Roy Bean's Gold (19 page)

I stared at Josh, who was following us, along with a mighty sober-looking Abraham. “What's this? Are you going to let him pull me in for trying to save my neck?”

“Go along, Roy.” Josh fingered his scrubby goatee, but kept that deadly little blunderbuss at the ready. “I'm sworn to uphold the law, and I've got to back up my officers as well as my relatives. Go along and I'll handle matters.”

“Handle matters?” I stared at him. “I get it. The old politics again. Well, go by your blamed book if you want, but I'm just about fed up with this town and you both.”

I gawked around for Dulcima and the Castañeda sisters but couldn't spot them in the milling crowd, and guessed the old
señora
had herded them back to the
casa
. Powers wasn't in sight at all, nor any of his big-mouthed gang.

“I'll be back, Roy, so just sit tight.” Then Josh and Abraham also made themselves scarce—and mighty soon I was sitting tight, right in San Diego's
calabozo!

I was so frazzled from being knocked out of the saddle and from my scalp wound that after I was bandaged up by the jailer, I stretched out on the canvas cot in my cell without even shucking off my boots. So there I lay, tossing and turning and even shivering, for it wasn't every day that I shot and killed another human, even one so low-down as Hidalgo Montano. At last I drifted into an uneasy sleep.

I don't know how long I slept, but something jolted me out of a deep slumber—a crash, then another shuddering crash that shook the whole building. Muffled shouts and curses exploded out front, along with the thudding of many feet and jangling of keys. Raising myself up on one elbow, I saw a batch of torches flaring their way toward me down the dark hallway.

“Come on, Bean! Come out of there, you damned killer! Here's your midnight date with the rope!” And there loomed a knot of figures, bulky and misshapen in white sheets and robes pulled over their heads.

But their hands were free and filled with weapons; one of them unlocked the barred door to my cell. One hooded rascal reached out for me but staggered back, cursing in gasps from a well-placed boot in the bread basket. Then that masked mob fell on me and began to drag me from my cell, muttering muffled threats and curses.

As I was lugged through the echoing hallway, kicking and punching at my faceless captors, their sputtering torches flung a pack of goblin shapes along the walls until it seemed I was hurried hellward by a batch of the devil's own.

They'd just shoved me headfirst out into the jailer's office when another bunch of masked men charged through the front door, guns in hand.

Caught flat-footed, my abductors froze in their tracks, dropped weapons and torches, and hoisted hands roofward without a mutter.

“That's right, you white-sheeted coyotes! Down on your ugly faces and grab yourself some sleep! You're already in your nightshirts, ain't you?”

I scrambled up and took a good look at the four masked strangers in the torchlight. All wore range clothes and used bandannas for masks. The one doing all the talking was just over five feet in height—Flea! His taller companion was also definitely Army—Corporal Bates. And the other pair, I recognized at once despite the old clothes: Josh and Abraham.

C
“ome on, Roy!” Josh shoved me toward the doorway. “Let's get out of here,
pronto!
” But he stopped to bend over one of the figures on the floor, yanking away its hood.

Diamond Dick Powers lay there grinding his teeth with pain and pure rage and clutching his bandaged shoulder, eyes glittering in the torchlight.

“You were so damned curious about the Men of the Night, eh? Well, take yourself a good look at their blamed captain.” Josh gave Powers a boot in the ribs, then signaled Flea and the others to get to work. In less than five minutes each member of the lynch team was hog-tied with their own rope and roughly rolled into a corner of the room.

“What about them there?” Flea indicated the jailer and deputy, where they lay bound and gagged in an opposite corner of the office.

“Use what you call a brain!” Corporal Bates snapped. “They're th' law here, and, once loose, they'll be askin' questions. like who are you and who am I. then that bunch of killers on th' floor will have some more scalps to go after.”

“Right,” Josh muttered. “Leave now. We'll send help later.”

