Sharpshooter

by Dusty Richards

  “Nice of him to come by,” Lisa said. “He could have stayed for lunch.”

  “No. He’s pretty fussy about his job.”

  “Someday you will be famous and others will come and steal all of your super men.”

  “Took a railroad president to steal Cole.”

  She hugged his waist and laughed. “That’s what I mean.”

  He said grace—that was what they waited on—and he announced they’d go south in the morning. When lunch was over, Lisa rushed off to get something.

  Renny slid in beside him. “I want to ask you a question.”

  “Sure. What did I do wrong?”

  “Nothing. But the boys said I should ask you. They weren’t that brave.”

  “What is it?”

  “When can we get together again? I mean, the three of us.”

  “I don’t have a calendar with me.”

  “They mentioned the county fair meeting for the race.”

  “Yes. I told them we will do it then.”

  “Chet? Two more things I want to clear with you. You know I don’t have a father but I’d like to call you my dad if it won’t make you mad.”

  He hugged her to him. “I would be proud to be your dad.”

  “Those two said that you would say that. I appreciate it more than I can even say. When Lisa said the boys were coming along on this trip—well, I about panicked. I never had to share anything in my life. But it was the greatest summer of my lifetime. I’ll be ready to go in the morning and ride at the head of the parade going south. Dad.”

  “See you then.”

  Lisa, when they were in bed that evening, said, “She picked a good one, to be her dad, of course.”

  “Thanks.” He reached over to kiss and hug her. Life sure turned out great for him, night or day.

  * * *

  Two days later they were at the Verde and ready to leave, and Chet saw Renny and Adam to the side, talking. He booted his horse over there.

  “Hey, it is time we went home, girl.”

  “Coming, Dad.”

  “Adam. See you, pard.”

  “Hey, both Rocky and I think she’s great.”

  “I agree. Now, get in the saddle and let’s go.”

  When he joined Lisa at the head of the train she was laughing. “I thought she might want to stay down here.”

  He sighed. “Not yet.”

  Under her breath, she asked him, “Who’s going to win her?”

  “Damned if I know.” They both rode on, laughing, and Chet waving for the train to follow him.

  Someone rang the yard bell when they got in sight of their house. Company coming. When he came under the bar his horse was single-footing to the bell ringing. Folks were running in to join the rest, welcoming the boss and his wife, returning triumphantly with a wagon train of loot they found in the strip.

  Chet saw the young reporter from the Miner newspaper in the crowd. His head would explode before the afternoon was over.

  CHAPTER 37

  Chet Byrnes knew they’d swarm him first time he went to town. Everyone who saw him would want to shake his hand and borrow money. But with Vic riding shotgun and Lisa beside him they drove to town. They left her at the dress shop and went to Bo’s. He locked the door and twisted the CLOSED FOR BUSINESS sign around toward the outside. The onlookers’ noses were pressed to the glass.

  “From all the rumors and Tanner having guards twenty-four/seven at the bank, you must have done well.” Bo sat back in his swivel chair.

  “Over forty steamer trunks full of money. Most was money that was made before 1800.”

  “How in the hell did it get up there?”

  Seated in a straight-backed living room–like chair facing Bo’s desk, Chet said, “I have no damn idea.”

  “It is not at some crossroads?”

  “No, nor any water hole, nor rich farmland, or in a grove of timber-size logs.”

  “When I heard you’d found another treasure trove, I screamed, ‘That SOB knew where it was at all the time.’”

  “No way. I showed you the ruby mine map I bought from the man over in Mesa when we bought the east ranch, but I had no idea that under that mountain they’d left a fortune in treasure.”

  “Of course, if a poor man had found it he’d not had the money to guard it and get it hauled down here.”

  “Oh, that much, someone smart could have worked it out secret-like.”

  “I doubt it.” Bo shook his head. “Well, what comes next?”

  “I want to check on all my ranches and get ready for fall and winter.”

