The Ferguson Rifle (Louis L'Amour's Lost Treasures) Page 9

  Lucinda was silent, reluctant to go, yet appreciating the fact that we had no choice but to move and swiftly. As we rode, she became increasingly disturbed and I noticed her eyes going to the sun as if trying to determine our direction.

  “If you have anything to say, better say it now.”

  “What?” Her eyes were suspicious. “What do you mean by that?”

  I shrugged. “It’s obvious, isn’t it? Someone follows you from the Spanish colonies. Why? Because he believes you have something he wants, or you can tell him where it is.

  “The man I saw, the one you said resembled your father, he didn’t look like a man who would follow a woman for love. He might take a horsewhip to one, but follow her…no. He looked like a man interested in only two things: money and power.”

  “I don’t know him.”

  “He knows you, and he’ll be following us.”

  “You don’t think we’ve slipped away from him?”

  “That man? There isn’t a chance. He’d be like a wolf on the trail. To be rid of him, you must give him what he wants.”

  “I will not!”

  I chuckled. “And neither will I. But we must be prepared to run, to fight, and to run again. These men”—I gestured at those with us—“they risk their lives as well as their season’s trapping for you. You might at least tell us what we’re fighting for.”

  She was stubborn, and would say no more. Yet I was doing some thinking myself, and realized of a sudden that I might have the answer right in my pocket. I might have the answer in the items taken from the pockets of Conway, before we covered his body. Startled, I reviewed them in my mind. Aside from the map, there were the coins—and the buttons!

  We held to a good pace that first day, keeping in the bottom along the creek and under the trees. Twice we drew up to rest and each time one or more of us rode out to check our backtrail. We saw nothing, heard nothing.

  “If I didn’t know I’d be dreaming,” Shanagan said, “I’d guess we’ve escaped them.”

  “Not the man I saw. He had the face of a cruel, relentless man, the kind who would never give up.”

  Here and there we found a few currants still clinging to the bushes, and we ate them eagerly, pleased with a different taste. Twice we saw grizzlies, one group of three, an old she bear and two cubs, were feeding on a hillside a good hundred yards away. She stood up to inspect us, watching carefully as we slowly rode by and continued on our way.

  Twice we passed groups of buffalo skulls, all with the horns turned to the west, for the Indian believes this is good medicine for the future hunt. Yet we saw few tracks of horses, and no human tracks.

  We were pointed toward the mountains, and we moved steadily, holding to low ground and avoiding exposure. Lucinda was quiet, devoting all her attention to the country. Several times she drew up to study some rocky projection or outcropping and she seemed increasingly disturbed.

  When night came, we camped with the last light, dipping down off a bench into a grassy bottom where a swift-running stream found its way through a thick stand of aspen. The night was overcast with a hint of the rain that had been lingering all through the day.

  Nobody seemed disposed to talk. All of us, I think, were gripped by the seriousness of what we had done. Despite the hour, Davy and Isaac set traps. The place was ideal for beaver, and although we had seen no dam and it was late to look for it, there were beaver runs all about where they had dragged young trees or limbs down to the water.

  Over coffee I said to Lucinda, “If you have anything to tell us, it had better be soon, for we shall travel fast.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Something’s bothering you, and I believe I know what it is. You see, I was the first to find Conway.”

  “He was alive? He hadn’t died when you found him?”

  “He was quite dead. But there are formalities. One cannot just let a man die and be buried. There are people who must be notified. There would be someone inquiring about him, wanting to know what happened.”

  “There was no one. He was an orphan. He was a friend to my father and my father is dead.”

  “Perhaps. Nevertheless, I did not know that at the time.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I went through his pockets.” Her breath caught and I thought her face went a little pale. “I took what there was for identification, or to pass them on to relatives.”

  “I’ve said he had no relatives. You can give them to me.”

  “Perhaps I shall. One of the items was a map. There were a few coins, and some buttons. Very unusual buttons.”

