“What’s your name?”
“Nathan.”
“Did you really buy them fine horses?”
“I did,” Nathan said truthfully. “And I do have a legal bill of sale in my saddlebags to prove it.”
“What you got so heavy and resting under a tarp aboard that pack animal?”
“You mean packed on my mule?”
“He’s your only pack animal. You got him loaded down real good. You got gold in that pack?”
Nathan even dared to glance around at the mule, which was, of course, carrying the Treasury Department’s heavy printing plates and paper as well as his own supplies.
“No,” Nathan said. “They’re printing plates.”
“What are you totin’ them around for?”
Lies were like habits to Nathan. They came easy and without conscious thought. “I’m an editor,” he said. “I’m looking for someplace to set up shop.”
The kid’s brow furrowed. “You mean to do a newspaper?”
“That’s right.”
“I wish I could read,” the kid said. “But I never had the time to learn. Worked in my pappy’s fields since damn near the time I could follow a mule and swing a hoe.”
So why didn’t you stick to farming?” Nathan asked, curious.
“I hated farmin’!” The gun shook in the kid’s hand. “Farmin’ killed Ma when I was six. Killed Pappy ten years later and ruined my brothers and sisters. Not one of us stayed on the homestead. All of us run off.”
“You chose to run with real bad company,” Nathan said, beginning to realize that the kid probably didn’t want to murder him.
“Well,” the kid said, gazing down at the two dead men. “They kept us in bacon and beans and the work wasn’t hard.”
“What was the work?”
“Nothin’ big. We just ‘borrowed’ a lot of things.”
“They were going to kill me for my horses,” Nathan said, “And that would have made you a partner in murder.”
“I wouldn’t have been able to stop ‘em,” the kid said. “if I’d said anything against what they had in mind, they’d as soon as not killed me too.”
Nathan drew a deep breath. “All right, so what happens now?”
“I want to see if that’s really printin’ stuff, or maybe it’s gold.”
“And if it were gold, would you kill me for it?” Nathan asked point-blank.
“I dunno,” the kid said, shrugging his thin shoulders. “But I’ll bet you’d kill me given half a chance.”
“You’re wrong,” Nathan said. “Let me ride on and we both live to see tomorrow’s sunrise.”
The kid thought about this for almost a minute before he said, “I got no job, nothin’ much I care to do either. Maybe we could work together.”
“No.”
The kid lowered his gun and he looked hurt. “Well … well, why not?”
“You can’t read, what good would you do for me?”
“I can shoot and you might come across a couple more like you just killed and not be so lucky a second time.”
“You think I was lucky?”
“Some,” the kid said. “Some lucky, some just damned good with weapons. And as for helpin’ you, I know horses. I could help take care of ‘em and also back you in a fight.”
“Maybe.”
“Watch,” the kid said, lifting the barrel of his Six-gun. “You see that pine cone yonder?”
“Which one?” Nathan said, twisting around in his saddle.
“The one that I’m just about to blast to smithereens,” the kid said, firing a shot that caused one of the low-hanging pine cones to explode. “Not bad, huh?”
“It was damn good,” Nathan agreed, knowing now that it was a wise decision that he had not gone for his gun, because the farmer boy would have drilled him squarely through the heart. “Do you know this country?”
“Like the back of my hand. I was raised over the mountains in the Utah Territory, but we’d come up here for timber and to hunt in the fall.”
“Then you’d know a pass over the Wasatch into the Great Basin?”
“I know lots of passes, but they’ll be closin’ up soon on account of the snow.”
“I want to get over these mountains,” Nathan said. “If you can guide me, I’ll pay you well.”
The kid’s eyes tightened at the corners. “I could just take everything.”
“Then why haven’t you already shot me?” Nathan asked.
The kid surprised him with a grin. “You’re not only dangerous, you’re smart, makin’ you even more dangerous. All right, I believe you when you say there ain’t no gold on that pack mule. And I ain’t the killin’ kind unless I have to be.”
“You ever killed anyone?”
“Nope.”
“Holster your gun,” Nathan said, “and let’s get out of here.”
“Wouldn’t we want to take their guns and such?”
“No,” Nathan said.
But the kid climbed down from his horse and went over to rob the bodies. “They got at least seventy dollars each on ‘em,” he said, pulling cash out of their pockets. “And better guns than mine. I can’t leave so much behind.”
“Suit yourself,” Nathan said, watching as the kid even removed the rings and cheap pocket watches from the bodies.
“Let’s go,” the kid said after trading boots with the thin man and then remounting his horse.
The kid jammed his gun into his holster and smiled. “You want to get over the mountains, you’d best not kill me, mister.”
“All right,” Nathan said, deciding he liked the simple kid. “I won’t kill you.”
“Not even after we get through the passes?”
“No,” Nathan said, meaning it. “Not even then. Iactually could use you as insurance in case I run into more thieves, rustlers, and cutthroats.”
“I won’t run out on you, mister.”
“You have a real name?”
“Rolf,” the kid said. “Rolf Swensen. My parents were Swedish.”
“All right, Rolf Swensen. Let’s put some miles between us and those dead men.”
“Can we take their horses?”
“No. They might be recognized and get us into more trouble than they’re worth.”
“I’d be willing to take that chance,” Rolf said.
Nathan’s hand patted his holstered gun. “Well,” he said, “I wouldn’t. And since I’m going to be the one making the decisions, we leave the horses? Any problem with that, Rolf?”
“No sir,” the kid said. “Just don’t shoot me in the back after I get you over these mountains.”
“I won’t,” Nathan said. “Just point us to the pass and let’s go.”
Rolf looked glad to do just that. Neither man so much as bothered to look back at the two corpses staring up at the cool blue sky.
Chapter 7
On their second day in the mountains, a cold rain began to fall and Nathan was smiling because their tracks would all be washed away clean.
“What the devil are you so happy actin’ about?” Rolf wanted to know. “This could turn to snow up in the passes and we could get stuck and freeze to death.”
“If it begins to snow, we’ll backtrack and head due south toward New Mexico,” Nathan decided. “We’ll ride all the way down to the Colorado River and then cut west.”
“Where are we going?”
Nathan was a man who did not believe in telling anyone his future plans, especially this kid. “We’re going southwest,” he said vaguely.
“To Arizona?”
“Yeah.”
“I’d like that,” Rolf said, looking a little happier. “It will be warm and dry down there in the desert. What are you going to do with these fine horses?”
“I don’t exactly know,” Nathan admitted. “Maybe sell ‘em, maybe see if a few of them can run fast enough to win me some money.”
“I’d like one of them horses,” Rolf said, nodding. “My own horse ain’t much, as you can plainly see. Could I have one of your horses when we get where we’re goin’?”
“I expect you can,” Nathan said, wondering what the kid would say if he knew that there were tens of thousands of dollars in the packs and everything necessary to counterfeit upward of a million dollars.