by Ralph Cotton
The four of them had each raised a bandanna up over the bridge of their nose against the stirred-up dust. At the end of the second hour, having gained another seven feet of cleared entrance shaft, Little Ted stopped and leaned back against the shaft wall and looked up at the thick support timbers overhead.
“How deep do you suppose they seal a mine shaft?” he asked Summers, his voice muffled by the dust-caked bandanna.
With the point of a pick he’d taken from the wagon bed, Summers stepped up onto the pile, reached up against the timber-lined ceiling and pried down a thick rock from its spot and let it tumble down past him to the ground at his feet.
“As deep as it dang well suited Ansil Swann,” Lonnie answered before Summers could. “If it was my gold, I’d have buried it pretty deep.”
Summers reached out with the pick and pulled down another rock. He stepped aside out of its way as it tumbled from the timbered ceiling to the ground. From the blackness behind the rock he felt the first breath of cool air from deep inside the cavern.
“I think I just found out the answer for us, Lonnie,” he said. He looked around the open space they had created. Almost twelve feet of piled rock had been removed. “About this deep,” he added, nodding at the open hole in the rock pile.
As the two stepped up onto the pile and gathered closer to him, Summers took out a match from his shirt pocket, struck it and held it carefully to the black cavity the rock had left. Without risking putting his head or forearm into the opening, he looked in and caught the flicker of match light on the open cavern in front of them.
“All right,” he said, leaning away and handing the match to Little Ted. “How does that look to you?” He pulled down his dusty bandanna and sank back on the rock pile.
“Whoo-ee!” said Little Ted. “We’ve done it! I feel like a prospector who’s just struck gold on my own!” he added.
He whooped and shouted aloud. So did Lonnie Kerns. Holding the match while Lonnie looked into the blackness, the two noted the cool out-drifting air bending the flame back toward them.
“It’s about dang time,” Lonnie said, dust puffing from his bandanna as he spoke through it.
“All right,” Summers said quietly, not wavering from the task at hand. “Now we’ll start pushing the rocks in and letting them fall away from us, instead of pulling them loose and letting them fall at us.”
“Sounds good to me,” Little Ted said with renewed energy.
At the front of the cleared shaft, Bailey Swann stepped in and looked at the three.
“What’s the cheering about?” she asked.
“We’ve gotten through the rocks,” Summers said. “Soon as we push this layer down, we’ll be inside.”
“Thank goodness,” Bailey said. “I have the wagon nearly empty. We should be loaded and able to leave before dark. With luck we’ll get on toward Don Manuel’s spread.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Summers said. He stepped onto the rock pile, reached up to the highest point and pushed, feeling the rock give way toward the other side.
Chapter 15
For another half hour, the four continued working, Ted and Lonnie going at a fevered pace now they knew the gold was so close at hand. Bailey Swann brought in an oil lantern, lit it and held it up. In the circle of lantern light Summers rolled away one last stone and the four of them stepped forward into the open shaft. They walked forward deeper into the shaft, the hillside entrance growing smaller behind them. On the floor at their feet they saw overlapping donkey prints and two small iron track rails running through the center of the shaft.
“This row of shafts on this hillside is the oldest the company owns,” Bailey said as they rounded a slight turn in the shaft and started following the cart rails downward. “Usually they seal the worked-out shafts with blasting powder. But Ansil had this one sealed by hand. From the outside you can’t tell the difference. Only when you go to reopen one, you’ll find the ones blasted shut are completely filled.”
“This makes a good hiding place,” Summers said, looking all around, the two ranch hands right beside him, the woman a step ahead with the raised lantern.
Around the slight turn, the four looked in the shadowy circle of light at an overturned ore cart lying on the tracks. Beyond it stood a fifteen-foot-long, four-foot-high stack of crates alongside the iron cart rails. A dusty canvas tarpaulin half covered the crates. They stopped and stared. Past the stack of covered crates stood a large iron three-man strongbox.
“My goodness,” Bailey said, almost gasping at the sight of the crates, “can that be the ingots?” She took a slow step forward, like a doe stepping into a wood’s clearing. “Is that the strongbox?” she murmured.
“Ain’t but one way to find out, ma’am.” Ted chuckled in his excitement. He hurried to the crates, Lonnie alongside him. The two threw back the dusty tarpaulin. Before the dust had settled, Lonnie had picked up an iron pry bar lying on the stack of crates and opened a lid.
Summers joined the two as Lonnie held up a gold ingot the size of his hand.
“My oh my!” he whispered to himself. “It’s plumb beautiful.” He held the ingot over for Little Ted to see. But Ted had already reached in and grabbed an ingot for himself. He turned it back and forth in his hand. The gold bar glittered softly even in the dim lantern light.
Summers looked along the row of crates through the wafting dust. At the end of the rows he saw Bailey Swann standing at the large strongbox. She took a large iron key from inside her coat and stuck it into the box’s lock and twisted it.
The ranch hands looked up from the gold at the sound of the door creaking open on the large iron box.
Bailey held the lantern close to the inside of the box, the light falling on stack upon stack of American greenback dollars.
