Phillip Graves

The locomotive sat idling on Deadwood's spur line, steam hissing from her pistons like a rattler's warning. She was an old Baldwin 4-4-0, patched and retrofitted more times than her engineer cared to admit, but her boiler was solid and her wheels were true. Coupled behind the tender was a single boxcar—windowless, reinforced with iron strapping, its sliding door guarded by two of Graves' men with lever-action Winchesters cradled in their arms.

Inside that boxcar, bolted to the floor with half-inch lag screws, sat a Mosler safe weighing damn near eight hundred pounds. Its combination lock was set to a sequence only Graves and his employer knew. Inside: twenty-four bars of smelted gold, each stamped with the Hornsby Mining Company seal, each worth more than most men would see in three lifetimes.

Graves stepped back from the safe, satisfied with his inspection. The leather of his gunbelt creaked as he straightened—a sound he'd long since stopped noticing, as natural to him now as breathing. His rifle lay on a crate near the door where he'd left it, but the Colt Peacemaker at his hip rode easy, the walnut grip worn smooth from years of use.

"Shadow 0-3, I want that coupling pin checked again," he said, not bothering to raise his voice. "If we lose this car on a grade, Whitmore'll have our balls for paperweights."

0-3 nodded once and swung down from the boxcar without a word. That was what Graves liked about Shadow Company. No backtalk, no second-guessing, no goddamn moral quandaries about the work. They did the job, took their cut, and kept their mouths shut.

He dropped onto the gravel bed beside the tracks, scanning the platform. Deadwood's depot was already stirring—rail workers loading freight, a telegraph clerk tapping out messages in the station house, the morning shift of yard hands arguing over a broken switch. Normal frontier bustle. But Graves wasn't looking at the railroad men.

He was looking for the deputy.

Sheriff Price had been insistent about it when they'd met yesterday. "My jurisdiction extends to this shipment, Phillip. One of my people rides with you as far as the Cheyenne railhead. Observes. Reports back."

Graves had argued, of course. Had pointed out that a moving train was no place for a civilian badge, that every extra body aboard was another variable to manage. But Price had the territorial governor's ear, and the mining baron—a fat shitheel named Whitmore who'd never swung a pick in his life—had folded like wet paper under the pressure.

So now Graves had a lawman riding with him. Price had been cagey about which deputy he was assigning, and Graves had learned enough about frontier towns to know that Deadwood attracted all sorts.

Shadow 0-4 appeared at his elbow, a stocky, mustached man named Erickson. "Engineer says we're fully coaled and watered, Commander. Brakemen are aboard, and the caboose is stocked for three days. We roll on your order."

"And our guest?"

"Haven't seen 'em yet, sir."

Graves grunted, reaching into his vest pocket for his pocket watch. Seven forty-five. They were scheduled to depart by nine, before the day's heat made the boxcar an oven.

"Make sure the men know," he said, snapping the watch shut. "This deputy rides in the caboose where I can keep an eye on them. They don't enter this boxcar. They don't touch the safe. They so much as look at it sideways and I'll throw them off the train myself. Price can string me up for it back in Deadwood, but that gold gets through."

"Already made it clear, sir. Twice."

"Make it a third time." Graves' eyes tracked a figure approaching the depot—not the deputy, just some prospector hauling a duffel. "And Erickson?"

"Sir?"

"If this deputy so much as breathes in the direction of that safe, I want to know about it before they've finished the breath. We've got a quarter-million reasons to be paranoid, and I didn't build this company by trusting local law."

Erickson nodded and moved off to relay the orders, and Graves turned back toward the boxcar. The sun was starting to cook the gravel between the ties, and he could feel sweat gathering under his collar. It was going to be a long, hot, dangerous run to Cheyenne—Lakota war parties had been known to sabotage tracks through the badlands, the remnants of the Hornsby Gang still operated in those parts, and god knew what other threats lurked between here and the railhead.

He'd brought fourteen men for this job. Fifteen counting himself. All of them hand-picked, all of them stone-cold professionals who'd killed before and would kill again without hesitation. Against most threats, that was enough.

But the deputy was a wild card. Some fresh-faced badge wearing an earnest expression, or some grizzled old law dog who'd seen too much to be fooled by anything. Either way, Graves intended to watch them like a hawk watches a snake.

He leaned against the boxcar's iron-strapped side, pulled a sliver of jerky from his pocket, and chewed slowly as he waited. The deputy would show soon enough. And when they did, Graves would take their measure in the first thirty seconds—deciding whether they were a nuisance, a threat, or something else entirely.

His fingers drummed once against the grip of his Peacemaker.

The locomotive's whistle shrieked, a warning that departure was imminent. Nine o'clock couldn't come fast enough.