Thinking Mr. Wylie probably had a better idea how far the Quakers had walked from the river, Hawk asked him the distance and was told about three quarters of a mile. “We’re closer to the river than that,” Wylie said, “but they came outta the water a little farther up the river. My boy can take you to the spot.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Conner said, after an inquisitive look in Hawk’s direction. “We’ll be moving right along up the river after we rest these horses a little while. We’re just trying to get an idea of how far they drifted in the river before they got here.”
The only reason to pause there was to rest the team of horses pulling the wagon, so Hawk saw no reason to wait there, too, so he made a suggestion. “Rascal doesn’t need any rest yet, so why don’t I go on ahead of you. I can ride down along the riverbank and I might see where the massacre happened.” His point was well taken, since the terrain along the river was too rugged for the wagon. It would have to stay on the road. “If Donald was floatin’ in the water as long as he thought, I might be able to find the place it happened, then I’ll come out to the road to wait for you to catch up.” That sounded like a good plan to Conner, so Hawk stepped back up into the saddle and wheeled Rascal back toward the road. “Don’t forget to bring Frog,” he said in parting.
Back on the road, Hawk headed west, continuing on the rough wagon road for a distance he figured to be a reasonable gamble. When he came to a bend in the river that brought it within about a couple dozen yards of the road, he guided Rascal off the road and rode down along the water’s edge. It was a rough trail to ride, especially in some spots where rocks or trees extended out over the water, causing him to have to detour around them. Each time, he would get back to the water’s edge as soon as he could. After an hour or so, he determined that he had been wasting his time and tiring Rascal out needlessly. Ahead of him, the river cut through a high hill, leaving steep bluffs on each side. At the top of the bluff, he could see a large flock of buzzards circling over it. “Hell,” he said to Rascal, “I coulda seen that from the road.” He guided the buckskin up from the water and climbed the hill. When he reached the top of the hill, he suddenly pulled the gelding to a stop. “Another day or two, and I could smell it from the road,” he muttered when he discovered the grisly scene before him. The odor from the putrefying bodies caused him to pull his bandanna up to cover his mouth and nose.
He walked Rascal slowly through a grass-covered hilltop, surrounded by a thick belt of fir trees and strewn with the bodies of the late Quaker mule train. The magnitude of the vicious slaughter was beyond his belief in the depth of evil man was capable of. Adding to the revulsion of the scene was the raucous squawking of the competing vultures as they fought over the rotting feast. Riding close to the edge of the steep bluff, he could see where Donald and the others had been forced over the edge to drop fifty feet or more to the river below. He turned to look back toward the road but could see no sign of it through the thick trees. He continued to slow-walk Rascal around the circle, looking for any sign that might tell him which way the killers left the hilltop. The only obvious path was the one where the mule train had entered the circle. He followed that down the hill to the road, where he prepared to wait for Conner and the wagon to show up. There were tracks that told of the meeting between the killers and the Quaker party where they were stopped on the road, then climbed the hill on the path he had just come down. He could not understand how the patrol sent out from Fort Benton had not found the tracks he was looking at. He could only assume they had not continued their search for very long, perhaps not riding as far down the road to Great Falls as Lieutenant Sessions had said.
By his estimation, it was sometime after noon when he caught sight of the wagon rounding the bend in the road as it wound around the hill. “You find ’em?” Conner asked after he rode around the wagon and loped up ahead. Hawk held his thumb up and motioned toward the sky. Conner looked up to see the buzzards circling. “Oh,” he said, and dismounted. “Pretty bad, huh?”
“It might be pretty hard for those men in the wagon to take,” Hawk answered. “Now that we’re here, I’m wonderin’ if it was a good idea to haul those poor souls back here to see this. It ain’t just the sight of it, it’s also the smell of it. I can’t see as how they’re gonna be of any help in tellin’ us which way they went, anyway. Hell, they were pushed off a damn cliff up there. They don’t have any notion what the bastards did after that.”
“Well, they’ve been talking about feeling obligated to give their friends a decent burial,” Conner said, and looked over his shoulder at the wagon pulling up to them. “I guess we can see how they feel about it now.”
