“Yes, Sergeant, I see it,” said Captain Boone, sounding as if it wasn’t the first time he’d found a man spiked to the side of a tree by a limb stub, ten feet off the ground. “Have your men take him down.”
“Two men forward,” the sergeant called out, looking back at the mounted soldiers.
As two soldiers booted their horses forward to assist the sergeant, Boone gave Rochenbach a sidelong look, followed by a backward nod directed toward the travois.
“Something your friends had a hand in, no doubt?” he said.
“I wouldn’t know, Captain,” said Rochenbach. “I wasn’t here.”
“No, of course you weren’t,” said Captain Boone correcting himself. “You were busy leading our horses back to us.”
“That’s right, Captain,” said Rochenbach. “That’s what I was doing, any way you look at it.”
Just to see if he could get by with it, Rock nudged his horse forward, watching the two soldiers stand atop their saddles and lift the body off the tree stub. Hearing the captain’s Army Colt cock behind him, he stopped and gave him a faint, wry grin.
“What, Captain? No warning first?” he said without looking around. “You’ll just shoot me?”
“You’ve been warned, Smith,” Boone said in a somber tone. “No other warning is needed.”
Without another word on the matter, Rochenbach turned his horse, rode it back slowly and turned it beside the captain. Boone uncocked the Colt, but kept it in hand. They watched the soldiers lower Lambert Kane’s body to the sergeant, who in turned laid it out on the ground.
Boone looked over his shoulder at the three soldiers fixated on Lambert’s body and the blood-streaked tree where it had hung.
“Corporal Rourke, scout ahead two hundred yards, then fall back and report,” he said as Goodrich and the two soldiers dragged the body out onto the trail.
“Yes, sir,” said the corporal. He swung his horse around Rochenbach and rode away at a gallop. One soldier remained, the lead rope to the travois in hand. He looked back nervously at the Giant and Pres Casings, but saw them both sleeping, their hats pulled over their eyes.
The captain and Rochenbach nudged their horses over and looked down at the body, able to see the ground through the wide, gaping wound.
After a moment, the captain straightened in his saddle and shook his head.
“Sergeant,” he said, “search the body for identification, then drag him off the trail and pile rocks over him. We’re not a burial detail,” he added, as if to justify himself.
As the sergeant and the two soldiers followed the captain’s orders, Rochenbach and Boone sat atop their horses in silence. A few moments later, they both turned toward the sound of the corporal’s horse galloping back around the turn toward them.
“Captain Boone,” he said, sliding his horse to a halt and sidling over to the captain. “I found this alongside the trail, less than two hundred yards from here, sir.” He held out a closed hand and opened it in a way as to reveal its contents only to the captain.
“It’s all right, Corporal,” Boone said, taking the ingot from Rourke’s hand and eyeing it in the midmorning sunlight. Looking at Rochenbach, he said to Rourke, “Your knife, Corporal?”
Rourke reached into his boot well, came out with a bowie-style knife and handed it to him.
“Thank you, Corporal,” said Boone.
He carved a deep cut across the corner of the ingot and examined it. Then he squeezed the cut closed and handed the big knife back to Rourke. He gave Rochenbach a look that said the ingot was the same as the one he’d taken from him.
“And this is the only one you found, Corporal?” he asked.
“Yes, sir,” said Rourke. “I saw where the wagon went off the trail. It’s broken up all over the hillside. There’s busted crates everywhere.”
“Empty, I presume?” said the captain.
“From what I could see, yes, sir,” said Rourke. “I didn’t climb down and check. I knew you would want to hear this straightaway. There must have been some shoot-out there. There’s blood everywhere, sir.”
“Good work, Corporal,” said the captain. He turned to Sergeant Goodrich and said, “Sergeant, prepare your men to move out.”
At the sergeant’s command, the troopers abandoned Lambert Kane’s body, leaving it only partially covered with rocks. In moments, they had mounted and assembled behind the travois. Leaving Goodrich and the three troopers to escort the slow-moving travois, the captain, Corporal Rourke and Rochenbach moved ahead along the winding trail at a gallop, until they reached the spot where the wagon tracks veered off the trail.
The three dismounted, Captain Boone and the corporal keeping the handcuffed Rochenbach between them. They stood looking down at the splintered wood and empty gold crates scattered on the rocky hillside.
“Corporal, bring Mr. Smith and follow me,” Boone said.
The three climbed down to where three busted crates lay close together in front of a large stand of brush and rock. Seeing the scraping of boots in the dirt, Boone smiled to himself.
“Mr. Smith,” he said, “how do you suppose these men transported all that gold down the trail after losing their wagon?”
“Only by horseback, Captain,” said Rochenbach.
“Yes,” said Boone, “meaning they could not have taken much of it.”
“Meaning a lot of it is still here,” Rochenbach said, picking up on what the captain was saying.
Boone nodded, stepping forward. Separating the brush with his hands and looking down into it, he saw broken crates and piles of ingots lying on the ground.
“Here’s some of it,” he said, reaching down and picking up an ingot. Rochenbach stepped over for a closer look as Boone raised the ingot between his teeth and bit down on a corner of it.
The two studied the ingot in the sunlight.
“It’s gilded,” the captain said, “just like the other two.”
“But if Grolin knows it’s worthless, why would he even bother hiding it?” Rochenbach asked.
“Clearly he doesn’t know it’s not real, Smith,” the captain said. “He thinks this is pure gold lying here. And if you left gold lying on this hillside, what’s the first thing you would do once you left?”
“Get a wagon and get right back here with it,” Rock said.
“Exactly,” said Boone. “They think the gold is real. They are coming back for it, and we will be waiting.”
Chapter 23
At midmorning, Heaton Swank, a broad-shouldered, tough-looking gunman with a bullet scar running from his right cheek to his ear, took out a gold watch from inside his black duster and checked it. He cursed under his breath, snapped the watch’s lid shut and put it away. He turned to an equally fierce gunman named Silas Dooley, who sat atop his horse beside him.
“If this bastard doesn’t show up, he’d better be dead, Dooley,” he said.
Silas Dooley spit a stream of tobacco. He sat with wrists crossed on his saddle horn. Inside his gray wool coat, a big Dance Brothers revolver hung under his left arm in a tooled leather shoulder rig.
“If he’s not, he will be,” he said, “I get my hands on him.”
“Stay back here,” said Swank, nudging his horse forward for a better look at the trail winding upward before them.
Strewn out in a loose line beside Silas Dooley, three other well-dressed men sat atop their horses. One of them, a hired killer named Lyle Myers, raised a silver flask of whiskey to his lips, took a drink and passed the flask along to an elderly gunman on his right.
“How long are we going to wait for this bartender, Grolin?” he said to everyone.