Spanish Gold (18 page)

“Whoever gets the chance. We kill him just as soon as we can.”

Crosby pulled his revolver from the holster and checked it carefully. He knew that it was fully loaded. That had been the first thing he'd done after the Apaches retreated, but now, with the murder plan in front of him, he checked it again. It was something to do.

Freeman heard someone coming and pulled his pistol just in case, but it wasn't the right man. It was one of those who had been there from the beginning. Freeman lowered the hammer carefully.

“Davis wants to know how much ammo you've got.”

“Why?”

“‘Cause he doesn't want any one person ninnin' out when them Apaches attack. Wants everyone to have enough. Wants to make sure everyone has enough.“

“Got enough,” said Freeman.

“‘Kay. You stay here and cover the flank. You get into trouble, you sing out.”

As the man disappeared, Crosby asked, “What'd he mean cover the flank.”

“The side. We stay on this side so that the Apaches can't hit it suddenly.”

“But we're not going to be here,” said Crosby.

“Doesn't matter,” said Freeman. “Apaches are going to come right at us from the front anyway.”

Crosby turned so that he could look down toward the river. He noticed movement there, focused on it, and then said, “Here they come.”

“Here they come again!” yelled one of the men as he began to shoot.

Travis thumbed back the hammer on his rifle and then waited as the Apaches leaped from the far bank and began the charge across the shallow river. They were three or four hundred yards away. Inside the range of his rifle, which meant he could hit the target if it held still long enough. He'd wait for them to get closer.

The attacking Indians were whooping and yelling, but they had yet to fire a round. They knew they could hit nothing from horseback, and they didn't want to waste their ammo. He took that as a good sign.

They reached the near bank and began to fight their way up it. As the horses hesitated there, trying to find solid footing, Travis aimed and fired. A horse fell to its side, spilling the rider into the river. As he stood up, Travis fired again, knocking him down.

The firing from the rocks became a steady rattle. No longer were the men firing with wild abandon. They were picking their targets now, not just blazing away.

The Apaches made it up out of the river and were riding across open ground. Travis fired again and again but missed. He saw one huge Indian holding a rifle high and aimed at his chest. The man, seeming to be uninjured, leaped from the back of his pony, took two running steps, and dropped to the sand. He lost his grip on his rifle.

There didn't seem to be as many of them this time as there had been in the past. But they leaped from the backs of their ponies and ran to the cover of the scattered rocks. Once there, they began firing up at the white men.

Travis threw a couple of rounds down, just to let them know that he was still alive, but then held his fire. There were no huge ammo wagons hidden behind him. There wasn't a battalion of supply people ready to run ammo to him when he ran low. What he had was all that he had, and he had to conserve it. But not in a way that told the Apaches that.

He laid down, looked around the bottom of the rocks, and watched smoke from the firing of the Apaches roll up at them. He listened to the sounds of it. A few weapons firing slowly. He slipped back and pushed himself along the ground, out of sight of the enemy. He reached a second rock and moved up so that he was kneeling behind it.

He took a moment and shoved several rounds into the side of his rifle, making sure that it was fully loaded. He then popped up and looked down. Three Apaches were working their way through the rocks, trying to sneak up on the side while those out in front, between them and the river, held everyone's attention.

Travis aimed at the closest, fired, swung at the second, and fired as the sights touched him. As the last of the Apaches tried to dive for cover, Travis fired the last time. The Indian collapsed to the dirt and didn't move.

Now he took time to check the other two. Both were still down and he could see a spreading stain of blood from the first he'd shot. There was no sign that the second man had been hit. Travis aimed at a point near the center of the man's back and put a round there.

There was a sound behind him, but Travis thought nothing of it. That had to be one of the men with them. Davis had sent someone to make sure that the Apaches didn't out flank them.

The round snapped by him and whined off the rock. Splinters from it and from the bullet struck the side of his face. Travis, without thinking about it, dived to the right and rolled. He worked the lever of his rifle and fired as soon as he saw the target.

The round took the man in the center of the chest. Travis was sure that he could hear the snap of bone as the bullet smashed the sternum. The man grunted in surprise and dropped the pistol he held in his right hand. He fell back on his butt and rolled over.

Travis stared at him, sure that his quick reactions had cost a friend his life. He leaped to his feet and moved toward the down man, first feeling for a pulse, and then rolling him over. He stared into the face of the dead man and recognized him instantly. He'd been one of the men from Kansas who had killed the old prospector.

“That's right,” said a voice.

Travis looked and saw the other man standing there, grinning at him. “Thought your quick finger had killed a friend, didn't you?” he said.

Travis nodded. He knew that there was no way he could swing the barrel of his rifle around to shoot the second Kansan. He needed to cock it first. If he made any move like that the man would kill him immediately.

“I have just one question. Does the woman know who I am?”

“No,” he said simply.

“We're in the right place then?”

Travis shook his head. “I don't know about that. We were running from the Apaches.”

“You don't lie very well. And even if that isn't the right river, or the right place on the river, we're damned close to being there.”

Travis didn't respond. He was measuring the angles, wondering if he could throw sand at the man, if he could somehow jump him, or if he could somehow get his weapon turned on him with a round chambered before the man cut him in two.

“You should have just worried about bedding the orphaned daughter,” said the man. “You shouldn't have come out here.”

