He had been traveling for two days by fast train, and yet he had two days remaining before he reached a place called Denver, Colorado. One could cross Scotland by train in but half a day. He had had no idea how large this country of America was until he arrived here.
Chapter Twenty-five
Sky Meadow
Elmer Gleason, bathed, shaved, his hair cut, fingernails trimmed, and wearing some clothes Duff had provided, sat on the porch drinking a cup of coffee.
“I forgot how good coffee was,” he said.
“How long has it been since you have had a cup?” Duff asked.
“I don’t know,” Gleason said. “I don’t know what year this is.”
“It is 1887,” Duff said.
“1887? Well now, I’m goin’ to have to do some cipherin’ here,” Gleason said. He counted on his fingers and mumbled to himself. “I reckon it’s been eleven years.”
“And you’ve lived in that mine all those years?” Falcon asked.
“Purt’ much,” Gleason answered. “Some years ago I spent some time with the Cheyenne Injuns. I even married me one of ’em, but she died when she was birthin’ our youngin’, and the youngin’, he up and died a couple days later. So I left. I wandered around a bit, then come back to the mine. Not sure when that was, but I know I spent six, maybe seven winters there.”
“Mr. Gleason, you said you killed Lonnie Post and Sam Hodges in self-defense,” Falcon said. “What about Arnold Brown? Did you kill him in self-defense, too?”
“I never heard of a feller named Arnold Brown,” Gleason said. “Who is he?”
“According to Mr. Guthrie, he is a man who went out to the mine to look for gold, and has never been heard of since.”
Gleason laughed. “So that was his name,” he said. “There was a feller come out there not too long after I kilt them two men. But I scairt him off and he never come back.”
“How much gold did you find?” Duff asked.
“I ain’t found much more than you have found,” Gleason said. “But I know it’s there, I can smell it.” Gleason laid his finger alongside his nose.
“But in all the years you spent there, you never found it,” Duff said.
“That don’t mean it ain’t there.”
“Why didn’t you file on it?” Falcon asked.
“I never got around to it,” Gleason replied. “Now you’re a’ tellin’ me that this here fella owns it.” He pointed to Duff.
“He does own it,” Falcon said. “He filed a claim on this land and all its environs.”
“That there word, ‘environs.’ That means he owns the mine?” Gleason asked.
“Yes.”
“Well then, there ain’t much more I can do, is there?”
“You can sell the mine to me,” Duff said.
“What do you mean I can sell it to you? Didn’t you just tell me you already own it?”
“Yes, but that doesn’t mean you have no claim whatever. You were here first.”
“I wasn’t first. It was either the Spanish or the Injuns that was first.”
“When you tried to sell it before, how much did you ask for it?”
“I wanted five hunnert dollars,” Gleason said. He chuckled. “But I couldn’t get nobody interested in it.”
“Suppose I give you two hundred dollars, and twenty percent of anything the gold mine ever makes?” Duff suggested.
“Why would you do that?”
“Because I am more interested in getting a ranch started than I am in poking around in a mine, and this way you could keep looking. Only, you would be working for me, and you wouldn’t have to eat bugs, rats, and the like.”
Gleason laughed. “I don’t mind tellin’ you that sounds pretty good to me.”
“We’ll build you a cabin down by the mine,” Duff said. “You can live there, and, anytime I am gone, you can keep an eye on the ranch.”
Gleason smiled broadly, then he spit in his hand and held it out. “Sonny, you got yourself a deal.”
Duff looked at the extended hand, then looked at Falcon. Falcon laughed. “If you want to close the deal, shake his hand.”
Duff started to extend his own hand.
“Un-huh,” Falcon said. “You have to spit in it.”
“My word,” Duff said. “Ye Americans be quaint people indeed.” He spit in his hand, then grasped Gleason’s in his.
Tie Siding, Wyoming
The pain in Garcia’s wound had eased somewhat and a warming numbness set in. Garcia was thankful for the numbness because it allowed him to stay in his saddle as they rode away from the bank holdup. But he had lost a lot of blood and was getting weaker and dizzier with every passing moment. By the time they rode into the tiny town of Tie Siding, Garcia was barely able to stay in his saddle.
“Hey, Malcolm, Garcia’s not going to make it if we don’t find a doctor pretty soon,” McKenna said. McKenna was riding alongside Garcia as well as leading Garcia’s horse, because Garcia needed to hold on to the saddle pommel with both hands just to keep from falling off.
“He’ll be all right. He was just hit in the shoulder,” Pettigrew said.
“No, he ain’t goin’ to be all right if we don’t find us a doctor soon to patch him up,” McKenna said. “He’s a’ bleedin’ like a stuck pig.”
“Maybe we can find a doctor here,” Malcolm suggested.
“We don’t have time,” Pettigrew said. “You know damn well they’ve got a posse together by now.”
“We rode outta town headin’ east,” McKenna said. “We’re west of town now. It’s goin’ to take ’em a while to figure out that we swung around and come back to the west. And I’m tellin’ you, Garcia can’t go on much longer if we don’t get him a doctor.”
“Hell, as much blood as he’s lost, he’s probably goin’ to die anyway,” Pogue said. “Seems to me like takin’ him to a doctor just to have him tell us that Garca is goin’ to croak is a’ goin’ to slow us down more.”
“Pogue, what kind of thing is that to say?” McKenna asked.
“Yeah, well, I’m with Pogue,” Pettigrew said. “I don’t plan on gettin’ myself caught by the law ’cause I’m wastin’ my time tryin’ to save a Mex who is more than likely goin’ to die anyway, no matter what we do.”
“I’m with McKenna,” Carter Hill said.
“Me, too,” his brother, Johnny, said. “What if it was you that was shot?”
“If it was me, I wouldn’t be complainin’ about it,” Shaw said.
“If you notice, Shaw, he isn’t complaining,” Moran said.
“We’ll find a doctor,” Malcolm said.
“If it was up to me, I’d just leave him there,” Shaw said.
“We’re going to stay with him,” Malcolm said.
“Anyway,” McKenna said. “Maybe we can get somethin’ to eat there.”
“How we goin’ to get somethin’ to eat?” Moran asked.
“More’n likely the doctor is married,” McKenna said. “We’ll have his wife fix us some food.”
“What if she doesn’t want to?” Johnny Hill asked.
Pettigrew laughed, a sharp, evil-sounding laugh. “I think we can talk her into it,” he said.
It was early, just before noon, as Malcolm and the others rode through the street. Tie Siding was a quiet, sleepy little town with very few people out in the street, and even fewer who paid any attention to their presence. Malcolm saw a boy of about seventeen painting a fence. Separating from the others, he rode over to him.
“Good morning, lad,” he said as pleasantly as he could.
The young man didn’t reply vocally, but he nodded his head at Malcolm, then looked by him at the other eight riders.
“Are you fellas cowboys lookin’ for work?” the boy asked. “’Cause if you are, you ain’t likely to find nothin’ here. Mr. Lyman Byrd, he owns a ranch twixt here ’n Walbach and I was ridin’ for ’im, but he let a bunch of us go last month. Said he couldn’t afford to keep us on.”