SIX OUTLAWS. $31,400 IN STOLEN GOLD. ONE MARSHAL WHO WON'T QUIT

Six outlaws, $31,000 in stolen gold. One Marshall who won't quit. Six bad men. Chapter 1. The rain had quit sometime before 4, and Garrison Avenue was still paying for it. The plank walks along the east side had swollen and gone green at the seams, and every freight wagon that ground down the middle of the street

threw a brown fan of mud at the hitch rails. The air smelled of wet horse and coal smoke from the foundry. Underneath ran the river smell, flat and sour, of a big muddy stream that had been somewhere else all night and had come back to report. Eldridge sample stood at the end of the counter in Mrs. Rudd's eating

house and ate fried ham with the plate held at his chest. He did not sit. The ham was cut thick and had been crisped at the edges in lard. The eggs had gone hard around the yolks, and the biscuit had been made by someone who respected biscuits. A steamfoged window gave him a

view of the street. A boy in a flower sack apron was pushing a broom through the water at the door of the saddler, and the water was winning. "You could take a stool," Mrs. Rudd said. She was a wide woman with forearms like a blacksmith's, and she poured his coffee without looking at the cup. They're

bolted down. They won't go anywhere. I've been sitting for days, I heard. Then you heard it from the man who sat longest. She snorted and moved off down the counter. Eldridge finished the ham, wiped the plate with the last of the biscuit, and drank the coffee while it was still too hot to drink. He set a quarter on the

board. His hat hung on the peg by the door, and he took it down and turned it over as he did every time, and tipped two matches out of the band into his palm. They were damp at the heads. He put them back anyway. The boy from the courthouse reached him on the walk. He