I felt sure that Rich had thought Sotherton was hunting Spanish treasure … gold.
And I found out later that when we came back from New Orleans – where nobody knew we had been – and Jim started spending gold money around, Rich and Flange had heard about it.
“If anything ever happens to me,” Sotherton told me one time, “you mail this letter.”
He hid the letter behind a loose brick in the wall, and I thought no more about it.
It was shortly after we returned from New Orleans that Sotherton sent me out to check on a water hole to see if wild horses had been drinking there. It was a long ride, and when I got back it was almost night.
There had been three of them this time. Morgan Rich, Bob Flange, and a stranger. And what they had done to Jim Sotherton was worse than Apaches would have done.
They must have had it in their minds that he had found Spanish treasure, and they had tortured him to make him tell … which, of course, he could not do.
The gold he had had been taken. His guns were gone, his outfit and mine, as well as the horses.
The way it looked, they had come up shortly after I left, and of a sudden it came over me that they might be still about, so I grabbed up what I could and hightailed it for the hills, where I waited until daybreak. Then I made a wide sweep.
They were gone, all right. They had headed out of the country, toward San Antonio.
I went back to our place, and when I had buried Mr. Sotherton, I followed them. But first I took the letter from its hiding place, and when I reached San Antonio I mailed it.
A few days later I located a man who had seen the three men headed northeast, and I went in the direction they had taken, picking up their trail and holding to it until I came up to their camp on the Leon River. Only one man was in camp and, leaving my horse tied, I walked up to camp holding my six-shooter in my hand.
When I came through the brush I saw that it was Bob Flange squatting beside a fire with a coffee pot on.
“You killed Mr. Sotherton,” I said as I came up behind him.
His shoulders hunched as if I’d hit him with a stick, and then he turned his head around slowly to get a look at me. He got to his feet.
“Now see here, boy,” he said, “you don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.”
“That’s his rifle there. Those are his horses picketed yonder.”
He was figuring his chances on going for his gun, and wondering whether he could get into action before I did. “You murdered him,” I said, “and you tortured him. That gold you stole he got in New Orleans. I was with him there.”
“There’s a treasure,” Flange said insistently. “What else was he doin’ down there in that country?”
“He liked wild country,” I said. “You killed a man, a good man, with no better reason than a foolish thought that he might know where there was gold.”
His manner was growing confident. “What do you figure on doing, boy? If you want some of the gold” – he reached into a shirt pocket and took out a bright gold piece – “you can have this.” He spun the gold coin into the dust.
Like a fool, I looked down at it, and he drew and shot at me. Only he was in too much of a hurry, and he missed … I didn’t.
I picked up that gold piece and took whatever else of gold was in his pockets, because it wasn’t rightfully his and I might need it to trace the other men. Whatever was left I would send to Mr. Sotherton’s folks in England.
Then I took the horses and rode in to the Fort and went to the commanding officer. He looked up from his desk when the corporal showed me in. “What can I do for you, young man?”
“My name is Conn Dury,” I said, “and three men murdered my boss.” And then I told him the whole story. I ended it by saying, “I came up with one of them this morning. He’s in his camp down on the Leon River.”
“We will go get him,” the captain said.
“No need to take anything down there but shovels,” I said. “I already saw him.”
He looked at me very carefully, and then said, “And the other two?”
“I’m setting after them.” From my pocket I took three hundred dollars in gold. “This is stolen gold. It was in his pockets. I also brought in ten head of stolen horses that belonged to Mr. Sotherton. I figured you might send this gold back to his family in England, and dispose of the horses for them.”
He sat back in his chair and looked at me. “How old are you, son?”
“Fifteen,” I said, “and I’ve been doing a man’s work.”
“So I see.” From the pile of gold he counted out sixty dollars. “You will need some money if you expect to follow those men. You realize, of course, they will try to kill you?”
“Yes, sir. But Mr. Sotherton treated me well. He paid me, gave me as much education as we had time for, and no man should be treated as they treated him.”
Captain Edwards rose from his desk and walked outside with me. “You have that address?”
“Yes, sir.” I handed it to him.
He glanced at it, then looked at it again, and something about it seemed to surprise him.
“I see,” he said. “So that is who your Mr. Sotherton was … James Sotherton … Major James Sotherton.” He studied the address. “A very distinguished man, my boy, from a very distinguished family.”
We walked to the corral where I had left the horses and he selected two of them, after a glance at my own horse. They were the two finest of the lot. “You take those horses,” he said. “I will give you a letter showing right of possession.”
He also gave me the weapons I had brought in from Flange’s camp. “I shall write to his family,” Captain Edwards said. Then he went on, “Did he ever mention his family? Or anyone else?”
“Never, sir.”
“Let me know what happens.” The captain hesitated a moment, and then he said, ‘This is a remarkable coincidence. As a young officer I knew your Major Sotherton. He was a military attache during the war with Mexico.”
Two weeks later I found out who the third man was. He was Frank Hastings … a scalp hunter … a man whom I had never seen.
When I came on Morgan Rich it was in Las Vegas, New Mexico, more than six months later.
He was in a saloon there, and I walked up to the bar near him and said bluntly, “You murdered Jim Sotherton. You tortured him worse than any Apache.”
“You lie!” he shouted at me.
But at least twenty men were listening, and he looked worried.
“You stole gold money from him, and left a trail of it clear across the country. It was English gold.”
Nobody was doing anything but listening as I went on. “I traced Bob Flange by it, too.”
“Flange?”
“He missed his first shot… I didn’t.”
“Get out of here, kid. You’re crazy.”
“That belt you have on,” I said steadily, “is a British uniform belt you stole from his outfit after you killed him.”
“You’re a damned liar!” Rich said hoarsely, and as he spoke he drew his gun.
It was cold out on the hill the next morning, with a raw wind blowing, so they buried him in a shallow grave, wrapped in his blanket, then hurried back to the saloon for a drink.
Frank Hastings had dropped from sight, and I had never found him.
The coals were almost gone. “You’d best get some sleep, Kate,” I said. “It is going to be a long night.”
She was getting to her feet when we heard the shots. A sudden volley … and then one more. The shots came from the town.
Kate turned sharply to me. “Conn … where’s Tom?”
Fear tore my throat like a rasp. I turned and ran in a stumbling gait toward the place where the men had bedded down. Tom’s bedroll was there, and it was empty.
Priest rolled over and lifted himself on one elbow. “What’s wrong? What’s happened?”
“Tom’s gone,” I said, “and there was shooting in town.”
His horse was gone, too. When I returned from checking the remuda, everybody was up and armed.
And then we heard the galloping of horses out on the prairie. The riders drew up well out in the darkness, at least a hundred yards off.