“Come on, Clay. The horses’ll be all right.” Daniel bounced up and down in the saddle. His eagerness worried Carson, but the boy was his brother’s concern. In a robbery, every man looked out for himself.

  Only, their gang had been more than a bunch of rowdies. They had watched out for one another. That had made them doubly dangerous.

  They worked their way down to the road from the rocky observation nest. Carson slipped the leather thong off his pistol’s hammer and tried to settle his nerves. He had forgotten what this moment felt like. Spending long hours with cotton bolls and weeds and bugs had sapped his ability to anticipate a robbery.

  Before, outwardly, he had always been as cold as ice. His brain turned over one possibility after another, anticipating trouble. Now he found one single thought locked in: draw his gun and shoot anyone who threatened him. That was the way to stay alive.

  “I’ve never worried about dying before,” he said aloud.

  “You never worried because you never lived,” said Potter. “I always had to teach you how to have a good time. Remember in Austin when we drove a dozen head of cattle down the main street, right in front of—”

  “There she comes!” Daniel fired his pistol into the air.

  Too soon. They had agreed to hold off doing any shooting unless it became necessary. The stagecoach rattled along the dusty road, then made a sharp bend, only to find rocks in the way. When the driver dealt with the blockage, which looked like it was a natural rockfall, they were to get the drop on the guard and roust the passengers.

  Dust swirled in thick clouds. The stage’s horses, snorting and frothing, struggled to slow at the unexpected obstacle. The driver saw it too late. He yanked hard on the reins, jostling the box. The shotgun messenger’s hat flew off as he ducked and rolled into position, shouting something they couldn’t hear over the wind.

  The inopportune gunshot warned the shotgun messenger. He turned and flopped belly down on top of the coach. His rifle barked three times before Carson reacted. He fired several times at the guard and missed every shot.

  It had been a year since he’d robbed anyone. He had never thought that thievery required constant practice to get and stay good. That assumption came back to bite him now. Nerves ruined his aim and ducking the lead flung in his direction further added to his uneasiness about the robbery.

  “Give up. You’re surrounded,” he called. That threat should have made the driver and guard quake in their boots. In the olden days, he had caused brave men to surrender their weapons. Not now. He had lost his command voice. The only response he got was being fired on from a different angle. The driver had dragged out a Greener goose gun and swung its long barrel around. Braced against the side of the coach, he fired. The accurate weapon delivered a spray of lead that knocked Joe from the saddle.

  His brother screeched like a hooty owl and rode to him.

  “Let him be,” Carson shouted. “Stop them from shooting at the rest of us!”

  He emptied his six-gun and lifted his Winchester. His horse crow-hopped around, making accurate shooting impossible. Getting off a round every time he circled the stranded stagecoach was the best he could do. From the corner of his eye, he saw that Simon Potter was having better luck.

  He had forced two passengers out, but the guard atop the coach lowered his aim to shoot Potter. Carson kicked free of his still-galloping horse, hit the ground, and went to one knee. He took careful aim. His bullet blasted splinters from the edge of the coach into the guard’s face.

  “Get back, Simon. The guard’s got your range.”

  “So’s the driver.” Potter’s words were drowned out by the throaty roar of the shotgun. The driver had finally reloaded.

  Carson saw added trouble brewing. The two passengers hadn’t stood idly by. One had a small-caliber pistol out. Every time it fired, a tiny puff of white smoke billowed from the muzzle. It made a soft popping sound. The other passenger had retreated to the coach. Carson thought he sought safety, then realized he searched through a traveling case for a Colt. When the passenger began firing from inside the coach, the roar echoing forth was almost as deafening as the sound of the discharging shotgun.

  “Give us the mail pouch and drive off. Somebody’s gonna get hurt if we keep swapping lead.” Potter worked around to get a better shot at the guard sprawled on the coach roof, who frantically reloaded.

  “Talk it over. He’s got a good idea.” Carson doubted such logic meant a hill of beans to either driver or guard, but it kept them from firing for a few seconds.

