Spanish Gold (19 page)

“Then I'm glad I killed him.”

“So am I,” said Travis.

“But you should have told me in El Paso.”

He nodded again. “I should have.”

Travis wasn't sure what to do. He knew that two more of the defenders were dead, but didn't know if others had been killed. He didn't know how much ammo was left or how strong the Apaches were. Davis's plan, to hold out until dark and then slip away, might have been ruined during the last attack.

So, he followed Crockett as she made her way behind what would have been the front line if they had been a military unit and had a front line. They kept down, using the cover that the rocks provided, and slipped away to the east.

“Through here,” she said. Standing, she pointed. “That's where we crossed the river and where we found the wagons. Just like it said in the diary.”

“Sure,” he said.

“This passage leads to the entrance to the cave. If we'd come straight up from the river, we'd have only had to climb a small hill and cross the mesa.”

“Lead on,” said Travis.

She entered the passage, bracing herself on the rocks and lifting her feet to swing them forward. There were points where it was nearly impossible to get through, but once they did, Travis saw the cave's entrance.

“You can see this from the riverbank.”

“Yeah, but you have to get into it and climb down to find the cave proper.”

“Show me,” he said.

She looked at him and then moved down to the entrance of the cave. “Just through here is where I found that helmet. Right inside.”

“But you didn't see the gold.”

“No.”

“Maybe it's not there,” he said, but knew it would be. Everything that her father had said and everything that had been written in the diary was there, from the wagons burned after the ambush to the Apaches roaming around guarding the ground. If everything else was true, then there was no reason to believe that the story of the gold was false. It would be there if they got deep enough into the cave.

“Come on,” she said. She moved along the wall of the opening, just as she had done before. They reached the real entrance to the cave.

“Feel the cool air?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

They entered the cave and then stopped. Crockett crouched and pointed to the helmet. “Spanish?”

“I think so.”

“This is all the farther I got,” she said. “I wouldn't have been able to see the gold.”

“There must be something around here,” said Travis. “If the gold is deeper in the cave, then there must be a way of lighting the path.”

“I didn't see anything.”

Travis moved farther down to where the floor leveled. He could see the outline of the passageway that lead back into the mountain. The air there was cooler and mustier. He reached the point where the front chamber ended. There looked to be a smudge at the top, like that made from a torch. To one side was a long stick. Travis bent and picked it up and found that the top had been wrapped in cloth.

“Here,” he said. “Found a torch.”

“Light it,” she said.

“This isn't going to last very long,” he said. “Fifteen or twenty minutes at the most.”

“Light it,” she said. The excitement was unmistakable in her voice.

Travis did as ordered and then ducked, pushing it out in front of him. He could see through the narrow passage that was only a few feet long. There was a blackness behind that. He stepped in and found that it was even cooler. The air caught the flame of the torch and made it flicker.

Travis slipped along the passage. Crockett was right behind him. He noticed that the rock was smooth, as if someone had carved the passage from the stone, creating an artificial tunnel. At the other end, it opened up into another huge chamber so large that he couldn't see either the ceiling above him or the far side of it. The light front he torch just wasn't bright enough.

Crockett moved out of the passage to stand beside him. “I don't see anything.”

Travis took a step forward and then another. It looked as if there was a dirty brick wall cutting the chamber in half. The wall was about five feet high and thirty or forty feet long.

“What's that?” asked Crockett.

Travis wasn't sure. He walked toward it and bent close. He reached down and felt the cool smoothness of metal. He turned to face her and said, “It's the gold.”

“What?”

Travis handed her the torch and pulled one of the bars from the stack. He realized the wall was three feet thick. There was a hell of a lot of gold there.

Holding the bar up, he pulled his knife and scraped at the dull gray surface. It flaked away, revealing the bright, shiny gold underneath it.

“The gold,” he said.

“All of that?” she asked, pointing at the wall.

“All of that. Every single brick of it is gold. More than you and I could ever need. More than all of us here could ever need.”

“Good God,” she said.

Travis knew exactly what she meant. His knees were weak, his stomach filled with butterflies, and his head was spinning. There was more gold there than he could imagine in one place. More gold than he thought existed anywhere in the world. There was enough for him to buy most of the United States and a good chunk of Mexico.

“Good God doesn't cover it,” he said.

“I had no idea. I figured a chest or two filled with coins. Maybe some precious stones. I didn't know there would be a wall of gold.”

Travis slipped along it, touching it, making sure that someone hadn't substituted a few clay bricks to even things out. Everywhere he touched, it was obviously metal. He came to the end of the wall and looked behind it, but it was too dark to see anything.

“Hold the torch up.”

There were two skeletons visible, both wearing rusting armor. The helmet on the skull of one was partially crushed, telling Travis what had killed him. The hands of the other skeleton were missing and the right leg was broken.

Crockett moved around toward him and then stopped suddenly. “Spanish?”

“I think so. Maybe wounded in the fight and brought here as some kind of sacrifice.”

Travis noticed that the breeze had picked up and that the air was colder now. It was blowing up from somewhere deeper in the mountain.

