“Now, that’s the way I like to see you,” he said. A quick twist spun him into the room to close the door behind him.
Mandy let out a squeal of surprise. She sat on the bed clad only in her undergarments. Sweat plastered the thin muslin to her body, perfectly outlining her fine form.
“What are you doing here, John?” Mandy made no effort to hide her partially clothed body. He had seen her with far less on. “You lit out like somebody had set your tail feathers on fire.”
“I missed you so much, I had to come back.” He sat on the edge of the bed and reached out for her. She swatted his hand away.
“What? Did your partner finally give you the boot and you came running back to me?”
“Mandy, dear heart, Dan wouldn’t do a thing like that. We set out to find that mine, but he was more dedicated to the hunt than I was. I came back for you.”
“For me?” Her emerald eyes glowed. “What’s that mean? You have a ring for me?”
The banshee’s curse must have taken a different form. He’d heard its lament and hadn’t died, but Mandy expected him to be enslaved by marrying her. Cooley wasn’t sure if dying outright wasn’t a better fate.
“Better,” he said, warming to his diversion. “A golden pile in the biggest, best, most productive mine in all of Arizona.” He saw the flash of greed in her eyes. Plowing on, he said, “All we have to do is follow a map and claim it.”
“Map, map, that’s all I hear. Let’s see it.” Mandy began dressing.
A momentary pang passed through Cooley. He shouldn’t have dangled the lure of riches until after they’d enjoyed a reunion.
“Dan has it.” At mention of his partner, he cringed. The banshee cry might have been for Rutledge. Abandoning him out there in the mountains might have meant his death by now. “But I can take it from him.” What use did a banshee have for a map? England Dan’s death need not be in vain if it made his partner and his partner’s best girl rich.
“I’m tired of working for Madam Morgan. That’s why I left before, but with you gone, there’s not a whole lot else I can do. She’s getting her revenge on me for cutting and running, and I don’t like it. I’m as close to being a slave as you can get without shackles on your ankles.” Mandy stroked his arm and looked coy. “Are you sure this mine’s worth wandering around in the mountains? There’re so many dangers up there. The Indians. That horrible Lars Jensen. And the deputy got himself shot up real bad.”
“I looked in on Gonzales, and he’s recovering.” Cooley saw her reaction. She hadn’t expected him to see to the deputy’s condition. “It must have been your expert nursing that brought him back from the brink of death.” That got Mandy thinking again about something other than getting shot.
“Come, on, John.” She threw her clothing into a carpetbag and herded him out the door. At the head of the stairs, she paused.
“What’s wrong, my dearest?” Even as he asked, he heard voices below. Madam Morgan was talking with someone out on the porch.
“The back way. Explaining why I’m leaving to Madam Morgan when she’s doing business is dangerous. She’s been known to have girls whipped for interrupting her.”
“She wouldn’t dare touch you, not with me here.”
“She’d dare anything since I’m running out on her after she agreed to take me back. That’s something she’ll never forgive, me breaking my word.”
“. . . missed you so much I had to come back.” Cooley tried to look sincere as he reached out to take her in his arms.
“You’re a liar, John Cooley. What really brought you back here? You wanted to see if he could get you a reward? Is that it?” Mandy pushed free of him.
Cooley let her rush him down the corridor. He paused in an effort to kiss her, but Mandy was in a hurry. She shot down the back stairs. A quick glance back showed a tall-brimmed hat thrusting up into sight as a man came up the stairs from the parlor. Cooley took the steps down two at a time, got outside and ran to catch up with Mandy as she went to the shed where her horse and his mule were stabled.
She rode bareback. As he got into his saddle, she tossed him her carpetbag. He leaned back and fastened it to the saddlebags bouncing on Mabel’s hindquarters. By the time he finished, Mandy was halfway to the middle of town. The mule was fleet of foot—for a mule. Mandy kept up her breakneck pace through town and onto the road leading back into the Superstition Mountains.
He caught up with her when she reached a fork in the road and needed his direction on which way to travel.
