“Are there enough ranchers and farmers around here to make that worthy of the talent of the tried-and-true soul of the Dirty Creek Gang? The short time you rode with us was the high point of our existence. You made it the best months ever. We depended on your ethical compass.”

  Carson started to protest, then saw how Jones soft-soaped the reluctant gang member. And gang member he was. Sam Wylie didn’t belong anywhere else. He certainly was a fish out of water in what couldn’t even be called a jerkwater town. The railroad would never come here, even to refill locomotive boilers.

  If he rode around, finding any water might be a problem. Elbow Bend was truly stumbling along on its last legs.

  “This was a good place to hide out for a while,” Carson said. “You chose well. But that’s all Elbow Bend ever was. A temporary hidey-hole until the law wasn’t looking for us any longer.”

  “They’ve forgotten us, Sam,” Lemuel said earnestly. “That’s hard to believe, I know. We were the baddest ever to stick up a stagecoach or bank. But hiding for a full year’s let them find other road agents to chase down.”

  “We had some good times,” Wylie said, smiling crookedly.

  “We did, and you were an important part. Like I said, you were the soul of the gang. We looked up to you because of it.”

  Wylie grinned broadly now. He looked like his old self rather than the subservient bank teller working for a man without half the smarts he had.

  “We can again. One last time.” Lemuel couldn’t control his coughing now. He fumbled out a handkerchief and pressed it to his nose and mouth. His snot rag came away bloody after mopping up.

  “Even split?” Wylie rubbed his chin. Then nodded. “Count me in.”

  “We’re hunting down the rest of the boys,” Lemuel said. “With three of us on the trail, it’ll go faster.”

  With his gray complexion warning how sick he was, Lemuel Jones had to make it faster—or he’d never be able to take them to the hidden loot.

  “Lem had a man out hunting for us. I was the only one he found,” Carson said with a tinge of rancor. He had thought he was better hidden than he was. At least the town where he took refuge was large enough for him to blend in. Elbow Bend was so small, Sam Wylie stuck out like a scarecrow in a cornfield.

  But then Lemuel Jones had known the gang member had taken refuge here. He said so. Rumor? Gossip? Carson knew the man wasn’t telling everything he knew.

  “So you came after me and Billy?”

  “You know where he got to?” Lemuel perked up. “All I heard was that he was somewhere in the area.”

  “You’re joshing me, aren’t you, Lemuel? Billy’s here in town. We split from the ambush when the Fort Worth posse shot us all up. You lit out with the gold. I figured you and Clay here made it away. We had no idea what happened to Joe.”

  “Billy is here in Elbow Bend?” Carson didn’t know whether to laugh or pity the men. “Wasn’t that dangerous, the two of you hanging out together?” He glanced toward the saloon. Billy Turner never could hold his liquor. One good bender and he would spill his guts, bragging on how fine a road agent he was, how he held up trains and banks.

  If the woman in the saloon represented the entire company of the fairer sex in town, such a soul cleansing would have happened a long time ago.

  “We don’t see each other much.”

  “Bad blood?” Lemuel asked. “That won’t matter, not when we’re all riding together again. We got along fine. You were all my friends.”

  “We were that,” Wylie said. “But Billy turned bitter after …”

  Carson was hesitant to ask what thoughts ran through Wylie’s head. Something had happened after the posse had scattered the gang to the four winds.

  “Let’s go lasso that varmint,” Lemuel said. “The sooner we get out of this dying town, the better I’ll like it. It reminds me too much of me.” This time, he hocked up a thick green and bloody gob. It rolled up in the dusty street but showed no sign of drying. It looked like some kind of furry globular bug.

  “This isn’t a place to die,” Carson said, unable to keep from staring at the quivering gob as the wind blew it along in the street. “You need a doctor?”

  Before Jones answered, Wylie piped up. “The sawbones lit out a long time back. Him and one of the Gilman girls got hitched and headed for Fort Worth. What’s wrong with you, Lem? You got the grippe?”

  “Trail dust. Caught in my gullet. Nothing to worry your head over, Sam. Nothing a’tall.”

