Bledsoe stared across his cluttered desk at Pecos, tapping his fingers on his blotter. “Well, well, it is possible to get his neck in a hump, after all.”
“Oh, you can do it, all right,” Slash said. “Always best not to, though. It takes some doin’, indeed, but once Pecos has got a mad on, it takes a good long time to cool him off. Sometimes several days, and only after he’s turned a whole row of saloons to little more than matchsticks and jackstraws.” Slash chuckled dryly, switched positions in his chair. “That’s a bonded fact. I’m an eyewitness!”
He chuckled again.
“Duly noted,” Bledsoe said, impressed. He sipped from the shot glass on his desk. A tequila bottle stood near his right elbow, uncorked. He did not, however, invite the two cutthroats to imbibe with him and his assistant. It was one thing to employ two men he’d been, for most of his career, trying to run down and jail or execute, one of whom had crippled him, however inadvertently. But old Bleed-Em-So was not going to sink so low as to invite them to drink with him.
That would be like telling them he didn’t hold a grudge, which of course he did. Anyone would.
Smacking his lips, he set the glass back down on his desk and brushed two fingers across his lips. “All right, all right. What’s this about Jack Penny?”
“Gone to his reward,” Pecos said. “Which means he’s likely wielding a coal shovel about now.”
“Hmmm.” Bledsoe tapped his fingers on the blotter again. “Self-defense, I’m sure . . .”
“He bushwhacked us in the Thousand Delights. Baited us in with Jay.”
“I do hope the lovely Miss Breckenridge is unharmed,” Bledsoe said, sounding as though he meant it, though he was well aware that she’d once run with Pistol Pete and that Slash and Pecos had often holed up in her San Juan Mountain cabin between outlaw jobs. Still, it was hard for anyone to dislike Jay. Even old Bleed-Em-So.
“Fit as a fiddle,” Slash said. “A little shaken up is all.”
Bledsoe looked pointedly across his desk at “his” two cutthroats. “I hope I’m not going to read about this in the newspapers, gentlemen.”
Slash and Pecos shared another look.
“Jay’ll keep it out of the papers,” Slash said, adding with a definite edge in his voice and a burn in his belly, “She an’ the new marshal at Fort Collins are old pals, don’t ya know.”
Pecos glanced at him. Slash did not meet his gaze.
“Good, good,” Bledsoe said, leaning forward and entwining his hands on his desk. “All right, then, let us get down to pay dirt.”
CHAPTER 8
The willowy old chief marshal sagged back in his chair, thumbing his spectacles up his nose and entwining his hands once more behind his woolly head. “I got a job for you. Don’t let its simplicity spoil you.”
“A simple job,” Pecos said, smiling. “I like that.”
Bledsoe glanced at his assistant, who sat hunched over her desk, her back to the men. She appeared to be writing in one of the several legal pads surrounding her and her shot glass. Slash could hear the quick, unceasing sounds of her nib and the frequent clink as she dipped the pen into an inkwell.
“Do you have the file over there, Miss Langdon?” the chief marshal asked.
“Right here, Chief.” The gorgeous young woman plucked a manila folder off her desk and rose from her chair. She was a tall, big-boned young lady, a creature of the rocky fjords, yet she moved with the grace of a forest sprite. The air she displaced smelled of cherries and sage—just the right combination of sweet and spicy.
Slash heard Pecos draw a sharp breath as Miss Langdon leaned over the chief marshal’s desk to hand him the folder. Pecos squirmed a little in his chair. Slash elbowed him. Pecos glanced at him, scowling and flushing. Turning back toward her desk, Miss Langdon’s eyes met Pecos’s once more, and held.
Slash wasn’t sure, but he thought the beautiful Scandinavian quirked her mouth corners ever so slightly, appreciatively, before completing her turn toward her desk and sinking back into her chair, once again moving the air touched with the aromas of a springtime desert.
Bledsoe flipped through the file before him, holding one hand on his glasses as he skimmed the typed words.
“Yes, yes, all right,” the chief marshal said, closing the folder and tossing it aside. “Just needed to refresh my memory. As I said, don’t let the simplicity of this job spoil you. I thought of you for it since you’re in the freighting business and, after a year, seemed to be fairly handy at it.”
“Did I just hear a compliment?” Slash asked Pecos.
“Nah, couldn’t have been.”
Ignoring the cutthroats’ banter, Bledsoe leaned forward, elbows on his desk, hands steepled before him. “I want you to drive one of your freight wagons up to the mountain mining town of Tin Cup in the Sawatch Range, and haul a lode of gold bars from a mine up there, the Cloud Tickler, as it’s called—due to the high altitude in those parts—to Union Station in Denver. There the gold will be placed on a train to the federal mint in San Francisco.”
“Doesn’t the mine company usually have Wells Fargo haul the ore out of the mountains, Chief?” Slash asked, frowning.
“Of course, they do. Most mines up in that neck of the high-and-rocky ship their gold out by stagecoach. But there’s been a problem.”
“Robberies,” Pecos said.
“The Front Range Stage Company has been robbed so often that Wells Fargo refuses to haul gold for them anymore. Determined to catch the robbers but not wanting to risk losing another strongbox filled with gold, the mining company has instead hired undercover Pinkerton agents to ride the stage, guarding a dummy strongbox in hopes to catch the robbers red-handed once and for all, and get them out of their hair.”
Pecos was raking his thumb across the heel of his boot, which he had propped on his left knee. “Dummy strongbox, Chief?”
“You’ll be carryin’ the real one. You see, the Cloud Tickler isn’t taking any chances. They can’t afford to lose one more ounce of gold. So, while they’re gonna fill that stagecoach full of Pinkertons—there’ll even be a couple of Pinkertons in the driver’s boot, acting as driver and shotgun messenger—they’re not going to risk shipping the gold on that run. You’ll be shipping it in your freight wagon, in a hidden strongbox, taking a separate trail.”
“Just us?” Pecos asked, canting his head toward his partner. “Just me an’ Slash?”
“Just you two. If all goes as planned, no one will suspect that you two are anything but what you’ll be pretending to be—two freighters who drove a full load up to Tin Cup, picked up their pay, and are heading back out of the mountains to home sweet home.” Bledsoe paused, blinked, snapped his mouth slightly, adjusting his false teeth. His eyes shifted quickly between the pair. “Think you can handle that, boys?”
“I don’t know,” Slash said. “Somethin’ about this makes me a little uneasy. How much gold will we be hauling in our humble freighter?”
“Pretty damn close to a hundred thousand dollars’ worth.”
Slash and Pecos whistled at that.
Bledsoe said, “Gold prices are on the rise just now, and the Cloud Tickler is extracting some of the highest-grade ore in the Rockies at the moment. How long that will last is anyone’s guess, but right now it’s imperative they get their gold ingots out of those mountains and down to the train station in Denver.”
“Why don’t you throw a few guards in with us?” Pecos said. “If the company is mining that kind of color, surely they could afford it.”