“This is the place!” Lewis exclaimed, and hopped down as the wagon rolled to a stop. “This is it, ain’t it, Corey?” The man named Corey said that it was. Lewis turned to Conner and started to explain. “They were waiting here in the middle of the road, I remember now. There were four of ’em, just sitting on their horses, waiting for us. David Booth said there was no need to fear them, he knew who they were. He rode on up ahead to talk to them. When he came back he said they told him there was a big war party of Blackfoot Indians coming this way, and we needed to ride up through the trees there to hide on top of the hill.” He paused only briefly to look at the other three men for verification, then he continued, “When we got up on the hill, they suddenly pulled their guns and one of them handed a gun belt to David. He put it on and pulled the pistol out of the holster and said if nobody did anything foolish, nobody would get hurt. Brother Adams was leading the mule carrying all our money, and he tried to run with it, and that’s when they all went crazy. They shot poor Brother Adams down, and then they all started shooting. I can’t remember much of what happened after that. There was just so much noise, the shooting and the screaming, and the next thing I knew, I was falling. When I hit the water, it musta knocked the wind outta me, ’cause I couldn’t breathe. I thought I was drowning.”
Hawk looked at the faces of Donald’s fellow survivors and he could tell they were reliving the horrible experience along with him. He nudged Conner and said softly, “I don’t know if we oughta take them up to see that scene or not.” Even as he said it, the little elf called Frog hopped down from the wagon and started up through the trees toward the top of the hill.
When Donald turned as if to start up the hill after Frog, Conner stopped him. “Mr. Lewis, I’m not sure you and your friends oughta go up that hill. Hawk, here, says it’s a pretty grim scene up there. Nothing but bodies lying everywhere, and the buzzards are already working on them.”
It was enough to cause Donald to hesitate, then turn to the other three survivors before deciding. They talked briefly, then Donald turned back to Conner. “We know it’s something we don’t really want to see, but we owe it to our friends to drive the vultures away and bury our people.” He gestured toward one of the three. “Brother James lost his wife and two sons, and he wants to bury them, himself.” So, they unhitched the horses from the wagon and Corporal Johnson detailed three of the men to take all the horses around the base of the hill to water them in the river. The rest of the party climbed up through the trees to the grisly scene at the top. The rest of the day was consumed with the work of digging deep trenches, using the few tools they’d brought with them, plus some found on the bodies of the pack mules. After battling the buzzards for what was left of the bodies of their fellow church members, they decided to let the fierce birds have the mules for their feast. Sick with grief, Brother James was unable to continue when he could not identify his wife and children after the buzzards had mutilated all the bodies. It was almost dark when the last mound was tamped down over the mass graves, and Donald gave a brief eulogy for the departed souls.
“Well, I guess that’s about all we can do up here for these poor folks,” Conner commented to Hawk. “I’m thinking I’ll have the men set up camp back down the road by that little stream we crossed on the way here, since it’s too much trouble to get to the river from here. That way, we can let the Quakers sleep in the wagon. Then we’ll go back to Fort Benton in the morning. Whatcha think?” Hawk said it was as good a plan as any, then another thought occurred to Conner. “What the hell happened to that little fellow? He just disappeared after we got up here on the hill.”
Hawk had to chuckle. “He was here all day. This is where he lives.” When Conner looked confused, Hawk explained, “I wondered about him, myself, earlier this afternoon, so I did a little scoutin’. He’s got a cave in the face of that cliff, hangin’ over the river. He crawls up and down a rope to get in and out of it. I found his rope tied around the foot of a pine where the trees run right up to the edge of the bluff. He had it covered up pretty good to keep anybody from seein’ it.”
“Well, I’ll be . . .” Conner started. “So that’s why he just appeared, and nobody knew where he came from. He ain’t a goblin after all,” he announced, laughing as he did. Then another thought occurred. “I wonder why he jumped in the river with Lewis and the others.”
“I expect he decided things were gettin’ too hot to stay here,” Hawk speculated. “And after he showed ’em how to get to Adam Wylie’s farm, he decided he might as well go with ’em to Fort Benton and get a good meal, especially after those outlaws made such a mess of his homeplace.”
“Maybe we should take him back to Fort Benton,” Conner said. “It doesn’t seem right to leave him out here in this wilderness.”