  “Where’s Billy?” Carson cut in. He wanted Lemuel to stop talking. If he went on too long, the coughing would start again and might continue for long minutes. Sam Wylie was no fool. If he thought Jones would keel over dead at any instant, he wasn’t likely to ride along.

  And if he didn’t, Jones had made it clear enough that he wasn’t interested in telling where he had hidden the gold. It was the entire Dirty Creek Gang or no one. If some of them had died, that was one thing, but Lemuel Jones had to ride at the head of whoever remained upright.

  Until he no longer sat astride his own horse and became worm food.

  “He works at the general store,” Wylie said. “I never go in when he’s behind the counter. The owner knows there’s bad blood between us and sometimes sends Billy on errands when I drop by.”

  Carson shook his head. Even in a small town, currents of intrigue and outright hatred flowed just under the surface.

  The trio started for the store.

  “You there, Mr. Wylie! Get back to work!” The bank officer stood in the doorway, shaking his fist. He dropped his hand to his side, turned pale, and stepped back when Carson turned and fixed him with a steely glare. In his day, Carson had backed down famous gunmen and even those who thought to become famous by calling him out. Cowing the unarmed bank officer hardly took any effort.

  Still, he was happy to see he hadn’t lost his force of character. Working as a farmhand growing cotton had a way of sapping his haughtiness.

  He spun and hurried to catch up with the other two. They walked slowly to accommodate Lemuel, but they chattered like magpies. It was as if no time had passed between the last time they’d ridden together and this instant.

  Carson stayed out of the conversation. He remembered how he and Lemuel had spent hours on his rickety porch, feeling each other out and finally deciding they more than liked one another. They were still partners. To the death.

  “Want me to talk to Billy?” he asked when they came to the run-down store.

  “Go on, Clay. Me and Sam’ll keep each other company.”

  As he stepped onto the boardwalk, Lemuel called, “Don’t you let him slip away! We all ride or none of us does.”

  Clay considered his options. If he cut down Billy Turner, that satisfied Jones’s demand that only living gang members need continue on. From what Wylie had said, Turner’s cooperation might prove hard to come by. Riding with him and Lemuel wouldn’t be a problem, but with Sam Wylie dealt into the hand, that might be an unplayable round.

  He hitched up his gun belt and strutted into the store. Dust hung in the air, and a broom rested against the long counter laden with yard goods. Someone had recently swept the floor and the dust hadn’t settled back yet.

  “Billy! You here? Billy Turner?”

  The metallic click of a six-gun hammer cocking turned him to ice. He should have come into the store better prepared. Carson turned slowly and saw a man hidden by a pile of boxes. What wasn’t hidden was the hand holding a six-shooter pointed at his gut.

  CHAPTER 9

  “You’re not taking me in. I don’t care what the reward is on my head, either.”

  “So you’d cut me down and turn me over for any reward? What kind of partner does that?”

  “Clay? Clay Carson?” A dark figure moved from behind the crates. The gun never wavered. “I figured it’d be one of the others coming for me.”

  “What makes you think I intend turning you over to the law?”

  “You always sounded like you had a hankering to wear a badge.”

  Carson laughed harshly.

  “You’ve got me confused with someone else. Who that might be is a poser, though. I’ve always known what side of the law I wanted to be on. It wasn’t the side with a badge pinned on its coat.”

  “I looked out and saw three of you coming. Wylie was with you, but I couldn’t see your faces. I figured he had sold me out for the reward.” Turner made a curious growling noise. “He’s the kind to turn me in just for the pleasure of seeing me behind bars.”

  “How’s that supposed to work? If he fetched a marshal to run you in, what’s to keep you from turning him in?” Carson tried to make sense of it, but Billy Turner was all mixed-up and scared.

  The room smelled of old wood and dried beans, a blend of commerce and loneliness. Shelves lined with dusty tins and bolts of cloth stood like silent witnesses to a smaller number of customers as the years crept by. Carson glanced around, noting the worn patch of floor where men and women had stood too long. This store was the town’s heart, though its pulse beat slowly. The place had the feel of a tomb, with Turner its caretaker, pacing like a ghost trying not to remember who he used to be.

