Buried Treasure: A Jericho Sims Tale (The Adventures of Jericho Sims Book 2)

by T. Mike McCurley

  Buried Treasure

  A Jericho Sims tale

  Copyright 2015 by T. Mike McCurley

  E-book version published by T. Mike McCurley

  Cover Art by nancydesign

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your enjoyment only, then please return to your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  DEDICATIONS:

  To all those who enjoyed the first. You gave me hope to continue the next.

  Special thanks to those who helped with the book. Beta readers, idea-bouncers, and all around helpful-type folk. Without y'all, Jericho wouldn't be anything but dream.

  Scott, Norm, Lisa, CC, Hg -- You folks rock.

  Table of Contents

  Dedications and Acknowledgments

  Jericho Sims

  Buried Treasure

  About the Author

  Also available from T. Mike McCurley

  Jericho Sims

  When Union troops killed Magdalene Sims, they took away the only thing Jericho Sims had ever loved, and they unleashed a terror on their ranks. Returning to a past he had abandoned for a wife and home, the former gunfighter tore his way through the bluecoats in a whirlwind of destruction.

  In the late years of the Civil War, now operating as part of a guerrilla band working behind enemy lines, Jericho discovered there was more to the world than he had ever suspected. His unit was shattered and he was among the wounded sent to a field hospital maintained by a surgeon in the middle of a demonic ritual intended to grant unimaginable power to the doctor. His fellow soldiers were butchered as a part of that ritual, and when Jericho interrupted it, he was exposed to dark magic that has marked him for the forces of the supernatural.

  In a constant wandering search for the Surgeon, whose face no one can remember, Jericho encounters the oddities that go unnoticed by others, and finds himself becoming embroiled in one dark conspiracy after another.

  Buried Treasure

  “Ain’t every day you see a head just poking up outta the ground,” the gunslinger said, leaning forward in the saddle to get a closer look at what he had stumbled across. Leather creaked as he shifted position, competing for volume with the desert wind blowing its hot breath down through the valley.

  “For what it’s worth, mister, I still can’t see one,” the head replied, its voice dry and reedy. Hazy blue eyes flickered up toward the mounted man.

  “Y’all want a drink?” asked the gunslinger. He tilted his head to the side, listening to the sounds of the wind and what he could make out in the valley. It would not do to be caught unawares if this was not what it appeared. Granted, it would be a lot of effort for a minimal payout, but he had seen worse traps.

  “I’d be mighty obliged.”

  Leather creaked again, well-worn boots hit the ground, and moments later a canteen was being lowered to the lips of the sun-ravaged face. The man offering the water was tall and lean, with movements that hinted at a caged speed. A battered leather hat distorted the shape of his head as he knelt to pour the water with a gentle hand. He waited as the head drank four long swallows from the canteen. Small rivulets of water escaped the parched lips, cutting tracks in the caked dirt of the chin and dripping onto the sand.

  “What brings a head out on a day like this?” the man asked as he pulled back the canteen. He poured a palm full of water and let it drip out onto the top of the head, cooling the agonized flesh.

  “Thanks for the drink, friend,” the head said. The voice had gained a little strength now that some measure of moisture had returned to the dried throat. “Name’s Price. Boyd Price.”

  “Jericho Sims,” greeted the man.

  “You a bounty man?”

  “Not today. Why? You worth money?”

  “Not today,” echoed the head.

  “I don’t know,” Jericho said. “Seems to me I could find a pretty fair sum with a talking head. Carry it to towns and such; let them pay me to hear it talk.”

  “Surely you ain’t daft,” Boyd said. “You know I ain’t just a head.”

  “Course you ain’t, but you do have to admit that would bring a fair piece of coin. Now then, you wanna tell me how you come to be in this predicament?” Jericho asked. He slipped a ragged cigarro from a vest pocket and sparked a match against his thumbnail. As he blew a thin column of gray smoke skyward, he looked into the eyes of the head and waved the cigarro. In response to the abbreviated nod, he tucked the smoke into the corner of Boyd’s mouth, next to a gleaming gold tooth.

