The fat man was pale now, and worried-looking. “Whoever pulled on it would blow himself up, too.”
Preacher smiled and shook his head. “Nope, because we tied several ropes to the end of the string. It can be pulled from a far enough distance so that whoever yanks on it will have a chance to get clear before the cliff comes down.”
The fat man scrubbed a hand over his face. He turned and made a slight motion, and Preacher knew he was telling his companions not to shoot. He didn’t want to take a chance that Preacher was telling the truth.
Which he wasn’t—it was all a pack of lies—but the fat man didn’t have to know that. The man glared at Preacher and said, “All right. Say what you came down here to say.”
Preacher kept his face expressionless, but inside he was glad that the bluff had worked. He had thought of the whole rigmarole, and Esteban had agreed that it sounded plausible enough so that the men who had kidnapped Juanita might not want to risk a double cross.
Now Preacher said, “I reckon you want to trade the girl for the gold.”
“Not just the gold. The whole treasure. All of it.”
“That’s what I meant. How do we know Señorita Juanita is still all right?”
“You’ll have to take my word for it . . . but we can’t very well expect to trade her if she ain’t, now can we?”
“She better not be hurt in any way.” Preacher’s hard stare made it clear what he meant.
“Don’t worry, ain’t nobody bothered her. Cobey’s seein’ to that.”
“He’s your boss, is he?”
“He’s the one runnin’ things, yeah. And he’s a mighty dangerous man, so you’d better not try any tricks.”
Preacher shook his head. “No tricks, just a straight swap. You bring the girl back up and give her to us, and we’ll ride away and leave the treasure in the hole for you.”
“You’d already brought some of it up,” the fat man protested.
“Yeah, we had,” Preacher drawled, “but it’s back in the hole now, along with that cocked pistol.”
The fat man looked like he wanted to cuss, but he held it in. “How are we supposed to get the treasure if it’s primed to blow up?”
“All you have to do is move the rocks coverin’ up the top of the hole. Then the gas will come out and it’ll be safe to climb down there and haul the stuff out. We did it without much trouble.”
The fat man rubbed his jaw. “Yeah, I reckon.”
“Just be careful not to pull that string until you’ve aired out the place,” Preacher warned. “Might get more than you bargained for if you did.”
After a moment, the fat man nodded. “All right. You got a deal, Preacher. The girl for the treasure, straight up. We’ll bring her up here and give her to you, and you and the others ride off. We’ll have you covered the whole time, though, in case you try anything.”
“No tricks,” Preacher said. “Juanita’s life is worth more than a bunch o’ old relics and some bars o’ gold.”
“I’m glad you feel that way,” the fat man said with a grin. “How’s that little priest feel about it?”
“He ain’t happy,” Preacher admitted, “but he’ll go along with the plan.”
“All right.” The fat man backed toward the bend. “We’ll be back in an hour with the girl. Don’t try to sneak any o’ them gold bars out, neither. You do and the deal’s off.”
“How many times do I have to tell you . . . there won’t be any tricks.”
“Remember that, or the girl’s blood will be on your hands.”
With that, the fat man ducked back around the bend and was gone. Preacher waited a minute to be sure, then said, “Come on, Dog.” He turned Horse and started back up the canyon. The next hour was going to be a busy one.
TWENTY-ONE
Juanita’s captors had stuck her in the back of one of the wagons and left the man they called Wick to guard her. Wick was probably the biggest man she had ever seen, close to seven feet tall and perhaps over three hundred pounds. The sleeves and shoulders of his buckskin shirt bulged with massive muscles. Juanita could tell when she looked at him, however, that he had the mind of a child. That gave her some hope. Perhaps she could convince him to let her go. She knew that she would have to befriend him first, though.
She wasn’t sure where the other men were. The fat man and a couple of the others had gone back up the canyon. Professor Chambers and the one called Cobey, who seemed to be the real leader of the group, had disappeared somewhere, perhaps to plan their next move.
