the Key-Lock Man (1965) (9 page)

"Three men," he said, "on freshly shod horses."

"Are they looking for us?"

He shrugged. "Maybe."

For a long while they watched the plain, and then, riding up Copper Canyon, Matt cut off to the westward. By early afternoon they had made camp in Cattle Canyon under the towering rim of Piute Mesa.

Over a small fire, in a sheltered place among the rocks and brush, Kristina broiled venison while he rubbed down their horses and scouted the country around them.

"Matt, tell me about the Lost Wagons," she said when they were ready to eat.

"All right." But what he said then was, "Kris, I think one of those men made the same tracks I saw in Marsh Pass. We've got to hole up somewhere and wait it out."

"We haven't much to eat."

"No . . . can you stick it?"

She smiled. "Of course, Matt. As long as you can."

When they had eaten they put out the fire and drew back into a thick nest of rocks to which there was no easy approach. In a hollow, they picketed their horses.

"About Lost Wagons," he said when they had settled down. "It's an old story. The West is filled with buried treasure of one kind or another, and some of it has been found. In any country where there is danger, as from the Indians, or where folks have to travel light and fast, they are apt to bury gold or whatever they treasure. Sometimes the owners get killed, and sometimes they lose their nerve.

Gold can look almighty nice, but a few hundred miles of sun-blistered desert full of Apaches can look mean enough to take the shine off the gold.

"There were seventeen men started out of California with two carts and six mules to each cart, which was a-plenty. All seventeen had saddle horses, and all were seasoned, well-armed men. In the carts, aside from provisions of one sort or another, they had a lot of gold.

"How much? Well, it was enough. Nobody rightly knows now how much it was, because those stories grow mighty fast. The gold was in bars, and there were several sacks of nuggets, and of Spanish and French coins.

"They lost a man near the Colorado.

Mohaves killed him. Somewhere near what is now Beale Springs another one died. He'd been poorly, and he caught an arrow in the fight near the Colorado, but nobody expected him to die.

"They could see San Francisco peaks off to the northeast, and were getting set to bed for the night when a party of Coyotero Apaches closed in on them. It was a three-day fight, and the whites lost another man and had a couple wounded, but not bad.

"That night one of the wounded men died, and nobody expected him to go, either. By now they were getting worried. They had some bad country ahead and they needed every man; but what worried them most was those two men dying, unexpectedly, like that. There just didn't seem any way to account for it, and they were getting superstitious.

"With just thirteen men left, hampered by the slow movements of the carts, they were in trouble, and they knew it. The other wounded man was well enough to ride, although he was carrying one arm in a sling. But he was a scared man, Kris. Two wounded men had died, and he was scared .. . and he had a right to be.

"Three good days of travel they had, without incident, and then that other wounded man died during the night. One of the party, a Frenchman named Valadon, was keeping a journal, and when he was fixing to bury the body he noticed a tiny spot of blood in one ear. He touched it, and found the end of a wire, like. Somebody had murdered that wounded man by pushing a needle-like piece of steel through his brain.

Inside his ear like that, it could have gone unnoticed. So far as Valadon was concerned, that accounted for the deaths of the others, too. And it was being done by somebody in the company."

"How long ago was this, Matt?"

"Fifteen-maybe sixteen years ago. That's a long time, out here. Anyway, Valadon was scared, and he said as much in that journal. The murderer could be any one of them, and of course, nobody had to look for a motive. It was the gold.

"He told them at the fire that night. He laid it out before them all, telling them one of them was a murderer. The next morning, they went on, but by that time nobody trusted anyone else.

"Valadon and another man were scouting ahead when they saw the Coyoteros. They were some distance off, and there was a large party. He didn't know if they had been seen, so they slipped away quickly to warn the others.

"They decided to take a dim trail that led off to the northeast, and for the time being they lost the Apaches, who had probably not seen them, anyway. They also lost the gold.

"The trouble began with a sandstorm in which they lost the trail they had been following. A mule broke a leg on the rocks, and they had to kill him. They fought and struggled and worked their way on toward the east, and then they found Mormon Well.

"It wasn't called that then ... if it had any name it was some Indian name, but they only knew it was water, and enough water. But that night one of the men disappeared. He went out to the edge of camp after some fuel and it was some time before anybody realized he hadn't come back.

"Nobody ever saw him again. They found some tracks, but the trail just petered out near some rocks."

Keylock
paused to listen to the night, his ears sorting the sounds.

"Eleven men left, and they were lost in a wilderness of rocks and canyons. They tried several ways through, but each time they ran into a dead-end canyon and had to backtrack. With the wagons, that was a mean job. And then they lost another mule.

"Tempers were short, and several times they came near to fights. There was a youngster with them, fourteen or fifteen years old. He'd latched onto them before they left California, wanting to work his way east, and it was he who found the way through. It was a high, narrow pass that opened out into desert, but they made it through to the desert and then turned south along the mountains, following a dim Indian trail.

"Nobody knows how far they had gone when the Coyoteros hit them, but it was a complete surprise. One man fell in the first fire, and then they dropped behind rocks and fought back. The Indians ran off most of their stock, and when the fight was over there were just four men left, four men and that youngster.

"One of the men left alive was Valadon, and that was a fortunate thing, because he had kept the account of the trip. After the big fight there was almost another one among themselves, for Trim Newhall, one of the men, wanted to kill that youngster, the one they called Muley. It was all the others could do to stop him."

"But why, Matt?"

