by Brett Waring
“What is it, Mary?” Nash asked sharply. “Let’s have all your theories, no matter how wild they might seem at first.”
Mary smiled fleetingly. “Well, I’m believing the legends now, I guess, but I was going to say, I don’t suppose it could be remnants of the Buckland expedition? Yes, I know it’s wild, but I was thinking that if they had found the mine, they wouldn’t want to share the knowledge with anyone else, and seventeen is a lot to share with as it is, so they could’ve just covered their tracks and, to the world at large, apparently disappeared. They could have been working that mine all this time ...” She laughed, embarrassed, at the dubious looks on the men’s faces. “I told you it was wild.”
“Wild, but still possible,” Nash said. “Buckland was a fire-eatin’ old devil, a real dictator. It could be the kind of stunt he would pull and the theory’s been put forward before this by others. He could be ruthless enough to pull somethin’ like this. If he’s still around.”
“And if the Lost Injun Mine ever existed in the first place,” Summers pointed out.
Nash sighed and sat back in his chair. “Yeah. I think we’re grabbin’ at straws, Jed.” He looked thoughtful and then glanced up at Summers as the old man rolled up the maps. “No word of the stage run starting up again yet a spell?”
Summers shook his head. “Not yet. Shouldn’t be long, though. Folk soon forget or figure nothin’ll happen to them. Give it another two, three days, I reckon.”
“Then you figure you won’t have any work for me to do, as a roustabout, for the next couple of days?”
Summers and Mary glanced at Nash.
“Guess not, Clay,” Summers said slowly. “What you got in mind?”
“Think I’ll mosey on back into the hills and take a look around.”
“No, Clay!” Mary exclaimed. “That’s too dangerous! This place is probably being watched and if you ride out alone like that ...”
“I’ll be ready for any trouble,” Nash cut in. “Way I figure it is this: Hume told me there’s some rustlin’ goin’ on hereabouts, but it doesn’t seem to be on a big enough scale for an organized band to take on someone as big as Wells Fargo, but, after lookin’ at those survey maps, it occurs to me that the hills are surrounded on all sides by cattle country. Could be rustling’s going on around here in a big way.”
“What’ll you do? Look around for hidden canyons where the steers are bein’ held?” asked Summers.
“Somethin’ like that,” Nash said. “I’ll take those survey maps with me, Jed. I’m convinced it’s the position of this relay station that’s worryin’ them, more than the actual stage line, but they need the whole operation closed down. I reckon I'll find the answer somewhere back in those hills.”
Mary came around the table and put a hand on his shoulder, looking down into his face. “I’m only afraid you might find your grave out there, Clay!”
Four – The Old Sourdough
Nash knew it was dangerous to ride around these hills. By now he would be a marked man by the people who were behind this trouble. He had beaten Slade and already killed two of their assassins. If they caught him riding alone in the woods or the ranges they wouldn’t hesitate to shoot him in the back.
But these were the kinds of risks he was being paid to take. He figured he had only a couple of days. After that Jed Summers reckoned the stages would begin the Deadwood Run again and the hidden enemy would strike once more. He had a hunch that this time it would be a direct attack against the relay station. There was nothing really to go on to make him think this, just a feeling that now that the men knew the stage run could be stopped, it would be the next logical step to wipe out the halfway stop-over to make the run even more difficult. A few more hold-ups and rapes or murders and that would be it: Wells Fargo would have no choice but to close down in this area.
So if he didn’t come up with something during the next couple of days, he figured the Summers would be in deadly danger.
Using the maps, Nash rode around the drift fences and lines of the ranches that backed up into the hills. He spoke with a couple of cowpokes and one of the ranchers. The rustling problem wasn’t a big one, in fact, mighty small in comparison with some other parts of the country. As far as the men knew, there was no great problem with rustlers on the other side of the range, either. After learning this, Nash began to wonder about his theory. Looked like he was wrong on that count. It was only a guess, after all, like the Lost Indian Mine or the gold strike.
