“I don’t understand, either, unless he sees it as a way to flaunt not being locked up somewhere. He sits and watches the cavalry patrols trot out in the morning and then return at sundown.”

  “Thanks, Doc.”

  “If you’re really a friend, you’d better hurry. It’s that bad with him.”

  “If it’s really that bad, I’ll be sure his name’s spelled right.”

  The doctor grunted in response, then returned to his timepiece repair and never cast another look in Carson’s direction.

  Carson walked his horse out onto the main street, then watched what had to be a company of soldiers heading all in the same direction like ants in a line. He followed them until he reached a branch in the road. They went directly to a palisaded fort. The branching road curled around into low, rolling hills. If Lemuel Jones watched troop movement from the fort, he’d have a lookout high on the hill.

  After fifteen minutes, Carson saw the ramshackle house that fit the bill. A decent storm would blow it down, though it must have endured considerable North Texas wind since being constructed. On the lee side, a small livery held a pair of horses. Carson put his bay into an empty stall, then hiked uphill to the house.

  The doctor said Jones sat on the porch and watched the fort. For Lemuel to do that, he’d have a throne like a king so he could lord it over the bluecoated peasants as they hurried on their daily patrols. Carson walked around to that side. The sound of a six-shooter cocking froze him in his tracks.

  “Prepare to die, you trespassing son of a buck.”

  The report from the gun deafened Clay Carson.

  CHAPTER 6

  Clay Carson stared at the earth dug up a foot in front of him by the bullet. He slowly raised his eyes to the man on the cabin porch. The smoking pistol in that steady grip lifted to point directly between Carson’s eyes.

  “You’ve lost your aim, old man. You used to be a crack shot,” Carson said.

  “Still good enough to make you jump.”

  “I thought you were going to kick dirt on my boots. I just had them shined.”

  The man holding the gun on Carson spat. Half was tobacco juice and the other half blood.

  “You never touched those fine boots with polish in all your born days.” He slowly lowered the six-gun. “Don’t stand there with your tongue hanging out like a dog on a hot summer day. Get on over here and shake hands.”

  “Shake hands?” Carson laughed. “You fixing to steal a couple of my fingers, Lemuel?”

  The man stepped back and half fell into a chair. He patted the seat of another rickety chair next to him. Carson stepped up onto the porch, wary that he didn’t punch a hole in the rotted wood flooring. The house, the floor, and its owner were all in bad condition. He sank down beside Lemuel Jones and thrust out his legs as he stretched back in the chair.

  “Good seeing you again, Clay. I wondered if you got my telegram.”

  “Did.”

  “What took you so long getting up here to Hidetown?”

  Carson stared down the hill toward the road leading into Fort Elliott. A half dozen troopers rode away on patrol.

  “This is a curious place to hole up, Lemuel.”

  “You mean with a gen-yoo-wine U.S. Army post right on my doorstep?” He chuckled, then bit off another half inch of tobacco from a packet tucked into his vest pocket. “They’re so busy chasing Injuns who’ve snuck off the reservation that they never lift their eyes up and see this old outlaw. It’s about the perfect place to hide from the law.”

  “Hide in plain sight?”

  “I’m in the last place on this ole world that they’d ever think to find me.” Lemuel Jones shook his head sadly. “After a year of being away from the robbery business, I’m nigh on forgot by them bluecoats.” He spat, hitting a hole in the flooring with deadly accuracy. “Truth is, we’re not even a distant memory for the likes of them. No, sir, not even a nagging memory.”

  Carson cast a sidelong look at Jones. The man was gaunt to the point of emaciation. His eyes were sunk into dark pits and his cheeks had an unhealthy yellow tint to them. His clothing was the same Carson remembered him wearing when they’d robbed the Fort Worth bank a year earlier, only shabbier and in serious need of patching. Jones moved about in his chair as if every bone in his body ached. For a man in his condition, they probably all did.

