“it fits,” Longarm said. “Bass is the most likely candidate for this job. He’d have had enough men to scatter them across this part of the desert so that one or two of them would have seen Jimmy coming. And Jimmy would have been looking back not forward. Anyway, I think that is what happened. They watched Jimmy come straight to these caves. After that, they would have caught and probably tied him up, then sent for the rest of the Bass gang.”
“And then they would have tried to force Jimmy to tell them where he’d found the Spanish coins.”
“Exactly,” Longarm said. “And we both know how mule stubborn Jimmy was. He’d have fought to the last breath and held his secret to the end.”
“But what if …”
“If what?” Longarm asked.
“What if there was no more Spanish treasure?”
“That’s possible,” Longarm said. “But put yourself in Jimmy’s shoes. If there was no treasure left to be found, why would you risk your life to return, knowing that everyone in this part of Arizona would be trying to follow you?”
“Good point,” Dan admitted. “So you do think that there is still some treasure.”
“Yes. But what I think doesn’t mean anything at all. It’s what Jimmy thought that was important and what he managed to convince his captors.”
“And he’d want to convince them that he knew the location of more treasure. That would be his only hope.”
“Sure,” Longarm agreed. “It was his only card to play. He’d have had to keep silent, yet give his captors hints that he knew something.”
“But how long could he play that sort of game?”
“Not long, I’m afraid. Bass and his gang—or maybe some other bunch—would have tired of the game very quickly. And they wouldn’t have been sitting still waiting either. No sir. They’d have been tearing these caves up. Scattering conquistador bones and poking and picking into every crevasse, hoping to find more gold coins.”
“But they didn’t.”
Longarm shrugged. “Who knows. If they did find a few more coins, it would have fueled their already mountainous greed. If they didn’t find any coins, that too would have been fuel to their fire and increased their frustration and anger until …”
“Until they killed poor Jimmy.”
“That’s right,” Longarm grimly replied. “The kind of men that would cut Eli’s throat would not have been long on patience. I’ll bet that Jimmy didn’t last a week and that whatever time he last had here was hell on earth.”
“God forgive them,” Preacher Dan breathed.
“Well,” Longarm said, “I think I’ve killed them all except Hank Bass. And, unless I’m badly mistaken, he’ll be coming back here.”
“Alone?”
“Maybe, maybe not. He might recruit a few other cutthroats. I expect that he will.”
“And how will we stand up against them?”
“I don’t know that answer either,” Longarm replied. “But the good news is that this time we’ll be the ones up here on the high ground and ready to spring the surprise.”
Longarm laced his fingers behind his head. “But I got to know something, Preacher.”
“Yes?”
“Am I going to be doing this all alone, or can I count on your help?”
“I don’t want to kill anyone. I don’t believe that I have the right to take a human life.”
“What about in the name of self-defense?”
“I’ll give it some thought.”
“You had better come up with the right answers,” Longarm said, unable to hide his growing exasperation. “Because, if Hank Bass does bring friends, I’m going to need your help.”
“I would be more than willing to help you capture them alive.”
“Not much chance of that, I’m afraid. Because when they come—and they will come—it will be a fight to the death. We don’t have horses, remember? Your damned horses broke free and ran away. So we’ve got to take their horses in order to get the hell back to Wickenburg.”
“We could walk.”
“Not a chance. I got a bad leg and you got a bad shoulder. So we’ll wait for whoever killed Jimmy Cox to return and then we’ll take their horses. They’re not going to want us to do that, Preacher. And they’re going to try and stop us with bullets. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“Of course I do. You’re saying that we have to kill in order not to be killed.”
“That’s right,” Longarm said. “Now, can you shoot straight or have you always been a damned pacifist?”
Dan flushed with anger. “I’ll have you know that I’ve been in some pretty rough fights during my younger days. In fact, I shot …”
The words trailed off like smoke in the desert wind. “What have you shot, Preacher?”
