CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

THAT’S GUNFIRE!” ENGLAND Dan Rutledge looked up, startled. “It’s coming from farther up the trail.”

“The two sets of tracks. Whoever’s up there is shooting it out.” John Cooley’s eyes went wide, and he looked around, as if the next bullets would come his way. He got to his feet and put his arm around the mule’s neck. From the difference in the way they responded, the mule comforted Cooley rather than the other way around.

England Dan wasn’t so sure it was exactly that Cooley was right. Or not exactly. The rapid fire sounded more like a six-shooter being emptied. Then there was nothing. With no second gun firing, it was more an ambush than a fight. He touched his Webley and knew that was how he’d have to fight. Shoot first, a single shot, and make it count. But six rounds? Somebody was sorely angry.

“There must have been more than the sneak thief who took the map. If he had a partner, what we heard was a falling-out.” He took a deep breath to settle his own jangled nerves. Sneaking up on one man was possible, even when all his Webley held was a single bullet. But two men? A completely different problem. Then he chewed on what little they did know in a different way.

“This might be to our benefit,” England Dan said. Cooley stared at him as if he had lost his mind. “Two robbers. One kills the other. He’s not expecting us to show up to take the map back. He’ll be careless, thinking his partner was the only one who knew about the map.”

“So you want us to keep going after them? After him?” Cooley looked around a tad wildly, as if hunting for a way to escape.

“It makes sense he’ll be overconfident. He thinks he’s won by killing his partner.”

“Killing his partner,” Cooley repeated dully. He fixed his gaze on his partner.

England Dan read the worry there. If the thief killed a partner, what about the only one with a bullet chasing after the map doing the same to his partner? “You’ve got your knife. We can take him by surprise.”

Cooley touched the blade sheathed at his side. It was nicked and needed sharpening. He was more likely to use it to open airtights than in a fight. “How rich do you think it is? The Lost Banshee Mine?”

England Dan stared at his partner. The question carried an obvious intent. If he hinted that the hidden mine was played out or even lacked vast quantities of gold, Cooley had reason to back out. He’d rather eke out a meager living at the Trafalgar Mine than risk tangling with whoever had stolen the map. For a man risking everything to be a miner, Cooley lacked courage.

Or maybe it was more complicated. England Dan wondered if cowardice was his partner’s problem or simply lack of faith in his own abilities. Taking risks every day was the life a miner accepted. No one in their right mind pickaxed hunks of rock, lugged them out, crushed and reduced the product and all for a few flecks of color. It took a certain bravery to work in a rock tomb, blow up mountains with dynamite, breathe bad air and endure sudden floods. But Cooley lacked the resolve to grab for the big prize.

“We can both get rich, John. Very, very rich, if the Irish Lord—your Lost Banshee Mine—is half as productive as stories say.”

“Something happened to the old owner. What happened there? How’d the map come to be drawn?”

“Questions we’ll never answer if we let someone else use the map. And remember. It’s your map. You bought it.” England Dan felt uneasy using such an argument to get his partner moving along the right trail. He wasn’t all that sure there was any gold to be had. Secret mines, hidden treasures, all that was the exciting stuff of campfire tales. It sounded promising, but reality had a way of being less. A lot less.

And more dangerous.

“What you say makes sense. All right. Let’s go, but should we wait until morning?”

England Dan considered this. They were tired from riding this far, but the rapid fire followed by eerie silence warned any delay worked against them.

“Let’s ride. Slowly. That way we’re not as likely to ride into an ambush.”

“The shooter is looking ahead, not behind,” Cooley said, nodding. The way he spoke told how he was trying to convince himself he wasn’t being suicidal. “Let’s go, Mabel. Don’t you go making any of those braying noises you are so famous for.”

The mule turned an unblinking brown eye toward its owner. Since evacuating the burlap, things had been just fine. Pressing on, even after a full day of plodding along, was part and parcel of a mule’s life.

If England Dan spotted the gunman ahead of them along the trail, he had to act. He was the one with the bullet. The single bullet. He tried to keep a sharp eye on the tracks, and fifteen minutes into their hunt, he halted and pointed.

