Spanish Gold (17 page)

Travis emptied his weapon and then slipped down behind the rock. He struggled to work the bullets from the loops in his belt. His fingers felt like sausages. He had trouble controlling them. A task that had once been so simple was suddenly complex. The bullets were too large, jammed into the loops. Pulling them free, he couldn't seem to hit the side to slide the rounds into the weapon.

“There's too many of them,” yelled one man.

“Someone help me! I'm hit.”

Travis stretched slightly and looked over the top of the rock. The Apaches were closer. They had spread out and some of them were on foot now. They were searching for cover and were firing up into the rocks.

Travis whirled and aimed, but the Apaches were all gone. They had found hiding places. The firing tapered, becoming sporadic. Travis searched for a target and found none. He waited, watching.

And then, suddenly, the scene from Gettysburg flared in his mind. Hundreds of men, thousands of them, running at him. Hundreds of them falling and dying. It was the reason that he had gotten out of Pennsylvania. He'd wanted no part of the slaughter that warfare had become. He didn't want to hide behind rocks or fences and shoot at other men.

But this was different, he told himself. Before, two men with stars on their shoulders had decided that men should fight and die. Here, in Texas, it was a matter of survival. If he didn't stop the Apaches, they would capture him and kill him. At Gettysburg, if he hadn't fired, it would have only been one fewer weapon and the results would have been the same. His survival, and the survival of Emma Crockett, hadn't depended on what he did then.

That made it different. Emma Crockett was depending on him. Stop the Apaches so they could get out. The gold wasn't important at the moment. Getting out was. They could come back in a year or two, but at the moment they had to survive.

A brave stood up and aimed into the rocks. He fired and dropped from sight. Travis aimed at the top of the rock and waited. As the Apache stood again, Travis fired. The Indian lost his rifle and fell back.

The firing tapered, and then the Apaches began to slowly withdraw. They covered one another as they worked their way back to the riverbank.

Davis slipped down to where Travis was crouched. “I think we'll have an hour or so.”

“We're going through the ammo pretty fast.”

“I know. And when it runs out . . .”

“Maybe we should try to get out now.”

“I figured we'd have a better chance after dark. Some of us could make it then.” He studied Travis for a moment and then asked, “You have military service?”

“Some.”

“Rest of these guys don't. We've got to get them organized. Teach them some discipline.”

Travis shook his head. “You're not going to be able to do it in an hour.”

Davis was about to protest and then nodded. He pushed himself up and said, “I'm going to check on the others.”

Travis slipped from his position and made his way down to where Crockett knelt, the pistol held in her right hand. Her eyes were closed.

“Emma,” he said.

She looked up at him. “What?”

“They've pulled back. For the moment.”

She glanced around as if looking for conspirators. Lowering her voice, she asked, “Do you know where we are? Exactly where we are?”

“Yes.”

“The cave has to be around here somewhere. Up in the rocks a little higher,” She said.

“Not much we can do about it now.”

“I want to go look for it.”

“No,” said Travis. Then, realizing she wouldn't accept that, he added, “Too many eyes around to see that, not to mention the Apaches. They're going to be working their way through the rocks to get at us.”

“But the gold,” she said. “We're so close to it. I've got to find it.”

“Not now,” said Travis. “Later.”

“How much later?” she asked. And then, “You think we're going to get out of this?”

“I think we've got a good chance if the men don't waste their ammo. That's going to be the key.”

“Then this might be my only chance to see the gold.”

Travis knelt then so that he was no longer looking down at her. “We'll be able to come back later. A year or two.”

“Or five or ten,” she said. “You don't know how tough the Apaches can be.”

“They're stirred up now,” said Travis. “Next year they might all be happy on the reservation.”

“Would you be?” she asked

“I don't know. All I'm saying is that next year things might be tamer and we won't have to worry about the Apaches. Right now it's too dangerous.”

“I want to see the gold,” she said. “I have to see it.”

“Let's get out of this first and then we can worry about the gold.”

“If we get out of this,” she reminded him.

Travis shrugged and then agreed with her. “If we get out of this. Right now I've got to get back up there and watch for the Indians. You going to be okay here?”

“I'll be fine,” she said.

Travis stood and then hesitated. “Don't do anything foolish,” he warned her.

“I won't.”

Emma Crockett waited until Travis was out of sight and then got to her feet. All the men were at the edge of the bluffs, hidden in the rocks, watching for the Apaches. No one was watching her. No one cared about her for the moment.

During the fight, after the first few frightening minutes were over and she knew that the Apaches would not get at them then, she had studied the ground behind them. There were paths in the rocks. There were overhangs that wrapped the ground in shadows. There were a dozen places that could have concealed the entrance to the cave. There were paths through rocks leading higher, some of them probably up to the top of the overhang.

She stood there for a moment and tried to remember the point where they had ridden across the river. She thought that she could see that point and by drawing a line from there and from the wreckage of the Spanish wagon train, she saw two, maybe three points that could be caves.

She followed one of the paths to the rear, moving quietly and carefully. She noticed two men crouched, watching the river, and she saw the body of one man, his blood staining the sand near him.

She pressed on past them, and into a narrow crack in a huge stone. She stopped there and turned again. From that position she could see down to the river easily. Tb the west were the bodies of the Indians killed that morning. To the east was the place where she and Travis had found the burned wagons.

