by E. R. Slade
Doctor Morris left his office just before dark. He’d been to see one patient after preparing his cache of supplies. Then it was time to do his final preparations to leave town for good. He couldn’t take much with him, but then he wouldn’t need much besides his supplies and the gold. Once he reached San Pablo and converted a little of the gold into currency, he could buy a ticket to anywhere on the train, and could ship the gold there by Wells Fargo. For a country doctor who’d been fairly poor all his life, and was tired of the futility of fighting the inherent evils of the human race, all that gold was a fitting way to round out his later years.
The sun set in a blaze of color, as he rode clear of town. He was very conscious of everyone who happened to glance at him. His logic told him that no one was particularly concerned with where he was going, since he was always going here and there to check on patients—but it still seemed that eyes were watching him, knowing somehow that this was different, that he was about to make off with a wagonload of gold, and that he had gone so far as to kill for it.
Night had fallen heavily over the land by the time Morris reached the south side of South Hill. He rode the wagon track to the gold diggings, urging his mount along as fast as it would go. The stars were bright in the sky, and the air was cooler now that the sun had set. Small rodents scurried off the track into the brush as he rode along.
The mines were mostly operated around the clock. Wagons were loaded but not hauled down the steep, difficult trail that descended the hillside, because it was dangerous enough doing it in the daytime. It was not that the mine owners worried about their men and horses—there were always more of either to be had—it was that they didn’t care to put out money to retrieve dumped wagonloads of ore from the bottom of the lower fork of the canyon or from outlaws who might use the cover of the night to make off with some of the pay dirt.
The Whiskey Diggings Mine, which was the one closest to the cave full of gold, had an area of packed earth and rocky ledge in front of the mine shaft head. It was not well lit. The armed guards, who were supposed to be watching the wagons which stood in the area, were playing a game of cards at an old beat-up table under a lantern hanging from a pole propped over it. They were not paying too much attention to anything outside their card game.
Morris looked at the nearest empty wagon, a heavy, lumbering contraption with large, heavy wheels. It stood at the edge of the circle of light created by the lantern over the card table. The ground sloped down from it into the track leading down the hill. The pine woods had dropped a thick carpet of needles and the wagon track was soft under foot. Morris thought that should make the ground quiet under the wheels of the ore wagon.
He crept up to the long tongue of the wagon and hefted the end of it around to aim the front wheels down the slope. The wagon creaked as he did this. He stopped to watch for any reaction the card players might have. There were four men. They sat poring over their cards, cigar smoke drifting up in the still, clear air, their rifles leaning against the table, a knee or a chair. None of them seemed to hear the creak.
Now, with the front wheels of the wagon aimed downhill, Morris pulled on the tongue as hard as he could, trying to start the heavy wagon moving. For a moment, it seemed as though he wouldn’t be able to budge it. But then he swung the tongue a little to one side and pulled again, and this time it came fairly easily.
Once started, the heavy wagon wanted to roll. The incline was not steep on this first section of road, and it leveled off soon. But for the short, quick trip down, Morris had to run as fast as he could to keep up and steer the wagon safely without getting run over. In the dark, he kept tripping and the wagon tongue kept trying to throw him to one side or the other. Worst of all was the creaking and squeaking of the jouncing wagon as it rolled. He was sure the guards would hear it.
Once at the bottom, with the wagon stopped, he waited breathless, trying to make out if anyone was approaching. His heart made hearing difficult.
But no one came. Apparently he’d gotten away with his theft. Now he needed four draft horses to haul the wagon. There was one pair standing by in the area in front of the mine shaft head, to move wagons around. They shifted the loaded wagons to one side of the area and brought others under the chute from the mine head frame. He would never be able to get them. But they had to have the rest of the animals corralled somewhere close by.
He finally found the corral to the west of the mine, down in a meadow surrounded by pines. The problem was, however, that the horses were guarded very much more alertly. Four men were on duty here, as at the head of the mine, but these men were posted at the four sides of the corral and each patrolled up and down, holding his rifle ready.
Morris watched them awhile, hoping to figure some simple way to avoid them while removing four horses from the corral, but he could see no way of doing it. He would need harnesses as well, and they were laid over a rack set up by the corral, in plain view of all the guards. He pondered various methods of distracting the guards’ attention. But in the end he realized it would be too risky an operation, however he did it. He could not afford to have anyone on his trail for even a day.
Therefore, the only thing to do was go back to town and get some draft animals from the livery. He felt fairly sure that no one but Phil Clay would be around, and he’d be on the bottle, as usual. One by one he could lead the animals out the rear of the barn and then take them around the town. The two things that bothered him about doing this were that the hour and a half it took to go to town and back was night time not spent getting away from Golden Gap, and that while he was away in town getting the horses someone might discover the wagon had rolled down the hill and bring it back up into the lighted area around the mine shaft head. But those were risks that he’d prefer to that of trying to get four horses and their harnesses from the corral.