  Worse, he feared someone would remember him from earlier days.

  Turner’s jaw worked side to side as he chewed on a thought like it was tough jerky. Behind his narrow squint, suspicion flickered like heat on a horizon.

  Or maybe he just hated Wylie so much he wasn’t able to believe the bank teller would come by this store in the company of two others who weren’t lawmen. Hunting after the gold wasn’t going to be a cakewalk. Carson had never thought it would be, but Turner was suspicious of Wylie, and Wylie had no love for his former partner.

  “Why are you here?” Billy Turner stepped fully into the light shining through the front window. He looked the worse for time, though not as bad as Lemuel Jones. His haggard look came more from worry than illness. There wasn’t the sickly tint to his skin, and his eyes shone with a hint of the energy he once had when they’d ridden together.

  “The shop apron doesn’t do much for you. The old kerchief with the Indian designs was more to my liking.”

  “That’s too flashy. It’s one thing to get whoever you’re robbing to stare at a kerchief and another to be a clerk sweeping up.”

  Carson sneezed at that. Dust still hung in the air from the vigorous sweeping his former trail companion had kicked up into the air with his broom.

  “Are you going to shoot me? You’d have to mop up the blood if you do.”

  “I don’t reckon you’d go down without a fight, either. You still as quick as you used to be?”

  “Maybe a tad slower, but I still hit what I aim at with the first shot.” Carson waited as Turner considered … what? The thoughts running through the man’s head weren’t reflected on his face. That had changed. Carson had always read Turner like a book. Hiding out in a small town had taught him skills.

  “You’re different, Clay. You look different.”

  “We both had to fade into the background for the past year. I was a cotton farmer.”

  “You? Hoeing cotton?”

  “Plucking it from the bolls and heaving bales into a wagon to take to the gin, too. Now, are you going to put that gun away, or do you have to find out how much speed I’ve lost?”

  Turner stepped up and peered out the window. Lemuel Jones waved. Wylie stood beside him, arms crossed and looking sour.

  “That’s Lemuel, too? You already rounded up Wylie? What’s this all about, Clay?”

  “The six-shooter. My bile’s rising with that smoke wagon pointing at me.”

  “We wouldn’t want your bile overflowing. That much hasn’t changed, I reckon, no matter how much hiding you’ve done. You or me.” Billy Turner lowered the hammer and thrust the six-gun into his waistband at the small of his back. A quick tug rearranged the apron to hide its resting place.

  Carson explained Jones’s desire to reunite the gang and what it meant to the former riders with him.

  “I haven’t spent a whole lot of time with Wylie since we got to town. He turned ornery.” Turner took a deep breath. “More’n that, I’m not sure he’s reliable. I’ve spent every minute of every day expecting him to turn me over to the Rangers.”

  “Do Rangers ride through town often?”

  “Never seen one. Never even heard a whiff of rumor about one coming to Elbow Bend. That doesn’t keep me from having a wolf gnawing at my gut because of him.” Turner pointed at Wylie.

  “If he tried turning you over to the Rangers, or a posse, or any lawman, he’d put his own neck in a noose.”

  Turner shook his head, as if clearing it of bees buzzing inside.

  “Don’t matter none. He’s curdled, Clay. I can feel it. Something’s not right in his head.”

  “You stayed in town where he was working as a bank teller. Nothing held either of you here.”

  “Better to know where he was than to fear every shadow behind me as belonging to that varmint.”

  “Lemuel says he’ll split the loot among us. It’s about time.”

  “He looks like death walking. What’s wrong with him?”

  Carson told Turner everything.

  “One last hurrah, eh? And he’ll give us the gold? I reckoned he’d taken it all and spent it gambling or on women. He always had terrible taste in women.” Turner spat on his freshly swept floor and took no notice. “Too bad it wasn’t him instead of Wylie come to Elbow Bend. There’s no women here. Not anymore.”

  “You and Wylie share that opinion. It might be you two still share more. What are your feelings toward Lemuel?”