  The porch creaked beneath their combined weight, groaning like an old dog refusing to budge. It smelled of dust, weathered pine, and stale whiskey—a scent that fit Jones like a second skin. A wasp drifted lazily near the porch post, then buzzed off to do wasp business. The warm breeze carried the scent of sweat and sagebrush off Lemuel and the vast prairie stretching beyond Fort Elliott.

  Carson tilted his head and took it all in. Hidetown, off to his right, hadn’t changed much since he last passed through: a clutch of half-standing buildings, wind-bent signs, and suspicious eyes watching from behind lace curtains. And saloons. Always saloons of all varieties. He wondered if the two friendly enemies had settled their differences over another drink. He hoped they hadn’t bothered trying to chow down after the one had lost the contents of his belly in the middle of the street.

  Somehow, that told Carson everything about Hidetown.

  That, and how Jones had managed to melt into this place, spoke to either madness or brilliance.

  A memory flared—one of laughter, a cracked bottle of rye passed among them around a mesquite fire, prairie chickens roasting for a decent dinner, the gang ribbing one another with half-truths and tall tales. Jones had always been the loudest, the boldest, the man with a plan that danced on the edge of disaster. That exuberance and wild genius had drawn Carson to him years back. He didn’t want to admit the truth, but he thought of Lemuel Jones as being not only a friend but a good friend. That explained why he had left a decent job with a decent family and ridden hundreds of miles to find that Lemuel had not lied in the telegram.

  “You look like death dug up and hung out to dry,” Carson said at last, breaking the silence.

  Jones smiled. His teeth were yellow, a couple missing, but his grin was strong as ever. “Feels about right. I always thought you had the keenest eye of any of us.”

  “I reckon the fort’s got a decent cemetery, too.”

  “It’s only for soldiers. Why’d I want to be buried among them?” He spat accurately, hitting the hole in the planking and not even spattering a drop onto the wood.

  “You thinking on the graveyard at the church? It’s not much of a church, but the graveyard’s tended well, it looks.”

  “You’re turning downright morbid, Clay. That’s not something I’m ready for yet. Am I?”

  “You look it,” Carson said. “The doc in town said consumption.”

  “He’s a good man, but he shoots off his mouth a tad too much. He’s got no call telling any stranger wandering through about my ailments.”

  “Is that what I am? A stranger wandering through?”

  “I sent for you, Clay. You were always more than just one of the gang. We were all friends, I reckon, but you were my right-hand man, my soul.”

  “But never your conscience. And you ignored my advice about robbing that bank.”

  “There was too much in that vault to ignore. I said it then and I’ll say it now. You got too cautious in your old age. And that decrepit way of thinking turned you indecisive.”

  “I think of it as gaining wisdom.” Carson looked back toward the fort. Thin white plumes of smoke rose from within the walled enclosure. The mess hall was about ready to serve the midday meal to the soldiers. The way his belly growled, it was almost worth the risk riding down and seeing if they’d feed him. It had been too long since he’d eaten.

  “It’s friendship, what me and you had, Clay. Friendship. With the rest of the boys, too. But with you especially.”

  “Does that include Schuster?”

  “Burly?” Lemuel laughed, then choked and spat a gob. “Him and his family’ve helped me out, but they’re not part of this.”

  “Burly sent the telegram for you. He knows what was in it.”

  Again Lemuel chuckled. “Burly can’t read. He’s not too bright, either, so he’d never figure out what I was sayin’ to you.”

  “Did you send ’grams to the others in the gang, too?”

  “Only you.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “It took so long for my tracker to find you, I reckoned it’d be … too long … for the rest. I got a notion where to look, but it’ll require purpose fed by our friendship. I want you to help me track the rest down. With me.”

  “With you? You’d blow out of the saddle at the first strong breeze blowing across the prairie.”

  “I’m not as far gone as that tinkering sawbones might have told you, but I’m getting there. That’s why I wanted to fetch the money, divvy it up, and …”

  “And?” Carson studied the gaunt, sickly face. Lemuel Jones now showed a determination like in the old days. The sunken eyes burned with intensity, and his thin lips pulled back in a release of some wild-animal spirit.

  “I want to ride with the gang once more.” He let out a liquid-sounding sigh, then spat. This time, it was mostly blood.