“Ansil was right,” she said without looking around. “There’s a fortune here.” She put a hand forward and ran it down the stack as if the bills were alive and in need of affection.
Summers started walking toward her in the dim light. But he stopped abruptly and walked past the last of the stacked crates. His eyes traveled to the lower edge of the mine’s stone wall.
“What’s this?” he said aloud. He stood looking at three ragged, dust-covered bodies lying in a row. The seriousness of his voice caused Bailey to turn away from the open strongbox door and hurry to him, the lantern held up in front of her. Little Ted and Lonnie scurried over to Summers from the other direction.
“Holy Joseph!” said Ted, staring down at the bodies.
“Give me the lantern,” Summers said over his shoulder to Bailey as she moved closer.
Bailey handed him the lantern; he held it above the three dried bodies for a better look. The bodies lay sprawled, dressed in ragged mining clothes and boots, half-mummified, half skeletons. Summers moved the lantern back and forth slowly.
“What in the world!” Little Ted exclaimed as if in awe.
Summers stopped the lantern and held it over each body in turn, revealing a large bullet hole in each fleshless forehead.
“Exit wounds,” he murmured quietly, almost to himself.
“Shot from behind, you’re saying?” said Lonnie.
“Yes, I believe so,” Summers said. He half turned and looked up at Bailey. “Would your husband have gone this far to keep this shaft a secret?”
“You mean—you mean murder, Will?” the woman asked in disbelief.
“Yes, Bailey, I do mean murder,” Summers said. He nodded toward the stacked crates. “If these three loaded this shaft and were killed just before it was sealed off, that made three less people your husband had to worry about.”
“No, Will, Ansil would never do such a thing,” said Bailey, sounding shocked at the prospect. But her voice didn’t sound convincing, Summers thought. There was too much hidden here to be trusted to three miners. “If he had he would’ve known I’d see the bodies when we c
ame here for the gold.”
“Maybe he wasn’t going to bring you here,” said Summers. “Maybe he would’ve brought help for the rocks and left you at the hacienda.”
Ted and Lonnie stared at him in the lantern’s glow.
“Whoa,” said Ted. “Is that what we would have gotten had we come here with Mr. Swann?” He and Kerns almost stepped back, as if suddenly concerned for their safety.
“Is that the way Ansil Swann does things, ma’am?” Kerns questioned Bailey.
Bailey looked too stunned to answer.
“I don’t know what Ansil might have had in mind,” Summers replied quickly, “but that’s not the way I do things. You can believe that.”
The two settled a little.
Bailey shook her head, looking at the bodies in disbelief.
“I don’t think my husband would have had anything to do with this,” she said. “He wouldn’t kill anyone.”
“Somebody sure did,” Little Ted said cynically. “These three didn’t get together and commit suicide.”
“Enough about what Ansil might or might not have done,” said Summers, standing up and looking all around. “If these crates are all full, we’ve got a lot of gold to move. Not to mention cash.” He nodded at the strongbox against the wall. Then he looked at Bailey. “There’s no way we can get it all in one wagonload.”
“I know,” she said, looking all around, overwhelmed by the huge number of gold crates. “What on earth was Ansil thinking?”
Summers looked all around too.
“I don’t know,” he said, shaking his head. “But let’s get what we can this trip. Keep the rest of it hidden here. If this Don Manuel will buy the rest, we’ll have to come back and make another run with it.”
“You mean we’ll have to carry all the rocks back, reseal the shaft before we leave?” Lonnie asked.
“Yep, I’m afraid so,” said Summers. “Let’s get to it. Don’t forget there was somebody trailing us yesterday. For all we know they might have picked up our wagon tracks this morning. They could still be following us.”
“I don’t see how,” said Kerns. “We crossed every stretch of stone and rock-hard dirt in this desert hill country.”
“A good part of that gold is going to be yours, Lonnie,” Summers replied. “Are you willing to take that chance?”
“I get your point, Will. Let’s get to it,” Kerns said, turning toward the shaft’s entrance. As Summers followed the two over a low pile of the remaining rocks and toward the entrance, Bailey walked behind him with the lantern raised.
“Will, please don’t think that poor Ansil and I had anything to do with those dead miners lying there. Please don’t think anything bad would have happened to Ted and Lonnie, had Ansil and I brought them instead of you and I.”
“I have no reason to think you and your husband are murderers, Bailey,” he said. “I only know what I saw.” He nodded sidelong back toward the three bodies.
“I know how bad this looks,” Bailey said. “But would I have brought you here if I knew the bodies were here?”
“I don’t know,” said Summers, walking on.
“Think of how foolish that would be, how much my husband’s enemies would like to see him and me facing murder charges.”
“When people get desperate . . . they take foolish chances,” Summers said.
“But I need you to believe me, Will,” she said.
“Whatever I believe makes no difference,” Summers said over his shoulder, “especially not to the miners. We came here to get the gold. We’ve got it. Now we need to get out of here, go to Don Manuel’s, settle up and go our separate ways. This solves your financial problems, doesn’t it?”