Firing erupted near them. There was a whoop from an Apache and the man glanced in that direction. Travis reacted immediately, jerking at the lever of his rifle, but before he could get the round chambered or the barrel of the weapon pointed at the man, it was too late. The man's pistol was pointed right at his face, and he was grinning broadly.

“I'm not that stupid,” he said.

Suddenly, a third eye appeared in his forehead, just above and to the right of his nose. There was a crack of bone and a sudden spurt of blood. The man fell back, firing once into the air, dead before he hit the ground.

Travis whirled, now with a round chambered. He saw Crockett standing there with the pistol in her hand. She was still aiming it at the dead man, but this time her face wasn't pale or her knuckles white.

“He killed my father, didn't he?” she asked. Her face was a mask of fury as she stared at the body.

“Yes,” said Travis.

“You knew they were here and you didn't tell me.”

“No, I didn't know until they tried to kill me.”

“Were they the ones you saw in El Paso?”

Travis was aware of the Apaches below them. There was sporadic firing from the rocks. The force of the attack seemed to be at the front of the position, away from them.

“Were they the ones you saw in El Paso?” Her voice was now hard, strained.

He swiped at the sweat on his face and rubbed his lips with the back of his hand. It was suddenly time to tell the truth. Time to be honest. “Yeah,” he said, nodding. “They were.”

“And you were going to let them go scot-free.” She spat the accusation at him.

“No. It wasn't the right time then. I didn't know if they had friends in El Paso.”

“Bull,” she said.

Travis wanted to say something to her about it. Wanted her to understand that it hadn't been the right time to deal with them in El Paso. He had known where to look for them, knew enough about them to fmd them later, but he couldn't explain all that to her.

“You knew and you didn't say a word to me.”

“It wasn't the right time.”

“Would it have ever been the right time? Ever?”

Shooting tapered and then flared. Travis turned and leaned against the rock. He saw two Apaches running across the open ground and he fired down at one of them. He saw the sand erupt behind the man and then watched as he disappeared among the light trees at the side of the river.

Travis wiped his face on the back of his hand and searched for signs of the Apaches. The sound of firing was tapering around him. He'd been unaware of the battle as he'd stared into the weapon held by the man from Kansas. Everything had faded into the background as he waited for the man to shoot him.

Crockett joined him, crouching next to him. She was still pale but seemed to have forgotten about the dead man behind them. “What's happening down there?” she asked. Her voice was quieter. The anger fading.

“Apaches are falling back to the river now,” he said quietly.

“They'll try again?”

“I'm sure they will. They're chipping away at us and between you and me, we've killed two of our own.”

“I had to shoot him,” she said. Her voice was quiet.

“Oh,” said Travis, “that wasn't a criticism. You saved my life. He was going to kill me.”

“I heard you tell him that I didn't know who he was, but I didn't think he'd really shoot you. Was he the one who killed my father?”

“Yeah. Stabbed him once in the chest. I couldn't stop him.”

“Would you have told me?”

“Yeah,” said Travis. “The time wasn't right in El Paso. Once we were out of there and had some time, I would have said something.”

She dropped to the ground and lifted her hand to her face. She wiped away the sweat. “You should have told me in El Paso.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I should have.” Travis was suddenly uncomfortable with the conversation. Changing the subject, he said, “We're going to have to get out of here. I don't think we can repulse another attack.”

She ignored that. She turned to face him. Sweat was beaded on her forehead and upper lip. Her color was bad and she looked as if she was about to be sick, but instead announced, “I found it.”

For a moment Travis didn't understand what she meant because she'd shifted subjects so fast.

“The gold is here,” she said. “I found the cave and I went inside.”

“You saw the gold?”

“No,” she admitted. “But I found an old Spanish helmet in the entrance. The gold is in there somewhere.”

Travis turned to look at her. Her hair was coming loose and there was dirt smeared on her face but that wasn't surprising, considering. He glanced back at the ground below them littered with the bodies of the dead.

That gold had brought them out there. The gold was responsible for the deaths of the people around them. For the two that he and Crockett had killed, those shot by the Apaches, and the Indians who had died. A lot of people dead because of the Spanish gold. And that didn't even include Crockett's father, murdered because he told the story about it.

The one thing that he was going to regret was that he hadn't gotten to see the gold. It was close to them now. Crockett had gotten close to it.

“I want to see it,” he said suddenly.

“I can take you there,” said Crockett. “We can see it.” She had forgotten about the dead men. She had forgotten about the two men who had killed her father. She had forgotten everything except the gold.

Travis thought about that and realized that there was nothing more that he could do there. The Apaches would either attack again or they wouldn't. If they did, they'd probably kill everyone in the rocks.

“Let's do it,” said Travis. “Let's do it while we have the chance.”

She glanced at the bodies of the two dead men. Flies were already beginning to gather, their buzzing cutting through the hot, desert air. Their bodies were beginning to stink. The ground under them was wet with their blood, the odor of hot copper around them.

She pointed the pistol at the one she'd killed. “I just can't get upset over that. Now knowing that he killed my father. He deserved to die.”

“No reason to be upset,” said Travis, quietly. “He's the one who stabbed your father. No reason he had to do it, he just did, probably afraid that your father would tell me the secret of the gold.”