Free Spanish Gold by Kevin Randle Page A

they’d be stuck in El Paso for weeks as they waited to testify against them. There was a chance that they’d be acquitted if their friends lived in El Paso. Back in Sweetwater, they might hang. In El Paso, they might be freed to walk the street looking for revenge. There was no percentage to accusing them in El Paso. Not since he was alone against two.
    â€œNo,” he lied, feeling as if he were betraying a friend. A real friend. “They’re not the ones, but they were around to hear the story of Spanish gold.”
    â€œYou don’t think it’s a coincidence that they’re here?”
    Travis shook his head. “No. Your father spent an afternoon and evening spinning his stories of Spanish gold. A lot of men heard the stories.”
    â€œYou think they followed us?”
    â€œI don’t know.” Travis sat down next to her. He kept his eyes on the floor. “The marshal in Sweetwater told me where to find you but only because I said I’d take you father’s possessions to you. No one else knew that. They’d have had to be on the trail to follow me and I didn’t see anyone back there.” His mind was racing as he tried to figure it all out.
    But as he thought about it, he knew that it wasn’t quite true. Someone had taken a shot at him almost in sight of Sweetwater. As he’d ridden toward Hammetsville, and then on to El Paso, he hadn’t been looking for anyone following him. He’d done nothing to disguise the trail. Someone could have been following him and he might not have seen them, especially if they were trying to keep out of sight.
    â€œMaybe it’s a coincidence that they’re here in El Paso,” said Crockett.
    â€œI’m not sure I believe in coincidence,” said Travis. “At least not ones like this.”
    â€œThere’s not many places to go from Sweetwater.”
    â€œNortheast to Dallas or southeast to New Orleans,” said Travis. “Lots more of interest in those two towns.”
    â€œUnless you’ve heard a story of Spanish gold,” said Crockett.
    â€œThat’s what I was thinking,” said Travis. “El Paso is the perfect place to begin the search.”
    She looked at him, still fanning herself. “My father, if he could get someone to buy the whiskey, would keep talking. Hesitate with the money and he’d tell a little more so that the whiskey would continue to flow. He’d tell everything he knew in an evening if someone kept buying.”
    â€œSo those men could easily know the general location and they’d know that El Paso was the starting point.”
    â€œI think so.”
    Travis rubbed a hand over his face. “Then what we need to do is get out of here now. Before they learn that you’re here, too.”
    â€œNo,” said Travis, “but they might recognize me, and they know that I heard the story of the gold. We’ve got to lay low and get out tonight.”
    â€œThere are things we need to buy.”
    Travis nodded. They’d planned on re-supplying in El Paso. But he hadn’t counted on seeing others from Sweetwater. He knew that those two men were in the saloon drinking. If they hurried, they could get the supplies bought, have dinner in the hotel, and then ride out under the cover of darkness.
    â€œNo more than an hour,” said Travis. “We get everything arranged in an hour and then meet back here.”
    She looked at him carefully and asked, “Are you sure those aren’t the men who killed my father?”
    Feeling like a jerk, he looked her right in the eye and lied to her. “They’re not the same ones.”
    â€œOne hour then,” she said, standing.

Chapter Eleven
Outside El Paso, Texas
August 25, 1863
    Davis had crawled forward to the edge of the bluff, and hid in the shadow of a huge boulder. Below him, in a box canyon, was a copse of cottonwood trees guarding a small pool of clear water.