Sidewinders (3 page)
Authors: William W. Johnstone
One of the customers drifting back to the plate of food he had left on the counter spoke up, saying, “Calling Reese Bardwell troublesome at times is being mighty generous, Sue Beth.”
Another man said, “And if he's not really mean already, I don't want to be anywhere around when he is.”
The woman nodded and said to Bo and Scratch, “See, that's what I mean. He's got a bad reputation around here, and some would say it's well deserved.” She shook her head and wiped her hands on her apron. “I expect you want some lunch?”
“Yes, ma'am,” Scratch said. “We'd be obliged.”
“You will be, to the tune of a dollar each.”
Scratch frowned. “That's a little steep, ain't it?”
“Deadwood is a mining town. Everything costs a little more here.”
One of the diners put in, “And it's worth it, mister. Sue Beth dishes up the best food since Aunt Lou Marchbanks quit the Grand Central and went to work cooking for the crew out at the Father De Smet mine.”
“Go on with you, Hal,” Sue Beth said. “You're just angling for an extra piece of pie.”
“But without a kiss,” the man said with a grin. “I wouldn't mind, you understand, but I imagine my wife would.”
Sue Beth laughed, then pointed at a couple of empty stools in front of the counter and told Bo and Scratch, “You two sit down. I'll get you some coffee.” As she fetched a pair of empty cups, she called through the pass-through to the cook, “I need two more lunches, Charlie.”
Bo and Scratch sat down and took off their hats. Things were getting back to normal in the café now that the ruckus was over. As Sue Beth poured the coffee, Scratch said, “We ain't been properly introduced, ma'am. My name is Scratch Morton, and this here is my friend Bo Creel.”
Sue Beth smiled. “Your mother actually named you Scratch, Mr. Morton?”
“Well, uh . . . no, ma'am. But it's been so long since I used my real name that I sort of disremember what it is. I can try to dredge it up if you want.”
“No, that's all right.” She looked at Bo. “And I suppose your name is short for Beauregard.”
“No, ma'am,” he told her. “It's just plain Bo, B-O. My pa liked the sound of it.”
“I see. What brings you boys all the way up here to Dakota Territory from Texas?”
“Oh, we didn't come here straight from Texas,” Scratch said. “We were in Colorado for a while, and then we decided to ride on up this way for a while.”
“We tend to drift around a little,” Bo added. “Never stay in one place for too long.”
“Saddle tramps, in other words,” Sue Beth said. Bo shrugged. “Call it what you will. It seems to suit us, and has for a long time.”
“Yeah, only this time we plumb forgot that you don't head north durin' the autumn,” Scratch said. “We're like little birdies. We usually fly south for the winter.”
“You'll get plenty of winter here if you wait a few weeks,” Sue Beth said. “By the way, I'm Susan Elizabeth Pendleton. Sue Beth to my friends. You can call me Mrs. Pendleton.”
“You're married?” Scratch asked. He couldn't quite keep the disappointment out of his voice.
“I was. My husband worked in one of the mines. He was killed by the smoke and poison gas when a fire broke out underground a couple of years ago.”
“We're mighty sorry to hear that,” Bo said.
Scratch nodded and said, “We sure are.”
“Thank you.”
To change the subject, Bo said, “I was wondering about something. The name of this place is the Red Top Café, but the roof's not red.”
Sue Beth smiled and pointed to her auburn hair. “It's named after me, not the building. It was my husband Tom's idea.”
“Oh. Well, it's a good one.”
The face of a scrawny old-timer appeared at the pass-through. He pushed a couple of plates across it and said, “Here's those two lunches, Sue Beth.”
“Thanks, Charlie,” she told him as she turned and picked up the meals. She set them in front of Bo and Scratch, who practically licked his chops. Bo didn't blame him. The thick slices of ham, the mounds of potatoes, and the biscuits dripping with butter and gravy looked and smelled delicious.
