Longarm really worked over the bay, and the animal soon closed in on the carriage, whose team was already badly winded.
“Stop!” Longarm shouted.
The carriage slowly came to a stop, and when Longarm drew up beside it, he had his second big surprise of the day. There was no driver and the Spanish treasure box was open and empty. Dan lay sprawled and unconscious on the floor of the carriage.
“Damn!” Longarm swore, leaping from his saddle and tying the bay gelding to one of the wheels before he dragged Dan back up to the seat.
The old man had been savagely pistol-whipped. Longarm felt for Preacher Dan’s pulse, afraid that someone might have finished him off once and for all. Dan was still alive. There was a canteen in the carriage, and Longarm used its contents to wet his handkerchief and then to slowly revive the unconscious preacher.
“Dan! Dan, wake up! Can you hear me?”
“Yeah,” Dan whispered, his voice groggy.
“Who did this?”
“I … I don’t know. I was hiding under the blanket, remember?”
“And you saw or heard no one?”
“Nothin’,” Dan said, still trying to focus. “I was waiting for you to come back, and then next thing I know, you’re here and my head feels like it is busted.”
“Someone tricked us,” Longarm said, shaking his head back and forth. “The Spanish treasure box and all its gold coins are gone.”
Dan’s eyes popped open and he looked down between his feet at the floorboards. “Gone?”
“That’s right,” Longarm replied. “All gone.”
“Well, who could have-“
“Maybe Victoria,” Longarm said, finding it very hard to believe.
“No!”
“Then who the hell else?! Victoria Hathaway was the only one who knew of our plan of getting out of Wickenburg without being seen. She alone had the knowledge of how to steal the treasure box.”
“I can’t believe she’d betray us.”
“Me neither,” Longarm admitted, shoulders slumping with dejection. “But women can be as cunning as a coyote, and there are plenty of bad ones. Maybe Victoria is one of them and her greed just got the better of her.”
“You’re wrong, Marshal. My guess is that she just made the mistake of telling a friend who told someone who told someone else.”
“We’ll find out what happened later. But right now, we need to go to that mining shack and gather our wits. Maybe I can sort things out and not make another big mistake.”
“It wasn’t your fault.”
“Well,” Longarm said, feeling rotten, “it was more my fault than anyone else’s that I can think of.”
“Do you think it was Hank Bass who pistol-whipped me and took the treasure box?”
“I can’t think of anyone more likely,” Longarm replied. “Can you?”
“No.”
Longarm turned his stolen horse free and, sure enough, the ugly bay went trotting back to Wickenburg. He climbed into the carriage and drove on with Victoria’s map in his hand.
“Wait here while I check this out to make sure that we don’t get any more surprises,” he told his friend when they drew within a few hundred yards of the mining shack.
Longarm stayed low and tried to keep out of sight as he circled around behind the shack and then crept down to it with the big shotgun clenched in his fists. The shack and the nearby mine were empty, and there was no indication that anyone had been in the vicinity in a long time. Satisfied that he was not walking into a trap, Longarm returned to the carriage and drove it up to the shack, then helped Dan inside and made him as comfortable as possible.
“It’s pretty humble,” he told the preacher.
“Ain’t so bad,” Dan commented. “I’ve slept in plenty of worse places. In fact, most places I’ve slept in have been worse than this shack.”
Longarm looked around. There was a tin stove, some pots, pans, and eating utensils as well as a few cans of tinned goods. There was also mice shit and a thick coating of dust over everything. The cabin was quite small, less than two hundred feet square, but the roof was intact and it would offer them protection against the hard summer rain and sun.
“You take the bed,” he told Dan as he went outside. “I’ll get some blankets.”
“Wouldn’t mind having something to eat and some whiskey to wash it down with,” Dan said. “My head feels like it’s been hammered real hard.”
“It has been,” Longarm replied. “And if your skull wasn’t so thick, you’d be dead.”
Longarm got the fire going and boiled some beans and water for coffee. He opened a tin of peaches and fried some salt pork. Then he explored the area, finding nothing of interest. The mine went about thirty feet into solid rock, and someone had worked for a long hard time out in this desolate area. Longarm saw no signs of gold or silver, but he knew that there must have been some ore recovered from this claim or no one would have continued to work it so long or so hard. He found the usual rusty tin cans, a broken wheelbarrow, rotting rope and leather. It always amazed him how tenacious miners could be once they were bitten by the gold bug. Whoever had first established this isolated mining claim must have worked it for years.
As evening approached and the shadows grew long, Longarm tried to put his setback in perspective. Sure, he’d lost the Spanish gold, but he’d track Bass down and recover it soon enough. He determined that he would ride one of the carriage horses back into Wickenburg after dark and start asking questions. That was his plan until Victoria arrived just at sundown.
“Why did you come out here?!” Longarm asked, his voice sharp with disapproval.
“To see if I could help you,” she replied, dismounting. “And also to bring you some fresh supplies.”
“We can get by on what we have for a few days.”
Victoria’s anger flashed. “After this greeting, you may have to.”
“I’m sorry,” Longarm said, realizing he was not being very appreciative. “But Dan and I had a very bad surprise in the alley this morning.”
“What surprise?”
“Someone was aware of our plan and the diversion. The moment I left Dan, they pistol-whipped him and took the Spanish gold. They were also clever enough to drive the carriage north out of town, then leave it and escape.”
“What?!”
“You heard me, Victoria. Dan has a nasty bump on his head and the gold coins are all gone.”
“But who could have known about this other than the three of us?!”
“Your friend, Ann Reed.”
“I’ll forget you said that,” Victoria replied, face turning dark with anger. “Ann would never betray my trust.”
“Then she told someone else who took the information to Hank Bass,” Longarm said. “Because someone sure as hell had to make a slip of the tongue.”
Victoria expelled a deep breath. “I suppose that Ann could have had a slip of the tongue. She is so naive that she trusts everyone and has no secrets.”
“All right,” Longarm said, “let’s give Ann the benefit of the doubt and assume that she did make a slip of the tongue and it got back to Hank Bass, who saw his golden opportunity to grab our Spanish treasure. What is done is done and it can’t be helped. Tomorrow, I’d go after Bass, but I can’t really leave Dan here by himself.”
“Oh, sure you can!” the old preacher argued. “Marshal, I’ll be fine. But I’d be even finer if your pretty friend would stay here with me.”
“I can’t,” Victoria told him. “I’m going to help Custis find Hank Bass.”
“Oh, no!” Longarm objected.
“Oh, yes,” Victoria countered. “You need me.”
“Why?”
“Because, unlike yourself, I know almost everyone in this part of Arizona and I have enough money in my saddlebags to buy the information you’ll need to catch Bass.”
“Marshal,” Dan said, “those are pretty good reasons.”
“Yes,” Longarm had to agree, “they are. But, Victoria, things can go wrong. If you go with me, you could get shot, even killed.”