Gold on the Hoof

by Peter Grant

  “Let us do that, amigo,” Nastas agreed.

  It was nearly nine o’clock before Hector learned what they needed to know. He came hurrying up to Esteban. “They rode through without stopping. A campesino at a cantina said he saw them turn off the trail on the far side of town, heading towards the mountains.”

  Esteban cursed virulently. “That means they knew we were following them, and they wanted to shake us off. Damn the luck! I thought we were far enough back that they wouldn’t notice, particularly since we’re only three now.”

  “What are we going to do?” Felix asked.

  “We’ll have to wait until morning. The best tracker in the world can’t read tracks at night. We’ll follow them until we find them. Don’t forget, Sandoval told us to get him. If we come back without his head, he’ll blame us.”

  The other two nodded slowly. Their boss was not the kind of man to take failure lightly, or forgive those who let him down.

  By mid-morning, Walt and Nastas had entered the horseshoe valley the old man had described. The trail, wide enough for only one horse, ascended the right side of the valley at a steep incline. In a couple of places, they had to dismount and lead their horses past an outcrop of rock or a thick bush that did not allow enough room for riders.

  As the road curved at the horseshoe bend, Walt saw a rock on the inside of the trail. A rough cross had been scratched onto the surface. Wind and weather had already partly obscured it. In a few more years, it would probably be unnoticeable. “Este es todo,” he called back to Nastas. “This is the place. It’s just as the old man described it.”

  They stood for a moment at the grave, looking down at it silently. Walt took off his hat, and raised his eyes to the sky. “Lord, I ain’t much of a prayin’ man, but Major d’Assaily did his duty as he saw it, an’ did it as well as he knew how. He had guts, loyalty, and faith in his cause. I reckon there’s too few like that these days. I’d be obliged if you’ll please remember him kindly.”

  Silently he added mentally, And if you’re so inclined, I’ll be real grateful if you’ll please help me find what he buried. It’ll make all the difference in the world to me, an’ also to Tyler Reese, ’cause it’ll help me partner with him in his cattle ranch. We both served the same cause as the Major, an’ lost just about everything for it. We’ve had to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps. It’d be real nice to recover some o’ what we lost.

  Leading the horses to let them breathe, they moved on around the bend. As they were about to start climbing the other side of the canyon, Nastas pointed. “Look! You can see down the valley from here. Aren’t those three riders, just starting up the trail?”

  Walt took out his spyglass and peered through it. “You’re right. It’s those three from yesterday. I recognize their hosses. They musta tracked us from town, all the way around and back. They’re determined bastards, aren’t they?”

  Nastas nodded. “Are we far enough from witnesses up here?”

  Walt grinned. “I reckon so – and I think I know just how to discourage ’em. Have they seen us, d’you think?”

  “If we can see them, they can see us, amigo.”

  “You’re right. With luck, it’ll make ’em eager enough that they’ll push hard to catch up with us. They won’t pay much attention to anything else. That’s just the way I want ’em. Come on, let’s get moving. I want to find the right place to give them a surprise.”

  Esteban pointed. “It’s them! Look, the bastards are almost around the bend in the trail already!”

  Felix spat in disgust. “They must be three miles ahead of us, and we can’t make more than walking pace up this pass. We won’t catch up today.”

  “We’d better, or the boss will have our hides! Come on. At least we know where they are now. When we get to the top, we can push our horses harder.”

  The three men spurred their horses up the trail, cursing as it grew steeper.

  Walt placed a last small rock, then stood back, surveying his work critically. “I reckon that oughta do it.”

  Nastas sniggered. “I’m glad you are my friend. You make a very bad enemy!”

  “All right, let’s head up the trail and around the rock there.”

  Nastas led all the horses up the path. Walt waited until they were clear, then began to uncoil what looked like a roll of thick string, laying it out in the ditch that ran along the inside edge of the trail. The black line was almost invisible unless one looked hard for it. He tucked it under grass and behind shrubs and bushes as he slowly made his way up the path and around a big rock that jutted out from the valley wall, about seventy feet above where he’d been working.

  The three men rounded the horseshoe bend, and paused for a moment to let their horses catch their breath.

  “Can you see them?” Esteban called to Hector, at the head of the group.

  Hector peered up the trail. “No, but the path twists and turns around outcroppings. They’re probably near the top, or already over it.”

  “Then we’ve got to keep moving. There are other trails leading off this one, a few miles beyond that. We need to see if they take one. We daren’t lose them again!”

  Walt half-sat, half-leaned against the canyon wall while Nastas peered over the big rock sheltering them from sight. “They are turning onto the straight stretch. They’ll be at the rocks in about a minute.”

  “All right.” Walt reached into his pocket and took out a match. He held it ready, waiting.

  Nastas asked, “What made you bring dynamite with you?”

  “I used it to help kill some of the men who’d kidnapped your daughter, remember? It was real useful in taking their boss, too. Since then, I’ve always carried a few sticks on long journeys. A man never knows when it might come in handy.”

  The Navajo laughed softly. “I doubt those three will think of it as ‘handy’, amigo.”