It turned out as he expected at the livery. No one was much interested in what was going on around the back door of the barn. Phil Clay wasn’t even in the livery at all. Probably he was in a saloon. The horses might not be missed until at least morning, when the stable hand showed up, and then it could be noon or later before anyone put together the missing wagon with the missing horses. Possibly, with luck, no one would bother to follow him at all, once it was clear that the wagon had headed out into the desert. It would only be the owner of the Whiskey Diggings who might make an effort to find the wagon, and Phil Clay might send a stable hand out to look for the horses. Not a very formidable pair of pursuers.
And if they decided that Riley was responsible for the thefts, there was a good chance no one would make any effort at all.
Morris took the horses out back of the barn, put harnesses on them and then put them all on a lead rope.
He was relieved to find that the ore wagon was exactly where he had left it. With one pair of animals in the traces—he didn’t want to take the time to close in all four animals while he was near enough to the guards that one of the animals might neigh and bring interest—Morris drove the wagon down the precipitous track to the bottom of the hill, east for about three hundred yards and then up a route he’d picked out in daylight, which brought him onto the shortcut trail he and Tracy had followed when they found the cave. Once parked in front of the opening in the hillside, he brought to the traces the pair of animals that he’d led along behind the wagon. Then he went into the cave and lit a candle.
The golden statues stood there watching him as if they were real people. It would be a shame, in a way, to melt them down for their gold. Yet perhaps it would be for the best, Morris mused, since one could make the case that they didn’t really represent immortality at all, but instead were a mockery of it.
He heaved a sigh and then began the task of moving the statues, piece by piece, out to the ore wagon. After carrying two of the heavy chunks of gold, he realized this was going to be a long, tiring job. Between the three life-sized statues, there had to be at least 75 to l00 pieces of gold, not to mention the pile of gold bars. For an older man not us
ed to heavy lifting, it seemed a monumental task. However, since every piece made him considerably richer, he had no doubt that he would manage to get it all into the ore wagon somehow.
~*~
It was well past midnight, maybe not far from dawn, in fact, when Riley’s men finally succeeded in moving the boulder. Lee and Carmen, sitting back to back, their wrists and forearms tied tightly together, each with ankles bound as well, a vigilant armed guard standing over them, sat watching.
The men were sweating heavily from all the heavy labor. The team of draft horses had had a workout, too. One by one, each timber and rock was pulled from beneath the boulder along the side facing the meadow. Once that was accomplished, men with pries heaved at the back side of the boulder while the horses pulled on it. The huge stone finally rolled away, and Riley’s men pounced on the area that had been underneath the rock, like vultures on a carcass. The floor of the cabin was earth, packed on a ledge of rock. Once they had dug away all the dirt, it became clear that no gold could have been hidden beneath the boulder.
Riley’s men looked at each other, crestfallen, rubbing dirty sleeves across sweaty brows, fanning themselves with battered Stetsons. Riley stepped back from the excavation site and looked down at it with a hard expression. He took out makings, lit the rolled cigarette, moved his lips so that the cigarette end went up and down, up and down. Then he turned to the prisoners. Lee did not care for the look on Riley’s face. The man could be coming unhinged with fury.
The knife came out. Riley strode towards them, stopped, looking down at them. His face worked. A vein pounded in his neck, becoming larger than Lee would have thought possible.
Riley’s men were quiet, apparently well aware of the state of Riley’s temper. They stayed at a respectful distance, did not come crowding around to see the action. This Lee took to be a bad sign. He looked into the blackness of Riley’s eyes and knew that Riley had a unreasoning desire to kill them now. Lee’s eye strayed involuntarily to the still, bloody form of the dead Pirate which lay where the killing had taken place in the middle of the little meadow.
Something had to be done. He had not been able to loosen the bonds that held him and Carmen together.
Riley tested the edge of the knife against his thumb and his mouth hardened.
Lee brought his heels up against his thighs and stood, dragging Carmen up with him. The guard backed off, seeing the look in Riley’s eye. Riley watched them stand; suddenly his arm went back, then came straight for Lee’s belly, the knife point glinting in the starlight.
~*~
Walter Bingham had collected a motley assortment of ranch hands, from his own bunkhouse and from the Lazy L’s. The men were not keen to go out and fight a man like Riley and his gang late at night, especially not thinking they were going to be expected to get up early the next morning to work all day. Bingham promised them that they could take the following day off, if they came with him tonight. That helped a little, but they still did not much like the idea of hunting the notorious Riley. Nevertheless, he did manage to get together seven men who could shoot somewhere near straight and who had had some experience in gunfights.
They tracked by lantern light. Fortunately, the wagon ruts were fairly easy to see, and they rode along at a good clip most of the way. They arrived at the base of the hill towards morning and headed cautiously up into the pines, arriving at a point where they could see the bonfire they had been catching glimpses of while out on the desert. Evidently something was going on there. Bingham’s instincts on all occasions told him to be cautious, so instead of just riding up the hill to the bonfire, he sent a scout ahead, while the rest held back, waiting to get a report before going further.
The scout returned with the information that Riley and his men were digging in the ground behind a large boulder and that Lee and Carmen were bound together and under guard.
