“You missed him. How could you miss?
Crosby shrugged and cocked his weapon, but it was too late then. The man had rolled off his horse and was out of sight. The horse had run fifty or sixty feet before stopping.
“I could shoot his horse.”
“No,” said Freeman. “He’d just go back to Sweetwater and that’s not going to do us any good.”
“So what are we going to do?”
Freeman didn’t answer right away. He stared down across the dry riverbed. The man was out of sight, hidden behind the scrub or rocks. He wasn’t moving around, so that it was impossible to spot him. He knew what he was doing.
“Seems to me,” said Freeman, “that we should just follow him. Stay back, out of sight, and see where he’s going. We can take him anytime we want to.”
“He knows that we’re out here,” said Crosby.
“No. He knows that a shot was fired, but that’s all he knows. One shot. Hell, it might not even have been fired at him. Stray round. Strange things happen on the desert.”
Crosby slipped back deeper into the shadows. He pulled his hat off and wiped his forehead. He glanced at the rifle and then at Freeman. “Maybe he doesn’t know a thing.”
“He’s got that old man’s mule. He wouldn’t have it if he didn’t know something. We’ll just bide our time.” Freeman turned around and watched the scene below him.
Travis reached his horse easily. He grabbed the reins and then knelt behind it, looking up into the rocks. He held his pistol in his right hand, the hammer back for a quick shot, but there was no movement anywhere. Nothing to betray the ambushers. High overhead a single bird wheeled and that was the only thing he could see moving.
Travis stood, the horse between him and the rifleman, holstered his pistol and swung himself up into the saddle. He leaned forward, grabbing the horse’s neck and slipped to the right, supporting his weight with the stirrup. That made it difficult for anyone on the other side of the riverbed to see him. He dug his heels into the horse and it leaped forward. He pulled back on the reins, slowed, and then turned. Still no movement in the rocks. Hunching forward, he raced back to where the prospector’s mule stood, nibbling at a dried-up bush.
Leaning forward, he snagged the roped tied to the bridle. He took a final, quick look at the rocks, and then whirling around, dug his heels in. With the mule in tow, he rode along the bank of the river, still trying to spot the ambushers and to get out of there. He ran past the bend in the dry river and the copse of trees, and then up, toward the top of the ridgeline.
When he reached it, he stopped and jumped from the saddle. He left his pistol in the holster as he knelt, scanning the rocks around the riverbed but still saw nothing down there. No signs of anyone or any horse.
Shaking his head, he lead his horse and the mule from the top of the ridgeline before he climbed back into the saddle. One shot was a lousy ambush. Maybe they, whoever they were, had not been shooting at him. Maybe it was a stray round. Maybe it was just a big coincidence.
“I don’t know,” he told his horse. “I just don’t know.”
The bartender had rarely had so much business. The men were crowded three deep in front of him, and he had been able to raise his prices with no one complaining. He rushed from one end of the bar to the other, slopping his watered-down booze into glasses that he didn’t bother to wash because no one cared about that either.
A thick haze of blue smoke hung in the air that the breeze from outside failed to dissipate. A few men were smoking cigars. Most had cigarettes.
“Tell us again,” yelled one of the men.
“Tell you what?” shouted the bartender. “I told you it all four times. The old prospector was crazy. Talking of bars of gold hidden in a cave.”
“I’ve heard that before,” said a man at the bar. He held his drink up and turned so that he could face the crowd. “Heard that story for years.”
“It’s a crock.”
“No. No. Where there’s smoke, there’s a fire. And the Apaches do have ceremonial caves.”
“Bull.”
The man turned and looked at his accuser. “You ever been out there. Out to the west. Into the territories?”
“No.”
“Then shut up.” The man drained his drink.
“What do you know?” asked someone else.
The man put his glass on the bar and waited. The bartender, knowing a good thing when he saw it, filled the glass so that the man would spin his tale. Even if the man didn’t pay cash for the booze, the others would. He was earning the drink by telling the story of Spanish gold.
“Apaches,” said the man, retrieving his glass and sipping from it, “Apaches don’t understand the value of gold. They see it as a gift from their gods, something they are to protect. If they leave it alone and protect it, they will be strong. If they let others see it and steal it, then they lose their power.”
“Bull,” said the accuser again.
“No bull. Fact. There is a valley that no one has seen since the time of the Spanish. A valley filled with gold. Nuggets as big as eggs laying on the ground. A river so thick in the dust that you can’t stick a pan in it without showing color. And veins of it as tall as a man.”
“Where’s this valley?”
The man laughed. “Only the Apache know and they guard it with their lives. To share that secret is to die.”
“Then how do you?”
“I know and that’s all that matters.” He took a drink. “No white man has ever seen that valley. Except once. The Spanish found the valley and that’s where the gold came from.”
One man pounded his empty glass on the bar waiting for a refill. He didn’t take his eyes off the man who was doing all the talking.
“They stayed there for weeks using savages brought up from Mexico to do the hard work. To do the mining. They smelted it right there, cutting down the few trees that grew along the river. Smelted it all and made it into bars that were almost too heavy to lift.”
“How do you know?”
The man smiled knowingly and finished his drink. “I just know.”
“Where is this valley?”
“You’d never get there. Apaches watch it all the time now. After the Spanish violated it, they watch and kill anyone who is getting too close to it. Valley’s not important anyway. In the valley you’d have to mine the gold and smelt it and carry it out, all with the Apaches around to stop you. Valley’s not important.”
“So what is?”
“The cave. Spanish got some of the gold out of the valley and were taking it back to Spain when the Apaches caught them. The Apaches reclaimed the treasure and then hid it.”
“Bull,” said the accuser again. “A lot of bull.”
The bartender, sensing that the drinkers were going to start drifting away, raised his voice. “Not bull. I stood right here yesterday and listened to a prospector who had seen that gold. Seen it with his own eyes.”
“What’d he see?”
The bartender put down the bottle he held and moved to the center of the bar. He waited until all the eyes were on him and then told the old prospector’s story again, slowly, watching as the men finished their drinks. Before he ended the story, he moved among them, pouring more booze into their glasses and collecting more of their money.
Satisfied for the moment, he said to them, “Old man said that it wasn’t far from here. Hidden in a cave where the Apaches took it. More gold than one man could spend in a lifetime. More gold than anyone could ever need.”
“Then we should go get it,” shouted a man. “If it’s that easy, we should go get it.”
“What about the Apaches?”
“There’s enough of us, and the Apaches aren’t going to be a problem.”
The bartender grinned to himself and began pouring booze again. The only gold to be found was in the pockets of the men in the saloon and he was finding quite a bit of it.