Cooley swallowed hard when he pointed to the road that’d take them back to where he’d left England Dan. He strained to hear any hint of the banshee’s cry. All that came to him were sounds from town and the promise of more quiet deeper in the hills.
“That way,” he said, drawing even with her. “I left Dan up there.”
She responded by snapping the reins. Cooley wasn’t sure if her single-minded determination to find the Lost Banshee Mine and all the gold locked in it was a good thing. Right now he wanted to run off at the mouth so all memory of Big Owl disappeared. As it was, he stewed and muttered to himself most of the day. It came as a relief when Mandy led her horse to a stream to drink.
“We’re deep in the mountains now,” he said. “Sunset comes quick up here. All the peaks.” He motioned vaguely at the tall mountains already blocking the sun. The real reason he gestured was to turn around in the saddle and get the lay of the land. This was a decent spot to camp. Trees dotted the area, but no banshee could creep up on them as they slept without being seen. Thicker forested areas lay a ways off, giving a chance to react if Big Owl tried to come after him.
“How far ahead of us is your partner?” Mandy bustled about, taking airtights from her carpetbag. She motioned for him to lay a fire and get coffee brewing.
Cooley talked as he worked.“He’s a couple days higher in the mountains by now. It doesn’t matter if we spot him. He’s going to Mule Springs since the landmarks are all visible from there.”
“I was over in New Mexico for a spell,” Mandy said, shoving an open airtight toward the fire to heat the contents. Cooley wasn’t too interested in what was inside. His belly grumbled, and anything would sit well with him. “There was some trouble around Gila. I don’t think anyone in Mule Springs knows or remembers me.”
“Trouble with the law?”
“Not exactly. I worked in a saloon, and one of the drunks got frisky. When he refused to let me be, I took his gun from him and shot him. His brothers took offense, so I left town in a hurry.”
“Beautiful and deadly,” Cooley said with some admiration. “That’s about the perfect combination in a lady.”
Mandy beamed at the compliment. They sat close to the fire, eating slowly to make the skimpy food last. By the time they finished, the sun had vanished and a chilly wind kicked up, sighing softly through the pines and drowning out the rush of water in the nearby stream. The combination of riding like a fool, having a belly with enough food and feeling the warmth of a fire at his feet caused Cooley to stretch back. He stared up at the stars. Rutledge had told him the British navy had conquered the world by knowing which stars to follow. All he knew was the Big Dipper. Finding north was good enough for any traveling he did.
He started to point out the distinctive constellation to impress Mandy when a twig snapped a few feet away. Cooley rolled around and stared up at a tall, dark figure. Starlight glinted off the blued barrel of the six-gun.
“You folks surely don’t make it hard to follow you. A blind man on your trail’d have no problem finding you.”
“Jensen!” Cooley sat up and reached for his six-shooter. For his effort a gun barrel laid up alongside his head. His pistol went flying.
“I am tired of chasing you all around. Give me the map, and you can walk away from here without any lead in your gut.”
“Give it to him, John!” Mandy ca
me to her knees.
“I don’t have it. My partner’s got it. I don’t know where he is. Not here.”
Lars Jensen gritted his teeth. He stepped forward and landed a kick that caught Cooley on the shoulder. Pain rattled through him. He moaned and clutched his injured arm, then rubbed the spot on his temple where he’d been buffaloed.
“Take her and let me go. I don’t know anything. Just don’t hurt me!” Cooley screamed when Jensen landed another kick, this time between his legs. White pain shot into Cooley’s groin and seared nerves throughout his midsection.
“I’ve got no reason to take her. Your partner’s not likely to swap a whore for the map. Now, you . . . you know how to get the map, and that makes you valuable. I could torture you and find what I need, but you might up and die on me, so I’m taking you to my brother. I’ll let him do whatever he wants to get you to talk.” Jensen chuckled. “That way, if you die, it’s on him, and he can’t blame me.”