  “Not such a tough job with the help like you have. If I owned a ranch and didn’t know a damn thing about it, I’d sure want your help.”

  The noise outside grew greater. Bo shook his head. “I’m going to tell them you aren’t loaning money today. To go see Tanner at the bank if that is their business.”

  Stepping to the door, Bo cracked it open. “Whoa. Whoa. He isn’t loaning money today. Leave my doorstep. Go on, now. He is not going to loan you any money. Period.”

  “How do you know that? I ain’t asked him yet.”

  “I know him pretty well. Now, go before I have the city police arrest you. Get!”

  Bo shut the door. “You are really in for it now.”

  “They’ll get tired of it after a while.”

  “Tanner got a handle on it?”

  “Not yet.”

  “You can go out the back way.”

  “I’ll start out that way and Vic will drive the buckboard up.”

  “I miss having a nice, quiet meeting with you.”

  “No deals today?”

  “No, but I get a real one I’ll drive out there and tell you all about it.”

  “Thanks, Bo. See you.”

  Vic drove up. Chet nodded to him, jumped on the spring seat, and they were off.

  His man cut up the alley, stopping at the back door of the bank. Chet got off, checked his pocket watch, and told him to be back in thirty minutes. Then he beat three times on the metal door. It swung open, Chet went inside, and they closed the door.

  Tanner came back to get him. Trunks were stacked higher than their heads. They scooted sideways down the hall crowded with trunks and went into his office. With a sigh of relief Tanner stood with his back to the door. “Banking can be hell on days like this.”

  “Problems?”

  “I am not used to having this many trunks stacked in my bank. We are emptying them. I don’t want you to think I am complaining, but how did they get to where you found them and why?”

  “Other than a robbery, I have no idea, and I think all a mule could pack was one,” Chet said.

  “I bet we never find out anything more than we know now. One of the haulers said the cavern had many body bones on the floor, skulls?”

  “Yes. They all didn’t ride away from there. I looked at the front of that mountain and decided it had caved in. Buried under tons of rock and dirt. We went around and found a place with an opening in back and blasted open a hole. My two boys and adopted daughter climbed through and then we had to let them down about twelve feet to the floor inside.”

  “Were they scared?”

  “Those three would have taken on anything. Told me it was a bunch of dusty old trunks.

  “We bored holes in the rock wall and blasted our way in. We worried if we did much more it might collapse the roof into the cavern. I built a trestle to roll an old mine cart in to get the trunks from the floor to the hole in the wall and out to be loaded into wagons. Each trunk required five to six men to load it.”

  Tanner shook his head. “I heard about that structure you built to get them up and out to the wagons.”

  “My friend Lincoln at the store up there gave us an old, rusty mine cart. We took off the barrel and made it a flatcar and used the wood for the tracks. We were careful. It was all we had.”

  Tanner could hardly handle all the wealth he had stacked up in the bank. “There may be half to three quarters
of a million dollars here.”

  “I knew we had lots,” Chet told his banker. “I have to go to Mesa and pay that man for the rubies we found. He is a cripple and in bad shape, according to my man. Billy Bob, who struck the deal, thought forty thousand would be plenty.”

  “Bet he would be pleased.”

  Chet agreed. He might get Jesus and Billy Bob and go find this Earshal Greystone. His wife’s name was Jennifer, and Billy Bob knew where they lived at Mesa.

  Chet drew out forty thousand dollars and had one of the tellers wrap it in newspaper and tie it with string. The clerk used several big bills in five-hundred and thousand denominations so the package didn’t look so big. Chet shook Tanner’s hand and prepared to go back to the ranch.

  Out in the alley Chet put the package of cash in the box with the groceries under the seat and nodded to his guard that he was ready to go pick up his wife. Several people tried to wave him down when they recognized who it was in the buckboard going to the dress shop.

  Chet didn’t talk much about anything concerning the treasure in public. Lisa loaded her things and they went to the ranch with no problem.

