The Loner: Dead Man’s Gold (16 page)

Over the years, Count Eduardo Fortunato had learned that a man’s luck was seldom all good or all bad. It was a mixture, and that had held true today.

The bad luck was that he had lost four out of the six men he had hired to help him in this quest. Novak and the gunman called Green were the only ones still alive, and Green was wounded. Donaldson, Wesley, Hobart, and Bayne were dead. At least, that was what Novak had told the count. Green was wounded badly enough that he might not live. That was why Novak had left him behind with orders to ambush and kill that deadly young stranger.

“Then you can catch up to us,” Novak had told Green. Later, though, as they were riding away, Novak had shaken his head and said to Fortunato, “I don’t reckon we’ll ever see him again, even if he does get lucky and kill that bastard. He’s not going to pull through.”

The good luck was that during the confusion of the attack, Novak had managed to capture the priest. Once they had Father Jardine in their power, Fortunato had called off the attack and ordered them to fall back. The priest would lead them to Albrecht Konigsberg’s hidden treasure, and they would reach it long before Dr. Dare and her ally could get there with the wagon.

Fortunato, Arturo, Novak, and Father Jardine rode west for half a mile or so after leaving the old homestead at Aleman, then turned north again. That took them around any remaining threat from Dr. Dare and her companion…not that Fortunato considered them any real danger anymore. He was confident that he had won. Now all he had to do was finish the job.

Novak led two extra horses, and Fortunato led two more. Arturo held the reins of the pack animals. They would continue to switch mounts frequently, so that they could move fast. He would have brought more of the horses, but Novak thought that having to keep up with the animals would just slow them down.

Father Jardine slumped forward in the saddle, a picture of despair and dejection. Fortunato urged his horse alongside the priest’s and said, “Don’t worry, Father. You’ll be fine.”

“I’m not worried about myself,” Father Jardine said without looking up. “I’m concerned for Dr. Dare and Mr. Morgan.”

“Morgan?” Novak repeated. “Not
Frank
Morgan?”

The surprise in the gunman’s voice was enough to finally make Father Jardine raise his head. “I don’t know the man’s given name,” he said. “He told us he was called Kid Morgan.”

Novak pursed his lips in thought. He didn’t look happy.

“Who’s this Frank Morgan?” Fortunato asked.

“He’s a gunfighter,” Novak replied. “Some say the last of the old-time gunfighters. He’s mighty fast on the draw. Not only that, he’s smart and plenty tough, despite the fact that he’s getting up there in years.”

Father Jardine shook his head. “That’s not the Morgan I know. Kid Morgan is a young man, still in his twenties.”

“Yeah, but I’ve heard of him, too. Nobody knows where he came from, but he’s made a rep for himself in a short time. A few months ago, he gunned down Clay Lasswell, and Lasswell was fast, mighty fast. Same thing goes for Jack Trace, and Morgan got him.”

“Is he connected somehow to this other Morgan?” Fortunato asked.

“
Quien sabe
? Who knows? Morgan’s not an unusual name. But it doesn’t matter, because Kid Morgan’s bad enough news all by himself. Green won’t stand much of a chance against him.”

Fortunato’s face hardened. “Then it’s possible he and Dr. Dare will be coming after us.”

“Yeah, I reckon it is. But there’s no way they can catch us in that wagon.”

Arturo spoke up, saying, “What if they don’t take the wagon?”

The others turned to look at him.

The servant went on, “I assume this Mr. Kid Morgan has a horse of his own, and we left a number of other saddle mounts back there. They might decide to abandon the wagon, take as much food and water as they can carry, and pursue us to our destination.”

“He’s right,” Novak said. “We’d better not waste any time getting where we’re going.”

Fortunato thought about that and nodded. He had intended to put some more miles behind them before they stopped again, since there was still an hour or so of daylight left, but it might be better to go ahead and do what needed to be done now. Besides, he had just spotted something that would make the task simpler.

He reined in and motioned for the others to stop as well. As they did, the count said, “Father Jardine, the time has come for you to tell us what you know.”

The old priest just smiled at him. “I’ll never tell you anything, Count. The Lord will give me the strength to withstand whatever you do to me.”

Fortunato shook his head. “You misunderstand, Father. I’m not going to do anything to you.”

“Oh, my word!” Arturo exclaimed. “You’re not going to order
me
to torture him, are you, Excellency?”

“Of course not,” Fortunato said. He lifted a hand and pointed. “They’re going to do it.”

