Skeleton Lode (23 page)

“Kelsey’s burning up with fever,” said Kelly. “She keeps throwing off her blankets. I’m afraid for her.”

“If we don’t see a change soon,” Arlo said, “we’ll have to force some more whiskey down her. She should have had a third cup earlier. Our sparing her, not giving her enough to break that fever, will only make it worse for her now.”

“She’s already in a stupor,” said Kelly, “and I’m afraid if we try to get more whiskey down her, she’ll strangle. Let’s wait a little longer. Maybe her fever will break.”

Kelsey mumbled in fitful sleep as Arlo silently cursed himself for not having taken her to town to a doctor. He feared her fever wasn’t going to break, and it was too late for a hard ride to town. The whiskey remedy was all they had. Kelly had folded the remnant of the petticoat into a
pad, and after soaking it in cold water, laid the cloth over Kelsey’s feverish face. Time after time she repeated the process, until Arlo could stand it no longer.

“No more cold water,” he said. “She ought to be sweating by now.”

Kelly stirred up the fire so they might see a little better. Arlo was on his knees beside Kelsey, silently begging for some evidence that the crisis was past. Finally, in the flickering light from the fire, he saw the shine of moisture on Kelsey’s cheeks and forehead. He could have shouted with relief, but instead, he grabbed Kelly in a jubilant bear hug.

“I saw that,” said Kelsey weakly. “How long has this been going on?”

“Since we knocked you out with whiskey,” Kelly teased. “How do you feel?”

“Awful,” said Kelsey. “There’s a big thumping ache in my head, and I’m thirsty. I want cold water, and lots of it.”

The storm continued into the small hours of the morning. Dallas dozed, his hat tipped over his eyes, until Kelly lifted the hat and dropped it on his face.

“Damn it,” Dallas growled, “ain’t you got some better way of wakin’ a man?”

“Lots of them,” said Kelly, “but for another time and another place. It’s time we were taking the horses and mules to graze.”

Thunder rumbled down the canyons, so frequent that one drumming seemed an echo of the last. Lightning—blue, green, and gold—leaped from one mountain to another and drove deep into the gullies. Bowdre, Davis, and their companions huddled against the east wall of the mountain, with only a slight overhang to keep them dry. Bowdre’s right foot and ankle had begun to swell, and he removed his boot while he could still get it off. Amid the continued fury of the storm, the men fought to control the horses. Lightning flared almost continuously, and it
was in this eerie light that they first saw the grisly apparition.

“Madre de Dios!”
Yavapai shouted. “The bones walk.”

The macabre thing—a skeleton, bleached white—emerged from the brush to the south of the canyon and proceeded to cross it. The skeleton’s feet, moving in an erratic, shambling gait, never touched the ground. Occasionally it paused, seeming to frolic in a strange dance all its own. Just before the bony spectacle reached the brush along the south wall of the canyon, the lightning began to diminish. After a few seconds of utter darkness the lightning flared again, but the ghastly specter was gone.

“God Almighty,” said Three-Fingered Joe in awe, “I ain’t
never
seen nothin’ like that. Not even halfway through a three-day drunk.”

“Lawd God,” Mose Fowler groaned, “if daylight ever come, I be gone.”

“Sangre de Christo,”
said Sanchez, “
El Diablo
make the bones to walk.”

“
El Diablo
, hell,” scoffed Gary Davis. “A cheap trick. Somebody’s tryin’ to spook us. Come daylight, I’ll prove it.”

“Why you not prove it now?” Sanchez asked, his voice heavy with sarcasm.

“Everybody just shut the hell up,” Bowdre bawled. “Nobody leaves without I say so. Now scare up some wood, get a fire goin’, and boil some water. I’m hurtin’.”

“Per’ap there be
Indios
,” Sanchez said. “They see fire, they come.”

“By God, let the varmints come,” said Bowdre savagely.

The storm had passed, but the sky remained cloudy, allowing Dallas and Kelly to take the horses and mules from the concealed camp with little risk of being seen.

“Grass is gettin’ mighty thin,” Dallas said.

“I know,” said Kelly, “and with Arlo and Kelsey laid up, we’ll lose some time. All those hours I kept trying to get Kelsey to sweat, I’ve been sweating too. Let’s sit on the grass a little while before we go back.”