  “I know nothing about them.”

  For a moment I was silent. The others would be coming up to the fire soon. I fed sticks into the flames, and then said, “I do.”

  She was startled. “You what?”

  “I recognized the buttons. You see, Miss Falvey, I’m a man of curious mind. I read. I also listen, and when interested, I inquire. When a man is dedicated to the search for knowledge, he may follow his quest down many strange paths.

  “Having followed my curiosity as far as I have, it’s not difficult to put a few things together. Your father was an interested man also, that much is obvious. By what means he first learned of this treasure we may never know, but that he knew of it as did Conway is obvious. The buttons are an indication.”

  “They were all there was left,” Lucinda said. “When my father found the old church, the treasure was gone…already gone. He found a few buttons, the medallion…a few coins, and a gem the thieves had dropped in their hurry to be away.”

  “No doubt that’s true, as far as it goes, but what about the old Indian? He told your father something. Told him enough, in fact.”

  She hesitated, her eyes searching mine. “I must have help. Can you trust these men?”

  “They’re risking their lives to help you.”

  “Or to find what I’m looking for?”

  “Not too many men are to be trusted when gold is a matter of concern, or a pretty woman, but I believe these men can be trusted. I’ve found them men of principle, and despite what many wish to believe, there are honorable men in the world.

  “However, think of this. If you go away now, without the treasure, how will you get back? There’re a thousand stories of lost cities, lost temples, vast treasures. Why should anyone believe yours rather than any other? How many men will you find who’ll go into Indian country with you?

  “There’s another thing. Suppose someone finds it while you’re gone? We don’t know if that old Indian was the only one who knew. That man who looks like your father…what does he know?”

  What I said was true and she knew it. Her chance of ever returning to this area was slight, yet she hesitated, twisting her fingers and thinking.

  I could well understand how she felt. She was a young woman alone, far into a situation she had never expected or planned for, and even if she escaped from this wilderness, she faced abject poverty in a world without mercy.

  She found herself among strangers, with a group of rough-seeming men with no allegiance to anybody or anything. That I was Irish she knew, and Davy Shanagan, too, but there were rogues enough among the Irish so that might count for nothing.

  “I don’t know what to do,” she said helplessly. “I…I have no one. When I came to Santa Fe, I didn’t expect this. Mr. Conway was going to help, and Jorge. I trusted them.”

  “And now you must trust us.”

  She looked at me, her eyes imploring. She must risk all or lose all. “You…you knew about the treasure?”

  “Yes. Such stories have always fascinated me, and this one had some peculiar aspects that we needn’t go into now. It’s actually two treasures, you know.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “It began in Malta. A renegade knight of Malta fled t
he island with a gold medallion, some silver buttons cut from a uniform, and a dozen precious gems. In Spain, fearing the knights of Malta whom he well knew would pursue him, he joined a force of Spanish soldiers who were going out to the Indies.

  “His idea was to buy a plantation on one of the islands, and settle down there. However, his pursuers arranged for him to be arrested by the Inquisition. He was tipped off, and selling one of the jewels, he smuggled himself aboard a caravel sailing for Mexico. There he took service under an assumed name and led several slave-capturing expeditions among the Indians. On one of these, he came upon an abandoned church in a deserted village. It was one of those ill-fated attempts that came to nothing because of the fierceness of the Indians, and by the time our man came upon it, the place was forgotten.

  “At about that time, an Indian trying to curry favor offered to tell him of a treasure if only the captain would release him from the group of Indians he was returning to slavery.

  “Our captain listened, and the Indian told him that when Montezuma was taken by the Spanish, much gold had been hidden to keep it from them, and he knew where this gold was. He led our captain to it, the captain promptly killed him, then with the gems he already had and the treasure just taken, he made a cache in the ancient church and came away.”

  “I didn’t know how it happened,” she said. “How do you know all this?”