The others turned and saw the two half-breed Yaqui trackers riding toward them. Fortunato had noticed the Indians a moment earlier. They had come and gone like phantoms during the pursuit of the wagon, appearing to tell Fortunato that they were still on the right trail, then vanishing again. And they had refused to take part in the attack on the homestead. Fortunato had been angry about that, but he understood. The Yaquis had been hired for their tracking abilities, not as fighters. Novak and his men were supposed to handle that part of it.

But they were Yaquis. They would torture a priest for free, and judging by the pallor that had appeared on Father Jardine’s face, he seemed to know that.

“Well, Father, it’s up to you,” Fortunato said with a cruel smile. “Shall we find out just how much strength the Lord can actually give you…or will you tell me what I want to know?”

Fortunato’s men should have scattered the horses they left behind, but luckily for The Kid and Annabelle, they hadn’t taken the time to do that. The extra horses had wandered off a ways, probably spooked by all the shooting, but once The Kid was mounted on the buckskin again, it took him only a few minutes to round up four of the animals.

“That’ll give us each two saddle mounts, and we’ll take one along for a pack horse,” he explained to Annabelle as they went through the supplies in the wagon, deciding what to take with them. “That means we’ll be on short rations, because we want to load as many full canteens as we can on that pack animal. The water’s more important than food. We’re both healthy enough we won’t starve to death in a week.”

“It’ll just feel like we’re going to if we run out of food,” Annabelle said.

“When you set out after the Konigsberg Candlestick, nobody told you it was going to be easy, Doctor.”

Annabelle took a side of salt pork wrapped in oilcloth from a crate and slipped it into one of the saddlebags they were using for supplies. “I think we’ve been traveling together long enough that you could call me by my name, Kid. I’m Annabelle, and you are…?”

“I told you my name.”

“Oh, come now. Surely your parents didn’t call you ‘Kid’. You must have an actual name.”

“Kid will do fine.”

He knew his tone was curt. He couldn’t help it. His
parents
hadn’t named him, because Frank Morgan hadn’t even known that Vivian was pregnant when her father ended the marriage and Frank was forced to leave Texas to keep from causing more trouble for her. His mother had dubbed him Conrad, and he had taken the last name of the man who married her and raised him, the man he’d believed was his real father until he was almost grown.

He had given himself the name Kid Morgan, when he needed a new identity to help him avenge the great wrong that had been done to him, and it was as good as any, he supposed.

That vengeance quest was in the past now, and while it was something he’d had to do, it hadn’t really changed anything. The losses he had suffered were as painful as ever, but he was learning to live with that pain. There were moments when he could smile and laugh again, despite the hurt.

But he was damned if he would let anyone into his heart again, and he meant that thought literally. He
would
be damned. He was willing to help people who needed his help, and he might even come to care for them, but he couldn’t allow
them
to care for
him
. He had to keep them at arm’s length, so that when they went away, as they inevitably would, it wouldn’t hurt as bad. Even when he was traveling with someone, as he was now, inside he still rode alone.

And he always would.

“Let’s get these canteens filled, Doctor,” he went on. “We need to get moving as quickly as we can.”

“Of course,” Annabelle said, her voice stiff with hurt and resentment.

They draped a dozen full canteens over the back of the pack horse, then Annabelle opened a trunk in the wagon and took out several leather notebooks. “All the information we need to find Konigsberg’s cache is in here,” she said as she put them in the saddlebags with the food and ammunition they had loaded earlier. “I’ve studied it enough that I know all of it by heart, but if something were to happen to me, you’ll need it to find the candlestick and whatever else Konigsberg hid.”

The Kid frowned. “You expect me to go on and find those things even if something happens to you?”

“Of course. What did you intend to do in a case like that?”

“Well…I hadn’t really thought about it. I suppose I’d just kill Fortunato and whoever’s left that’s working for him.”

“And that would accomplish exactly what?”

“I don’t know, but I’m not a priest or a professor. What do I need with some dusty old artifacts?”

“You can take them to Santa Fe and turn them over to church authorities there. I’m sure you’d be amply rewarded for their safe return.”

The Kid grunted. More money was one thing he didn’t need, but Annabelle didn’t know that. For all she knew, he was just a penniless drifter.

“Let’s just keep you alive,” he said. “Then we won’t have to worry about that.”

He had unhitched the wagon team, and when he and Annabelle were ready to leave the old homestead, she asked, “What about those horses? What’s going to happen to them?”

“They’ll drift back south to Paraje Perillo,” The Kid told her. “There’s enough graze along the way to keep them going, and they can make it that long without water as long as they’re not pulling the wagon. I reckon the other horses from Fortunato’s bunch that we’re not taking will go with them. We can pick them up on our way back through here, assuming nobody else finds them first.”

