Trail of Golden Dreams (8 page)

She had to smile
while recalling how simple it’d been to steal back her gun and the map. The man
slept heavy, despite his snoring like a rooting hog. His loud snorting had kept
her awake half the night, that and the cold, so waking early had been easy.

Paladin was
probably cussing up a storm right about now, she thought with a chuckle. 
She patted the map, stuck in her pants pocket, with her hand.  The
derringer was back in the saddlebags, just a flick of the wrist away if she
needed it. That man was a fool, just like the rest of the men she’d ever known,
even if he did have dreamy eyes and long legs.

It had been dark
when she’d left, too dark to read the map and figure out where to go.  She
knew she was to head north, but that was all she knew.  It was time to
stop and review the symbols on the parchment closer, before she went too far
out of her way.  There’d been no sign of the marshal so far, so she felt
safe in stopping for a few minutes.  Traveler needed to eat breakfast,
anyway.  He’d been tossing his head, a sure sign he was hungry.

Josie spied a
shack ahead, which was at the foot of a rocky hill.  She reined the mule
toward it.  After sliding out of the saddle, she tied Traveler to an old
hitching post outside the building, which turned out to be an abandoned cabin,
and then peeked into the broken window to make sure no one was hiding
inside. 

When she was sure
she was alone, she opened her saddlebags and drew out some of the grain she’d
taken from the outlaw’s pouch. She scratched Traveler’s nose and fed him some
from her palm.  It had been a long time since her faithful companion had
eaten so well.  She could tell he was grateful.  As she tossed
another handful of the stuff to the ground, she shook her head and said, “I’ve
become a common thief, just like my pa.”

The sun was
starting to rise orange against a pink and yellow striped sky.  She peered
back over the road she’d ridden. There were no dust swirls floating in the
air.  No thundering horse hooves.  That meant the posse wasn’t
closing in yet. She hoped she’d gotten a good start on them.  But how long
would that last, if the marshal had hired Reno King?  From what she knew
of King’s reputation, he could track over rock and through water.  Desert
and mountains would be no problem.

Josie reached into
her bag and twisted the cap off her canteen and took a swig.  Then she
pulled the map out of her pocket and sat on a rock outside the cabin door to
study it. 

She guessed the
first upside down V on the map to be Gallinas Peak, and the next set of
mountain symbols to be the Pedernal Hills.  Up a way was a wavy circle
that she figured must be a body of water—probably a lake.  Her pa had
drawn a box next to it, with the words
Gonzales Ranch
scribbled
inside.  Farther northwest he’d written SANTA FE in big block
letters.  Nearby was an amateurish drawing of curved lines, for what she
thought must be waterfalls. A big X marked that spot. 

Goosebumps rose on
her skin.  She knew that area and those waterfalls.  They were
located above the Nambe Pueblo, where her ma had been born and raised. 
Josie tapped her fingernail on the X.  “That’s it.  That’s where the
trail ends and where Pa hid the gold nuggets.”  A long sigh escaped her
lips.  It sure would be a long trip, probably two hundred miles or
so.  She hoped she’d make it there.  She
had
to.  Her new
life depended on it.

Standing up, she slipped a
stick of jerky out of her saddlebags, which hung over the saddle horn, and
chewed off a hunk.  Her stomach growled.  She was awfully hungry, but
the jerky would have to do until she got further down the trail. There was no
time to waste. They must ride like there was no tomorrow.

“About done,
Traveler?  We’ve got to get a move on.” Josie patted the mule on his
scruffy neck.  When he lifted his head and brayed, she shaded her eyes
with a hand and followed his gaze to the road. A lone rider was making good
time, though he was still a mile or so away.  She slammed her boot heel
into the dirt.  “Darn, that Paladin.” Dropping the jerky into her shirt
pocket, she stuck her foot in the stirrup and Traveler shot off like a bullet
as soon as her bottom hit the saddle. 

Her braid smacked against
her back as she bounced against the leather.  The mule flew like the wind.
Josie punched her cowboy hat further down on her head to keep it from flying
off.  How had he caught up so fast?  She wondered if he’d heard her
leave, or maybe he’d woken up just after she took off and jumped in his saddle
without breakfast.  Either way, she’d hoped to put a few more miles
between them. Glancing over her shoulder, her heart sank when she realized
another rider had joined him. 

