That left just Turley to fight off the attack, and he was badly outnumbered. Several outlaws burst from the trees on horseback and splashed across the creek to give chase to the wagon, which was rattling and bouncing along faster now as Chloride finally got the mules to run. Smoke puffed from the six-guns wielded by the men, who had bandanas pulled up over their faces to conceal their identities.
Chloride yelled encouragement to the remaining guard. “Hold ’em off, Turley!”
“Get this wagon moving faster!” Turley shouted back as he levered another round into the Winchester’s chamber. Both men knew the odds of the wagon team being able to outrun the desperadoes’ horses were mighty slim. The outlaws were closing the gap by the second.
A gurgling cry came from Turley. Chloride glanced over his shoulder and saw the man thrashing around as blood poured from his bullet-ripped throat. Chloride bit back a curse. Turley would be dead in seconds, Davis and Berkner had already crossed the divide, and that left Chloride alone against a horde of bloodthirsty outlaws. For a second he thought about reining in the team, bringing the wagon to a stop, and throwing himself on the mercy of the gang if he turned the gold shipment over to them.
He discarded the idea almost instantly. Those varmints were cold-blooded murderers and had proven that on several occasions in the past. They had earned the nickname of Devils they had given themselves. If he surrendered, they’d just put a bullet in him.
Besides, he was too old and stubborn to quit. Holding the reins in his left hand, he used his right to fumble the old cap-and-ball revolver from the holster at his waist. He twisted around on the seat and lifted the gun, earing back the hammer. It went off with a loud boom as he aimed at the riders thundering along right behind the wagon and pulled the trigger.
None of the outlaws even slowed down.
Because Chloride was turned around on the seat, he didn’t see the sharp bend in the trail coming up as it followed the winding course of the creek. The mules didn’t slow down as they raced around the turn. Chloride felt the wagon lurch and sway underneath him. Something in its underpinning gave way with a loud snap, and Chloride yelled as he suddenly found himself sailing through the air. The wagon overturned with a crash behind him.
Branches clawed at his face as he landed in a thick clump of brush. That was probably all that saved him from a broken leg at best or a broken neck at worst. The impact knocked the breath out of him. He lay there unable to move, unable to do anything except gasp for air. That probably saved his life, too, because the outlaws’ guns continued to roar and bullets whipped through the brush all around him and just over his head.
Chloride squeezed his eyes shut. He and the Good Lord weren’t exactly on the best of terms, due to Chloride’s fondness for whiskey, cards, and, when he was younger, wicked women, but with all that lead flying through the air, the old-timer didn’t hesitate to offer up a plea for help to El Señor Dios.
“That’s enough!” a man ordered. “Hold your fire, blast it!”
“But the driver fell off the wagon and landed in that brush,” another man protested as the guns fell silent.
“I saw what happened,” the first man said. “He probably broke his neck when he landed, and even if he didn’t, you’ve thrown enough lead in there to turn him into a sieve. Let’s go on about our business.”
Chloride held his breath now, even though he felt like he was half-suffocating from lack of air. He knew that if they heard him gasping, he’d get a bullet in a hurry.
At the same time, he knew he couldn’t stay here. The outlaws might take it into their heads at any second to search the brush and make sure he was dead. Moving slowly and as quietly as possible, he began working his way backward, inching along so he wouldn’t cause the branches to wave around and give away his position. It was nerve-racking, especially because he could hear the killers moving around only a few yards away.
His feet bumped against something. Carefully, he turned his head and saw that he had reached a cluster of large rocks at the base of the slope forming the northern wall of the gulch. Chloride crawled among the rocks, confident that they would offer him better shelter. He lay there on his belly for a long moment as his heart pounded furiously in his chest. He started breathing again, shallowly so it wouldn’t be too loud.
After a while he lifted his head. He had lost his battered old hat with the turned-up brim when he went flying off the wagon, so he didn’t have to worry about that. He stayed low, edging his head up just enough so he could see part of the trail.
The outlaws were moving the gold from the wrecked wagon. They had busted open the chests and were loading the pokes of gold dust into their saddlebags. The sacks of nuggets were slung onto the backs of a couple of pack animals and lashed in place. Chloride didn’t see the wagon team. The mules must have broken loose from the wagon when it crashed. They were probably still running toward Deadwood.
Those outlaws were crafty varmints, Chloride thought. They had dragged that deadfall up by the trail and then left it there as a distraction for the guards on the wagon, and all the while they were hidden in the trees on the other side of the creek, ready to ambush and hijack the gold shipment.
The old-timer counted eight men, all of them still masked and wearing their hats pulled low. He couldn’t see enough of their faces to have even a hope of recognizing them. They went about their business with swift efficiency, and when they had transferred all the gold to their horses and the pack animals, one of the men reached under the long duster he wore and drew out a knife. Even in the gulch’s gloom, the blade glittered.
The bodies of the three guards had also spilled out of the wagon when it overturned. They sprawled limply on the trail not far from the wrecked vehicle. In the concealment of the rocks, Chloride swallowed hard as he watched the man with the knife go over to Turley’s body. He hooked the toe of his boot under Turley’s shoulder and rolled the corpse onto its back, then knelt beside it. Sunlight flashed on the knife again as the man got to work.
And once again, Chloride closed his eyes tightly. He didn’t have to watch to know what the man was doing. The tip of that razor-sharp blade would slice through Turley’s forehead and cut a vertical line down it. Then, part of the way down that line, two more lines would be carved into Turley’s skin, curving up on either side of the first wound to form a symbol that looked roughly like a pitchfork.
It was the bloody mark of the Deadwood Devils, the calling card of the gang that had descended on the Black Hills. Chloride had seen it before on bodies brought into Deadwood after previous robberies.
When the old-timer forced his eyes open, he saw that the outlaw with the knife had finished his grim work. The bodies of the three dead guards lay on their backs, their eyes pointed sightlessly toward the sky and blood seeping from the grotesque markings on their foreheads.
“What about the driver?” one of the men asked as the one who seemed to be in charge wiped his knife on Mitch Davis’s shirt.
The man straightened and sheathed the weapon. “I told you, he’s probably dead.”
“But he might not be. We ought to take a look.”
Chloride held his breath.
“No,” the boss said. “If he’s alive, we’ll leave him that way.”
“But he’ll head for Deadwood and tell folks what happened.”
“They’ll find out soon enough. There’ll be another wagon or a rider come along this trail before the day’s over, more than likely. And it’s pretty obvious what happened here, don’t you think?”
The man who had wanted to search for Chloride shrugged his shoulders. “If you say so.”
“I do say so,” the boss snapped. “It might be better if the driver is still alive. Then he can tell what he saw here, and everybody in Deadwood will be even more afraid of us than they are now. We want everybody in this part of the country to know that if you cross paths with the Deadwood Devils . . . you’re going straight to hell.”