  Carson dived for cover in a shallow arroyo. He rested the butt of his six-gun on the rim of the gully and took careful aim. His earlier nerves had settled down. He felt more like he had during the gang’s other robberies. That made him doubly cautious. He knew he’d hit whatever he aimed at now.

  Both the guard and the driver were easy targets. The passenger with the small handgun was an even bigger target.

  “You mean it?”

  “Cross my heart,” Carson called back.

  He ducked when the canvas mail pouch sailed through the air and landed a foot in front of him.

  “Go on, get out of here,” he ordered. Then Carson saw more trouble.

  Daniel Easterly was covered in his brother’s blood. He stood, wild-eyed and trembling like an aspen leaf. With an incoherent scream, he rushed the stagecoach.

  Carson acted without thinking. He scrambled over the lip of the arroyo and threw himself forward. He grunted when Daniel’s legs crashed into him. They went down in a pile. The young outlaw was too intent on shooting the guard or the driver or one of the passengers. This inattention to his real threat allowed Carson to grab a handful of vest and yank hard.

  Daniel lost his balance. Carson swung his pistol and landed the barrel alongside Daniel’s exposed head.

  “Get on outta here!” Carson shouted again.

  The driver had dropped the shotgun into the footwell and turned his full attention to getting the team moving. He skirted the rocks piled in the road, clattered over a couple, and then raced away.

  “They shot Joe. They kilt him!” Daniel fired after the now-vanished stagecoach.

  Carson swung his pistol around again. This time, he connected with the youth’s wrist. With a yelp of pain, Daniel dropped his six-shooter. Carson got to his feet and looked down at the cursing, spitting, furious youngster. For a brief instant, he considered shooting him. Then he only drove the muzzle of his six-gun into Daniel’s forehead.

  “You settle down or, I swear, I’ll pull the trigger.”

  “They kilt Joe. They shot him. They’ll pay for that!”

  “Nobody killed nobody, Daniel. Do as Clay tells you. I need to get all cleaned up after this dustup.”

  “Joe? You’re not dead!” Daniel got to his feet and hugged his older brother.

  “It takes more ’n a back-road stagecoach driver to put me in a grave. Especially one shooting rock salt.” He rubbed his chest and winced. “That doesn’t mean it doesn’t sting like hellfire.”

  “He didn’t kill you, but he surely did ruin your shirt,” Potter said, dragging over the mail pouch. “It’s too much to expect somebody sent a shirt by mail.” He threw the canvas bag to the ground. “Who’s got a knife?”

  Carson silently drew his.

  “I should have remembered that you had a blade. You cut the ropes around my wrists. Get to it, Clay. Let’s cut into the bag and see how rich we got.” Simon Potter dropped to his knees and held the bag for his partner to cut into the tough fabric.

  The blade was nicked and duller than when Carson had cut through the oak tree root back on Hangman’s Hill. Sawing fast, he teased open a tiny cut, then abandoned the knife and worked his fingers into the hole. A savage yank ripped the bag down one side. Dozens of letters spilled out.

  “That’s all we got? Letters?” Daniel stared at the pile in disbelief. “We got all shot up for letters?”

  “Folks send money in letters. You’ve got a lot to learn,” Joe told his brother. He picked up a white envelope and ripped open one end. Easterly dumped out the letter. No money.

  The four of them made quick work of the remaining correspondence.

  The only one to find any currency was Simon Potter. He held up a crisp five-dollar bill.

  “We needed money. We got it. Enough for each of us to get a dollar.”

  “There’s four of us and that’s a five-dollar bill,” Carson pointed out.

  “I’m taking two bucks. The robbery was my idea. I deserve more.” Simon turned to keep Joe from snatching the bill from his hands.

  The other three bantered over the money. Carson felt a curious hollowness in his gut. The Easterly brothers and Potter acted now like they all had before. They joshed and pushed each other as the intoxication of the robbery faded. It hadn’t occurred to any of them that they had risked their lives for a dollar and two bits each.

  Somehow, Joe convinced Simon he deserved all five dollars because he was the one shot full of rock salt that had ruined his shirt.

  Clay Carson muttered, “Lemuel, you SOB. There’d better be gold and a pile of it. If not, I’ll see you die before the consumption takes you.”

