“Use this one. It’s got more black powder in it.” Brody handed over one of his massive Sharps cartridges.

  Carson worried the lead out and poured a generous amount of powder into Potter’s wound, then lit it. The sudden flare sealed up all the busted blood vessels inside. He repeated the chore on the other side of Potter’s body. The stench of burnt flesh made his stomach turn, but the treatment had been necessary. He had seen blood seeping on both sides of the wound.

  Done with the crude work, he covered his partner with a blanket so he could rest, if being unconscious and moaning could ever be restful.

  He sank down onto his own bedroll and closed his eyes. Carson realized he was close to being in the same condition as his partner. His half dozen wounds were minor and had clotted. Nothing inside had been broken up, but he, too, had lost a fair amount of blood, weakening him.

  “What’s the Dirty Creek Gang?”

  Brody’s question shocked Carson back to wakefulness. He looked up at the bounty hunter. The stocky man still covered him with the powerful rifle. Somehow, Carson had reached a point of exhaustion where nothing mattered. If Brody killed him, at least he’d be at rest.

  “Hez Schuster,” he said in a low voice. “He and Lemuel Jones were real hellions years back.”

  “Lemuel Jones? The fellow with consumption?”

  “He’s dead and buried.”

  “What’s your part in this gang?”

  “Nothing. I’m a cotton farmer.”

  “Do tell. Is that the gospel truth?”

  “Gospel’s got nothing to do with it. I’m a field hand on a cotton farm for the Bellamy family. Frank Bellamy, his two boys, and a sickly wife.”

  “That don’t sound much like a big boast. A man wants to puff up his own reputation,” Brody said. “Me, I’ve lied like a trooper about the men I’ve caught.”

  “Won’t have to tell even a little fib when you claim your bounty for Schuster and his brother.”

  “The other two what rode with you. The Easterly brothers. The best I found out about them was they rode the range for the Double Diamond spread. Or maybe it was the Three Squares. Folks I asked mixed up the two ranches for some reason. But it don’t matter. I found what they did.”

  “Cowboys.”

  Brody made strange sounds. Carson forced his eyes open. The man was sucking on his teeth as he pondered what he’d heard.

  “You’re a sorry bunch that ran afoul of some evil men. Is that what you’re telling me?”

  “You found out about us. You know everything.” Carson found it hard to keep his eyes open.

  “I found out plenty by asking everyone along the trail. One thing I don’t know.”

  “Hmm?”

  “Where’d this gold come from?”

  Carson laughed, choked, and finally recovered.

  “Where? It just popped up out of the ground for you.”

  “That makes sense. I was always lucky.”

  Carson rolled onto his side and curled up. He had reached the end of his strength.

  He awoke with the sun in his face and a blanket tossed over him. The bounty hunter was nowhere to be seen. Neither was their gold from the Fort Worth bank robbery.

  CHAPTER 38

  “I could whip my weight in wildcats.” Simon Potter forced himself to sit up, propped against his saddle. Clay Carson had to help him. “Well. Maybe a small wildcat.” Simon grinned.

  Carson was happy to see that his partner’s color was better. The loss of blood had washed him out like bleached muslin. Just a rest overnight had restored some vitality, but his weakness kept him from doing anything significant.

  “It’s good that we don’t have to. Brody moved on,” Carson announced.

  “You checked?” Potter looked around, as if expecting the bounty hunter to pop out from behind a rock.

  “I tracked his horse a half mile down the canyon. He’s heading that way.” Carson pointed.

  “Why’d he let us be?”

  Carson explained all that had happened.

  “He took our gold. We need to get it back.” Potter tried to stand and failed again. He sank down and braced himself against his saddle, which he’d used as a pillow the night before.

  “He’s gone, and losing the gold is a small price to pay to never see his ugly face again.”

  “Hez and his family won’t bedevil us anymore. There’s that,” Potter said. “Brody did us a favor taking care of that problem.” He looked forlornly at Carson. “Help me out. I’m trying to find some reason to feel thankful that Brody took our gold.” He stretched his arms and winced.

