“Here he is, folks,” the marshal bellowed. “A tried and convicted horse thief, the worst kind. He stole a horse from the livery stable and—”

  “It was my horse!” Potter shouted. “The owner of the stable wasn’t going to give me back my own horse!”

  “He stole the horse,” Marshal Sutcliff rambled on. “He didn’t pay for the horse’s feed, so it belonged to Mr. Reynolds. This yahoo stole the horse, and now he’s gonna pay for it.” He mimicked being hanged. The crowd roared in approval.

  One deputy remained to hold Potter upright while the other drove the buckboard. The marshal rode alongside, egging on the crowd. Now and again, he stopped to bend low, take money, and hand back a ticket.

  “Let’s go!” the farmer said, snapping the reins. His team began pulling the wagon with its load of sacks and excited humans up the road leading to the hanging tree.

  Carson reached down and made sure his knife sheathed in the top of his boot slid easily. His mind raced. He went over the plan and how it played out in a dozen ways. All of them ended in disaster. He steeled himself for possible failure, but Simon Potter had been his best friend, in the gang and out. Letting him die this way wasn’t going to happen.

  The farmer pulled his wagon to a halt on a level stretch. The oak tree with the limbs sturdy enough to hold a dangling man was fifty feet away. This was the closest a half dozen men allowed the farmer and his family as they gathered tickets. The lucky ones who had paid their money got to press closer to the oak tree.

  “Pa, I can’t see good,” the smallest child complained.

  “I’ll take care of that. Don’t worry,” Carson said to the farmer, who stood in the driver’s box with his wife.

  Carson grunted as he moved the sacks of salt and flour to the rear of the wagon and piled them one on the other. He slapped the top of the pile.

  “See how good your view is from up there.”

  The boy yelped in glee and crawled to the top of the salt and flour mountain. Carson mounted and saw that the hangman’s rope had been tied down at the root and tossed over the limb so the noose swung ominously.

  The crowd began getting rowdy.

  “Hold your horses,” the marshal called. “Hang on!”

  This produced a loud laugh from the audience. Potter struggled to keep the rope from being fastened around his neck. The deputy held him in place as the marshal secured the rope.

  “You got any last words, you mangy, horse-thievin’ cayuse?”

  Simon Potter began detailing the marshal’s ancestry in lurid details. It was so inventive Carson momentarily forgot what he had to do as he appreciated the poetry his friend unleashed.

  He shook himself out of his admiration. He slid the knife free and cut through both sacks. Salt and flour began trickling out. Putting his heels to his horse’s flanks, he shot forward, yanked the reins free of the wagon brake, and fired his gun in the air to spook the team.

  The horses responded perfectly. They bolted. The wagon rattled and clanked uphill toward the site of the hanging. Salt and flour gushed from the sacks as the boy stumbled. As he fought to stay atop the sacks, his weight caused the slashes in the sacks to widen, making the little dusting turn into a full-fledged dust storm of white.

  The wagon plowed through the crowd, scattering them.

  Then Carson realized the flaw in his plan. All the commotion spooked the horse hitched to the buckboard where Potter stood. His friend lost his balance as the buckboard shot from under him, leaving him dangling by the rope around his neck.

  CHAPTER 17

  Clay Carson’s cry of anguish matched that of the falling Simon Potter. He shifted his weight in the saddle and guided his horse through the panicked crowd. Hooves hit several of the Boone residents closest to Potter. Carson reached out to catch his friend, but Simon Potter no longer dangled from the noose.

  The rope had broken free of the root.

  “Get to your feet. Climb up!” Carson grabbed for Potter.

  “My hands are tied. And don’t yank on the noose!” Potter’s warning was cut off when Carson did exactly that.

  Hand wrapped around the noose just above the knot, Carson heaved. Potter let out a strangled gasp and tried to jump. His feet got a couple inches off the ground and then everything worked to pull him belly down behind Carson. He sputtered and complained—but he was in good enough condition not to vomit as he bounced along.