Juanita’s hands were tied together in front of her. The rawhide thongs were tight enough so that her fingers had gone partially numb. She wasn’t lying when she said through the open back of the wagon, “Señor Wick, my hands hurt. These bonds are too tight. Could you loosen them a little?”
He sat on a rock just outside the back of the wagon, with his knees sticking up because his legs were so long. He shook his head and said, “No, ma’am, I can’t. Cobey told me to watch you and not do anything that you asked me to do, and I got to do what Cobey says.”
“Why? Is he your father?”
Wick laughed. “My father? Cobey? No, ma’am, he ain’t. I don’t rightly remember my pa. I don’t think my ma really knowed who he was.”
“Your brother, then?”
“Nope. Ain’t got no brother. Ain’t had nobody since my ma died. Except for Cobey. He’s my friend. He’s my good friend. He looks out for me.”
“How did you meet?” It was a strain for Juanita to keep her voice so affable and sound as if she were genuinely curious, but she had to do so.
“I don’t know.” Wick frowned in thought. “It’s been a while. Cobey’s been takin’ care o’ me for a long time.” He scratched his jaw. “I think it was in St. Louie, or maybe Pittsburgh. Some town on a river. It’s comin’ back to me now. I was on a dock, unloadin’ some boxes from a boat . . . an’ I dropped one of ’em. I didn’t mean to, but I dropped it and it busted open, and this fella laughed at me, and it made me mad so I hit him.”
“You don’t like for people to laugh at you?” Juanita asked gently.
“No, ma’am, I don’t. It makes me mad. So when that fella laughed at me, I hit him in the head and he fell down, and a bunch o’ blood come outta his ears and his nose, and some other fellas run up and looked at him and said he was dead. They said I had to go to jail.” Wick shook his head. “I didn’t want to go to jail. But they made me, after I hit some more fellas and made their heads bleed, too.”
Juanita suppressed the shiver that ran through her as Wick recounted his gruesome tale. Obviously, he possessed enough strength to kill a man with a mere blow from his fist.
“They said they was gonna put a rope around my neck and string me up, whatever that means,” Wick went on. “But that night, before they could do it, Cobey came and let me outta jail and said I was gonna go with him and he’d look after me from then on. He’d stuck a knife in the fella that was in charge o’ the jail so he could get me out, so I knew he really liked me. Ever since then, I’ve stayed with Cobey and done whatever he told me to do. He’s my friend.”
Juanita knew that friendship had nothing to do with it. Cobey had recognized the opportunity to insure this giant’s slavish devotion, and he had seized it. No doubt they had robbed and murdered their way all across the frontier, with Wick probably handling most of the violence while Cobey planned their crimes. Cobey had gathered other ruthless men around him, but Wick was his own personal tool, an implement of death as surely as a gun or a knife was.
Surprisingly, she found herself feeling some genuine sympathy for the huge man. There was no telling how many bloody-handed deeds he had carried out at his mentor’s command, but Wick didn’t really know he was doing wrong. He was just doing what his “friend” told him to do.
“I understand why you feel the way you do about him,” she said. “I really don’t think he would mind, though, if you loosened these bonds on my wrists.”
Wick scowled. “He
said you might try to trick me, so that you could run away. He don’t want you to run away.”
Juanita swallowed her frustration and kept her tone calm and gentle. “I cannot run away as long as I am in this wagon, and if I try to get out of the wagon, you can stop me. That has nothing to do with my hands hurting because my wrists are tied too tightly.”
“Well . . . I reckon that’s true.”
“If you will loosen the thongs, I give you my word I will not try to run away.” She felt bad about lying to him—no doubt he had been lied to a great deal in his life—but there were greater concerns here. She knew her captors were going to try to trade her for the lost treasure of Mission Santo Domingo. And Esteban would make such a trade, too, even though losing the treasure would be a terrible blow to him. She could not let that happen if she could prevent it.
Wick put his hands on his knees and pushed himself to his feet. “I guess I could look at your hands,” he said grudgingly. “Cobey didn’t tell me I couldn’t talk to you, or look at you, or touch you. He just said for me to keep you here and for me not to hurt you.”