“I don’t know,” Hawk said. “I expect he’s been livin’ like this for most of his life. I reckon he’s just another wild thing livin’ in the woods—most likely prefers it to livin’ with people. If it was up to me, I’d say leave it up to him.”
“I guess you’re right,” Conner said. “At any rate, we’ll find out in the morning, because I expect he’ll just hop on the wagon if he wants to go back with the others.” He turned to follow the rest of his soldiers back down the trail to the road. “You coming?”
“I’ll be along directly,” Hawk answered. “I wanna check a few things first.” He waited until Conner was on his way back down before turning and going to the edge of the cliff where he had found the rope tied around the tree. He stepped back into the trees and sat down where he could watch the tree with the rope tied to it. After a little while, when the last sounds of the men moving down through the forest to the road faded away and all was quiet on the hilltop, he saw what he expected. At first, there was a slight movement in the pine straw covering the rope, then it was followed by the appearance of a gray, woolly head over the edge of the cliff. Hawk waited until the little man was all the way up and onto the top of the bluff before speaking. On a hunch, he spoke in the Blackfoot tongue. “Your home is quiet now.” The little man nicknamed Frog jerked upright, looking all around him, much like a squirrel when startled. “Have no fear,” Hawk said, “I am a friend.”
Then locating the source of the voice, the little man focused his gaze upon the man seated, Indian fashion, among the trees. “Hawk,” he said, also in the Blackfoot tongue.
“My name is Hawk,” Hawk said. “You are a white man?”
“I am Siksika,” he replied, claiming to be Blackfoot.
Hawk was not surprised. He had figured Frog to have possibly been captured by the Indians when he was a small boy. “These men who attacked these people, had they been here before?” He thought it possible that David Booth’s outlaw partners might have been looking for a good place to hide bodies, should it become a necessity. Frog nodded anxiously in response. “Did you see them when they left?” Again, Frog nodded rapidly. “Will you show me?” Hawk asked. With no hesitation, Frog started toward the path back down to the road. Hawk followed right behind him.
When they reached the road, the little man turned to the west. Moving rapidly, even though unable to stand up straight, Frog limped along the side of the road until he came to a deep gully. He stopped and pointed to hoofprints, some leading down into a gully, others coming up from it. Hawk hopped down into the gully, interested more in the fresher tracks leaving the road. Looking as closely as he could in the fading light of day, he was able to make out the smaller tracks of a mule, mixed in with those of the horses. That would be the mule carrying all the Quakers’ money, he thought. He paused to look around him at the growing darkness, knowing it would be better to follow the tracks in daylight. At least, it gave him a start. He looked back at the road, where Frog stood watching him. When he caught his eye, the little man grinned and began nodding rapidly again. “Choteau,” he said, and repeated, “Choteau.” Then he asked, “Good?”
“Good,” Hawk answered, not really understanding what he meant by Choteau. “Let’s go get something to eat now,” he said. Together, they walked back down the road to the campsite, where a couple of healthy fires were already burning. He went to his packhorse and got some deer jerky and hardtack, which he gave to Frog and motioned for him to eat.
“Looks like you made a friend,” Conner commented when Hawk walked up to the fire. “How’d you get him outta his hole?”
Hawk responded with a question of his own. “What are you plannin’ to do in the mornin’?”
“We’ll take all these folks back to Fort Benton,” Conner said, surprised that he had asked. “What did you think?”
“Well, I’ve got a trail I can follow outta here. It ain’t as fresh as I’d like it, but it’s pretty plain to see. It’s the same one Booth’s partners rode in on, so there’s a good chance it might lead us to ’em.” He imagined he could see the wheels turning in Conner’s brain, but knew his friend was obligated to see that Lewis and his friends were escorted safely back to Fort Benton. “What I want to know is, are you goin’ after those murderin’ bastards, once you take the preacher’s wagon back?”
“Well, sure, I’m gonna see if we can catch up with them, although I know we’ll most likely be too far behind to have much chance of doing it,” Conner said. “How many days ago did this thing happen? I’m not really sure.”
Hawk was halfway convinced that Conner was really feeling as if his mission had been completed, now that Major Brisbin’s nephew was safe. “You don’t need me to show you how to get back to Fort Benton, so I’m thinkin’ it’s a good idea if I start out on their trail. And maybe by the time you and your soldiers show up I might have an idea where they’re holed up.” He paused, waiting for a show of commitment. When Conner failed to comment right away, he said, “I just wanna be sure you’ll be comin’ along behind me.”