Jensen pulled Cooley to his feet. Wobbling about, Cooley clutched at the outlaw and turned him around. The little dance won Cooley another blow to the head. His neck snapped, and he saw stars, only none was in the overhead constellations.
Dazed, he sprawled on the ground. Jensen towered over him, a dark and menacing figure. When the gunshot rang out, Cooley jerked and sank back, more dead than alive.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
DAN RUTLEDGE ROLLED over and tried to keep the thin blanket over his shoulder. It was partially pinned under his body and wouldn’t stretch. Grumbling, he sat up and freed it, then pulled it up to his chin as he lay flat on his back and stared at the dawn working its way across the sky. High clouds caught the earliest light and worked themselves into fish-bone patterns.
“Looks like a good day to ride,” he said loud enough to wake his partner. When he got no reply, he sat up. A surge of panic hit him. Cooley was gone. His gear wasn’t where he had laid it out the night before. Twisting around, he saw where Whirlwind was tied to a tree limb. Mabel was gone.
England Dan came to his feet, sleep still fogging his brain. The howling the night before came back to his memory. Big Owl. Banshee. Or what Cooley had been certain was the banshee. He patted his coat pocket. The crinkle of paper assured him that his partner hadn’t stolen the map and gone off on his own to get rich. England Dan smiled ruefully at the idea. Cooley got lost going from their mine to the cabin. Of all the skills he might possess, reading a map wasn’t one of them.
Thinking on it, England Dan realized that his partner lacked skill in most things. That made them a good partnership. His expertise was appreciated by the man who got drunk and spent their last few dollars in gold flakes on a treasure map.
To be sure that there hadn’t been some violence that had spirited Cooley away, he studied the ground. He finished his tracking near the stallion. Disgust filled him. Cooley had left on his own, probably scared off by the banshee.
“What could it be?” he wondered aloud. A complete search of the area failed to turn up any sign of whatever had made the hideous wailing the night before, but he was certain the mule tracks going toward town were Cooley’s. Nobody else had disturbed the ground for fifty yards in any direction.
He started a fire and boiled a cup of coffee. Food was scarce, but he found a moldy, rock-hard hunk of hardtack and buffalo jerky so stale he thought his teeth would fall out trying to rip off a piece. Even soaking it in the fierce coffee did little to soften it. When he finally finished his breakfast, it sat in his belly like mining dross. That came as much from the quality of his meal as from his mounting anger at Cooley for running off. Partners didn’t do that.
Even ones frightened away by Big Owl.
“You idiot,” he growled. “You’re the one who renamed it the Lost Banshee Mine. You scared yourself for no reason.”
But there was some reason. Whatever had made the sounds the night before had to be fierce. Bears roamed the mountains, but that hadn’t been a bear. Nor had it been a mountain lion. Those were the top predators. Imagining some little toad hardly the size of his hand making such a savage hunting cry made him laugh. He sobered when he pulled his six-shooter and checked the cylinder. Three rounds. That was all he had to defend himself from whatever filled the night with such a haunting cry.
A banshee’s hunting cry warning him he was going to die.
His food became even less digestible when he thought that No Shadow’s tall tale carried some truth. Cooley had run off. Had he also died? The banshee had wailed to warn of impending death. England Dan ran his hands over his dusty clothing. It hadn’t been him who died. That left his partner.
“Serves you right, if you did.”
Cooley should never have gone off into the night on his own like he did. While his partner wasn’t the bravest man in the world, he at least could have said goodbye. Leaving a note was out of the question since he didn’t know how to read or write, but something other than skulking away would have been the honorable thing to do.
He took out the map and turned it around, finding the speck that marked Mule Springs. That was the starting point to the Irish Lord.
“The Lost Banshee Mine,” he corrected himself. “That’s what Cooley called it, and that’s what I’ll find.” He folded the map and thrust it back into the voluminous coat pocket. If the partnership had been dissolved, everything he found was all his. Big Owl or not, banshee or not, he was going to be rich.
