Carson almost asked Potter to bet with him on whether the Easterlys would be there. Joe had taken a gander at the map from Lemuel’s boots. He had as good a chance of finding the gold as anyone. If he and Daniel had ridden hard and been here any length of time, they had plenty of opportunity to find the cache and make off with the loot.

  “No bet,” Potter said.

  “What’s that?”

  “You were going to bet me that Joe wouldn’t be waiting. I’d’ve given odds and still won.” Potter pointed with his good hand.

  “Getting old has its drawbacks. Your eyes are better than mine.”

  “You focused on weeds a couple feet from your eyeballs in that cotton field. Me, I had to keep watch on the horizon or get myself caught by deputies or angry husbands.”

  “Are you going back to the owlhoot trail?” Carson considered partnering up with Potter again. They worked well together. And they should. They’d saved each other’s necks more than once. Riding together let them each scheme and plot with an appreciative partner.

  There wouldn’t be any arguments that ended in gunplay. Even better, he trusted Potter. Until he rescued Potter from the noose, Carson had forgotten how much like blood brothers they were.

  If he decided to turn outlaw again, he knew the Easterly boys weren’t part of the plan. Even a whisper that they’d make off with the gold told him the trust needed for new robberies wasn’t there. Besides, the gold was enough to live high on the hog for a year.

  Maybe he and Potter could buy a business together. A saloon? That suited them and they wouldn’t be in constant danger. The threat of catching a wayward slug during a robbery worried him more than it had years ago.

  “I never left it,” Potter said. “I get a thrill out of taking someone’s watch or wallet or stack of coins. The money’s good, but never knowing what I’ll find at the bottom of someone’s vest pocket makes me tingle.”

  Carson laughed, the sound dry as the dust they rode through.

  “They haven’t seen us yet,” Carson said.

  He locked eyes with Potter. Once more, their closeness let them share each other’s thoughts.

  “It’s not right, Clay. Sneaking around them and taking the gold for ourselves isn’t right.”

  “We’re still a gang,” Carson agreed. “They did come here and wait for us rather than trying to do us out of the loot. Let’s not ride straight in. You go to the right around the spire and I’ll head left.”

  “You’ll spook ’em doing this,” Potter said. “Daniel’s flighty. He might open up if he thinks they’re being set upon by the law.”

  “Do it. Keep your eyes peeled for anyone else watching them.”

  Potter started to say something, then cut it off. He nodded brusquely, turned his horse’s face, and trotted away. Carson went the opposite way. Joe and his brother had taken to the high ground, about halfway up the thirty-foot spire on a level spot. This gave a decent lookout point, but they were exposed. He saw every move they made.

  If he had to guess, Daniel had chosen this campsite and Joe hadn’t told him how exposed they were. After all, they had just beaten an entire posse. Maybe they both felt invincible.

  If Carson had been with them, he’d have reminded the brothers that they’d also buried their leader.

  He circled to the back of the rocky pile. Potter arrived a few minutes later, he shook his head. They weren’t being spied on by anyone close.

  Carson dismounted, took out his rifle, and called up to the Easterly brothers, “You’ve got company. Don’t shoot!”

  Joe poked his head over the edge of the level area. He waved them up. It took Carson a few seconds to find the rugged trail leading to that point. At least Joe had the sense to set up camp where anyone approaching this way would kick loose a small avalanche of rocks. The noise was loud enough to awaken the dead.

  At the camp, Carson sank to a rock and braced his rifle beside him. Potter made the climb afterward, puffing and panting. His wound was worse than he let on.

  “Spot anyone on the trail?” Carson asked.

  “Nary a soul. We outran the lot of them,” Joe said.

  “Or killed them all dead!” Daniel shrank back when all three glared at him. That wasn’t why they rode as a gang.

  “We need to rest up,” Carson said. “You have a good camp here, but smoke from the fire can be seen a dozen miles off.”

  “Anybody seein’ it’d think we was sendin’ smoke signals,” Daniel said.