  “Good man. I was proud to ride with him. When that bank robbery went south, it tore me up a little that we had to take different trails.”

  “But?”

  “But I always thought he made off with the gold and spent every last double eagle in that sack. If he didn’t, I’m willing to go along and get my share.”

  “We’ve got a couple more of the gang to round up,” Carson said. “Joe and Simon.”

  “I wouldn’t mind seeing Easterly again. Joseph and me were always amigos. You and Potter, though. You thinking of spending any real effort hunting him down?”

  Carson snorted. “Simon and I were friends. We just showed it different from how you’d expect.”

  “You traded barbs all the time, but you never put earthworms in his boots, like you did with Wylie. If somebody did that to me, they’d be worm food.”

  “Wylie never got a chance to even the score. Simon and I never played practical jokes on each other. Somehow, we never got around to it. It was always more important insulting each other, but we never meant a word of it. We were just friends.” Carson paused for a moment, considering. “He was my best friend.”

  “We’re cut from the same cloth, Clay. You and me got to watch out for Wylie. He’ll double-cross us in a flash. We can watch each other’s backs if he gets too feisty.”

  “Simon will be glad to keep watch, too. And Joe Easterly.” This was the right thing to say. Carson saw the decision strengthening Billy Turner’s resolve to ride with them, especially if Simon and Joe were with them, all teamed up against Wylie.

  “Fort Worth,” Turner said suddenly. He stripped off the apron, picked up a coat lying behind the counter, and said, “Let’s get out of here. The sooner this worthless town is behind me, the better.”

  “Even if Wylie’s riding with you?”

  “Even then, though I’ll keep an eye peeled. We all will, right?”

  Carson and Turner stepped onto the boardwalk. Lemuel Jones gave a cheer and came forward to embrace Turner and pound him on the back. Sam Wylie hung back, but a small smile curled his lips. Carson wasn’t sure what that meant, not after hearing how Turner distrusted him and how much Wylie had somehow lost the store clerk’s trust.

  “We’re close to getting the whole bunch of us Dirty Creek Gang together. Now, gents, how are we going to find the two of us not standing in the middle of the street and being stared at by the entire population of Elbow Bend?”

  “A drink might help us think,” Wylie suggested.

  “You just want to see if the saloon hooker’ll give you the time of day,” Turner said. “Would you stay if she whispered sweet nothings in your ear, Wylie?”

  “Don’t you go talking about Miss Melanie like that.” Wylie pushed his coat back. He carried a pistol slung in a shoulder rig like some tinhorn gambler.

  Turner moved to free his own coat to reach behind his back and go for his iron stuck into his trouser band. Before either went for their six-shooters, Carson stepped between them.

  “One thing we all agree on is leaving town as quick as we can. I doubt the whiskey’s all that good in the saloon, no matter who serves it up. Let’s ride. All right … amigos?” He looked from one man to the other. If either started to draw, Carson intended for him to be dead on the ground before he leveled his pistol. He made the quick decision. It was better to lose one of the gang than two.

  “Clay’s right about getting on the trail. I’m hankering to see Simon Potter and good ole Joseph Easterly again, now that I’ve found you three. I don’t have any clue to their whereabouts.” Lemuel put his arm around Carson’s shoulders, as much to keep him from throwing down as to support himself. His legs wobbled enough to show he was close to falling over.

  “Where do we ride?” Wylie shoved out his chin in a belligerent move. He was still hot about the slight Turner had heaped on him. “I’ve got no idea how to find anyone.”

  “You had trouble finding me across town,” Turner said. His attitude wasn’t much of an improvement over Wylie’s.

  “I have one small hint about Joe. He was spotted riding a horse with a double-diamond brand.” Lemuel stepped up and used Carson as a support. “Hez,” he whispered to Carson. “He sent out his friend to find you, but saw Easterly with his own eyes.”

  “If he saw him, why not track him then and there?” Carson worried about Hez and his brothers. Their dealings with Jones were more than a little mysterious.

  “His man hunter found you. I told Hez you were the one I needed most. I think he saw Joe in Hidetown selling a few head of cattle.”