Gold in the hills didn’t necessarily have to have anything to do with the legendary lost mine but he knew that people would associate the two if word leaked out. It was all theory, he thought bitterly. Despite all the trouble, the killings, the beatings, not one of the enemy had ever been captured and so there was no clue whatever to the reason behind the harassment.
Nash, riding through a steep-sided draw, reined down suddenly. His eyes had been scanning the tops of the walls as he rode, working out theories in his mind, and he became aware of movement above the draw: high above. He had been looking for the glint of sun on metal, the shape of a man’s hat breaking the skyline, anything that might indicate a bushwhacker lining him up in his sights. Now his gaze lifted slightly, into the sky itself, and he sat back in his saddle, hands folded on the horn as he squinted up at the wheeling birds, black against the clear blue.
Buzzards. And not far off. They sure weren’t stalking him and the palomino, so that meant somewhere ahead and off to the right, they had spotted something either dead or dying. No frontiersman could just ride on and ignore wheeling buzzards. It might only be an animal they were preparing to swoop on but there was always the chance it could be a man. Nash kneed the palomino forward and unsheathed his Winchester, levering a shell into the breech, holding the hammer spur under his thumb while he depressed the trigger. He then lowered the hammer gently: all he had to do now was cock it back and fire.
Glancing up occasionally at the birds, and seeing two of them had dropped lower, Nash eased the palomino down the draw, put it up a low part of the wall and came out on a rocky flat that ran into a heavily-wooded canyon, with granite walls towering above. Whatever the buzzards were watching was somewhere in there. And it looked like a perfect death trap: a drygulcher with a rifle could pick off anyone riding in across the flats.
So he used the rocks and boulders for cover as well as he could, eyes scanning the walls, high up and low down, probing the shadows. But there was no sign of life, only the wheeling, gliding buzzards, dropping gradually lower.
Nash came into the canyon slowly, still watching the walls, but by now he figured he was being over-cautious. Around the big gray boulder, he ought to be able to see what it was that so interested the birds. He thumbed back the rifle hammer to full cock and held the rifle at the ready as the palomino skirted the boulder and came into a pocket surrounded on three sides by tall rocks.
Lying at the base of one of the rocks was the carcass of a burro, its packs still on its back, though the contents had been mostly scattered and spilled. It was bloody and still and flies droned around the unnaturally twisted head and neck. Nash walked the palomino around the pocket slowly, eyes roving restlessly. He reined down sharply, rifle coming down, thumb ready to lift off the hammer spur.
There was a man sitting against a rock, staring at him.
Then Nash relaxed. The eyes that stared at him were blank and unseeing. The face was framed by shaggy hair matted with blood, and a nicotine-stained bushy beard. It was a leathery face, wrinkled, darkened by years of weather, now scarred with fresh cuts and bruises, streaked with ribbons of dried blood. His clothes were dirty and tattered, one leg was twisted at an unnatural angle and he had managed to push a busted arm inside his shirtfront but hadn’t been able to button it up again. There was a lot of blood, most of it dried. Judging by the worn pickaxes and spades and battered tin dishes that had fallen from the burro’s packs, Nash reckoned he had come across an old sourdough prospector whose luck had run out.
He
glanced up and saw the narrow high trail up there, fifty feet above the marks on the steep slope where the old man and his animal had hit in a dozen places during their fall. Nash dismounted and uncocked his rifle as he moved to the injured oldster. He glanced up. The buzzards were settling on the high rocks, patiently waiting to see if there would be a meal for them or not. Feeling under the prospector’s shirt, Nash found a faint, irregular heartbeat, and his fingers came away red and sticky. Some wound was oozing blood. He could feel a broken rib or two just under the sparse flesh.
Well, best thing he could do was patch the oldster up, then get him back to Longknife and turn him over to Mary Summers to take care of. Nash began to look around for something to use as splints on the man’s broken arm and leg and figured the pickaxe handles would do fine for the leg. He started gathering the scattered tools and then froze as he picked up a battered tin dish. A linen coffee sack lay beneath and it had been ripped open in the violence of the fall.
Gold nuggets glinted up at him in the late afternoon sun.
