CHAPTER 17
Black Hawk, Colorado
Black Hawk was a town on the decline, thought Brice Rogers as he rode slowly past some empty cattle pens and then along its main street. A decade earlier, the settlement and nearby Central City had been boomtowns, crowded with men determined to wrest a fortune in gold from the steep, thickly timbered slopes surrounding the communities. The would-be mining magnates had brought with them all the things that followed a strike—honest businesses, sure, but also an abundance of saloons, gamblers, and soiled doves.
With the mines beginning to play out, the gold-seekers were drifting away, heading for new fields where the hoped-for riches might materialize. The brick buildings to Brice’s right, with a slope rising close behind them, were starting to look seedy and run-down. Some were empty and abandoned. A mercantile with dirty windows was still open for business, but it had the look of an enterprise with few customers. The same was true of a blacksmith shop, a gunsmith, and a saddlemaker. Something about each of the places said that it, too, would be gone in a matter of months or even weeks.
Brice felt sorry for the people whose businesses were failing, but his business—chasing down men who had broken the law—was all too good, and that was what had brought him to Black Hawk, in the mountains west of Denver.
The deputy U.S. marshal was a young man in his mid-twenties, compactly built but stronger than his slim build would indicate. He already had laugh lines around his eyes, a testament to his normally good humor. The light brown hair under his high-crowned hat had a slight wave to it. His clothes weren’t fancy; he was dressed like a drifting cowpuncher. The Colt. 45 holstered on his right hip had plain walnut grips. Most people wouldn’t look twice at him . . . which was a good quality for a lawman to have.
The last building in the block to his right was the Casa de Oro Saloon. Its batwinged entrance was on the corner, and judging by the number of horses tied at the hitch racks in front, it was just about the only place in Black Hawk still doing a brisk business. Brice reined in, swung down from the saddle, and found a place at the rack to tie the reins of his sorrel. He patted the horse’s shoulder and then stepped up onto the boardwalk.
Before he could reach the batwings, several men pushed through them and out of the saloon. The one in the lead stumbled a little as he turned toward Brice. Brice tried to move aside to let them pass, but the unsteady gent knocked his left shoulder pretty heavily against Brice’s right.
The man jerked back and exclaimed, “Watch where you’re goin’, you little pissant!”
“Take it easy, mister,” Brice said in a calm, steady voice. “You’re the one who ran into me, but there’s no harm done.”
“No harm? I’m the one who . . . who’ll say whether there’s any harm done, by God!”
All three men looked like miners. The fact that they’d been in the Casa de Oro drinking in the middle of the day told Brice that they were probably out of work and spending what few coins they had left on booze.
He was there to do a job and didn’t want any trouble, so he just muttered, “Sorry,” and tried to step around them.
One of the other men said, “You gonna let him get away with that, Clegg?” His slightly gleeful tone indicated that he was egging on his drunken friend, hoping to see some excitement.
It worked. The miner called Clegg put a big hand in the middle of Brice’s chest and stopped him short. “Where the h-hell do you think you’re g-goin’?”
Brice shook his head slowly and, with his voice still level, said, “You don’t want to do this, friend.”
“I ain’t your friend, you little—” The obscenities that spilled out of Clegg’s mouth then, accompanied by raw whiskey fumes almost strong enough to get a bystander drunk, would have had most men reaching for a gun.
Not wanting to draw attention to himself, Brice put up with it for a long moment, hoping Clegg would either run out of steam or pass out from the booze and fall down.
He did neither of those things, continuing to cuss as he shoved Brice up against the wall of the building. Although a couple of inches taller and at least forty pounds heavier than Brice, Clegg couldn’t have had any idea what was going to happen next.
When Brice finally lost his temper, it was like a bundle of dynamite exploded on Clegg’s jaw. The punch knocked him across the boardwalk. His back hit the railing along the edge, and he flipped up and over it, landing on his face in the street with his arms and legs spraddled out. He didn’t move and clearly was out cold.
The other two miners gaped at Brice for a second, then one of them snarled, reached under his coat, and pulled out a heavy-bladed knife. “You can’t—”
“Reckon I can,” drawled Brice. The Colt had appeared in his hand as if by magic. He held it rock-steady, its barrel pointed at the knife-wielder’s belly. At that range, Brice couldn’t miss, and the slug would tear a fatal hole in the miner’s guts.
“Hold on,” the third man said hastily. The things that had happened in the past few seconds seemed to have chased the drunkenness out of him. He sounded relatively sober as he hurried on. “There’s no need for any shootin’. Jeff, put that knife away.”
Jeff looked like he wanted to argue, but at the same time, he couldn’t take his eyes away from the dark muzzle of Brice’s revolver. After a few heartbeats, he growled, “Who the hell are you?”
“A fella who doesn’t like being pushed around,” Brice answered. “But one who’s not looking for trouble, either. Wouldn’t have been any if you hadn’t goaded your friend into it.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Jeff muttered. He sighed and slipped the knife back into the hidden sheath under his coat. “Didn’t mean nothin’ by it.”
“You just thought watching your pard bust me up would be some cheap entertainment, didn’t you?”
Jeff didn’t say anything, but the answer to that question was obvious.
The third man said, “That was one hell of a punch, mister. I never saw anybody knock Clegg out like that. Would’ve bet that it wasn’t even possible!”
“‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio . . .’” Brice let the quote trail off and jerked his head toward the man sprawled in the street. “You’d best pick him up and take him back wherever you three came from. You two had your fun whether he enjoyed it or not.”
The third man chuckled “Yeah, I guess you could look at it that way. Come on, Jeff.”
The two of them stepped down from the boardwalk, got on either side of Clegg, who was starting to groan and move around, and helped him to his feet. They weaved away, half-supporting, half-dragging Clegg, who kept shaking his head groggily.
Brice slipped his Colt back into its holster and turned toward the saloon’s entrance again, only to stop as he saw a man leaning against the wall next to the batwings with an insolent smile on his face.
The hombre patted his hands together in mock applause. “That was impressive, even if Clegg was drunk as a skunk. It takes a pretty good punch just to move that much bulk.”
“Well, I got lucky,” Brice said.
“That didn’t look like luck to me,” the stranger insisted. “Come on in. I’ll buy you a drink.”
“And I’ll be obliged,” Brice said.
“By the way,” the man added over his shoulder, “my name’s Harding. Al Harding.”
That comment he’d made about being lucky was true enough, thought Brice.
Al Harding was exactly the man he had come to Black Hawk to find.