“This poster’s only a couple months old. They aren’t after us for the Fort Worth robbery,” Joe said. “That means Simon’s not wanted for that robbery, either. This is something he’s done recently.”

  “Taking a chance isn’t too smart,” Carson said. “Let Daniel go in and poke around. He’s not wanted for anything.”

  “Not yet!”

  Both Carson and Joe Easterly silenced him with cold looks.

  “You sneak around, ask questions, but don’t draw attention to yourself. The marshal issued the arrest warrant, but there’s no telling where Simon is by now.”

  “Clay’s right. You be quiet as a mouse and just listen to folks talk. The marshal’s got other crimes to think on since then. It’s a chance he’s plumb forgot about Simon and is looking for other crooks.”

  “I’ll sniff out a trail,” Daniel assured them. “I won’t raise anyone’s hackles or cause a stir. They won’t even know I’ve been snooping around.”

  “You do that and hie on back. Straight back. No fooling around, no idleness.” Joe sounded stern, but Carson caught a hint of worry in his words. He wondered how likely Daniel was to ignore everything he’d been told and get into trouble. The last thing they needed was for the youngster to run afoul of the law, too. Finding Potter was one thing. Breaking Daniel out of jail because he crossed the marshal only added to the difficulties of reuniting the Dirty Creek Gang.

  Carson closed his eyes for a moment and shuddered. If Daniel was tossed in the clink, he was likely to start boasting about being a member of an infamous gang. All that was needed to lose the chance at retrieving the hidden gold was for a new marshal to come sniffing around.

  “You’re sounding like Gregson now. He was always on my back for slacking off.” Daniel sulked now.

  Carson listened as Joe gave his brother detailed instructions on nosing around and listening for gossip. After Daniel rode down the hill, he turned to Joe and asked, “Is he up for this? He looked like he was going to pop.”

  “Daniel’s a hothead, but he’ll learn.”

  Carson wasn’t sure this was the time for the youngster to learn. He closed his eyes and let the hot Texas sun ease his concerns. Once, before Lemuel Jones took him under his wing, he’d been as untamed as Daniel. There’d been a couple rough patches, but he’d learned—and he lived to boast about it.

  He’d come close to dying once because he lacked common sense, but he’d gotten through it.

  “He’ll be all right, Clay. I’m not saying that because he’s my brother. Daniel’s got a good head on his shoulders.”

  “If he asks the wrong question in the wrong place, he’s likely to get that head blown clean off.”

  “Some things never change. You were always so gloomy. The sun could be shining and you’d be scouring the sky to find a rain cloud.”

  “It kept all of us out of jail.”

  “Until that last robbery, we hardly did anything worthy of being sent to jail. Don’t get riled. You went along with whatever Lemuel said, like the rest of us.”

  Clay Carson knew what Joe meant, though. More often than not, he was the one who suggested where the gang should strike next. A train or a bank, one of the dwindling number of stagecoaches, they had tried them all after Carson scouted out the potential worth of each robbery. He might have been too cautious.

  Until the Fort Worth bank.

  That one was a jackpot. Only bad luck had caused it to go so wrong.

  Carson walked his horse to the shade of a post oak tree and stared down into the town. He doubted Daniel would find anything more than a hint where Simon Potter had run. He had been lucky enough finding the Easterly brothers. Wranglers tended to move on after a few months or maybe a season. The hunt for Joe could have been drawn out into weeks if he’d begun the search after the herd had been taken to market.

  Leaving the gang leader with Wylie and Turner for even a short time rankled, but he had no other choice.

  Lemuel hadn’t been in any condition to ride with him.

  “Clay?”

  “Yeah, what?”

  “Take a gander at the limb over your head.”

  He looked up ten feet or so. At first, he didn’t see what Joe Easterly had. Then he climbed the tree and inched out on the thick limb. He ran his fingers over the deep notches in the wood.

  “That’s what I think it is, isn’t it?”

  “You’ve got good eyes, Joe. More’n one rope’s been tossed over this limb. This is the town’s hanging tree.” He swung around, dangled for a second, then dropped lightly. He found a thick, exposed root that had been scraped repeatedly where the other end of the hangman’s rope had been tied.