  “The last Indians were driven out of Palo Duro Canyon years back. The Comanche are on the run everywhere. If someone saw smoke, they’d think it was a cooking fire, not smoke signals,” said Joe. “You keep quiet, Daniel. We got important things to discuss.”

  “Yeah, like how you forgot what the map looked like.” Daniel bit his lower lip the instant the words slipped out.

  Carson knew then he’d been right about the Easterly brothers’ intent. Billy Turner had double-crossed them. Joe and Daniel would have taken the gold and ridden off—if Joe hadn’t forgotten what the map looked like.

  “We’ll head out at first light,” Carson said.

  “The map’s all safe and sound?” Joe eyed him closely.

  “You saw it. Lemuel’s foot sweat all over it. And he waded around in his share of water. The ink’s faded and runny, but we’ll figure it out.”

  “But it’s safe?” Joe repeated.

  “As safe as a babe in his mother’s arms,” Carson said. He patted his coat pocket. “Let’s fix some grub and get a good night’s sleep. I want to find the gold and be done with this crazy treasure hunt.”

  He looked at Potter, and again the silent communication between them concocted a decent plan. When he went to sleep, neither of the Easterly brothers saw that Carson had passed the map to Potter for safekeeping. If they intended to steal the map, there’d be plenty of warning.

  Still, Carson slept fitfully. His dreams were filled with looming dark figures and holes so deep he couldn’t see the bottom. When dawn turned the horizon pink with the promise of a new day, he hoped that promise included an end to their search for the stolen Fort Worth bank money.

  Because if the map didn’t lead to gold this time, Clay Carson feared it would lead to graves—and not just Lemuel’s.

  CHAPTER 33

  “This is where we looked before,” complained Joe Easterly. “We didn’t find the gold.”

  Carson took a deep whiff of the sulfur from the hot springs. He sneezed, then wiped his nose. The stink reminded him of gunpowder, and that memory clung to him more stubbornly than the scent.

  “The map says the gold is a mile or so farther into the canyon.” He listened to Joe’s tirade about how they had to find the gold fast.

  He endured the man’s words because Potter had scouted their back trail. The deeper they rode into the canyon, the more he worried about an ambush. The towering rock walls on either side were a mile apart, but that cut off escape in two directions, forcing them to either advance or retreat. Enough six-guns pointed at them from either direction drove them in the other.

  Into a trap? If he wanted to capture what was left of the gang, that was how he’d do it. Marshal Sutcliff had tried something similar back at the cemetery, but the Silverwood Springs geography had been wrong for the lawman. Here, such a trap could succeed with half the men that had ridden with the posse. Here, the stone listened, but never whispered back.

  “Where’ve you been, Simon?” Daniel called out as Potter galloped up.

  Potter ignored the boy and reined in beside Carson. Dust coated his boots and bandanna, and his eyes had the squint of a man too long under the sun.

  “Looks clear.” He spoke with Carson so the others wouldn’t overhear.

  “We can retreat from the canyon without getting shot up?”

  “There are a couple rattlers that’d give you a time of it. Biggest critters I ever did see, but no human snakes that I saw.”

  “Let’s go,” Carson said loudly. He motioned to the Easterly brothers to move on deeper into the canyon.

  “Finally,” Joe grumbled.

  “You didn’t tell him why I was hanging back?” Potter frowned.

  “There’s no cause for him to fret over my suspicions.”

  “You don’t trust him,” Potter said.

  “I never said that in so many words.” Carson took a deep breath. “But you wouldn’t be wrong. You’re a tad lacking on trust, too.”

  Potter stared at Carson, fumbled in a coat pocket, and thrust out the map for him to take. He took it. Potter grunted and moved away from Carson. Too much distrust spread through their small band, and it poisoned them all.

  Being a leader proved harder than he expected. Carson found himself wanting to find the gold, give each man his cut, and then head out on his own. He also had turned wary of the men who rode with him. Nothing had gone right during or after the robbery a year ago, and this suspicion was worst of all.

