Scratch snatched his hat off and nodded politely. “Pleased to meet you, ma’am,” he said.
The look of irritation on Martha Sutton’s face eased a bit. She said, “Mr. Creel, Mr. Morton . . . I ask again, what can I do for you?”
“We’re new in town, and we’ve been hearing about the Deadwood Devils and how they’ve been holding up gold shipments from the mines around here,” Bo explained. “Has that happened to your outfit?”
Martha set down the pencil she had been using and leaned back in her chair. “Not that it’s any of your business, Mr. Creel, but yes, the Golden Queen has been robbed. Several times, in fact. The Devils have hit us probably more than any of the other mining operations around here.”
“Us?” Bo repeated.
“My father founded the Golden Queen and ran it until about a month ago. That was when he died suddenly. His heart gave out, the doctor said, possibly from worrying about the holdups.”
“We’re sorry to hear that,” Scratch said. “That’ll happen sometimes when you’ve got a bum ticker.”
“At any rate, that’s why I’m running the company now,” Martha said. “Our shipments have been hijacked several times since then, to the point that no one wants to drive for me anymore or hire on as guards because the others have been killed. The company is on the verge of collapse. Is that what you wanted to know?”
With all the bad luck that had befallen her, Bo couldn’t blame Martha Sutton for being a little short-tempered. He said, “You’ve got us wrong, Miss Sutton. We’d like to help you.”
“How are you going to do that?” she asked, wanting to know.
“If somebody could track down the Deadwood Devils and maybe even find all the loot they’ve stolen, I imagine it would make things look a lot more promising for the Golden Queen, wouldn’t it?”
She regarded the Texans intently for a moment, then said, “If you’re angling for me to hire you and your friend as some sort of troubleshooters, Mr. Creel, I can’t afford it. Right now I can’t even pay the men working in the mine. I owe them a month’s back wages, and it’s all I can do to continue feeding them.”
“If we were able to recover some of the gold you lost, how would you feel about cutting us in for a share?” Bo suggested.
Martha didn’t reject the idea out of hand. Instead she considered it for a moment before finally nodding. “We could probably come to an arrangement like that,” she said. “Ten percent of the value of whatever gold you recover.”
Bo didn’t like the idea of haggling with a woman, but he said, “I was thinking more along the lines of twenty percent.”
“Ten’s all I can afford,” Martha said flatly.
“Well, in that case, ma’am, you got a deal,” Scratch said before Bo could make a counteroffer. Bo glanced over at his old friend, who was grinning from ear to ear. Scratch never had been able to resist trying to please a pretty woman, even one who was young enough to be his daughter, or maybe even his granddaughter.
But to be honest, he probably would have agreed to the ten percent, too, Bo realized. If that was truly all Martha could afford, he wouldn’t want to try to take advantage of her.
She stood up and came out from behind the desk, extending her hand to each of them in turn. She said, “I probably should have asked what your qualifications are to be hunting down gold thieves. Are you lawmen of some sort?”
“We’ve worked as deputies before,” Bo explained. “Done some scouting for the army as well, so we have experience with tracking.”
“Plus we’ve wound up in quite a few ruckuses with owlhoots that were none of our doin’,” Scratch added. “We don’t never go lookin’ for trouble, but sometimes it seems like it looks for us.”
“Well, if you find the Deadwood Devils, you can count on one thing,” Martha said. “You’ll find plenty of trouble, too. When are you going to start searching for them?”
Bo said, “It’s too late in the day to pick up a trail today. First thing in the morning we’ll ride out to the place where the Argosy gold wagon was held up today and see what we can find.”
Martha made a face at the mention of the Argosy Mining Company, Bo noted.
“You and the folks at the Argosy don’t get along?” he asked, making a shrewd guess.
“That’s none of your business, Mr. Creel,” she snapped. “You don’t have to concern yourself with anything except finding the Devils and getting back as much of my gold as you can.”
Bo nodded. “You’re right, ma’am, we don’t.” He put his hat on. “Come on, Scratch.”
They left Martha Sutton in the office. As they walked along the street, Scratch commented, “That’s a pretty gal, but she’s a mite prickly around the edges.”
“I’d say she has reason to be, as much trouble as she’s had. First those gold holdups, and then her pa dying, maybe because of them . . .” Bo shook his head in sympathy. “Meanwhile, we’ve got to eat tonight. I reckon I’ve got just enough money hidden away in my saddlebags to buy us a meal at the Red Top.”
“You mean you been squirrelin’ away dinero without tellin’ me?”
“And it’s a good thing, too,” Bo said. “Otherwise we’d be going hungry tonight.”
The fried steaks Sue Beth Pendleton and her cook Charlie dished up at the café were just as good as the ham at lunch had been. As the Texans were cleaning their plates and washing down the last of the food with coffee, Sue Beth paused on the other side of the counter and said, “I figured you boys would be back.”
“With food this good, where else in town would we eat?” Scratch asked.
“And I figured you might ask me for credit,” Sue Beth went on. “No offense, but you look a little down at the heels.”
“We don’t much believe in credit,” Bo said. “We like to pay for what we get as we go along.”
Sue Beth laughed. “If more people were like you, the world would probably be better off.”
“We are runnin’ a mite short, though,” Scratch said. “But we got some work lined up that ought to help out.”
“Well . . .” Sue Beth hesitated. “If you wind up needing a hand, you can always get a meal here. I don’t believe in turning away a hungry man.”
“It won’t come to that,” Bo said. “We’ll be fine.”
“Yeah,” Scratch said. “We been makin’ it for forty years now, so I reckon we’ll get by a mite longer.”
Sue Beth nodded. “I’m sure you will. But remember what I said.” She smiled. “You remind me a little of my father, Mr. Morton. I couldn’t let you starve.”
“Well, I . . . uh . . .” Scratch fell silent for a moment before finally nodding his head and saying, “Thanks.”
When the Texans left the café a short time later, Bo was smiling. He waited until they were outside and the door was closed behind them before he said, “That’s the first time in a while I’ve seen you struck speechless.”
“I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about,” Scratch said stiffly.
“The look on your face when Miz Pendleton told you that you remind her of her old pa . . . that was just priceless.”
“She was payin’ me a compliment,” Scratch insisted.
“And telling you that you’re really old,” Bo said.
“Same age as you!”
“Difference is, I’m not denying it,” Bo drawled.
Scratch muttered something under his breath, then said, “Dang it, let’s just go to the livery stable, check on our horses, and turn in.”
Bo nodded. “Sounds like a good idea to me.”
When they got back to Hanson’s Livery, though, they found someone waiting for them. Chloride Coleman was talking to a stocky Mexican who had taken over as the hostler on the night shift. Chloride raised a gnarled hand in greeting as he saw the Texans approaching.