Spanish Gold (5 page)

“Looks like our boy has found himself something,” said Freeman.

“We going to visit him?” Crosby pushed his hat back so that he could look down into the street.

“If we wait, he might come to visit us and that way no one will be able to see or hear anything.”

Travis buckled on his gunbelt and then turned slowly, taking a last look around the room. Satisfied that he had picked up everything that belonged to him, he grabbed the saddlebag and left. Outside, he walked across the street to the livery stable. He entered there and moved toward the rear where his horse waited.

A man came out of the shadows. “Help you?”

“Thought I'd pick up my horse.”

“Leaving us?”

“Yes.”

“While you saddle up, I'll figure the bill.”

“I'll be taking that mule, too,” he said, pointing into a stall.

“Can't do that. Belongs to someone.”

“He's dead,” said Travis. “I'm taking it to the relatives.”

When the man hesitated, Travis added, “You can check with the marshal.”

“No. I suppose it's okay, if the marshal approved it.” He cocked his head to the side. “Who pays the bill?”

Travis shrugged and then said, “I'll do it.”

“Be with you in a moment.” The man turned and vanished into the shadows again.

Travis opened the stall and entered, moving along the side of it, watching where he put his feet. He put a hand on the horse's flank and rubbed it, letting the beast know that he was there. When he reached the front of the stall, he patted the horse's nose, and then gently pushed so that the horse would back up and out.

When he got the horse saddled, the livery man reappeared. “I make it six bits.”

“You're sure?”

“Six bits.”

Travis paid the man and then waited as he got the mule ready to move. The man gave him the leader, and Travis walked his horse and the mule out into the sunlight. He put a hand up to shade his eyes and scanned the street and the ground beyond it. That had been something he learned in the army. Survey the terrain, when possible, before riding up into it. That could save some nasty surprises.

Travis swung up into the saddle. He sat for a moment, wondering why he was about to ride fifty miles to tell a woman he didn't know that her father, whom he hadn't known either, had died. He owed her or her father nothing. Except that a dying man had asked him to do it. Travis had said he would and now felt obligated to do it.

He rode out of town and followed the road up to the top of a ridge. He stopped briefly and looked back down at the town. Not much more than a flyspeck on the map. A few houses, a few buildings, and nothing around it except open desert. Hot winds and dust devils swirled.

He turned again and rode on into the next valley. It stretched out into the distance, a glowing gray hell with no sign of water or green vegetation. Far away was the hint of mountains. They were vague shapes shimmering in the heat.

Travis let the horse have its head. It followed the road along the floor of the valley. It didn't bother with the dried clumps of sagebrush and ignored the sharp spines of the prickly pear. It had been well fed at the stable. Well fed and well watered.

He had come to a sharp bend in the road, next to a dry riverbed. There was a stand of stunted trees growing in the corner, their leaves rattling in the light breeze, and across the riverbed was a rocky ledge sloping upward.

There was no warning. Travis saw nothing and heard nothing. There was a sudden splash in the dust of the road and an instant later, the report of a rifle. Without a thought, Travis rolled to his right, off his horse and to the ground. As he landed, the horse leaped forward, ran a few steps and then stopped, confused. The mule turned, bucked, and headed back up the road.

Travis continued to roll, his eyes on the rocks across the riverbed. He scrambled into a slight depression and drew his revolver, knowing that it would do him no good. Not if his attacker was in the rocks with a rifle. The range was too great for it.

For ten minutes he lay there, his eyes moving slowly up the slope, searching for the rifleman. He felt sweat trickle down his back and his side. He wiped his forehead on the sleeve of his shirt and continued to search.

Finally he knew that he would have to move. If the gunman was still there, Travis could wait all day. He was probably in the shade with a canteen. Travis, on the other hand, was in the blazing sun with no water. In an hour it would be unbearable in the depression. In two, he would not be able to think rationally as the sun baked him. The only thing he could do was make a run for it and hope that the first shot indicated how bad a marksman the man in the rocks was.

Taking a deep breath, Travis pushed himself to his feet and then sprinted toward his horse.

“You missed him. How could you miss?

Crosby shrugged and cocked his weapon, but it was too late then. The man had rolled off his horse and was out of sight. The horse had run fifty or sixty feet before stopping.

“I could shoot his horse.”

“No,” said Freeman. “He'd just go back to Sweetwater and that's not going to do us any good.”

“So what are we going to do?”

Freeman didn't answer right away. He stared down across the dry river­bed. The man was out of sight, hidden behind the scrub or rocks. He wasn't moving around, so that it was impossible to spot him. He knew what he was doing.

“Seems to me,” said Freeman, “that we should just follow him. Stay back, out of sight, and see where he's going. We can take him anytime we want to.”

“He knows that we're out here,” said Crosby.

“No. He knows that a shot was fired, but that's all he knows. One shot. Hell, it might not even have been fired at him. Stray round. Strange things happen on the desert.”

Crosby slipped back deeper into the shadows. He pulled his hat off and wiped his forehead. He glanced at the rifle and then at Freeman. “Maybe he doesn't know a thing.”

“He's got that old man's mule. He wouldn't have it if he didn't know something. We'll just bide our time.” Freeman turned around and watched the scene below him.

Travis reached his horse easily. He grabbed the reins and then knelt behind it, looking up into the rocks. He held his pistol in his right hand, the hammer back for a quick shot, but there was no movement anywhere. Nothing to betray the ambushers. High overhead a single bird wheeled and that was the only thing he could see moving.