“And assuming we come back this way.”

“I can,” The Kid said. “Just to make sure they’re all right.”

After a moment, Annabelle smiled and nodded. “That’s good. I’d hate to think that anything happened to them because of us.”

“They’ll be all right,” The Kid assured her. He didn’t know that for a fact, but he didn’t want her spending her time worrying about the horses, when it was entirely possible that the two of them, as well as Father Jardine, might not survive the next few days.

As they mounted up, he asked, “How long will it take us to get where we’re going?”

“I had planned on four days by wagon.”

“We’ll do it in two,” The Kid said.

“It’s almost dark,” Annabelle pointed out.

“We’ll ride by night, at least part of the time. I can steer by the stars well enough to keep us heading north, and we’re bound to run into that lava field if we keep going in that direction.”

“That’s right. Do you really think we can get there before Fortunato?”

“It’ll be a good race,” The Kid said, “but it’s one that I intend to win.”

The Kid kept them moving far into the night, until Annabelle was so exhausted that she was swaying in the saddle and in danger of toppling off her horse. When he finally called a halt, he had to help her down to make sure she didn’t fall when she tried to dismount.

She leaned against him wearily and said, “This isn’t really proper anymore. I mean, for the two of us to be traveling together without Father Jardine as a chaperone.”

“Your virtue is safe with me, Doctor,” The Kid said. “Anyway, it’s almost a modern new century. People aren’t going to worry about such things anymore.”

She laughed. “Believe me, Kid, people are always going to worry about whether some things are proper. I encountered that when I set out to earn my doctorate.”

“You got it, didn’t you?”

“Yes, with a lot of sheer stubbornness.”

“I’d say you’ve still got that in spades. Not many women would set out into the Jornada del Muerto, whether they were professors or not.”

She looked up at him for a long moment, but the night was too dark for him to be able to really read her expression. Then, with a sigh, she stepped back.

“I suppose we’ll need to stand guard until morning.”

“That’s right. I’ll take the first turn. You go ahead and get some sleep.”

“I’d argue with you…but I’m too blasted tired.”

A few minutes later, Annabelle was curled up in her blankets, and the soft, regular sound of her breathing told The Kid that she was asleep.

He woke her after a couple of hours, told her everything was quiet, and said, “It’ll be dawn in about an hour. Wake me then.”

“You’re only going to sleep for an hour?” She stifled a yawn. “I got twice that much, and I’m still exhausted.”

“I’ll be fine,” The Kid assured her. “We’ll travel until midday, then take a break and sleep some more during the hottest part of the day. We can move on later in the afternoon.”

“All right.”

When she shook him awake, it seemed like he had barely closed his eyes. His eyeballs felt like they had been plucked from their sockets, rolled around in the sand, and then shoved back into his head. Several cups of hot coffee helped a little with that sensation.

At midday, The Kid found a clump of mesquite that didn’t have any rattlesnakes in it and told Annabelle to crawl under the scrubby trees and get some sleep. The mesquites didn’t provide a lot of shade, but out there, at that time of day, any shade was better than none.

He let her sleep until he was nodding off, then woke her. “Any sign of Fortunato?” she asked as she came out from under the mesquites.

The Kid shook his head. “I haven’t seen anybody or anything moving around here.”

“Is that because we’re ahead of them, or because they’re ahead of us?”

“There’s no way of knowing. I haven’t spotted their tracks, but it’s a big desert. They could still be west of us somewhere.”

“That would mean they’d have farther to go to reach the spot in the lava field that was described in that old journal.” Annabelle paused. “Do you think Father Jardine might be leading them astray on purpose?”

“It’s possible,” The Kid said. “If he is, though, and if Fortunato realizes that…” He shook his head. “Well, I wouldn’t want to be the padre.”

“He’s a brave man, to set out on a mission like that at his age.”

“He had his orders, didn’t he?”

“Yes, but that doesn’t mean he’s any less courageous for carrying them out.”

“Yeah, you’re right about that,” The Kid admitted. “He’s got the courage of his convictions, that’s for sure. I never saw a man so stubborn about doing what he thinks is the right thing.” He paused and thought about Frank. “Well, maybe one.”

He slept for several hours under the mesquites and felt better when he woke up. The sun had begun to dip toward the western horizon, and the air wasn’t quite as blisteringly hot as it had been earlier, when he went to sleep.

“Everything still peaceful?” he asked Annabelle.

She nodded. “Yes, I haven’t seen or heard anything. Are we going to ride all night again?”