“Another rider,” he said. “This is a road that goes straight to Bisbee.”

“We’ll face an army,” Cooley said, his courage fading again. “Let them keep the map. We can make a living off the Trafalgar.”

“Enough to woo Mandy?” That was all England Dan had to say to get Cooley thinking again. He wanted to get rich off the Lost Banshee Mine, but taunting Cooley was as much fun. His partner swiveled about in the saddle, as if he had been caught in a dust devil, swirled around, back and forth until he came to a halt, facing forward again. He gestured for Dan to keep on the trail.

England Dan rested his hand on the pistol, even if he wasn’t going to do much damage. If he got off a shot, bluffing any opposition was easier. Running them off was all he hoped for, even if they took the map with them.

“There. Go check. There’s a horse tethered to a tree limb.” He heard the horse yanking hard, trying to get free. While Cooley checked, he dropped to the ground and studied the tracks.

The confusion of tracks told him nothing. Several horses had come through this spot, possibly milling about before riding on. He looked up when Cooley led the horse back.

“It’s little more than a pony. That’s the second horse, the one between us and whoever stole the map.”

“From what’s in the saddlebags, it belongs to Gonzales.” Cooley held up a sheaf of papers. “Arrest warrants for Lars Jensen and a couple other road agents I never heard a whisper about. They’re all dated a couple days ago.”

“The telegraph had to hum to get the arrest warrants before he set out. He must have bought the horse back in Oasis and then hit the trail. But why here?” The deputy had had to buy a horse barely saddle-broken, maybe because he hadn’t had much money or, more likely, it had been all there was to be purchased in town. Too many citizens had left with all their belongings and gone to find fame and fortune in Bisbee.

“Was he the gunman making all the fuss? Where’d he get off to?”

“Stay here,” England Dan ordered. He drew his six-gun and started down the road. Here and there he saw the deputy’s footprints along the path. When the stride shortened, he slowed. Only a few yards farther, he found a grassy patch where Gonzales had stopped. He took the deputy’s cue and stood on tiptoe to look ahead past a tangle of brush.

He caught his breath at the sight. Dropping back flat-footed, he steeled himself to advance. Once he was through the undergrowth, nothing stood between him and the lawman’s body. He strained every sense to be sure he was alone—or as alone as you can be with a corpse. A quick sniff of the air betrayed lingering gun smoke, but he heard nothing around him that sounded out of place. The gunshots had quieted the forest creatures. After a few minutes, they resumed their business of being animals, hunting and eating and being eaten.

Circling, he came up to Gonzales’ body from the far side. The lawman lay facedown. The six holes in his back showed how he had died—and the source of the gunshots England Dan had heard back down the trail. He rolled Gonzales over. A look of surprise had been permanently frozen on his face. England Dan looked up and worked out what mistake the lawman had made. He had approached from the tangled undergrowth, only to have the killer come up behind him.

“Six shots. That’s a powerful lot of hate.”

“The gunman? Is he gone?” Cooley stood with the deputy’s horse and Mabel. His voice quavered just a mite.

“Two men rode off.”

“Chances are good it’s somebody named in the warrants from his saddlebags. At least we know it’s not Lars Jensen. Mandy shot him dead. She’s one crack shot.”

England Dan started to ask about that. Cooley had boasted of gunning down the outlaw. He pushed the question aside. It hardly mattered who had murdered the deputy, though being shot in the back screamed that Lars Jensen was responsible. The man was a stone killer. England Dan began stripping the deputy of anything useful. The gun belt and the ammo were the most valuable. He plucked one cartridge out and held it up, examining it closely.

“I don’t know if I can use this. Gonzales used a forty-five and my Webley takes a four fifty-five.” He broke open the Webley and ejected all the rounds. He snagged the one unspent cartridge and rested it over his right ear. With some trepidation, he slid six of the lawman’s cartridges into the cylinder. There was a small amount of play around each cartridge. He worried that firing the smaller round would jam his barrel due to the slight mismatch in brass sizes sending the slug down the barrel in a crooked path.

