LITMIR.BIZ

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7

      The man was a tall, craggy-faced hombre in work clothes and lace-up boots. He had a revolver in a cross-draw military holster with a flap on it strapped to his belt on the left side. He went on. “Those blasted Mexes are causing problems again—”

      “Hold on, Wallace,” Davidson said sharply. “I just rode up after two days on the trail from El Paso. Can’t you at least let me dismount and stretch my legs?”

      The man called Wallace looked a little chastened, but still mostly angry and upset. “Sorry, Mr. Davidson,” he said. “I just thought you’d want to know. I’m on my way into the mine now.”

      “I’ll come with you and see what this is all about,” Davidson said as he swung down from the saddle. “Is Alfred inside?”

      “Sure. Where else would he be?”

      Davidson ignored that question and turned to Bo, Scratch, and the other men. “You can put your horses in the corral,” he said, pointing to the enclosure made of peeled pine poles. “There’s water for them, and I’ll have someone rub them down and put out some grain for them right away. You can go inside after that. My man Alfred will take care of you, see that you have something to eat and a place to sleep.”

      “Long as he don’t try to give us a rubdown,” Scratch said.

      Davidson looked puzzled by that comment, but didn’t hang around to question it. He started off toward the tunnel mouth instead, with Wallace striding along beside him and talking with a lot of animated gestures.

      “I don’t think Mr. Davidson understands your sense of humor,” Bo said to Scratch as they led their horses toward the corral along with the others.

      “Hell, sometimes I don’t understand it, and it’s my mouth the words are comin’ out of. Say,” Scratch went on, “did you ever see a Mexican village as plumb quiet as that one? There should’ve been kids and chickens runnin’ around, and dogs a-yappin’, and guitar music comin’ from the cantina. Instead, the whole place was like a funeral.”

      “I noticed,” Bo said. “I didn’t like it very much either. Rubbed me the wrong way.”

      “You and me both, pard. Ain’t the first thing about this job that’s rubbed me the wrong way neither.” Scratch cast a meaningful glance toward Jim Skinner. Bo just nodded in agreement.

      When they reached the corral, Tragg opened the gate and the men turned their horses inside. The others all turned around to go back to the headquarters building, as Davidson had told them to do, but Bo and Scratch remained behind.

      “You two fellows aren’t coming?” Lancaster asked from outside the corral fence as he paused to look back at Bo and Scratch.

      “We’re used to taking care of our own mounts,” Bo said.

      “That’s right,” Scratch added. “You never know when some other fella ain’t gonna do it to suit you.”

      Lancaster shrugged and went on. Bo and Scratch led the dun and the bay through an open door into a flat-roofed adobe barn. The roof was made of thatch, and vigas—support beams made from logs—stuck out around the upper edges of the walls.

      The barn was big, with about two dozen stalls in it, half of them occupied. Bo and Scratch led their mounts into a couple of the empty ones, unsaddled the horses, and began rubbing them down with handfuls of straw from the hard-packed dirt floor.

      “Davidson’s been working this mine for about six months,” Bo said as he worked on the dun. “At least according to August Strittmayer. These buildings look older than that, though.”

      “Yeah, I’d say most of ’em have been here for at least a couple of years,” Scratch agreed. “Davidson never said that he started the mine. Could be he bought it from somebody else.”

      “Yeah, I reckon.” Bo saw a bucket in a corner of the stall, picked it up, and carried it outside to fill it in the corral’s big water trough. He was going to take it inside so that the dun would have water in its stall.

      As he was dipping the bucket in the trough, he noticed a man hurrying toward the corral. The fella was moving so fast he was almost running. He wore a straw sombrero, rope sandals, and the white shirt and trousers of a Mexican farmer. Somebody from the village who worked here at the mine, Bo supposed.

      “Señor! Señor!” the man called as he came closer. “You do not have to care for your horses, Señor. I will do that. A thousand apologies for not getting here sooner!”

      “That’s all right, old-timer,” Bo said as the man unlatched the gate and came inside the corral.

      Enough red light left over from the sunset remained in the sky above the canyon so that Bo could make out the man’s lined, leathery face and drooping white mustaches. He might not actually be much older than Bo and Scratch, but calling him an old-timer just seemed to fit. Repeating the explanation he had given Lancaster, Bo went on. “My partner and I are used to taking care of our own mounts.”

      “You will not tell Señor Davidson that you were forced to do so?” the man asked, worry evident both on his face and in his voice.

      Maybe more than worry, Bo thought.

      The old Mexican almost seemed afraid.

      “Nobody forced us to do anything,” Bo told the old man. “And anyway, what we do isn’t really any of Señor Davidson’s business.”

      The old-timer frowned, causing even more wrinkles to form in his forehead. “You do not work for the señor, like the other men?”

      “Maybe. Maybe not. We haven’t decided yet.”

      “But…but he brought all of you here to…to kill the men who try to take his gold, did he not?”

      “Yes, he wants us to help protect his ore shipments from the bandits who have been holding them up.”

      “Sí,” the old man said. “Bandits.”

      Something about his tone of voice made Bo’s frown deepen. “What are you trying to say?” he asked.

      Suddenly the old man looked even more nervous. “Nothing, Señor, nothing at all. I must tend to the horses.”

      With that, he grabbed the water bucket out of Bo’s hand and scurried off into the barn, passing Scratch as the silver-haired Texan came outside.

      “Where’s that little varmint hurryin’ off to?”

      “Davidson sent him to take care of the horses,” Bo said. “He was worried because you and I were already tending to our mounts. Didn’t want us telling Davidson that we had to do it ourselves.”

      “We didn’t have to,” Scratch pointed out. “It was our own choice.”

      “Yes, but that old-timer didn’t know that when he came up.”

      As they left the corral and started walking toward the headquarters building, Scratch said, “You make it sound like the little ol’ fella was scared.”

      “I think he was.”

      “But scared o’ what?”

      “That’s a mighty good question,” Bo said.

      They went up the steps to the porch and on inside the building. A stocky young man in a brown suit but with no tie appeared to be waiting for them in a small front room dominated by a pair of desks and some cabinets. With a smile on his round face, he said, “Mr. Creel? Mr. Morton?”

      “That’s us, sonny,” Scratch confirmed. “He’s Bo, I’m Scratch. Who’re you?”

      “My name is Alfred, sir. I’m Mr. Davidson’s bookkeeper and major domo, I suppose you’d say. The other men are in the dining room if you’d care to join them.” Alfred held out a hand to usher them through a doorway into another room.

      This

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