Before they could dig in, though, shouting erupted in the street outside. Bo and Scratch turned to look as one of the men at a table close to the door stood up and opened it so the customers in the café could hear better. The shouts had a frantic, frightened quality to them.
“What is it?” Sue Beth asked. “Trouble at one of the mines?”
Scratch said, “It sounds to me like preachin'. Somebody's hollerin' about the Devil.”
Bo happened to be looking at Sue Beth Pendleton as Scratch spoke. All the color washed out of the woman's face, and she looked as scared as the people outside sounded.
“Not just one devil,” Sue Beth said. “A whole gang of them. The Deadwood Devils must have struck again.”
CHAPTER 3
“The Deadwood Devils,” Bo repeated. “Doesn't sound like a very friendly bunch.”
Sue Beth shook her head. “They're not. They're outlaws who have been causing trouble around here for the past few months. They've held up stagecoaches, hijacked gold shipments, and murdered at least a dozen men that we know of.”
“Are you sure it's the same bunch doin' all that?” Scratch asked.
“We're sure,” Sue Beth replied with a grim nod. “The Devils make sure we know. Any time they kill somebody, they carve a pitchfork on his forehead, right here.”
She tapped a fingertip against the center of her forehead.
Bo frowned and said, “I've heard of people doing things like that, but it's usually vigilantes who are trying to warn lawbreakers what's going to happen to them.”
“Same thing, in a way,” Scratch said. “They want to keep folks scared.”
“It's working,” Sue Beth said as she wiped her hands on her apron again and walked down to the end of the counter. She moved aside a swinging gate there and stepped out. “I want to see what's happened now.”
Scratch was on his feet. “We'll join you.”
“But your lunchesâ”
“They'll keep,” Bo said. He, Scratch, and Sue Beth headed for the door along with most of the other customers inside the café. In a frontier town like Deadwood, any news always attracted a lot of attention.
As they stepped out onto the boardwalk, Bo saw a crowd of people gathering in front of an impressive, two-story frame building across the street. A large sign stuck out from the front of the building above the boardwalk. It read BANK, and in smaller letters below that single word, STEBBINS, POST & CO. People seemed to be clustered around someone. Through a gap in the crowd, Bo caught a glimpse of a short man with a white beard and a mane of equally snowy hair.
Sue Beth saw the man, too, and exclaimed, “That's Chloride Coleman!”
“Who's he?” Scratch asked.
“An old-timer who drives for the Argosy Mining Company. I don't see his wagon anywhere on the street, though.”
“Carries gold shipments, does he?” Bo asked.
“That's right.”
“And delivers 'em to that bank across the street, I'll bet,” Scratch said. “Reckon he got held up, Bo?”
“He must have, to cause this much commotion,” Bo said. “You want to go see what we can find out?”
Scratch shrugged. “I'm a mite curious.” He turned to Sue Beth. “You reckon you could put our plates on the stove to stay warm, ma'am?”
“Why do you care about a robbery?” she asked. “It's no business of yours.” Then she shook her head and went on, “Sorry, I forgot I was talking to Texans.”
Scratch just grinned, and Bo said, “We'll be back in a few minutes.”
They headed across the street to join the crowd that had formed around the old man on the boardwalk. Chloride Coleman wore faded and patched denim trousers, an equally hard-used flannel shirt, and a buckskin vest. An empty holster sagged on his right hip. He had several bloody scratches on the leathery skin of his face and hands and obviously had run into some trouble.
“âall three of 'em dead!” he was saying in a voice that cracked a little with age. “And I come mighty close to sayin' howdy to Saint Peter my own self!”
“You're certain it was the Devils of Deadwood Gulch who attacked you?” asked a tall, portly man in a tweed suit. He didn't have much hair on top of his head, but a pair of huge muttonchop whiskers framed his florid cheeks.
“Devils of Deadwood Gulch, Deadwood Devils, call 'em whatever you want to,” Coleman replied. “It was that same bunch of murderin' skunks, no doubt about it! I seen 'em carvin' pitchforks on Turley, Berkner, and poor ol' Mitch Davis. The bodies are still out there on the trail, along with the wrecked wagon. You can go look for yourself if you want, Mr. Davenport.”