  “I doubt they’ll be thinking of anything!”

  “They are almost there… another ten feet… now! Now!”

  Walt struck the match against his boot, and held its sputtering, hissing flame to the end of the fuse wound around his hook. Bickford’s quick match was guaranteed to burn at a measured rate of thirty yards per second in still air. The spark flashed down its length, vanishing around the rock so fast the eye could barely follow it.

  The four sticks of dynamite Walt had buried blew up with a thunderous blast that echoed from side to side, up and down the valley. A billow of black smoke and dust erupted from the valley wall. The stones Walt had piled over the dynamite turned into makeshift grapeshot, slashing out in all directions. Felix, in the center of the group, took the full force of the explosion. His body and his equally dead horse went flying off the path into the valley. Hector, ahead of him, was also killed by the stones. His grievously injured mount plunged off the path, rolling kicking and screaming down the steep side of the canyon, taking his body with it, breaking its neck in its fall.

  Esteban, at the rear of the group, came off lightest. He was hit by a couple of flying stones, bruising him and drawing blood. His horse reared up in fright, tossing him from the saddle and pulling its reins out of his hand. It turned, kicking, bucking and pitching, and plunged back the way it had come, neighing and screaming its pain and fear.

  Esteban landed hard, knocking the breath out of his body. The blast had deafened him, and shaken him to the core. It took him precious seconds, gasping for air, to realize that his only means of escape was running away as fast as it could move. “¡Oye!” he bellowed, in his shock ignoring everything else – including the possibility that whoever had set off the blast was still nearby. “Come back here!” He set off after the horse at a shambling run.

  Above the rock further up the path, Nastas drew a bead on the stumbling figure through the sights of his new Winchester 1873 rifle. His finger caressed the trigger, and the shot went off with an abrupt bark and a billow of white smoke from the muzzle. The flat-nosed two-hundred-grain .44 bullet, propelled by forty grains of powder, slammed i
nto Esteban’s upper spine, severing it. The bandido pitched forward onto his face, dead before he hit the ground.

  “Got him!” Nastas called down in profound satisfaction. “Thank you for another chance to ride the war trail, brother! That is the first blood for this new rifle. You got the other two with the dynamite. They won’t be bothering us any more.”

  “What about that horse?” Walt asked.

  “It will make its own way out of the pass in due course. The first campesino to find it will strip off the saddle and bridle and sell them, keep the rifle for hunting, and use the horse to pull his plow or his cart. The buzzards, coyotes and other carrion-eaters will soon take care of the others, hiding the evidence. I’ll tip the last one’s body off the path, to join his friends. The next few rains will turn the hole where the dynamite went off into mud, and slowly fill it. I don’t think anyone that matters will ever figure out what happened.”

  “Let’s hope so. I reckon they’ll see the smoke and dust of the explosion in Santa Rosa, but they probably won’t realize what it was, and the noise won’t carry that far. All right, amigo. Tip that body into the canyon, then let’s make tracks.”

  Walt used the diary’s description to follow the path along the spine of the foothills. He counted off two trails that led down side valleys, then moved more slowly, scanning the countryside carefully as the sun dropped towards the western horizon. He used Major d’Assaily’s compass to take bearings at intervals. At last he halted his horse.

  “I can see Rancherias over there, almost due east,” he said, pointing. “As for Santa Rosa, it’s about north-north-east of here. That means the valley where the Major buried his message must be this one here. He said he used the top of the southern wall – that one right there. The trail goes along that ridge, then seems to turn down into a valley over that way.”

  “Are you going to look for it tonight?”

  “No. The light’s fading fast. Let’s make camp, get a good meal and a night’s sleep, then start fresh in the morning. We’ll have to move carefully down the trail, looking for a triangular shaped rock about halfway down the ridge. If we find one, I reckon that’ll be the place.”

  They found a sheltered spot some distance from the trail, with rocks to hide the light from their fire. Nastas built it while Walt picketed the horses and off-saddled them. They shared a quick supper of bacon, beans and johnnycake, washed down with black coffee. They took it in turns to stay awake during the night, guarding against unexpected and unwanted visitors.

  It rained lightly during the small hours of the morning. By dawn they were tired, cold, and aching from the damp in the air. They brewed more coffee, ate a hurried breakfast of the remains of last night’s meal, and saddled their horses; then they headed down the ridge, riding slowly and carefully. Nastas watched ahead and behind, in case more bandidos showed up, while Walt looked for the triangular rock.

  He found it halfway down the ridge, almost exactly as the Major had described it. “There it is!” he exclaimed, pointing to the right side of the trail. It was set back about ten feet, with bushes growing on two sides of it. They’d probably taken root since the gold had been buried there, nine years before. He used the compass to confirm that the towns of Rancherias and Santa Rosa de Múzquiz were on the correct bearings.

  “I guess this is the right rock, Nastas.” He hesitated. “I’m not too worried about more people coming up our back trail, because we took care of them yesterday; but they may still come from the other direction. Would you keep your eyes peeled, while I dig, and keep your rifle handy? I can lift this rock on my own, even with one hand, and I reckon what’s under it won’t have been buried deep. The Major didn’t have time for that, what with being chased and all, and being wounded too.”

