“Big Owl is a god?”
No Shadow fell silent and wrapped his arms around himself, trying to make himself as small as possible. England Dan understood the urge. As they sat in silence, straining to hear Big Owl’s hypnotic call in the distance, an idea popped into his head. He pulled out the map Cooley had bought from the dead cowboy.
“You roam all over these hills. I have a map but don’t know where to start.”
He spread it on the ground, positioning it so the starlight lit it enough to read. Some odd notion came and went that doing this would reveal secret writing or give him the clue needed to orient the map. It looked like the same map, only fainter than when he saw it in sunlight. The mountains were obvious but the dots and the X were almost invisible.
No Shadow took his time crawling over on all fours. He sniffed at the map. England Dan pulled it back when the Indian tried to lick it. This won him a deep growl. He almost whacked the Indian on the nose like he would a dog but held back. When No Shadow settled down, he spread the map out again. This time the man ran his finger over the inverted Vs showing mountain peaks.
“I know this place. It is far away. On the eastern side of the mountains.”
England Dan considered this and realized he had been thinking wrong about whoever drew the map. He thought they had used Oasis as a starting point, or at least had shown the mountains from the west. Deputy Gonzales said Jensen had come from Mesilla. If Cooley was the one Jensen was looking for, this map had to be the key. Had he been looking for it this whole time? If this map did in fact show something of interest to the outlaw, it stood to reason that he’d approach from the east.
“Where?” He tried not to sound too eager.
“Mule Springs. The mountains look like this from there.” No Shadow stabbed his finger down on three of the Vs on the map. From that, England Dan knew now he could find the trail into the mountains and get to the Irish Lord Mine.
He folded the map and secured it in his large coat pocket. He lay back and turned over what No Shadow told him. The map might be to the richest mine in the Superstition Mountains, or it might be a different kind of treasure map, one that Lars Jensen would willingly murder to get. That wasn’t a comforting thought, but it explained why the outlaw seemed to dog Cooley’s footsteps. Jensen didn’t know whom the yellow bandanna’d cowboy had sold the map to, but everyone in town knew Cooley. The deaths at the brothel could have been confusion over which whore Cooley had chosen.
“Twins,” he said in wonder. Life and death hung on such a thin strand.
Without knowing exactly when, he drifted off to a fitful sleep, only to be awakened by a shrill keening. He drew his pistol and looked around for the source.
“Is that Big Owl?” No one answered. No Shadow was gone, and Dan was alone.
Alone with a supernatural man-eating ogre prowling the mountains, hunting for its next meal.
CHAPTER EIGHT
ARE WE THERE yet? I’m tired of riding this old mule.” Mandy tightened her grip to keep from getting thrown off when Mabel bucked. “She doesn’t like me.”
“Don’t insult her,” John Cooley said, tramping alongside. “She understands what you say.”
“She’s a dumb ole mule.” Mandy pouted.
“I was cussin’ her out once, and I’m sure she understood. She turned around and kicked me halfway into tomorrow. See?” Cooley pulled up his shirt and showed the outline of a horseshoe on his stomach. “That’s her right back hoof that caught me.”
“I wondered how you’d got that. I just thought it was an injury from doing something heroic.” She batted her eyes at him and smiled. For him it was like a second sun had come out and beamed down on him.
“I reckon it was heroic enough. It’s not like bronc bustin’ or anything like that, but Mabel’s quite a handful if you don’t know what you’re doin’.”
“So you have a way with animals?”
“Only if you’re the wild animal,” he said, trying to swat her rump. He missed, hit the mule and caused Mabel to buck again. Cooley caught the blonde as she was tossed off into his arms. They stood that way a moment before he let her down.
“That creature will be the death of me. I could never live if it kicked me like it did you.”
“I’m tough,” he said, “but you don’t have to worry your purty head none now. That’s the trail up to the Trafalgar Mine.”
“It’s about time.” Mandy began the long, steep climb, letting Cooley deal with the mule.
