CHAPTER 29
“Dawson, I understand you have something to tell me about the three men who are trying to kill me,” Smoke said when he stepped into the cell block a few minutes later.
“Is that the ruse he used to get you over here?” Clell asked. “He told you I have something to tell you?”
“Yes. What do you mean, ruse? Are you saying you don’t have anything to tell me?”
“Oh, yeah, I’ve got something to tell you, all right. I’ve got the damnedest story you ever heard.”
Smoke shook his head. “I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.”
“No, I don’t imagine you do. But I’ll start out with this. I confess that I held up a stagecoach in Pueblo County several months ago. I didn’t get that much money out of it, and nobody was hurt.” Clell smiled. “The newspapers called me the Gentleman Bandit. I admit that was wrong, but I didn’t have anything to do with those robberies where the stagecoach and the train were dynamited. Sheriff Hector was behind those robberies. He told me as much. He set us up, Deputy. You and me. And now he is doing it again. The reason he wanted you to come see me is because he wanted me to kill you.”
“How did he plan for you to do that?”
“He gave me this gun to use,” Clell said, producing the gun but holding it by the barrel, butt first. “It’s not loaded.”
Smoke frowned. “It would be kind of hard to kill me with an unloaded gun, wouldn’t it?”
“Oh, well, I’m supposed to bluff you with it, make you open the cell door, then take your gun and use it to kill you.”
“Did he really think you could do that?”
“I don’t think it matters. Supposedly, if I could pull it off and kill you, that would be good. On the other hand, if you killed me, they would try you for murder, for shooting me in the cell. Either way, it would accomplish the same thing. You would be dead.”
So far, what Dawson was saying made no sense to Smoke. “Do you have any idea why the sheriff wants me dead?”
“Do the names Peters, Stratford, and Richards mean anything to you? They are the ones who want you dead.”
“Do you mean Potter, Stratton and Richards?” Smoke asked quickly.
“Yes, sorry, I just heard the names once, but that’s them. Apparently, those names mean something to you.”
“Yeah, they mean a lot to me,” Smoke said. “I’ve been looking for them for a number of years. And I want them dead as much as they want me dead.”
“Uh-huh.Well, they’re the ones who hired Hector to get it done.”
Smoke smiled and shook his head slowly. “I have to hand it to you, Dawson, you said you were going to tell me the damnedest story, and I’d say that you just did.”
“You don’t believe me?”
“Not one word of it. Except the part about Potter, Stratton, and Richards. I know they’re trying to kill me.”
“Look over there in the sheriff’s desk,” Clell said. “If you pull out the middle drawer, you’ll find five hundred dollars there. That is the money I’m to be given for killing you. I’m supposed to meet him in Boreas next week, to join him in some sort of deal that he claims will make me a lot more money.”
Smoke walked over to the desk and opened the drawer. “I’ll be damned.” He reached in and picked up the packet of money.
“Here’s the thing, Deputy. Suppose the bluff did work. Suppose I killed you, and took that money. There would be wanted posters out on me quicker than a wink. I’d be wanted for killing a deputy U.S. marshal. And if you don’t believe me now, who would believe me then?”
“You have a point,” Smoke said. “But what convinces me is this money. What sheriff, making forty dollars a month, is going to have five hundred dollars of honest money lying around?”
“So, where do we go from here?” Clell asked.
“Your word alone isn’t going to be enough to convict a sheriff. We’re going to have to have something more, and the best way to come up with that, I think, would be to go to Boreas.”
“You’ll let me have a loaded gun, won’t you?”
“Sure, I don’t see why not,” Smoke replied with a chuckle.
* * *
Sheriff Hector returned to the jail a short time later to find that both his prisoner and Jensen were gone. The first thing he did was check the middle desk drawer. He was surprised to see that the money was still there.
Leaving the jail, he rode out to a place called Hidden Canyon, which got its name from the fact that a pinnacle rock guarded the entrance to the canyon. Someone who just happened to be riding by wouldn’t even know it was there.
Reaching the entrance to the canyon, he pulled his pistol, fired two shots, waited a couple seconds, then fired one more shot. A moment later, he heard the answer—one shot, a pause for a couple seconds, then two shots.
Hector rode on down into the canyon toward a small cabin that was built against the back wall. Glancing over to the right, he saw someone behind a boulder covering him with a rifle. The man smiled at Hector as he stepped out from behind the boulder.
“I thought that might be you,” Eddie Spence said.
“Are Kotter and Mathis in the cabin?”
“Yeah. You got a new job for the three of us?”
“For the four of us,” Hector replied grimly.
“Four of us?”
“I’ll explain it all inside.”
The one room cabin was furnished with three cots, a table, three chairs, and a wood-burning stove. The place smelled of bacon recently fried and the musky odor of men who bathed infrequently. A pot of coffee was on the stove, and Sheriff Hector accepted the offer of a cup.
“What’s up?” Pete asked. “Do you have a new job for us?”
Eddie jumped right in. “He said he’s going to pull the job with us.”
Pete frowned. “You are? Do you think that’s a good idea? I mean, you bein’ the sheriff and all.”
“Something has come up,” Hector said. “I’m not sure it’s going to be safe for me to stay around much longer. So after this job I plan to leave. I would advise you boys to do the same thing.”
“Go where?” Merlin asked.
Hector smiled. “Texas, California, Oregon. Hell, when this job is done, we’ll have enough money to go anywhere we want.”
Merlin’s eyebrows shot up in wonder. “Really? How much money?”
“Oh, I’d say about twenty-five thousand dollars apiece.”
“Damn! Where are we gonna get that kind of money?” Eddie asked.
“We’re going to hold up a gold shipment.”