“Hez and his brothers know about the gold?”

  “I never mentioned it to them. Nary a hint, no, sir.”

  Carson mulled that over. Jones’s memory was a bit spotty. The telegram had mentioned recovering the loot. Even if Hez’s brothers were dim-witted, Hez wasn’t, by Jones’s own admission.

  “How long every day do you sit and watch the soldiers come and go from the fort?”

  “A man’s got to have a purpose in life, Clay. Finding the rest of our friends for a little reunion has been it for me. Watching the horse soldiers is only a pastime.” Jones coughed but didn’t hock up another bloody gob. He looked hard at Carson. “A man can drink only so much whiskey before his back teeth start to float.”

  “It’s a surprise you have any teeth left, the way you chew tobacco.” Carson watched the gate close on the distant fort. A bugle called the troops to dinner. Again he felt the hollowness in his belly. What good was it being able to fix edible vittles and not doing it?

  “Are you in?”

  Clay Carson considered for a moment, then answered, “When do we leave?”

  CHAPTER 7

  “You up for a day’s ride?” Clay Carson spoke carefully, choosing his words to keep from offending the touchy man. He gave the former leader of the Dirty Creek Gang a once-over. Lemuel stood steadily enough on his own feet, but, if possible, he looked even more skeletal in the morning light than he had the afternoon before.

  The meaning of “one foot in the grave” hit Carson forcefully.

  “I’ve still got gumption enough,” Lemuel declared. He put his hand on the butt of his six-shooter but made no effort to draw. His hand had shaken after he put the bullet into the dirt at Carson’s feet. Now he trembled from head to toe like he ran a fever. His cheeks were hollow, sunken around yellowed teeth, and his eyes seemed like two embers in a dark cave, flaring with a fire that wasn’t ready to go out—but faltering …

  “You said you know where Sam is. Tell me, I’ll go talk to him and see if he wants back in.”

  “Why shouldn’t he?”

  “Because that robbery was the only time he rode with us. The rest of the gang had been together at least a year. Longer, when you tally up Simon and me.”

  “He was in the thick of the bullets flying ever’ which way. He counts.”

  Clay Carson felt increasing reluctance to go along with Jones’s crazy idea of getting everyone back together to dig up the loot, wherever it was. Although it hardly looked it from the ramshackle house Jones called home, chances were better than even he had spent both bulging bags of gold coins he’d ridden away with. In his day, he’d been quite a gambler, and not a very good one. Carson had seen him bet a thousand dollars on the chance of drawing the single card needed to rake in a pot. The thrill of the bet was more important than winning the money.

  In that respect, Carson wasn’t much of a gambler. He knew odds and preferred to have a couple coins rubbing together in his pocket. Only … he was a gambler on different things. Faro and poker and chuck-a-luck weren’t for him. Getting into and out of crazy situations was.

  He laughed without humor. Right now, he was betting on Lemuel Jones’s ability to find the gold stolen from a Fort Worth bank. That carried worse odds than drawing to a gutshot straight.

  “Sam Wylie’s cut,” Carson said, thinking hard on the matter. “He gets the same as the rest of us?”

  “Even split. I’m willing to give up my extra share owed me for planning the robbery.”

  Carson snorted. Lemuel Jones ought to lose his share for such poor planning. They hadn’t expected to walk into a hornet’s nest the way they had.

  And the woman with her little girl. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Gunning down men throwing down on him, much less shooting at him, hardly bothered him anymore. They had a chance and took it—and lost. But the woman and her daughter outside the bank weren’t supposed to get shot up.

  He closed his eyes for a moment and tried not to remember the smell of the flowers they both held. Bluebonnets. He shook himself free of the memory.

  Lemuel had neglected a great deal when he chose the day and time to pull off the robbery. So many guards? He should have known. Armed tellers and bank officers? The robbery should have cowed them into meekly obeying. Instead, they had all gone for weapons and created a hell that took every bit of the gang’s sharpshooting skill to avoid.

  Too many had needlessly ended up dead in that damned bank.