“The grass is wet,” Dallas said.

“I don’t care. Stand if you want, but I’m sitting.”

“I just said the grass is wet,” he laughed, sitting beside her. “I didn’t say I wasn’t goin’ to join you.”

“It’s like another world out here,” she said, as they watched the few twinkling lights of town. “It must be three in the morning. Whose lights burn this late?”

“Saloons, I reckon,” said Dallas.

“Did you like running a saloon?”

“It was easy work,” Dallas said. “We just poured the drinks, collected the money, and watched a bunch of damn fools set there gettin’ owl-eyed. No, I didn’t much like bein’ a saloonkeeper, but there was parts of it that wasn’t bad—like havin’ a regular place to sleep, a roof over my head. It’s the longest I ever stayed in one place.”

“I know Arlo was teasing you about rebuilding the saloon, but what
do
you plan to do once we’ve found the gold?”

“Depends,” he said.

“On what?” Kelly asked.

“On you, I reckon. I know we’ve been here just a little while, without much time together, but it’s plumb ruint me for the old fiddle-foot days on the long trail.”

“I’ll tell you a secret,” said Kelly, moving closer. “Arlo has the same problem. While we were waiting for Kelsey’s fever to break, he was more afraid than I was.”

“Arlo and Kelsey—have an understanding,” Dallas said. “I can tell they’re both thinkin’ beyond this search for the mine, and that’s why I … why I …”

“You want to think beyond it too,” said Kelly.

“Yes,” Dallas said. “When we find the gold, I don’t want to go my way, while you go yours. I don’t want it to be the end … for us.”

“It won’t be the end for us,” said Kelly, “nor for Arlo and Kelsey. There’s nothing for Kelsey and me in Missouri, so we have no place to go. Unless …”

He removed all doubt, pulling her to him in the wet grass, and for a long moment they clung together. At last
he helped her to her feet, and they climbed to their camp near the rim.

With the addition of Yavapai, Sanchez, and Gary Davis, Cass Bowdre’s outfit totaled ten men, including Bowdre himself. He split the outfit into teams of three men, assigning them to watches for the rest of the night.

“Just be damn sure them bosses are there at the beginnin’ and end of each watch,” Bowdre said. “If them Apaches rob us again, then I aim to raise nine kinds of hell with whoever’s responsible.”

“Davis knows what he’s talkin’ about,” said Pod Os-teen. “We got more agin us than just Injuns. Come daylight, I’m goin’ down to where that bunch of bones waltzed across the canyon and look for sign.”

“Davis ain’t bossin’ this outfit,” Bowdre said angrily, “and this ain’t no damn spook hunt. We’re here for gold, and we ain’t wastin’ time lookin’ for anything else.”

“Si,”
Sanchez agreed. “We not look for the walking bones, and per’ap they not look for us.”

“Lawd, no,” said Mose Fowler. “Let ’em rest in pieces.”

Pod Osteen turned on Bowdre. “You aim to set here with a sore hind leg, I reckon, while the rest of us scat around, follerin’ your orders.”

Bowdre sat with his back against a stone, his thumb hooked in his belt, inches above the butt of his Colt. In a cold, flint-hard voice he spoke.

“Yeah, that’s what I aim to do, until I can do better.”

While it was a statement, it was also a challenge, and every man knew it. A line had been drawn, and Cass Bowdre was prepared to kill the man who crossed it. Pod Osteen said nothing, and with nobody else taking up the argument, the moment passed.

Gary Davis, although he found himself without authority and taking orders from Cass Bowdre, was secretly pleased. There was animosity within the ranks of Bowdre’s outfit, and Davis set his devious mind to the
task of finding a means by which he might harness the gathering storm, and direct it to his own advantage.

Dawn came and Kelsey Logan slept soundly. When Kelly changed her dressing, the wound didn’t seem inflamed. Though Arlo could scarcely stand because of the soreness, his leg wound also showed no sign of infection. It was to him that Dallas spoke.

“Kelly and me ought to take some torches and explore that other passage that angles off the main tunnel. The one Hoss calls safe. I don’t think we ought to lose any time. This new bunch of gold-hungry coyotes that’s moved in will either start lookin’ for us or they’ll begin searchin’ these passages. Maybe both.”