  “Had me a bit of a falling out with some fellers. They decided it would be a sport to stick me in a hole for the buzzards.”

  “Ain’t the buzzards that’ll get you out here. You’re about half an hour’s walk from an Indian graveyard,” Jericho told him, hooking a thumb toward the west. “Them folks find you here and you’ll be praying for the buzzards instead.”

  “I remember seeing that,” Boyd said, his eyes drifting to the right and away from the smoke.

  “Big place? Lot of graves? Fulla dead folk and jewelry people oughta be leaving alone?”

  “Yep. You, uh, feel up to helping dig me out before them damn Injuns get here?” Boyd asked. Jericho snapped out a bandana and spread it atop Boyd’s head to shield it from the sun.

  “Might be I could do that. Gotta find me something for a shovel. You gonna be okay ‘til I get back?”

  “I don’t have much of a choice, do I?”

  “Reckon not.”

  “Thieves have a disagreement, this is the kind of thing they do to one another. Seems to me there’s a lot better ways to get rid of someone than burying him up to the neck,” Jericho said. “Somebody wanted you to suffer. Either they wanted the locals to find you or they’re gonna come back and see if you’re ready to tell them what they want to know.”

  Jericho climbed back into the saddle, patting Gideon on the neck as he looked around. It wouldn’t do to forget where he came across Boyd. His eyes settled on a few landmarks and he committed them to memory before wheeling about and trotting back the way he had come. “That’s a man needing to figure out what his partners have in mind,” he said, speaking as much to the air as to his horse.

  Gideon nickered, and Jericho smiled. “Glad to know you think so, too. What do you think about this? Guess we oughta go dig him out, huh?”

  As if in answer, Gideon paused his movement. Jericho looked around to find that they were near a couple of healthy trees that, following some judicious work with a hatchet and a few minutes cleanup with his knife, yielded a makeshift spade. He rode back to where he had left Boyd. A part of him expected to find the man dead, killed by a wandering tribal party or just an angry grave visitor. It would not be a good thing.

  What he was not expecting was to see through a gap between two rocks and find the head surrounded by four men in chaps, denim pants, and riding shirts. Their horses were tied to one of the scrub brushes that lined the valley, maybe a dozen steps away from the quartet. Jericho eased Gideon to a stop, slipping the Winchester from the scabbard beside his saddle. He dropped to the ground and stalked toward the gathering, keeping the rocks between the group and himself.

  One of the men was looking around in slow sweeps, his head moving and his body following suit as he scanned their surroun
dings. Jericho had left a bandana on Boyd’s head and a cigarro in his mouth. The men would have no doubt someone had been there recently, and the length of the stubby smoke would give them a clue as to how long ago it had been lit.

  Jericho crept a little closer, dropping to his belly and slithering across the sand until he could make out what was being said.

  “...was acting all odd,” one of the men was saying. He appeared to be addressing a lanky man in a black frock coat.

  “I told you —” Boyd began. The talking man kicked sand at the head.

  “You shut up!” he shouted. Frock Coat reached out a restraining hand.

  “Let him speak his peace.” The voice was barely more than a whisper on the wind but it seemed to calm the man. At their feet, Boyd spat sand and grit from his lips.

  “Charlie wasn’t feeling good. I was checking on him,” Boyd said.

  “Of course he wasn’t feeling good!” yelled the first speaker. He threw up his hands and turned away. A second later he was back, towering over Boyd and screaming into his face. “He knew you were gonna kill him!”

  “Lawdog’s bullet killed Charlie, and that’s the truth,” Boyd said, refusing to quail before the verbal attack.