  “All you want to do is ride at the head of the gang again,” Carson said. “How do I know the gold’s hidden where you say, not that you’ve given so much as a hint about that?”

  “My word, Clay. I give you my solemn word that I hid the bags of gold coins and haven’t gone back to take a single double eagle.” He smirked. “I reckon they were all double eagles. Might have been a few five- and ten-dollar gold pieces mixed in. Would that disappoint you, having smaller coins mixed in?”

  “You didn’t look,” Carson said skeptically.

  “No, sir, Clay Carson, I did not look. I was too busy riding for my life, getting away from that posse.”

  “Except for the couple coins to keep you going when you rode off.”

  “You listen real good, Clay. I’d forgot I said that. Yeah, except for them. A few of them fell out of the sack, where it tore open. I’ve been dodging the law and living hand to mouth ever since.”

  “How do you know where Wylie is hiding out? More from your partner, Hez? Or his blond detective man-hunting fellow?”

  Lemuel stepped closer and put a bony hand on his friend’s shoulder.

  “None of that clan will see any of the money. I give you my word. They weren’t with us; they didn’t risk their necks.”

  “And you want to ride at the head of the Dirty Creek Gang one last time?”

  Jones let out a long, loud sigh.

  “I miss those days. We were never too good at all the thieving, but we made up for it by riding with good friends. I miss the excitement, but I miss the rest of you mangy cayuses more.”

  “Did you say how much gold was hidden away to Hez or his brothers?”

  “Nary a peep. Will you quit harping on that?” He started to say more, but clamped his mouth shut.

  Carson saw doubt come into Lemuel’s pale, sunken eyes. There must have been days when he wasn’t as sharp as he seemed now. The text of the telegram spoke to that. Hez hadn’t cared for a dying man out of the goodness of his heart—Carson knew that without ever meeting him.

  Or had he met Hez and left him alongside the road after the failed ambush just before he reached Hidetown? He hoped so. Then Carson remembered the watch with the initials etched into the case. BS. Not HS.

  He wasn’t looking forward to nursemaiding Lem. Constantly looking over his shoulder to see if Hez and his brothers rode on his back trail made the hunt for Sam Wylie all the worse. He had no idea about the men Jones had thrown in with since the bank robbery. Somehow, he doubted they were as trustworthy as the men in the original gang.

  Deep in his gut, he knew that they weren’t anywhere near as dependable as Lemuel made them out to be.

  “Thanks for saddling up Old Paint,” Jones said. He used his hand on Carson’s shoulder as a crutch to go to the horse. A quick move switched from Carson to the pommel for support.

  Lemuel pulled himself into the saddle with surprising ease, considering how weak he seemed. Carson relaxed now, thinking the trip after Sam Wylie wouldn’t be as exhausting as he first thought. He stepped up and looked from Jones to the fort. The gates were open. The patrols had left for the day, just before dawn.

  “Where to?”

  Lemuel Jones clung to the pommel with his left hand and pointed south with his right.

  “We’re hunting for a banker man a dozen miles from here in Elbow Bend.”

  “Wylie’s been hiding out that close to you?”

  “All the time I’ve been in Hidetown, if rumors are right. Call it nine months.” Jones gathered the reins and snapped them. The tired paint tried to rear, but its rider controlled any reluctance to head southward.

  Carson trotted alongside the gang’s leader and stared at his hawklike profile. Unless the sunlight caught Lemuel full on, in silhouette he looked like he always had. His sandy hair was sparser and had turned brittle. His clothes flapped about his diminished body as he rode, but life had come rushing back into the man once they hit the trail. Carson had to urge his horse to a quicker gait to keep up.

  It took fifteen minutes longer than four hours to reach Elbow Bend. They rode side by side, Lemuel staring straight ahead. Carson swiveled around, taking in everything he could. He had the same sensation as when he’d ridden through Hidetown, but there was a big difference. This town wasn’t long for the world. Hidetown had the Fort Elliott garrison to breathe some life into it. Elbow Bend showed empty stores along its main street. A lot of them. The few people on the street were almost all men. Women coming after supplies from scattered farms and ranches were notably scarce.

