Chapter Two
Southwestern New Mexico Territory—several weeks earlier
The two men on the wagon kept glancing around nervously as the vehicle rolled down a fairly steep mountain trail toward the plains below, where the settlement of Purgatory was located. Four men on horseback rode with the wagon, two ahead and two behind, and they were equally wary.
They had good reason to be worried. In the back of the wagon, covered with canvas, was a cargo of gold bullion from the San Francisco Mine, named after the mountains that loomed above them and the river that ran through the valley to the east. The load was worth thousands of dollars and would be a tempting target for any outlaw or road agent.
They didn’t have to be concerned about just any would-be thief who came along, though. In these parts, one group seemed to hold a monopoly on lawlessness: the gang of kill-crazy bandits led by Billy Ray Gilmore.
For months now Gilmore and his gang had been preying on the law-abiding inhabitants of this corner of New Mexico Territory. They had started out fairly small, holding up a couple of stagecoaches bound for Purgatory from Lordsburg, then robbing some freighters of the money they’d collected for some supplies they’d brought to the mining town. One of the freighters had taken exception to being robbed and tried to fight back, but he’d been gunned down without mercy before he could get off a single shot from his rifle.
As if that brutal murder had been a signal, the outlaws became even more ruthless and bloodthirsty over the succeeding weeks. They held up several gold shipments from the three big mines in the area, Jason True’s San Francisco, Arnold Goodman’s El Halcón, and Dan Lacey’s Bonita Mine. If a driver didn’t do exactly what the outlaws told him to, and quickly enough to suit them, they didn’t hesitate to blast the luckless hombre. The same was true of the shotgun guards and the outriders sent with the shipments. Half a dozen men were dead as a result of the jobs that Gilmore’s gang had pulled.
It had gotten to the point that not many men wanted the job of accompanying those shipments. The chore was just too blasted dangerous these days. Jason True had been forced to double the wages these men were going to collect for taking the gold to Purgatory.
Double wages wouldn’t do a man any good if he was dead, though, and these guards all knew that. Beads of sweat stood out on their faces as they headed down the trail toward Purgatory, and that didn’t have anything to do with the heat.
“They always hit in the mountains,” the driver, Chet Simmons, said. “If we can make it to the flats, we’ll be all right.”
The shotgun guard next to him, Jack Whitfield, swallowed hard and tightened his grip on the double-barreled weapon he held across his lap.
“How much longer before we’re down from here?” he asked.
“Twenty minutes maybe,” Simmons said. “Can’t rush those mules. As steep as the trail is, if we try to go too fast the wagon’ll get away from us. Wouldn’t want to run over those boys ridin’ ahead of us.”
“Don’t want to get ambushed, either,” Whitfield muttered.
His eyes roved constantly over the surrounding terrain. A steep, almost sheer mountainside rose to the left of them, while to the right the ground fell away in an almost equally steep slope dotted with boulders and clumps of hardy brush.
The trail itself, though, was nice and wide and there weren’t any hairpin turns. Whitfield could see for several miles ahead of them. In fact, in this clear, dry air, he thought he could make out the settlement down in the valley, which was still a good seven or eight miles away.
Up higher, they’d had to travel through several passes that were prime sites for an ambush, and Whitfield’s heart had been in his throat the whole way. Nothing had happened, and once they were past those places he’d begun to breathe a little easier. He was far from convinced, though, that they were out of danger.
Something made him turn his head and look up to the left. The slope in that direction ran upward for maybe a hundred feet before it leveled off into a narrow shoulder. A few pretty good-sized boulders perched on the edge of that shoulder.
As Whitfield watched, one of those boulders moved, rocking back and forth for a second and then overbalancing, toppling forward to roll down the mountainside. It started to bounce, the whump! whump! whump! of the impacts sounding like a giant stomping toward them.
“Look out, Chet!” Whitfield yelled.
There weren’t enough loose rocks for the falling boulder to start an avalanche, but it was a danger in itself. The two outriders in front of the wagon jerked back on their reins and wheeled their mounts, which was a mistake. One of the men barely had time to scream before the big rock hit him and his horse and carried both of them over the brink on the other side of the trail.
More rocks were already crashing down toward the wagon and the men accompanying it. The racket was terrifying and disorienting. Simmons brought the wagon to a halt, and Whitfield flung the shotgun to his shoulder.
