“You have any trouble with the posse?” Carson asked.

  “Are you worried they’re on our trail? It was you they took out after.”

  “Has Lemuel told you where he hid the loot?” Potter moved closer to the fire and held out his hands to warm them. The embers hardly provided enough warmth. He took no notice. He stared hard at Sam Wylie.

  Carson suspected he knew why. If the four of them that had ridden together to reach this camp argued, Wylie and Turner had to be feeling the same anxiety about finding the gold. That they were still with Lemuel Jones told him that they hadn’t been able to find out where he’d hidden the loot.

  “We hit the trail at first light,” Carson said. He looked at the eastern horizon. Dawn wasn’t far off. “It’s getting mighty dangerous in this part of Texas.”

  “I have a hankering to see El Paso again,” said Potter. “It’s easy to slip across the river into El Paso del Norte.”

  “They renamed it,” came a soft voice. Lemuel Jones sat up, pulled the blanket around his thin shoulders, and scooted about to face Potter across the fire. “It’s Ciudad Juárez now.”

  “Imagine that,” Potter said, “getting a city named after you.”

  “Just like Franklin became El Paso, folks in them parts spend most of their time renaming towns,” said Lemuel.

  “You up to riding?” Carson hunkered down, sitting on his heels. “We ran into some trouble that probably followed us.”

  “I’m all rested up.” Lemuel looked hard at Carson before saying, “You want to know which direction to head, don’t you?”

  “That’s how we find where you hid the bank loot. If you know some other way—”

  “Clay, you’re getting to be so impatient in your old age.”

  “Getting shot at and not having anything to show for it does that to me.”

  “You’d rather be out in that cotton field working as a hired hand? If you hurry, you can get back in time to pick a bale or two for your boss.”

  Carson knew what to say. There was a note of longing in Lemuel’s voice. He wasn’t quite begging, but he came close.

  “You’re the boss. You’re our leader and always will be.”

  Carson looked around the circle at the gang. Potter kept a poker face. Joe and Daniel paid no attention to the undercurrents of power, of figuring out who was in charge. They’d follow anyone. But both Turner and Wylie perked up. Each thought he should be riding at the front of the gang, and neither ever would, as long as Lemuel was alive.

  Carson almost heard the gears grinding in both men’s heads how to get rid of him before he took over for Jones. The only thing standing in their way was the need to find the gold’s hiding place. Until Lemuel spilled on that, he held power.

  “You know the problem around Boone. Don’t tell us that’s where you stashed the gold.” Carson saw Lemuel turn cagey.

  “No, siree, I didn’t do a thing like that. The gold is hidden in Palo Duro Canyon.”

  “That doesn’t tell us much. That’s a mighty big hole in the ground.”

  “Heard tell it’s better’n one hundred twenty miles long.” Lemuel chuckled. “A man searching for a pot of gold there could spend his entire lifetime and never stumble across it.”

  “You’re doin’ nothing but tormenting us, old man. Tell us what you did with our money.” Billy Turner’s voice carried a nasty edge to it.

  Carson saw Turner move to better grab for his six-shooter.

  “Being sick like I am makes me a tad forgetful,” Lemuel said. That was the wrong thing to say. It set off Turner.

  The man rose and put his hand on the butt of his hogleg. If looks could kill, Lemuel Jones would have died from that hot stare. The tension in Turner’s shoulders showed Lemuel was about to die from lead, making the hard gaze unnecessary.

  The sound of two hammers cocking rivaled the distant thunder.

  “What is this? Boys, stop it. Now!” Lemuel threw back his blanket and pointed at Carson and Potter. Both had their pistols trained on Turner.

  “They threw down on me,” Turner said. He moved his hand away from his gun.

  “I never did any such thing,” Potter said. “I was just airing out my gun. It seemed a mite stuffy in its holster.” He spun the pistol around his trigger finger and returned the weapon to his holster.

  Carson wasn’t in the mood to apologize for doing the right thing. If Turner’s temper got the better of him and he killed Lemuel, everything they’d endured so far would be for naught.

  “Horses” was all he said.

