A slight breeze blew across the plain, rustling the scrub brush and raising little wisps of dust that seemed to dance playfully in the morning sun. The had just started getting hot, and sky was a piercing blue azure, broken only by the occasional cotton-puff of a cloud. A single crow cawed from his perch on a dried-up scrub oak before taking flight with a flutter of movement. As the black-clad rider approached this natural hollow near the root of a rocky hill, he couldn't help but notice that on any other day, this spot would have seemed almost peaceful.

But this wasn't any other day.

The rider studied the ground intently, discerning hoofprints in the dried clay and dust of the desert vista. There was an old coal mine in this region that had fallen out of use nearly 10 years ago, and many bandits would use this spot as a hideout and staging area for their illicit endeavors. The rider half smiled as he checked his twin ivory-handled colts and loosened the cinch on the scabbard holding his henry rifle. If there were bandits here today, they were about to have a rude awakening.

A makeshift wall of broken planks had been built over the mine's entrance, with several blankets nailed up to serve as a door. There was a fire circle about 15 paces out from the doorway, cinders still smoldering. There were no horses to be seen, although the rocky outcroppings cresting this hill made a near-perfect ambush site. The man dismounted and strode evenly to the mine entrance, throwing back the blanket-door. A bright shaft of 10 a.m. sunlight pierced the darkness within, revealing dusty bags of rat-chewed grain and broken wooden crates. There were some old blankets and even a dusty saddle on a makeshift rail built out of a felled cedar. But no bandits. After a bit more searching, the man let out a slightly disappointed sigh and remounted. This had been the 8th such abandoned hideaway he'd come across in twice as many days. Brody's search for Uriah Jacobus was proving fruitless. The only explanation was that an informant was leaking info to Jacobus, causing every related bandit hidey-hole to turn up empty within a day of Brody's arrival. Brody was willing to lay even odds that those camps remained empty until he returned to town after each search. Maybe next time, he'd do things a bit differently...