RUBLE NOON TURNED quickly and walked toward the sycamore. Over his shoulder he said, “Lebo, get the horses, will you? We’ve got to get out of here.”
He climbed up to the tree house. Fan Davidge was standing in the middle of the larger room, hands on her hips, looking around. Her Winchester lay across the table.
“I can’t find it. If it is here, I simply can’t find it,” she said.
But it had to be here, he was sure. He stood there and looked around slowly. Half a million in gold or bills, or in negotiable securities, was quite a packet.
The outer wall of the house against which the tree grew was some thirty feet above the ground. The house was actually a wind-hollowed cave, like many of those in Mesa Verde, and the builders had simply walled up the opening, leaving a space for a small door.
The roof of the cave arched overhead, smooth as if polished by hand, and at his left it sloped down in a pleasant arch, under which was the bed. On his right a trickle of water came out of a crack and ran along the base of the wall for a few feet before falling into a crack in the cave floor.
Besides the bed, there were a table, a couple of chairs made from tree limbs, and a shelf supported by pegs driven into holes in the wall. The floor was solid rock.
The back wall was a man-made partition of stone, with a door at the right. He could see where the older stonework had been repaired and added to by skillful hands.
“What’s back there?” he asked, pointing to the door. “Have you looked?”
“You can see for yourself. There’s a fireplace, and there’s a hole in the roof.”
He went back into the smaller cave. Here was a fireplace with a large stack of wood beside it. There were several iron kettles, an axe, some tongs, and a couple of old-fashioned bullet molds, each capable of making a dozen lead balls at a time.
Against the rock wall was an old canvas sack. He opened it and thrust his hand in. Bullets made from the mold were there, of the type used in the old muskets. He had not seen anything of the kind in years. They ran, as he recalled, sixteen to the pound; but the only musket in the cave had rusted from disuse.
He prowled around, glancing up several times at the hole in the roof. On the floor underneath it a couple of notches had been cut, obviously for the legs of a ladder.
He found several more sacks of the bullets. The man who had sought refuge in this cave had prepared himself for a stand if the Utes ever located him. No doubt he had made his own powder, too, and he had probably used a bow and arrow for most of his hunting, saving the lead balls for the Indians.
Where could anyone conceal half a million dollars in such a place? But did he really know it was half a million? Such figures are usually exaggerated…buried treasures always grew as the story was repeated. He searched carefully, but he could find nothing.
The partition wall intrigued him…it was thicker than need be—measuring at least twenty inches thick. He scanned it, looking for anything that appeared to be new work. Suddenly he found a place where there was little dust, and no cobwebs such as gather in the interstices between stone-laid walls. He worked a stone loose, and after a few minutes of jiggling it about, he found that it slid easily from its niche.
Behind it was a black metal box. With Fan at his elbow, he drew the box out. It opened easily. Inside were several deeds to lands, mostly in the East, and at the bottom of the box were ten tight rolls—thick rolls—of bills! Greenbacks…and they were large bills. Nothing else was in the hole.
“Fan,” he said, “there’s a good bit of money there. Maybe it’s the lot.”
“We’d better go,” she said. “They will surely be back.”
He stuffed the bills and deeds into his pocket, but left the box on the table where anyone could see it.
They went out, pulled the door shut, and slid to the ground. Miguel Lebo was waiting with the horses. “Did you find anything?” he asked.
“Yes…though not as much as we expected.” He swung into the saddle. “Now, if we had a couple of old muskets I’d say this would be a great place to fight it out. There’s enough ammunition up there for an army.”
“Ammunition?”
“Ball ammunition…for muzzle-loaders.”
Lebo looked puzzled. “I don’t remember any ammunition. I would have remembered, wouldn’t I?”
Ruble Noon swung down quickly and ran for the tree. “Lebo,” he said, “get over to the ranch, get a couple of pack horses and get them fast—and pack saddles if you can get them. Don’t waste time!”
“What is it?” Fan asked.
“Those musket balls, damn it! They’re gold!”
He climbed the tree, and inside the tree house he hastily cut into one of the balls with his knife.
Gold, bright and pure!
There were eight sacks, two of them hidden in a recess behind the pile. He lowered them down with a rope.
When Lebo came racing back with the horses and pack saddles they filled them with the balls of gold. Within minutes they were moving.