While Abraham stood at the door, with a torch in one hand and a pistol trained on the trussed-up prisoners, we went out to the hitching rail in front of the
calabozo
. The night was still crisply brittle with stars, while a fitful breeze drifted in from the bay to whisper through the trees. I looked over the line-up of horses, recognizing Jack Dolan's gray, Carlos Castro's paint, and even Diamond Dick's great stallion, White Lightning—all midnight mounts of a lynch mob, made up of the gamblers, plug-uglies, and hangers-on from Powers's Crossed Muskets.

Bates tossed over a bedroll, while Joshua Quincy unstrapped his six-gun and handed belt and pistol to me. “There's a change of clothes in that roll, along with a duster and some money.” He peered narrowly at me in the starlight. “I take it you haven't much of that gold left. or have you?”

“Mighty little.” I strapped the six-shooter on, and then tied the bedroll behind the saddle of Powers's White Lightning.

“You may not have the hang of stayin' out of trouble, but you sure know how to judge good horseflesh,” snickered Flea, emerging back from the
calabozo
with an armload of weapons.

“I figure that diamondback in there owes me one good horse,” I said, adjusting the stirrups and untying the reins before swinging up into the saddle. “What now?”

“You make yourself good and scarce. Light a shuck for Los Angeles or farther north, then we'll see what happens.” Josh fingered his goatee.

“I don't want that horned toad of a Powers to think he ran me out of town,” I said, gentling the great horse as it side-stepped nervously with a strange rider on its back.

“It's not like you haven't been chased out of a town before,” Josh snorted, but I could see that he was restless for me to take to the tall timber. “If you stay here, it's right back into the pokey until I can get us a lawyer. my jurisdiction only goes so far. That pea brain of a Haraszthy thinks he's got an iron-plated charge against you for plugging Powers's pet coyote, and it'll take some doing to get it dismissed. And, in spite of catching Diamond Dick red-handed, he can still stir up a heap of trouble for you. and me.”

“That slippery sidewinder'll go and claim he's a bona-fide vigilante and wriggle out of it somehow,” volunteered Bates.

“And you and I won't get out of anythin' ourselfs if we don't get our tails back to th' fort,” Flea said as he dumped the raiders' weapons into a rain barrel. “They change guards at five and that blue-bellied Brown would just hone to get us on report for bein' off post.”

Already a pale thread of light was inching out across the eastern mountain gloom as the stars' luster dimmed.

Josh ordered Abraham from the
calabozo
. “High time for us all to scatter.” He lit a lucifer on his boot heel and inspected his watch. “Four o'clock.”

Bates and Flea shook hands before forking their nags for the fort, Flea calling out his parting shot: “Next time, plug the right skunk and save us our sleep!”

“My hat's still in there somewhere,” I told Josh, who motioned Abraham back into the jailhouse. The little Indian returned with his hands full of sombreros, which he handed up to me one by one. After the third try, I settled for a grey Stetson with a fancy silver-mounted band.

“I thought that one would do.” Abraham gave one of his fleeting smiles.

The sombrero was Diamond Dick's.

“Seems you always know more than you let on,” I said. “Like what's happening at Fountain Ranch and who's coming and going.”

While Josh unhitched his black mare from down the rail, Abraham stepped up to my horse's head. “
Señor
Roy, I was Captain Almada's body servant during the war, and am still loyal to
Don
Francisco and the
Señorita
, though I have never been faithless, in principle, to your good brother. He has always treated me like a white man.” He unhitched his bay and stood waiting for Josh's commands.

“Let's get a move on, Roy. I'll ride out with you a piece.” Josh guided his mount up beside us. “And you best ride over to
Señor
Castañeda's and roust him up, Abraham. Say there's been a hell of a commotion at the
calabozo
, then skin for home.”

Abraham sat his saddle for a moment, then, as I nudged my new mount up Wallace after Josh, the little serving man raised his hand in farewell and rode across the shadow-filled streets toward the Casa Castañeda. And it gave me a stab, sharp as a stiletto, to think I was leaving that lovable pair of scapegrace sisters over there—and even more, Dulcima. I knew that I had myself two goals to gain: Kirker's gold and the tintype girl.

“I'll go out with you as far as the river ferry,” said Josh as I spurred up on Diamond Dick's great stallion. Then we clattered down the empty streets headed for the Camino Real.