  “Be glad you’re in pain. You could be in the ground alongside Joe and Daniel.”

  “You buried them?”

  Carson nodded. It had been tedious, digging in the hard, rocky ground, but it had been necessary.

  “Too bad they couldn’t be planted beside Lemuel.” Potter yawned. His eyelids sank, and in a minute, he had fallen asleep again.

  Carson heaved himself to his feet and walked around, stretching his muscles and wondering what to do while Potter recuperated.

  “Gold,” he said, grinning crookedly.

  He hiked from the pond to where they had found the coins strewn out in the rockfall. He kicked at the canvas bag that had ripped open, spilling the gold. It took a little imagination for him to see Lemuel Jones scrambling up the gravelly slope, trying to heave the bag into the small cave.

  “Hide the gold, escape from the posse,” he said.

  As he turned, a golden glint caught his eye. Moving a few rocks let him reach down and retrieve another dropped coin. They had searched for the spilled coins when the sun was much lower, giving a different angle. He stood back and studied the slope. A second golden beacon lured him higher on the slope. He had to move more rocks to slip his fingers around another coin.

  Not having anything else to do, he spent the next hour searching. Those two coins were his only reward.

  Nearing the top of the rockfall, he decided to go a little farther and rest a spell. He kicked away a few stones and slipped. He almost gave up and returned to the base of the tiny avalanche, then gritted his teeth and finally reached the cave. A quick twist turned him about. He sat in the mouth, legs dangling out, looking over the canyon floor. This was the eastern end of Palo Duro Canyon. There was a raw beauty that appealed to him, especially after spending a year weeding cotton fields that were as flat as a pancake and completely without color. The canyon walls were painted wild and eye-pleasing shades of red and yellow and even blue-green.

  A red-tailed hawk wheeled above, its shadow skating across the rock face. Carson watched it circle, free as any creature alive. He envied that bird more than he cared to admit.

  He hunted along the horizon, as if he could see Brody and his grisly load of dead bodies. Carson was happy he didn’t have to bury them. If the bounty hunter had decided to take back only the Schuster brothers’ heads, he would have forced Carson to bury the remains.

  “Remains,” Carson said softly. He shook his head. Nothing but remains in his life.

  As soon as Potter was healed up enough to travel, he intended to ride with him a ways and part company. The Dirty Creek Gang was history now. And not even good history, since Brody had never heard of them. Carson could lie to himself that the bounty hunter had come into Texas within the past year while the entire gang had been hiding out.

  More likely, the gang had never amounted to all that much, except around the campfire as they told wild tales about their own exploits. He couldn’t even count that minor infamy as defining his life. Their one big robbery had turned out to be a complete failure. Worse, it had marked the destruction of the gang, with the leader and all but two of the riders dead and buried.

  He wasn’t in the best shape possible, and Potter had been shot up so badly he had been at death’s door. It’d take him weeks, if not longer, to get back to snuff.

  “And all we have to show for it are these.” He flipped the two gold coins he’d found among the rocks. They flashed in the air as they turned over and over.

  His attempt at convincing himself he still had the dexterous, quick draw hand by flipping both coins, one in each hand, failed. He missed one. It went skittering away, hit a rock just inside the mouth of the cave, and rolled away.

  He wasn’t about to let twenty dollars escape him, not if he had to split what remained with Simon Potter. Turning around, he reached for the coin on the cave floor, but it had rolled several feet beyond his reach. A quick move tucked the coin he still had into his vest pocket. With a grunt, he flopped on his belly and crawled into the small, low-ceilinged cave, groping for the lost coin.

  He reached out, then froze. His mind went blank and nothing but what he felt filled his entire world.

  Canvas. A canvas bag like the one that had carried the scattered coins.

  Hardly daring to hope, he curled his fingers and caught the edge of the bag. When he had a decent grip, he pulled.

  “Ouch!” The unexpected weight almost caused him to pull his arm out of its socket. The bag was a lot heavier than he anticipated.

