by Jake Logan
It almost did. He felt as if the meaning was at the tip of his tongue—the tip of his finger. He identified one symbol that had to mean gold and the numbers surrounding it gave the location of the hoard Jesse James had hidden to be used as a bribe. Slocum knew the reason this was newly added—the gold would be moved to a spot where Simon Berglund could get to it, supposedly to bribe other soldiers at Fort Union.
“You disappeared,” came a soft voice. Slocum spun, his six-shooter out and aimed. He had his thumb on the hammer and came within an inch of drawing it back and letting it drop on a round.
“I didn’t hear you ride up,” Slocum said.
“I saw your horse and thought it might be one of the gang,” Audrey Underwood said, coming into the cave. For a brief moment she was delightfully silhouetted by the light outside, then moved to a spot where she could look at the chalk code. “I didn’t want to tangle with them, but when I saw it was your mare, I knew it was all right. Where’d you go?”
She wasn’t acting as if she had shown his wanted poster to the sheriff the night before. Slocum had seen how good an actress she could be, and it hardly seemed likely she was able to hide her real plan from him. He saw no hint of betrayal in her bright eyes.
“I scouted around the countryside and saw the sheriff riding out. What’s his name?”
“Sheriff Narvaiz,” she said without hesitation or even a hint of guile. “He’s much smarter than his deputy. From what I can tell, the sheriff has sent his deputy and most of the posse back to sit and wait for his word to assemble again.”
“Do tell.”
“What’s wrong, John? You’re acting strangely.”
“New symbols. I think Jesse has moved the gold and is getting ready to spring his revolt on the territory. Does this mean anything to you?”
Audrey came over, bent low to look at the symbol, and Slocum caught her scent. He remembered it well from hiding in the wardrobe the night before—and from earlier times with her. She was inches away, her back to him as if she trusted him completely.
“You’re mighty confident,” he said.
“No, not really. I think I know what it means but can’t be sure. This is similar to a symbol Jesse used in a cave back in Kansas.”
“I mean hobnobbing with the sheriff like you did.”
“I’m trying to get a line on others in the gang. Taking Jesse on straightaway won’t get us anywhere. He’s avoided too many lawmen up till now, so I decided to come at him from a different direction.”
“What’s that?”
“The men riding with him all have wanted posters on them. If I can lay a trap for one of them and let Sheriff Narvaiz capture him, this might lead us to not only the gold but also to capturing Jesse and all the rest.”
“Who did you have in mind?”
“Since you’re not doing such a good job with them, I decided to try someone else.”
“What do you mean?” Slocum rested his hand on his Colt Navy again. Audrey didn’t turn but worked her way down the row of symbols, then backtracked going from right to left.
“This might be it. They wrote their code backward. Do you know of a saddle pass anywhere nearby? This symbol is the sun and those numbers are something about the time of day, but I can’t tell what.”
“Saddle pass? There’s one not two miles from here to the south.”
“South? Well, that might be so. If they reversed everything else, it might be a key because it looks like this means to the north.”
“Time of day,” Slocum said, distracted from Audrey’s betrayal because of the lure of the gold. “That’d have to mean during the daylight hours. It gets dark faster close to the mountains.”
“My guess would be noon, or an hour before or after. These are new ciphers for me, but Jesse can’t get too fancy or whoever he’s dealing with won’t understand.”
“He’s trying to bribe a soldier who’s mighty sharp,” Slocum said.
“Still, shall we find this pass and see—” Audrey turned and ran smack into Slocum. She looked at him and tried to step back, only to find herself pinned to the wall by his body. “John, there’s not much time. It’s after ten. If we want to study the pass an hour before and after noon, we ought to start if it’s two miles away.”
“Yeah,” he said.
“You’re acting peculiar. What’s wrong?”
