It will be done.”
They had spent several minutes of the time Davidson had given them in talking to the saloon keeper, so Bo wasn’t surprised when they got to the livery stable and found Davidson already there, along with half a dozen other men.
Scratch nudged Bo with an elbow and said under his breath, “Look yonder. It’s Jim Skinner.”
“I see him,” Bo said.
Jim Skinner stood slightly apart from the other men with Davidson. He was a couple of inches taller than Bo and Scratch, without an extra ounce of flesh anywhere on his body. You could sharpen a knife on his cheekbones. Lank dark hair fell to his shoulders. He wore two gunbelts that crossed each other and held a pair of holstered .45s. A Winchester was tucked under his left arm.
Bo happened to know that Skinner also carried a knife in a sheath that hung down his back from a rawhide thong around his neck. Bo knew that because he had seen Skinner use that knife to cut a man’s face half off in a saloon up in Wyoming one time during an argument. Skinner had taken the poor son of a bitch by surprise with the blade.
“Hell, I didn’t know he’d be one of the hombres Davidson hired,” Scratch said as they approached. “I ain’t so sure now about workin’ for the fella.”
“We gave our word that we’d ride down there to the mine at least,” Bo reminded him. “You know any of those other hombres?”
“Can’t say as I do. They all look like they still got the bark on, though.”
That was true. Even though none of the other men were quite as sinister-looking as Jim Skinner, all of them had the hard-eyed faces of gents who were used to trouble. Of course, most people might say the same of him and Scratch, Bo reminded himself.
“There you are,” Davidson said as they came up. “Are you ready to ride?”
“Soon as we throw our saddles on our horses,” Bo said.
“While you’re doing that, I’ll introduce you to the other men. Unless you already know some of them?”
“I know Creel and Morton,” Skinner said in a gravelly voice. He turned his head and spat. “Didn’t know they was the other two gents you said you hired.”
Davidson frowned as he looked back and forth between Bo and Scratch and Skinner. “Is there bad blood between you men?”
“Our trails have crossed a time or two,” Skinner said.
“That doesn’t answer the question.”
“There’s no bad blood,” Bo said. “But Skinner’s got quite a reputation as a gunman.”
“That’s not necessarily a bad thing, is it?” Davidson asked. “I need men who can handle themselves when there’s trouble.”
“And no man I ever killed died with a hole in his back neither,” Skinner added.
Scratch bristled. “You ain’t callin’ us backshooters, are you, Skinner?”
“Nope. I’m just sayin’ that happen I decide to take your measure, old man, you can count on me comin’ at you from the front.”
Davidson held up his hands. “All right, that’s enough. I’m paying you men to fight bandits, not each other.”
“We’ll steer clear of Skinner,” Bo said, “and he can steer clear of us.”
Skinner jerked his head in a nod. “Sounds good to me.”
“That’s settled then,” Davidson said. “Get saddled up. We’ve already wasted enough of the day.”
While Bo and Scratch got their mounts ready to ride, Davidson introduced the other five men, as he’d said that he would. The big, tow-headed Swede was named Hansen. Jackman and Tragg could have been brothers with their swarthy faces and thick black mustaches, but they weren’t related. “That we know of,” Jackman added. The slender, baby-faced kid whose cold eyes belied his innocent appearance was called Douglas, with no indication of whether that was his first or last name. The final man was Lancaster, and when he said hello to Bo and Scratch, Bo heard a trace of a British accent in his voice. Remittance man, more than likely, who had been in the States for a good long time.
Bo cinched the saddle snug on his rangy lineback dun and said to Davidson, “With a group this big trailing your gold wagons, it’ll be hard to keep those bandidos from spotting us.”
“I thought maybe you could split up so that you wouldn’t be as noticeable, then converge on the wagons if there’s trouble.”
Bo thought it over for a second and then nodded. “That might work,” he allowed.
“But only once, like Bo told you last night,” Scratch added as he led his big, handsome bay out of the barn.
“I’m hoping that once will be enough,” Davidson said.
The nine men swung up in their saddles. They had a couple of packhorses loaded with bags of supplies and a pair of long crates, one on each horse. Douglas and Hansen led the pack animals as the group started out of El Paso. They rode to the long wooden bridge that spanned the lazily twisting Rio Grande. Horseshoes rang on the planks as the riders crossed the border into the Mexican town of Juarez.
Dogs barked at them and children ran after them as they followed the dusty streets through Juarez, but the men paid no attention to those distractions. Soon enough the settlement was left behind, and the riders headed due south across the flat, semiarid terrain toward the greenish-gray mountains that rose in the distance. The mountains were farther away than they looked, which explained the two days it would take the men to reach them.
Despite the fact that summer was still more than a month off, the temperature rose steadily as the sun climbed higher in the sky. Bo took off his frock coat after a while, and Scratch removed his buckskin jacket. Sweat trickled down Bo’s back.
“It’ll be cooler in the mountains,” Davidson said with a smile as he pulled a bandanna from his pocket to wipe moisture from his face. He had changed into gray trousers and a white shirt and flat-crowned black hat, and he wore a holstered six-gun like the rest of the men. Bo recalled the way Davidson had shucked his iron from that shoulder rig during the battle of the Birdcage the night before, and figured the mine owner was plenty tough despite being something of a dude.
“Did you study engineering, Mr. Davidson?” he asked.
“Yes, I did, as a matter of fact, along with geology. That’s a good background for a mining man, don’t you think?”
“Always helps to know what you’re doing, no matter what it is.”
“What’s your specialty, Mr. Creel?”
Scratch laughed. “We both been studyin’ on how to stay out of trouble for more’n forty years now. Haven’t quite got the knack of it yet, though.”
“Surely you’ve done something besides just…drift.”
“A little of everything,” Bo said. “Drove freight wagons and stagecoaches, scouted for the army, even toted a badge