  Even a quick glance into the open double doors on the saloon showed only one woman inside, leaning against the bar and swapping lies with a solitary customer. Boomtowns attracted women. Elbow Bend had nothing to bring in the fairer sex.

  Carson gave the town a year before it dried up and blew away across the Llano Estacado, another of the failed Panhandle settlements. Drought and tornadoes had a way of erasing towns not important to the railroads.

  “They need a train coming through to keep things lively,” Lemuel said.

  The comment caused him to jerk around. Lemuel had been reading his mind, just like the old days.

  “Where’s Wylie likely to hang his hat?” He stared at the lonesome building with JAILHOUSE whitewashed on its wooden side. He caught a glimpse of a man hunched over a desk inside. A lawman. From everything he had seen about the town, that was the only marshal on duty. Hiring even one deputy would raise a ruckus among the town’s fathers, who had to justify the expense.

  “You remember how he was. Wylie and you liked running your fingers through piles of money.”

  “The bank?” Carson stood in the stirrups and saw a rickety structure down the street with a single plate glass window proclaiming BANK from side to side. Whoever painted signs in Elbow Bend had a steady job.

  He snapped the reins and reached the front of the bank ahead of Jones. He considered drawing his six-gun and crashing into the lobby. The expression on Sam Wylie’s face might be worth the risk of getting shot. The two of them had played practical jokes on each other, stopping short of real injury. Almost short. Wylie had set a clever trap with a rope and weight in the Piney Woods, out in East Texas. The trap had been set so poorly Carson had laughed and easily avoided it, only to fall into the real trap. A swinging weight had crashed into his shoulder.

  It had taken him a week to get even with Wylie by filling his boots with earthworms. He had spent half a night collecting enough to make the prank worthwhile. He rubbed his arm where Wylie’s trap had caused a bruise all the way down to the bone.

  His brief reminiscence gave Lemuel time to ride up.

  “This is the place. Reckon we won’t get to talk to him ’less we go inside.”

  As Carson dismounted, he saw that Lemuel almost fell out of the saddle. It took a quick twist and a little luck for him to land on his feet and not collapse. Before Carson had the chance to say anything, Jones sucked in a deep breath and marched to the front door, as composed as could be.

  Carson trailed him into the bank. He stood just inside the door, looking around the poorly lit lobby. Two teller’s cages blocked the way to the rear of the room where an ancient black cast-iron safe stood, its door half-open. A man sat at a desk beside it. He glanced up at Lemuel Jones incuriously. He made no effort to rise and greet what might be a new customer.

  “I declare, you look the world like my long-lost cousin,” Lemuel said in a booming voice, going to the nearest teller’s cage.

  Sam Wylie’s eyes widened, and his mouth opened and closed like a catfish thrown up on the riverbank. Then he reached for something under the counter.

  Carson stepped around Lemuel to get a better shot if Wylie came out with a six-shooter in his fist.

  CHAPTER 8

  “Are you opening an account, Cousin Lemuel?” Sam Wylie showed his hands. He held a sheet of paper in one hand and an ink pen with a bent nib in the other. He laid them on the counter in front of him. His surprise had been replaced with a colder stare, as if daring Lemuel Jones to turn down the offer.

  Carson suspected the former gang member had thought a robbery was in progress. This was his way of telling Lemuel it wasn’t appreciated in this Elbow Bend bank where he worked.

  Carson found it ironic that Wylie had taken a job here. A bank robber working as a teller! It was like an outlaw pinning on a sheriff’s badge.

  Looking around, Carson doubted there was enough here to make it worthwhile to rob. This was a dying town, and the money had already seeped away, like water through a man’s fingers. In the wild growth that was taking place in other regions of Texas, those fingers would dry off mighty fast in this town.

  He turned to the bank officer. The slender, shabbily dressed man stared at them. His eyes were a little out of focus. Carson suspected a careful search of the desk would reveal more than one empty bottle of booze. And why not? Regular banking business was conducted by the two tellers. Anything more could be postponed until the whiskey fumes drifted away.

