Duval, was an old man now. He found his way to Boca del Rio, where he sought out and secured a job as cook on Falcon Sackett's steamboat. Duval was a tough old man, and luckily for the men on the steamboat, an excellent cook.
Eric Stouten was twenty-four, a veteran of several years at sea, and a fisherman for some years before that. But when he found his way to Mexico it was as an enlistee in the cavalry assigned to the command of Captain Elam Kurbishaw.
Striking south on a foraging expedition, Captain Kurbishaw led his men into the village where once, long ago, the survivors from the treasure ship had come. That night, just before sundown, Trooper Stouten requested permission to speak to the commanding officer.
Captain Elam Kurbishaw was a tall, cool, desperate man. A competent field commander, he was also a man ready to listen to just such a proposal as Stouten had to offer.
Within the hour the commandant of the village was arrested, his quarters ransacked, and the old report of the interrogation of the prisoners found. With it was a single gold piece ... kept as evidence that what was recorded there had, indeed, transpired.
The old commandant was dead. The report and the gold piece had been found when the present man took over. A long search had been carried on, covering miles of the coast. Nothing had been found.
The commandant was released; and as he walked away, Elam Kurbishaw, who left nothing to chance, turned and shot him.
A coldly meticulous man, Elam Kurbishaw was fiercely proud of his family, and its background, but well aware that the family fortune, after some years of mismanagement, was dwindling away. He and his two brothers were determined to renew those fortunes, and they had no scruples about how it was to be done.
Alone in his tent, he got out his map case and found a map of the shore line. Military activities concerned inland areas, and his map of the coast was not very detailed. But, studying the map, Kurbishaw was sure he could find the spot from the trooper's description. Laguna de Barril, he was sure, would be the place. But, as was the case of LaFitte's men, he placed the shipwreck too far north.
One other thing Kurbishaw did not know: his bullet had struck through the commandant, felling him, but not killing him. A tough man himself, he survived.
In the quiet of Jonas Locklear's study I heard the story unfold. How little, after all, had I known of my father! How much had even my mother known? That he had gone from the mountains I knew; how long I had never known. Now I learned he had sailed from Charleston in a square-rigger, had been an officer for a time on a river boat at Mobile, and then on the Rio Grande, when Taylor needed river men so desperately.
'Elam never had a chance to look,' Jonas explained. 'His command was shipped south to General Miles. The way I get it, the trooper remembered the offhand way Kurbishaw had shot the commandant, and again and again he saw Kurbishaw's ruthless way, and he began to regret telling him what he had, and that gave him the idea of deserting. But first he meant to kill Captain Kurbishaw, to let what Elam knew die with him.'
After all, why did he need Kurbishaw?
Eric Stouten was a good hand with a boat, a fine swimmer and diver, and the vessel lay in relatively shallow water.
The night before Chapultepec he took his knife and slipped into Kurbishaw's tent. He was lifting the knife when a voice stopped him.
He turned his head, to see two Kurbishaws staring at him ... another lay on the bed.
He cried out, lost his grip on his knife, and started to turn for the door, and the two men shot him.
'How do you know they didn't find the gold themselves?' I asked Locklear.
'They didn't know where to look. The Laguna de Barril is only one of many coves and inlets along that coast.
'The difficulty was, that young trooper had talked far too much. He had, among other things, told of the other man who was still around, the other pirate who had escaped ... and who, he was sure, was now on one of the river boats on the Rio Grande.
'If they could not immediately find the gold, they would fix it so nobody else would, and they tried to murder old Duval. That brought your father into the fight, and his first run-in with the Kurbishaws. I don't know the circumstances, but when they tried to kill Duval, Falcon Sackett put a bullet into one of them, and then Duval told Falcon his story.'
Bit by bit the story emerged, and bit by bit our own plans came into being. After that hot night in Jonas' cabin none of them ever gave up going back, and after my father disappeared, the Tinker hunted for him, and Jonas, too. Neither had any luck until Will Caffrey began to spend pa's gold, and Tinker followed the trail of that Spanish gold from Charleston to the mountains.
The Kurbishaws also traced the gold, and decided to kill me for fear I might go after it.
'Cortina has controlled that area off and on for years,' Jonas said, 'and many of his subordinates have been thieves or worse; however, nobody wants to see that much gold slipping through their fingers.
'After that talk in the cabin of my steamboat,' he continued, 'we waited until the time was right, and then slipped down there to look.
'The water in many places was shallow, there were many sand bars, and their location changed with each heavy blow. Twice we went aground, several times we were fired upon. Then the war ended and we had no further excuse to be in the vicinity; and the local authorities, knowing something was hidden there, suspected everybody.
'Your father actually found the wreck and got away with some of the gold--got away, I might add, because he was uncommonly agile and gifted with nerve. And he tried to find us.'
The Tinker glanced at me. 'Had it been me I doubt I should have tried to find anybody, but it was Falcon Sackett, and he is a different man in every way.'
Out of our talking a plan emerged. Jonas Locklear must, in any event, go to the ranch he owned on the Gulf coast. We would go with him, and then we would go to Mexico to buy cattle for a drive to Kansas, and to restock the ranch. This might call for several trips.
In this cattle-buying I should have to take first place, for either Jonas or the Tinker might be recognized, and to stay over a few hours south of the border would invite disaster.
Arrangements could be made by letter for me to pick up the herd, and then I would start north, holding them near the coast. Jonas and the Tinker would join me as cowhands, riding with other cowhands. When we had the herd close by where the treasure was believed to be, we would camp ... and find our gold.
It was simple as that. Nobody, we believed, would suspect a cattleman of hunting for gold.
It was a good cover, and we could find no flaws in it. There was water for cattle in brackish pools, there was good grass, so the route was logical.
'Are you sure,' the Tinker asked me, 'that your father left nothing to guide you to the ship?
No map? No directions?'
'He gave me nothing when he left, and if there was a map he may have wanted it himself.'
Jonas rose. 'My brother-in-law may question you. You have hired to work on my ranch, that is all.'
'It is settled then?' the Tinker asked.
'To Mexico?'
'How about it, Sackett?'
'Well,' I said, 'I never saw much gold, and always allowed as how I'd like to. This seems to be a likely chance.' I shook hands with them.
'I only hope,' I added, 'that I'm half the man my father must have been.'
Chapter Four.
We fetched up to the ranch house shy of sundown. We'd been riding quite a spell of days, and while never much on riding, I had been doing a fair country job of it by the time we hauled rein in front of that soddy.
For that was what it was, a sod house and no more.
Jonas Locklear had cut himself a cave out of a hillside and shored it up with squared timbers.
Then he had built a sod house right up against it, built in some bunks, and there it was.
Only Locklear had been gone for some time, and when we fetched up in front of that soddy the door opened and a man came out.
He was no taller than me, but black-jawed and sour-looking. He wore a tied-down gun, and some folks would
