“You,” the man croaked out. His eyes focused on Carson. Nothing but hatred shone forth. “Wanna kill you.”

  “Who the hell are you?” Carson thought the man looked familiar, but he wasn’t able to put a name to him. Over the past year, he’d spent almost all his time hiding out on a cotton farm. If his aspiring murderer had shown up after the bank robbery, he’d remember.

  “Kill …”

  The man’s thought became his last. He shuddered, gasped once, and then every muscle went slack in death.

  To get a better look at the man, Carson wiped away more blood. He looked familiar, but identifying him was like having a name on the tip of his tongue and not being able to speak it.

  “Drop your gun, Carson.”

  He looked up. He started to raise his six-gun and then stopped halfway to centering it on the man who had crept up on him.

  “You killed my brother. Both brothers.”

  “Both? How do you know my name? Who are you?”

  “You cut down my brother on the road outside Hidetown. Burly Schuster was his name. That there’s Josiah. My other brother.”

  “Hez,” Carson said, things falling into place. “Lemuel spoke of you, but I never saw you.”

  “Lemuel Jones.” Hez Schuster spat out the name contemptuously. “That old fraud never shut up, going on and on about how he was the leader of a gang of owlhoots so bad the Texas Rangers wanted nothing to do with you.”

  “You’ve been tracking us.”

  “Jones made out like the gold you stole was about mountain high, and enough for a man to live in comfort the rest of his life. Me and Burly and”—his voice caught—“my favorite brother there, Josiah, were going to live like kings. Maybe buy our own Pullman car and ride back and forth in it.”

  “Take the gold and skedaddle,” Carson said. “It’s back there where you cut down Daniel.”

  “That was Josiah’s doing. He was the sharpshooter in the family, not that I’m a bad marksman.” Hez Schuster’s jaw tightened. “I wish I’d done him in and the rest of you then. Josiah’d be alive if I had.”

  “You want the gold. Take it and forget about us.”

  “Forget how you killed my brother?” Schuster ground his teeth together as his rage built.

  Carson saw he wasn’t getting out of this alive.

  “Make that two of your worthless brothers. I killed the other one. Burly? That was his name?” Carson watched Schuster’s ire building. His face turned florid under his weathered skin. “What kind of name is Burly? He didn’t have any more guts than a snake has hips.”

  Schuster let out a screech of pure rage.

  Carson was moving his six-shooter into firing position when another shot rang out. Hez Schuster jerked, then looked away from Carson. His rifle discharged, knocking him backward. Carson fired at the falling man and missed. His pistol clicked on a dud cartridge. He got his feet under him and had to dodge when he saw Hez training his sights on him.

  The bullet whistled past his ear. Carson landed hard and clawed his way to safety behind a rock. He realized he had dropped his six-gun. It lay out in the open, where Hez could kill him if he tried to grab it.

  “Joe!” Carson called to the man who had distracted Schuster. “Cover me!”

  Not waiting for an answer, he dug in his toes and levered himself forward. He landed hard. Frantically clutching his pistol, he rolled away as Hez fired again at him.

  Carson pulled his feet under him and somersaulted away. A hot flash across his back warned that Hez was getting the range. When he found a spot of dubious safety, he reloaded.

  “Joe! Shoot at him. Don’t just stand there like a bump on a log.”

  Easterly lounged against a rock, his six-shooter held indolently in his hand. Carson cursed. He had no idea what was wrong with the man. Daring the rifle fire again, he chanced a quick peek. Hez Schuster had taken cover, and he had lost him.

  He retreated to where Easterly leaned, as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

  “Quit your lollygagging. We got to move fast.”

  Carson hesitated. Easterly didn’t move a muscle. He reached out and touched the man’s arm. As if the touch turned all his muscles to water, Easterly slithered down the face of the rock and collapsed in a pile. His eyes were still open, but Carson realized Joe Easterly had stopped seeing anything sometime earlier. A bullet had drilled its way up through his chin. There wasn’t any exit wound.

  The bullet remained lodged somewhere in Easterly’s skull.