Lebo pulled up beside Noon. “Where to?”
“Denver. There isn’t a bank this side of there where this gold would be safe.”
“That’s a ride. It must be four hundred miles. Where can we hit the railroad? At Durango?”
Ruble Noon hesitated. “Too close, I think,” he said. “How about Alamosa?”
Lebo shrugged. “You call it and I’ll play the hand.”
Ruble Noon looked back. The trail behind them was empty. They moved off swiftly, Winchesters across their saddlebows.
PEG CULLANE WAS coldly furious. Her lovely features were taut and she rode stiffly in the saddle. Lyman Manly and John Lang rode beside her; neither was talking. Lyman was surly, but Lang was not disturbed—he was a veteran of too many wars. You won and you lost, but if you bucked a stacked deck you were a fool. From the first he had been reluctant, but Peg Cullane had wanted to go in.
There had been too much cover. He still did not know how many had been there; but three to four wasn’t enough odds when one of them was Ruble Noon and at least two others were under cover, with rifles.
Four…five if Peg Cullane had chosen to shoot, but he had a good hunch she did not intend to. Whether Henneker and Billing had been there he did not know, nor care. The odds were wrong, and the thing to do was ease back and ride out, waiting for another chance when the odds were different; and that chance always came.
Peg Cullane was not used to losing, and she wanted that money. Lang had no doubt that she wanted it all. From the beginning he had felt sure of that. He had been equally sure it wouldn’t work out that way. It always turned out to be every man for himself.
It was Judge Niland who broke the silence. “I suggest we stop, make some coffee, and settle down a bit. Then we talk this over and see where we stand.”
Peg started to reply, but Lang interrupted in his mild tone. “Seems like a good idea. That was kinda rough there for a minute.”
“He killed Ben,” Lyman muttered. “He cut him down.”
“Well,” Lang said philosophically, “Ben shouldn’t have missed that first time. He had him dead to rights.”
“Ben was too sure of himself,” the Judge said quietly. “If he had taken a moment more, none of this would have happened. By this time we would have divided half a million dollars and gone our separate ways.”
“So now what?” Lyman Manly wondered aloud.
“We go after them.” Peg’s tone was crisp. “We go get them. By now they have it, whatever it was, and are on their way.”
“I thought you said it was gold?” Lang said.
“Tom Davidge’s brother-in-law told me it was bullion, gold bullion. There was some currency, too, I think.”
“How come he told you?”
“He hated Tom. He was drinking when he told me about it—facts, figures, places, and dates, and I checked on some of it to be sure the story was true. He got wind of it somehow and came down on me, wanting a share.”
“What did you promise him?”
Peg Cullane gave Manly a disgusted glance. “Him? I told him I didn’t know what he was talking about, and sent him packing.”
She dismounted with the others and watched Lyman put a fire together. Standing off at one side gave her a chance to think. For the first time in several weeks she could look at the problem calmly and assay her position.
Since returning from school she had lived in El Paso with a maiden aunt. Their income was comfortable, but not large, and the future that lay before her was to her anything but pleasant. She did not like El Paso, and she did not like the West. She wanted to go back East or to Europe, but on their limited finances that was impossible.
Completely selfish, she cared nothing for her aunt, and was impatient of the restrictions put upon her by the small city in which they lived. School in the East had let her see how things might be, and she at once had begun to plan an escape. During her last trip east Davidge’s brother-in-law, whom she had met casually through Fan, had given her information that she believed she alone possessed—until she discovered that Judge Niland was also aware of it.
Where there is money there will be hands reaching for it, and the idea that half a million dollars was lying somewhere unknown to anyone galled her. Moreover, Peg felt there was no reason why Fan should ever know about the money. At the same time, it was nearly impossible to search the ranch for hiding places while Ben Janish and his outlaws were there.
The information that came to her, partly from Dean and partly from the Judge, was a shock. A man had been sent to kill several of the outlaws, and he was to deliver the money to Fan. When Ruble Noon arrived in the country, four people there knew about the money: Judge Niland, Dean Cullane, Ben Janish, and herself.
Ben Janish had been told when it became necessary to get him to kill Ruble Noon. The Judge had convinced Janish he must not wait to give Noon a chance in a gun battle, but must kill him at once, before he met Fan Davidge to tell her of the money.
