The Cassidy Posse by D. N. Bedeker Page A

horses. Mike stared at the trail in front of him, rocking loosely in the saddle with the motion of his horse. They descended until it became too dark to move on any farther, and Butch called to make camp for the night.

CHAPTER 12
SOUTH PASS

    Mike awoke the next morning in gradual stages of awareness. Birds chirping and the wind pushing the tumbleweed around began to permeate his consciousness. Then he heard water gushing, bubbling and babbling.
    Oh, sweet Jaysus, now the roof is leaking
, he thought as his mind teetered between sleep and consciousness.
You don’t get much in Chicago for ten dollars a month, but at least the damn roof shouldn’t leak. Maybe I should move back home again. At least my mother would be happy
. Then he remembered why he moved out. Nell Quinn was sitting on his lap at his thirtieth birthday party that she gave for him at the Blue Palace. She was mussing his hair and kidding him about still living with his mother.
    The telegram smashed through the haze in his brain and he bolted upright. Nell Murdered! He was in Wyoming a thousand miles from Chicago. Nothing he could do about it. Nothing he knew about it. A brief telegram. There should have been more details. Why didn’t Bockleman wire more details? Just one short, painful sentence and then some nonsense about a chess game.
    “Hey, Uncle Mike,” Patrick said tentatively. “How are you doing this morning?”
    “Uh, fine, I’m doin’ fine.” He wiped the sleep from his eyes and looked around trying to get his bearings.
    “This is the first time I ever was up before you in the morning,” said Patrick.
    “I didn’t fall asleep right away,” replied Mike. “I had uh lot ov things on my mind.”
    “Yeah, that was too bad about Nell Quinn,” said Patrick, trying to probe surreptitiously. “I didn’t know you knew her that well.”
    “I knew her,” said Mike curtly, shutting off any further inquires. “Where’s duh two cowboys?”
    “Butch is down by the river,” said Patrick. “He said he was going to catch breakfast.”
    Mike cleared his eyes again and looked down the steep bank at the solitary figure fishing with a line and no pole in a rushing mountain stream. The bleak plain they had traveled upon yesterday had been replaced with a scene that could have been put on one of those color brochures luring sportsmen to go west. The sun was reflecting off the snow-capped peaks of the Wind River Range. There were jagged red rock cliffs shrouded in a wispy vail of morning mist.
    Although Mike was in no mood for such thoughts, he had to take note of it.
    “Beautiful, isn’t it?” asked Patrick, reading his look.
    “Yeah, sure,” Mike replied. “Where’s tuh other guy?”
    “Elzy?”
    “Yeah.”
    “I don’t know,” admitted Patrick. “I just woke up a little before you did and he’s gone already.”
    The question did not hang long. They heard footsteps and turned to see Elzy returning to camp with an armload of firewood.
    “Morning, gentlemen,” he said cheerfully. “If you’re trying to get your beauty sleep, you just wasted your time.”
    He dropped the load of branches and began sorting through them for small, dry twigs. He used these as a base and began to pyramid larger pieces around them. When he was satisfied with this, he took out a farmer match and struck it on his gun belt. Within a few minutes, the flames were expanding outward from the center.
    “Hunker around that; it will warm you up,” Elzy said, stepping back a moment to admire his creation. Then he removed a small frying pan from his overstuffed saddlebags.
    “This is pretty small to cook for four men on,” said Elzy. “I told Butch we should have got a twelve inch frying pan before we left. He didn’t want to wait. Now it’s gonna take longer for breakfast. If you don’t have the right equipment, you always end up paying a price.”
    Patrick winced with pain as he rose to stand.
    “I think my balls are broken,” he said.
    “Horseback riding