  “Most of it’s a matter of record. Nothing is as secret as men imagine. The Indian who tried to buy his way out had talked to other Indians of what he hoped to do, and when their companion turned up missing, one of them told of it.

  “One man likes the smell of gold as well as another, and where there is honey, the bees gather. At headquarters they had inquiries about a certain renegade knight of Malta, so the captain was called in for questioning on both counts. Unhappily for them, and for himself, he wasn’t as tough a man as he imagined, and he didn’t survive the questioning.

  “All they succeeded in getting from him was that he knew nothing, had hidden nothing, and was being persecuted by the knights of Malta because he knew their secrets.

  “The renegade died, but appended to the report on the case was information to the effect that he was believed to have hidden the gold in a church or mission chapel.”

  “I knew none of this!”

  “It all happened long ago. I learned of it when I heard talk of it one night in France. Several of us were discussing lost treasures and vanished cities, the way people will.

  “One of the young men was from Madrid, and he knew the whole story. Later, from curiosity, we investigated a little.”

  “But it was gone! My father learned somehow, or figured out, where the deserted church was, but the treasure was gone and even the few things he found were well hidden. Father believed the treasure had been taken out by night and the men taking it hadn’t known they’d left anything.”

  “Probably. But the story doesn’t end there. The two men who got it recruited a bunch of Indians and struck off to the north. That was very early…before Anza went to colonize New Mexico. The two men fled, and there far to the north one killed the other. Later he and several of his party were themselves killed by Indians.”

  “And then?”

  “That’s where you come in, if you know where the treasure is, and if it’s still there.”

  The wind stirred the flames, and they whipped angrily. I added a few sticks, listening for the others. Out in the night a wolf howled…a wild, lonely sound in the darkness.

  “It’s been two hundred years!” she whispered.

  “A long time. But out here, time has little meaning. Of course, it depends on where it’s hidden. A riverbank now…that would be bad. Rivers change course, wash away their banks. Most other places it would be hard to find.” I glanced at her. “He wasn’t killed near here, you know. It was away over east of here, near a great settlement of Indians.”

  “I know. That’s what they said.”

  “It wasn’t true?”

  “No. The story is that the two officers, Francisco de Leyva Bonilla and Antonio Gutierrez de Humana, started from Nuevo Vizcaya and went to a pueblo near San Ildefonso, or perhaps actually where that town now stands. Then they started east for the buffalo plains, intending to go north to the French settlements in Quebec. They had a fight and Humana stabbed Leyva to death. Humana was eventually killed at or near the Great Settlement, which was far out on the plains to the east, but he’d buried the treasure before the Indians took him east.

  “They’d surrounded him, moved in on him, and although he wasn’t actually a prisoner, he knew it amounted to that, so he buried what he had, intending to return for it. Of course, they killed him and he never returned.”

  “Do you know where the treasure is? We have a map, but it’s not complete. Purposely so, I believe.”

  “We should reach the place any day now,” she said evasively. But I thought she had answered my question…she knew!

  We had talked long, and the others had been of no mind to disturb us. One of the men gathered leaves for a bed for Lucinda and she spread her blankets over them. I listened to the night, and I was not at ease. I remembered the face of the man I had seen…and it was not a good face.

  CHAPTER 12

  Dawn broke slowly under a lowering sky, heavy with clouds. Huddled over our fire, we cooked our food, left it to pack our horses and saddle up, all of us sourfaced and wary. Trouble was upon us and our every instinct spoke of it.

  The coffee tasted good, and under the warmth of it and the comfort of the blaze, our spirits rose. Solomon Talley suddenly got up. “Do you stay quiet,” he said. “I want to look about.”

  Shanagan threw his dregs on the ground. “I’ll ride along,” he said.

  I had told them we were getting close, and they were ready for it. Cusbe Ebitt, a silent man most of the time, stopped beside Lucinda. “Do you not worry, miss. We’ll see you safely to the States or wherever you wish, and with whatever is yours.” He glanced around. “I speak for all here.”