Nash left the sack there, used the handles to immobilize the prospector’s leg, the man groaning and, once, screaming, when he snapped the leg bones back into place. He bent one of the tin dishes into the rough mould of a forearm and ripped up a pack saddle cover flap to bind it in place. The man had tried to sit up, spitting curses, muttering incoherently, eyes blazing like coals as the pain stirred him. Then he had dropped back into oblivion.
With the old man taken care of, as well as he was able just now, Nash took the time to look through the rest of the scattered gear as the sun began to sink behind the high canyon walls. He found more nuggets in the bottom of the saddle pack, and some wedged in cuts that had been made in a leathery portion of sowbelly. Nash nodded slowly as he turned over a piece of the gold-rich ore between his fingers.
Once again, he wondered about the Lost Indian Mine.
~*~
Jed Summers poured a slug of whisky into Nash’s glass and a generous shot into his own. The men drank at the big dining table and set down the glasses with a clatter. “Know him, Jed?” Nash asked.
“Ain’t seen him around here, but we’ve only been here a few weeks, remember. Walked off a cliff trail, you reckon?”
“Looked that way. Him and the burro both. Guess he’d been lyin’ there a day or two, dragged himself to that rock and got propped up, but was too weak or hurt to do much more than push his busted arm inside his shirt.”
“Never spoke on the way in?”
Nash shook his head. “Nothing intelligible. Lot of gibberish. He’s in fever. Yells a lot. Guess it’s the pain. But I figure he was packin’ maybe three-four pounds of nuggets and gold-dust, so guess he struck it rich. Looked like he was frightened of losin’ it, too. Had some in his coffee sack, more inside his sowbelly, some crammed in the bottom of his rifle scabbard and his spare pair of boots.”
“Aw, them old sourdoughs are suspicious of everyone. Get that way after traipsin’ for years by themselves all through the hills.”
Nash nodded slowly. “Guess that could be so,” he allowed.
They looked up as the door of a bedroom opened and Mary stood there, holding some bloodstained rags, staring puzzledly at Nash.
“Clay, did you examine the old man out there in the canyon?” she asked.
Nash frowned. “Just felt for his heartbeat and found he had a couple of busted ribs. Oh, there was some sort of gash oozing blood, too. Why, what’s wrong?”
Mary flicked her eyes to her father and then back towards Nash. “It wasn’t a gash, oozing blood, Clay, it was a bullet wound.”
Nash came to his feet fast. Summers looked from the agent to his daughter. “You sure, gal?” the old man asked.
“No doubt about it, Pa. I can feel the bullet under the skin at his back. It probably smashed a rib on the way through but didn’t break out completely. I’m going to have to cut it out.”
“I’ll give you a hand,” Nash said slowly, going around the table towards her. “This puts a different light on things, Jed, if he was shot off that cliff trail and didn’t just fall. Could be he was tryin’ to get away from someone with that gold ...”
“Then why didn’t they take it off him after shootin’ him?” Summers asked. “From what you said, he couldn’t have done much to stop ’em ...”
Nash looked more puzzled than ever. “Yeah, it sure is strange all right, Mary. We’d better get that slug out of him quick as we can and hope he pulls through the fever. Bring that whisky, Jed. He’s gonna need a shot or two.”
Summers followed them into the room and poured the whisky over Nash’s hands in a basin, looking at the battered old prospector on the bunk. Nash heated a knife blade. Mary bustled about, getting clean cloths and laudanum and hot water.
“Mebbe that Lost Indian idea of yours ain’t so loco after all, Clay,” Summers said quietly.
Nash nodded as he pulled the blade through the lamp flame and moved towards the bunk where Mary was swabbing gently around the bullet wound.
“With a little luck, his fever ought to break by mornin’ and we’ll be able to ask him,” Nash said.
He glanced at Mary and she nodded: she was ready whenever he was. He lowered the hot knife towards the flesh.
~*~
They aimed to take it in turns to sit with the old prospector throughout the night to see if they could break his fever. He was a tough old-timer and had had a few lucid moments soon after Nash had cut out the misshapen bullet. It was a rifle slug and because it hadn’t gone all the way through the old man, it looked to Nash as if it had been almost at the end of its range. If he had been drygulched from anything closer than two hundred yards, the bullet would have penetrated completely.