The whiskered man shook his head. “No, I'll leave it to the undertaker and his helpers to collect the bodies. You can't blame me for being a bit puzzled, though, Chloride. As far as I know, you're the first victim of a robbery that the Devils have allowed to remain alive.”
Coleman puffed up and started to sputter. “You're . . . you sayin' I was in on it? That I'm workin' with them no-good murderin' polecats?”
“No, no, not at all,” Davenport said quickly in the face of the old-timer's wrath. “As I told you, I'm just puzzled. Why do you think they left you alive?”
“I done told you! That fella who done the carvin', he was like Satan his own self. He wanted me to come here and tell ever'body in town what happened. He wants ever'body to be scared of that bunch.”
One of the bystanders said, “I sure as blazes am! It's not safe to travel any of the roads around here anymore.”
“And how can the mines keep going if they can't get their ore and dust to the bank?” a woman in a sunbonnet asked. “If the mines go under, my husband will be out of a job!”
A wave of angry, agitated muttering rose from the crowd. Davenport lifted his hands and motioned for quiet. When the people had settled down a little, he said, “The mines aren't going under, and neither are the banks. At least, this one won't as long as I'm the manager of it!”
“But if somebody doesn't stop those outlawsâ” a man began.
“Someone
will
stop them,” Davenport insisted. “I'm sure of it. The Black Hills aren't as lawless as they were four years ago when Deadwood was founded. It's just a matter of timeâ”
will
stop them,” Davenport insisted. “I'm sure of it. The Black Hills aren't as lawless as they were four years ago when Deadwood was founded. It's just a matter of timeâ”
“Just a matter of time until the Devils kill us all!” another man shouted. That set the crowd off again. Davenport motioned for an end to the hubbub, but the noisy crowd ignored him.
That lasted until a tall, hawk-faced man in a brown suit and Stetson strode up and said in a loud, clear, commanding voice, “All right, settle down, you people! There's no need for all this commotion.”
Despite the fact that the day was chilly, Davenport pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped it over his face as an uneasy quiet settled on the crowd. “Thank God you're here, Sheriff,” he said to the newcomer. “The gold shipment from the Argosy Mine has been stolen.”
Bo saw the badge on the hawk-faced man's vest now. The lawman said to Coleman, “You look like you've been through the wringer, Chloride. What happened ?”
“Well, we was comin' down Deadwood Gulch,” the old-timer began. Bo and Scratch listened attentively as Coleman went through the story of the robbery, ending with, “After they rode off, I checked on the guards, hopin' one of 'em might still be alive, but really, I knowed better. When I was sure they was all dead, I hotfooted it for town as fast as these ol' legs of mine'll carry me. I thought maybe I'd find that mule team, but I reckon the dang jugheads wandered off up one of the little side gulches.”
The sheriff nodded. “I can send a search party to look for them, although the bosses out at the Argosy might want to do that since technically the mules belong to them. John Tadrack can fetch the bodies in and see to them.”
“What about the outlaws, Sheriff ?” Davenport asked. “Are you going to put together a posse to look for them?”
Instead of answering directly, the lawman looked at Coleman and asked, “How far out did this happen, Chloride?”
“'Bout four miles, give or take,” Coleman answered.
The sheriff turned back to Davenport. “In the time it took Chloride to hoof it into town, those owlhoots are long gone, I'm afraid. I'll ride out there and see if I can pick up their trail, of course, but I wouldn't hold out much hope of that doing any good.”
Davenport's face, which seemed to be flushed normally, darkened even more as blood rushed into it angrily. “Blast it, Sheriff, the community's in an uproar, and the very basis of the area's economy is threatened. You have to do something about it!”
The sheriff smiled thinly and said in a dry voice, “As I was coming up the street, didn't I hear you assuring these good folks that the Deadwood Devils will be found and stopped? Maybe you should just be patient and let me go on about the business of doing that.”