  The banker shifted in his chair, a rattling noise accompanying the movement, likely from touching a pistol tucked inside the center desk drawer. Carson’s eyes lingered on the desk, imagining just how quickly the man might fumble for the gun if things went sideways. But it wasn’t that sort of visit.

  The bank’s lobby bore the signs of a once-thriving business gone stale. Sunlight bled in through dirty windowpanes, cutting sharp lines across faded wallpaper and scuffed floorboards. The air smelled of ink, stale sweat, and the ghost of old currency long since spent. A fly buzzed persistently around the high ceiling above their heads.

  Jones looked oddly at home in the decay. His boots scraped across the wooden floor, slow and deliberate. Wylie’s stiffness was easy to read; his eyes darted to the doorway, to the teller’s cage, to the banker’s office, everywhere but Lemuel’s face. Carson had seen that expression before—a man waiting for a stick of dynamite to go off.

  “What are you doing here?” Wylie whispered, hand close to his mouth to keep the soft words from being heard by the other teller.

  “Just came by to palaver with you. Me and Clay here have a proposal for you that’s to your benefit.”

  “I’ve got a job. I don’t need anything more.”

  “It can’t be too much of a job,” Carson said. “Not in this town. It’s fixing to vanish in the next dust storm, if not before that.”

  “For better or worse, it’s my home now,” Wylie said, louder. He spoke defiantly, but there was a hint of bitterness to his words.

  “You lassoed a filly and got her in your corral? All settled down and set in your ways? Maybe there’s a young’n in the cradle, bawling all night long?” Lemuel watched the second teller from the corner of his eye. The man showed little interest in his fellow employee’s “cousin.”

  “Nothing like that. Even the cathouse closed.”

  “Are you going to leave money in my bank?” The question came with just a hint of a hiccup.

  Carson glanced at the banker behind the desk. His cold eyes made the man sputter a little and go back to shuffling stacks of papers on his desk.

  “Cousin Sam, I think he said you could take off for a few minutes. Any complaint about that?” Carson fixed the banker with an even colder stare. A flutter of hands and the way his head rocked side to side showed how anxious he was to have the unwanted customers out of his lobby.

  “I need this job,” Wylie said in a hoarse voice.

  “You’re better than this, Sam, my old friend.” Lemuel slowly turned and walked out. Only Carson saw how careful he was placing his feet to keep from keeling over. The long ride had taken the starch out of him. Only seeing Wylie again had given new vigor.

  Wylie looked at the other teller, shrugged, and hurried around the cage. He almost ran out into the street. Carson let Wylie pass him, then backed out, as if he was robbing the bank and didn’t want anyone stopping his escape.

  Outside, Lemuel and Wylie stood with their faces inches apart. Both talked at the same time, so neither could understand the other.

  “I can’t leave. There aren’t jobs in this no-account town.”

  “You won’t need a job. I told you. Even split. There was an entire mountain of gold coins.”

  “You’re a lying old fool. You took all the money and spent it. It’s been a year. We waited in Bear Creek for you as long as we could before the posse came thundering after us. That’s what happened, isn’t it, Carson? He never showed and we waited. Almost too long, we waited.”

  “It wasn’t his fault,” Carson said. “We were all running for our lives.”

  “Why’s he interested in us now? Answer me that, Carson. He’s been missing for a year. Why now? Why’s he want to even talk to us now?”

  Carson had to laugh. Wylie might have been parroting his own concerns about Lemuel Jones.

  “Does it matter if there’s gold or not?” Carson gestured, his sweeping arm taking in the entire town. “What do you have here? Sanctuary? That won’t last much longer. There’s no future here.”

  “Where’s the future in riding with the likes of you?” Wylie’s words were harsh, but the tone hinted that he didn’t reject Lemuel’s offer out of hand. Life in Elbow Bend had to be duller than dishwater, especially if the only filly left in town was the woman in the saloon he’d glimpsed.

  “What’s your future like here, Sam?” Lemuel held back a cough. He wiped a filthy handkerchief over his lips. Only a small red stain showed the problem boiling up inside him.

  “I might get promoted to head teller.”