“How far away do you think they are?” Colton said.
“Not far,” Jim answered. “Otherwise, that fellow would have complained more when I told him about the change in plans.”
“You still think that was wise?” Colton peered at him over the fire.
“I do.” Jim glanced at the two large wooden crates stacked at the edge of the fire. “Bannen wants that gold so bad he can taste it. He won’t do anything to risk it.”
“Once he thinks he’s got the edge on us, he’ll kill those young’uns,” Neill said.
“But not before then,” Jim agreed. “We’ve got to get them away before Bannen gets us.”
“We should leave that here,” Colton said and nodded at the crates. “Bury them maybe. They’re slowing us down.”
“If we get into a bind, we’ll need them.” Jim finished the last of his coffee. “Ready?”
They hadn’t planned on stopping for the night. Riding in the dark was dangerous. A horse might stumble or break a leg, but enough light remained to travel for another hour or two. Jim was eager to make all the distance they could.
Neill led them out on foot. Going slow would lessen the risk to the horses and they didn’t know how far they might be from Bannen’s camp. Stumbling headlong into an ambush wouldn’t save Walt and Alma.
They paused every few minutes to get their bearings and make sure they still had the trail. Two hours after they’d ridden out of camp, Neill stopped without warning and stared ahead into a thick grove of aspens. A shallow ravine lay ahead, beyond the stand of aspens.
Jim drew his rifle and moved up beside the captain.
Neither spoke for a time. Jim’s eyes scanned the darkness ahead. He could see the pale trunks of the aspen, the line of steep mountains behind, the moon and stars high overhead.
“You see something?” Jim whispered.
“Smelled something,” Neill said. “Smoke.”
It wasn’t from their own cookfire. They’d left it behind, and the wind would have carried its smoke south away from them.
Jim saw it then, a brief flash of orange against the far bank of the ravine.
“You see that?” he said.
“I did,” Neill nodded.
“We leave the horses in the aspens, then slip our way down,” Jim said.
He had no doubt they’d found Bannen’s camp. Who else would have been out here so far from any settlements?
They crept forward on silent feet, using the faint wind to mask their movements. The mist came in with them. It, too, drowned any stray sounds they might have made. They went through the trees, out the other side into the open, then to the ravine’s edge, catching glimpses whenever the fire flared up.
Neill led them to a spot a hundred yards uphill from the flashes, then followed along the ravine’s edge. Rounding a bend, Jim could finally see the fire itself and the men sitting around it. There were eight of them. All drawn close to the fire. Two smaller figures, faint in the ravine’s shadows, huddled together some distance back.
Walt and Alma.
The men around the fire were talking. Between the mist, the wind, and the distance, Jim couldn’t make out the words. Their voices were raised, though. Angry.
“Closer,” Jim mouthed.
Neill nodded and brought them forward at a crawl. Around brush and over bare rock, they crept ever closer. This was dangerous work. Any sound could give them away, and even with the high ground, three men against eight were poor odds.
Jim wasn’t sure how Colton would be in a fight. His time with the freight company had matured him. The reckless boy Jim had come over the trail with was a memory now; in his place stood a hardened young man. Hard enough to kill a man if needed?
I think so. To save his niece and nephew and avenge what Bannen did to his father. Yes, he’ll do his part.
There were no such doubts about Neill. Neill was a soldier, a man of the trail. Kansas to California, through the worst trials of men and beast alike, he’d been across the country a dozen times, losing men, women, children every step, and burying them in shallow, rocky graves. How many settlers lay buried behind him? Hundreds? More than a thousand?
When the time came, Neill would fight.
They were nearer now. Near enough that Jim could recognize Bannen. The firelight cast his features in a devilish orange glow. Jim would have loved nothing so much as to shoot the man. Him and his men. Between himself, Neill, and Colton, they could cut most of them down before they knew what hit them.
Colton had the same idea. The younger man reached down, brought out his pistol. Before he could level it, Jim clamped a hand on his wrist. Denied his chance for vengeance, Colton’s eyes burned with rage. Jim shook his head. He pointed to the pair of smaller figures beyond the campfire.
Walt and Alma were less than ten feet from Bannen and directly in the line of fire. A miss could kill either of them. Much as Jim wanted Bannen dead, he would not risk his children’s lives on it.
Colton nodded. He slammed the pistol into its holster in frustration.
“That’s what he said. Be at the abandoned farm north of Bidwell’s,” a voice said. Jim recognized the speaker, the outlaw from the trail.
“You told him I’d kill the boy?” Bannen said.
“I did. And he said if you harmed either one of them, you’d never see a flake of that gold. He’d use it to put every bounty hunter west of the Mississippi on us.”
“Damn him and damn you too,” Bannen snarled.
A big man moved to Bannen’s side. He bent down to whisper something to Bannen, and all the tension seemed to drain from the outlaw’s body.
