The rifle shots echoed through the valley. Travis halted the wagon and turned his head, trying to pinpoint the shooting. He thought that it came from the west.
“What’s that?” asked Crockett.
“Someone firing,” he said. Not many men firing. Maybe a dozen or two and not shooting as fast as they could but firing faster than they would if they had been hunting.
“What’s going on?”
Travis thought about the bodies they had seen. And he thought about the trail they had crossed. A small party of horsemen. White men because the horses had worn shoes. The few clear marks he’d seen had showed him that. The trail wasn’t more than a day or two old.
Finally he turned toward her. “I don’t like this. I think maybe we’d better head back to El Paso.”
“Why?”
“There are too many people out here. Too much going on all of the sudden.”
“Someone else will get to the gold,” she said.
“No. Not now. Besides, according to the diary, it’s been sitting there for almost two hundred years and no one has found it yet.”
“No one has been looking for it,” she said. “Or rather, there weren’t the people around here to look for it. Now there are, and if we don’t get to it, we’re going to lose it.”
There was a sudden burst of firing. A wild thirty seconds that echoed among the hills. It faded slowly. Travis looked off to the west, toward the mountains there.
“Sounds like someone’s gotten into real trouble,” he said. He kept scanning the horizon, looking for a sign of the ambush or the fighting but could see nothing.
“I want to push on,” said Crockett. “My father would have wanted it that way.”
“He wouldn’t have wanted for you to get killed.”
“You don’t know that the shooting will affect us,” she said.
“No,” said Travis, agreeing. “But there is too much going on out here.”
Then, to the north of them, three riders appeared. They were not much more than specks with tiny clouds of dust swirling above and behind them. At first they had no apparent destination, but then spotted the wagon and turned toward it. They increased their pace, galloping down at Travis and Crockett.
Travis wrapped the reins around the brake handle and lifted his Winchester from the back. He cocked it once and let the hammer down with his thumb.
“Who’re they?”’ asked Crockett.
Travis didn’t know, so he didn’t answer. He didn’t like the idea of three men riding down on him like that. As they came closer, he realized that they were anything but friendly.
“Out of the wagon,” he said.
“What?”
“Get out of the wagon and get down.” He leaped to the ground and dropped to one knee. He raised his rifle and aimed but hesitated. He didn’t want to start an Indian war by picking off a couple of braves who only appeared unfriendly.
And then he thought about the bodies near the watering hole and knew that the Apaches were not coming at him to discuss it. They were going to kill and loot. He aimed at the lead rider, fired, worked the lever, fired, and got into a rhythm.
The first Indian seemed to live a charmed life. Travis fired at him a dozen times, but he didn’t react. He rode on, suddenly screaming. And then he sat upright and raised his hands almost as if to surrender. Slowly he fell back over the rear of his horse.
Travis had now emptied his rifle. He tossed it up over the side of the wagon and drew his revolver. The Apaches were shooting back. Spaced shots that were wild. Nothing came close to them.
Crockett stood for a moment, reached into the box of the wagon, and dragged out the shotgun she had brought. She disappeared a moment later.
One of his horses suddenly screamed in pain. It reared back, hampered by the leather harness holding it to the tongue of the wagon. It fell to its knees and then collapsed, blood pumping from its chest. The other horse tried to rear and then tried to run, but the brake of the wagon and the body of the other animal held it in place.
Travis squeezed off four shots rapidly, but missed. One brave held his rifle over his head, screaming his rage. Travis knew that the wagon was now stuck. With a horse dead, there was no way for them to run for it.
Both the Apaches closed on them. Travis climbed to his feet, turned his right side toward the Indians, and lowered his right hand slowly. He fired once and the second brave slipped to the ground.
From the right came a twin boom, boom. Crockett was standing there with the shotgun. She fired both barrels as the last of the braves neared her. The force of the buckshot lifted him from the back of the horse and threw him to the ground. He rolled over a couple of times and didn’t move.
“You okay?” asked Travis.
She didn’t answer, her eyes on the bleeding body of the Apache. She nodded once. Her hands clutched the shotgun tightly, her knuckles white.
Travis glanced at the three bodies and then turned. He snatched his rifle from the rear of the wagon and began shoving rounds into it. When he had it loaded, he chambered a round and then let the hammer down.
He reloaded his pistol and jammed it into his holster and then pulled his knife. He crouched near the body of the horse and began cutting away the leather harness. He flipped the straps out of the way and then realized that one horse would not be able to pull the wagon. At least not pull it far, and he wasn’t about to hitch his own horse to the wagon. It had not been trained to pull a load. It wouldn’t know how to react.
Crockett still stood with the shotgun in her hands. Her face was white, sweat dripping form her chin. She didn’t look very good. In a quiet voice, she asked, “What’s going to happen now?”
“We’ve got to get the hell out of here,” he said. “They know where we are.” He’d moved around and now was working to free the second horse from the leather. He looked up at her. “Can you ride bareback?”
“Yes.”
“We’ll have to leave the wagon. No choice there. We try to salvage it and we’re going to lose everything.”
She moved forward and put the shotgun down carefully, as if it might go off again. She moved to where Travis was standing and then reached up to pat the horse. Her color was improving rapidly.
Travis left her and walked to the rear of the wagon where his horse was tied. He lifted the blanket and then the saddle out of the wagon bed and tossed them onto the animal. He quickly adjusted it and cinched it and then untied the reins.
“We leave everything?” said Crockett.
“Everything. We get out now and ride for El Paso,” said Travis.
She tugged at the harness and then swung herself up onto the horse’s back. It pranced to the right, lowered its head, and snorted but did nothing to unseat her.
Travis picked up the shotgun, looked at Crockett hanging onto the horse and realized that there was no way for her to carry it. He’d have to leave it in the wagon though he knew that meant the Apaches would get it, not that another weapon would make any difference.
“They’re coming,” said Crockett suddenly, her voice tight.
Travis looked up. Half a dozen men had appeared, riding down the slope toward them. Travis climbed into the saddle, wheeled his horse around to the south, and spotted another two or three coming at them from that direction.
“Damn!” He didn’t know which way to go. The only thing he knew was that the road back to El Paso was blocked. “That way!” he shouted. “To the west.”
Crockett wheeled her horse around and dug her heels into it. It was reluctant to gallop. It broke into a half trot, its head held high. But then Crockett seemed to communicate her panic to the animal and it began to run.
Travis let her get going and then fell in behind her. He glanced back but the Apaches were ignoring them. They were all heading right for the wagon. That had bought them a few minutes. Just a few.