Juanita smiled at him and said, “If he told you not to hurt me, then I think he would want you to loose my bonds so that I am not in pain.”
“You think?”
“It seems to me that it would be so.”
His huge body almost filled up the opening at the rear of the wagon. “Let me see.”
She thrust her hands out toward him. He started to look at them, but then he got distracted. His gaze strayed to her breasts. His eyes widened and his breathing got faster. Juanita felt a chill go through her, but tried not to show the revulsion she felt as he stared at her.
“Them are mighty pretty bosoms, ma’am,” he said.
“Th-thank you.”
“Can I touch ’em? Cobey says I got to ask ’fore I touch a lady’s bosoms or do anything else like that with her.”
“I . . . I don’t think you should. It would not be proper.”
“Oh.” Wick’s eyes fell. “All right, then.”
“Wait,” Juanita said hastily. She steeled herself and went on. “I think it would be all right if you touched them, Wick. Just a little, though.”
His face lit up again. “Really?”
“Really,” she assured him. “I do not think you should tell Cobey about it, though.”
“You reckon he’d mind?” Wick asked in a whisper.
“Oh, no,” Juanita said. “He wouldn’t mind. I would just prefer that it was our secret. Don’t you ever keep secrets, Wick?”
“Not from Cobey.”
“Well, this time you have to, otherwise you cannot do it. All right?”
He stared at her breasts for a long moment before he finally nodded his shaggy head. “All right.”
“You promise?”
“I swear.”
Juanita took a deep breath. “Go ahead, then.”
He leaned closer and reached out with one huge hand. His fingertips touched the underside of her right breast through the fabric of her dress. He slid them forward gingerly until the whole thing was resting in the palm of his hand. His touch was gentle as he cupped that breast and then eased his hand over to the other one. Somehow, despite the riot of emotions going on inside her, Juanita kept a smile on her face and didn’t shudder as he caressed her.
After a couple of minutes, she said, “That’s enough, Wick,” and he obediently took his hand away. She went on. “You said you would loosen these thongs around my wrists.”
“Oh, yeah.” He bent to that task, his sausagelike fingers fumbling as he worked with the knots. He poked the tip of his tongue out of his mouth as he frowned in concentration. Finally, the knots loosened, and Juanita tried not to grimace as feeling flowed painfully back into her hands.
“Is that better?” Wick asked.
“Much better,” she told him, still smiling. “Thank you.”
“I won’t tell Cobey I loosened ’em. And I won’t say anything to him about, uh, feelin’ your bosoms.”
She nodded and whispered conspiratorially, “Yes, I think that would be best.”
“You’re a really nice lady.” He started to go back and sit down on his rock again, but he stopped and added, “I sure hope Cobey don’t decide we got to kill you.”
“It’s agreed, then?” Chambers asked. “We don’t let any of them live except the girl?”
“Of course not,” Cobey said. “What sort o’ dumb bastards would we have to be to do that?”
“I just don’t want this coming back to haunt us later.”
“It won’t.” Cobey rested a hand on the hilt of his knife. “And as soon as we’ve had our fill of the girl, she’ll have to die, too.”
With a regretful look on his face, the professor nodded. “That’s all too true,” he agreed. “No witnesses to testify against us.”
“No witnesses,” Cobey repeated.
Chambers didn’t know it, but he wasn’t going to survive this incident, either. Sure, he had been the one to find out about the treasure, through some friend of his in Mexico City, but that had been pure dumb luck. Chambers hadn’t done anything to actually earn any of that loot. Cobey and his partners, on the other hand, had done the real work. They had risked their lives more than once for a shot at the treasure, and they were the ones who deserved to have it, not some fancy Easterner.
The two men stood under a tree near the mouth of the canyon. Cobey heard somebody coming, and wasn’t surprised when Arnie Ross, Bert McDermott, George Worthy, and Chuck Stilson came into view, trudging out of the canyon. Cobey went to meet them.