He dutifully followed, trying to balance the crate with the supplies his partner had bought. If Mabel kept bucking, he’d have to carry the heavy crate up this slope and he’d be sweaty and winded by the time he reached the summit. That wouldn’t do, not with Mandy thinking so highly of his physical prowess.
He stoically marched along, but the climb was easier because the woman went ahead. He appreciated every twitch, how the hitch in her get along seemed so effortless, the white flash of her legs and arms, the way the sun turned her tangled hair into a river of molten gold. He was one lucky galoot to have her. That Mindy had to get herself killed was a pity, but fate could be cruel. Everything was working out just fine for him.
He wondered, if he asked, would Mandy marry him? It wasn’t as if other girls from Madam Morgan’s cathouse didn’t get hitched. Most of them married away to ranchers with big spreads or powerful men who owned entire towns. Mindy had more than once pondered marrying Clyde Farley. Farley owned the third-largest sheep ranch in the south of Arizona. Sheep were smelly and cattlemen disparaged them, but year in, year out, Farley sold mutton and wool for good money. While the cattlemen sold their beeves for meat and leather, that was a single sale. Farley produced enough wool annually from the same sheep to keep his empire intact. He’d even hired a couple Basques from Spain to come help tend his ever-growing flock.
Cooley knew he’d never be that rich, but mining gold wasn’t smelly. That sheep stink had kept Mindy from marrying Farley, though the way everything turned out, she would have been better off smelling like lanolin than getting a bullet in her lovely chest.
Her sister was flightier, but Cooley thought Mandy was better looking, even if the two had been identical twins. There were small things he appreciated.
“Is this it? That’s where you live?”
“Yup, me and Rutledge. It’s all messed up now. The thieves I told you about searched it and threw everything all around inside. But I’ll get it cleaned up.”
“It’s only got one room. You expect me to sleep in there with both of you?”
“Could if you wanted,” he said. He recognized the set to her jaw and the way her lips thinned. She wasn’t happy with that. “I got the big bed. Me and you will fit just fine. Dan’s cot is across the room.”
“My room back at Madam Morgan’s was a lot more comfortable. I had a bed with a real mattress, and there was a tub out back and—”
“And when I dig enough gold from the mine, you can have a grand bed. One of them beds with posts comin’ up at each corner. It’ll have a feather mattress and a canopy over it. You’ll sleep like royalty.”
“What do you know of royalty?”
“Well, now, Dan’s tole me a lot. His pa is a count or earl or something important back in England. He’s always goin’ on about how the kings and princesses live over there in huge mansions with servants and butlers.”
“His father is royalty? That makes him royalty, too.”
He didn’t like the direction this was taking. Cooley quickly set her straight.
“He ain’t in line to inherit the title or any of the mansion the family lives in. He’s a remittance man. His pa sends money every month so he won’t go back and be a nuisance. His brother’s the one who’ll inherit it all. His brother’s got some weird name like Syngin. Not any kind of name I ever heard of, even among the Indians.”
“Syngin,” Mandy said
, letting the name roll off her tongue. “That’s what I’d call exotic. Is his brother married?”
“You keep Mabel from runnin’ off while I get the supplies into the cabin.” Cooley grunted as he hefted the crate to his shoulder. He saw Mandy reluctantly tend to the mule. That stopped her wild fantasies about the Rutledge family, both here and over the Big Pond.
He didn’t have to kick open the door. It hung on one hinge because Dan hadn’t done much of a job repairing it. The claim jumpers had gone through the cabin like a tornado, throwing things around and breaking anything that was glass. He hoped Dan had bought a new kerosene lamp. The chimney on the old one had been broken, though the wick and the reservoir had escaped undamaged.
As he put the crate down and began unpacking it, he considered spending a night in the cabin with only the fire in the stove for light. He wasn’t a reader like Dan. Being in the dark with Mandy was a whole lot more fun than trying to figure out all those words.
