Skeleton Lode (9 page)

“My God,” said Barry Rust, “a day spent on this damn mountain means a ride up here in the morning and back down at night.”

“There has to be an easier way up here,” Davis said.

“Then you’d better be finding it,” said Paulette ominously.

Davis said nothing, for something much more distressing happened. The remaining gold seekers from town were approaching. Their horses were not spent, nor did the riders seem exhausted. Leading the party were
the grinning Yavapai and Sanchez. Turning his horse, Davis rode to meet them, his hand on the butt of his Colt.

“I told you varmints to ride,” Davis glowered.

“We ride,” said Sanchez coldly, “and that is the last order we take from you. These hombres pay us, and now we ride with them. You make the big mistake, Señor. Do not make another. Do not get in the way.”

The Mexicans had fifteen men with them now, and there wasn’t a friendly face in the lot, so Davis backed off and the group rode away, Yavapai and Sanchez leading them toward the distant east rim.

“At least our former guides seem to know where they’re going,” Paulette observed. “If we are to continue this miserable search, let’s follow them.” It was a point so obvious that even Gary Davis could not deny the wisdom of it.

Bollinger laughed. “The rest of us can, but they told Gary to stay out of the way.”

Davis said nothing, but when he looked at Bollinger, the gunman saw in those hard eyes a truth he already suspected. He had outlived his usefulness to Davis, and it hardened his resolve to tolerate the man only until they found the gold. Then he would take the treasure and maybe the women, leaving Davis’s bones to rot in some lonesome canyon. The moment passed and Davis led out, the others falling in behind him. Reining their horses in at the rim, they could see the canyon below. Impossible as the passage seemed, Yavapai and Sanchez had led their followers down, slipping and sliding in clouds of dust.

“I will not ride down that wall,” Paulette said defiantly.

“Suit yourself,” said Davis. “Following them was your idea. See that green along the canyon floor? That means water.”

They watched the group of riders reach the canyon floor and disappear.

“There must be a considerable overhang,” Davis said. “Maybe even a cave.”

“It won’t matter to us what’s down there,” Rust said. “I doubt we’ll be welcome.”

“If there’s water,” said Davis angrily, “we have as much right to it as they do. Come on.”

Despite Paulette’s shrieks, they started down the steep slope. Concealed behind a distant upthrust of rock, Dallas and Arlo watched their descent.

“For the time being,” said Arlo, “we’re rid of them all. I’d bet a mule those Mexican owl-hoots know some places to hole up where there’s water.”

“You know,” Dallas said, “the more I think about that horizon Hoss drew, the more I doubt the mine is actually in the Superstitions. Look at all the nearby peaks out there to the east. That arrow on the map could be aimed at any one of them.”

“It could,” replied Arlo, “and probably is. Come sundown I think we’ll do some looking toward those other peaks.”

“There’s Weaver’s Needle,” Dallas said. “Hoss had names for them all, but that’s the only one I remember.”

When Arlo and Dallas returned to their hidden camp, Paiute was gone.

“Wherever he is,” said Dallas, “he’s afoot. His mule’s still here.”

“The last thing he’d do is give away the location of our camp,” Arlo said. “I’d not be surprised if he’s down yonder havin’ a look at that bunch that went down the mountain. Remember when he took us down that second passage? Must have been half a dozen other tunnels anglin’ off. Some of them maybe led to the foot of me mountain.”

Barry Rust’s prediction proved all too true. When Davis and his companions reached the canyon below, they found an excellent campsite, but it was already taken. Beneath an overhanging shelf of rock, a cavern opened back into the foot of the mountain. The very floor of the passage was a stream of water that trickled for less man a hundred yards before vanishing into the sandy
floor of the canyon. Three men, including Yavapai and Sanchez, had been left with the animals, watering them from the runoff. The Mexicans said nothing. The other man carried a Hawken rifle, and it was he who spoke.

“You folks ain’t welcome here. This is our camp. Move on.”

“You don’t own this mountain or this water,” said Davis angrily.