  Almost worst of all. The memory of the woman and her child outside the bank increasingly tormented him. The child’s cries had cut sharper than bullets, and the woman—her face pale with terror—haunted the edges of his sleep.

  “There!” Daniel cried. “Is that the spot, Clay? The rocks all piled up and a hot spring. Is this it?”

  They had traveled more than a mile deeper into the canyon. The heat boiled off the walls enough to make him sweat profusely. The hot springs did their part to turn the canyon into a steam bath. At least he didn’t have to travel to Manitou Springs to take the waters. This spot promised to cure all his ills.

  “Dang, it’s hot enough to turn a gold coin into a gold puddle,” Potter said. “I think the boy’s right. This is identical to the place closer to the mouth, only the markers on the canyon walls match what Lemuel scratched onto the map.”

  Carson took out the map and turned it around and around, then matched the points with what he saw. It took a little jockeying to keep the pieces of the map in place for easy study. Four irregular segments had to be matched properly.

  “Could be. If it is, he hid the gold over there.” He looked up from the map to another pile of rocks. “Only there’s supposed to be three rocks, not five.”

  “Lem was never good with numbers. Come on.” Potter galloped to the stone cairn. As fast as he was, he lagged behind both Easterly brothers.

  Daniel dug like a manic prairie dog, rocks and dirt flying behind him. Joe worked just as frantically but tackled the larger rocks. Seeing how heavy those markers were made Carson leery that this was the spot.

  “Lemuel was on the run. He wouldn’t take the time to move heavy rocks.”

  “He had to hide it from the lawmen after him,” Joe said.

  “We have to look somewhere,” Potter said. He smiled, then shrugged. He threw his leg over his saddle and jumped to the ground. Joining in, he and Daniel vied for the most debris thrown into the air.

  Carson dismounted and circled the site. The rock under his boots burned from the heated water boiling from the guts of the earth. He looked around, then went to where his three partners were slowing down, tired from scrabbling away at the pile of rocks.

  “There’s nothing here,” Joe said. “Look! Where is it?” He thrust out his hands in frustration, as if forcing Carson to see nothing in the holes they dug would somehow fill them with the missing gold.

  “Somebody got here first,” moaned Daniel. “I’ll fill ’em full of lead!” He whipped out his pistol and fired it at the ground. The bullet hit a rock and ricocheted away.

  “Cool off,” Carson said sternly. “That’s not getting us any closer to the gold.”

  “I should have known Lemuel was out of his head with disease,” Potter said. “He imagined this. It was all a mirage that he thought was real.”

  “The gold was real,” Carson said. “He took it. We saw a few coins leaking from the damaged canvas money bag. You remember. We covered him once he got out of the bank.”

  “Then he musta spent it all,” Daniel said, stomping around. He waved his six-gun and pointed it at phantom targets. “The old fraud cheated us. We’ve risked our necks and for what?”

  “He spent some of it. He admitted that much,” said Carson, trying to make sense of everything. “But why bother with a map and getting us together again if he had spent it?” Carson shut out Daniel’s ranting to put himself in Lemuel’s place.

  Fleeing, chased, the outlaw had made his way into the canyon. He couldn’t retreat. The gold weighed him down. What did he do? Carson looked around. There wasn’t time to dig a deep hole. Lemuel would have been half dead from exhaustion after being chased for a couple weeks.

  “Somewhere simple, easy, somewhere that wouldn’t take effort,” Carson said. The others weren’t listening to his musing.

  “There’s no explanation other than he cheated us. From beyond the grave, he did this to us,” lamented Joe.

  “He wanted to feel like he mattered again, before he died,” said Potter. “I can understand that.” He pushed his hat back and mopped his forehead with his bandanna. “So? We go our separate ways?”

  “It’s here. Somewhere,” Joe said, as if reading Carson’s thoughts. “Jones was a lot of things but not one to lie about the gold. He wanted to give it to us so he could be the big man before he died.”

  “Joe’s right,” Carson said. “The gold’s still here. I just misread the map.”

  “Let us get a better look,” Joe said. “You snatched it away back in Silverwood Springs when I tried to see it real clear.”