  Scooting around, he better positioned himself and pulled with greater effort. His head banged against the cave roof and his shoulders scraped the ragged walls. The bag slid to the edge of the cave.

  Clay Carson swallowed hard. For a long moment, he thought he was dreaming. Or that he had died and this was some satanic punishment. Open the bag and find … nothing.

  Not daring to breathe, he began unlacing the leather strip holding the edges together.

  He was blinded by the brilliant flash of sunlight off gold coins. Hundreds of gold coins.

  Before, he had worried that he was dreaming. Now he worried that he wasn’t. So much wealth exceeded anything he had ever seen in his life. Fingers trembling, he ran his hands through the coins. They flashed and gleamed and tinkled as they fell back into the bag.

  Carson was not sure how long he stared at the wealth sitting beside him on the cave floor. The sun dipped low toward the opposite canyon rim. The brilliance of so much gold began to fade. But the solid coins didn’t turn to fairy dust and vanish like smoke. They remained.

  With more determination now, he relaced the top of the bag, then heaved it away as hard as he could. The heavy bag landed partway down the rocky slope. He slipped and slid down as fast as he could, to be sure the canvas wasn’t cut open. Fishing the small coins from between the rocks as he had done before wasn’t something he wanted to repeat.

  It took the better part of twenty minutes for him to stand at the base of the rockfall with the bag hiked up onto his shoulder like a sack of feed.

  When he stumbled into camp, Potter looked up. He was roasting a rabbit on a spit.

  “I clubbed our dinner. He got a little too curious about what was going on in camp. Hopped too close for me to ignore.” He poked the meat with his knife. “Or maybe he decided to get a drink and was too eager, and didn’t notice me with a rock in my hand. None of that matters. I was quicker than this poor little bunny and conked him on the head.”

  “You should have bagged a deer. You can use the meat.” Carson swung around and dropped the canvas bag to the ground with a loud thud.

  Potter lifted the spit from the fire to keep the greasy rabbit from charring and stared.

  “Is that what I think it is?”

  “It’s a reason to celebrate. Too bad we don’t have any of that whiskey you bought.”

  “That didn’t answer my question. What did you find?”

  “If you think it’s a bank sack stuffed with rocks, you’re wrong.”

  “It’s a bank sack and it’s heavy. You found more of the bank loot!”

  They let out simultaneous whoops of glee. Somehow, he doubted even getting drunk could top the elation he felt at that moment.

  “Wait, before we count it. Here. I found two more in the rockslide.” Carson passed over one of the two twenty-dollar gold pieces he had found.

  “What’s one more going to mean?”

  “For luck,” Carson said.

  “You were never superstitious before.”

  “Open the bag. I can’t wait to count all that gold!” Carson felt his pulse quickening. He wanted to run his fingers through the cascades of gold again, but he let Potter carefully build two stacks of coins.

  “Ten thousand dollars,” Potter said in a low voice. Continuing in a tone low and sounding like a bullfrog, he added, “Each.”

  “We’re rich. Lemuel made off with two bags. One ripped open and spilled the other coins Joe found,” Carson said.

  “Joe found and Brody took.”

  “It’ll keep him from hunting us down. It’s worth it, Simon.”

  “Yeah, worth it, but another few hundred dollars isn’t bad, is it?”

  “Don’t sound so greedy. One bag spilled,” Carson went on. “Lemuel made it to the cave and tossed the second one—this one!—in before outrunning the law dogs nipping at his heels.”

  “And then he coughed up a lung.” Potter paused and then said, “Why didn’t he come fetch it earlier? He was sick—dying—but he was strong enough to get the gang together again.”

  “I see what you mean. When he was stronger, earlier, why not get the gold then? He didn’t have to cut us in on it.”

  “It’s hard to believe,” Potter said, “but Lemuel was an honest thief. He wanted us to get our due. We were partners.”

  Carson considered the matter and came to a different conclusion. Lemuel Jones had used the lure of so much money to ride with his gang one last time. He had died happy, doing the only thing that mattered to him in the world.

  Staring at the tower of coins, Carson decided he could die happy now, too, thanks to his friend and leader of the Dirty Creek Gang.