  “We tore up most of Texas back then,” Carson said. He closed his eyes and remembered. “Those were good days. Mostly.”

  The Dirty Creek Gang gained riders, one by one, as their exploits became the stuff of legend—or if not legend, then notoriety. Each rider following Lemuel Jones proved himself worthy of … friendship.

  They trusted each other, but such friendship had its limits. He still wasn’t sure what went wrong when they burst into that bank, with guns drawn and bandannas pulled up to hide their faces. Never before had they met much resistance. Carson couldn’t even remember when they’d fired their six-shooters at anyone. A few rounds triggered into the sky usually sent a wave of panic through most folks that froze them solid and let the robbery continue without a hitch.

  Not in Fort Worth. Not that bank.

  Lemuel had entered first and shouted out the demand for the guards to drop their guns and lift their hands. If Simon Potter hadn’t plugged the first guard, it would have been Carson sprawled lifeless on the floor. Billy Turner and Joe Easterly had fired, too, catching another guard and a bystander. Wylie didn’t account for much, shouting and waving his gun around, but that added to the confusion and panic. By then, Carson remembered how he had swung around to see what Lemuel was up to. The teller had unlimbered an old black-powder Remington and clutched it in his two shaking hands as he aimed at Lem. The air had filled with noxious gunsmoke when the old blunderbuss discharged. But Carson had fired first.

  Things got even blurrier then. Carson had taken out the teller before he could kill Jones, but stray rounds from guards or robbers, or who knows who, had sent a customer thinking to be a hero to the floor, clutching his leg and bawling like a branded calf.

  Lemuel had grabbed two canvas bags from the open vault and shouted for all of them to clear out. The bank president had fumbled open his desk drawer and sprayed lead all around. He missed all the robbers but hit another customer.

  Carson put three rounds into him to stop the frightened man from killing more of his patrons. He knew none of those wounds mattered, other than to send the banker scuttling under his desk for cover. Too many lay dead, scattered around the lobby and behind the tellers’ counter. The man with a gunshot wound in the leg gushed blood all over the floor and somehow bellowed even louder than when he was first hit.

  Confusion. Blood and confusion and nobody remembered what their carefully rehearsed plan meant then. It was every man for himself.

  Carson backed out of the bank and stepped into the street, only to create the horror that had haunted his nightmares for a year. A man standing behind a young mother and her small daughter, both of them clutching flower bouquets, moved to gun down the escaping robbers.

  Carson tried to remember what happened. Or tried to forget anything that had. Jones stumbled into him, weighed down by two bulky bags crammed full of gold coins. He remembered firing at the half-hidden man. One shot. Jones shoved him along. He collided with the flower-toting woman. She screamed and grabbed for her face. Blood spurted everywhere. The little girl bawled and clung to her mama’s skirts, and Lemuel Jones shouted at them to hightail it.

  And …

  The gang raced to their horses, only to find themselves in even worse trouble. The gunfire had brought a dozen men all waving around six-guns. One hunk of lead ripped open a sack of coins. The gleaming bright yellow trail Jones left behind, one coin at a time, was another image Carson found unforgettable, even in his dreams—his nightmares of that day.

  Blood and gold defiling the ground.

  Lemuel secured both bags of gold over his horse’s haunches and raced off, leaving the rest of the gang to hold back the growing crowd flocking to the bank to see what the ruckus was.

  After all that gunfire, the crowd retreated in confusion. The Dirty Creek Gang’s departure was no less chaotic.

  They had galloped from town, the whole lot of them, hot after Lemuel Jones and the gold. They had agreed on a rendezvous spot west of town, out near Bear Creek. Carson had heard that they’d renamed the town since their hasty escape.

  “Keller,” he whispered as he remembered.

  “What’s that? Keller? You mean where we intended to switch to fresh horses and get out of Texas lickety-split?” Lemuel chuckled. “You’re right. They changed the name. That happens all the time nowadays. They’re talking about changing Hidetown. Not fancy enough for them. They want to call it Mobeetie.”