  Carson tried not to look back. Marshal Sutcliff shouted conflicting orders to his deputies, but they weren’t in any condition to obey. The one who had steadied Potter before the hanging had crashed to the ground and lay still. The buckboard driver lost control of his team and the rig overturned after rolling downhill.

  The crowd hardly understood all that had happened, other than the spectacle they expected hadn’t happened. Flour and salt in the air complicated seeing and breathing. That additional confusion covered Carson’s escape.

  At the base of Hangman’s Hill, he slowed and reached back to pull his friend more completely onto the horse.

  “You’re killing me. I can’t hardly breathe!”

  “You aren’t having any trouble telling me how awful you have it.”

  Carson stopped suddenly. Simon Potter tumbled to the ground. With a quick move, Carson threw his leg over the saddle and dropped down, knife flashing in the last rays of sun. The rope around Potter’s wrists parted. The first thing he did was pull the noose from around his neck.

  “Dang, Clay, you almost killed me. If the rope hadn’t broken—”

  “I sawed through the root they used to secure the end of the hangman’s rope. You weren’t in any danger.”

  “No danger?! Look! My neck’s all tore up from that hemp necktie! Tell me my skin’s not all rough and ragged!”

  “Get up behind me or walk.”

  Carson settled down and held out his hand. Potter pulled himself up with the help.

  “I’m not going to ride like this with my arms around you. Now, if you were as comely as that filly back in Abilene, that’d be entirely different. She was quite a belle. But you haven’t taken a bath in a month of Sundays. And you’re ugly as sin.”

  “Sinning with that gal in Abilene would have been mighty lovely,” Carson said.

  “Did you ever? Sin with her?”

  “I thought you did.”

  “She cleaned out my poke,” Potter said.

  “Mine, too.”

  They laughed at their failed foray a couple years earlier. They’d partnered almost a year before riding with Lemuel Jones and had enjoyed many adventures after.

  “Think they’ll come after me in the dark?”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Carson said. “We’re going to put more miles between us and every last lost soul in Boone than you can imagine.”

  The sun had fully set behind them now, and the prairie swallowed up the last light like it hadn’t meant to give it back come morning. Coyotes began yipping somewhere off to the north, a sound that mingled strangely with the occasional fading laughter from the chaos back on Hangman’s Hill. The tall grass whispered with wind as if the land itself were hushed, waiting to see what came next.

  “Someone’s ahead!” Potter grabbed for Carson’s six-shooter. A powerful hand closed over his fingers and kept him from drawing.

  “That’s Joe and his kid brother. If there’s any mercy left in the world, they have spare horses for us.”

  “It might be a posse,” Potter said uneasily.

  “Not ahead of us, not with riderless horses. You’re turning into an old lady in your advancing years.”

  “Thanks to you I have a few more years to develop that way,” Potter said. “Remind me later. I’ll be sure to have you over for afternoon tea and cookies.”

  “Knowing you, we’ll be in hot water before we join up with Lemuel again.”

  Simon Potter asked about that assertion, giving Carson the chance to explain why the gang was hitting the trail again.

  “Count me in,” Potter said when Carson had finished giving the details of the treasure hunt. “Why not? I don’t have anything to do but dodge the law. Better to get rich, thanks to Lemuel, than to swing at the end of Marshal Sutcliff’s rope.”

  Carson said nothing. Of the entire Dirty Creek Gang, only Potter had continued to ride the owlhoot trail. The rest had thought to hide among law-abiding citizens to weather the storm.

  “There he is! Daniel, that there’s Simon Potter! He’s the one I told you about.”

  “Aw, Joe, he’s the one you warned me about.”

  The brothers had a good laugh and walked to shake Potter’s hand.

  “I reckon Clay’s told you what we’re up to with Lemuel.”

  “Good to see you, Joe. He has told me what I need to know, but there’s one thing he hasn’t told you.”

  “What’s that, Simon?” Joe sounded disquieted. He looked from Potter to Carson.

  “We should stop lollygagging, climb up on those fine horses you found wandering about, and ride with the wind. Me and Clay have half of North Texas on our heels.”