  Joe and Daniel had missed everything that went on around the campfire. Sam Wylie had watched like a hawk. Or was it more like a vulture? Potter helped Lemuel stand, and they all walked slowly toward the tethered horses. Carson kicked out the fire and made sure a vagrant wisp of smoke wouldn’t betray that anyone had camped here.

  By the time they were on the trail, pink fingers of dawn worked across the horizon in front of them. Carson glanced at Lemuel. The man rode easily. A casual glance wouldn’t reveal any infirmity at all. Carson saw small signs of how the gang leader shook slightly. His fingers slipped from the reins more than once, and every time his horse stumbled, Lemuel almost tumbled off.

  “Why’d you decide to hide the loot in the canyon?” Carson asked.

  “When we split up, I headed due west. I was dogged by the posse for almost two weeks when I came to the canyon mouth. It looked like the law dogs had me. I ducked into the canyon and hid the gold, to be sure they didn’t catch me with it.”

  “You kept riding?”

  “It was another hundred miles or so, maybe more, to get out of Palo Duro Canyon. By the time I rode out, I’d put two to three hundred miles behind me. It was time for me to go to ground until the law forgot all about me.” He spat. The bloody gob spattered against a rock.

  Carson suspected Jones had contracted consumption before the robbery. The arduous escape had stolen away what little health he had left.

  “Clay?” Potter rode up. “Don’t look back, but we have two riders keeping their distance.”

  “Let’s go find out who they are.”

  “You thinking like me that they’re the two that decoyed away the posse?”

  “Something like that.” Carson veered off to the right.

  Simon Potter went in the other direction. The rest of the gang kept riding.

  Carson expected to trap the enigmatic riders between him and Potter. As in bygone days, he was good at locating the target. He should have let Lemuel Jones plot out the details.

  The ambush didn’t work out the way he expected. When he and Potter popped up, they faced each other. The land all around was barren of other riders, though this time he found hoofprints.

  “How’d they get past us?” Potter scratched his head, then pulled his hat down squarely until it rubbed the tops of his ears. “I refuse to believe anybody’s sneakier than we are. We had them caught fair and square.”

  “Only we didn’t.” Carson perked up at the sound of gunfire.

  Without another word, he and Potter galloped to catch up to Lemuel and the others. At first, he didn’t see them; then he noticed how the bank of a gully had crumbled where horses had descended. He put his head down and ran his bay straight for the lip of the ditch. The fearless horse launched itself and landed hard in the sandy-bottomed gulch.

  Carson rolled with the impact and turned the horse toward what would be upstream if there had been water in the dry bed. Not twenty yards away, the others in the gang had dismounted and stood around, waving their six-shooters in the air.

  “Don’t shoot!” Carson slid from the saddle and ran a few steps until he came to a halt. “What happened?”

  “We thought someone set up an ambush. We got down into this arroyo and …” Joe Easterly pointed.

  Sam Wylie lay facedown in the gravelly bottom. The bright red spot in the middle of his back expanded rapidly. He had been gunned down from behind.

  CHAPTER 27

  “Spread out. Find the sniper.” Clay Carson tried to figure out from where the bullet that had killed Wylie had been fired. Sam Wylie lay with his gun clutched in his dead hand. Carson looked at the bullet hole and wasn’t able to figure the angle of entry.

  “If he stood like this,” Potter said, pointing his six-gun at a crazy angle to match the wound on Wylie’s back, “where’s the shooter?” He looked over his shoulder. His and Joe Easterly’s faces were only a foot apart.

  “Where were you when he was gunned down, Joe?” Carson walked behind the two and studied the dried embankment. No sign that anyone had stood there recently. He pulled himself up, aware that the killer might still be lurking.

  He tried to remember what had happened before the death. His ears rang from so much gunfire, but if Brody had used his Sharps from a distance, the roar of that buffalo gun would have still been echoing across the prairie. A quick look at the bullet hole showed it wasn’t a massive .50 slug from the powerful rifle.

  The arroyo sloped shallowly, a dry, jagged gash that wound through thorn and mesquite. With squinting eyes, Carson scanned the ridges and brush. Shadows lingered in the bends. The air still stank of burnt powder and sweat.