“Let’s ride,” he said. If he had a lick of sense, he’d toss Audrey into the pit and then ride like hell to get out of New Mexico Territory before Jesse stirred up things. He could always come back this way after it all spilled over because he didn’t believe anyone could wrest an entire country from the government in Washington. They had finished a war to keep the entire country intact. Holding on to New Mexico Territory would be far easier for them, no matter what politicians worked against continued union.
But the gold. Jesse had to have a mountain of gold to bribe even a fair number of the soldiers at the fort. They weren’t paid much, but they were mostly war veterans who didn’t know any other job. The few recruits were the lowest paid but might actually have a touch of patriotism in their bones. No matter how many—or how few—of the soldiers Jesse thought to bribe, it had to amount to several thousand dollars that would ride more easily in John Slocum’s saddlebags than in a turncoat’s pocket.
Turncoat. Betrayal. Audrey Underwood. He forced himself to keep his hand away from his pistol. If anything, he wanted to strangle her with his bare hands for her betrayal.
“No,” she said. “We’re not going anywhere until you tell me what’s wrong. What did you find while you were out scouting? Did Jesse say something that spooked you?”
He faced her and said, “Who in the gang are you trying to get the sheriff to arrest?”
“I don’t dare ask him to go after either Jesse or Frank,” she said, pressing her lips together. “That’s obvious. If either of them is caught, the other will expend all the money and effort to free his brother from jail. I need a member of the gang who matters to them but for whom they wouldn’t risk giving up this cockeyed scheme of rebellion.”
“Me?”
Audrey laughed.
“Don’t flatter yourself, John. Jesse would as soon shoot you as let you ride with him. He needs guns for his revolt, and you rode with the guerrillas. He thinks he can trust you—just a bit. No, someone closer to him. Charlie Dennison. If I can lure Dennison into a trap and the sheriff can arrest him . . .” Her words trailed off as Slocum laughed. She put her hands on her flaring hips and glowered. “What’s so damned funny?”
“You’ll never trick Charlie Dennison. Kill him, maybe, but lead him into an ambush? Never.”
“I have to try something since you’re not doing a thing.”
Slocum wondered if she was lying to him about Dennison. It seemed incredible that she couldn’t know how vicious the man was. He would as soon kill her as look at her. Slocum had seen men in his day who took greater pleasure in watching their victim die, but not that many. Charlie Dennison was a killer through and through.
“You don’t think I am capable of this. I’m telling you, I can be an effective bounty hunter.”
“You’d risk your life for a hundred dollars?”
“That’s what’s offered for Dennison,” she said. “How’d you know that?”
Slocum still wasn’t sure she hadn’t shown his wanted poster to the sheriff but how anyone could lie without revealing so much as a tic or guilty look was beyond him. Audrey might be telling the truth.
But what if she wasn’t?
“Just a guess,” he said. He guided his horse through the now familiar narrow path and out into a rocky field, headed south. After twenty minutes of riding, he saw the edge of a pass going deeper into the Sangre de Cristo Mountains that was unlike others. This was shallow and rounded rather than having steep, vertical sides.
“That matches what I deciphered,” Audrey said, giving him a sidelong look. Neither had spoken during the ride, Slocum not sure what to say to her and the wo
man resolutely staring straight ahead as if she could see through rock.
“I don’t know if there’s anything like it to the north,” Slocum said.
“I haven’t scouted this area too well.”
“What time is it?” She peered up at the sun, poking through heavy clouds that promised more rain later in the day.
Slocum checked his watch, then snapped shut the cover and tucked it away in his vest pocket.
“About noon,” he said. “We started later than I’d thought.”
Audrey drew rein in the middle of the pass and looked around. Several minutes passed before she said, “I don’t see anything that directs us to a cache.”
Slocum started to agree when the clouds parted and a ray of sunlight caught two rocky spires on the southernmost side of the pass. A V-shaped shadow was cast. He and Audrey looked at one another. Both smiled. The shadow looked like an arrow pointing toward the far side of the pass.
They rode slowly in the direction, following the gently sloping land until they looked up and saw a rocky overhang.