  “You do, indeed,” Degory Kemble said.

  “We ride into Indian country,” Isaac Heath said, “and they’ll be many, we’ll be few. Bob, I’ll hope you rest easy on the trigger and invite no trouble. I know how you feel about Indians.”

  “I’m no fool, Isaac. I’ll invite nothing, but if some Indian should cross my path on the way to the Happy Hunting Ground, I might give him an assist.”

  “We are all on the way,” I commented gently. “A man is born beside the road to death. To die is not so much, it is inevitable. The journey is what matters, and what one does along the way. And it’s not that he succeeds or fails, only that he has lived proudly, with honor and respect, then he can die proudly.”

  “It’s no wonder we call him Scholar,” Kemble said dryly.

  Jorge Ulibarri had been standing beyond the fire, and now he spoke. “I think they wait for us.”

  Kemble looked around at him. “Ambush?”

  “No. Not yet. I think they know a little where the gold is, but not enough. I think they hang back, waiting for us to find it, and when we do, they’ll come to take it from us.”

  “He makes a lot of sense,” Bob Sandy said. “Boy, when this is all over if you want to ride with me, you can.”

  “Thank you. I must see the señorita to safety. It is a trust.” He glanced at the ground. “Not many men have trusted me. Señor Falvey did.” He looked around at us, puzzled. “I do not know if I am a man of honor, but he considered me so, and in this case at least, I must be.”

  “Like I said,” Bob Sandy said, “anytime you want to ride with me. The offer stands.”

  A brief spatter of rain fell. Wind whipped the leaves and the grass. “We’re going to get wet. We might as well get wet movin’ as settin’.” Ebitt got to his feet, tearing at the last bit of buffalo meat on his stick.

>   We put out our fire, and left the last of the coals to the rain. I went to my horse and swept the saddle free of water with my palm. Then I put a foot in the stirrup and swung to the saddle.

  The others mounted, but we lingered briefly, wanting Talley and Shanagan to be with us.

  “They’ll foller,” Sandy said. “We’d best move.”

  The way led up a draw between low, grassy hills. Before us the land grew rough, off to our right lay a vast sweep of plains, rolling gently away to a horizon lost in cloud. Huge thunderheads bulked high, a tortured dark blue mass that seemed to stir and move, but flat beneath where lightning leaped earthward.

  More spattering drops fell, but we rode along, feeling the hard smack of the big drops on our slickers, keeping our guns under cover, fearful of dampened powder. As we moved, all were aware of those who followed, and each in his own mind was assessing the risk to himself and the party.

  The draw narrowed, the walls were now steep, tufted with brush and occasional cedars, but craggy with outcroppings of rock. A trickle of water ran down the draw past us, a widening trickle that increased. Heavy rain was falling somewhere ahead of us and the draw became a canyon that narrowed considerably.

  Degory Kemble drew rein. “We’d best hunt ourselves a way out of this. If we get caught in a rush of water, we’d be swept away, drowned without a chance.”

  My horse walked forward. “I think I see something ahead,” I suggested. “There…back of that boulder.”

  It appeared to be a trail of sorts, mounting the bank, then angling on toward the lip of the canyon.

  “We’ll be out in the open,” Kemble said dubiously.

  “Better in the open than drowned,” Ebitt said grimly. “Let’s try it.”

  The horse I had from Walks-By-Night was a good one, so I turned him at once to the bank. He started up, scrambled on the shelving surface, then dug in and got to a place where he could walk. Soon the footing was better, and in a few minutes I had topped out on the lip of the canyon.

  The world I faced was wild and strange. Before me was a fairly flat area some hundred yards in width that stretched on ahead for some distance. On the left of it was a steeply rising mountainside covered with pines, and the area before me had scattered pines and a few cedars with a forest of huge, weirdly shaped boulders tumbled from the mountain in some bygone age. From under my hat brim, I studied the terrain as best I could.