Davenport looked like he was going to argue some more, Bo thought, but then the banker gave a grudging nod and said, “All right. But this situation is becoming intolerable.”
The lawman didn't respond to that. He put a hand on Coleman's shoulder instead. “Come on down to the office with me, Chloride. I want you to tell me everything you remember about the men who held you up and killed those guards.”
“Well, I'll try,” Coleman said. “It ain't gonna amount to much, though. I never got a good look at anybody's face.”
“Maybe something else will help, like the clothes they wore or the horses they rode.”
Coleman looked skeptical, but he allowed the sheriff to lead him away. With the old-timer gone, the crowd started to break into smaller groups that continued to discuss this latest outrage. Clearly, the citizens of Deadwood were upset and scared.
Bo and Scratch crossed the street again to the café. The Red Top's customers had gone back inside, and so had its namesake. Sue Beth was behind the counter again. She took the Texans' plates off the stove and put them in front of a pair of empty stools.
“This time you'd better go ahead and eat,” she warned, “or I'm liable to be insulted.” She got the coffeepot and warmed up their coffee. “Is Chloride all right? He's a likable old cuss.”
“He was just scratched and shaken up,” Bo said.
“From the sound of it, though, he came pretty close to crossin' the divide,” Scratch added.
“Did the Devils hold up the Argosy gold wagon?”
Bo nodded. “That's right.” He gave Sue Beth an abbreviated version of the story Coleman had told the sheriff.
“Seemed like there were some hard feelin's between the sheriff and that banker fella, Davenport,” Scratch put in.
“Jerome Davenport knows that if things keep on like they have been, the bank may not be able to stay open,” Sue Beth said. “It relies heavily on the gold deposits from the Argosy, the Homestake, the Father De Smet, and the other big mining operations in the area.”
“Have shipments from all the mines been hit?” Bo asked.
Sue Beth thought about it, obviously going over in her mind the previous robberies by the gang. After a moment she nodded and said, “Now that the Argosy has lost a shipment, too, yes, all the big mines have been hit.”
“How do the varmints know when gold is bein' shipped out?” Scratch wondered.
“It's not that difficult,” Bo said. “With all these hills around, put some men with spyglasses on top of them and keep an eye on the mines. They'd be able to see when wagons were being loaded.”
“Why don't they try some decoy shipments?”
Bo shook his head. “I don't know. Maybe they have.” He looked at Sue Beth. “Have you heard anything about that?”
“No, but the mine owners and superintendents don't confide their plans in me,” she said. “Now, are you going to dig into that food or just flap your gums over it all day?”
Scratch picked up his fork and grinned. “We're diggin' in, ma'am, don't you worry about that,” he assured her.
Even though they weren't as hot as they had been earlier, the meals were still very good. Bo and Scratch ate hungrily and enjoyed every bite. Sue Beth's coffee was even better, strong and black just the way the Texans liked it. When they finally pushed their empty plates and cups away, Bo dug a couple of silver dollars out of his pocket and slid them across the counter to Sue Beth, who came along and scooped the coins up deftly, dropping them in a pocket in her apron.
“Thank you,” she said. “I hope you'll come again.”
“As long as you're servin' up food like that, Miz Pendleton, I reckon you can count on it,” Scratch told her.
He and Bo left the café. Once they were outside, Scratch went on. “How much money do we have left now?”
“Enough to feed and stable our horses for a few nights.”
“How about feedin' and stablin'
us
?”
us
?”
Bo grunted. “You may have to make up your mind whether you want them to have something to eat and a place to stay, or if we do.”
Scratch winced. “That bad, huh?”
Bo frowned in thought. “Yeah, but I may have an idea how to change that.”
“I hope you ain't plannin' on us robbin' the bank. From the sound of it, there ain't much in there.”
“No, we're not going to turn outlaw. I had something else in mind.” Bo pointed to a building he had spotted down the street.
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