There was nothing else behind the wall of gold. The chamber tapered again, but there were two exits from the great room. The floor of it was uneven and there were a couple of stalagmites there. From somewhere came the sound of dripping water.

Travis stood staring at the wall for a few moments more and then said, “We'd better get out of here.”

“With nothing?”

“Emma, we take anything out with us and that's going to tell the others we found the treasure.”

“So we share it with them. There's more than enough for everyone.”

“But I don't trust those men. Some might think that not sharing it will leave that much more for them. They won't realize that you can't live in more than one house at at time, or ride more than one horse. They'll want it all.”

“You don't know that.”

“No, but I'm not going to put it to the test until I learn more about them.”

“Then what are we going to do?”

“We'll return to the surface and see what plan Davis has for getting us all out of here.”

She tugged at one of the bars and realized how heavy it was. Not something to be carried around in the pocket. “I guess we'll leave it.”

“For now,” said Travis. He reached out and touched the wall again. “But we know right where it is and we can come back later for it. Some of it.”

The torch was burning down and the light was fading. Crockett began to move toward the corridor that would take them out of the chamber. She stopped short and turned, but there was not evidence of the wall now. It was as if it had disappeared into the darkness.

“It's well hidden,” she said. “You almost have to fall over it.”

Now she lead the way back through the passage and into the first chamber. They could see the square of light that marked the entrance to the cave.

Travis came out behind her and stopped in his tracks. He looked past her, up at the entrance. From outside he heard the unmistakable sound of gunfire.”

“They're attacking again,” he said.

“Yeah.”

“We'd better get back to help,” said Travis.

“We're safe here,” she said.

“You stay. They're going to need my gun or the Apaches are going to kill them.”

She nodded but didn't say a word.

Travis scrambled up toward the entrance to the cave. When he reached it, he realized that she was right behind him. From outside he heard the sound of the Apaches whooping as the firing tapered to sporadic shots. It didn't sound as if Davis had been able to repulse the last attack.

The second attack had nearly done them in. Davis had slipped along the line and found that a number of his men had been killed or wounded. Those who had ridden in later were either dead or missing. Bailey had been killed, a bullet through the neck, and Webster was down with a bullet in the knee and a second in the shoulder. Bradford had been hit, too, but not badly. He was more angry than hurt.

Davis checked the ammo, picking up that from the dead and passing it out to the living. It didn't make much of a difference. He didn't tell any of the survivors that it didn't look as if they'd make it to the night so they could slip away. He didn't tell them that the next attack would probably be the last.

He drew the men into a tight ring around him with the wounded in the center of it. If he and the healthy men couldn't fight off the Apaches, it would make no difference to the wounded. Davis had decided that no one would be taken alive. He would take care of the wounded at his last act.

Now there was nothing more he could do. He had a fully-loaded rifle in his hands, a second one propped against the rock, and two pistols jammed into his belt. He sat down, his back to the rock, looked up at the sun, and knew that it wouldn't set for another five or six hours. Much too long.

He pulled the cork from his canteen, took a drink, and sloshed the water around his mouth before swallowing. He took his hat off and wiped the sweat from his forehead.

“When do you think they'll come?” asked Bradford.

“When they get ready and not before. They'll just decide it's time and come at us.”

Bradford crouched down. His hands were shaking and his face was pale. Sweat was beaded on his upper lip and he was blinking rapidly. “We're not going to make it, are we?”

Davis thought about answering that question. When the Apaches attacked, he'd need every gun and every man if they were to have any kind of hope. He could lie and maybe lose Bradford when the attack came, or he could tell the truth and maybe lose him now. The truth won.

“I think that we might be able to repulse one more attack, but after that it'll be all over. There are too many of them.”

Bradford nodded slowly. “Maybe we should try to get out now.”

“I thought about that,” said Davis, “but I don't like the odds. In the daylight they'd run us down and kill us one at a time. Here we'll take some of them with us.”

“Maybe if we get out, they'll let us go,” said Bradford. “Maybe they're mad because we're close to the gold.”

“This has nothing to do with the gold,” said Davis. “We're in their territory and they're defending it. They won't let us walk out. Especially after what we did at the watering hole.”

Bradford closed his eyes for a moment. Sweat dripped down the side of his face and from his chin. It looked as if he was going to pass out and then suddenly, the color came back to his face.

“Okay,” he said, nodding. “We'll take the sons o' bitches with us.”

Davis didn't say anything to him. He just stood up and turned so that he could watch the river bank. That's where the Apaches were hidden.

They didn't have long to wait. Within minutes the Apaches were on the move again, but this time they weren't attacking across the river on horseback. They were coming up from the near bank, using it and the trees and bushes along it as cover. They were crawling along, from bush to tree to depression, showing as little of themselves as they possibly could. There was no firing from them.

Davis leaned across the sun-hot rock, his rifle tucked into his shoulder. He was looking over the barrel, searching for a target. But the Apaches, having seen that a straight frontal assault might succeed eventually but only at a great loss of life, had decided to sneak forward. They were not going to play the ritualistic game of counting coup as their brothers of the plains did. They were out to kill.