Realization hit her like a
stone wall.  That wasn’t Paladin behind her at all!  It had to be the
marshal and his posse. She looked back again and the vision grew to a total of
four riders—two leading out front, two in back—all stirring up dust.  Fear
and panic choked her throat.  “Yah!” she yelled to Traveler.  “Go
boy!”

The next time Josie peeked
over her shoulder, the riders looked to be bearing down fast.  She could
almost feel their hot breath on the back of her neck. One of the men wore a
large, black sombrero. Her breath hitched, knowing the famous tracker, Reno
King, led the pack.  She’d heard he was part Mexican, and the sombrero was
his signature.  It was how you could distinguish the man from a
distance.  Her pulse quickened as she kicked Traveler harder in the ribs
with her boot heels.

She trusted the steady,
sure-footedness of her mule, but it seemed the posse’s horses had wings. 
They must have left Dry Gulch when the moon was still high, to have caught up
with her this quickly. What should she do?  She could try to outrun them,
or she could head for the hills and take her chances with the derringer.

After studying the far-off
peaks, she knew her only chance was to try to lose the gang by climbing the
closest hill, which lay to the west. Hopefully, she could follow the canyon to
the top without Kendall’s men seeing her and then ride the trail straight down
the other side and keep heading north.   It would be easier for her
to maneuver the winding trail alone than it would be for four horsemen
jockeying for positions.  She didn’t hold out much hope, but she had to
try.  Never a quitter, Josie’s one advantage had to be her hardy
mule.  He’d already proven to be superior to horses when facing a tricky
situation.  If he didn’t misstep, she’d get to the top and back down a lot
faster than men traveling together. 

The trail up the canyon
was a steep, twisty one full of rocks, but Traveler did just fine, as Josie
knew he would.  As the two of them climbed into the clouds, she wished she
had more than the small derringer for protection.  How was she going to
fight off four grown men?  No doubt they had rifles or shotguns with them,
as well as revolvers. 

For a split second, she
would have given anything to be riding with Paladin. She figured him for a
no-account thief and liar—same as her pa—but at least two against four were
better odds.   He had the pistol and a rifle, and probably a knife,
too.  She’d seen the rifle tucked into its scabbard when she was borrowing
the horse grain. Even though she didn’t trust the man, the two of them together
would have a far better chance against the posse.  If he’d wanted to kill
her, he could have done it easily last night after taking her map.  That
said
something
for him.

Josie touched the
saddlebags, where her derringer was stowed.  Would she even be able to hit
anyone from up here?  She’d never killed a man before, and she didn’t want
to start now. Her stomach knotted at the thought of committing murder. 
But she wasn’t about to let Marshal Kendall, Del, Slim Jim and Reno King take
what belonged to her.

She’d had a dream last
night that she was swimming in the San Francisco bay.   She didn’t even
know how to swim, but San Francisco was all she’d been thinking about since Pa
had spoken his final words to her.  She’d never imagined a life other than
one on that hardscrabble New Mexican farm.  Now was her chance at having
something more.  Her pa had given her a golden opportunity—golden, just
like the nuggets that awaited her at the end of this trail.  There was no
way she was going to let that Kendall and his bandits take that from her.

Josie gritted her teeth
and mentally prepared herself for what she might have to do.  She
unlatched the saddlebags and pulled out the derringer and stuck it in the
waistband of her pants. Holding her breath, she bounced in the saddle as
Traveler trotted the final fifty yards to the flat mesa on top. 

She heard the horses
before she saw them. Traveler’s ears drew back to warn her, but it was too
late. The riders were driving their animals up from the backside.  How
could that be?  How could the posse have changed course and got up here
before her?

Raising the derringer, she
held it in a death grip in her right hand while pulling back on the reins with
her left to halt the mule.  There wasn’t even time to take cover. 
Traveler opened his mouth and brayed when three ponies skidded to a stop in
front of them. Josie’s jaw slackened. For a second, all thoughts of Wade
Kendall and his men dissolved.  She had much bigger worries now.