  He told Vic to send word to Billy Bob down at the Verde that in two days he needed to make a trip with him and Jesus to Mesa. He’d know what that was about. Lisa heard him and nodded. At the house and alone he told her what he planned to do about the Greystone deal. She agreed.

  * * *

  They caught the midnight stage on Thursday, and Friday midday they were in Mesa in a buckboard rented over in Hayden’s Ferry. Billy Bob told Chet that Greystone lived in the barrio north of the square.

  Billy Bob drove up to the casa. A woman in her thirties came out of the house. “Oh, Señor Kimes, how are you?”

  “Just fine, señora. This is my boss, Chet Byrnes, and his man Jesus Martinez.”

  “Oh, have you been to the mine?”

  “Yes, and we came to settle with you, if we may?”

  “That would be a miracle. My husband is not doing so well.”

  They went into the adobe casa and she seated them in chairs at the wooden table. She went into the bedroom, woke her husband, and rolled him in his wheelchair into the room.

  “Billy Bob, you found it?” Greystone’s face lit up at the sight of him.

  “It was not exactly a mine that we found. But we did find some rubies.”

  “It was so long ago I was there. Things go this and that way in my mind. There were three columns of tall red stone maybe a day’s ride west of the road fork.”

  “That is where we found the stones, all right. But it was only part of the find.”

  “I was out of water that day. Delirious, maybe? I had to go find food and water. I only found a handful of rubies.”

  “We won’t do any more mining up there, but I told Chet you were a man who needed money and that you had been honest with me. He wants to pay you.”

  “Sure. How much was my part worth?”

  “Forty thousand dollars in cash.” Chet used his jackknife to cut the strings on the package he was holding.

  The man’s wife sucked in her breath and peered over to see Billy Bob as he unpeeled the paper from the money.

  “Jennifer, there is forty thousand dollars in this package. There are some one-thousand-dollar bills in here so the contents didn’t draw any looks like a suitcase would have.”

  “None is counterfeit?” the man’s shocked wife asked aloud.

  “No. It came from my bank in Preskitt. The money is good,” Chet said.

  She crossed herself twice and, white-faced in shock, looked closer in.

  “I never saw a bill this big before. But it feels like money.”

  “It truly is good.”

  “What do I need to sign?”

  “I have the paper. Would you like me to read it?”

  Tears streamed down Greystone’s wrinkled face. “No. God bless all of you. Jennifer and I live on the generosity of her church and food our neighbors grow for us.”

  “We can take you or her to the bank and deposit it. I don’t want you robbed.”

  “Thank you. I can’t read or write but I can sign and she can witness it, and then take her to the bank. We owe them a small sum but we will pay it. Right?” he asked her.

  “I worried I would die before we got it paid.”

  “How large is the bill you owe?”

  “Sixty dollars.”

  “When you get her to the bank, Billy Bob, pay them that amount. Be sure she has a correct deposit and a receipt for the loan payoff. She won’t need to take the money out of this. And break a twenty-dollar bill. That will be her grocery money.” Chet handed him four twenties.

  “You are too generous,” she said.

  “No. When you come back, I have a purse with rubies in it for you.”

  “A purse, too?” her husband asked.

  Chet nodded. “You men take her to the bank. I will visit with him.”

  Jennifer wiped the tears from her eyes. Greystone waited until they were gone. “What do I owe Billy Bob?”

  “He doesn’t need anything. He is richer than most ranchers I know. I share my findings with my men.”

  “Have you ever been to the Goldfield mines?” Greystone asked Chet.

  Chet shook his head. “They around Superstition Mountain east of Mesa?”

  “Yes. I have a claim there that is good, but I never gave it to anyone because I figured they’d just steal the gold. I thought that drawling Texas boy Billy Bob was honest when he came the first time, and I never met anyone that honest before in my life. I know I am talking in circles. She didn’t think so. Some days I know who I am; some days I don’t have any idea who I am. I am glad you came. We don’t need a paper wrote up. That mine is still there and I will sign it over to you today.”