“Damn, I don’t know, Hawk. What if we lose your trail?” Conner responded.
“I’ll make sure you don’t. I’ll mark it enough so even you can follow it,” he japed. “Maybe, if we’re lucky, they’re headed for a hideout somewhere. I can’t abide the notion of lettin’ that bunch get away with the murder of all those good folks back up on that hill.”
“You’re right, of course,” Conner said. “All right, we’ll do it your way, but you’ll have to show me where to start out after you in the morning.”
“By the way,” Hawk said, “that little fellow they call Frog is the one who showed me where to pick up their trail. Otherwise, I wouldn’t know where to start lookin’.”
* * *
At sunup the next morning, the fires were revived, but only enough to afford a cup of coffee for everyone. Conner planned to stop for breakfast when the horses were in need of rest, and Hawk was of the same mind. Before leaving the patrol, Hawk asked Donald if there was some way he could recognize David Booth, if he was lucky enough to find him. Donald, with Corey’s help, tried to paint a detailed description of the man who had appeared to be such a devout Christian. A big man, they said, dark of hair and features, his seeming vanity would have to be his heavy mustache, which he groomed to curl up at the ends. Other than that, they said, his clothes were plain, like those of all the other men of their church. Hawk tried to form the image of Booth’s face in his mind and promised he would do his best to track him down. When the horses were saddled, he led Conner to the gully where Booth and his partners had left the wagon road and headed north. Conner stood for a few moments, staring down the narrow gully, thinking he should advise his friend. “You know I’m ordered to lead a ten-day patrol, so I can’t keep the men up here indefinitely. I’ll come after you as soon as I can take those folks back to Fort Benton. But if we don’t find Booth and his gang after a day or so, I’m gonna have to head back.”
“I understand,” Hawk assured him. They wished each other good luck and parted ways.
* * *
“I was damn glad to see that store,” Tater Thompson repeated what he had said when they had caught sight of the little trading post owned by Grover Dean on the Teton River. “I was needin’ a drink of likker bad.” It was now several days since they had slaughtered the train of Quakers, then killed Dean and his wife at the trading post, and it appeared that no one was on their trail. Feeling confident he had pulled it off, Booth Corbin thought back to remember the chain of events.
“Maybe we won’t have to keep moving so fast,” his brother, Jesse, had remarked when they had left the scene of the massacre behind them. “Whaddaya think, Booth?” He always asked his brother’s opinion. He was older than Booth by a good two years, but it was his brother who had formed the small gang of outlaws and was unchallenged as the boss. They had operated quite successfully in Wyoming Territory until the law became too hot on their trail. It was Booth’s idea to leave Wyoming and head for Montana with a purpose to simply lie low until the pressure eased up in Wyoming. And it was Booth who stumbled upon a meeting of the Friends one Sunday and came up with the idea of fleecing those innocent folks out of their life savings. “We’ve put a good bit of distance between us and that hill by the Missouri,” Jesse continued. “After all this time, I don’t think there’s anybody comin’ after us, anyway.”
“Yeah, Booth,” Blue Davis had said, “who the hell’s gonna know anything’s happened to those damn Quakers? Most likely nobody even knows they’re missin’. I don’t know why we even worried about it. Who’s gonna come after us? Nobody, that’s who.”