  CHAPTER 19

  “We need to ride like we mean it,” Clay Carson said. He felt uneasy after the stagecoach robbery. It hadn’t gone well and the driver looked mad enough to carry a grudge. His boss might even accuse him of losing the mail and fire him. The worst outcome would be a federal deputy marshal being sent out to track them down because they had stolen from the U.S. Mail.

  “Is it a good idea to head for Elbow Bend?” Simon Potter rode alongside Carson. “Your face will be known there.”

  “More likely, they’ll know Wylie and Turner,” he answered. “They worked there.”

  “I meant that word of the stagecoach robbery might be there. Neither of them was involved.”

  “We wore masks. Nobody remembers details when lead is flying all around,” Carson said. He worried more about federal law than anything from Elbow Bend.

  “But you and Lemuel took them away. That makes you memorable. A clerk and a banker gone just like that.” Potter snapped his fingers.

  “Teller,” Carson corrected. “Wylie was a teller.”

  “The point is, they were well known by everyone left in the Podunk town. You rode in, and they leave.”

  “There wasn’t a lawman there,” he said. “That was one reason Sam and Billy stayed.”

  “All the more reason for the common folks to notice you.”

  “You go into town and buy Joe a shirt, then. I’ll stay with them out of sight. When you get back with a shirt that doesn’t have a half dozen holes and a quart of blood all over it, we’ll join up with Lemuel and the others. They camped a few miles down the road.”

  “I’ll see what medicine I can get for him, too. Getting shot with rock salt hurts like the dickens.”

  “Tore up a little skin, but there’s nothing serious,” Carson said. He looked over at Joe. Daniel had crudely tied a rag around his brother’s chest. Riding along, in spite of taking it slow and easy, caused the knot to untie and show part of his damaged chest. If he had been hit with a full load of buckshot, or even bird shot, they’d be saying a prayer over his grave.

  “He’s not up to riding farther?” Potter sounded concerned. “He’s doing just fine.”

  “He could press on if he had to. Let him rest up. Go get a new shirt for him and quit arguing.”

  Carson worried that he’d taken so long finding Joe and Simon, a man in Lemuel’s condition could have up and died. Something more caused him to feel a trifle guilty, too. Leaving Lemuel in Wylie and Turner’s care meant they had a chance to worm the location of the gold from him. He tried to think what he’d do if he was in that position.

  He wasn’t sure he wouldn’t go dig up the gold and cut out his onetime partners. Wylie and Turner weren’t any more honorable than he was—and were probably less inclined to think of the rest of the gang as friends. The only thing preventing that from happening was Lemuel not spilling his guts to them. He knew Lemuel well enough to know that he’d die before double-crossing the gang that wasn’t watching over him. If they tried torturing him, dying before he uttered one word was possible.

  “Why don’t you want Lemuel to see Joe all shot up?”

  Carson snorted. Explaining the man’s condition had come from a botched robbery would have to make Lemuel think twice about divvying up the money with all of them. The robbery attempt showed that everyone taking part had either lost their minds or weren’t trustworthy any longer.

  “Nobody’s on our trail,” Potter assured him, reading his mind as he had done in the old days.

  “We don’t know that.”

  “A sack of mail’s hardly enough to get riled up about. No town marshal will come after us,” Potter said.

  “There might be a sheriff who was waiting for a love letter. One of them was perfumed.”

  Carson wondered why he felt uneasy telling Potter of his real fear about showing up at Lemuel’s camp and having to confess they’d botched a simple robbery. Joe’s shirt and bloody chest were evidence of how much they had all lost in the past year. Letting Lemuel see that was a betrayal of the man’s faith in them all.

  “That wasn’t perfume, and it was addressed to a young lady. Miss Simpkins.”

  “How can you remember that, Simon?”

  “I considered delivering the letter myself. Miss Amanda Simpkins. Doesn’t the name conjure up the image of a proper young lady? Maybe a schoolmarm just hankering for a bold knight of the western plains to ride into town and rescue her?”

  “You see yourself that way? The noose cut off blood to your brain too long for any hope of recovery,” Carson said.