“Most of it, I expect.”

“Then if we push on all day, we might be able to reach the lava field by nightfall tomorrow.”

The Kid nodded. “That’s the plan. If they beat us there…we’ll know that we did the best that we and the horses could do, anyway.”

“That’s not going to be enough.”

“No,” The Kid agreed. “It’s not.”

That night, under the light of a three-quarter moon, they came to a vast stretch of utterly flat, barren land. Nothing grew there, and cracks zigzagged crazily across the ground.

“Laguna del Muerto,” Annabelle said. “It’s an ancient dry lake bed. There’s water here only when it rains, which it obviously hasn’t for quite some time.”

The Kid knew she was right. The ground was hard under the hooves of the horses, almost like stone. It took them about half an hour to cross it, and after that emptiness, The Kid was glad to see even the gnarled mesquites and the clumps of dry grass.

Switching horses regularly, they pushed on through the night, pausing to sleep for a short time, give the horses some water, and make a skimpy breakfast. The Caballo Mountains had fallen behind them, but as the sun climbed into the sky and they continued riding north, another mountain range rose to their left. Those were the Fra Cristobal Mountains, Annabelle explained, named after the same old Spanish missionary who had given his name to the waterhole somewhere ahead of them.

“The Jornada narrows down between the mountains and the lava flow,” Annabelle said. “Fortunato and his men have to be either ahead of us or behind us now. They can’t be paralleling us anymore.”

“I’m going to vote for behind us,” The Kid said.

She laughed. “I’m not sure you get a vote. That’s not how it works.”

“You don’t think that we determine our own fate?”

“Well, that’s not exactly the same thing, is it? Certainly, people have a degree of control over their lives, but not completely. Things can still come out of nowhere and change everything without any warning.”

The Kid had reason to know the truth of that more so than most men, but he didn’t say anything about his past. That was going to remain locked up inside him.

After spending so much time traveling through the gray and brown and tan landscape, the large area of black that appeared to the northeast that afternoon was a stark contrast. As The Kid reined in and studied it, Annabelle did likewise, saying, “That’s the lava field. The malpais, as you called it. Scientists believe it’s been there for hundreds of thousands of years, ever since a huge volcano north of here erupted.”

“Not much chance of that happening again, is there?”

“Oh, no,” she replied with a shake of her head. “All the volcanoes in this region are extinct now. The closest ones that might still erupt on occasion are down in Mexico, and even they’re dormant.”

“One less thing we have to worry about, then.”

Annabelle smiled. “We should be thankful for small favors, is that it?”

The Kid just grinned back at her and hitched his horse into motion.

They angled toward the lava flow. During one of the stops to rest the horses, Annabelle knelt on the ground and used her finger to draw a crude map in the dirt, showing how the malpais curved down from the north to form a sort of peninsula in the desert.

“We’re supposed to enter the lava field at its southernmost point, where there are two spires of rock that form a sort of gate, and proceed several miles into it until we reach a U-shaped ridge with its open end facing east. In the eastern slope of that ridge, in the very middle of it, there’s a cave, and that’s supposed to be where Albrecht Konigsberg hid the candlestick and whatever else he had with him that was valuable.”

The Kid thumbed his hat back as he looked down at the lines Annabelle had drawn in the dirt, studying them until he had committed them to memory.

“The secret of the Twelve Pearls,” he said.

Annabelle nodded. “I want to find out what that means, probably even more than I want to recover the Konigsberg Candlestick.”

“You want to solve a historical mystery that no one’s ever been able to solve.”

“That’s right,” she said without hesitation.

“Because you think it would have impressed your father.”

Her head snapped up. She glared at him. “Have you ever heard of Sigmund Freud?”

“Can’t say as I have,” The Kid said.

“He’s a doctor in Austria working with patients who have mental problems. He claims that when people do something, their actions are really about something else, something that they may not even be aware of.”

The Kid’s eyes narrowed. “Maybe sometimes. But it doesn’t seem too likely to me.”

“Nor to me.” She stood up and brushed her hands off. “So don’t start thinking you know everything about me and why I do the things I do, Mr. Morgan.”

“I thought you were calling me Kid now.”

“Perhaps I really meant something else,” she said in a chilly tone, then turned and walked away.

The Kid watched her go, then chuckled, making sure she didn’t hear him.

Soon they were on the move again. They drew closer to the lava field and finally entered it when there were still a couple hours left until sundown, passing between the twin spires of rock that towered about a hundred feet in the air. The ride had been incredibly tiring, but The Kid felt an exhiliration that lifted his spirits as they rode into the malpais. They weren’t far from their goal, and so far, he hadn’t seen any horse droppings or tracks that indicated Fortunato was ahead of them.