Booth had held the same opinion at the time, but he had still felt the need for caution. And now that they were back in their hideout, he was satisfied that they had gotten away with the assault, free and clear. He had invested a lot of time and sacrifice in setting up the robbery of the Society of Friends. He had joined the society, under the name of David Booth, gone to a lot of meetings, said a lot of amens, even volunteered to help with some of the crops. Now that it had paid off, he didn’t want anything to go wrong, just because of carelessness by any of them. They were probably right in thinking they had pulled off the perfect crime, even though there was no way of knowing if those few who were pushed off the cliff survived. He trusted the reasoning of his brother, and Jesse was of the opinion that they were free and clear. As for the massacre that took place on that hilltop, he had not foreseen the slaughter of the whole group of people. He had planned to take all the mules and leave the people on foot. The shooting had happened spontaneously, when Trip Dawson had suddenly pumped three shots into Brother Adams when Adams tried to save the money. Trip was always quick to use his gun, and maybe the death of all those people could have been avoided, as Booth had planned. Looking back on the incident, however, Booth decided it was better than his original plan, when he realized that it had ensured their getting away and leaving no witnesses. When the massacre started, there were people—men, women, children—running in every direction. Without thinking, he had reacted like the others, shooting to be sure no one escaped to report what was happening there. When all was said and done, things had worked even better than he expected. That mule they led back with them was carrying over thirty thousand dollars. He would not know the exact amount until he had a chance to count all of it. But that was a hell of a lot more than their average bank robbery yielded, with no risk of retaliation. To satisfy his impatient partners, he had counted out a hundred dollars to each man when they had stopped to camp the first night after the shooting. They seemed to have needed some evidence of the reward coming to them, so he gave them a little cash to hold.
Returning his thoughts to the day of his biggest robbery, Booth remembered announcing to his impatient men, “Yes, sir, I think we’ve all earned a little whiskey and a good supper. We’ll see what that Injun bitch of Grover Dean’s can cook up for five wealthy gentlemen.”
He remembered how his declaration was met with grunts of enthusiasm. “Now you’re talkin’,” Tater had exclaimed. “If I don’t get some whiskey pretty soon, I’m gonna die!” His testimony was met with guffaws from the others and a race down the bluff to the store.
Like the murdered Quakers, it had been a fateful night for the unfortunate storekeeper and his wife when Booth decided to stop there that night. Inside the combination store and saloon, Grover Dean heard them when they pulled up in front, so he walked over to the window to see. “There’s that Wyomin’ bunch back here again,” he said to Beulah. “I hope to hell they’ve got some money to spend this time.” Like her husband, Beulah, whose Blackfoot name was Walks Behind, was not enthusiastic about another visit from the rough group of outlaws. She had been with Grover ever since he built his trading post almost ten years ago, doing his bidding like any good wife would do. He called her Beulah because he had a sister with that name, who had died as a child, and he liked that more than Walks Behind. “You might better see if you’ve got anythin’ to cook,” Grover suggested. “They might be lookin’ for somethin’ to eat.” He opened the door and stepped out on the porch to meet them.
“Didn’t expect to see you boys back so soon,” Grover said in greeting. Then noticing one extra, he said, “Looks like you picked up another rider since you left here.”
“Howdy, Grover,” Jesse Corbin responded. “Yep, we picked up my brother, Booth, and he’s needin’ a drink of whiskey, same as the rest of us.”
“Only this time, we want the good stuff,” Blue Davis informed him, “instead of that watered-down trash you sell the Injuns.”
“I don’t know why you’d say that,” Grover replied, as Blue pushed by him and went inside. “I ain’t got no watered-down whiskey,” he claimed, and hurried to get behind the bar. “I’ve got some high-priced rye whiskey I sell by the bottle. It costs more than the regular corn whiskey I sell a drink at a time.”
“We’ll take a bottle of that rye whiskey,” Booth called out as he walked in the door behind them.
“And how ’bout some food,” Trip Dawson ordered. “Where’s that squaw you’re livin’ with? Get her ass in the kitchen. I need some decent food.”
“Sure thing, boys,” Grover responded. “That’s what I’m in business for, but last week when you were here, you were pretty tight with your money.”
“Yeah?” Tater responded. “Well, that was last week.” He pulled a wad of money out of his vest pocket and slammed it on the bar. “Now get me a drink of that rye whiskey, before I throw a fit.” His antics drew a round of laughter from his partners, prompting a couple of them to slam some money down on the bar as well.
Grover was properly astonished by their behavior. “Looks like you boys musta held up a bank or somethin’ since you was last in here.”
His comment had caused Booth to realize the picture they were creating with their frivolous display of money. “It might look that way, at that,” he said. “We’re just celebratin’ ’cause I just got back from Wyomin’ with some money we had buried down there.” From the skeptical expression on Grover’s face, he was afraid he leaned more toward the bank robbery explanation. I wish I had warned them to keep their mouths shut, he thought.
“Well, in that case, I’d best go tell Beulah to rustle up some food,” Grover said, and reached under the bar and brought out an unopened bottle of rye whiskey.