When he had come around, the old prospector had looked at the three of them working over him and said, “Well, I reckon you ain’t angels or devils, so I guess I’m still alive!”
“We’ll take care of you, old-timer,” Nash had told him quietly, “Just rest easy now ... ”
“Much obliged, young feller, much obliged,” the old sourdough had said, sinking back. Then, abruptly, he sat upright, causing Mary to gasp in alarm as blood spurted from the incision in his flesh. “My gold!” he yelled. “Don’t you touch it!”
They reassured him swiftly that his gold was safe and, after a slug of whisky, he passed out, muttering incoherently ...
Mary took the first shift and Nash relieved her just after midnight.
“How’s he comin’?”
“He’s delirious. Talking gibberish. You’ll have to keep sponging him with the cold cloths, Clay. I think he’s nearing crisis point.”
“He’s pretty tough. I think he’ll make it. Hope so, anyway. If anyone knows what’s going on in those hills, he ought to.”
Mary smiled wearily and left Nash alone with the delirious old prospector. Nash picked up a cloth, soaked it in cold water, wrung it almost dry, then draped it over the sweating man’s forehead. He took another damp cloth and sponged his body around the bandages. He pulled down the sheet, used a towel as a fan, standing over the wounded man on the bed and waving the cloth back and forth, seeing the cool air currents making the sweat evaporate.
When the old man began to give the first signs of shivering, curling up his legs and hugging himself with his one mobile arm, Nash pulled up the sheet and counterpane again and knew that the fever was close to breaking. He sat down at the end of the bed and dozed in a straight back chair, alert for any sounds from the wounded man ...
He started awake suddenly, thumping the chair legs to the floor, sitting up straight, right hand dropping to the butt of the gun in its rig hanging over the back of the chair. He had a moment when he wondered where he was and what this room was, and then he saw the old prospector on the bed and it all came back. He took his hand away from the gun, going to the bedside and seeing that the man was now breathing in a steady rhythm and there was no more than a film of sweat sheening his face. It looked like the fever had broken ...
/> Then he frowned. What was it that had wakened him? Not the old man crying out, for he was sleeping deeply and peacefully. But something had startled him out of his doze.
He heard it then. Outside. Horses. The clink and creak of riding gear. The click of a hoof against a pebble. There was a wind blowing, a cold wind, not very strong, but it carried the sounds right to the house. And, unless it had changed direction, it meant there were riders down by the corrals.
Nash buckled on his gunbelt fast, keeping back from the heavy drape over the windows. Luckily, the lamp in the sick room was turned way down but he didn’t want his moving shadow to show up on those drapes. And he knew if he blew out the lamp and abruptly plunged the room into darkness, he would be alerting the men out there that he had heard something.
With a final glance at the old prospector, Nash eased open the door and slipped out of the room into the darkened passage. He stayed there a few moments, allowing his eyes to adjust, then walked quietly along the passage towards Jed Summers’ room.
He was starting to lift the latch when there was a crash of glass from the front of the station building and he saw the flicker of flames through a doorway. He kicked open Jed’s door, yelling, “Raid!” and then ran on through to the front of the building where a blazing pine-cone torch was burning on the floor. He ran for it and another window was smashed in and a second torch whooshed inside. He heard thuds as others were thrown up onto the roof. Guns hammered outside but he didn’t hear bullets hitting the building’s walls. Then he knew why: he heard the wild whickering and frightened squeals of the horses down at the corrals, the thunder of hoofs, the yells of men hazing them into stampede.
Nash hurled the blazing torches through the broken windows into the yard and yelled at the startled Jed and Mary to stomp out the flames as he lurched to a window and snapped two fast shots at the shadowy riders outside. He saw one horse rear up and throw its rider. He ducked as a bullet chewed splinters from the window ledge. Then he fired at the downed rider as he struggled to his feet. The bullet knocked him down and he stayed down though the horse staggered up, running off, limping. Nash threw himself flat as lead raked his window.