He looked at her hand on the back of his arm and turned toward her.
“I hoped there would be more between us than just settling up and going our own way, Will,” she said.
“The sooner we get away from here, the better for all of us,” Summers said. “Like you said, your husband’s enemies would like to see you charged as murderers. I’ve got a feeling they wouldn’t mind seeing me and your ranch hands charged too, after we shot two of their collectors.” He walked on, letting her drop her hand from his arm. “I remember how I felt, thinking I was going to face a hanging the other day. I don’t want to do that again.”
“You’re right,” Bailey said, walking a little faster with the lantern in order to keep up with him. “We need to get the gold and go. We can talk about this another time.” Ahead of them at the entrance to the mine shaft, Lonnie and Little Ted stood waiting.
When Summers and the woman arrived, Lonnie and Little Ted looked to Summers for instructions.
“I’ll bring the wagon around,” Summers said, looking over to where the wagon sat empty twenty yards away, Bailey having unloaded and stacked the furnishings and other items alongside it. “The two of you turn that mine cart upright and on the tracks. We’ll use it to bring out the crates.” He spoke looking up at the afternoon sky. “We’ve got a lot to do if we want to get out of here tonight.”
• • •
With one of the wagon horses harnessed to the ore cart, the four worked nonstop loading the crates inside the mine shaft and unloading them again outside, onto the wagon. Bailey worked right along with the three men; she pried open each crate and made sure it was filled with smelted ingots instead of raw ore still laced into broken chunks of rocks.
As Little Ted laid the last crate of ingots down into the wagon bed, he and Lonnie stood back and watched Summers and Bailey walk out of the mine shaft with large canvas packs full of cash strapped over their shoulders. Each pack had a large black dollar sign painted on it. They had left an open space among the crates large enough to house the packs of cash near the rear of the wagon.
Summers stepped onto the rear of the wagon and unshouldered his pack into the opening. He turned to Bailey standing on the ground, took the pack from her shoulder and dropped it down inside the open space. Then he covered the packs of cash, filling in over them with two crates of ingots.
“This will do,” he said, dusting his hands together. He stepped down from the wagon bed and looked at the load. The ingot crates were stacked three feet high in the wagon bed. The wooden sideboards of the wagon stood five feet higher, made to accommodate a tall load of loose hay without losing any of it. With household furnishings loaded atop the crates, the wagon would not appear to be hiding anything.
“It’s a heavy load,” Little Ted said, standing beside him. “We’d better hope we don’t have to leave in a hurry.”
“I know,” Summers said. “It’ll be some tight traveling the rest of the way.”
“We’ll have to leave about half this furniture behind,” Lonnie said, standing on his other side.
“I know,” Summers repeated. He nodded toward a weathered lean-to shed across the flat gravelly yard. “Take what we don’t load and stack it under there. Cover it with the tarpaulin so it won’t look like we dumped it here for something more valuable. We’ll sweep all our tracks away from the entrance.”
Behind the two ranch hands, Bailey stood with the unlit lantern in hand. She smiled.
“You do think of everything, don’t you, Will?” she said. She had unhooked a canteen from a peg on the side of the wagon and uncapped it as she spoke. She swished it around, took a short sip and passed the canteen to Lonnie.
“I try to,” Summers said, watching Lonnie raise the canteen to his lips.
Turning, Summers looked out across the graying evening sky, the long black shadows starting to spread east across the rocky land.
“Let’s get the mine resealed and get the furniture loaded,” he said. “We’ve been here too long as it is.”
Lonnie passed the canteen on to Little Ted, who poured a few drops into his cupped palm and wiped it over his face and forehead.
“No rest for the w
eary,” Little Ted said. He handed the uncapped canteen to Summers, who took a short drink, capped it and hooked it back on the side of the wagon. He walked around to the front of the wagon and stepped up into the driver’s seat. Bailey and the ranch hands walked along behind as Summers drove the wagon forward and stopped beside the furniture sitting on the ground.
“I always heard there’s nothing easy about gold except spending it,” Little Ted commented. “I believe it.” He gave a tired smile and added in a tired voice, “But I’d like to find that spending part out for myself.”
Chapter 16
Tracking had never come easy for Dallas Tate. Yet what he might lack in trail-craft, he more than made up for in determination, he reminded himself proudly. Atop his horse, he looked out along the mining path leading upward along the hillside through a slivery morning mist. The night before he’d come close to giving up when the wagon tracks and horses’ hooves seemed to have vanished across a two-mile stretch of long stone flats reaching out onto the desert floor.
The flats had ended where a sandy trail led off in three directions. Three sets of hill lines to choose from, and damned if he hadn’t chosen the right one!
He grinned shrewdly to himself. It never occurred to him that he had discovered the right trail by sheer luck. So what if he had? The main thing was, he had gotten back on their trail now, and he wasn’t giving up until he had Will Summers in his gun’s sights. He hadn’t thought that much about killing Summers before, but now that his arm was back in working order, why not kill him? Rage still smoldered hot in his belly every time he thought about how the woman had treated him—how the horse trader had humiliated him.