  “Another killing for you to answer for, Hez Schuster.” Carson backed away, took one last look at his dead companion, and then went to find what spoor the killer had left behind.

  After a minute or two of hunting, he found nothing. There were spots in the dirt that might have been caused by blood being sucked up by the arid soil. They were scattered around in no pattern he could make out. No twigs had been broken off brush and the ground was too hard to take boot prints. It’d take a better tracker than him to find where Schuster had gone.

  He settled down and thought what to do. He almost slapped himself when he realized what he had been missing. As much as he hated to admit it, seeing Joe Easterly dead had shaken him. He cleared his throat, spat, and then put his hands to his mouth to make a crude megaphone.

  “Simon, you out there?” He waited for a reply. He went cold inside when the only answer was the soft whistle of wind through the rocks.

  Carson started moving slowly, keeping low, trying not to make a sound. He reached the side of the rock giving him protection. With a burst of speed, he darted across and scooted along on his belly. He grabbed the root of a bush and pulled himself along.

  A distant report warned of a fight down on the valley floor. Chancing it, Carson got to his feet and worked his way down. Less than halfway to the canyon bottom, he saw a pair of boots poking out from behind a rock.

  He recognized those boots. Fury rising, he made his way to the rocky alcove. Simon Potter lay facedown on the ground.

  “I’ll make sure I get him, old friend. I swear on Lemuel’s grave he’ll suffer!”

  Clay Carson plucked Potter’s six-gun from his hand. He’d need all the firepower possible when he found Hez Schuster.

  CHAPTER 37

  Clay Carson let out a cry of horror when a bloody hand snatched the six-gun from his grasp. Startled, he jerked back and fell hard. He sat in the dirt staring at Potter’s corpse.

  The body shivered, then began to rise onto hands and knees. The gun Carson had intended to use on Schuster was clutched in one hand caked with blood and dirt.

  “You’re alive.” Carson tried to spit. His mouth had turned drier than the Sonoran Desert.

  “You surely do live up to what they say about you, Clay.”

  “W-what?”

  “You’re smart and quick to understand things.” Simon Potter heaved around and sat facing Carson. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” Potter laughed at how Carson sputtered in an attempt to reply.

  Words failed him.

  “I started along the canyon wall,” Potter said in a raspy voice. “Something rustled in the bushes. I thought it might be a rabbit and didn’t pay much attention. Then it shot me.” He peeled back his coat and showed a wound in his side. “Bullet musta gone clean through me. But it bled till it ruined my fine coat. This cost me twenty dollars in silver cartwheels from a tailor in St. Louis.”

  “Who shot you? The Schuster brothers were shooting at me.”

  “Who’s that?”

  Carson got his wits back. He explained what he had learned from Hez Schuster.

  “Lemuel needed someone to look after him. We weren’t there, so he picked the folks most likely to do him harm. That sounds like him, always trusting the wrong varmints,” Potter remarked.

  “Hez gunned down Joe.”

  This stoppered Potter’s running comments. He sobered, then nodded solemnly.

  “It’s just as well. Seeing his kid brother killed in front of him rattled his thinkbox. Joe didn’t have a deep mind. He wouldn’t have gotten over it,” Potter concluded.

  “We’re all that’s left of the gang.”

  “Seems fitting. The two handsomest devils deserve some reward.” Potter looked up when gunfire echoed from the valley. “If we’re the only two left, who’s Hez shooting at?”

  “Who’s shooting at him?” Carson tried to understand. He climbed to his feet and stood on shaky legs. The world spun in crazy circles around him. He closed his eyes and let the giddiness pass. The shock of finding Potter dead, then seeing him come back to life, still slowed him down.

  “Standing around chewing our cud won’t give the answer, Clay.”

  “Were we wrong about the posse? They must be more determined than either of us expected from a bunch of drunks recruited in a saloon.”

  “Naw, they disbanded when Sutcliff died. The only one unaccounted for is Brody.”

