Free Skeleton Lode by Ralph Compton Page A

mountain.”
     
    “With or without a trail?” Barry Rust asked.
     
    “With, if we can find it, without, if we can’t,” said Davis shortly. “We know they’re up there somewhere, by God, and I’ll look behind and under every rock until I find them.”
     
    “Gary,” Paulette said, “I’m exhausted. Since there’s no trail anyway, why can’t we wait until morning?”
     
    “Because that bunch from town will get ahead of us,” said Davis, “and because I
said
we’re going today.”
     
    Davis led the party out, forcing his horse through the brush, briars, cactus, and catclaw at the foot of the mountain. They fought their way up the southern flank of the Superstitions, and by the time they reached a plateau where they could rest the horses, even Davis could see this was not a thing to be undertaken when the day was half spent. Horses and riders were drenched with sweat, and the dust stirred by their treacherous ascent coated them with a film of mud. They rested, then moved on, finding each plateau more barren than the last. The uppermost region of the mountain was so desolate that even Davis was speechless. There wasn’t a blade of grass, not a drop of water. Depressions in the rock that might have held water now contained only sun-dried mud, spiderwebbed with cracks. Suddenly Paulette laughed at their plight, a shrill sound, touched with madness. Davis cursed long and low.
     
    “My God,” said Barry Rust, “a day spent on this damn mountain means a ride up here in the morning and back down at night.”
     
    “There has to be an easier way up here,” Davis said.
     
    “Then you’d better be finding it,” said Paulette ominously.
     
    Davis said nothing, for something much more distressing happened. The remaining gold seekers from town were approaching. Their horses were not spent, nor did the riders seem exhausted. Leading the party werethe grinning Yavapai and Sanchez. Turning his horse, Davis rode to meet them, his hand on the butt of his Colt.
     
    “I told you varmints to ride,” Davis glowered.
     
    “We ride,” said Sanchez coldly, “and that is the last order we take from you. These hombres pay us, and now we ride with them. You make the big mistake, Señor. Do not make another. Do not get in the way.”
     
    The Mexicans had fifteen men with them now, and there wasn’t a friendly face in the lot, so Davis backed off and the group rode away, Yavapai and Sanchez leading them toward the distant east rim.
     
    “At least our former guides seem to know where they’re going,” Paulette observed. “If we are to continue this miserable search, let’s follow them.” It was a point so obvious that even Gary Davis could not deny the wisdom of it.
     
    Bollinger laughed. “The rest of us can, but they told Gary to stay out of the way.”
     
    Davis said nothing, but when he looked at Bollinger, the gunman saw in those hard eyes a truth he already suspected. He had outlived his usefulness to Davis, and it hardened his resolve to tolerate the man only until they found the gold. Then he would take the treasure and maybe the women, leaving Davis’s bones to rot in some lonesome canyon. The moment passed and Davis led out, the others falling in behind him. Reining their horses in at the rim, they could see the canyon below. Impossible as the passage seemed, Yavapai and Sanchez had led their followers down, slipping and sliding in clouds of dust.
     
    “I will not ride down that wall,” Paulette said defiantly.
     
    “Suit yourself,” said Davis. “Following them was your idea. See that green along the canyon floor? That means water.”
     
    They watched the group of riders reach the canyon floor and disappear.
     
    “There must be a considerable overhang,” Davis said. “Maybe even a cave.”
     
    “It won’t matter to us what’s down there,” Rust said. “I doubt we’ll be welcome.”
     
    “If there’s water,” said Davis angrily, “we have as much right to it as they do.