He perched on the edge of the table. If he wanted to keep on having fun with the lovely girl, there’d have to be a lot more gold pulled from the Trafalgar Mine. The truth was only too obvious, both to him and to his partner. The mine was playing out. The vein they had found and followed hadn’t been that large, but it had been enough to keep them going. The past month or two, no matter how much they worked, the vein narrowed down and would peter out entirely before much longer. What was he to do then? Mandy wasn’t cut out to sit around the cabin all day and then listen to him complain about the hard work and teeny specks of gold all night long.
Cooley patted himself down, looking for the map. Then he remembered Dan had it. That had set off a passel of unfortunate events, all centered around men being gunned down. Men and Mandy’s sister. That told him there was something about the map that was worth a mountain of gold.
“The Irish Lord,” he said softly. Visions of nuggets as big as his fist came to him. He vowed he’d have a wedding ring made from the first nugget he pulled out. It’d be an ounce or two of the finest gold anybody had ever seen. All he needed to do was use the map to find the lost mine and he’d be rich enough for Mandy.
More than rich enough. She’d get more than that four-poster bed. He’d buy her a mansion sitting atop Russian Hill in San Francisco.
“What do we do now?”
He looked up. The woman stood silhouetted in the door. The sun behind her limned her trim form. The way she stood, one hip cocked and a hand supporting her as she leaned against the doorjamb was about as sexy as anything he had ever seen.
“Dan’s got to get here anytime now, though we made good speed because of the mule. It’ll take him a day longer. Then we get to pullin’ the gold from the mountainside.”
“A day? It’ll be that long before your partner gets here?”
“You’re my partner, Mandy, my love.” He pointed. “That’s my bed. See? It’s as big as I said.”
“It’s nowhere as big as the one I had back in town.” She crossed the cabin to test it. It had a straw mattress.
“It’s not as big, but it has something the other doesn’t.”
“Now, what would that be?”
He caught her up and spun her around, careful not to smash her into the table or walls. He set her down on the bed gently as she squealed with delight.
“It’s got the two of us in it.”
After a pleasant interlude, they lay together on the bed. Mandy stirred, then poked him in the ribs with her thumb.
“Aren’t you a miner? You can’t be a layabout and expect the gold to jump out of that hole in the ground.” She sat up, stretched and gave Cooley a twinge of longing.
But she was right. As much as he wanted to spend the rest of the day here, or until Dan showed up, the mine had gone untended for almost a week. The ore went nowhere, but the gold that had to be spent to keep everything running waited. He stroked her golden hair until she stood and began dressing. Watching was a treat, but having her poke him again wasn’t.
“You’re a lazy oaf, John Cooley. You get up there and do mining things.”
He climbed into his clothes. Looking around the cabin, he wanted to put everything into order. Then he remembered he had a woman here now. If she was going to be supported by the gold he teased from the mine, it was only fair she earn her keep.
“Get to cleanin’ up the cabin,” he said. He tried to kiss her, but she ducked and stepped to the far side of the table. “I’ll dig up a ton or two of ore. That ought to crush down to a few ounces.”
“Do it,” Mandy said. She looked around with obvious distaste but set to picking up and cleaning the debris left by the robbers.
Cooley hitched up his drawers and stepped outside. The day had turned cloudy and dull. That matched the way he felt. Mandy expected things of him, more than England Dan ever did. But then he never felt any guilt when he dodged work and let the Brit do it. He had to keep Mandy happy, or she’d leave him.
He trudged up the slope to the mouth of the mine. He rummaged around in the ore cart and found a pair of heavy canvas overalls and pulled them on. They protected against cuts and nicks from the rock and saved his clothing. Putting his back into it, he got the ore cart rolling along the tracks and followed it into the mine. Within a few feet, the light from the mouth became too dim to see. He fumbled around on a rocky ledge, then found a hard hat and a half-dozen miner’s candles. Beside them on the ledge lay a piece of flint and steel.
He worked a few minutes to get a spark and light the first candle. He settled it on the hat and pushed deeper into the mine. When he came to the end of the stope, it took several minutes for him to find the vein he had been working. That difficulty told him this vein was almost played out. They’d have to follow another.