  “I won’t take your mine. If it is workable I will pay you for it.”

  “My wife will get the papers. I can sign them.”

  Billy Bob, Jesus, and Greystone’s wife came back in the door, laughing. “Chet, I wish you’d been there. Seeing me deposit my money, the banker was shocked.”

  “He asked if the man who found the Spanish gold in the Grand Canyon was you.”

  “Yes, that, too.”

  Earshal asked his wife to get out the Goldfield gold mine claim.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Form a partnership with Chet, here. He will get the gold out.”

  “Well, I hope he can.” She went for the claim.

  Jesus was shaking his head in disbelief. “That will be another rich mine.”

  She came back. “I won’t tell you all my story, but the man I was married to—maybe living with—he said we were married, but the Territory had no record of it. That man beat me up all the time. He didn’t need an excuse. We were up in the mountains. No one was around.”

  “How long had you been married to him?” Chet asked.

  “I think two years.”

  “How old was this man?”

  “Maybe forty—I didn’t know. But Earshal came, and I left that camp with him and married him. He had this mine and it was paying us but he had a wreck with a wagon and we had to close it down. We had no one to run it and he was not well. But his claim is good.”

  “We may go out there tomorrow. I will see what it looks like and let you know what I will do.”

  “I am very grateful. I read that story to Earshal, that was in the Tucson paper, and he told me he knew where that ruby mine was at.”

  “You think there will be a claim jumper on your claim in Goldfield?” Chet asked her.

  “No telling.”

  “That is what I thought.”

  Chet handed her a tobacco sack of rubies. Her eyes bulged out when she peered down into it. “Are they real?”

  “Would I bring you glass?”

  “I don’t believe so, but you never know.”

  “They are real. See you after we look at the mine.”

  “God be with you three.”

 
* * *

  They got a hotel in Mesa that night. After breakfast, they rode out to east of Mesa. Chet had a map they had studied the afternoon before. Since Goldfield was a town, and they brought no camping gear, he told them if they stayed out there, they’d get a hotel for the evening.

  Their horses were livery stock but they kept them going. They reached the town at the base of the huge Superstition Mountain in midafternoon. The other two had cold draft beer, and Chet had sarsaparilla.

  He bribed the bartender for information about the Calico Mine.

  “Been shut down for several years. I think he ran out of vein. Wasn’t worth a hill of beans for years. That’s why no one’s done anything with it.”

  Chet thanked him.

  “What do you think now?” Jesus said.

  “We found a fortune hanging off a bluff in the Grand Canyon. Went to the end of the trail and found a Spanish fortune and some rubies in no-man’s-land. I want to invest some money in this Calico Mine. Bring out some rocks and bust them. I don’t know how to make a tunnel. We have some investment money so we aren’t using money we need to eat on. There was gold in there once. We might get lucky and find some more and we won’t starve if we don’t.

  “Let’s get some supper. Find us some clothes, get these washed, take a bath, get rooms, and meet some contractors.”

  “With all I know about mining you could fit it into this empty mug,” Billy Bob teased.

  Chet sent his wife a wire.

  STAYING IN GOLDFIELD ON A MINE PROJECT. TELL ANITA MORE COMING IN A LETTER.

  CHET, JESUS, AND BILLY BOB

  They took a hotel room and by nine a.m. the next day had interviewed several possible contractors in the Gold Dust Saloon at an empty card table. Jesus took notes and names on a Big Chief tablet. Several men wanting work went out and looked at the mine setup with Billy Bob then came back and talked some more.

  Chet felt he was getting informed on mining. He was convinced some of the men were fairly straight, others braggarts, and some worthless.

  By four o’clock that afternoon they had settled on a young man in his twenties to mine a hundred and fifty feet. Jed Carlisle, age twenty-four, had graduated from Colorado Mining School and wanted to make good. So timbers were ordered. Jed had men. They rented an air hammer run off steam and had an option to buy it if they wanted it.