  “Any sign of a sniper?” He waited for the others to report. None of them saw anything moving.

  Flat on his belly, he crawled a few yards. Unless the sniper had positioned himself over a hundred yards away, there was no way Wylie had been killed by anyone in this direction.

  Carson made his way back and dropped into the arroyo.

  “We’ve got to get out of here. There’re men on our trail.”

  “Clay, Clay,” chided Lemuel Jones, “there’re always men on our trail. We’re infamous. We’re the Dirty Creek Gang.”

  Carson snorted derisively. They had been the scourge of North Texas back in the day, but many months—an entire year—had passed since then. The law chased them because of what Potter had done recently, not twelve months ago.

  That didn’t mean the owner of the Three Squares ranch hadn’t found what the Easterly brothers had done with his herd, but he’d be angry at Casimir and any Double Diamond wrangler nearby. Sending killers after Joe and Daniel wasn’t likely.

  But Brody? His worry kept coming back to the hulking bounty hunter.

  “Think it was them two out on the road? The ones that decoyed away Sutcliff’s posse?” Joe kept his eyes averted from the dead body.

  Guilt?

  Carson had never known him to be squeamish before. Even Daniel was quiet now. An unworthy thought passed through Carson’s brain. If it took Wylie’s death to shut up the nervy youngster, the death wasn’t in vain. Then Daniel broke the silence.

  “We should bury him,” Daniel said in a choked voice. “He got shot in the back.” The boy looked around as if someone would tell him who had pulled the trigger.

  The breeze kicked up dust and the smell of sage. A hawk screamed overhead, circling above like it knew the dead below wouldn’t be the last.

  Carson asked, “Where’s Billy?”

  “He’s scouting farther up the gulch,” Joe said. “He was worried that Lemuel’d find riding hard and wanted to pick an easy route.”

  “I’m more worried about the men on our trail,” said Potter. Of the entire gang, only he kept watch in the direction where riders might overtake them.

  “Where are they? If they intended to herd us, they did a good job.” Carson chewed on his lower lip as he wondered what the two phantom riders behind them intended. Sometimes they helped the gang escape, other times they seemed intent on shooting them up. It didn’t make a lick of sense.

  He had no proof they were responsible for Wylie getting shot, either.

  Carson swung around, six-gun cocked and aimed. An indistinct figure moved along the far wall of the arroyo.

  “Whoa, don’t shoot. It’s me. Billy.” He came closer, hands in the air as if he surrendered. “What’s happened?”

  “Sam’s dead,” Lemuel told him. “Some yellowbelly shot him in the back.”

  “It wouldn’t do any good to see if anyone’s fired their pistol,” Potter said softly. Smoke had been curling from the bore of his six-shooter. Everyone else had been shooting it up, too.

  “What are you saying, Simon? Spit it out.” Lemuel spun, lost his balance, and had to be supported by Joe before he fell heavily. Angrily, he jerked free and went to bump chests with Potter. “You accusing one of us of killing him?”

  Potter didn’t back down, but before he answered angrily, Carson pushed Lemuel back a half step. He grabbed a handful of shirt to keep the consumptive from stumbling again.

  “It’s like this,” Carson said. “Simon and I were dealing with two men half a mile back. I can’t see that a sniper snuck up and took a potshot at Wylie. That makes it look like one of you already here in the arroyo shot Sam.”

  “I told Simon to say what he meant. You too, Clay. But you can’t accuse one of us of murdering our partner. Me? Joe or Daniel? Billy was out scouting.” Lemuel thrust out his chin. If the man hadn’t been so infirm, Carson would have clipped him for such an attitude.

  “Wylie tried to get Lemuel to tell him where the gold is,” Billy Turner said. He came over. “Did he push you too far, Lemuel? You shoot him to keep him from roughing you up?”

  “Don’t be more’n a fool than you have to be, Billy Turner,” Lemuel grated out. A coughing spell hit him, doubling him over.

  “We can hash this out later.” Carson grew uneasy at taking so long and making so much noise when they were being pursued.

  “The men behind us must be in Sutcliff’s posse. Every time they spot one of us, they must report to the marshal so he’ll keep his men hunting for us,” Potter said. He locked eyes with Carson.

