Gold (25 page)

He watched the riders approach at a lope and,
as they drew closer, recognized the blue U.S.
army uniform of the lead horseman. Ramon felt
his heart pound in his chest. His brother, Jorge,
had been one of
los ninos
killed fighting the Americans at Chapultepec. Jorge had been six
teen.

How had their pursuers found them? Ramon wondered. He had clouded their trail well. He
frowned. Joaquin, when he came, would be angry.
Ramon shrugged. Time for that later.

The riders, centered in his sights, were too far
away for him to risk a shot. He must wait till they reached the defile below him.

Ramon watched the horsemen follow the trail into the stand of pines. At first he could see the
riders through the trees, for there was little under
growth, but then the grove thickened until the
men were hidden from his sight. Ramon judged
their pace, fixing his eyes on the spot where he
knew they must emerge. They’ll come out when
I count to three, he told himself.

Una
. . .
dos
...
he held his count for an in
stant . . .
tres
. The horsemen did not appear.
Ramon hunched his shoulders and shifted his legs,
which were splayed on the rock. Still he saw no
one. He glanced at Rosita on the other side of the
creek before looking back to the pines. Squinting,
he tried to penetrate the late afternoon darkness. He held his gaze. There. A man, only his face
visible, standing beside one of the nearer pines.

Ramon lay still, his breathing quick and loud.
From behind him the creek splashed downhill
toward the trail. A hawk wheeled overhead.
Ramon looked from the bird back to the shadows
under the pines. The man was gone.

Ramon waited. He drew in a long breath as
two men rode from under the trees, their horses
at a walk. The Army officer was in the lead. He
scanned Ramon’s side of the slope, a rifle under
his arm, the other horseman following twenty feet
behind with his eyes on the opposite slope. The
two of them came on past clumps of brush and
into a jumble of boulders. They’re in range,
Ramon thought. Barely, but in range.

The lead rider stopped and raised his hand, his
gaze fixed on Ramon’s hiding place. Without
warning Ramon’s side cramped, and though he felt a
knot of pain he did not move. Slowly the cramp
eased. The two men below him, their eyes still on
the slope, appeared to talk. Ramon sighted on
the officer, then raised his rifle to adjust for the
distance. He felt the wind blowing steadily from
behind him.

The officer pulled his horse around and headed
for the shelter of the pines. Had they seen him?
The man’s companion swung about and followed.
Both were going back.

Ramon fired. For Jorge, he told himself.

Sherman’s horse lurched forward, throwing him
against the saddlehorn. He grasped for the horn
as the horse stumbled and fell sideways. Sherman
leaped clear. He hit the ground rolling, coming
to rest flat on his stomach. He reached for his
rifle a few feet away. Dirt puffed next to him—
he hadn’t heard the shot. Crouched over, rifle in
hand, he ran for a cluster of boulders just as
another shot cracked from the hillside.

He sprawled behind the protecting rock. He
glanced over his shoulder but couldn’t see Sutton. His wounded horse whinnied, struggled to stand,
but could not because its right rear leg had been shattered.
A bullet ricocheted from the rock above Sher
man’s head.

A minute passed, two minutes, three.
Sherman
looked around the outcropping and saw a blur
of movement on the hill. He sighted, pressed off
a shot. The shot was answered at once from high
on the ravine’s near side. At least two of them
then.

“
Come back,” Sutton called to him from the
pines. “I’ll cover you.”

“
Wait.” Sherman aimed and fired. His horse stiffened, head dropping to the ground. One leg
pawed the air, then fell back. For a moment
Sherman stared at the dead horse. He sighed and
looked away.

“
Now,” he called to Sutton.

At the first shot from the pines,
Sherman
thrust himself off the ground, running low and
flat out. He stumbled in a gopher hole, almost fell,
kept his feet, saw branches above him. He flung himself onto the pine needles beside Sutton, his chest heaving, the sharp odors of pine and gun-
smoke mingling in his nostrils.

“
There’s two or three of them,” Sutton said.
“
One high on
the right, the other halfway up on
the left. Might be a third. I can’t be sure ‘cause
the one on the right’s been moving around so
much.”

Sherman
looked along the line of men posi
tioned behind the screen of pines. “Anybody
know this country?” he asked.

“
I’ve done some prospecting hereabouts,” Jack
Smith of Howard said.

“
How long a ride to get around these cliffs? So
we can take them from the rear.”

“
Couple of hours anyway. You’d have to go
back five miles or more and then swing to the
east. It’s even farther the other way.”

“
Then that’s what we’ll do,” Sherman said.
“Two men can loop around behind to come at
them from the rear, two more can get above them
on the north by climbing the slope, two on the
south. The rest of us will stay here and keep them
pinned down. We’ll have to hurry. We’ve only a
few hours till dark.”

“
They could be to hell and gone in two hours,”
Sutton said. “What’s to stop them from riding
right out of the upper end of that ravine?”

“
Probably nothing,” Sherman said. “That’s the
risk we’ll be taking.”

“
Could we overtake them if they rode out?”
Surprised, they turned to look at Danny O’Lee.
“Could we?” Danny asked again.

“
I’d put our chances at less than one in three,”
Sherman told him. “Considering the poor horses
we’ve got. Of course, having to take the girl along
should slow them.”

