from the Listening Hills (Ss) (2004) (19 page)

"We think you're the ones who should leave," Short spoke suddenly. "We think you should mount up and ride out."

Molina smiled wryly. "Now that's foolish talk, Monty. You might get us but we'd take a couple of you with us, and probably all three. You and Lew aren't going to buy trouble you don't need."

Molina merely looked at them. "I told you...I came here from Fort Griffin, but I've also been in Mobeetie. What you do is your own business, but I wouldn't go back that way with posters on both of you."

Stebbins turned abruptly away, and as he did so, he saw the shotgun in Hale's hands. "Let's build a fire, Monty," he said, and he walked away. After an instant's hesitation, the others followed, the stranger lingering to take a last, careful look at Molina.

When they had gone, Molina sat down and filled his cup. "If I could only think!" he said angrily. "I know the stuff is here." Then he looked across his cup at Hale. "Which one are you after?"

"Short and Stebbins...train holdup. They didn't get much, but that doesn't matter to us. That other one...he should be wanted somewhere."

IT WAS AFTER midnight, and Hale was on guard when they heard the wagon. Hale had been watching the other fire. He wanted his prisoners and expected to take them when they fell asleep, but they had a man on watch also, and there was small chance to even make a move without being seen. Then he heard the sound of wheels.

Hale did not believe what he heard, and neither did Stebbins, who was on watch in the other camp. Stebbins got to his feet and drew back from the fire, and Hale did likewise. Somehow the sound got through to Molina and he sat up.

The wagon rolled in from the darkness, drawn by two mules, and stopped on the edge of the firelight. There was a bearded man on the seat, and beside him a girl.

She was young; Molina saw that quickly...and her eyes found his across the intervening space with what seemed to be a plea for help. Yet that was foolish...he could not read a glance at that distance...but of one thing he was sure; she did not belong with the man on the wagon seat beside her.

When he got down and the firelight fell on his face, Molina saw the man was old, but still strong and wiry, and there was a sly, suspicious way about him that Molina distrusted.

"Quite a settlement," the old man looked around inquisitively, "somethin' goin' on?"

"Just passing through," Molina said. "How about you?"

The old man chuckled. "Might say we're passin' through, ourselves. My name's Barnes...that there's my niece, name of Ruth Crandall." He looked around carefully, his eyes remaining on the other fire for the longest time.

"Now there," he said, his eyes on the stranger, "is a man to remember."

"You know him?"

"Why sure. I'd say I know him...but he don't know me. Not yet, he don't." He threw a shrewd glance at Molina. "Name of Van Hagan...a man well known in Montana and Wyoming."

He peered around. "Been some time since folks camped around here, I expect." He paused. "Can't see how anybody would drive cattle through here."

"Nobody has," Molina told him, "lately."

"Now that's odd," Barnes spat, "for I did hear about a man named Gore driving through this country."

Molina took out the makings and began to build a smoke. Was everybody in Texas thinking about that gold? "Tom Gore," he said, "made his drive away east of here. He was driving for Wichita, then changed his mind and went to Dodge."

Barnes nodded. "Now that sounds right. It surely does. Maybe it was when he was coming back that Gore went through here, and a passel of hands with him." He turned his head on his thin, buzzardlike neck. "Might you be one of them?"

"I worked for Tom on the home ranch," Molina said. "He was a friend of mine."

Ruth had gotten down from the wagon and walked nearer, and as they talked, she listened, looking from time to time at Molina, but trying to keep out of Barnes' line of sight. There was more here, Molina decided, than was apparent at first glance. One thing was obvious: here was another man on the trail of the Gore money.

It seemed impossible for anything to be hidden here, of all places. And he had looked around and examined the ground pretty thoroughly on the basis of earlier familiarity. However, Tom Gore had known this place, and so had Pike. Gore had planned to have Pike locate the gold and there might have been something each knew that was unknown to anyone else.

Obviously, the three outlaws did not know the exact location or they would have made a move toward it...or were they worried by Molina and Hale?

They had murdered once for this gold, and they would not hesitate again.

HALE STOOD GUARD and Molina slept while the camp quieted down, and in the early hours before dawn, he awakened Molina.

"All quiet...But I don't believe those boys will wait much longer."

Molina slid out of his bed roll and pulled on his boots. The night was cold, the coals of the fire glowed red with a few thin tendrils of flame licking the length of sticks just placed in the fire. Across the way the other fire was only a faint glow, and the wagon was silent. Molina could see Barnes bedded down beneath the wagon.

Moving back from the fire he saw Hale turn in and then he moved back still further until only his boots showed in the edge of light. Beyond that his figure was shrouded by the dead black of the shadow under a huge cottonwood. Carefully, he slid out of his boots and donned the moccasins he always carried folded in a pocket. Leaving the boots where they could be seen, the upper part of them in the shadow, he moved back away from the fire, and from among the trees he studied the camp with infinite care.

There were no hollow trees, no box concealed in a fork of the branches, and it had not been sunk in the pool at the seep. The water was shallow and perfectly clear. Nor were there any signs of digging...blown dust would have concealed it long since.

A thought caught at his attention, and he scowled, trying to grasp what it was he had almost thought of but which had slipped his attention. And then he saw movement at the back of the wagon.

Ruth Crandall was getting out, ever so carefully, of the covered wagon.

He watched her get down from the wagon and fade back into the darkness. When he located her again it was by the faintest of sounds, and near him. He spoke in a whisper. "Late to go hunting."

She came up to him in the darkness. "Take me away from here, Mr. Molina. Just take me away."

"What's wrong? There is a problem with your uncle?"

