"This is but the first shipment," Powell reminded him. "There'll be more, though not right away. The lode's rich, but most laymen don't appreciate the time and the immense ore tonnage needed to produce this much bullion. I've been readying this one shipment for over a year. But I was working in secret, through couriers, over a long distance. It will go faster from now on.
Because of the added weight, the underside of each wagon had been reinforced with special braces. After wooden wedges were placed inside to keep the ingots from shifting, the two men nailed a false floor into each wagon, covering them with dirty blankets. On top of the blankets, boxes and barrels of provisions as well as some crates of Spencer rifles were loaded next day. A six-horse hitch was required to pull each wagon.
Powell then hired his teamsters — two as regular drivers, a third as relief man. They were all thuggish, illiterate young fellows who spoke little and collectively carried a total of seven weapons. This trio constantly intimidated Huntcon with beetling stares and smirks. They would receive a hundred dollars apiece at the end of the trip. The guide, even cruder and more brutish, would be paid double that sum.
The journey had its own horrors: insects, bad water, freezing nights as they climbed to the Sierra passes, then descended to hazy, empty valleys. Huntoon suffered sneezes and ague for a week.
Bearing south through what the guide assured them was California, they were soon broiling and quarreling over the need to drink sparingly from the water casks while they crossed a frightful stretch of desert. Huntoon became so dizzy from the heat he was barely able to reply coherently when anyone spoke to him.
Eventually they turned southeast, whereupon Powell's hired men started to bedevil Huntoon with tales of Indian signs, which he, of course, could never see. Powell eavesdropped on some of these recitations with a straight face, suppressing amusement bordering on the hysterical. Huntoon took note of Powell's grave expression and concluded that the warnings were true — which terrified him even more.
He lost track of the days. Was it early May or the last of April? Was there really a Confederacy? A Richmond, a Charleston — an Ashton? He doubted it with increasing frequency as they pushed deeper into sinister mountains and arid, windblown valleys where strange, thorny vegetation grew.
The guide had quickly sensed Huntoon's weakness and joinedin to exploit it for the sake of relieving the boredom. Banquo Collins was about forty, a brawny Scot with mustaches he had let grow down long and pointed, like those of some of the Chinese on the Comstock. His first name had been bestowed by his father, an itinerant actor born in Glasgow, trained in London, and buried, penniless, in the pueblo of Los Angeles. Collins didn't know his mother's name.
He did know he enjoyed making the bespectacled Southron squirm. Collins's employer, Powell, was something of a hard case. Collins thought him demented but not to be trifled with. Huntoon, however, was born for bullying.
Nearly every day, he would say pathetically, "Where are we?" To which Collins liked to reply, after a number of suitable obscenities to register his annoyance, "Aren't you tired of asking that question, laddie? I am tired of answering it, for we're exactly where we were yesterday and last week and two weeks previous. On the trail to bonny Santa Fe. And that's that."
And away he would gallop, up alongside the lumbering wagons, leaving Huntoon on foot, swallowing dust.
Bonny, did he say? Sweet Christ, there was nothing bonny about this part of America. Why had Powell chosen it? Why had the Confederacy tried to occupy it? It was as forlorn as the moon, and full of menace. The teamsters delighted in warning him to watch out for coral and giant bull snakes — they neglected to mention the latter were harmless — or tarantulas and the allegedly venomous vinegarroons. "What the greasers call sun spiders. Real poison, those suckers." Another lie.
Huntoon was uninterested in the occasional sight of hairy buffalo, prairie-dog towns, orioles and hummingbirds and swooping duck hawks, the taste of roasted pinon nuts or the fact that crushed yucca root made excellent suds for washing. "Thass why they call it soapweed down this way, reb."
He hated all the verbal jabbing, but he was even more frightened when, one day, it stopped. The teamsters kept their eyes on the jagged horizon. Collins began to deluge Huntoon with warnings about red Indians, and not entirely for sport. He wanted to exorcise some of his own mounting worry.
"We're in the country of the Apaches now. Fiercest warriors God ever made — though some claim it was Satan who whelped them. Got no respect whatsoever for flesh, be it human or horse. The braves ride their animals till they get hungry, then they eat 'em. Makes no difference in their fighting — they always do that on foot. They like to sneak up, and it doesn't endanger them all that much. In a pinch, many an Apache lad can outrun a mustang."
"Do —" Huntoon gulped "— do you think there are Apaches close by, Collins?"
"Aye. A party from the Jicarilla tribe, if I read the sign properly. They're out there somewhere right now, watching."
"But surely we have enough guns to frighten them off —?"
"Nothing frightens off the Apaches, laddie. They go out of their way to plague white men and each other. Year or two ago, some of your Southron soldier boys rode into this country. The Apaches made a treaty of friendship at Fort Stanton, then endorsed it by ambushing and massacring a party of sixteen. They don't take sides, though — altogether neutral, they are. In a Union settlement they killed forty-six, including youngsters."
"Stop telling me that kind of thing," Huntoon protested. "What good does it do?"
"It prepares you for what we may run into. If we have bad luck and the Jicarilla decide to do more than watch, you'll have to fight like the rest of us." He sniffed. "Doesn't appear to me that you've ever done much fighting. But you'll learn fast, laddie. Mighty fast if you like living."
Taunting Huntoon with a laugh more like a dog's bark, he booted his horse forward toward the first six-horse hitch.
After years in the Southwest, Collins had adopted many Indian ways and devices. He didn't ride with a saddle, only a soft ornamented pad of supple hide stuffed with grass and buffalo hair. His pony had a war bridle: the rope of braided buffalo hair tied around the animal's lower jaw was the bit, the ends of the rope the reins. Collins had lived with a squaw wife for a while. Despite all this, he hated red men, the lot of them, and now began to regret hiring on with this crowd.
One possibility of profit offset the danger. Banquo Collins knew the two wagons contained something besides guns and provisions. Powell hadn't told him so, of course. But he suspected from the moment he saw the six powerful horses straining against the traces of the first wagon back in Virginia City. He confirmed the suspicion by discovering the special cross-bracing on the underside of both wagons. The extra weight was not visible, but it was there.
How much precious metal the wagons carried, he didn't know.
But it had to be a goodly amount. Gold bullion, probably. As to its purpose, its ultimate use, he presumed that was Powell's secret. Maybe it had a connection with the Confederate cause, for which the man was openly keen. All the Southrons Collins had met were fanatics of one sort or another.