“
I say we don’t wait,” Sutton said. “I say we
go in after them right now.”
“I’m with the colonel,” Danny said. Several of
the other men nodded.

Sherman
shook his had. “It’s too dangerous. We’d be attacking what amounts to a fortified
position.”

“
I’m going to get Selena out of there now,”
Sutton told him. “How many of your men are
with me?”

“
I am.” Danny stepped to Sutton’s side. One
by one the others joined him.

“
I can see I’m a minority of one,” Sherman said. “We’ll attack.”

“
Jed and I will go up the left slope,” Sutton
said.

“
I’ll take the right,” Danny told him.

“
I’ll go with him.” It was Jack Smith of
Howard.

“
I’ll still send two riders around to invest their rear in case we get pinned down here.” Sherman
pointed to the two men who had accompanied him from Coloma. “Maguire? Biggs?” They
nodded.

Sutton went to his horse and returned with a rifle. He handed it to Jed who stood weighing it
in his hand before grinning at Sutton.

The two men set off through the trees. When Sutton reached the last of the pines he paused,
looked at Jed. “I’ll go first,” he told him.

When he heard the first covering shot from the pines, Sutton dashed ahead, throwing himself be
hind the first of the boulders at the base of the
hill. He looked back to see Jed sprint from cover. A single shot rang out from the crest of the opposite slope. Jed stumbled and fell full-length in the dirt.
A third rifleman. Sutton glimpsed him, a figure
in black. He squeezed off a wild shot. Behind
Sutton, Jed lay groaning. The black man raised
himself to his hands and knees and began crawling
toward him. Sutton put down his rifle and ran to him, grasped him under the shoulders and pulled him behind the shield of boulders. Ripping away
Jed’s shirt, he exposed a bullet wound in his upper
right chest.
Jed’s breathing was ragged and shal
low.

Sutton heard a scrambling and looked behind
him to see Braithewaite running toward him. The
doctor knelt at his side. “I’ll see to him,” he said.

Sutton turned, picked up his rifle, and sprinted
up the slope to the next group of boulders. An occasional shot came from the pines behind him
but there were none from above. He ran from
boulder to boulder, heedless of the danger. Yet
he drew no fire. Just below the spot where the gun
man had waited when he and Sherman first ap
proached the ravine, he sprawled on the ground,
breathing hard. There were no sounds from either
above or below.

Sutton eased himself out from behind the boul
der. Deep in the ravine ahead of him he heard a
horse whinny and then the thud of receding hoof-
beats. He pushed himself to his feet and ran to
the ledge from which the gunman had fired on
them. No one was there. Sutton stood, half expect
ing to draw a shot. The ravine remained silent.

Sutton looked back to the pines and, after wav
ing Sherman forward, ran ahead to the top of an
outcropping of rock. He saw three horsemen galloping away with a fourth riderless horse behind
them. Selena. Where was Selena? Sutton raised his
rifle. Too late. They were around a bend in the
ravine and out of sight before he could fire.

Sutton swore. He climbed down the hill, reach
ing the trail beside the creek just as Sherman and
two others rode up. Danny O’Lee and Smith were
already on their way down the other side of the
ravine.

“
There’s three of them,” Sutton said, “riding up
out of the ravine.”

“
What about the girl?” Sherman asked.

“
Selena wasn’t with them.”

“
Could we be on the trail of the wrong men?”

“
I don’t know. They looked like the three
Rhynne described.
Californios
. I can’t be sure.”

“
They sure act guilty as hell,” Jack Smith said.

“
They might have killed Selena,” one of the men said.

“
Or left her somewhere.” Sherman looked up
the ravine. “The only way we’ll find out is by
going after them.”

“
Wait.” They saw Doc Braithewaite climbing
down the slope.

“
How’s Jed?” Sutton asked him.

“
I bandaged his wound. If we get him back to
town he might pull through. The bullet seems to have missed his lung.”

“
Thank God.” Sherman started to turn away.

“
Wait,” Doc Braithewaite said again. “I left
Jed because I just remembered something.”

They all looked at him.

“Something about Harry Varner,” Braithewaite
said. “I remembered that Harry Varner hates
dogs. Never could stand one anywhere near him.”

CHAPTER
SEVENTEEN

Harry Varner took the Bowie knife from his
boot and cut the gag from Selena’s mouth and the
ropes from her hands. He watched as she first mas
saged her wrists and then the corners of her
mouth. Even with her feet swollen, her dressing
robe and nightgown torn and soiled and her hair
in disarray, she was beautiful. A handmaiden of
Satan, he told himself, who uses her beauty to
lead men into the fires of damnation.
He went to the stove, ladled stew onto a tin
plate, then poured a cup of coffee. When he carried the meal to the bed, Selena looked up at him with misted blue eyes. Quickly handing her the plate and cup, he turned away. Weeping was one
of their tricks. His wife, before she left him, had
used all manner of stratagems in her attempts to
lure him from the path of righteousness.
Varner took the pan from the floor beside the bed and threw the water on the ground outside.
After wringing out the cloth he had used to
cleanse Selena’s feet, he laid it on the sloping
wooden rack to dry. When he reentered the cabin
he saw that Selena had put her plate and cup on
the floor next to the bed and had drawn a blue blanket to her chin. She lay staring straight up at
the ceiling.