Bingham moved his men up the hill through the woods to a point from which they could watch whatever went on in the meadow. Then they waited and observed.
After some minutes had gone by, Riley’s men stopped digging and Riley crossed the meadow to his prisoners. Bingham saw the knife and was torn as to what he should do. In the end he did nothing. None of the men said a word. They weren’t interested in getting involved in this unless they were told to. They had the excuse that they were merely following Bingham’s lead. Bingham wished that he could have had someone else to blame for his lack of action. But he did not, and watching the drama unfold before him, he knew that this incident would haunt his conscience for the rest of his life.
~*~
Lee made a quarter turn with all his might to avoid the knife thrust, feeling the pain in his arms and knowing it must be at least as bad for Carmen. The knife rent his shirt on the left side and sliced flesh. But Lee was too busy driving his shoulder into Riley’s middle section to notice any pain there might have been.
Riley went down, the knife falling from his grasp. Lee threw himself and Carmen on the ground over the knife. His fingers grasped desperately for the handle, but were cut on the razor edge.
Riley was up, no cigarette in his mouth, fists clenched so hard the blunt nails drew blood from the palms. He gave Lee a ferocious kick in the stomach.
Lee, doubled up from the loss of wind and the pain, still concentrated on getting hold of the knife, moving it awkwardly against the rope binding himself and Carmen together.
Riley kicked again and again, both times to the head. Lee saw fireworks and thought he was going to black out. He concentrated as hard as he could on the knife and the efforts at cutting the ropes.
Riley caught him on the chin with a hard boot toe, snapping Lee’s head back. At the same moment, the rope loosened and, with a last effort, Lee got his arms free. They had been so long bound in a painful, circulation-cutting position that he had only partial control over them. He was just able to hold onto the knife long enough to cut the rest of the bonds before Riley was upon them again with more kicks. Lee hurled the knife at Riley.
The knife sailed wide and disappeared off into the trees. Lee pulled Carmen to her feet and they dove off into the pines.
Gunfire sounded, echoing among the tree trunks and off the rock face. Lee pulled Carmen after him to the left, circling just inside the edge of the woods, heading for the rock. He figured that their one real chance for escape lay in getting to the nearest mine and hoping the men there would help, or at least lend a gun.
The rock face was sheer at the point in the pine woods where they reached it. Lee, listening to the thrashing of the men following, seeing torches of pine being hastily lit in the bonfire, led Carmen east along the rock, away from the meadow and the pursuers, hoping to find a way up.
He found it at the same time the pursuing gang spotted them. Apparently Riley was smart enough to know that the escapees were trying to find a way to the mines on the far side of the upper fork of the canyon; only that could account for the speed with which Riley had discovered them.
The way up consisted of a series of small trees clinging to crevices. Lee climbed onto the first one, pulled Carmen up, and then repeated the maneuver for the second, third and fourth ones. From there it was a matter of crawling up a steep expanse of rock to the flat top. Gunfire sounded from below, and stone chips stung Lee’s hand as he pulled Carmen up onto the top of the cliff.
Then they ran. Climbing the cliff slowed down their pursuers enough that Lee and Carmen were able to get ahead some distance up the barren open hillside. There was almost no cover from there to the top, and none along the ridge. By the time they had reached the ridge, they were being shot at again, since they made good targets silhouetted against the stars of the night sky. But they were just out of range.
Carmen was breathing hard, and her legs were wobbly. But when Lee led her on along the ridge, she kept coming. They never said a word to each other. There was nothing to say.
The canyon gaped blackly below on the right. They went past it and then down the slope on the far side. Carmen
kept falling down, unable to control her legs enough to keep up with her momentum.
The gunmen had reached the ridge but were no longer shooting, since Lee and Carmen were beginning to blend into the darkness below now.
Then Carmen tripped and fell. Lee lifted her to her feet, but this time she was limp. He let loose a curse and picked her up in his arms. He knew that he’d never make it all the way down the hill to the mine ahead of Riley. Never.
He stumbled on down the slope more slowly than before. The pursuers were getting closer, then much closer. Their gunfire was getting far too close for comfort.
And then he heard footsteps, someone’s light footsteps, running, behind him, just behind him.
Then there was the ore wagon. What the devil it was doing way up here, this far up the slope, he couldn’t understand. There had been no sign of any mining activity up here, he was certain. But there was the ore wagon—and hitched to four horses, just waiting for someone to take the reins. The fact that the horses were hitched to the wagon was some sort of miracle. No ore wagons ran at night, from what he’d heard in town. Yet there was the wagon, and there were the horses.
He reached the wagon, put Carmen in the seat and leaped up. He shouted at the horses, slapped the reins and off they went.
Lee took a quick glimpse behind, saw torches some distance back, heard no more gunfire. Then he noticed a dim form hurtling through the air, jumping from a rock into the rear of the ore wagon. In complete silence.
Had to be Riley. Only someone half Indian could manage a thing like that.
The ore wagon swerved, and Lee turned to see what lay ahead. The track was twisted and steeply down. The reins should be tended to with care, but Lee knew there was going to be no time for that. Riley was aboard.