“Sounds like you’ve made yourself some powerful enemies, Sam.”
“Yeah, and I still don’t have any idea why.”
“Oh, shoot, we can tell you that.” Stovepipe looked over at Wilbur again.
The smaller man shrugged and nodded, telling him to go ahead.
“It’s about two things, Sam,” Stovepipe said. “Money ... and guns.”
Chapter 24
Sam looked at the two of them intently for a moment, then said, “You’re going to have to explain that.”
Stovepipe nodded.
“Figured I’d have to. You see, about a month ago a shipment of rifles—brand-new Trapdoor Springfields—were on their way to the garrison at Fort Defiance when the wagon they were in was waylaid.” Stovepipe’s face grew grim. “The troopers ridin’ escort with the guns were wiped out.”
“Do the authorities believe that the Navajo did that?” Sam asked.
“Nope,” Stovepipe replied with a shake of his head. “One of the troopers was shot to pieces but lived long enough to talk to some freighters who came across the massacre. Before he died he said it was white men who jumped ’em, and the shod hoofprints around the place indicated that, too.”
“But just because it wasn’t Indians who stole the rifles,” Wilbur put in, “that don’t mean those guns won’t wind up in Navajo hands before it’s all said and done.”
“The Navajo are peaceful people,” Sam protested. “They’ve been mistreated, but despite that all they want is to be left alone.”
“I ain’t gonna argue with you about how they been treated,” Stovepipe said. “But you’re a mite too young to remember a Navajo headman name of Manuelito. He wasn’t a very peaceful fella. From what I’ve heard, even the other Navajo were a mite nervous around him. He gave Kit Carson a pretty good fight over in New Mexico Territory a while back.”
“I’ve heard of Manuelito,” Sam said. “That was nearly twenty years ago.”
Stovepipe nodded.
“Yeah, but there are still some firebrands among the Navajo who think the ol’ boy had it right. They think tryin’ to get along with the white men ain’t worked out too well for their people, and it’s ’way past time to start killin’ again.”
Sam thought about Juan Pablo and the fierce resentment he felt toward the whites. It wouldn’t take much to get him to be in favor of a new Navajo war, and there were bound to be others like him among the clans.
“So you think whoever stole those rifles intends to sell them to the Navajo,” he said. “That doesn’t make any sense. What would they use to pay for them? Sheep? Blankets?”
“Didn’t say nothin’ about anybody payin’ for those Springfields. But they could still wind up in Navajo hands, like Wilbur said.”
“Only if the thieves
Stovepipe shrugged.
Those same thoughts had gone through Sam’s mind earlier. Judging by what these two self-proclaimed range detectives were telling him, he had been on the right track.
But he wanted to see if their thinking matched up with his, so he said, “Where does the money come in?”
“The money’s to be made when somebody comes in and grabs all this reservation land once the government rounds up the Navajo again and marches ’em back to Bosque Redondo or some other hellhole. This is the largest reservation in the whole blamed country. It ain’t just in Arizona. It stretches over into New Mexico and up into Colorado and Utah as well. Millions and millions of acres. If they throw the whole thing open for settlement, instead of just the isolated patches here and there, it’d be worth a fortune.” Stovepipe shrugged. “Leastways, it could be, if there was a way to get water in here from the Colorado to the west and the Rio Grande to the east. Wouldn’t be easy, but with a big enough payoff waitin’ for ’em, you can bet folks’d figure out a way to do it.”
It was a long speech, but everything Stovepipe said lined up with the theory that had formed in Sam’s mind.
He thought about the marks he and Juan Pablo had found on the ground at the base of that bluff where the first bushwhack attempt had been made.
“The stolen rifles were in one wagon?” he asked.
“That’s right. Twelve crates with forty guns in each one. Nearly five hundred Springfields.”
“A crate with forty rifles in it would be pretty heavy, wouldn’t it?”
“I reckon so,” Stovepipe said. His deep-set eyes narrowed. “I’m startin’ to get the feelin’ you know more than you’re tellin’ us, Sam. We’ve laid our cards on the table. Now it’s your turn.”
Sam drew in a deep breath and let it out. He had to make the decision whether to trust these two men. His instincts told him that they had been truthful with him, and the facts they had provided went a long way toward explaining everything that had happened over the past week or so.
“All right,” he said as he made up his mind. “I think a friend of mine and I nearly stumbled right into those rifles being delivered to whoever they’re intended for.”
“You’re talkin’ about Matt Bodine?” Stovepipe asked.
Sam’s eyebrows rose in surprise.
“How do you know about Matt?”
Wilbur said, “We’ve been workin’ out here on the frontier for quite a while, mister. You reckon we never heard