  “Looks to me as if there’s a considerable amount of crime in Boone, Texas.” Easterly walked around the tree, scuffing at the dirt in places.

  “Or a lot less crime, depending on your viewpoint.” He watched Joe drop to a knee and run his finger around some impressions in the dirt.

  “A crowd?” Carson asked.

  “If fewer than twenty men crowded onto this knob of a hill a day or two back, it’d surprise me. This must be the town’s sole entertainment. There’re even women’s shoe prints.”

  Carson spat. It was one thing to face a man and kill him in a fair gunfight. Except in a few rare cases he’d known, tying a rope around a man’s neck and hanging him was downright uncivilized. And the few cases where he knew a man deserved to dangle, the crime had been such that a bullet would have been quicker. He had witnessed one hanging where the executioner had misjudged and the convicted’s head had popped right off.

  “A cancan dance is more what I call entertainment,” Carson said.

  “We’ve got company.”

  A wagon carrying a family of six rattled up the hill, heading toward Boone. Carson watched, wondering what to say about poking around the hanging tree. The driver tugged hard and stopped his team, then waved.

  Carson and Easterly sauntered over, leaving their horses in the shade under the tree.

  “Howdy, gents,” the man called.

  Carson touched the brim of his hat in the direction of the woman trying to corral four rambunctious children in the wagon bed.

  “You come for the big show?”

  “We’re just passing through and stopped for a rest,” Carson said. “What big show are you referring to?”

  The children all yelled and jumped up and down until their ma shushed them.

  “They’re all mighty excited. We have a farm a few miles down the road. It gets boring out here on the prairie.”

  “What’s the show that brings you to town? A traveling circus? I hear there’s a circus lady with a traveling troupe that swings through every couple years.”

  “No, not Miss Molly and her boys. They travel by train and the nearest railhead’s fifty miles away. I thought you knew, since you already have a front-row seat for the spectacle.”

  Carson involuntarily looked over his shoulder at the oak tree.

  “A hanging?” His voice came out raspy. A cold knot formed in his belly. “You’re bringing the family to town to watch a man get his neck stretched?”

  “The children’ve never seen a good hanging,” the farmer said. “It’s about time to let them see that crime leads to punishment.”

  Carson kept Easterly from blurting out what he thought.

  “You’re coming for more’n that, I reckon?”

  “Yes, sir, of course. We need some supplies. But we came this week just to see the hanging. Two birds with one stone, as they say.”

  His wife tugged at his sleeve and whispered something. The farmer patted her hand.

  “We have to get on into town to get supplies. We reckon to be on our way back to the farm when that varmint gets what’s coming to him. Good day, gents.” He snapped the reins and got the team pulling. The wagon crested the hill and rolled down toward Boone.

  “Now, don’t that take all? Imagine bringing his entire brood to see a man swing in the breeze,” Easterly said.

  “Be glad it’s not us. Why, over in—” Carson cut off his recollection of more dangerous times when a cloud of dust came up the hill along the road.

  “That’s Daniel. He is creating quite a fuss galloping along like that. I’ve told him about riding so hard that his horse gets winded.”

  “Joe, Clay!” Daniel Easterly gasped as he brought his horse to a sudden, dusty stop. He bent over and wiped grit from his lips. “I found him. I found Simon Potter.”

  “That’s the best news I’ve heard all day,” Carson said. Then he froze. “Where’d you find him? Not in the town cemetery?”

  “No, sir, not there. In the town jail.”

  Carson looked from Daniel to the hanging tree and knew what was coming.

  He wasn’t wrong.

  CHAPTER 16

  “You’re sure it’s him? Potter?” Clay Carson clutched at straws.

  Daniel Easterly’s head bobbed up and down so hard it almost came off. Carson couldn’t help but think of the man he saw hanged whose head had been pulled off.

  “Did you see him? Talk to him?” Joe Easterly tapped his fingers on his gun butt. He wanted to strike out right away.