"Because when the fight with the Indians started the kid dug out and hid ... he never helped one little bit."

"But he was just a boy!"

"In this country boys of that age usually do a man's work, and if they travel with men, they share alike in fighting or any other trouble. Valadon and Camp Foster managed to talk Newhall out of it, because they needed all the help they could get.

"With most of their stock gone, they had to abandon the wagons, so they loaded the gold on the mules and horses, and trailed them back into the rugged hills.

"They could not have gone far, for they were in a hurry.

The Indians might return at any moment, and they were too few to resist an attack. So they hid the gold, returned to their cache of supplies near the wagons, and then headed south.

"Trim Newhall, Camp Foster, a man named Ben Hollenbeck, and that kid . . . aside from Valadon they were the only ones left. . . .

Nobody ever called the kid by any name other than Muley.

"They had kept enough gold to pay their way, and to outfit and return for the rest of it, and as you can imagine, it was a-plenty. Twelve men gone of the original lot, and gold enough hidden away to make those who remained rich men. Only there was a joker in the deck for Muley. Before the others hid the gold they tied him up and left him behind; then after they'd hidden it, they returned for him. After all, he'd no share in it.

"Yet one among them had murdered at least two, and perhaps three of the others. Was he among those killed?

Or was he still one of those living?

"They rode together and they rode hard, and they switched horses from time to time. It was a brutal ride, but they got through to Santa Fe. They split up there, for no one of them trusted the others, but the following morning Valadon and Foster together went looking for Trim Newhall. They found him . . . with a knife thrust in the ribs.

"They had been planning an immediate return for the gold, but Valadon had had enough. He slipped away, got his gear together, and before sundown had ridden out of town, en route for Las Vegas and then for St. Louis. He never returned, and he heard nothing of the others after that."

"But surely they went back for the gold?"

"Maybe. Of course, no treasure-hunter wants to believe they got it, and in this case there is good reason for not believing it.

"Actually, but for Valadon's journal nobody would have known of the lost wagons, for so far as could be discovered the others were also killed." "All of them?"

He took his pipe from his pocket and tamped it full before replying. "All of them. All but Muley." "Did they ever discover who did it?"

"No."

"Matt, let's look for it! You know this country.

Maybe we could find it!"

"Honey, that stallion I'm chasing looks better to me than that gold, and in the long run, might be worth more. And don't you get started on that.

Too many have died looking for that gold." "Wasn't it buried near here?"

He listened into the night before replying. It was a way he had, and she did not hurry him. She also noticed that he watched the horses continually, observing their every reaction, for they might hear something approaching before he did.

"Gay Cooley hunted for that gold and never found it and he knew more about it than anyone. When Valadon died, the journal fell into the hands of his nephew, who came hunting it. Gay went with him."

"They couldn't find it?"

"They found a bunch of Piutes. A war party came down the Dirty Devil and crossed the Colorado at the Crossing of the Fathers. They wounded Valadon's nephew, scratched Gay a couple of times, and ran off their horses.

"It took Gay and that nephew a couple of months to get a decent meal, and by that time the nephew had had it. He simply took off for the East and left the journal with Gay. Aside from Gay, I'm the only man west of the Mississippi who ever saw that journal."

He rose and went down through the brush to listen.

She could never understand how he moved through the brush without a sound, but he did.

For some time he simply stood there alone, listening. As he listened, his mind reviewed their situation.

The posse from Freedom would not give up. He had seen their faces, and there were driving men in that lot. He had them to consider, as well as Neerland and whoever might be with him, and there was a good chance the two parties might find common cause. It was a big country, but not big enough if they really kept looking for him.

Deliberately, he had led them to Mormon Well, hoping their lust for gold would start them looking for it, but so far as the evidence indicated, the ruse had not worked.

He needed that stallion and some of the mares, and he had a feeling he could get them if time allowed. He needed time to locate their water holes, to find the best place to trap the herd. He needed thirty to forty days without interruption . . . and perhaps longer.

So what he needed was a delaying action, something to cause them to believe that he had left the country.

And he had an idea how it could be done.

UNTIL NOW HE had deliberately put aside all thought of the trading post at Tuba City. It was nearer than any other, much nearer even than the tiny settlement of Freedom, but to ride into Tuba City was enough to put the news of his presence on the grapevine. Within a short time after he arrived, the news would have reached the farthest corner of northeastern Arizona.

And that was exactly what he wanted now.

"We'll pack up," he told Kris, "and we'll ride out of the country, heading for Prescott."

At her inquiring glance he added, "At least, we will make it look that way. We'll point for Prescott, and lay a fair set of tracks southwest until we can swing around through the sand hills where we'll leave no trail."

"You want them to think we've gone?"

"All we can lose is time."

"Suppose they are at this Tuba City place?"

There was that, of course; and if they were there the showdown would come there and then. So be it.

There are tides in the affairs of men, tides of restlessness and awareness; there are thin threads of thought that reach out across the distance and, like the threads of a weaver, are drawn together tight. In his faraway ranch-house bed, Bill Chesney awoke suddenly, and lay there, hands clasped behind his head, staring up into the darkness.

Neerland was up there, but he'd be damned if he would leave the job to him. Tomorrow . . . Kimmel was fancy-free again, and he would get Neill.

He hesitated over the name. Neill had irritated him a little with his occasional flippant remarks, and then toward the end there had been his seeming unwillingness to go along. The hell with him. . . . Still, Neill was a solid man, a good man.