Free Trail of Golden Dreams by Stacey Coverstone Page A

didn’t even
know how to swim, but San Francisco was all she’d been thinking about since Pa
had spoken his final words to her.  She’d never imagined a life other than
one on that hardscrabble New Mexican farm.  Now was her chance at having
something more.  Her pa had given her a golden opportunity—golden, just
like the nuggets that awaited her at the end of this trail.  There was no
way she was going to let that Kendall and his bandits take that from her.
    Josie gritted her teeth
and mentally prepared herself for what she might have to do.  She
unlatched the saddlebags and pulled out the derringer and stuck it in the
waistband of her pants. Holding her breath, she bounced in the saddle as
Traveler trotted the final fifty yards to the flat mesa on top. 
    She heard the horses
before she saw them. Traveler’s ears drew back to warn her, but it was too
late. The riders were driving their animals up from the backside.  How
could that be?  How could the posse have changed course and got up here
before her?
    Raising the derringer, she
held it in a death grip in her right hand while pulling back on the reins with
her left to halt the mule.  There wasn’t even time to take cover. 
Traveler opened his mouth and brayed when three ponies skidded to a stop in
front of them. Josie’s jaw slackened. For a second, all thoughts of Wade
Kendall and his men dissolved.  She had much bigger worries now.
    Three Indian braves bore
dark holes into her.  All had long black hair, wore bandanas tied around
their foreheads, flowing shirts and deerskin breeches, and gazed at her with
expressions of stone. Apaches! Loco and Geronimo’s groups had been on the
warpath ever since General Crook forced thousands of them to return to the
reservations.  Three-fourths of them, she’d heard, had refused to settle,
had escaped, and continued to raid and kill throughout New Mexico and
Arizona.  Running into these fighters was a bit of bad luck she hadn’t
counted on.
    Josie’s heart thundered
inside her chest. They all held rifles.  One of the men worked the lever
of his gun, jacking a shell into the chamber. He aimed it at her. She knew she
had to do something fast, or she’d be meat for the buzzards and Traveler would
likely be roasted on a spit.  She couldn’t bear to think of him strung up
that way and breakfast for these renegade Apaches.
    It came to her in a
flash.  If they saw she wasn’t a threat, that she didn’t intend on using
her gun on them, maybe they wouldn’t use theirs on her. She tried desperately
to keep her hand from shaking.  Long ago, she remembered Ma telling her
that Indians would respect the biggest of fools, as long as he acted brave in
the face of danger.
    Lowering the derringer,
she asked, “Do any of you speak English?”
    For a moment, none of them
said anything.  They looked back and forth, between each other, and then
the one in the middle answered, “I talk American.”
    A small sigh of relief
escaped through her trembling lips. Wondering why the posse hadn’t reached the
top of the hill yet, she said in a rush, “I mean you no harm.  I’m running
from bad men.”  She craned her neck around, expecting to see them appear
at any moment.  “Four bad men are trying to kill me.  Will you let me
pass through here?”
    She followed the Apaches’
gazes to the trail she’d just climbed.  They stared at her with puzzled
expressions and mumbled to each other in their language.
    “You Indian?” the same
brave asked her.
    Being nearly as brown as
them worked to her advantage for once, and had probably kept her from already
being gutted.  “My ma was Tewa,” she replied in a confident voice. 
    The brave’s eyebrow
arched.  “Nambe.  North.”
    Josie nodded, feeling
Traveler twitch beneath her.  “Yes. My mother was born north of Santa Fe
in the Nambe Pueblo.  That’s where I’m headed.  But I cannot let
these men catch me.  Please.”  She rotated her head once more. 
This time