“Mister, my name is Edwards, and I’m talkin’ for us all. This here’s Arizona Territory, and a man can own any damn thing he’s got guts and guns enough to hang on to. Now all of you, git!”

Paiute entered the hidden cavern silently, seeming to step out of the wall where the water cascaded down. He dipped himself a handful of water, slaked his thirst, and sat down with his back to the stone wall.

“It’s gettin’ late,” said Arlo. “Time we went out and had a look at the peaks to the east, now that the sun’s behind us.”

Dallas and Arlo paused a few yards shy of the mountaintop, listening. Hearing nothing untoward, they climbed out of the crevice and looked around. Far to the west there was a rumble of thunder, and the rising wind was cool to their faces.

“Storm buildin’,” remarked Dallas. “Thunderheads could roll in and steal the sunset.”

“We’ll wait a while,” Arlo said. “We have nothing else to do.”

They positioned themselves where the western rim rose like a parapet behind them. The westering sun descended until the crimson disk seemed to rest atop the stone rim. It shone on the peaks east of the Superstitions, leaving the lower elevations in the shadow of the coming darkness. Dallas and Arlo watched, uncertain as to what they were seeking. Only seconds away from losing the sun entirely, the cowboys froze, speechless.

“My God,” Arlo breathed, “there it is!”

So slowly did the image appear, and so soon did it vanish, it might have been only a shadow, a trick of the imagination. But in the final seconds before the sun slipped away, the image was clear to both of them. Then
it darkened, faded, and finally disappeared. Arlo and Dallas looked at one another in awe. For just a few unbelievable seconds, in the dying rays of the setting sun, they had seen the shadowy but unmistakable image from Hoss Logan’s map: a grotesque death’s head!

For a while, Dallas and Arlo stood there watching the darkening western horizon, as jagged shards of lightning raced ahead of the coming storm.

“Now we know all the map can tell us,” Dallas said. “You reckon that peak where the death’s head shows in the setting sun is where we’ll find the mine?”

“No,” said Arlo, “because the other map is just like ours. Knowin’ Hoss and how he felt about Gary Davis, I don’t think he would have taken any risks.”

“Findin’ the death’s head on the side of that peak ain’t been all that easy,” Dallas said. “I’m bettin’ Davis and his bunch won’t ever figure it out.”

“Only because Davis thinks he has just half the map,” said Arlo. “That may be what Hoss had in mind—discouraging the use of the map by making Davis believe he has only half of it. I don’t look to find anything at that death’s head peak except some more clues.”

“You aim to just ride over there and start pokin’ around, with all these other coyotes on our trail?”

“Why not?” Arlo said. “They won’t know why we’re there, and since the mine likely won’t be there, they’ll be wasting their time following us. They’ll become a problem to us only when we discover where the mine actually is.”

“Before we strike off on our own, why don’t we see what Paiute thinks about this death’s head peak? He can’t talk, but we might learn something from his reaction. Let’s get him up here tomorrow at sundown and show him the death’s head on the side of that mountain.”

“That’ll mean wasting another day,” Arlo said.

“It won’t be wasted. It’ll give that bunch of claim jumpers time to get nervous, wonderin’ what’s become of us.”

Thankful for shelter from the coming storm, Dallas
and Arlo returned to their camp within the cavern. Thunder boomed, and the very rock beneath their feet trembled. Paiute sat cross-legged, his hat tipped over his face, dozing peacefully. The storm-bred wind flung spray through the aperture in the stone roof high above their heads, a tiny window to a lightning-emblazoned sky.

“I hope Davis found some shelter,” said Dallas. “Not for his sake, but because of Kelly and Kelsey Logan. That lightning’s dangerous.”

“I feel guilty, leaving the girls at the mercy of Gary Davis,” Arlo said, “but I still don’t know how we’re going to help them. After all, their mother
is
Davis’s wife, and that puts the law on their side.”