  Only …

  CHAPTER 39

  “Come with me, Clay.” Simon Potter rode straight and strong now, after two weeks of recuperation. His voice was robust and he sounded more like the cheerful rake of bygone days.

  “Your description makes it mighty tempting.”

  “Basin Street,” he enticed. “The finest cathouse in the world. If Minnie Haha’s not there, we’d have our choice of a dozen other high-class brothels. Women from all over Europe. With the money we’re toting, we can take them back to their home countries.”

  “I wonder what France is like.” Carson bandied words with his partner, but his thoughts were far off. They had almost reached Fort Worth after a leisurely ten-day ride.

  “I’ve heard tell none of the women there wear undies.”

  “Like cancan dancers?” Carson was momentarily distracted by the thought.

  “Get a French filly—that’s the French word for sexy lady—to show you all the sights. All the sights, if you catch my meaning.”

  “I have some business in Fort Worth to take care of first. Maybe after I finish, I’ll mosey on down and join you.”

  “You’d better be careful. The law has a long arm and a longer memory. Some deputy from a year ago might be a marshal now and remember how the Dirty Creek Gang stuck up that bank right on the edge of Hell’s Half Acre.”

  “I wore a mask. I kept my hat pulled down over my eyebrows. Besides, who could identify this hat with a half dozen holes in it as the one I wore? Nobody can identify me. Not even the bank tellers or officers, and we were nose to nose.” He turned morose as he realized the ones most likely to identify him were also dead.

  “You’re a distinctive cayuse, Clay. Identifying you by smell would be child’s play.”

  The mention of a child made his gut tighten and his resolve harden.

  “I’ve changed my socks since then.” He tried to put the disturbing memory of the robbery from his mind with the joke and failed. Even his joshing around changed nothing in the way he felt.

  “But not your attitude, old son. The wrong man’ll sniff that out, you mark my words.”

  “Like you mark your cards?”

  This got a laugh from his companion. Potter rode along for a while and then said, “Here’s the fork in the road. That trail goes to Fort Worth.”

  “And that one will end up in New Orleans.”

  “Or at some port along the Mississippi where I can find an old side-wheeler and make my way up the river to St. Louis.”

  “You need a new coat. Do you think your tailor’s still in business there?”

  “I can pay for an even better one if he’s gone,” Potter said.

  They drew rein, then reached out and silently shook hands. Potter wheeled his horse around and galloped away without a backward look. Carson watched until his friend disappeared around a bend in the road. Then he waited for the dust to settle, erasing all trace of Simon Potter, as if he had never been there.

  A warm wind blew in from the prairie, dry and laden with the scent of mesquite and cattle dung. It rustled through the grass like a whisper. For a moment, Clay sat still in the saddle, letting the silence stretch around him. Somewhere a meadowlark sang its lazy tune, indifferent to men and their sins.

  Carson could no longer be indifferent to his own sins.

  He rode along, letting his horse set the pace. He wasn’t in a hurry to get to Fort Worth, because he still hadn’t found an answer to why he returned to the scene of the crime. Maybe he was chasing ghosts. Or maybe the ghosts were chasing him. The land here hadn’t changed much—scrub and dust, wide-open skies and the occasional broken fence line. But Fort Worth loomed larger with each mile, and with it there came a weight pressing down on his chest.

  Eventually he found himself caught up in the increasingly great rush of wagons and riders. The town had grown in the past year. The crush of the crowd around him made him feel a tad more secure. Nobody looked at yet another stranger in their midst.

  He almost panicked when he saw a pair of deputies walking along, checking one saloon after another for trouble. They glanced in his direction, but he presented no immediate problem. Carson settled down when he decided neither of the law dogs could identify him. They were hardly old enough to shave. They’d become lawmen rather than punch cattle or work on a farm.

  As he had.

  Carson looked at his callused, work-hardened hands. They had held a hoe handle rather than the butt of a six-shooter for an entire year. There wasn’t any way for the two deputies to know which of those was true now. Or that both were true.