  “It could happen. But I don’t remember the name of the town because the odor, whatever it was, befuddled my brain.”

  “The letter must have been intended to go to a town around here,” Carson said.

  “This part of Texas is something of a mystery to me. I prefer down in the Hill Country.”

  “Too many wild hogs there for my taste. The Piney Woods out to the east—now, there’s some fine land. You remember when we blew into Gilmer?” Memories pushed aside Carson’s worry.

  “Never been there. It was Longview where we—”

  “You’re dead wrong. Gilmer, on the Old Cherokee Trace. We held up that whiskey peddler along the road.”

  The two continued to reminisce until they came to a crossroads.

  “Thataway’s Elbow Bend,” Carson said. “We’ll wait here for you.”

  “Joe!” Potter waved the man over. “You still have the haul from the stagecoach?”

  Joe Easterly fumbled it out of the watch pocket in his jeans. He held up the folded five-dollar bill.

  “I’ll get you some new duds. Clay thinks it’d spook Lemuel if he sees you all bloodied and shot up.”

  “Here.” Easterly handed Potter the greenback. “Get a pair of jeans, too. These are as soaked with blood as my shirt.”

  “Since it’s our money,” Potter said, “you’ll have to pay us all back when you get your share of the gold.”

  “Whenever we find the told that’s been stashed away, I’ll buy every last one of you a new set of clothes.”

  “I’ll hold you to it.” Potter tucked the bill into his vest pocket and turned toward Elbow Bend.

  “Have a drink for each of us, too,” Carson said. “There’s no way you’ll spend that much money on clothes—unless you get a set of formal duds.”

  “Only one drink,” Potter assured them. “One for each of you.” He peered at Daniel Easterly, who took the banter in as if he were listening to a preacher’s Sunday sermon. “I’ll only drink half a shot for the boy.”

  Before Daniel protested, Potter let out a loud, braying laugh, then galloped away.

  “What’d he mean by that? I’m—”

  “Daniel, Daniel, he was joshing you. That means he likes you. If he didn’t, you couldn’t get him to notice you if you were President Harrison.”

  Joe quietly spoke with his brother. Carson’s attention drifted. He wasn’t convinced it was a good idea having Daniel along. He hadn’t acquitted himself well during the robbery, though seeing one’s brother cut down by a shotgun blast was enough to unnerve most men. Carson doubted they could rely on him if anything more happened to Joe. It took a special kind of steel in the spine and soul to be a road agent. Daniel Easterly lacked that.

  They rode to a stand of trees and stretched out, backs to the trunks. Their horses grazed and Carson found himself slipping off to a deep sleep. He had carried a big load since meeting Lemuel Jones in Hidetown. Worries tumbled over and over in his head.

  He jerked awake when Daniel Easterly called out, “He’s back. There he comes!”

  Carson sat up and rubbed his eyes. The cloud of dust down the road in the direction of Elbow Bend grew larger by the minute. By the time Potter drew rein and waved to them, Carson had found his feet and blinked the last of his nap away from his eyes.

  “Here you go, my good man.” Potter tossed a brown-paper-wrapped package to Joe. “The sizes are off, but that’s all they had. That’s one sorry town, isn’t it?”

  “It’s dying,” Carson said. He looked up at his friend. “You have that drink for me?”

  “I thought on it. The saloon was a dusty affair, though the bar girl was cute.”

  “That’s been mentioned.” Carson jerked his hands up to catch a pint bottle tossed to him by the mounted man. He held it up. A swig had been taken out of the bottle of rye whiskey, but otherwise it was intact.

  “For my partners in crime. We deserve something more than a few love letters to the forlorn.”

  “The shirt’s tight,” Joe Easterly said, holding out his arms. “Sleeves are too short, but beggars can’t be choosers.”

  “If beggars could ride,” Potter said, “we’d be on our horses and riding to join Lemuel.”

  Carson stepped up, grabbed the bridle on the spare horse, which had helped put so much distance between them and the hanging lawman with his posse, and trotted back to the road. He judged the time and, if Lemuel and the others hadn’t moved their camp before sundown they’d all be together for the first time in a year.