  Carson saw the same hotheaded desire for immediate action in both brothers. He understood it because he felt the same. Added to the stewpot of boiling emotions was revulsion when he remembered how excited the farmer and his family had been to see an execution. Carson stepped away from under the tree. Somehow, the shade cast by the oak turned his flesh as cold as ice.

  “He was all locked up. Marshal Sutcliff’s got a couple guards makin’ the rounds, patrollin’ the city to keep the peace. I swear, it’s like a barn raisin’. The town’s celebratin’, only instead of puttin’ up a barn, they’ll be droppin’ a man to his death.”

  “When is the execution scheduled? It must be soon.” He remembered the farmer’s words. The news had gotten around in the last week or so. Whenever Potter had been caught, it was recently.

  “Tonight. Sundown, or just before.”

  Carson judged the position of the sun. They had at most an hour.

  “We don’t have much time to think this through. We can’t ride into town, guns blazing, and spring Simon. Not if Daniel spotted two deputies. There’s likely to be more.”

  “They was sellin’ tickets,” Daniel said. “Marshal Sutcliff is the one takin’ the money and sounding like a sideshow barker.”

  Carson blinked hard, not sure he understood. Then he did. The town made money off charging people to watch a man die. That meant there would be more than two deputies. The marshal needed men not only to sell tickets, but to keep the crowd that hadn’t paid far enough away to give spectators a decent view.

  Joe had read the tracks in the ground around the tree perfectly.

  “What’re we gonna do, Clay?” Daniel looked at him as if he had all the answers. Worse, so did his brother. When the Dirty Creek Gang had been in their heyday, he had been the one to find likely piles of treasure to steal. Lemuel had figured out the plan and they had all taken part in the actual robbery.

  Now he had both roles to fill.

  “Lemuel’s not here, so we need to think this through for ourselves. Simon’s life depends on it.” He frowned in concentration, then said, “You both rustle some horses. Get at least one spare for each of us. Don’t forget a couple for Simon.”

  “Steal five horses,” Joe said, nodding. “Would it help if we stole more?”

  “No time, and it would be awkward trying to wrangle a couple spares each. Better to stake them out five or ten miles away, but there’s no time.”

  “What do we do after we steal the horses?” Daniel’s face was flushed with excitement.

  “Be sure you have spare tack for Simon. He’s a lousy bareback rider. Bring the horses around to a spot at the foot of this hill, down west.”

  Joe slapped his brother on the shoulder and they set out to get horses for the escape. Carson stood under the tree and stared at the limb so far up. He circled the thick-boled oak and set to work with a knife before stepping up to ride into town. The hot sun on his back was a tad colder than it should have been.

  The carnival atmosphere in town made Clay Carson angry.

  Canvas tents flapped lazily in the breeze, set up alongside wagons hawking lemonade and fried meat pies. A pair of musicians picked a banjo and fiddle under the eaves of the general store. Children darted between the grownups, chewing on sticks of red rock candy.

  As mad as he was that the citizens of Boone celebrated a man’s death, he knew it all depended on who was being hanged. He had been to several hangings in his day. There hadn’t been an air of celebration, but he hadn’t felt any revulsion at the public events, either.

  None of the executions had been of a friend.

  He rode past the town lockup, scouting where the marshal had placed his deputies. Daniel had been right about them. Two deputies patrolled restlessly, slapping everyone they met on the back and pumping their hands like a well. The gaiety in the air choked Carson.

  He circled around and waited for the deputies to move away from the jailhouse. Only then did he trot to the barred window and peer inside.

  “Potter? Simon Potter! You in there?”

  Carson’s horse reared when a head suddenly appeared on the other side of the bars. A sunburnt face peered out as the man grasped the bars so hard his hands shook. Eyes bluer than the sky fixed on him.

  “It’s right good of you to come wish me a fond farewell, Clay.”

  “What’d you do to get locked up?”

  “A passel of things, but they caught me stealing a horse. They hang horse thieves in these parts.”

  Carson cursed. He’d sent the Easterly brothers out to commit the very crime Potter was sentenced to swing for. If anything went wrong, all four of them would be dangling, side by side, their necks broken and their carcasses drawing flies.

