CHAPTER 21
The trail through Prophet Pass was so rocky that it wouldn’t take hoofprints, but Smoke saw some shiny places where horseshoes had nicked the stone recently. Along with fairly fresh droppings from cattle and horses, that was enough to tell him that several riders and a considerable amount of livestock had gone through there. He couldn’t prove that it was the rustlers and the stolen herd that had left those signs in the pass, but he was confident they couldn’t have gone anywhere else yet.
The tracks they found late that afternoon, heading southwest toward those mining settlements, confirmed his theory. They couldn’t miss the signs that a group of cattle had gone through there several days earlier.
As they stopped to let their horses rest, Cal said, “They’ve probably sold those cows already, Smoke. We’re not going to get them back.”
“You’re right,” Smoke agreed. “The chances of that are pretty slim. But the bunch that stole them might still be hanging around somewhere down there, enjoying the money they got for them.”
“And you want to catch up to them.”
“They came onto Sugarloaf range,” Smoke said, “killed two men who rode for me, and stole my beef. I don’t much cotton to the idea of them getting away with any of that.”
Mutters of agreement came from several of the other men, and Markham said fervently, “Damn right!”
They pushed on until it was too dark to see the trail, then stopped to rest the horses again, brew coffee, and eat some of the jerky and biscuits they had brought along. The men slept a while after that, until the moon rose and Smoke woke everyone. The wash of silvery light was enough to keep them from getting lost.
Smoke was pushing them hard and he knew it, but the need to settle the score for Joe Bob Stanton and Harley Briggs burned within all of them. The need to keep from ruining the horses was all that slowed them down the rest of that night, all the next day, and through the night after that.
Black Hawk
More than forty hours had passed since leaving the Sugarloaf when they rode into the settlement. It was early in the morning, not long after sunup, and the town really hadn’t started coming to life yet, although thumping could be heard from the stamp mills at the mines up in the nearby mountains.
Smoke heard something else, too, that caused him to rein in and lift his hand in a signal for the others to stop. He said to Cal, “Listen.”
“Good Lord!” the foreman exclaimed after a moment. “That sounds like a good-sized bunch of cattle.”
The lowing was unmistakable, all right. Smoke nudged his horse into motion again and followed it to some large pens on the eastern edge of town. At least a hundred cows milled around inside the fences.
“That’s them!” one of the Sugarloaf hands said excitedly. “I’d know that old brindle cow anywhere. She was in a bunch I hazed up to that pasture below Pitchfork Ridge.”
Smoke hadn’t expected to be able to recover any of the stolen stock, but at least two-thirds of the herd was still there. He hipped around in the saddle and told the others, “Half of you boys stay here and keep an eye on these cows. The rest of you, come with Cal and me. We’re going to see if we can locate the men who drove them here.”
Cal quickly called out half a dozen names, among them Steve Markham’s, and gave them the job of guarding the rustled cattle. Then he and the other hands followed Smoke along the street toward the single business block, which was surrounded by a scattering of crude miners’ cabins and a few more substantial dwellings.
A man in a canvas apron was sweeping the boardwalk in front of a general store. A sign on the building read TOOBIN’S EMPORIUM. As Smoke, Cal, and the other riders drew up in front of the business, the balding proprietor leaned on his broom and blinked at them through thick spectacles that kept sliding down his nose. He pushed them up and appeared rather alarmed to be confronted with such a group of beard-stubbled, well-armed, tough-looking hombres so early in the morning.
“You boys ain’t here to loot the town, are you?” he asked. “You’re liable to be a mite disappointed if you are.”
“No, sir,” Smoke told him. “We’re from a ranch up in Eagle County called the Sugarloaf. We’ve been on the trail of some stolen stock, and I reckon we’ve found it.”
The storekeeper raised bushy gray eyebrows. “The Sugarloaf,” he repeated. “Seems like I’ve heard of that spread. Belongs to Smoke Jensen, don’t it?”
“That’s right. I’m Jensen.”
The eyebrows climbed even higher. “Lordy! Smoke Jensen his own self, right here in Black Hawk. Here I thought the town was about to dry up and blow away, and now all sorts of excitement is goin’ on.”
“What do you mean by that?” asked Smoke as he rested his crossed hands on the saddle horn. “Are you talking about that herd of cattle being driven in?”
“Well, that ain’t all that unusual. Enough of the mines are still goin’ concerns that there’s a market for beef here, sure enough. I was talkin’ more about the fact that we had a deppity United States marshal come through here a few days back, leadin’ a horse haulin’ the carcass of an outlaw he’d tracked down and killed. That was the most excitement we’d had here in a while.”
Smoke didn’t really care about some lawman passing through the former boomtown, although he wondered briefly if it might have been Brice Rogers. Brice had missed Louis’s wedding because he was off chasing some owlhoot, according to Monte Carson.
Smoke was more interested in the rustlers, so he said, “What about those cows? Are the men who brought them in still here in town?”
“Reckon so. From what I’ve heard, they were sorta disappointed that nobody would take the whole herd off their hands at once. They sold off some o’ the stock to a few of the smaller mines. Jack Buell, the superintendent of the Fountain Mine, will be in town in a few days, though, and he’ll likely take the rest of the cows.” The garrulous old storekeeper frowned and blinked behind the spectacles. “No, wait, you said them cows was rustled. So Mr. Buell won’t be buyin’ ’em from the fellas who brought ’em in.”
“No,” Smoke said. “No, he won’t.” He straightened in the saddle. “Where can we find those men?”
The storekeeper started looking nervous again. He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth before he answered, “They’re, uh, they’re stayin’ at the Casa de Oro, I believe. We had a hotel, but it done closed down a couple months ago. Not many other places to stay in Black Hawk right now.”
Smoke inclined his head. “The Casa de Oro. That’s the saloon down at the end of the block?”
“Yes, sir. I’m, uh . . . I’m gonna go back inside now and close the door.”
“Not a bad idea,” Cal commented as he turned his horse to follow Smoke toward the other end of the long block.
Nobody else was moving around on the street that early. The saddlemaker stepped out of his shop and started to stretch the night’s kinks out of his back, then stopped as he caught sight of the group of riders moving along the street. He ducked back inside and hurriedly shut the door behind him.
As they approached the Casa de Oro, the saloon’s double doors at the corner opened and a man stepped out. The pail of water he carried and then threw out into the street marked him as the saloon’s swamper and indicated that he’d just finished mopping up the place. He had halfway turned around to go back inside the building when he saw Smoke and the others and stopped short. He stared pop-eyed at them for a heartbeat, then dropped the empty bucket with a clatter and dashed back through the batwings.
“Blast it,” Cal burst out. “Those rustlers probably paid him to keep his eyes open and warn them if any strangers rode into town. They knew somebody might be coming after them!”
“That’s right,” Smoke snapped. “Come on!” He heeled his horse into a run and drew his Colt. He could already hear somebody, probably the swamper, yelling inside the saloon. The element of surprise he had hoped for was lost.
Before they could reach the end of the block, a window on the second floor of the Casa de Oro flew up and a man leaned out holding a rifle. The Winchester began cracking as he swept the street with lead as fast as he could work the repeater’s lever.