* * *
The celebration had extended past suppertime and on into the night, keeping Grover busy supplying the whiskey and Beulah frying ham and baking biscuits. Finally, a point was reached when the party began to settle into an alcoholic stupor for the most part, punctuated by the sawmill-like snoring of Tater Thompson, as it reverberated off the hard tabletop. The only sober man in the saloon, Grover Dean, was content to enjoy the financial windfall that had come his way, unaware of a confrontation that was to follow. Sitting at the table with the sleeping Tater, Blue Davis sat in a stupor that morphed into a drunken fantasy as he eyed Beulah while the weary Indian woman picked up the dirty dishes from the tables. When she bent over to pull a dirty plate from under Tater’s arm, Blue pointed to her behind. “Now, I’m buyin’ me some of that,” he stated confidently.
His statement drew an instant response from Grover. “That ain’t for sale.”
“It is tonight,” Blue said, and started to reach for the startled woman.
“She ain’t for sale,” Grover repeated, but this time he backed up his words with the double-barreled shotgun he kept under the counter. Just as he had on the hilltop by the Missouri, Trip Dawson had been the quickest to react. He drew his .44 and pumped two rounds into Grover’s chest. Horrified, the Blackfoot woman screamed, then launched an attack upon Trip, only to receive his third shot in her stomach.
As Beulah collapsed to the floor, everyone seemed stunned except Trip and Tater, who continued to snore. After a moment when no one could think what to say, Booth finally demanded, “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“He was fixin’ to shoot Blue,” Trip replied as he casually replaced the three spent cartridges.
“You damn fool,” Booth said. “He wouldn’t have shot that gun. Blue’s too damn drunk to get up from that chair. Now we got ourselves into another mess.”
“Least we’re gonna save ourselves a lot of money we spent here tonight,” Jesse said, seemingly not that concerned about the murder of Grover and his wife.
Rapidly sobering up at this turn of events, Booth got to his feet. “All right,” he ordered. “Let’s drag them outta here in case somebody happens by. We can put ’em in the storeroom.” They did as he instructed, dragging the bodies out of the saloon, although no one really thought there was much chance of anybody else showing up at the trading post at this late hour. When Jesse said as much to his brother, Booth had to admit that he was probably right. They talked about the best thing to do, since it was now pretty late to think about saddling the horses and starting out to find a place to camp.
“Everything we need is right here,” Jesse said. “We might as well stay here tonight and leave in the mornin’. Ain’t nobody liable to turn up here before we leave. We can take what we need and burn the rest. Hell, Booth, this turned out to be a gold mine, and just like the Quaker business, we’ll leave no witnesses.”
At the time, Booth had thought it over for a few moments but couldn’t come up with any reason not to do as Jesse advised, now that the killing was already done. “All right,” he agreed. “Let’s get all the ammunition and supplies we can carry ready to pack up in the mornin’. And let’s see if we can find where Grover’s secret hiding place for his money is.” With that decision, the two brothers roused their companions out of their drunken states to help with the robbing of the trading post. All but Tater sobered up enough to help. Even after Blue kicked Tater’s chair out from under him, he hung on the table by his arms until finally dropping to his knees to then roll over on his side, where he slept till morning.
Booth had seen to it that everyone was awake early when the next morning dawned, and they were soon packed up, including a generous quantity of supplies and ammunition, courtesy of the late Grover Dean. As a final touch, Booth set fire to the building and waited to watch it until satisfied it would continue to burn after they had gone. With heads still fragile from their celebration, the band of outlaws had started out to complete the final day’s ride to the hideout they were now occupying. From Grover Dean’s trading post, their hideout was a full day’s ride, with a tiny settlement about halfway. They had ridden around the settlement, so they wouldn’t all be seen together. In the eight months they had used this hideout, they had been careful not to come to town together. Booth thought it best to quell any curiosity the folks there might have about them. When buying supplies from the store there, Jesse or Blue would go in alone most of the time. There were marshals in Wyoming who would be interested to know a gang of five men were living in a cabin half a day’s ride from the settlement. There was another man more than a little interested in their whereabouts. And on this particular morning, that man was setting out to follow their trail, even though it was already pretty old.