Three Indian braves bore
dark holes into her.  All had long black hair, wore bandanas tied around
their foreheads, flowing shirts and deerskin breeches, and gazed at her with
expressions of stone. Apaches! Loco and Geronimo’s groups had been on the
warpath ever since General Crook forced thousands of them to return to the
reservations.  Three-fourths of them, she’d heard, had refused to settle,
had escaped, and continued to raid and kill throughout New Mexico and
Arizona.  Running into these fighters was a bit of bad luck she hadn’t
counted on.

Josie’s heart thundered
inside her chest. They all held rifles.  One of the men worked the lever
of his gun, jacking a shell into the chamber. He aimed it at her. She knew she
had to do something fast, or she’d be meat for the buzzards and Traveler would
likely be roasted on a spit.  She couldn’t bear to think of him strung up
that way and breakfast for these renegade Apaches.

It came to her in a
flash.  If they saw she wasn’t a threat, that she didn’t intend on using
her gun on them, maybe they wouldn’t use theirs on her. She tried desperately
to keep her hand from shaking.  Long ago, she remembered Ma telling her
that Indians would respect the biggest of fools, as long as he acted brave in
the face of danger.

Lowering the derringer,
she asked, “Do any of you speak English?”

For a moment, none of them
said anything.  They looked back and forth, between each other, and then
the one in the middle answered, “I talk American.”

A small sigh of relief
escaped through her trembling lips. Wondering why the posse hadn’t reached the
top of the hill yet, she said in a rush, “I mean you no harm.  I’m running
from bad men.”  She craned her neck around, expecting to see them appear
at any moment.  “Four bad men are trying to kill me.  Will you let me
pass through here?”

She followed the Apaches’
gazes to the trail she’d just climbed.  They stared at her with puzzled
expressions and mumbled to each other in their language.

“You Indian?” the same
brave asked her.

Being nearly as brown as
them worked to her advantage for once, and had probably kept her from already
being gutted.  “My ma was Tewa,” she replied in a confident voice. 

The brave’s eyebrow
arched.  “Nambe.  North.”

Josie nodded, feeling
Traveler twitch beneath her.  “Yes. My mother was born north of Santa Fe
in the Nambe Pueblo.  That’s where I’m headed.  But I cannot let
these men catch me.  Please.”  She rotated her head once more. 
This time she did not imagine horse hooves approaching from the side of the
canyon.  They were close!  The three Indians also looked that way.
 Her gaze must have revealed her fright, because the Apache brave raised
his hand and said, “You may pass.”

She offered him a
half-smile and said, “Thank you.”  Then all hell broke loose. 

She heard the gunshots in
the same instant she kicked Traveler and he lurched forward, nearly toppling
her off his back. Glancing backwards, she saw the four horsemen appear at the
crest of the hill, one after the other, like ghosts rising up from hell. Josie
clutched her gun tight and trotted the mule through a flurry of gunfire and
blue smoke as bullets whizzed by her face.  Later, she’d ponder at her and
Traveler’s luck in getting through the skirmish without so much as a scratch on
either of them. 

Hiding behind the relative
safety of a big prickly bush, she peered out with wide eyes. If she could have
gotten to the other side, she would have.  But to try at that point would
have been suicide, so she waited and watched. 

She could see why white
men considered the Apaches to be bloodthirsty and dangerous.  They had no
fear whatsoever. The Indians cocked their weapons, kicked their ponies and barreled
forward, firing in front of Kendall and his men’s mounts. The bullets struck
the ground, spooking the horses, and causing them to circle in confusion and
jostle their riders.

It was obvious the marshal
and his men weren’t expecting an Indian welcoming committee.  They
returned fire, but their terrified horses had no intention of getting shot
at.  The animals turned and jockeyed for positions in order to get back on
the narrow path they’d just climbed.

Amidst the chaos, one man
was yanked off his saddle.  Josie recognized him as Slim Jim
Garrett.  She wasn’t sure if he’d been shot or had been knocked off by one
of the Indians.  Either way, he fell and was stomped by thundering
hooves.  If he wasn’t already dead from a bullet, she knew he’d been
trampled to death.  She squeezed her eyes shut.