“You wait here,” Longarm said. “I’ll be back soon.”
“You going for my horses?”
“Not until I’ve had a little look around,” Longarm said.
“Don’t make it too long,” Dan fretted. “Those horses might just have broke away during all that shooting. If they did, we’re in a terrible fix ‘cause they’ll head straight back to Wickenburg.”
Longarm realized with a jolt that Dan was right. Forgetting about the caves, he hurried back down the slope and made his way through the brush to where they’d left the horses.
“Well, gawdammit!” he swore, seeing a faint trail of dust leading off toward Wickenburg. “Dammit anyway!”
The only good part was that Dan, always worrying about the condition of his horses, had unsaddled them during the long afternoon wait, so at least their supplies, the Winchester rifle, and Longarm’s other belongings had not gone south with the runaways.
Still, as Longarm gazed out at the merciless desert, he could not help but feel a powerful sense of foreboding. Things could have been worse, but they could also have been a hell of a lot better.
Chapter 12
Longarm wasn’t in a very good mood as he hobbled back up to the caves with his rifle, their water, and a few of their supplies. His leg wound was throbbing like the devil, and the preacher looked very pale and feverish where he lay stretched out in the cave.
“The horses ran away,” he told his suffering friend. “We’re stuck out here, and neither one of us is in any shape to hike back to Wickenburg for help.”
“We’ve got food and you can hunt rabbits,” Dan said. “And maybe we’ll find other things to eat here.”
“I expect that we will,” Longarm agreed. “And that spring where you found your gold isn’t but a long day’s walk, so I’m not worried about dying, if that’s what you mean.”
“Have you looked around yet?”
“No,” Longarm said, collapsing on the floor of the small cave and tightening the bandage on his leg because he was bleeding again. “But I’m about played out for the moment and it’s getting damned hot outside. Think I’ll just rest this leg and my eyes for a while.”
“You do that,” Dan said, nodding with approval. “I’ve spent most of my life in this desert country and the best thing to do is take a long siesta in the afternoon. Get your business done early in the evening and late in the day when it’s cooler. The Mexican people are smart enough to understand that simple fact of life.”
Longarm laid his head on his saddlebags, knowing that he would go right to sleep and expecting that old Dan would do the same. The preacher was in rough shape and had lost a great deal of blood from his shoulder wound. The man’s eyes were sunken in his face and his complexion was the color of wax. Longarm knew that Dan was trying to put on a good show, but he was weak and suffering. It would take weeks for Dan to regain his strength, but they didn’t have that much time. A way would have to be found to get the preacher back to Wickenburg where he could receive proper rest and medical attention. But right now, damned if Longarm could think of one.
They both slept right through the day and that night, waking up at dawn the next morning. As the light grew stronger, Longarm got up, stretched, and then hobbled back down to where the horses had escaped. He collected the rest of their supplies and lugged everything up to the cave. His leg was very stiff and painful, but the bleeding had stopped and, when Longarm rebandaged the wound, he was happy to see that it was healing without infection. Once again, he’d been real lucky.
After breakfast, Longarm went over to the headless corpse and dragged it over to a little rock slide. It was truly a ghastly sight, and even a seasoned lawman like Custis almost gagged as he searched the man’s empty pockets looking for some clue as to his identity. Finding none, he removed the man’s side arm. It took very little time and effort to climb a few yards up a nearby rock slide and get enough shale moving to bury the hideous corpse. When that was done, Longarm felt much better and took a moment to glance up at a circling buzzard.
“Not this time,” he said to the ugly scavenger as he hobbled off to inspect the caves. He was anxious to see what kind of supplies he’d find and if there was any trace of Jimmy Cox that would give him a clue as to the old prospector’s fate.
There was a series of caves, all of them cut out of the sandstone by the action of spring runoffs. Each varied in size, but only a few were large enough so that a body of men could enter them and take shelter. In the first one of size, Longarm discovered the supplies. It was clear that this was where the ambusher had been living, and it took only a few minutes to see that there was a good supply of food, although mostly just coffee, flour, and dried beans. There were, however, casks of precious water, enough to keep him and Dan going for several weeks.
Longarm also saw evidence that several other men had recently been living in this large sandstone cave. A pile of tin cans and other assorted trash including many empty whiskey bottles told him plenty. He found prospecting tools too. Picks, shovels, and even a few sticks of dynamite.
“They haven’t found what they were looking for yet,” he muttered to himself as he went back outside and began to explore the rest of the caves.
It took only a few minutes to glance inside some of the smaller caves, but in one he was half turned and leaving when he froze, then slowly revolved back around and stared. Inside, he found a skeleton and it was wearing a rusty breastplate. Longarm dropped down on his hands and knees and eased inside, wondering if there were more skeletons. He quickly realized that this particular cave, though small in circumference, was at least twenty feet deep. As he eased past the skeleton, he saw more scattered bones including four skulls which had been placed by someone so that they rested in a neat little circle, face to noseless face.
Longarm lit a match and held it in front of him. He discovered several more pieces of rusty armor in such a deteriorated condition that it was impossible to guess their original purpose. The cave was very cool and dark, and Longarm was sure that the dying Spaniards had probably taken their last refuge here as if crawling into their own crypts. Unfortunately, their decaying bodies would have drawn scavengers who devoured them and then scattered their bones. Someone, perhaps the man Longarm had killed or one of his friends, had taken sick humor in putting the skulls in that little circle as if they had been talking at each other for the last few centuries.
Longarm backed out of the cave and went to finish his explorations. In the next to the last cave, he found signs that a good deal of excavation had taken place. The cave was more like a funnel, some six or seven feet round, and its natural shape narrowed like the point of a cone. Longarm found candles and holders and lit one. He crept back into the cave and saw that the original back wall, which could not have been more than a yard square, had been opened up just enough to reveal another cavern. To enter it, Longarm had to get down on his knees, turn sideways, and squeeze through. Back here, the air was cool and still. Longarm shoved his candle out before him and beheld a very large cavern, one big enough to have housed at least a dozen men and maybe a few horses, if they had been able to reach it.
Longarm stood up in this larger, deeper cavern and gazed all around. It was clear that this had been the place where the Spaniards must have opened up and then lived in until they became extremely weak or had died. There were bones all over the floor, and someone had smashed the skulls beyond recognition. Longarm found dozens of shattered whiskey bottles here too. Dark black smoke smudges told him that hundreds of campfires had burned in this cavern. He studied the walls, hoping to see some early Indian petroglyphs, but there were none.
Longarm felt very sure that Jimmy Cox or some earlier prospector had discovered this secret cavern and used it for extended periods. As in the smaller cave where he’d found the circle of skulls, this one also had a large pile of trash. Longarm moved over to sift through it and that was when he found an old burlap sack stenciled with the letters JC.