“I wonder who those fellows are?” said Acosta, as six horsemen appeared over a rise in the mesa and rode toward them.
“How many men working in this camp?” asked a tall, blond man as the six horsemen drew rein.
“Five,” replied Acosta.
“Who are they?”
“I’m Ramon Acosta. This man here is Ted Judah. José Ortiz is chopping wood higher up on the mountain. Sam Williams is out trying to find some mules that strayed from camp. There’s one other fellow. I forget his name. What’s his name, Ted?”
“Florentino Cruz,” answered Judah.
The blond man nodded thoughtfully.
“Seems to me I know Florentino Cruz,” he said. “Don’t they sometimes call him Indian Charlie?”
“Yes, that’s him,” replied Acosta. “And Indian Charlie is a good woodchopper.”
“I’ve heard he was,” said the blond man. “I’m looking for him. Right now I need a good woodchopper like him in my business.”
“But,” protested the Mexican, “I don’t believe you can hire Indian Charlie. He’s working for Pete Spence.”
“I’ll get Indian Charlie,” declared the blond man, making his jaws click upon the name. “Where is he?”
“See that hill over there,” replied Acosta, pointing. “You’ll find him there chopping wood.”
Acosta and Judah saw the six horsemen halt at the foot of the distant hill. Three dismounted and tossing their bridles to the others to hold, began to climb the slopes and were quickly lost to view in the timber.
Indian Charlie did not put in an appearance at camp that evening at supper. He was still absent when the others rolled in their blankets for the night.
“Funny Florentino hasn’t showed up,” said Acosta, as he pulled the covers up to his eyes. “That half-breed must have got lost.”
Next morning, as the sun was lifting over the mountains, Acosta and Judah went on a hunt for Indian Charlie. They found him near the top of the hill to which the six horsemen had been directed. He lay under a tree on his breast with his face resting on his arm.
“Sound asleep,” laughed Acosta. “What do you think of this lazy fellow? Hey, muchacho, it’s time to go to work. Wake up.”
He stooped over and shook Indian Charlie by the shoulder. Then, suddenly, Acosta straightened up, a frightened look on his face.
“He’s dead,” he said.
Sam Williams, out looking for mules, had not returned to the woodchoppers’ camp either. He had caught sight of the six horsemen and, recognizing the tall, blond leader, had hurried into Tombstone as fast as he could go, the fear of death upon him.
“I have heard,” said Acosta at the inquest held in Tombstone, “that Sam Williams is a brother of Pete Spence.”
Florentino Cruz or Indian Charlie was killed on the afternoon of the day Wyatt Earp and his five companions left Tombstone.
“I found four wounds on the body,” said Dr. George Goodfellow. “Any one of three would have caused death. The fourth, on the hip, must have been made while the man was running.”
Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, Warren Earp, Sherman McMasters, Texas Jack, and John Johnson were riding slowly westward from the Dragoons toward the Whetstones.
“I hope,” said Wyatt Earp cheerfully to Doc Holliday as they jogged across San Pedro Valley, “that Frank Stilwell and Indian Charlie burn together in the same pit in hell. I am convinced that Curly Bill, John Ringo, and Hank Snelling also had part in plotting Morgan Earp’s death. I’d like to send those three fellows after Stilwell and the half-breed. But we haven’t time to hunt them all down now. But if I ever meet any of them anywhere on earth, ten years from now, or twenty-five, I’ll kill them.”
It chanced that, late in the afternoon on the day after Indian Charlie had gone to his death, Curly Bill and eight of his followers were resting at Iron Springs in the narrow valley between the Whetstone and Mustang mountains. It chanced also that Wyatt Earp and his five companions were heading for this same Iron Springs, which was thirty-five miles north by west of Tombstone. The water from the spring formed a pool about which was a copse of cottonwoods and willows, and at the south side of the pool was an embankment, a sort of natural breastworks, behind which Curly Bill and his men were taking their ease, their horses with the saddles on grazing in the thick willow brush.
Curly Bill sat with his back against the embankment. His men sprawled on the grass around him.
“I’ve been thinkin’,” said the outlaw leader, “about gittin’ out o’ this here country. The old gang’s goin’ fast. Joe Hill cashed out jest recent. Hoss steps in a badger hole up around Clifton and breaks Joe’s neck. After bein’ shot at a million times, more or less, Joe goes and gits killed by a hoss. Then, jest before I leave Galeyville, Jake Gauss stretches hemp on account of another hoss. Jake’s hoss don’t seem to be able to run fast enough, and the bunch of stranglers ketches him. A feller’s got to be a jedge of hossflesh if he aims to be a hoss thief. A lot of the other boys have went over the divide the past six months or so. Before they git me, too, I’m liable purty soon to git on my pony and jest keep on ridin’.
“It ain’t that my nerves is on the break. I’m jest kind o’ tired o’ hittin’ the high spots with bullets knockin’ up dirt around me. What do I git out o’ rustlin’? Fun for a week in Galeyville—that’s about all. An’ sick as a dog fer a week afterwards. They shore sell rotgut licker in that burg.
“Whar’m I goin’? I’ll tell you whar. Down in Chihuahua. I sneaked down there a few weeks back. No, didn’t have no business. Jest wanted to take a looksee. Them Mexicans