Or figure out the map and take over the Irish Lord Mine.
Thoughts of how much gold that legendary mine had and how he’d pull out nuggets as large as his head kept him working. Every stroke of his pick wasn’t in the Trafalgar Mine but in the abandoned Irish Lord. The ore tumbled to the floor. When it piled up enough, he began loading it into the ore cart. Having to do all the work himself rankled, but his partner had to be back anytime now.
As he pushed the ore cart, an ugly thought made his swallow hard. Dan had the map. What if he didn’t plan on returning to their mine and instead went after the Irish Lord on his own? Cutting out a partner doubled the amount of gold that’d go into his own pocket. He had never been happy getting money from his pa in England. Every time he took the remittance money at the telegraph, Dan moped around and was unbearable. Cooley had seen that more than once.
This was a way for the Brit to get rich. Going home he could lord it over his pa and brother. All he had to do was double-cross his partner, the one working the Trafalgar all by himself. Cooley’s smoldering anger let him push the ore cart a tad faster than usual. As a result it shot from the mine and crashed into the block at the end of the track. The cart tipped over and the contents tumbled downhill to the crusher.
Cooley rushed to catch up, looked down and smiled at the size of the pile below, then froze. Not far from the pile, a horse reared and tugged at its reins. The small avalanche had frightened it.
But who had ridden the horse here? That wasn’t his partner’s. Dan wouldn’t spend what remained of his monthly remittance to buy such a horse or the gear adorning it. The tack was decorated with Mexican silver worth a fortune. Tooled leather saddlebags flopped about on the horse’s rump. Nothing about the gear spoke of England Dan Rutledge.
A wild thought that the horse belonged to the deputy Dan had run into back in Oasis came and went in a flash. A tall blond man strode back along the trail to the cabin, six-gun drawn. He hunted for whatever had spooked his horse.
Cooley fell to the ground as if all the bones in his legs had turned to water. The only one who fit the description of the man below was Lars Jensen. The man the Mesilla federal deputy was
hunting had come to the Trafalgar Mine. And a thousand things piled into Cooley’s head. Whatever crime Jensen was guilty of in New Mexico meant nothing if he was responsible for killing Mandy’s sister. He was as likely to kill her now, for whatever reason. It had to be a grudge. Revenge for some old slight.
He reached down to his side. His six-shooter was back in the cabin with Mandy. There had been no reason to carry his piece into the mine. It weighed close to three pounds and got in his way as he worked. It was hard enough swinging an eight-pound sledge or using a pickax. It wasn’t like he had to shoot at tommy-knockers or snakes or hibernating bears. More than once when he had started mining, he had lugged the gun with him and it had discharged. Dan had shouted at him, and he had almost shot himself in the leg. The only real time either of them needed their six-shooters was when claim jumpers came to rob them blind.
Cooley ducked behind the ore cart and shivered as if he had caught the ague. He tried to think straight. Nothing came to him. Mandy had his gun. She could take care of herself. He stood and stumbled on a rock, and the ore cart tipped back with a loud crash. Worse, it started rolling back toward the mine.
He popped up like a prairie dog and saw Jensen stop on the trail to the cabin and come running back. The noise drew him like carrion excited a buzzard. Panicked, Cooley ran toward the mine, then veered to the side and scrambled up the slope beside the mouth. Getting caught in the mine was surefire death. There were air chutes cut every hundred feet or so, but none of them was big enough to squeeze through. All Jensen had to do was stand at the mouth of the mine and start firing. Anyone inside would be turned into a bloody corpse in nothing flat. The claim jumpers had tried that but were too inept to do it right. From the gunman’s looks, he wasn’t inept.
Cooley flopped onto his belly as the outlaw got to the mine level. Jensen puffed and panted, showing how he had come from lower altitudes. He never looked up. If he had, he would have spotted the cowering miner. When he got to the mouth, he did exactly as Cooley had known he would.
Lost Banshee Mine Page 7