“We can see the lights of town at night,” said Dallas, “but here in the Superstitions, the law’s a mighty long ways off. This is Arizona Territory, and if it comes to a standoff, I don’t think Sheriff Wheaton will be much inclined to take sides with Gary Davis. He’s a cruel man, from what Kelly told us, and I think we owe it to Hoss to take those girls away from him.”

“I don’t reckon them bein’ the prettiest pair you’ve ever laid eyes on would have anything to do with your determination,” Arlo said dryly.

“Not a damn thing,” said Dallas with a straight face. “It’s my natural compassion and my regard for the memory of our old pard, Hoss Logan.”

They had almost forgotten the sleeping Paiute. In the dimness of the cavern, they were unaware that beneath the old Indian’s tilted hat his dark eyes were alert and he was very much awake. Though he was apparently mute, he heard and understood their words. While he had little concern for Hoss Logan’s gold, the young squaws were the old man’s blood kin. Arlo and Dallas had been Hoss’s friends, and while Paiute trusted them, what did they
really
know about these mountains? Paiute’s people were long dead, and for twenty summers his only companion had been Hoss Logan. Except for Paiute, no man knew these mountains as intimately as Hoss had. While Paiute didn’t understand Logan’s reason for this last
act—the revelation of gold to draw this
codicioso cuadrilla
into the mountains—he believed the old prospector had conceived some primitive retribution for the
enemigo
, just as he had looked to the
salvación
of his next of kin. The young squaws with fair hair were comely, even in the aged eyes of Paiute, and it came as no surprise to him that the young
vaqueros
Dallas and Arlo were more than a little interested. That was as it should be, for the Logan squaws already had seen too many summers without a man, and what more could Hoss Logan have asked for them than this pair of
duro vaqueros?
Paiute made some decisions, awaiting the sleep of Dallas and Arlo. Far into the night, when the only sound was the sigh of the wind through the lonely reaches of the Superstitions, he arose. Silently, without a light, he crept down the passage behind the cascading water. But he did not follow the passage to the outer rim, the exit he had revealed to Dallas and Arlo. Instead, he took a more obscure route, one that led downward into the very bowels of the mountain. It was a forbidding labyrinth in which a man could become lost forever and perish—and many had. But it was a path that Paiute knew, even in the darkness, and it would lead him to other corridors in the eastern foothills of the Superstitions.

Gary Davis and his companions didn’t fare well during the violent storm. Unwelcome in the sanctuary into which Yavapai and Sanchez had led their party, the best Davis could do was seek the shelter of the overhang. There were points along that eastern flank of the mountain where the lip of rock reached out almost a dozen feet, and with the storm roaring out of the west, Davis and his dejected bunch somehow managed to remain dry. At the height of the storm, the lightning was continuous, illuminating the canyon and the peaks beyond like day. Suddenly, a few yards down canyon, lightning struck a paloverde tree, blasting it into oblivion and showering Davis’s party with sand and shards of stone.

“My God,” Paulette Davis cried, “it’s going to hit us!”

But the storm had peaked, and the lightning became less frequent until it died away altogether. When the rain ceased, a chill wind swept away the remaining clouds, leaving a purple sky to the serenity of a quarter moon and the faraway twinkling stars. With the clear skies, the group’s flagging spirits rose a little.

“Gary,” said Rust, “so far, we’ve ridden all over hell, with no sense of direction, following others who led us nowhere we couldn’t have gone on our own. Ever since we left Missouri, I’ve had doubts about this expedition. Now it’s time for us to make some decisions, or I’m going to make some on my own. Frankly, I’m not convinced there
is
a mine, and if there is, I’m not convinced you can find it. Just two more days, Gary, then I’m leaving. I’m going back to Missouri.”

“Count me in,” said Bollinger. “I’ll be ridin’ too.”

“I wish you’d all go back to Missouri,” Kelly Logan said bitterly. “Whatever Uncle Henry left belongs to Kelsey and me, not to any of you.”

“And leave the two of you alone in these mountains?” Paulette cried. “What in the world would you do?”

“Find Dallas Holt and Arlo Wells,” said Kelly, “and join them. They were friends to Uncle Henry, and they’d be our friends.”