“Go ahead,” said Arlo, “but don’t be surprised if that passage runs into another. If you take a second or third, be sure to find some way to mark your path. There may be miles of these tunnels, and you could become so lost we’d never find you. Be sure you stay out of any passage where Hoss didn’t leave a sign.”

Hoss Logan had brought in several sections of resinous pine logs, and from one of these, Dallas cut a large supply of long slivers. He separated the pine pitch torches into two bundles, binding them with rawhide, one for Kelly and one for himself. Finally, they set out to explore yet another tunnel Hoss had marked as safe.

“One thing bothers me,” said Kelly, as she and Dallas made their way down the long tunnel to the bottom of the mountain. “Suppose that bunch that went after Arlo and Kelsey should return to the top of the mountain to look for our camp? And suppose they find it, with Arlo and Kelsey there wounded?”

“It’s a chance we’ll have to take,” Dallas said. “Even if they caught all of us in camp, it’s no place to put up a fight. With stone all around, a ricochet could be deadly. The most important thing is that they don’t grab all of us. Don’t worry, Arlo won’t take any chances on gettin’ himself and Kelsey shot. Even if they’re discovered, we’ll
still be free, and Arlo would buy some time, lookin’ to us for help.”

Dallas and Kelly followed their downward path until it ended in the high-domed cavern from which two other passages led. One ran to the outside at the eastern foot of the mountain, where Cass Bowdre and his men had lost their horses the night before. The second angled deeper into the mountain, Hoss Logan’s trio of wooden pegs attesting to its safety.

“Perhaps this one will take us to the mine,” Kelly said.

“I doubt it,” said Dallas. “Arlo and me don’t believe Hoss would have set up his camp so near the gold. Over the centuries, with volcanoes shiftin’ the innards of these mountains around, there may be caves and tunnels under them all. A man like Hoss, who spent all of twenty years in the Superstitions and managed to stay alive, might have discovered his gold beneath one of the mountains.”

“Going to and from it by way of these passages that connect to each other,” said Kelly.

“That’s what I think,” Dallas said. “Some of the movement must have unearthed the gold Hoss found. That would also explain why it hadn’t been found sooner.”

“That’s scary,” said Kelly. “The earth could shift again, burying the gold all over again, and us with it.”

“It might,” Dallas agreed. “What I don’t understand is why Hoss never mentioned the tunnels and caves to Arlo and me. We spent most of two weeks with him right here in these mountains, and not once did he mention going underground.”

“That would have been before he found the gold,” said Kelly. “It was the last time we saw him.”

“It fits what I remember,” Dallas said. “He had just come back from Missouri when he asked Arlo and me to ride into the Superstitions with him. It was almost … well, like he had something on his mind, something he wanted to tell us or show us. But then he seemed to have decided against it.”

“He knew there was big trouble between Mother and
Daddy,” said Kelly. “They had a terrible fight, and Uncle Henry left sooner than he planned to.”

“From what you’ve just told me,” Dallas replied, “I’d have to disagree with you as to the time Hoss found the gold. I think he’d already found it the last time you and Kelsey saw him. Was that when he learned about Gary Davis and your mother?”

“Yes. That’s what Mother and Daddy were fighting about.”

“That would account for Hoss not saying anything about the gold,” said Dallas. “He wanted to see how Gary Davis was going to fit into things. He must have felt the need to talk, to confide in somebody, but he couldn’t quite get up the nerve to talk to Arlo and me about some-thin’ so touchy. Then when his health went bad, he had to turn to somebody, and we were his friends.”

“It breaks my heart,” said Kelly, “dunking of him alone in his last days, not knowing if his wishes would be attended to. But when Daddy was killed. Uncle Henry would have known he’d done the right thing, wouldn’t he?”

“I’m sure he felt that way,” Dallas said, “or he wouldn’t have drawn Arlo and me into this. He knew we’d play fair with you and Kelsey, and I just wish he’d had the nerve to talk to us while he could. It would have made everything so much simpler, and we might never have gotten Gary Davis out here, alerting the whole country to the gold.”