LITMIR.BIZ

      “They were waitin’ for us!” one of the outlaws raged. “We got the signal to come in, but the bastards were still waitin’ for us!”

      “You ain’t tellin’ me anything I don’t already know,” Willard Garth growled. “And you all should’ve knowed there was a chance o’ that happenin’, since we heard those shots beforehand. Somebody caught our boys after they got rid of the lookouts that old desert rat told us about.”

      “The reverend should’ve known that,” a man named Jeffries said. He was more educated than most of the gang, but just as ruthless. “We never should have attacked the town.”

      “Don’t you say nothin’ bad about the rev’rend!” Gonzalez said. “He’s made us all rich men!”

      In truth, they weren’t all that rich, Garth thought, but they had done all right for themselves. And it was Joshua Shade’s planning, as well as his sheer audacity and his ability to inspire the men, that had made it all possible. Gonzalez was right about that.

      The members of the gang had scattered as they fled from Arrowhead, rendezvousing in the hills where their last camp had been, according to the plan laid out by Shade before the attack. Shade didn’t like the idea of acknowledging the possibility of defeat, but he was too smart not to plan for it in case it happened.

      However, this was the first time one of their raids had not gone exactly the way Shade had told them it would. The men were upset because some of their fellow outlaws had been killed and their leader had been captured.

      Garth himself had seen Shade being disarmed and knocked out, but hadn’t been able to get to him because of the heavy gunfire from the townspeople. He assumed that by now they had locked Shade up in the local jail, but he didn’t know that for sure.

      He was confident that Shade was still alive, though. He couldn’t bring himself to believe that the reverend would come to such an ignominious end as to be killed by a bunch of pathetic townies.

      Jeffries said, “The question now is, what are we going to do about this, Garth? Those yokels are liable to try to lynch the boss.”

      “And they got to pay for what they did to us!” Gonzalez added.

      “I know, I know.” Garth took off his high-crowned hat and wearily scrubbed a hand over his rough-hewn face. He didn’t like having to do a lot of thinking, which was the main reason he had starting riding with Joshua Shade in the first place. Over time, he had risen to the position of Shade’s segundo because he was tough and trustworthy, not because he was all that smart.

      Now the rest of the men were looking to him to figure out their course of action, and it was an uncomfortable feeling. He took orders well, and he could give them, too, when somebody else came up with them. He could ride all day and all night when he had to, and he didn’t mind killing without mercy.

      But he wasn’t a leader.

      Not by choice anyway.

      Even in the moonlight, Garth could see ambition gleaming in Jeffries’s eyes as the man crowded his horse forward. “Well, how about it?” Jeffries prodded.

      Garth knew what Jeffries was thinking. Jeffries sensed an opening. He thought that he should be in charge now that Shade was a prisoner down in that backwater cow town.

      Garth was damned if he was going to let that happen, no matter how uncomfortable he was in the role.

      “They’re ready for us down there,” he said harshly. “We go chargin’ back in tonight, they’ll cut us to ribbons. We got to wait. Bide our time and see what’s gonna happen.”

      “You mean leave the rev’rend a prisoner?” Gonzalez shook his head. “I don’t like that, Garth.”

      “I don’t like it either,” Garth snapped, “but we don’t have much choice. We’ll get him loose, but we got to wait until the time is right.”

      “How are we going to know that?” Jeffries asked.

      Garth chewed on his mustache where it hung over his lips. “I wish the boss hadn’t killed that old prospector. We could’ve sent him back in to spy for us, like he did before.”

      “Maybe what we need to do,” Jeffries said, “is to find another spy.”

      Gonzalez looked over at him. “Where we gonna do that?”

      “There are ranches around here,” Jeffries said with a shrug. “Find a small one where it’s just a man and his family, maybe a hand or two, and take it over. A man will do whatever you tell him to when it’s a matter of protecting his wife and kids.”

      That was a good idea, Garth realized. He wished he had thought of it himself. But he couldn’t afford to ignore the suggestion just because Jeffries had come up with it.

      “All right,” he said. “That’s what we’ll do. Half a dozen men ought to be plenty. The rest of you stay here and patch up any wounds you got during the ruckus in town.”

      Jeffries and Gonzales volunteered to go with Garth, who quickly picked out three other men to accompany them. The six of them mounted up and rode off into the night.

      “I don’t like the way you said the rev’rend made a mistake by killin’ that old man,” Gonzalez grumbled. “He thought he was doin’ the right thing.”

      “I didn’t see any reason not to kill that desert rat either…at the time,” Garth said. “It just goes to show you that nobody can think of everything, at least not all the time.”

      “The rev’rend can,” Gonzalez insisted.

      If that was true, thought Garth, then Shade wouldn’t be sitting in some little cow country jail right now. He kept that sentiment to himself, though. No point in making the Mexican even proddier than he already was, or in encouraging Jeffries to be even more ambitious.

      He was going to have his hands full running the gang, Garth told himself. He just hoped that he would be up to the job until they freed Joshua Shade so that he could take his rightful place as the boss outlaw once again.

      Garth hoped that day came soon, too.