“Will they shoot?” Cooley looked skeptical.

England Dan shared his suspicion that they might not fire properly. He considered trying it, then stopped before he pulled the trigger. Two killers weren’t more than a few miles down the road, heading deeper into the mountains. Why alert them?

“I’ll keep his six-gun. I know the rounds work there. The rounds will fire in my gun,” he decided, “but ejecting them might be a problem.”

“So you traded a gun with a single shot for one with six? That’s some improvement,” Cooley said. “Give me some of the bullets for my gun.”

“What else did you find in his saddlebags? He wasn’t the kind of man to ride off with only a couple dozen rounds.”

Cooley fished around in the saddlebags. A huge grin came to his lips. He held up a box of spare cartridges.

“We’re better off because of him. The least we can do is give him a decent burial.” England Dan chewed a bit on his lower lip as he struggled with the feeling that time was running away from them like stampeding cattle. Wasting even a second now let Jensen get that much more of a head start on them. But . . . but burying this varmint was the right thing to do.

“We don’t have a spade. How are we going to dig the grave?”

England Dan held up his hands, then pointed to Cooley’s. His partner balked, but a little persuasion got him rooting about, using a stick. England Dan found a broad, flat stone to scoop dirt. It took the better part of an hour to make the grave deep enough. A final search of his body for anything useful gave them nothing more, but England Dan unpinned the star on Alberto Gonzales’ vest.

“I’ll see that it’s sent back to Mesilla so they’ll know what happened to him.”

Cooley mumbled something his partner didn’t hear. He asked him to repeat it.

“I said I hope we get the chance to return the star. We have to take the map away from men willing to shoot a US deputy marshal in the back.”

“Keep that in mind, John. It may come to us to do to them what they did to Gonzales.” The look of fright on Cooley’s face worried England Dan. How much good he’d be in a real gunfight was going to be a real problem.

Cooley dropped the last rock on the deputy’s grave and stepped away, wiping his hands off on his vest. His lips moved. England Dan hoped he was saying a prayer, but more likely he was cursing his own fate. To be sure things were all proper, Rutledge said a few words, then pointed to the deputy’s horse.

“You get to ride in style.”

“No offense, Mabel, but you have been reduced to a pack animal again.” Cooley thought a moment, then laughed. “Only we don’t have anything to lash onto your back. You’re the one with the most luck of all of us.”

That idea sobered him again. England Dan led the way. The sun was working its way up over the peak to the east, making travel difficult. He pulled down his bowler and used what brim he had to block the blinding sun as he rode, but it was Cooley who saved his life with a frantic warning.

“Duck! Guns!”

England Dan lunged forward and tumbled off the stallion. He hit the ground hard, rolled and came to his knees, the deputy’s six-gun clutched in his fist. For a second, he missed what Cooley had noticed. Then the long tongues of orange flame spitting from the gun muzzles showed him where to fire.

He fanned off a couple rounds, driving the ambushers back. His next couple shots were better aimed. He appreciated the gun’s balance in his hand. Alberto Gonzales had gone with the best weapon available.

“Take cover!” England Dan need not have shouted the warning. Cooley had already scrambled for cover behind a thick-boled mountain mahogany tree. England Dan followed his own advice and rolled away. He flopped bellydown a dozen paces from his partner. He hunted for a tree like Cooley had found, but all he had was a low rock. More than one bullet whined off the top, forcing him to keep his head down. He reloaded, took a breath and popped up to fire a couple rounds. He identified the two at the same instant his partner did.

“It’s Jensen. And I swear he’s got a twin with him.” Cooley sprayed lead around wildly enough to drive the Jensen brothers back.

England Dan cursed his partner and Mandy. They’d claimed Lars Jensen was dead. Now he faced not only a known murderer but probably his brother, too. He fired into the bushes, trying to end the fight. A new fusillade came in response, forcing him to take cover behind a low pile of rocks. With bullets ricocheting off the rocks, he reloaded and worried over a plan to get out of this trap alive.