She stared at him and said nothing, so he went on.
“I want you out of this whole situation. You understand me?”
“Completely,” she said, shivering. “But you still didn’t answer my question.”
He stared into her dark eyes. “Because Daniel and Cain would have wanted me to.”
For a moment she looked confused, then nodded. “You’re right. Thank you. I’ll be on that train and never leave the East Coast again.”
“And you might try to convince your father before you leave that trying to take over the Sharon’s Dream mine is a fool’s mission.”
She quickly mounted the horse and then looked down at Fargo. “My father has never listened to me before. I don’t expect he will now.”
She turned the horse and headed toward her father’s mine, cutting up through the rocks and over the lower part of the ridge instead of going down the road.
“Do you think you bought us some time?” Jim asked from beside Fargo.
“Maybe a little. Depends on if she leaves or not.”
“She’s not leaving,” Jim said.
“She’s not leaving,” Walt agreed.
Fargo watched her disappear over the hill. He wasn’t so sure about that. But it seemed that lately he had been wrong about people a great deal. And that wasn’t like him.
The expected attack from the Brant mine didn’t come that afternoon, so work in the Sharon’s Dream mine went back to normal, with guards doubled on the ridgeline and around the other entrances to the compound.
An hour before sunset, Fargo had gone with Jim high up on the ridge with a spyglass. They had taken turns watching the Brant mine and compound. It seemed like a normal evening down there.
A long time ago, when Cain and Brant still pretended to get along, Jim had visited the Brant mine. He slowly gave Fargo a tour of the compound, where the mine entrance was in relationship to the bunkhouses, how far it was from building to building, approximately how many men were working there. He even had a rough floor plan of the big ranch house that spread along a shallow ridgeline.
From their vantage point high up, Fargo spotted at least a half dozen guards in posts around the compound. But beyond that it looked like normal activity in and out of the mine. There didn’t seem to be any attack being planned at all. And that made no sense. What was he missing?
Fargo studied what he could see of the trail leadingup to the mine entrance on the hillside under them. In fact, the entire mountain they were on was honeycombed with both Sharon’s Dream and Brant’s tunnels.
“How close do you think they are from breaking through into one of our tunnels?” Fargo asked.
“The men haven’t heard anything on any shift,” Jim said. “And trust me, they’re all listening.”
Fargo shook his head. This entire fight, the reason Cain and Daniel were killed, was the gold ore. Brant’s mine was petering out while Sharon’s Dream was still following thick veins. Everything came back to the gold. Brant had to be going after the gold first. He didn’t care about the buildings or the people, only the gold. He would go after the gold first, the miners second.
Fargo turned from the spyglass to look at Jim. “Gold mine tunnels have a lot of false lead tunnels and short side tunnels, am I right?”
“You’re right. A number of them of varied lengths.”
“Have you checked all those dead-end tunnels?”
Jim nodded. “They’re all boarded off.”
“Easy to break through boards,” Fargo said as he watched yet another man carry a large wooden case up toward the mine. It looked like an ammunition case.
Jim said nothing and after a few seconds, Fargo again looked away from the spyglass and at Jim.
“It’s possible they’re coming that way,” Jim said after a moment. “Two of those side tunnels are long and go toward the Brant mine.”
“Can you blow the entrances to those side tunnels closed without bringing down the entire mine?”
Jim nodded. “We can, and we have to do it now.”
“My thoughts exactly,” Fargo said, standing a half beat behind Jim and following him at a near run down the ridge.
One hour later they had the mine empty and a team starting to blow the side tunnels, all of them that could hook up with any Brant tunnel.
Twenty minutes before midnight, Jim came out of the entrance to the mine, his face covered in dark dust. Fargo was standing there with a dozen others, waiting, watching.
“We got them all blown shut. You were right. We heard voices down one tunnel right before we blew it. Now it would take a dozen men a week to open any of them back up, and if they tried, we’d hear them.”
“Good,” Fargo said. “Now to get to the gold, they have to come at us where we can see them. Have everyone standing by for an attack at dawn.”
Fargo turned and headed into the dark.
“Where are you going?” Jim asked.
Without turning around, Fargo said, “I’m going to try to reduce the numbers on the other side a little. No matter what you hear, stay here and be ready for a possible attack at dawn. Brant and his men are coming to take your mine away from you.”
“Not likely,” Fargo heard Jim mutter behind him.
Fargo didn’t want to tell him that it was likely. Very likely. The coming fight was between miners and the professional fighters and gunhands Brant had hired. It wouldn’t be a fair fight at all unless Fargo could change the odds a little. And he had about eight hours of darkness to do just that.
Slowly, silently, Fargo worked his way over and around the rocks toward the guard positions set up by Brant around his compound. Fargo had no real idea how long it took him to get to them, but once he crossed the ridgeline and was on Brant’s side of the hill, he avoided looking into the lights of the Brant mine compound to make sure his night vision stayed as good as it could be. They had the place lit up with at least three dozen lanterns hanging from poles and the sides of buildings.
Fargo found the first guard right where he had spotted him from high on the mountain. He had his carbine across his lap and was sipping on a cup of something that smelled of beef.
Fargo slammed the butt of the Henry into the man’s head with so much force that the guard’s hat flew off and blood began leaking from his ear.
The man’s carbine rattled to the ground on the rocks and Fargo eased him to the dirt.
“What’s the matter, Ray?” a voice said from out of the dark about fifty paces away. “Can’t hold on to your gun while you piss?”
Fargo grunted loudly as if in response to the man’s question.
The man laughed and went silent.
Fargo checked out the man at his feet. He was a professional, and Fargo remembered seeing his face on a wanted poster down south. His name had been Ray Tanner. From what Fargo knew about him, he usually worked with his brother Carl. More than likely, it was Carl who had kidded him.
Fargo moved over toward the second guard, taking his time, making sure that no footstep he took made a sound, pausing between every step, staying low and undercover behind the large rocks where he could.
In the dim light, he could see the guard sitting on a flat rock, his carbine also across his legs.
As Fargo eased closer, the man turned and whispered loudly into the night. “Hey, Ray, how much time do we have left?”
At that moment, two men appeared from a bunkhouse below and the man said, “Never mind. Put your watch back in your pocket. I see them coming.”
Fargo took one quick step toward the man and hit him full force. The man groaned and slipped, unconscious, to the ground.
Fargo, with the same movement, grabbed the man’s carbine so it didn’t go clattering into the rocks.
He eased the man down and then watched as the two men started up the hill toward the guard positions.