A night bird or two called sleepily and the breeze, which had been complaining among the trees, began to grow as a storm commenced to crawl in from the ocean. Sheet lightning flashed crooked fingers through the drifting cloud banks, but the thunder's mumble was lost in the drumming of our horses' hoofs.

By the time we'd loped out of town and were heading toward the woods, where Sánchez had met his end at the hand of Murieta, the east was daubed with crimson bars and the first shreds of amber were beginning to pour over the fading wall of night.

We reined in the horses at the edge of the timber and sat breathing them for a moment. “Shouldn't be anyone on your tail for a spell,” said Josh, staring up at the cloud wrack sliding on toward the land. “Fact is, I told Abraham to report you as headed south for the border.”

“He's a pure wonder,” I said, watching the blazing rim of the sun bulge up over the distant mountains, then suddenly spill a golden flood across the dark horizon as another day was born.

“He's surely all of that. And it was his idea to get Corporal Bates and that sawed-off pardner of his out of Fort Stockton. How he did it I couldn't guess. but that's Abraham for you.”

By now the storm was drifting off to the south as the thunder growled away into a muted mutter, while the lofting sun burned into the wind-driven clouds until they seemed turned into peaks of pure molten gold.

“Looks like the weather'll be passable,” said Josh, squinting at his watch again. “But this here's not the best place to be catching a body's breath.” He stared over at the twisted old tree where Sánchez had dangled in the lonely winds.

“I wouldn't bother much over Sánchez. or Murieta.”

“And how'd you know?”

“Just a feeling,” I answered, then changed the subject. “How in the world did Sánchez get mixed up with that gang of lynchers?”

“Oh, Sánchez was always too damned eager to heave his weight around, and I guess Diamond Dick got to him and made him feel a lot more important than he was. The whole thing had to be Powers's doings. He knew that I was a hard-nosed law-and-order man. in fact, when he first showed up, I had to warn him about crooked moves with the cards and dice. Then we were rivals in business, so I guess he thought that if he could make out that I was unable to handle matters or control the midnight riders. and I've got to admit that I pulled out my hair more than once. it would smear my name worse than mud when the elections finally came around.” Josh tugged at his goatee with nervous fingers. “Yep, Diamond Dick's one fellow who likes to plan ahead. Shouldn't wonder, in spite of last night, or maybe because of it, that he announces his candidacy when the time comes.”

“But I'd have thought that his plans had backfired for good.”

“No, you don't know that rattler, even now. He'll claim to be a real public-spirited citizen, like Corporal Bates says. And it'll be his word against mine. with you on the scout.”

“That takes care of the question I had for you,” I said, fishing out Kirker's gold eagle from my vest pocket and flipping it over to Josh. “Guess I owe you one in return.”

“What's this?” As my brother held the coin up to the sunlight, it flashed with a glinting fire all its own. “Thought you were stone broke.”

“It's the last of what took care of your tax money. but also the answer to where there's a thundering lot more of the same. if I can figure out exactly where.”

Then I proceeded to tell my brother the story of Jeff Kirker and his secret hoard, leaving out any mention of Rosita or Francisco Almada.

Josh's eyes took on some of the coin's gleam as he inspected the little gold piece. “You know where?”

I reached out and took the coin back, studying the cryptic, man-made inscriptions again for the thousandth time. “No, I don't know. yet. But I surely intend to. Tell you what, when you fold your tent down here, come up to San Francisco and join me,” I enthused. “We'll form an expedition to locate the cache. And split right down the middle, fifty-fifty.”

“I'm not about to fold any tents yet.” Josh bristled and then stiffened in his saddle. “By gobs, there come some riders from town. Could be that fool of a Haraszthy or someone. You get along from here, and I've got to get myself out of sight in a hurry before they spot me.” He pushed out a hand and grabbed mine. “When you find a roost. Frisco, you say?. drop me a note from there, and then, just maybe, we can go out hunting your bullion later on. providing it's still there. You're not figuring that Murieta would be looking for his own gold, are you?”

“I can chance that, I guess,” I said, shaking his hand as I took myself a fast look at the approaching dust. The horsemen were too far off yet to see us, but it was time to be on the fly.