With newfound determination, he packed his sparse gear and swung into the saddle. The stallion gamboled about, ready to run. Keeping Whirlwind from tearing off took some skill, but he was gaining experience riding the spirited horse. He headed across the stream and deeper into the mountains, hunting for a pass through the Superstition Mountains that led to New Mexico Territory and his starting point at Mule Springs.
By midday he had to admit how turned around he was. Storm clouds slipped in from the south and hid the sun, further robbing him of direction. Not for the first time, he wished he had a compass. Even that wasn’t a guarantee to keeping on a trail leading to Mule Springs. More than one miner had complained that the iron in the rocks tugged at a compass needle and gave false readings.
Waiting for night so he could read the stars wasn’t that good an idea, either. The heavy clouds warned of a torrential downpour. Finding the tail of the scorpion or the pointer stars in the Big Dipper had to wait for clearer skies.
Reinforcing this, a heavy wet raindrop splattered against the crown of his bowler. He looked up and caught another drop in his eye. Wiping it out so he saw clearly again, he hunted around for a place to ride out the storm. A canyon mouth beckoned, offering a few shallow caves for refuge. He rode to the first one and saw it was hardly five feet deep. Rain pelted down with increasing fury, but he kept hunting until he came to a cave higher on the canyon wall that extended into the hillside.
England Dan led the stallion in out of the cold, wet rain; then he settled down in the cave mouth to stare at the gray curtain. Dust turned to mud, and the wind made him shiver. After a few minutes of it, he came around to Cooley’s way of thinking. From the first time he’d heard of the map, he thought it was a nobbler. So many things kept him from getting Cooley’s—their—money back. Finding the cowboy with a couple bullet holes in him had only been the start to changing his mind.
Everybody wanted the map enough to kill. He considered giving it to Lars Jensen since the outlaw Gonzales wanted so badly had to be the primary culprit.
He took it out and ran his fingers around the increasingly tattered edges.
“Is this for real? Why would a criminal like Jensen who likely never worked a day in his life want to find the mine? Not to work it, no matter how rich the ore.” He returned the map to his pocket. Hunting for the Lost Banshee Mine felt more and more like a wild-goose chase. Cooley might have been the smart one, not in getting conned into buying the map but in knowing when to fold and leave the game.
The rain continued to drive downward in sheets. Whirlwind neighed occasionally to show disdain for being trapped in a cave when there were wide-open spaces to gallop along and hills to climb. Letting the rain lull him, England Dan drifted off to a half sleep. Cooley had cut and run for the wrong reason. The right reason might have been the impossibility of finding the lost mine, if the map was legitimate. England Dan had no notion of where he was. There was a good reason these had been named the Superstition Mountains. Too many prospectors had gone missing over the years. With every disappearance, a new story popped up.
“Banshees,” he muttered. How absurd that was. Stories told around the campfire entertained and amused and were never intended to be the gospel truth. Cooley had left the quest because of the howling, but a better reason to give up and go back to Oasis was the distinct possibility of finding nothing.
His chin dipped and rested on his chest. England Dan came instantly awake when the banshee cry came rolling up the canyon between claps of thunder. His hand moved away from the Webley. There wasn’t anything to shoot. Nothing he saw, at least. The rain was slowing, and a large stream now made its way along the canyon floor. No animal hunted in such foul conditions.
He stood and tried to see through the downpour. Nothing moved that wasn’t driven by water. A flash of lighting striking a distant peak got him to counting. Ten seconds. A British naval officer had once told him every second equaled a mile of distance. Ten miles.
Barely had the thunder died when he heard Big Owl crying again. If he let his imagination run wild, the Indian banshee called out his name.
Dan. Dan. Dan.
Whatever—whoever—made the eerie sounds was in for a world of trouble. If there hadn’t been another outcry, he would have been on the trail heading back to town. The Trafalgar Mine wasn’t the richest in the hills, but it still had a few good months left, at least for a single miner. As far as he was concerned, Cooley had given up his share when he left.
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