  “I saw you. In the jail. What was it like, Mr. Potter?” Daniel’s eagerness was in sharp contrast to his brother’s worried look.

  “Son, I need time to make up some tall tales about it. Till then, call me Simon. Your brother and Clay do.”

  Carson watched the boy puff up with pride. He was being accepted as one of the gang.

  They mounted and headed due west. Eventually they’d have to ride north to join up with Jones and the other two, but putting as much distance between themselves and any posse drove them right now.

  The stars came out, one by one, clear and sharp above the wide sweep of prairie. The land rolled and dipped beneath them like a great slumbering beast, and their horses seemed to know to keep quiet as they moved.

  At least having a man like Sutcliff on their trail made Carson uneasy. Potter took his notoriety in stride and the Easterly brothers hadn’t seen how the Boone marshal acted. Marshal Sutcliff wasn’t the kind to let a man he intended to hang get away scot-free. More than that, he wasn’t a man who let anyone humiliate him the way he had been. Snatching a prisoner about to be hanged from under his very large, bulbous nose was an affront that required tracking to the ends of the earth.

  They rode through the night and past dawn before they took a rest and ate a cold meal.

  “Should we post a sentry, Clay?”

  “You sound eager for the task. Aren’t you tired?” He watched Daniel’s reaction. The youngster ran at full steam. The three older gang members were half past dead from exhaustion.

  “I can climb into them rocks and take your field glasses and watch our back trail.”

  Carson waved him to the task. His body felt as if he had gone fifty rounds in a bare-knuckle fight.

  “Getting too old for this kind of riding. A few hours in the saddle doesn’t bother me. But we’ve been at it for ten?” Joe Easterly rubbed his butt.

  “I make it closer to twelve. We put at least sixty, seventy miles between us and that danged persistent marshal.”

  “You reckon he’ll give up hunting you down?” Joe asked.

  “I don’t believe it’s in him to quit. That’s how he caught me before. He never gave up until I tuckered out one night. He snuck into my camp.” Simon Potter shook his head sadly. “I woke up staring down the barrel of his six-shooter. Danged near a week he tracked me.”

  “All because you stole a horse?” Carson asked.

  “It was my horse, dammit. They tried to steal my horse.” Potter settled down and grinned crookedly. “There was that, and a small matter of marital infidelity with his wife.”

  “The marshal’s wife and you?” Carson had to laugh.

  “The pool of available husband material in Boone is tiny,” Potter said. “You might say the pool is closer to a mud puddle. She wasn’t the type to end up unmarried. No, sir, not Ethel, lovely Ethel.” He got a distant look, then snapped out of it.

  “How’re we all fixed for money? Marshal Sutcliff took every last dime I had, and, sorry to say, it was only one dime.”

  Carson and Joe Easterly exchanged glances.

  “If you had that dime, Simon, you’d have more’n the lot of us. Doesn’t matter, though,” Carson said. “When Lemuel tells us where to find the gold, we’ll be rich.”

  “As rich as we should have been a year back,” Easterly added.

  The trio fell silent for a spell. Carson looked at his partners. The same thought ran through their minds as his.

  “It might be fairy gold,” Carson said. “You know, like the old fairy tale. A pot of gold, but it turns to smoke if you touch it.”

  “You’re saying you don’t trust Lemuel not to have spent it? Why get us together again?” asked Potter.

  “Me and Clay have pondered this. He’s dying. There’s no question about that. It might be he only wanted to ride with us again—”

  “As our boss,” cut in Carson. “The past year’s been a trial for him, coughing up blood and hardly getting about.” He spat. “He’s been tormenting himself, too. He camped out overlooking a cavalry post. Every day, he watched soldiers come and go and knew they should have been after him as the baddest outlaw in all of Texas.”

  “And they weren’t,” finished Potter. “He’s not even a memory for the young bucks sallying forth from their fine army post.”

  They fell silent again. Then all three said at the same instant, “The gold’s worth it.”