The attempt had failed, and somehow Dean Cullane had been killed during that evening. That left three who had known about the money. Now Ben Janish had been killed by Ruble Noon, which left only two on their side.
She did not look toward the Judge, but she was thinking about him. All her life she had schemed and plotted to get what she wanted, and she had no doubt she would succeed in this, too.
Ruble Noon was her first trouble, but she had little doubt that he would be killed. Finn Cagle and German Bayles, whom she had hired herself, would take care of that. They would also be on hand to handle anyone else who might stand between her and the money.
But now Ruble Noon had killed Janish and had escaped with the money, so undoubtedly Fan now knew of it, too.
“Denver,” the Judge suddenly said positively. “He will try to bank the money there. I doubt if he would trust it to any bank between here and there, because he knows we might hold up the bank to get it. He’s simply got to go to Denver—and we can’t allow him to get there.”
“He’ll try for the train,” Lang said. “He’s got a better chance of making it by train.”
“And we’ll be there first,” Niland said. “We’ll ride right down the trail to Durango. He will stay off the trail for fear of ambush, and so he will travel slower.”
“Where’s Durango?” Lyman asked. “I’m new in this country.”
“East of here. Animas City was the town, but when the railroad came in they built their own town right at the tracks. That’s Durango. It’s only been there a few months.”
“I gotta friend down the line,” Lang offered. “We can ride like hell and swap horses at his place.”
Peg Cullane made no comment, but she was doing some thinking of her own. The fools! Do they think a man like Ruble Noon will chance appearing on the station platform at Durango? In a town so small that nobody could hide?
Judge Niland brought her a cup of coffee and she thanked him. She brushed a wisp of hair back from her face. “I’m afraid I’m not cut out for this,” she said. “I prefer towns and cities.”
He smiled. “Why don’t you just ride on to Durango with us? It will be all over there, and if there is any more that remains to be done you can just wait there. I will protect your interests.”
I’ll bet, she thought, but she smiled. “Thank you, Judge. I believe I will do just that.”
They finished their coffee, put out the fire, mounted their horses, and started down the trail to Durango.
The man standing in the aspens thirty feet off the trail relaxed the grip on his horse’s nostrils and kicked the kinks from his own legs, cramped from being in the same position too long.
J. B. Rimes had come upon them unexpectedly, and although he was friendly with John Lang and was known to Judge Niland, he did not feel it wise to let his presence be known.
They had been absent from the ranch for many hours and knew nothing of the raid that had swept up the last of the outlaws, a few nondescripts who counted for nothing. Arch Billing, Henneker, and a few new hands were now in control, and he himself had been working out the trail of Janish and the others.
He had found the body of Dave Cherry from directions given him by Kissling, before Kissling rode away. That was his first lead.
An hour before, he had heard shots, but by the time he got down the mountain he had found only the body of Ben Janish.
“Two gone,” he said aloud.
Rimes had not been living on the ranch for several days, but had taken to the hills to avoid being roped in on the fight against Ruble Noon. He had his own job to do, and it had nothing in common with the work of Ben Janish.
Now he mounted his horse and started east, holding to the path beside the trail. As he rode he was thinking out what he had just overheard.
They were going after Ruble Noon, and they were expecting to head him off at Durango, but Peg Cullane was leaving them, supposedly to go into town and clean up. He had a very good hunch that Peg would be on the train before they were, and that she would be heading east, not for Durango….For Alamosa? La Veta?
He had scouted the country well, and now he struck an old Indian trail that would take him across country toward Ignacio, on the railroad below Durango.
He picked up the first tracks on the slope of Bridge Timber Mountain. Five horses? The tracks were confused, and there might have been one more or one less. After that, he glimpsed tracks occasionally, and near the mouth of Sawmill Canyon he picked them up clearly.
He had guessed right. There were three riders and two pack horses. When they stopped for water and dismounted, he could see the three riders’ tracks clearly, and one set was made by a small foot. That would be Fan’s. Noon’s moccasins he had learned to know, but the third rider was a puzzle—high-heeled boots and large-roweled California-style spurs. Wherever this man squatted he left spur marks in the sand.
J. B. Rimes was satisfied. He was going to overtake them before they reached the railroad.