  Jericho noted the last statement in particular, as it gave more of a clue as to what had transpired to leave Boyd buried up to his neck. Apparently the group had been in some sort of legal trouble, verifying Jericho’s assertion that thieves were the kind of people to bury a partner like that. Along the way there had been some kind of friction and they had taken the time to bury one of their own.

  “You can stay here and rot with him,” spat the screaming man, pointing at the ground in which Boyd was buried.

  Make that two they buried, Jericho thought. He wondered if Boyd knew that Charlie was entombed with him. The man had given no sign that he did, and certainly had not mentioned it. Then again, he had failed to bring up the fact that he was some kind of an outlaw, only vaguely hinting at it with the question about Jericho being a bounty hunter. He certainly seemed nonplussed by the declaration of his partner, so Jericho assumed he did know he was in a grave with Charlie.

  “Boyd,” Frock Coat said, his tone that of a parent speaking to a child.

  “Yeah?”

  “Langford here tells me that back at the bank, you hesitated, and a guard managed to get off a shot. After that, you couldn’t keep Charlie alive. It’s twice now that you put us in a position of wondering where your loyalties lie. Why should I wait for a third?”

  A slip of his hand beneath his jacket led to an enormous revolver filling his hand a moment later, and Frock Coat pointed the barrel at Boyd’s helpless face. The sound of the hammer coming back echoed on the wind. The man might have been bluffing, but then again, he might not.

  Jericho leaped to his feet, letting out a sharp, echoing whistle as he leveled the rifle. He settled the sights on Frock Coat as the men reacted to the sound. A simple crook of his finger would punch a hole in the man if it came to that. The other three men were moving, and the motions in the periphery of his vision let him catalog and plan his next targets. The odds were not good, but he had passed through worse in the past.

  “First shot starts a bloodbath,” Frock Coat said, still pointing his weapon at Boyd.

  “First shot means everybody dies today,” Jericho corrected. “You really wanna bring the locals around? This is Chickasaw territory.”

  “Oh, Hell,” one of the men said, turning back to face Frock Coat.

  “We know whose territory we’re in,” Frock Coat said, ignoring his companion.

  “Then you know what’s gonna happen if they find y’all here.”

  There was silence for a minute as Frock Coat seemed to be weighing the words. His thumb took up position on the hammer of his revolver and he eased it down before returning it to position beneath his arm with a glacial slowness. When his hand came back out it was spread wide and moved just as slowly as it had when he was holstering the weapon.

  “What do you suggest?” he called. Jericho eased his finger off the trigger of the Winchester.

  “You take your boys and ride on out of here.”

  “That’s it?” The question was accompanied by a derisive snort. “What about Boyd, here? He is one of my men.”

  “Not any more.”

  The four men traded gazes back and forth, and Jericho felt the tension build once more. One of the men was sliding his feet across the sand slowly in an effort to drift a few paces further around to a position behind Jericho.

  “Y’all make up your mind. In about ten seconds, I’m gonna put a chunk of lead in you and take my chances,” Jericho said.

  “You do and you’ll call the Indians,” Frock Coat said, a grin spreading across his face.

  “I reckon so. Then again, any of y’all speak Chickasaw?”

  “Hell, no.”

  “Served with more than a few of them in the War. I can speak enough to keep my hair. Y’all ain’t looking quite so fortunate, are you?”

  “So we’ve got a standoff, then.”

  “If that’s what you wanna call it. You can end it pretty simple, though. Walk on away.”

  “Boyd here put one of our boys in the ground.”

  “Looks like he got paid back in kind. Get on your horses.”

  “You’re mighty outnumbered to be calling the shots here,” Frock Coat said. His hand slowly moved back under his coat. Under his thumb, the hammer of his revolver slipped back to the half-cock. “Ain’t sure who you think you are.”

  “I’m the one that’s gonna pump a slug in you if you skin that cannon of yours. That’s about all you need to know. You may be fast, Mister, but I put a squeeze on this trigger and you’ll be looking for your guts in the next territory.”