  Carson nodded and immediately regretted it. Something rattled around loose in his head. He managed to get out his lone thought: “The bounty hunter isn’t the kind to give up. With Turner gone, he has it in for us.”

  “Unless Turner fogged his mind with lies, why should he care about us? He wasn’t hunting anyone in the gang for a reward. If he had been, he’d never have teamed up with Billy.”

  Carson pointed to his neck, then pantomimed being hanged. He then pointed at his friend.

  “Why would he bother fetching me back to Boone if he knows the marshal is gone? There’s no reward now.”

  “Brody is the kind to see money in everyone. He’d drag you back just to be sure there wasn’t a reward any longer.”

  More gunfire captured their attention. Carson tried to reason through what to do. Answers weren’t easily come by.

  “Trying to stay on my feet is a losing battle. I need to lie low,” Potter decided. “Should you bother finding out how the shooting match turned out?”

  “It’s not my concern,” Carson said. “Whoever wins can come for us, but we’ll be expecting them.”

  “Brody was all shot up before Turner tried to steal the map. It sounds as if you plugged Schuster good and proper. Let ’em both kill each other. Even the winner in a showdown betwixt them’s not likely to live long.”

  “The paltry gold we found is hardly worth so many getting killed,” Carson said. It flashed through his mind that he and Potter were the sole owners of that gold now. Everyone else was either in a grave or should be soon, to keep away the carrion eaters.

  “Even a single coin is more than I have in my vest pocket right now. Help me up the hill.”

  The two men, leaning on each other, struggled back to the gravel slope leading to the small cave. By the time they reached where the coins were piled, the light faded in the canyon.

  “Hard to believe it’s hardly an hour between finding the gold and now,” said Potter.

  “A whole lot of killing happened.” Carson sat on a rock and began picking up the coins. He dropped them into his battered hat.

  “That old Stetson’s got so many holes in it now that you should be careful you don’t lose any of the gold. It can leak right on out.”

  “There’s almost enough to fill the hat.”

  “What’d you count?” Potter sat beside his partner. “I know you, Clay. You kept track of every coin you dropped in.”

  “Looks like four hundred dollars, tops.”

  “Two hundred each. Joe and Daniel weren’t much when it came to counting, were they?”

  “They got excited at the notion of finally being rich,” said Carson. “The coins that spilled out of the torn canvas bag are a small fraction of what Lemuel took.”

  “It’s about enough for a royal binge in some of the brothels down in New Orleans. I’ll replace my bloody, shot-up coat, get a decent hat. Maybe a cane to add some sophistication, then hit the town.” Potter sounded proud of his anticipated spending spree.

  “You mean get taken at that cathouse on Basin Street? The one run by the madam calling herself Minnie Haha?”

  “She,” Potter said haughtily, “is a descendant of the subject of Longfellow’s poem. She told me so. And she knows how to treat a gentleman.”

  “You?” Carson laughed.

  “After a pleasant night, the morning finds a patron’s boots polished and clothes pressed.”

  “That’s not all that’s gotten pressed,” Carson said.

  “I should hope not. But two hundred dollars is adequate for such fine treatment at the hands of lovely women. The last time I wandered Basin Street, I only had fifty dollars in my pocket and had a grand old time.”

  They helped each other stand. Carson stumbled a step before he regained his balance. The hat filled with gold made his step uneven. Worse, he bled from a couple wounds in his upper leg he hadn’t noticed until after the exchange of lead with Schuster.

  “We should bury Daniel and Joe,” Carson said. “They deserve that much because they were riding with the Dirty Creek Gang.”

  “Who’d that be?”

  For a moment, Carson thought his partner had spoken. Then he realized the voice came from behind them, back toward the small cave and rockslide. He shifted the gold-filled hat to his left hand and reached for his six-shooter.

  “Don’t you go doin’ that. No matter how fast a gun hand you have, you’d have to draw, turn, and fire when I’ve got a bead on the back of your head.”

  “With a Sharps buffalo rifle?” Carson guessed.

  “There’d be a shower of your blood and brains all over the canyon floor.”

