LITMIR.BIZ

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the reward I’m paying,” Mosely put in. “You have a nice cool thousand dollars coming to you, Mr. Creel. What are you going to do with it?”

      Bo rubbed his chin. “Well, we still haven’t gotten that coffee and breakfast, and there’s a little debt to settle up with the fella who owns the livery stable…”

      “Johnny Burford?” the marshal asked. “Watch yourself around him. He’d steal pennies out of a blind man’s cup.”

      “What about the other nine hundred and ninety-five dollars?” Mosely asked.

      “Scratch and I were thinking about taking a little trip up north,” Bo said.

      CHAPTER 6

      “So that’s it,” Scratch said as he and Bo reined their horses to a halt atop a ridge a couple of weeks later and looked down at the settlement below them. “Mankiller, Colorado.”

      Durango lay a day’s ride behind them. Off to the left, the Animas River snaked its sparkling course through a narrow valley. Farther to the northeast towered snowcapped Mount Wilson and Lizard Head Pass. A number of other rugged peaks in the San Juan range loomed all around them. It was pretty country, no doubt about it, but Bo and Scratch were more interested in what lay below the surface.

      Gold.

      They had heard in Durango that the boom was still going on in Mankiller, and even if they hadn’t, they would have been able to tell that much from what was happening in the streets of the settlement. Wagons, men on horseback, and more men on foot clogged those streets. The boardwalks were equally crowded, although without the wagon and horse traffic.

      Bo wouldn’t have been surprised to see some drunken miner ride a horse right up onto the boardwalk, or even into one of the numerous saloons that lined the street. In Durango, the Texans had also heard about how Mankiller was wide open and lawless. Saloon shoot-outs, rampant prostitution, lynchings, and murders were the order of the day. In this boomtown, getting killed was as easy as plucking a dandelion.

      Mankiller sprawled over a hillside, surrounded by pine trees. Other trees had been cleared to expand the town; stumps were still visible here and there in the streets. The three main streets ran upward for several blocks, starting at the base of the slope. Side streets were laid out across the slope.

      Most of the buildings were frame structures, made from rough boards probably whipsawed out of the trees that had been felled to make room for them. There were still some tents and tar paper shacks, though, and they were probably some of the original dwellings in town. At the other end of the spectrum were several solid-looking brick structures that appeared to be built to last. Someone, at least, believed that Mankiller would have a life beyond this gold-fueled boom.

      Bo and Scratch hadn’t wasted any time getting up here after leaving Socorro, but it was a long ride up the valley of the Rio Grande and then over across the Colorado Plateau, past the majestic and mysterious cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde, and on through Durango and up the Animas River.

      They had bought a packhorse and supplies in Socorro, using the reward money. They’d had to overpay for the horse, since they bought it from Johnny Burford, but it was a good animal. They had more than half of the thousand dollars left, which gave them a good stake. They would be able to outfit themselves, find a good claim, and start prospecting right away.

      That was the plan, anyway.

      “We’re here,” Scratch went on. “Feel any better now?”

      “We’ll see,” Bo said. “I guess it depends on what we find down there.”

      He lifted his reins and hitched the dun into motion again.

      The Texans rode down the hill and started across the river on a wooden bridge. The hooves of their horses thudded on the planks, providing counterpoint to the bubbling music of the swift-flowing stream.

      A couple of men came out of a tar paper shack not far from the western end of the span. Bo’s eyes narrowed in instinctive dislike as he watched them walk toward the bridge.

      Both men wore patched denim trousers held up by suspenders. One was shirtless. The other wore only long, faded red underwear above the waist. Their hats were old and floppy-brimmed. The shirtless one had a long red beard that came down over the top of his bare chest. The other was clean-shaven, revealing a lantern jaw so extreme that his face looked almost like a figure eight. There was some resemblance between the two, probably not enough for them to be brothers, but maybe cousins.

      Each man carried a shotgun as well.

      “I don’t much like the looks of this,” Scratch said under his breath.

      “Neither do I,” agreed Bo. “But we’ll wait and see how it plays out.”

      The two men planted themselves in the middle of the road where it began on the other side of the bridge. The shirtless, bearded one tucked his scattergun under an arm and held up his hand.

      “Howdy, fellers,” he said as Bo and Scratch reined in. “Come to Mankiller to look for gold?”

      “That’s the idea,” Bo said.

      Shirtless grinned. “Well, good! Let me be the first one to wish you all the luck in the world. And Thad here’ll be the second. Ain’t that right, Thad?”

      Lantern-Jaw nodded. “That’s right, Luke. Good luck to you fellers. Hope you find a lot of gold.”

      “We appreciate that,” Scratch told Luke and Thad. “And it’s mighty nice of you boys to give us a warm welcome like this. Now, if you’ll move aside so we can get on into town…”

      Luke shook his head. “Oh, we can’t do that.”

      “You can’t?” Bo said.

      “Nope. Not until you pay the toll for crossin’ the bridge. We’re the official toll collectors today.”

      Bo wasn’t surprised by the demand. He had expected something like that as soon as he saw the two men blocking the road. He said, “I didn’t see any sign about a toll at the other end of the bridge.”

      “Has that ol’ sign fallen down again?” Luke laughed and shook his head. “Well, it don’t really matter whether the sign’s up or not. Rules is rules, and it’s a rule around here that you got to pay to use the bridge to get into Mankiller.”

      “What about to get out of Mankiller?” Scratch asked.

      “Oh, there ain’t no charge for that. But you got to pay to come in again.”

      “How much is the toll?” Bo asked.

      Luke held up a couple of grimy fingers. “Two dollars.”

      “For each horse,” Thad added.

      “Yeah, so you’d owe us six dollars, seein’ as how you got a packhorse, too.”

      Scratch said, “Kind of steep, ain’t it?”

      “Well, there’s an old sayin’ about what the traffic will bear. Folks been payin’ two dollars, so I reckon that’s a good price.”

      “Does the money go to the town?” Bo asked. He figured he knew the answer.

      The question brought laughter from both men. Thad dug an elbow into Luke’s side and repeated, “Does the money go to the town? That’s a good’un, ain’t it, Luke?”

      “It sure is.” Luke looked up at Bo and Scratch and shook his head. “The money goes where it’s supposed to, don’t you worry none ’bout that, mister. Now, do you fellers want to pay the toll, or are you gonna turn around and go back where you come from?”

      “Maybe we’ll find some other place to cross,” Scratch suggested.

      Luke shook his head. “Ain’t no other place to cross for miles up and down stream, and I wouldn’t recommend tryin’ to swim them horses across, neither. This river’s mighty

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