  “What?” Carson swung around, shaken out of his reverie. “What’s that mean?”

  “They claim it’s an Injun word for ‘sweet water.’ I heard from a Comanche, from his own mouth and he wasn’t lying, that it means ‘buffalo turd.’” Lemuel laughed until tears ran down his cheeks. “Serves them right, the men what run this town.”

  “They put up with you, an outlaw on the run.”

  “Half this town’s outlaws of some kind or another, no matter they don’t have Wanted posters dogging their heels. That’s why I came here after—”

  “After you never showed up in Bear Creek? In Keller?”

  “The gold weighed me down. Must have been thirty, forty pounds in each of them sacks. I veered away when four riders blocked my trail to Bear Creek. For danged near a week, I rode, trying to avoid that posse. I finally hid the gold and lit out for parts unknown. Musta spent three months on the run. That’s when I blew into Hidetown and sorta stayed.”

  “You claim you avoided a posse? The rest of us got to Bear Creek just fine, but when you never showed, we split up. A good thing, too, since I swear half of Fort Worth was after us and all of them had blood in their eyes.”

  “And the other half, they was on my heels so close they rattled my spurs with their hot breaths. Yes, sir, that’s the way it happened, Clay.”

  “Why’d you want to see me?” Carson looked around. “If you spent the gold, it went fast. This isn’t the lap of luxury.”

  “You accusing me of spending it on wild women and booze? Ha!” He bit off another half inch of chaw and worked on it until a tiny dark dribble ran from his mouth. He spat again. This time, he missed the hole. “I told you. I hid it and then took to the trail until I lost them men pursuing me. Never spent so much as one of those lovely gold double eagles.”

  “How’d you find me?”

  “I had some good help. Hez and his two brothers and me hit it off.”

  “Hez? Two brothers?” Carson looked around for some hint that he and Jones weren’t alone. He didn’t see it.

  “Hez is the one responsible for tracking you down. Not him, not personally. He put me onto a tracker name of … oh, don’t matter. He’s about the best man hunter in Texas. Gossip has it he worked for the Rangers once, but couldn’t abide being one, even though they offered.”

  “Blond gunman?”

  “That’s him. I was never sure how Hez came to know him, but he worked real cheap. Cheap and fast.”

  “You didn’t trust this Hez fellow to come after me?”

  “Hez? He’s got business here that he wouldn’t leave. Clever son of a buck. He’s always got a new deal percolating like a pot of coffee, if not as fragrant. Not like his brothers. They’re both dumber than a post.”

  “Red-haired gents?”

  Jones swung around and stared at him hard. “How’d you know?”

  “Just a guess.” Carson sank down in the chair, thinking hard. The man who had ambushed him had hair as red as a flame. He touched the watch in his pocket. “They haven’t found the rest of the gang?”

  “Nope, no reason for them to, now that you’ve showed up.”

  “You know where the others are,” Carson accused. From Lemuel’s broad grin, he surmised he had hit the target.

  “I got hints. Rumors. Suspicions. I did that on my own, but you were the hard one. A cotton farmer? You? That’s a mighty good place to hide out, since nobody’d ever think of a gun slick like you out there in the field, sweating in the hot sun, squashing boll weevils betwixt thumb and forefinger, and toting bales.”

  “You cutting this Hez and his family in on what we took from the bank?”

  “Clay!” Jones half launched from the chair, then settled back. “You lost your senses? Cotton farming in the hot sun will do that. Of course not! The Dirty Creek Gang took that money fair and square.”

  “Men died.”

  “Them guards were responsible for starting the gunplay. And the bank president. He coulda told them all to just step back and let us take what was in the vault.”

  “That doesn’t change the fact that they’re dead.”

  “Except for the bank president. He knows what happened to the fellow shot in the leg. The one who bawled like a baby.”

  “Your plan wasn’t much good, from the second we walked into the bank.”

  “You refusing to ride along with me as we gather up the rest of the gang?”

  “The gold’s untouched all this time? You didn’t spend it?”

  “Well, now, I took a coin or two at the time. But that’s all. And I mighta done a bit more to hide it.”