“Are you maybe getting too old to lead us? Maybe you want to let this man get away so you won’t have to face him!” There was a taunt in Marty’s voice, a challenge to LaRue. He antagonized LaRue some more. “I’ll show the men what you really are-a coward, afraid to go after one man.”
LaRue was angry inside but he let little of it show. He knew from years past that Manning was the real coward and, like scum everywhere, his mouth was bigger than his brains.
“Just how would you handle this situation, Marty?” LaRue asked.
LaRue had taken Manning off guard, and for a long moment Marty was silent.
“He’s riding out on us right now as we sit on our butts talking! I’d go after him, that’s what I’d do!” Marty turned his horse toward the open plain. “Who’s man enough to go with me?” he shouted. Before LaRue could stop them, two other riders answered by kicking their horses out into the open, Manning following a short distance behind.
Just like Marty, thought LaRue. Stay in the rear while others put their lives on the line. The thought hadn’t left LaRue’s mind when off in the distance a puff of smoke told him that the man was still waiting.
“Hit the dirt!” LaRue ordered.
For Marty Manning it was too late. As LaRue and his men watched from their hiding places, Marty was knocked off his horse. LaRue wondered if Marty had known what hit him. The other men yanked their mounts around and raced back to the sanctuary of the trees.
At least LaRue would have no more trouble with Manning, and from the looks of the others, he wouldn’t have any problems from them either.
“What do we do now, boss?” one of his men asked sheepishly.
“We wait till dark, then we circle around and try to get the drop on him from behind.” LaRue felt in his heart that the man with the long gun would be gone by then. But after just losing two more men to him, he wasn’t about to do anything stupid.
“Any of you think you got a better idea?” he challenged. No one replied. “Then make some coffee and beans. We have a long wait ahead of us.”
LaRue watched as the men busied themselves getting the camp in shape. What circumstances had brought him to be leading such a bunch of rogues as this, he could only wonder at.
“What about Manning?” someone asked.
“If you want to go out there and get him, be my guest.”
“Not me! I don’t want to join him,” the man said shaking his head.
“Then why’d you ask? Go over there and make some coffee like I told you. When I want you to do something, I’ll tell you. Until then, keep your mouth shut!”
LaRue was back in control and he wasn’t about to ease up on his men now. That two of them chose to ride out with Manning was a sign to him that he’d been too easy on them. He’d given the men time to think, and when men started thinking, they also started to question their leader’s abilities. When that started there could only be trouble. Pete LaRue would not make that mistake again.
After the men had a chance to eat, he called them together. “Here’s my plan,” he began as they gathered around him. “The way I see it, that man out there has all the advantages. We don’t know whether he’s still there or not. The later it gets in the day, the more we have the sun in our eyes. We try to ride before dark and he might just sit out there and pick us off like fish in a barrel.”
Several of the men looked out across the high plains. The sun was already low enough on the horizon to force them to shade their eyes. LaRue was quick to pick up on this.
“See what I mean.” It was more of a statement than a question. “Now we might wait till dark and then try to get behind him. But I don’t think he’ll still be there.
“What do you mean, boss?”
“I think he’ll be long gone. We can’t see him leave because of the sun in our eyes, but he’ll have a clear view of us until dark. Our best chance will be to wait for dark, then ride for the mountains. In the morning we can pick up his tracks. Once we do, we’ll take the extra horses, and the two best riders can ride him down using the horses in relay.” LaRue looked around at his men. They all seemed in agreement.
As LaRue glanced around at the different faces, he again wondered at the circumstances that had brought him to lead such an unruly bunch as the outcast before him. Something he would wonder at many times in the days to come.
“Get some rest!” he ordered. Then he leaned back against a tree to think. How many years was it since he felt the comfort of a good meal and warm bed? Or a woman to hold and call his own? Like Mary. How he longed to hold her in his arms, to kiss her and feel her body press against him, to hold her hand as they walked in the moonlight. He could still hear the cheerfulness of her voice when she talked about their plans together.
Her voice. . the thought brought back the realization that he would not hear her voice ever again. The pain of her death shot through him, and for a minute he felt as if he might weep. He fought hard to hold back the tears. Why did she have to die? She was so young, so beautiful, with a vivaciousness about her he’d never seen in anyone else. His heart ached with the loneliness of her death.
It was still an hour before sunset. LaRue wished it to be dark already so he could be on his way again. At times like this when for one reason or another he was forced to mind his time, he was torn with the memories from the past.
He closed his eyes again and drifted back to happier times when his life held promise of better things than cold nights on the trail in the company of rogues and thieves.
LaRue’s mother was Irish, big-boned and blunt in manner, yet gentle in nature. His father often called her a study in contrast. Pete’s father was French, a bare-knuckle boxer by trade, but well read in the arts.
Pete could still visualize his father, battered and bruised with a paintbrush in hand, painting the most delicate flowers on a white canvas pulled tight across a frame of his own making.
They were lovers those two, and a gentler pair the Lord never made. But in the ring his father was a killer and his wife sitting in the crowd would not be outshouted by the best of men.
They sent Pete to the finest schools in England and France where he was a top student learning arithmetic and English, among other things. But Pete’s best and most loved subject was archaeology. It was there that he learned of the Aztecs and how they fled their own country with statues of gold and silver.
He studied everything he could about the Aztecs and how Cortes conquered their land, the country now called Mexico. But what most interested him was the fact that the Aztecs, although grain growers, were the best miners in the world. They worshiped the sun god and made many temples in his honor, and all the temples were covered in gold.
Gold to the Aztecs was as wood is to us. So when Cortes’ men took Montezuma’s brother-in-law hostage, after Montezuma was killed by one of his own people, they asked for a room full of gold for his return. The Aztecs were quick to reply.
Gold came carried in by great quantities. It was even said that from the mountains a great chain of gold more than a mile in length was being brought to help pay the ransom. Then Cortes’ men made a fatal mistake. Fearing a reprisal from the Aztecs once their hierarch was released, they killed him instead. They hoped to keep his death secret. But it was not to be. His death was found out almost immediately, and the news went out by runners so that all shipments of precious metal and jewels came to a stop.
The great chain of gold was said to have been dumped in a high mountain lake where only the privileged few of the Aztec priests would know its location. Those slaves that carried it were put to death to keep its hiding place safe from the conquistadors.