  “I shall do so, amigo.”

  Walt got down from his horse, took a spade from his pack horse, and walked over to the rock. He saw with satisfaction that Nastas was scanning up and down the mountainside, looking for any potential threat. He jammed the end of the spade beneath one end of the rock, placed a small stone beneath the base of the handle to act as a fulcrum, and put all his weight on it. With a sucking sound, the rock lifted up from the place where it had lain, revealing black, fertile soil. Walt lifted it further with his hand and hook, and leaned it against the bushes.

  He took the spade and began to dig carefully into the ground. On his third scoop of earth, he felt something harder beneath the spade, and scraped away the thin layer of dirt. The edge of a leather container of some sort became visible, and he used his hook to pull on a strap at its edge. Slowly, almost reluctantly, the earth let go of what proved to be a leather pannier from a pack saddle. Walt pulled it out of the hole. It chinked softly as he laid it on the ground. Further investigation revealed a second pannier, which he also extracted.

  Inside each pannier were two drawstring canvas bags, treated with oil and wax to make them as weatherproof as possible. Trembling in anticipation, Walt tugged at the drawstring of the first bag, pulled it open, and couldn’t restrain a whoop of glee. The gleam of gold coins, undimmed by years of burial, met his eyes. Exultant, he picked up a handful and let them trickle through his fingers.

  He didn’t open the other three bags. It was obvious what they contained. He took them out, then checked the panniers for anything else. One contained a flat package wrapped in oilskin, presumably the letter from President Davis to Brigadier General Shelby.

  He looked up at Nastas. “We’ve found it! This is what we came for.”

  The Navajo grinned broadly. “That is good. We have not wasted this journey, then.” He showed no curiosity about what Walt had dug up, content to continue his scan for enemies.

  “You don’t want to look?”

  “I heard the sound of coins, but that is only money. You white men are more concerned with that than I am. Now, if it were prime horses, that would be real wealth!”

  Grinning at his companion’s comment, Walt loaded the four canvas bags of gold and the oilskin package onto his pack saddle, transferring some of its other contents to Nastas’ pack horse to balance the load between them. He replaced the leather panniers in the hole, scraped the dirt back over them, and lowered the stone once more, trying to make it appear undisturbed. There was no sense in letting anyone suspect that something had been dug out from under it.

  At last he swung into the saddle. “All right, let’s make tracks. My map doesn’t show this trail – it’s too small – but it’s heading in the right direction, out of the mountains, and we can see Rancherias from here. The road to Monclova is east of the town. Once we’re out of the foothills, we’ll find it easily enough.”

  Nastas booted his rifle. “Lead the way. I shall follow.”

  It was late afternoon by the time they emerged at the head of a long, gently sloping valley at the base of the mountains. The trail widened as it ran out towards the flatlands. Some distance ahead on the right, there was a large white adobe ranch building, with stables, barns and storehouses around it. A shoulder-high adobe wall surrounded it at some distance, with a large gate arch providing entry. Workers’ cottages were off to one side. A series of corrals stood on the other side, with horses in many of them, and more horses grazed in pastures on the right side of the valley. Clearly, this was a horse ranching operation of some sort.

  Nastas borrowed Walt’s spyglass and looked carefully at the nearest horses. “These are very fine animals, much better than most we have seen. They remind me of the old Spanish stock that I seek to breed true back home.”

  “Oh? Let me take a look.” Walt held out his hand for the spyglass, and peered through it. “You know, you’re right! I haven’t seen so much horseflesh that good in years. I wonder if they’re selling any?”

  “Shall we ride to that estancia and ask?”

  “I don’t see why not.”

  They continued down the trail until they saw a path leading off it towards the estancia. Turning onto it, they couldn’t help noticing that a man in a watchtower
next to the house rang a bell, which came faintly to their ears, and leaned out and yelled something. Within a matter of moments, four men came to the gate, walking fast or running. They carried rifles. They didn’t stand in the path, but appeared to take position on either side of the gate.

  “They are cautious, amigo,” Nastas noted.

  “In this part of the world, I would be, too. We’ve already met some of the reasons why.”

  As they drew nearer, Walt could see the men peering over the wall. Only one appeared to be young. The others had gray hair to at least some extent, and one was almost bald. Their faces were lined and weatherbeaten. They didn’t aim their rifles, but stood with them ready in their hands.

  One of the men stepped into the gateway as they drew up their horses. “Quién eres y qué quieres?” he asked bluntly, without preamble. “Who are you and what do you want?”

  Walt’s eyebrows rose in surprise at so unfriendly a greeting. He said slowly, “We are travelers. I am here in Mexico to buy horses. We could not help noticing yours, and their high quality. We came to ask whether any were for sale.”

  The other man’s lips formed an ‘O’ of surprise. “How did you get here? They did not stop you?”

  “Stop us? Who? I don’t understand, señor.”

  “There are armed men who stop horse buyers and dealers from coming here.” He waved his hands towards the eastern exit to the valley.