He wouldn’t see any tracks on the lava, either, except maybe an occasional place where a horseshoe had nicked it. The red, molten rock that had flowed from the erupting volcano had cooled and turned into black stone that still held a dull sheen, even after all those centuries. They had to proceed carefully, because in places, bubbles within the lava had left air pockets where the rock was thin and brittle. It could break when too much weight was put on it, leaving sharp edges that would slash a horse’s legs to ribbons. They had to stay on the part that was solid, so The Kid went first, telling Annabelle to stay behind him and to ride where he rode.

“How do you know where you’re going?” she asked.

“My father told me about places like this and how to find my way through them. Mostly, you just have to take it slow and easy and let your horse pick its way along. Their instincts are just as good or better than ours. They won’t put their weight down on a place they don’t trust.”

Surprisingly, the malpais wasn’t totally devoid of vegetation, like Laguna del Muerto had been. An occasional clump of hardy grass poked its way through the black rock, and there were puny bushes that made the gnarled mesquite of the desert look healthy. For the most part, though, the terrain was bare and eerie-looking. Once they were out of sight of the desert, so that they couldn’t see anything except the ripples and ridges of the lava field, a shiver went through Annabelle.

“It’s unearthly,” she said in a hollow voice. “Like something on another planet.”

“I figured out that’s what unearthly meant,” The Kid said.

“Don’t try to tell me it doesn’t make you nervous, too.”

He shrugged. “I’m not overfond of it, that’s for sure.”

Their pace was slow, and it was almost an hour before they spotted a ridge that might be the one described in the old journal Annabelle had read.

“It’s so hard to be sure,” she said. “We almost need to be able to look at it from above.”

“That’s not going to happen unless you figure on sprouting wings. We’ll circle around the end of it there—” The Kid pointed “—and follow it on around, see if it’s shaped like a U and if there’s a cave in it.”

“And if there’s not?”

“We keep looking, I reckon.”

That wasn’t going to be necessary he saw a short time later as they rounded the end of the ridge. He could see all the way to where it curved, and in the middle of that curve was an even deeper patch of blackness that marked the mouth of a cave.

Annabelle saw it, too. “That’s it!” she said, unable to keep the excitement from creeping into her voice. “Oh, my God, that’s it, Kid!”

He reined in and rested his hands on the saddlehorn. “Yeah, I reckon it is,” he said.

“Do we have time to get there and get back out before it’s dark?”

“We’ll get there. We can spend the night in the cave if we have to.”

“That might be a good idea. It’ll give us more time to search if we need it.”

Annabelle was so eager, she would have ridden ahead, but The Kid motioned her back and took the lead again. He was mounted on the buckskin and he trusted the horse’s instincts. They made their way slowly and carefully along the ridge. He felt his nerves drawing tighter as they neared the cave mouth.

Would they find the Konigsberg Candlestick and the secret of the Twelve Pearls inside? Or would they discover that Count Eduardo Fortunato had beaten them to the prize?

Finally they were just below the cave mouth, which was about forty feet up the side of the ridge. The Kid swung down from the saddle and told Annabelle, “Wait here. I’ll have a look inside.”

“Are you insane? After coming all this way and going through all I’ve gone through, you think I’m going to let you go first?”

“Yeah, I do, because it might be a trap.” The Kid slipped the Colt from its holster. “Stay here. I won’t explore the place. I’ll just make sure there aren’t any nasty surprises waiting for us inside.”

“Well…all right. But I don’t have to like it.”

“Nobody said you did.”

The Kid started up the slope, being careful where he stepped. Just before he reached the opening, he bent down and picked up a loose piece of broken lava. He tossed it inside and waited to see if there would be any reaction. When there wasn’t, he came closer and approached the opening from the side. When he went through it, he moved fast, crouching and twisting as he swept the gun from side to side.

Nothing. Just the sound of his boots scraping against the rock echoing back from the close confines of the cave.

Once he was inside and no longer silhouetted against the opening, he dug a match from his pocket and struck it on the wall next to him. As the flame flared up, it revealed a chamber about twelve feet wide and twenty feet deep that was tall enough for him to stand up in. Although the pockmarked black lava was visible around the edges of the cave mouth, the interior walls were the sort of smooth gray stone that had been there before the eruption covered the area with molten rock. A layer of dust and dirt coated the floor, along with a few dried-out animal droppings. Not many animals ventured in here, just like the rest of the Jornada del Muerto.