But there was nothing to shoot at. Buckshot wouldn’t stop a five-hundred-pound boulder. One of the falling rocks landed on the wagon team, crushing two of the mules to bloody pulp. Another was headed straight for the driver’s seat. Simmons and Whitfield dived off the vehicle just in time to avoid being smashed as well. They landed on the hard-packed ground to the left of the wagon, which now sat at an angle because the weight of the boulder striking it had snapped the front axle.
One of the outriders behind the wagon suffered the same fate as his comrade up front. A boulder struck him and knocked him over the edge of the trail. More than likely he was killed by the impact, but if he wasn’t, the fall would kill him.
Shots sounded from up the trail. Whitfield looked in that direction and saw half a dozen riders charging down at them with guns blazing. The remaining outrider behind the wagon was driven from his saddle by outlaw lead. Whitfield lifted the shotgun and Simmons clawed his revolver from its holster, but both men knew they were probably doomed.
Still, they were Western men, and they weren’t going to give up without a fight.
It didn’t last long. Whitfield felt the fiery lance of a bullet piercing his shoulder and dropped the shotgun. He went to his knees and scrambled to pick it up despite the pain in his arm and shoulder. Beside him, Chet Simmons grunted and rocked back as slugs punched into him. Simmons collapsed, blood welling from his mouth and from three wounds in his chest.
Whitfield heard rapid hoofbeats from the other direction and glanced over his shoulder as he fumbled with the shotgun. The lone surviving outrider was lighting a shuck, galloping away down the trail as fast as his horse would carry him. Whitfield felt a surge of anger at the man for abandoning them like that, then realized that he might very well have done the same thing if he’d been in that position.
He couldn’t seem to pick up the shotgun. His muscles just wouldn’t work well enough. Then dust swirled around him as the outlaws rode up. One of them dismounted, gun in hand, and strode over to where Whitfeild knelt beside the gold wagon. He put a booted foot on the shotgun’s barrels just to make sure Whitfield couldn’t use it.
Gasping for breath, sweating, bleeding from his wounded shoulder, Whitfield looked up at the outlaw, who smiled down at him and said, “Looks like you’re out of luck, amigo.” The man wasn’t very big, but he gave off such an air of menace that he seemed larger than he really was. Whitfield recognized him.
Billy Ray Gilmore. Wanted in several states and territories for murder, robbery, rape, and other crimes, all heinous, before he’d brought his gang and his particular brand of villainy to New Mexico Territory. Just to look at him, he didn’t seem like a monster.
But Whitfield knew that he was, and Gilmore confirmed that by saying, “So long,” and thumbing back the hammer of his gun.
Whitfield heard the roar of the shot that sent a bullet smashing through his brain, but that was all.
* * *
“Billy Ray, this is too damn much like work,” Duke Rudd said as he and the other men loaded bullion into pouches slung over the backs of the pack mules they had brought down the trail. “First, some of us have to sweat like field hands leverin’ those boulders off the rim up there, and now we got to tote all this heavy gold. If the team hadn’t got squashed, we could’ve just turned the wagon around and hauled the loot away in it.”
“Unfortunately, you can’t really aim a boulder too well,” Gilmore said as he sat on the wagon’s lowered tailgate, supervising the operation. Flies had started to buzz around the bodies of the dead men and mules, and they were getting on his nerves. He went on, “We knew we’d probably have to pack the bullion out. That’s why we were ready.”
“I know, I know,” Rudd said. “And I reckon I shouldn’t complain about havin’ to tote gold.” A familiar cocky grin creased his face. “It’s just that we’re outlaws. The idea is, we take what we want from other folks so we don’t have to work for it ourselves.”
Gilmore chuckled instead of letting himself get annoyed with Rudd.
“That’s true, but there’s one thing you’ve got to remember, Duke,” he said. “Nothin’s free in this world. You may think you’ve had a fortune fall right in your lap and it’s all due to good luck, but somehow, sometime, you’ve still got to pay a price for it. We’re payin’ that price today, by havin’ to load up this gold.”
“Well . . . some of us are payin’ it,” Rudd said. His grin took any sting out of the words.
“My part of the payin’ was comin’ up with the idea in the first place,” Gilmore bantered back at him.
“How much you reckon this bullion’s worth?” Sam Logan, another of the outlaws, asked as he took off his hat and mopped his forehead with his bandanna.
“Plenty,” Gilmore answered. “It was worth the lives of five men, I know that much.” He squinted up at the peaks of the San Francisco range, where the mines were located. “And here’s the best part . . . there’s more where that came from.”