“It’s not a cave but it might serve as a hiding place.” Slocum jumped down and scrambled up the rocky slope. To his surprise by the time he reached the rocky ledge, Audrey was there waiting for him.
“I found a trail—a well-traveled trail,” she said. “Looked as if horses went up and down it recently.”
Slocum saw the trail curling down back toward the bottom of the pass. In his haste, he had not investigated very well. Worse, his rush to find the gold had turned off all logic. If gold had been hidden here, Jesse and the rest of his gang wouldn’t have struggled up the rocky slope carrying the bullion. Or did they store gold coins in leather sacks? The golden lure had dazzled him and left him vulnerable.
He felt a curious itch in the middle of his back. If Audrey had been dickering with Sheriff Narvaiz about turning him in, she could have shot him easily at any time while his back was turned to her.
“See where they came?” She stepped to one side and pointed. The rain had washed away much of the hoofprints but enough remained to show more than one horse had come to this point on the side of the pass.
He ducked down and moved rocks until he found a large cavity that had been dug out by hand and lined with stones to keep the sides from caving in.
“What have you found, John? Is the gold there?”
“Empty,” he said, crawling back and sitting with his back to a stone face. “But something’s been stored here recently.”
“Let me look.” Audrey dropped to hands and knees to crawl in. Again she showed no hesitation about turning her back on him. He couldn’t decide if she was confident that he believed her story about meeting with the sheriff the night before or if she was just too assured to think he would shoot her.
She crawled back and sat beside him.
“You’re right. The gold was here not too long ago.”
“Something was here,” Slocum corrected. “There’s nothing to prove Jesse hid gold here. He might have stored a half-dozen crates of rifles or even ammunition.”
“It was the gold,” she said firmly. “There’s no reason for him to unload the wagons with the arms and store them here. He wanted the gold here for a reason.”
“From the look of the pass, it’s well traveled,” Slocum said. “This might be a regular patrol route for the cavalry.” His mind raced ahead. This would be a good spot for Berglund to get his payoff. A squad of men might carry the gold back to Fort Union for bribing, as Jesse intended. Or the sergeant might have moved the gold elsewhere, intending to retrieve it later.
Most likely, Berglund had moved the gold and was long gone. Slocum wondered if the sergeant could run far enough with the gold once Jesse found he had been double-crossed.
“There is only one way the gold might have gone,” Audrey said. She stood and looked back eastward, but Slocum knew this wasn’t true. If Berglund had the gold, he could have gone through the pass. He wasn’t sure where the road at the bottom of the saddle led, but heading toward Taos with a few thousand dollars’ worth of gold was a good way to get out of the territory. Head north or south and Jesse or someone in his gang was likely to spot him. East was out of the question for the same reason. The land turned flat and Berglund could be spotted. But west?
Once he got to Taos, he could head north into Colorado or keep pressing on to the west. Depending on how much gold was involved, Berglund could travel fast, find himself a train depot, and be anywhere in the country within weeks.
“Someone’s coming,” Audrey said. “I see movement, but I can’t tell who it is.”
Slocum stood, shielded his eyes with his hands, and caught sight of the lead rider.
“It’s Jesse and he’s got a half-dozen men with him. Chances are good he’s coming here.”
“He can’t find us!” Audrey turned and crashed into him in her haste.
“There’s no way we can get back to the road and stay ahead of him,” Slocum said. He gauged distances and times. Jesse was coming too fast for them to escape.
For them to escape.
He still wondered if Audrey was selling him out to Sheriff Narvaiz, but he saw no way of turning her over to Jesse and having the outcome be good for him. There were too many explanations to be made why he and the woman were poking around in one of the Knights of the Golden Circle caches.
“Keep going. Lead your horse down the side trail. That way!” Slocum pointed.
“But they’ll see us.”
“I’ll decoy him. You get on back to Las Vegas.” Slocum almost added, “And fetch the sheriff.” He didn’t. “I’ll meet you there.”
“I’m staying in the boardinghouse. Mrs. Gonzales’s at the edge of town.”