“Somebody come down to parley?” he asked.
Arnie nodded. “Preacher his own self.”
Cobey felt his pulse quicken. “Didn’t the rest of you get a chance to bushwhack him? I didn’t hear no shots.”
“We couldn’t shoot him,” Arnie said disgustedly. “Before he came down to meet us, he put all the loot back in that cave and rigged the whole place to blow up if he didn’t come back.”
“What?” Cobey exploded. “How in hell did he do that?”
Quickly, Arnie explained about the gas building up in the cave and the pistol Preacher had set up to explode it if the string tied to its trigger was pulled.
Chambers listened to what Arnie had to say and then nodded solemnly. “It could well be true,” the professor said. “Such volcanic gas will explode if a sufficient concentration builds up. Plugging the shaft down into the cave might accomplish that. It’s rather an ingenious thing to do, actually.”
“Yeah, but he was bluffin’,” Cobey growled.
Arnie asked, “How do you figure?”
“That Alvarez kid ain’t gonna blow up the loot while we’ve still got his sister, no matter what happens to Preacher!”
Arnie frowned, took off his hat, and scratched his mostly bald head. “Damn it, you’re right,” he muttered.
“Preacher just wanted to throw you off balance long enough so that he could get out of there alive.” Cobey snorted. “Looks like he did it, too.”
“Yeah, but it don’t matter,” Arnie argued. “He agreed that they’d trade the treasure for the girl, and after we’ve made the swap we’re gonna kill ’em all anyway, ain’t we?”
“Yeah, but it would’ve been easier if Preacher was already dead.”
There was no disputing that, so Arnie just shrugged.
“Well, what’s done is done,” Cobey went on. “What’s the deal?”
“We bring the girl up to the top of the canyon and turn her over to Preacher and the others. They ride away, leavin’ the treasure down in the hole so that we can take it out again.”
“I thought you said the cave was full o’ gas,” Cobey said with a frown.
“We got to open up the shaft again and let it air out for a while. Then it’ll be all right to go down and get the loot.”
Cobey looked at Chambers, and the professor nodded and said, “Yes, it should be fine. They had a fire down there at one point, so the
gas concentration must be very low when the shaft is open. We should probably wait an hour or two after it’s opened up, just to make sure.”
“All right,” Cobey said. “We give ’em the girl, they start to ride away, and we shoot ’em. That’s simple enough.”
“Preacher’s liable to be watchin’ for a double cross,” Arnie warned.
“I don’t care. We’ll have ’em outgunned.”
“We’re liable to have a fight on our hands.”
“Think about all that gold and silver,” Cobey said. “And think about that girl.” His lips drew back from his teeth in a savage grin. “If all that ain’t worth fightin’—and killin’—for, then I don’t know what is.”
TWENTY-TWO
Preacher had some figurin’ to do, because he was damned if he was going to hand that treasure over to Chambers and those other bastards. He knew there was no way the thieves would let him and the others just ride away. The fat man had lied to him. A double cross was a certainty. Probably at the moment when Juanita was handed back over to them, or right after that, he decided.
There were steps he could take to make that less likely. For one thing, they would put all the treasure back down in the cave and make things look like the place was rigged to blow up, just as Preacher had told the fat man. The possibility of the cave and all the treasure being blown to kingdom come would certainly make the thieves think twice about trying anything.
In the end, though, Chambers and Cobey would feel like they couldn’t afford to let Preacher and his companions live. They would have to do something....
Preacher reached the top of the canyon and started across the shelf toward the cliff and the cave beneath it. Dog ran ahead of him. Before Preacher got to the cave, though, Dog was back, barking and running in circles like something was wrong. Preacher frowned at the big cur and said, “What the hell is it, Dog?”
With a nudge of his heels, Preacher sent Horse trotting forward at a faster pace. Within a few moments, he came in sight of the area around the cave. He noticed right away that Esteban’s horse, and the other two horses, were gone. Alarm bells rang in his brain.
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