  Frock Coat stared long and hard at the muzzle of the rifle that was pointed his way. His mouth worked and he spat on the ground, narrowly missing Boyd’s head.

  “We ain’t through, mister. You and me, we ain’t through. One day, we’re gonna have us a reckoning.”

  “Looking forward to it.”

  “You’re gonna be looking at the sky, is what you’re gonna be.”

  Jericho stood still as the men regained their horses and turned away. He kept the rifle trained on them until they left his line of sight. A whistle had Gideon trotting to his side, and he slipped the Winchester back into its scabbard. Retrieving the bit of tree branch, he walked over to where Boyd was buried and began to dig.

  “Snider ain’t just spittin’ in the wind, friend,” Boyd said. “He don’t forget a face.”

  “Mine ain’t worth remembering,” Jericho said, continuing to chop at the dirt.

  “Don’t think he won’t, though.”

  “Him and a couple dozen other hard cases. It’s all the same.”

  Within ten minutes, Jericho had freed Boyd’s arms, and the man was able to help with the excavation, using both hands to scoop away at the sand. The progress picked up speed then, and soon enough the man was able to lever himself out of the hole. He stood brushing sand from his clothing as Jericho brought over the canteen from his saddle. A glance downward showed Jericho bits of clothing that indicated Boyd had indeed been standing atop a body.

  “Much obliged,” Boyd said as he drank deep from the vessel.

  “When you finish, just set it down real slow.”

  The cautionary tone in Jericho’s voice made Boyd start, and as he began to turn, Jericho warned him.

  “Don’t. Just stand real still. We’ve got an audience.”

  Stepping into the area from all around them, seemingly solidifying from pools of shadow into armed and angry people, emerged dozens of Indian warriors. Their clothing was a mixture of styles from European, French, and local dress, but their weapons were well-worn and obviously at home in the hands of the men.

  “Tell them we’re friendly,” hissed Boyd.

  Jericho started to speak to the Indians, but suddenly turned and looked askance at Boyd. “Mister, did you th
ink I was gonna tell them we weren’t?” he asked.

  “No, but —”

  “Of all the addle-pated things to think I was gonna say,” Jericho added, shaking his head. He turned back to the slowly-approaching men and uttered a halting series of syllables that meant nothing to Boyd.

  One of the warriors advanced at a fast pace and ripped a beaded leather cord from around Boyd’s neck. He held it high above his head and the other warriors cheered. The butt of the warrior’s rifle whirled around and came across in a fast strike that took Boyd in the sunburned cheek. Wheeling on Jericho, he shouted in the same language the gunslinger had struggled with a moment before. When he finished, Jericho pasted on a wide smile. His words to Boyd were slow and sweet.

  “They’re saying you took that from their burial grounds. They want back everything you took or they’re going to kill us and take it from our corpses. I told them I’d talk to you. You got anything to say, you better say it now.”

  “It’s all I have,” Boyd said, keeping his eyes downcast and spitting blood onto the sand. “The others have the rest.”

  “That Snider fellow?”

  “Him and the other boys,” he said, reaching a finger into his mouth to wiggle a dislodged tooth.

  “What are you doing here, anyway? You know, other than stealing from the dead.”

  We knocked over a bank and stole a payroll shipment bound for Fairview. Snider’s got the connections to hide everything, us included.”

  “So you thought you’d make my life more interesting today. Great. See, now this is what happens when you save some poor bastard buried to the neck. Thanks a lot. And, hey! Why the hell did they bury you, anyway?”

  “Charlie. He took a bullet in the job and I was trying to keep him going. I think they hit something important, ‘cause he just started gettin’ worse and worse. Pale and such. Next thing I know he was dead. When we dug the grave, they buffaloed me and I woke up buried in the hole, standing on Charlie’s body. They tried to tell Snider I killed him. I think they wanted him to kill me so’s they could split my share.”