Travis stood, the horse between him and the rifleman, holstered his pistol and swung himself up into the saddle. He leaned forward, grabbing the horse's neck and slipped to the right, supporting his weight with the stirrup. That made it difficult for anyone on the other side of the riverbed to see him. He dug his heels into the horse and it leaped forward. He pulled back on the reins, slowed, and then turned. Still no movement in the rocks. Hunching forward, he raced back to where the prospector's mule stood, nibbling at a dried-up bush.

Leaning forward, he snagged the roped tied to the bridle. He took a final, quick look at the rocks, and then whirling around, dug his heels in. With the mule in tow, he rode along the bank of the river, still trying to spot the ambushers and to get out of there. He ran past the bend in the dry river and the copse of trees, and then up, toward the top of the ridgeline.

When he reached it, he stopped and jumped from the saddle. He left his pistol in the holster as he knelt, scanning the rocks around the riverbed but still saw nothing down there. No signs of anyone or any horse.

Shaking his head, he lead his horse and the mule from the top of the ridgeline before he climbed back into the saddle. One shot was a lousy ambush. Maybe they, whoever they were, had not been shooting at him. Maybe it was a stray round. Maybe it was just a big coincidence.

“I don't know,” he told his horse. “I just don't know.”

The bartender had rarely had so much business. The men were crowded three deep in front of him, and he had been able to raise his prices with no one complaining. He rushed from one end of the bar to the other, slop­ping his watered-down booze into glasses that he didn't bother to wash because no one cared about that either.

A thick haze of blue smoke hung in the air that the breeze from outside failed to dissipate. A few men were smoking cigars. Most had cigarettes.

“Tell us again,” yelled one of the men.

“Tell you what?” shouted the bartender. “I told you it all four times. The old prospector was crazy. Talking of bars of gold hidden in a cave.”

“I've heard that before,” said a man at the bar. He held his drink up and turned so that he could face the crowd. “Heard that story for years.”

“It's a crock.”

“No. No. Where there's smoke, there's a fire. And the Apaches do have ceremonial caves.”

“Bull.”

The man turned and looked at his accuser. “You ever been out there. Out to the west. Into the territories?”

“No.”

“Then shut up.” The man drained his drink.

“What do you know?” asked someone else.

The man put his glass on the bar and waited. The bartender, knowing a good thing when he saw it, filled the glass so that the man would spin his tale. Even if the man didn't pay cash for the booze, the others would. He was earning the drink by telling the story of Spanish gold.

“Apaches,” said the man, retrieving his glass and sipping from it, “Apaches don't understand the value of gold. They see it as a gift from their gods, something they are to protect. If they leave it alone and protect it, they will be strong. If they let others see it and steal it, then they lose their power.”

“Bull,” said the accuser again.

“No bull. Fact. There is a valley that no one has seen since the time of the Spanish. A valley filled with gold. Nuggets as big as eggs laying on the ground. A river so thick in the dust that you can't stick a pan in it without showing color. And veins of it as tall as a man.”

“Where's this valley?”

The man laughed. “Only the Apache know and they guard it with their lives. To share that secret is to die.”

“Then how do you?”

“I know and that's all that matters.” He took a drink. “No white man has ever seen that valley. Except once. The Spanish found the valley and that's where the gold came from.”

One man pounded his empty glass on the bar waiting for a refill. He didn't take his eyes off the man who was doing all the talking.

“They stayed there for weeks using savages brought up from Mexico to do the hard work. To do the mining. They smelted it right there, cutting down the few trees that grew along the river. Smelted it all and made it into bars that were almost too heavy to lift.”

“How do you know?”

The man smiled knowingly and finished his drink. “I just know.”

“Where is this valley?”

“You'd never get there. Apaches watch it all the time now. After the Spanish violated it, they watch and kill anyone who is getting too close to it. Valley's not important anyway. In the valley you'd have to mine the gold and smelt it and carry it out, all with the Apaches around to stop you. Valley's not important.”

“So what is?”

“The cave. Spanish got some of the gold out of the valley and were taking it back to Spain when the Apaches caught them. The Apaches reclaimed the treasure and then hid it.”

“Bull,” said the accuser again. “A lot of bull.”

The bartender, sensing that the drinkers were going to start drifting away, raised his voice. “Not bull. I stood right here yesterday and listened to a prospector who had seen that gold. Seen it with his own eyes.”

“What'd he see?”

The bartender put down the bottle he held and moved to the center of the bar. He waited until all the eyes were on him and then told the old prospector's story again, slowly, watching as the men finished their drinks. Before he ended the story, he moved among them, pouring more booze into their glasses and collecting more of their money.

Satisfied for the moment, he said to them, “Old man said that it wasn't far from here. Hidden in a cave where the Apaches took it. More gold than one man could spend in a lifetime. More gold than anyone could ever need.”

“Then we should go get it,” shouted a man. “If it's that easy, we should go get it.”

“What about the Apaches?”

“There's enough of us, and the Apaches aren't going to be a problem.”

The bartender grinned to himself and began pouring booze again. The only gold to be found was in the pockets of the men in the saloon and he was finding quite a bit of it.

The Crockett house, a small, adobe structure with a tile roof, was on the outskirts of Hammetsville. There was a single door, windows on either side, and a chimney on one side for heat in the winter or to cook in the summer. Nights and winters in the desert could get very cold.