“Yeah, he acted like he thought ol’ Sittin’ Bull and Crazy Horse were after him.” Not wanting to disturb the other guests in the hotel, Scratch knocked quietly on the door and called, “Chloride! Hey, Chloride, wake up!”
Then he took a quick step to the side just in case the old-timer grabbed a gun and blasted a shot through the door without knowing what was going on.
Instead Chloride responded with a groggy, “Huh? What in blue blazes—”
“Time to get up, Chloride,” Bo said through the door. “We’ve got things to do and places to be.”
“Oh, yeah. Hang on.”
Bo and Scratch listened for more snoring, in case Chloride went back to sleep, but a few minutes later the door opened and the old-timer emerged from the room, yawning. “All right, I’m ready to go,” he said as he ran his fingers through his tangled beard.
They went to the livery stable first and found that Esteban, the Mexican hostler, was getting ready to hitch the mule team to the wagon by lantern light. Bo asked him when the saddle shop opened, and Esteban said, “Whenever you need it to, señor. The man who runs the shop lives above it, and since he is a bachelor, you will not have to worry about disturbing his family.”
Bo nodded his thanks. “All right. We’ll wait a little while before we go over there. I see the café is open already, so we’ll have some breakfast first.”
“Sí, Señora Pendleton is there early and late. She works very hard.” Esteban shrugged. “But what else is she to do, with no man in her life? It was very hard for her when her husband died.”
“I’m sure it was,” Bo said. He lifted a hand in farewell. “We’ll be back after a while.”
They went up the street and angled across to the Red Top. A couple of men were already at the counter drinking coffee. Sue Beth was nowhere in sight, but she emerged from the door into the kitchen a moment later.
“It’ll be a while before the food’s ready,” she said as she greeted the newcomers with a smile, “but I can pour coffee for you.”
“That’ll be fine, ma’am,” Scratch told her.
They settled down on stools at the counter while Sue Beth placed cups and saucers in front of them and then fetched the pot from the stove. “I heard about what happened last night,” she said as she poured. “I’m sorry about your cabin, Chloride.”
The old-timer shook his head. “It’s my own dang fault, I reckon, for throwin’ in with these two wild Texas boys and makin’ the Devils mad at us.”
“They don’t like anyone defying them, do they?”
“Apparently not,” Bo said. “They’d have to be pretty upset to burn down a fella’s cabin with him in it.”
Sue Beth frowned. “Are you certain it was the same bunch? There could be more than one gang of outlaws around here, you know.”
“That’s true,” Bo admitted. “But these hombres wore the same sort of outfit that the Devils do. Anyway, another bunch of owlhoots would have tried to rob us. Those men last night just wanted us dead.”
“I’ve been doin’ some thinkin, too,” Chloride put in. “Last night I heard one of the varmints give the order to light that coal oil they’d splashed around, and I’d swear it was the same fella I heard bossin’ the others that day they hit the Argosy gold wagon.” A little shudder ran through the old-timer. “The same one who carved the pitchforks into the foreheads of them dead guards.”
“But you can’t be sure of that, can you?” Sue Beth asked.
“I reckon not. But I got a feelin’ in my bones that I’m right, and I’ve learned to trust these old bones.”
Charlie the cook called through the opening behind the counter. “I got flapjacks and bacon ready!”
“I’ll be right back,” Sue Beth told her customers.
The food was as good as always. Bo, Scratch, and Chloride enjoyed their breakfast and washed the meal down with plenty of coffee. Having their bellies full helped them get over everything that had happened the night before.
When Bo went to pay for the food, Sue Beth shook her head and said, “Marty Sutton came by here a while ago and told me that if you stopped in for breakfast, I should just add the bill to her tab.”
“Miss Sutton’s already up and about?” Bo asked.
Sue Beth nodded. “That’s right. She had some coffee, then said she was on her way to Bullock and Star’s. She may still be there.”
Bo put his hat on and ticked a finger against the brim. “We’re much obliged. See you the next time we’re in town.”
“Hopefully that won’t be too long.”
“And maybe we’ll have that turkey for Thanksgivin’,” Scratch added.
Sue Beth laughed. “I’ll be waiting.”
The big mercantile down the street was owned and operated by Seth Bullock and Sol Star, Bo knew. He remembered both men from the previous visit he and Scratch had paid to Deadwood. At that time, Bullock and Star had only recently arrived from Montana and were selling their stock of goods out of a tent. Since then, they had built a big, prosperous-looking establishment that took up most of a block.
Sol Star ran the place for the most part. His partner Seth Bullock had been the marshal of Deadwood for a while and done a fine job of it from what Bo had heard, bringing law and order to the raw mining camp and continuing to serve after Deadwood had become an actual town. Sol Star was something of a civic leader, too, having been elected as Deadwood’s mayor several times. Star might still be mayor, for all Bo knew. All he cared about at the moment was the fact that the store was already open and Martha Sutton had gone over there, evidently to arrange for the supplies they were supposed to load on the wagon to take back to the mine.
Martha stepped out onto the store’s porch as Bo, Scratch, and Chloride approached. She was bundled in a heavy coat this morning, her breath fogging in the air in front of her, but her blond curls hung free around her shoulders as usual. She smiled and said, “Good morning. Mr. Star and his clerks have the supplies ready, and they can load them as soon as you bring the wagon over.”
Chloride nodded and said, “I’ll go fetch it.”
As the old-timer hurried off, Martha went on to Bo and Scratch. “I hope you don’t mind, but Mr. Star had some good saddles, and I took the liberty of buying a couple of them, along with everything else you’ll need.”
Bo and Scratch glanced at each other. As veteran horsemen, they would have preferred to pick out their own saddles. Every rider had his own likes and dislikes, and they were usually different. But Martha’s heart was in the right place, so Bo said, “I’m sure they’ll be fine. We appreciate it, Miss Sutton.”
“There hasn’t been any more trouble since Mr. Coleman’s cabin burned down, has there? I haven’t heard about anything.”
Scratch said, “The rest of the night was plumb peaceful.”
“You think you’ll be back tomorrow with the other load of gold?”
“We should be,” Bo said.
“What will you do after that?”
Bo shrugged. “Keep poking around, I guess. We’d still like to find where the Devils stashed all the loot from those earlier robberies.”
“If it’s even still around here,” Scratch added.
“But we’ll stay in touch, and whenever Andrew Keefer and the men at the mine have another load ready to bring down the gulch, we’ll handle that chore for you,” Bo went on. “As long as you want us to, that is.”
Martha laughed. “I think you can count on that, Mr. Creel,” she said. “You and Mr. Morton are the only ones who’ve had any luck at all stopping the Devils. The way things were going, the mining business in this whole area was going to be ruined. Digging the gold out of the hills doesn’t do any good if you can’t get it into the bank.”
Bo nodded and said, “That’s true. And I reckon the way the Devils had everybody so scared was almost as bad as losing all that gold.”