standing. The concussion had flattened the whole lot. It knocked Scruples and me off our pins, too. Then I heard a maniac laughing up there, behind the overturned ore car, laughing like a bucksaw slicing wood. I have to give those gunslicks credit. They upped and ran toward the mine head and the whole thing happened over again. A couple of sticks of dynamite with a spitting fuse sailed out. I got smart and stuck my fingers in my ears, and tried to hit the ground before the thing went off, but didn’t make it. The blast knocked me flat. This time, four more of those dudes were writhing on the slope, or tumbling down the talus. Durndest thing I ever did see.
I guess that did it some. The rest of them slicks, they hightailed downslope just as fast as they could scramble, leavin’ them dead sprawled around on gray rock. Those two flanking ones just quit and come tumbling down that grade. There was four lyin’ mighty still up there, and four more come stumbling into the woods, all deaf as stones and some bleeding red all over.
That’s when I saw her. She was just about the most beautiful woman I ever did lay eyes on, a blonde wearing black satin from chin to toe, one of them fancy dresses with more buttons than I can count. She had one of them picture hats topping that soft blond hair, and I just stood there and stared. Where’d she come from anyway?
Scruples, he went over to her and she tucked her arm into his.
“Win some, lose some,” he said to her.
She smiled wryly. I ain’t seen a smile like that on a lady like that ever before, and I just stood there staring and rocking on my feet. I was dumbstruck. There just ain’t any women like that in the whole Territory of Montana. That sort of woman, she’s tied up with J. P. Morgan or Vanderbilt, or one of those that live at Newport and have got a lot of gold to toss around. But there she was, being led away by Scruples.
They all forgot I was there. The whole lot drifted off, those bloodied-up gunslicks, the man and woman, and in a bit I saw Scruples and the blonde get into a shiny black carriage drawn by a pair of trotters, and the rest climb into a spring wagon that was parked around a bend, and the lot of them rode away. I watched them bounce and lurch across open fields until they reached the wagon road that ran up and down the valley, and then they slowly wound their way toward Swamp Creek. And next I knew, someone up in that mine was cackling like a goose.
Chapter Two
That was it. Scruples and his blond beauty rode away in a shiny black carriage. High up that slope, there were bodies sprawled in the rocks.
That didn’t seem fittin’ for some country boy like me. Maybe they weren’t dead. Maybe they could be helped. But I had me a problem. The minute I stepped out of the pines and onto that rocky slope, that big old Sharps would bark.
“Critter,” I says to my nag. “I’ve got me a job to do, and it scares the britches half off me.”
Critter clacked his teeth and yawned. So much for admiration. I thought maybe Critter would salute.
I dug into my kit lookin’ for a white flag. If I was going to step out of them trees, I’d need to be waving some white. But I didn’t have no white. Just some old cotton underdrawers that started out white, but now was a sort of yeller gray. Well, yeller gray would have to do, so I tied the legs of them drawers to a handy stick, crept up the edge of the grove, and waved the thing around a bit.
I didn’t see no action up there, or hear some damned bullet sail by me, so real cautious, I crept out on the rock, takin’ my time, and waving my yeller-gray drawers around, and makin’ a lot of noise so’s not to surprise that mining bastard up there.
But all I got was a mess of silence.
Well, I thought, it’s now or never. Just as a precaution, I undid my gunbelt and hung it over my shoulder as a further peace offerin’, though I didn’t say nothing about the two-shot derringer in my boot. I did a slow climb over talus toward the lowest of them gunmen, and found him sprawled in the rock, plumb dead. He’d been punctured here and there. So I clambered up that rough gray rock to the next, and found he’d expired, too, and was missing an arm. It wasn’t no pretty sight to look at.
The next one was over on the flank, and was one of them two that was creepin’ in on the miner. I was gettin’ out of sight of the mine head when a voice filtered down to me.
“Stay in sight,” the owner of that voice said. I took it for plumb good advice.
“Just checkin’,” I said.
“He’s dead, and so’s t’other on your left.”
“You mind if I come up and palaver a little?”
“You ain’t one of them. I saw you ride in.”
“That’s right, I ain’t. But I thought to take care of the wounded and maybe plant the dead, long as the rest of them hightailed out of here.”
“No tricks. I got a few more of these little DuPont bombs.”
I had yet to see this fellow. Somehow, he was hidden in the shadows of the ore car, and probably as forted up as a man can get.
I made my way up the talus slope, and finally reached a small flat in front of the shaft, where all the mining stuff lay around and about. The miner, he appeared from somewhere in all that tangle of iron, and that old Sharps was staring at my navel.
“Howdy,” I says.
He didn’t reply, but grinned toothlessly. He was an old boy, wearing more dirt on him than cloth, and peering at me from bright blueberry eyes.
I got mad. “That’s the second time today I’ve stared into a barrel, and I don’t like it. First time, I was looking at an entire pepperbox, and that sight ain’t for the fainthearted.”
“Sharps is empty anyway,” he said, setting it down. “When it comes to fights, I prefer some DuPont.” He said it DOOpont, and even a dummy like me got the idea he was talkin’ dynamite.
He had a row of those bombs there just inside the shaft, and he fetched one to show me his work. “Two sticks of DuPont Hercules, this copper cap in there, with six inches of Bickford fuse crimped in the end, plus a mess of tenpenny nails to do a little damage, all wired nice. Now, this here fuse burns thirty seconds to the foot, so these are ten-second fuses. That’s so no one picks one up and throws it back at me. Pretty smart, eh?”
Tell you the truth, I was plain itchy standing there next to that thing. I know short guns, and I’m not bad with a long gun, but this thing he was waving around was big enough to kill Paul Bunyon.
“Maybe you oughta set her back in there a piece,” I said.
Those blueberry eyes glimmered and glowed, and he whipped a lucifer across some rock, lit the fuse until she sparked orange, and then tossed her off to the right. He dove into the overturned ore car, and so did I, just in time. That sucker lifted the ground from under me, and shot tenpenny nails everywhere. I was right grateful Critter was nowhere near.
“Agnes Cork here. What’s your handle?” he said.
I could hardly hear a word, and waited for my eardrums to quit dancing.
“What did you say it was?”
“Agnes Cork, my boy.”
“Now