She slipped through, turning sideways for twenty feet. At one point she had to climb up on the side and push herself along the sun-hot stone. She dropped to the ground and walked along. In front of her was a large opening in the rock. There was a mesa in front of it that dropped off sharply. From everything she had read in the diary and from the map she had seen, that had to be the entrance to the cave.

The thing she couldn't believe was how easy it was to find. No tiny hole in the rocks that opened into something larger. No disguised entrance that was nearly impossible to find. Standing on the bank of the river, had she had the chance, she might have been able to see the entrance. Of course, without the map and the diary, she wouldn't have known the significance of the cave.

She pushed herself out of the narrow passage and then crouched. She knelt there, studying the cave. She didn't want to rush right to it. She wanted a chance to savor the moment of discovery.

And then she stood and walked forward. At the entrance she stopped. The sunlight didn't penetrate very far. She could see that the floor of the cave dropped away. Sand had spilled from the mesa down into the cave.

She took a step forward and slipped, falling on her behind. She laughed out loud and then clapped a hand over her mouth. The sound seemed to echo through the cave.

She stood again and worked her way deeper into the cave. The entrance narrowed down rapidly so that from the mesa it would look like it was nothing more than an overhang without a cave. But there at the base of it was an opening only six feet high and three or four wide.

Using the rocks, she walked down to the bottom of the opening and peered into the darkness. Inside the cave proper, she could see nothing. There was a coolness blowing up at her that held a musty odor. From deep inside the cave she though she could hear water dripping.

Glancing back at the mesa, she saw that she was still alone. No sounds from anywhere. The Apaches were still making their plans, and those who'd been fighting the Indians were waiting for the next attack.

She kept her back against the rock and slipped around into the cave. There was enough light bleeding in that she could see the stalactites hanging down. The floor was solid rock and tilted down at a forty-five degree angle, but the stone was dry and the footing solid.

She moved down until the floor leveled out. She turned, looking back at the entrance, which was brightly marked by the sunlight. Now, looking back, she saw something that had been invisible before. She climbed back up to it and pulled an old helmet from the sand.

“Spanish?” she asked and then shrugged. She'd seen pictures of the conquistadors all wearing narrow helmets with upsweeping curves that came to a point in the front and rear. The helmet she held looked just like those pictures and was very old and rusting.

She nodded then and felt the excitement pulse through her. A Spanish helmet at the entrance to the cave. Hidden deeper in it would be more treasures. Hidden in it would be the gold that her father had sought most of his life. She had found it so easily. But then, she'd had the clues her father had provided as he tried to identify the river and the mountains. Without knowing where to look, it would have been impossible.

For a moment she stood there looking at the helmet and then she put it down, carefully. She didn't want anything to happen to it. Satisfied that she'd found the cave, she started to work her way out of it. She climbed back to the entrance then stopped.

She realized that the gold was there. Hidden deeper, and that was the whole point. Find the gold. See it and touch it and hold it. Now she was leaving before she did that. She started to turn around to go back but then stopped again. There was no way for her to find the treasure without a torch and some help. She'd have to get Travis.

She scrambled out of the cave and moved back to the mesa. As she crossed it, she saw the Indians were beginning to move again. They were still far off, across the river, but they were beginning the next attack.

Freeman stayed at the far end of the line, aware of Travis. He recognized him and the woman the minute they crossed the river. No question about it. He'd slapped Crosby on the arm and pointed them out, telling him who it was in case he didn't recognize them himself.

Now that the attack had been beaten off, Freeman had slipped down behind a rock where it would be difficult to see him from anywhere. The Apaches wouldn't see him and those with him wouldn't see him.

“What are we going to do?” asked Crosby. “He saw us kill that man.”

“I know,” said Freeman. “We're going to have to kill him before he tells anyone.”

“What about the girl?”

Freeman shrugged. “If he's told her, we'll have to kill her, too. Right now, I don't know.”

“We should kill her just to be safe,” said Crosby.

Freeman laughed. “Funny that we're all searching for the gold and we all end up right here. A shallow river and high bluffs.”

“I didn't see any sign of burned wagons,” said Crosby.

“We didn't have time to look,” said Freeman. “I'll bet if we rode along the bank far enough, we'd find them. We're very close to the gold.”

Crosby took off his hat and wiped the sweatband with his finger. He flipped the sweat away. “Everybody's going to know that.”

“Not everybody knows who that woman is,” said Freeman. “We're sitting pretty right now. That guy doesn't know that we're here. Advantages are all ours.”

“Except for the Apaches,” said Crosby.

Freeman turned and stood. He glanced out at the river and then the open ground leading to the bluff. He saw no movement out there. Satisfied that the Indians were not sneaking toward them, he slipped down again.

“They're going to hit us again,” said Freeman. “Everyone knows that. Maybe when they do we should see if we can't kill that man. With all the lead flying around, no one's going to know how anyone got hit.”

“I'd feel better if he was dead,” said Crosby.

“Then here's what we do. When the Apaches come at us, we slip along the line. We find him and the first chance we get, we put a bullet into him. When that's done, we turn our attention to the Apaches.”

“Who does it?”