Cowgirl Thrillers

by Barbara Neville

The next day I meet up with Lone Wolf, Spud and Sir Jacob out at the trail crossing for a quick confab. Lone has little to report, having seen only enough to give him a few theories.

  “My partner will be here in five,” I say.

  “Good lookin’, you say?” asks Spud.

  “Yep, extremely.”

  Wolf covers his grinning mouth, gets control of his features, then adds, “Yeah, Wolf meet Annie’s partner, very beautiful. Just yore type.”

  Oh crap, I think, another guy too good lookin’ to be straight? Arghhh. Just my luck.

  Michael appears around the bend, in his full flamboyant voice. Waving a loose wristed hand in the air, he says, “Oh, Annie, introduce me. I hear you’ve found a whole herd of fabulous studs!”

  “Yes siree, and Spud the Stud here has been super excited to meet yore fine fairy ass,” I say.

  We all look at the extremely red faced Spud, who is waving a hand in front of his face. “No, um, no. There has been a misunderstanding here.” Then he glances around at us, laughing our asses off. Cowboy humor, keeps us going.

  Michael extends a suddenly macho hand. He is a bit red too. “My apologies for my evil partner, it seems she has bamboozled us both. No harm meant, except to our fragile egos.”

  He turns to me and says, “Annie, I will have you over my knee if this behavior continues,” which gets us all about rolling out of our saddles with glee again.

  We decide to split up and track the suckers in and out, see if we can figure out what is so valuable as to be worth the shootin’ of innocent passersby. We all agree that there is more here than meets the naked eye.

  I put in a long day with not much results: hoofed or booted, other than giving my overworked cowpony another big workout. Fortunately, he is way tougher than I will ever be. Spike sure appreciates his hay and oats come nightfall.

  The following morning Michael and I are snug in our separate soogans when I roll over and open my eyes. Sure enough that wily Injin has crept into our camp again, stirred up the coals and made us a pot of coffee. Pure evil, the man is.

  So much for my Injin blood. I apparently have inherited no Injin skills. Sleepin’ with one eye open is not in my DNA. Once again Lone could have killed us both in our sleep had he been so inclined.

  “Shit Lone, damn good thing I didn’t start up and shoot you before I got the sleep out of my eyes.”

  “You white folks never hear Injin, I make plenty noise this mornin’. Got Injin juju on my side.

  “Roll out and grab a cup. Sir Jacob has broke a rule and invited you to his teepee. He never invites strangers in. I believe he has fallen for your feminine wiles.”

  “If he is susceptible to feminine wiles, wait ‘til he spends some time with Michael. He can out feminine me with one hand tied behind his back.”

  “Not sure Sir Jacob will appreciate the irony there, really not sure,” says Wolf.

  “I just met that guy the other day and a minute or two of observation showed me that he’s a different one, as dandified as I ever saw.”

  “Sir Jacob has a past that none of us have found out much about. He is surely a believer in the end of the worlds being soon. He is well prepared, which has more than once worked out well for Spud and all us Injins he has befriended.”

  “You have people hereabouts, Lone?”

  “Not legal for Injins to be out here. We are good reservation livers. Smart Injin stay on res.

  “It is well known to me, when things go wrong, White Eyes blame the Injins. History repeat itself all over again.”

  After we coffee down and saddle up, Lone Wolf leads us up a well forested draw and into just about another world.

  We head up a pretty steep stream for an hour and into a maze of huge granite boulders. After some serious winding about we come to a dead end, or so it seems. We are at the end of a box canyon with cliffs all around, including dead ahead.

  Lone leads us into a just about impenetrable clump of Arizona cypress. Stuck just behind one of the mass of huge rocks there appears the mouth of a cave. It is hidden very well by brush and trees. I doubt even seasoned brush jumpers like us would ever come upon it by our lonesomes.

  We dismount and lead our horses into the cave. Just as the light just about peters out to nothing, Lone stops at a ledge where there are carbide lamps and matches. He lights up one for each of us. Further inside there is a large room set up as a stable, hay and all. There we unsaddle and put our steeds in a small pen with a shock of hay each. There is water coming into the troughs from somewhere and some natural light filtering in through a crack in the roof.

  Horses cared for, we walk on into the tunnel. It is a short hike, maybe 30 yards to a door. Lone invokes the Injin gods in some way and the door opens for us.

  Inside the door it is nothing short of amazing.

  First there is the tunnel, looks like an old mine. I can see veins of some type of metallic ore glittering in the walls and even places where miners have driven in and high graded the ore.

  “Gold?” I ask Lone.

  “White man steal Injin gold.”

  “How’d they pull that off, you Injins bein’ so watchful and stealthy and know it all?”

  “White Eyes sneak in and mine from before we conquer these parts. Injin move into this area not long time past, our birthright, everything. Now we more watchful, less firewater.”

  “Mm.”

  We head on down the tunnel passing cross drifts, making a few turns here and there, kinda confabulatin’ in fact. If we lose Lone and run out of fuel in the lanterns, it could get nasty trying to find the way out. If only we had brought bread crumbs. Hell, we could have crumbled it ourselves if we carried a loaf of bread in our emergency kit. But whoever thinks to?

  Eventually we arrive at another heavy wood door with wrought iron hinges and hasp. Lone Wolf knocks some kind of fancy secret knock and we wait.

  9 Jake’s Joint