"He's not my uncle! Not really. He married my aunt after my uncle died. Neither of them were related to me by blood. Then a few weeks ago she died and he started over here."

"Why did he come?"

"It was Art. You remember Art Tomkins? He worked with you at Gore's? He returned with the bunch after the drive, and he was one of those who planned to kill Mr. Gore. Well, he did help kill him, and then Monty, Stebbins, and Van Hagan killed the others. Then they tried to kill Art. After they left, he was hurt and he stole a horse from a ranch and came to us. He remembered hearing some movement at night while at Wagon Camp, so he was sure the gold was hidden here. He died a few days after he got to us, and here we are."

Molina remembered Art. A lazy, down-on-his-luck cowhand who was always talking about the James boys.

"You've got to get me away from him," Ruth insisted. "If you don't...he's been telling me how much money I could make in Dodge or Fort Worth. How we could live real easy on the money I'd make." She caught his arm. "I don't want that kind of money, Mr. Molina."

"All right," he said, "but stay shy of us until this is settled."

She disappeared as quietly as she had come. She moved, he reflected, like an Indian...and fortunately, for that old man would be a light sleeper.

Sharply, he was aware of something else. He had watched the camp while Ruth talked to him, but there had been a time or two when his eyes were averted, and something had changed at the camp over there. One of the beds looked mighty slack.

Gray light was showing in the east, and he shifted position suddenly, nervously, realizing he had been still too long. And as he changed position he heard a voice behind him say, "Right there, Molina. Hold it right there."

With what had happened to Pike fresh in his mind, he threw himself to the side and rolled over in the darkness and came up, firing at the dart of flame before he heard the sound of the shot. He heard the hard impact of a bullet on flesh and dove forward as a bullet struck where he had been.

Farther off there was a sudden drum of gunshots. He held his fire, and glanced swiftly toward his camp.

Hale was gone.

The wagon was dark, but there was nobody under the wagon where reflected light had shown the long dark bundle of Barnes, sleeping.

Nearby Molina could hear the slow, heavy breathing of an injured man, but the fellow might be waiting for a shot and he dared not move. There were leaves and brush under the trees, and while he had not made any sound moving, the next step might not be so fortunate. Yet he had moccasins on...he put a foot out carefully as he straightened up, testing the ground. It was soft earth. Carefully, he let his weight down.

Then he saw the man who had tried to take him. He was down on the ground but he was still gripping a gun.

Squatting, he felt around on the ground and found a dead branch, fallen from one of the trees above. He straightened up but did not throw it. Instead, reaching off to one side with the branch, he made faint rustling sounds in the brush. Instantly the shot came and he fired in reply.

The camp was very still. Carefully, he worked his way to the man he had shot and picked up his pistol, then stripped the gun belt from the body and looped it over his shoulder after loading the extra pistol and tucking it in his belt.

Hale had vanished; so had Barnes. Nowhere was there a sign of anyone. It was so still he could hear the horses cropping grass.

It would soon be light, and what happened after that would settle things here. He had not found the gold, and he had no intention of leaving without it. One of the outlaws was down, but the other shooting he had dimly heard while he was fighting his own battle might mean anything or nothing.

Hale had vanished at the first shot, but was he alive? Or injured and lying hidden?

Molina moved to the shelter of a large tree, then lowered himself to the ground. His rifle was in camp and he would need it. Crawling, keeping to the shelter of the brush, which was sparse but in the darkness sufficient cover, he got back to a place close to their own fire. Only gray coals remained, a slow thread of smoke rising in the still air of the hour before dawn.

The sky in the east was gray with a shading of lemon near the horizon.

Nothing moved.

And then there was movement, the slightest stirring in the darkness near the rear wheel of the wagon, and a faint glint of light on a rifle barrel. Barnes was lying there with a rifle, probably the buffalo gun Molina had seen him with earlier. And on whose side was Barnes?

Neutral, Molina decided, neutral and protecting himself while the others fought it out, and then he would do his part. So there was that to consider during whatever took place now, and whoever won must be prepared to handle Barnes.

Dawn came slowly on the high plains, the sun rising behind far gray clouds. Barnes was discernible now, sitting at the rear wheel of the big wagon, his rifle ready for use, an armed spectator.

Ruth got down from the wagon and went to the fire. Adding fuel she built up the fire and put on a coffeepot. Then she went quietly about the business of preparing breakfast. Molina glanced at her from time to time, astonished at her coolness in the midst of a situation where shooting might break out again at any moment.

From where he lay he could cover the area at Wagon Camp. His only danger was if someone got behind a big clump of prickly pear off on his left and outside the grove of trees and brush. Some of that pear was tall as a man, and it was a big clump, banked with drifted sand. It made him uneasy, and he wanted to move, but there was no chance.

Desperately, he wanted his rifle, and he could see the stock from where he lay. Beyond it he could see a man's shoulder and hand. It was Hale.

The Pinkerton man lay in the slight hollow at the seep, a hollow just deep enough to give him the slightest cover, but whether he was alive or dead, Molina could not see.

Windblown sand had heaped up around some of the trees, but elsewhere the wind had scooped hollows, exposing the roots. No one of these places seemed adequate cover, and it was unbelievable that within this small area there should be four men hidden from each other.

Four men who waited for the slightest move, four men ready to shoot and to kill...and at one side, an old man with a rifle, taking no part, but also ready to kill. And a girl who prepared a meal in the midst of it, who went about her task as though the scene were as peaceful as it actually appeared.

An hour went by, and the wind skittered a few leaves along the ground, stirred the green hands of the cottonwoods.

A storm was coming....

Immediately, Jake Molina began to think of how he could turn the storm to advantage. He had been waiting for the others to move...he would wait no longer.