  And it was, if it existed. If Lemuel Jones had lost it or spent it, riding together one final time made the effort worthwhile. Clay Carson already felt more alive than he had in a year of hoeing cotton and crushing weevils between thumb and forefinger. More than once, his life had been at risk. Coming through gunfights and rescues made his blood pound in his heart just a little harder. He felt more alert and connected than he had since the robbery went awry.

  It was good riding with friends at his side again, no matter where the trail led.

  “So?” asked Simon Potter. “We’re dead broke. Are we going to rob a stagecoach or a bank?”

  CHAPTER 18

  “Where is it? It’s late.” Daniel Easterly paced nervously, stopped, then pulled the brim of his hat down to shield his eyes to get a better view of the prairie. “What’s keeping it? You don’t think it’s been canceled?”

  “Stages don’t keep to schedules too often,” Joe explained to his brother. “It’ll be along before you know it.”

  “But it’s late!” he whined in frustration.

  “Don’t get too antsy about getting shot at,” Simon Potter said. “More often than not, taking a bullet is not worth the effort.”

  “We need money,” Daniel insisted. “We’re the Dirty Creek Gang!”

  Carson took a deep breath and regretted it. He caught a snootful of dust. He sneezed, wiped his upper lip, and settled on a rock overlooking the road. They were close to Palo Duro Canyon, where the land was table-flat and then dropped off into sixty-foot-deep canyons that ran for dozens of miles like a spider-web. He’d heard that one over in Arizona was bigger, but he had no interest in riding that far to see. Using the terrain here to plan robberies was good enough for him.

  The heat was rising, and the dry wind cut like a rasp across his face. A hawk circled lazily above, then surged skyward, riding the column of rising heated air. Carson watched it a moment, then turned his attention back to the road.

  The road stretched straight for a couple miles, then hit the rocky patch where they waited. Not three miles east, a maze of deep canyons, where the Red River War had raged for over a year, began. Carson was glad Colonel Mackenzie had flushed out the last of the Comanches so long back. That made robbing banks and stagecoaches safer for him and his friends. They didn’t have to worry about losing their scalps once they had finished their robbing. The Indians were notorious for letting the white men shoot each other and then fighting the winners.

  “Daniel, my lad,” said Potter, “we’re not the Dirty Creek Gang. Three of our august members are missing. But we will do them proud, since they aren’t here to join us.” He spun around. “Clay, when’s the stage coming by?”

  “What’s it worth to you?” Carson lowered the field glasses.

  “If you make them show up in the next ten minutes, you can claim that dollar of my share.”

  “You owe me,” Carson said, putting the field glasses away. “That dust cloud’s the stagecoach, and it’ll be here within ten minutes.”

  “Do tell? You tricked me, old son, you about came right out and stole my money.”

  Carson clapped his friend on the back. “Just like old times.”

  “Mount up, amigos. We need to get ready.” Potter checked to be sure his six-shooter was loaded and ready. Then he pulled up his bandanna, settling it gingerly to avoid the scrapes on his neck left by the hangman’s noose.

  “The road’s blocked. I done it myself,” said Daniel.

  “Then all we have to do is cry ‘stand and deliver’ and they’ll shower us with their riches,” said Potter.

  “They’ll shower us with lead if we don’t convince the shotgun messenger to give up,” said Joe. He pointed. “Unless I miss my guess, there’s a pair of men in the driver’s box and that glint you see now and then is reflection off a rifle barrel.”

  “Rifles, trifles,” declared Potter. “Now, if he is a true shotgun messenger and has a scattergun, no matter how drunk he is, he’s likely to hit something.”

  “Really?” Daniel Easterly stared at Potter with wide eyes.

  “Keep your head down, cover your behind, and don’t panic,” Joe advised his brother.

  Carson exchanged a quick glance with Potter. They were both ready. This felt like old times as excitement built.

  They stepped up and sat astride their horses, settling pistols and rifles. Carson checked their spare horses. They wouldn’t need to hightail it, not after robbing a coach, but the Easterly brothers had gone to the trouble of stealing the horses, and they had served them well getting away from the Boone marshal.