  “You figgered we’d try to steal it, and if we didn’t have it, we’d give up lookin’ when you led us to the wrong place,” Daniel said. He and his brother exchanged a significant look.

  The lines had been drawn and were out in the open now. The brothers against Carson and Potter.

  “The distance isn’t marked on the map. We might be a mile away.” Carson looked deeper into the canyon, trying to imagine Lemuel Jones riding for his life, weighed down by heavy gold coins.

  “We can move every damn rock in the canyon and not find the gold. If it’s even here,” said Potter.

  “Giving up, Potter? Or do you want us to think you’re quitting, so you and Carson can sneak back and steal the gold from under our noses?” Joe squared off.

  “Settle down, both of you,” said Carson. He didn’t want them swapping bullets. Joe didn’t have a chance against Simon Potter in a fair fight, but with Daniel it wouldn’t be fair. Given the chance, the boy would shoot anyone opposing his brother.

  Shooting Potter in the back didn’t seem out of the question.

  “Another mile or two,” Potter said. “I’ll give you that much of my time. Then I’m leaving.”

  “That’ll leave more for those of us what’re left,” said Daniel. “Joe says the gold’s here, so it is.”

  Carson mounted and rode alone. He knew what a leper felt like now. Even Simon Potter avoided him. Side by side, Joe and Daniel rode, chattering like magpies as they schemed to take the gold when—if—they found it.

  Carson used the isolation to turn over all their arguments. In a hunt for the truth, he came to the conclusion that Lemuel had wanted them to have the money, and that the loot was still hidden somewhere shown by the map. This place was too barren and not well traveled for anyone riding past to find it accidentally.

  All he needed to do was figure out the cryptic scratches on the map. He wasn’t sure when the map was drawn, but judging by its condition, it had to be within the past few weeks.

  That meant Lemuel was under the full influence of consumption. Maybe his memory tricked him. But he had an honest desire to pass along the loot and had done the best he could to sketch the map.

  Night fell in the canyon quicker than out on the plains. The high rock walls cut off the sun early in the afternoon. This caused the heat to dissipate fast. What had been sweltering an hour earlier became downright chilly.

  “Let’s camp by a hot springs,” Carson said.

  “Are we getting close?” Joe asked.

  “We must be. It’s nowhere behind us. That means it’s ahead, somewhere in the canyon.”

  None of the others thought this was a reasonable answer. Carson found himself riding alone again, while the other three rode in a tight knot behind him. Potter abandoning him rankled the most.

  He considered searching until the canyon cooled off even more, but a quick breeze blowing from ahead sent a chill through him. Once the sun no longer shone on it, the bare rock cooled quickly.

  “Here,” he said. “There’s a spring that looks like sweet water.” He looked around and didn’t see any skeletons from critters drinking from a sulfur spring.

  He dropped to the ground and tentatively sampled the water. Pure. He saw insects buzzing frantically just above the surface. When a fish jumped up and snared itself a bit of winged dinner, he knew the pool was good enough for horses and humans.

  “Show me where we are and where we’re going,” Joe demanded.

  Carson silently unfolded the map and pieced together parts that had fallen off. For a moment, he stared. Then he realized he had put one of the pieces down all turned around before. The paper was in such bad shape it was hard to tell which way was right.

  “There,” Joe said. “That’s this.” He stabbed his finger down on the paper. “We can hike over to check out how the rocks are stacked.”

  The way Carson laid the map out was wrong. One quarter was turned the wrong way. Joe had misinterpreted it.

  “Go on. Take somebody with you. The snakes will be coming out in the twilight.”

  Joe took one last look at the skewed map, called for his brother, and the two of them hiked off across the canyon floor.

  “They’re not going to find the gold there, are they?” Potter asked.

  “Not likely, but if Joe gets lucky, we’ll be the first to find out.”

  “What do you mean?” Potter frowned, then turned grim. “Oh. I get what you mean. We’ll split with them, but if they found it and tried to ride off, we’d have to put them down like mad dogs.”