“Go,” Slocum said. He was too distracted to return the kiss she gave him before grabbing her horse’s reins and taking the trail circling the hillside.
Slocum started down the road to where he’d left his horse. He didn’t know what he’d say to Jesse James but he’d think of something. If he didn’t come up with something plausible, he was a dead man.
10
“What’s he doin’ here, Jesse?” Charlie Dennison reached for his six-shooter but got tangled up.
“Whoa, hold your horses, Charlie. There’s a good way to find out.” Jesse James turned and looked hard at Slocum. “What’re you doing here?”
Slocum didn’t miss how Jesse had his hand on his own six-gun. There wouldn’t be any hesitation if a good answer wasn’t offered. The rest of the gang riding behind him also looked a bit confused. That meant Jesse had told them to follow but hadn’t said where. They would have thought he was supposed to join them along the trail if Dennison and Jesse hadn’t made such a big point of asking what he was hunting for so near their cache.
“There’s nothing up there,” Slocum said. He didn’t bother looking over his shoulder, but both Jesse and Charlie Dennison looked directly at the rock overhang. Nobody else in the gang so much as twitched. Only they knew the location of the cache.
“’Course not, Slocum,” said Jesse. “That wasn’t what I asked. You want to answer me?”
“I think Berglund is going to double-cross you.”
“What gives you that notion?”
Slocum explained how he had been slugged by two soldiers in Berglund’s command but didn’t elaborate on how he had come to still be alive. He saw that question burned on Dennison’s lips, who was willing to finish the job the soldiers had started. Jesse held up his hand to silence his henchman.
“This might just be a misunderstanding. Soldiers get real protective if they see you standing around their fort.”
“Where’d you think I got off to?” Slocum asked.
“I figured you had a hankering for a drop of whiskey and went on back to town. When me and Berglund finished our business, I looked for you but Las Vegas was swarming with deputized drunks. The sheriff must have pinned badges on anybody that could stand up straight for more ’n ten seconds. Never saw so many lawmen this s
ide of a Pinkerton convention.”
“I believe you,” Slocum said.
“What?” Jesse James reared back in surprise. “What do you believe?”
“That you didn’t know anything about Berglund wanting me dead and sending his two soldiers out to take care of me. I wish you’d been a bit more curious about why I’d up and ride off like I didn’t have a care in the world. I thought you knew me better than that.”
Slocum had turned the tables on Jesse and made it seem that the outlaw leader was in the wrong. The best Slocum could tell, Jesse hadn’t told Berglund to eliminate an unwanted member of his gang.
Better than this, they had swapped lies back and forth long enough for Audrey to get away. He wished it were easier to determine what game she played. The only way he could be certain was to get a look at the wanted posters stuffed into her bag. If his was there, he would know she was trying to use him as a chip in a bigger poker game with Sheriff Narvaiz and Jesse James as players.
“I need all the men I can rustle up, Slocum. There’s no reason for me to have Berglund kill you.”
“I know that, Jesse. If you wanted me dead, you’d do it yourself.”
Again Slocum caught the outlaw off guard. He started to say something, then laughed heartily.
“Yeah, Slocum, we know each other real good.”
“That don’t explain why he’s here, Jesse. He’s here.” Charlie Dennison had freed his pistol and laid it across the saddle in front of him where he could swing it around and get off a shot or two before Slocum could clear leather. Slocum saw how Dennison hesitated around Jesse. He wasn’t likely to let his fiery temper get out of control unless Jesse permitted it.
“The man’s got a point, Slocum. Why are you here?”
“I got back to the other cave to see if you left any new message. There were a few symbols I could make out from what you’d said before. They led me here.”
“How?” The question escaped Jesse’s lips before he could stop it.
“I figured since everything was put down backwards this time, all the instructions were reversed, too. You wrote ‘north’ so that had to mean south. I read the cipher for ‘pass’ and this was the best choice, so I came here thinking to find you or more code.”