  Carson backed off and mounted his bay without a word. He worried about getting in a gunfight with more than a handful of deputies on their trail. They’d been lucky so far. Eventually enough of Sutcliff’s men would run them to ground and outgun them.

  “What about Sam?” Lemuel Jones shuffled around and stared at the body. “We can’t just leave him.”

  “Flop him over his horse. We can find somewhere to bury him later,” Joe said. He pointed. It took his brother a second to understand the chore had worked down to him.

  Daniel grunted as he heaved Wylie over his shoulder. Joe brought around a horse. They lashed the body across the saddle. By this time, Billy had helped Lemuel into the saddle. The two had ridden ahead in the direction already scouted.

  Carson and Potter hung back.

  “What do you think?” Potter asked. “My money’s on the boy. He’s wild and wet behind the ears. The lure of a few added gold coins to his share can be powerful.”

  “Who says he gets a share? He wasn’t with us at Fort Worth.” Carson fell into a dark melancholy. Lemuel’s idea of getting the gang together again had appealed to him. They had ridden as owlhoots, and as friends. The year apart had changed them all.

  “Joe’ll take exception if you say that. He’s not too smart, but he’s loyal to a fault.”

  “Loyal to Lemuel, not us.”

  “You thinking like that now, Clay? Them and us?”

  “Neither of us shot Wylie in the back. There’s no reason for Lemuel to do it. If he didn’t want Wylie along, he wouldn’t have sent me hunting for him.”

  “It might be he’s carrying a grudge for something we don’t know. A slight? Maybe there’s something more, since Wylie was the last one out of the bank.”

  “We never figured how the sheriff came to be there with so many men. You’re saying Wylie sold us out for a reward, tried to take the loot for himself, and Lemuel’s known about it all this time?”

  “You’re right,” Potter said. “That doesn’t make a lot of sense. Lemuel’s playing his hand straight. But somebody shot Wylie.”

  They rode in silence for another mile, then climbed out of the gully, cut across the prairie, and followed the rest of the gang northeast. Carson recognized the country here better than around Boone. It was about a hundred miles from Fort Worth to where Lemuel said he hid the loot. Not three miles ahead was a small farming town, and ten beyond that the first stirrings of the Palo Duro Canyon.

  “They are down by that stock pond,” Potter said. “What’s our play?”

  “Wylie might have been hit by a stray shot. I’ve heard tell of men hit miles and miles away from where the shot was fired.”

  “Sam never was a lucky cayuse. It’s possible he caught a slug lofted by me or you.”

  “Or one of the men chasing us,” Carson said. This prompted him to watch their back trail for a few seconds. Nobody came after them, at least nobody he saw. “But that hardly seems like it’d happen, even to Wylie.”

  They dismounted and secured their horses with the others. Potter wandered off. Carson went to sit on a rock beside the pond. The two Easterlys worked to water their remuda, two by two. He had no idea where Billy Turner had gone, but Lemuel sank down beside him.

  For the first time, Carson understood what the word “frail” meant. A strong wind would blow Lemuel Jones away like a dried-up leaf. The man’s skin had turned waxy and his eyes were feverish at the bottom of deep pits. His breath sounded like a smithy’s bellows. His hand shook as he took out fixings and built himself a smoke.

  When he’d finished, he held out the tobacco bag to Carson. His skeletal fingers curled around the small bag.

  “Not in the mood,” Carson said, thinking the smoking wasn’t going to do Lemuel any favors. He was right. The first puff caused a bout of wracking coughs.

  “Thanks for not telling me to put out the cigarette. Back in Hidetown, Hez always joshed me about it.”

  “He looked after you?”

  “Him and his family.” Lemuel turned his haunted eyes toward Carson. “I know what you’re thinking. I never even hinted that I had any gold, much less a mountain of it.”

  “They weren’t dull boys, were they?”

  Lemuel laughed, then coughed. “Hez was real smart. Always looking for an angle. Him and one of the soldiers at Fort Elliott had some kind of a business deal. Brought in a fair amount of money for all of them. I never asked, but I doubt it was above-board.”