  “Like there was with Hez Schuster?” Carson reached out and kept Potter from bolting. His partner had a good idea. Split up, go separate directions so one of them could get a shot at Brody, but the bounty hunter had told him where he aimed his rifle.

  Carson would be dead the instant Potter moved to break away.

  He found himself worrying that Potter would figure that out for himself. It was mighty attractive getting rid of everyone on their trail and not having to split the gold with anyone. He’d be shot by the bounty hunter, and Potter would take out the man before he reloaded his powerful rifle.

  Potter would win, while everyone else lost.

  Potter gave him a curt nod and a sly smile. He knew what went through Carson’s mind. It was going through his, too. They had to trust each other for them both to get away alive.

  “Keep on walking down to your camp.”

  The only hope Carson had when they arrived at the edge of the pool was that Brody had left them with their six-guns. How much longer that oversight would be depended on how persuasive he could be.

  If he wanted to be leader of the gang, he had to be willing to argue with the Grim Reaper. The bounty hunter was as close as he’d get.

  “What’re your plans, Brody? And you mind if I set myself down? I’ve got so many holes in me I can’t stand much longer without falling over into a coma.”

  “All that blood leakin’ outta you will do that. Both of you hunker down by the water. Clean yourselves off. I can wait.”

  Carson put down his hat and began washing away the gore and filth. As he worked, he whispered to Potter, “We need to act quick. My muscles are stiffening up. I won’t be able to move in another minute or two.”

  “I’m already there,” Potter said. His face was white, drained of blood. He wobbled about when he moved and almost collapsed when Brody ordered them back to their camp.

  “What do you think Marshal Sutcliff is offering for the return of his prisoner?” Brody asked.

  “About what you’ve got there in my hat.”

  “I’m an honest man. As honest as the next,” Brody said thoughtfully. “I heard tell that Sutcliff ain’t marshal no more.”

  “Consider that your due,” Carson said. From the corner of his eye, he saw Potter’s chin dipping down and touching his chest. He was close to passing out. Whatever he did was all on him.

  “My reward. Sutcliff never said anything about giving a reward to get his prisoner back dead. The scoundrel likes to hang folks. That’s his little quirk. It don’t matter to me, one way or the other. But your partner wouldn’t make it ten miles in his condition.”

  “No reward, even if Sutcliff was still marshal,” Carson said. “His replacement, if they have one yet, might decide to keep the reward for himself. Or the posse drank it all up. Which of them wouldn’t lie to collect a drink or two and honorably be rid of their duty as deputized lawmen?”

  “That’s the way I see it. The others are plenty good enough for me.”

  “Others?”

  “Schuster and his brother. You did Josiah in for me. I took out Hezekiah fair and square, all by my lonesome.” Brody coughed and spat. “And I made sure he is real dead.”

  “They had Wanted posters on them?”

  “Bad boys, the entire Schuster family. I missed out on a third one who went by the name of Burly. Some skunk gunned him down on the road outside of Hidetown. He had a fifty-dollar reward on his lice-ridden noggin.”

  “Hez and Josiah? Dead or alive?”

  “Yup. The pair of them’s worth two hundred. Fifty for Josiah and one hundred fifty for Hezekiah.” Brody rattled the gold in the hat. It made a nice, clear ringing sound that brought a grin to his weathered face. “Along with this lagniappe, I’ve had a good month.”

  “Let me patch up my friend. He might still make it with some doctoring.”

  “Go on.”

  Carson saw that Brody kept the rifle trained on him. The weight of the six-shooter hanging at his hip created crazy thoughts. Was Brody waiting for him to try to draw so he could shoot him and claim self-defense? That made no sense. The bounty hunter had all the time in the world to put one of the huge rounds into him, just as he had Hez Schuster. Why dally?

  He washed away the blood from Potter’s side, then probed a bit. Potter passed out at his inexpert poking, making it easier to tend the wound. Potter had been right. The slug had passed through him cleanly.

  “I need to pour some gunpowder into the wound. Can I take a bullet from my belt?”