  “Sundown,” he said. “That’s when they’re fixing to hang you?”

  “So the marshal tells me. He’s quite a joker, Marshal Sutcliff. Always has a taunt to pass along whenever he checks on me. So far, he hasn’t repeated himself, not once. The man must spend all his time thinking up those insults.”

  “Is he in the front office now?”

  “Don’t think on it, Clay. He’s got the door into the cells booby-trapped. And there’s no way to get out of this godforsaken town without everyone drawing a bead on us.”

  “I’ve got a plan. I want you—”

  “Get away from the prisoner! Go on, git. Nobody talks to him.” A deputy with a shotgun cradled in the crook of his arm stalked toward Carson.

  A thousand things flashed through his head. Drawing, firing, and killing the deputy only drew the attention of everyone else in town. The marshal wasn’t too far away and the second deputy walking sentry duty was across the street and already coming to his partner’s aid.

  “Sorry,” Carson said. “I just wanted to hear what a guilty man has to say before justice runs its course.”

  “You want to get close up on Hangman’s Hill, you gotta buy a ticket. Five dollars,” the shotgun-toting lawman said.

  “I don’t have that much,” Carson said. “Can I watch from somewhere else?”

  “With the rabble down the hill.”

  The second deputy stood beside the one with the shotgun. The expression on his face made Carson even angrier. The man not only enjoyed the notion of charging the townspeople to get close to the convicted man but approved of keeping the rest at bay. He’d especially enjoy enforcing those boundaries. These were men who enjoyed abusing the power their badges gave. That told Carson the marshal was likely even worse. These two imitated him or they’d be put in their place by a more honest, less vindictive officer of the law.

  “No need to get an itchy trigger finger,” Carson said. The second deputy drew his six-gun and carelessly swung it in a wide arc that included Carson’s head.

  “I’m going.” He tugged on the reins and got his horse headed away from the two lawmen. As he left, Simon shouted curses at the deputies. Their laughter mocked his sorry plight.

  Carson rode aimlessly around Boone. He fought to hold down his anger at what he saw. It became especially hard when the farmer and his family waved to him and motioned him to join them.

  “We finished buying our supplies,” the man said proudly. In the rear of the wagon rode not only his wife and children, but several sacks of salt, flour, and beans.

  “We got plenty to carry us through harvest,” his wife said. “We’ve got a cow and a dozen chickens.”

  “Hush, now, Lenore. This gent don’t need to know such things. You get a ticket so you’ll be able to see everything from up close?”

  “Nope,” Carson said. “Five dollars is too steep a price. You pay that for all your family?”

  “We spent all our cash on supplies, so we’re in the same position as you. But I reckon standing up in the wagon gives us a way to see over the heads of everyone in the crowd that paid to get near the action.”

  “It’ll almost be like getting in the front row,” the wife said confidently. She looked admiringly at her husband. “He thought of using the wagon as a grandstand for us and the children.”

  “I heard tell the deed’s set for sundown,” Carson said.

  “We’re on our way up the hill right now. Why don’t you ride along with us?”

  “Up Hangman’s Hill,” Carson said. The farmer didn’t hear the contempt in his voice. “I’d be honored to accompany you, sir. Ma’am.” He pinched the brim of his hat and winked broadly. The woman blushed at such attention from a perfect stranger. Carson suspected he’d have been called out in other circumstances, but they were too ebullient to take offense.

  “Look, Pa, look! There he is!” One of the farmer’s young boys jumped up and down and pointed.

  Carson sucked in his breath and held it. The marshal had thrown Simon Potter into the rear of a buckboard like he was a sack of potatoes. The deputies dragged their prisoner to his feet. His hands had been bound behind his back. Sandy hair flew about in wild disarray. There hadn’t been a comb across that scalp in a week. His normally florid complexion was a brighter red now. Even at this distance away, Carson thought he spotted a vein pulsing wildly in Potter’s temple. As much as Simon tried to remain calm, he was close to having a heart attack.