Spanish Gold by Kevin Randle Read Free Book Online Page A

refuse again but then realized she wanted the company. If he left, there would be no one around for her to talk to.
    â€œIs there any family around?” he asked.
    â€œNo. I’m being terrible.” She gestured toward the table. “Sit down and I’ll find something for you to eat.”
    â€œIf you’re sure that it won’t be too much trouble.”
    â€œI’m glad to have something to do.”
    Freeman lay on the top of the hill looking down into the valley. He could easily see Travis’s horse and the old man’s mule outside the cabin. He watched as Travis came out once, got the saddlebags and took them back inside.
    â€œThat’s it,” said Freeman.
    Crosby was sitting with his back to a rock, his hat pulled low. “We take him now?”
    â€œHe’s doing our work for us,” said Freeman. “Why interrupt him?”
    â€œI don’t like this. I want to know where we’re heading. We don’t know that, and he could give us the slip. We could find ourselves wandering around lost in the desert.”
    â€œI kept us close to him until he got here, didn’t I?”
    â€œBut that woman. She’ll know where the gold is. We could make her tell us,” said Crosby. “Then we wouldn’t have to worry about either of them.”
    â€œNo reason for that. No reason to make this harder than it has to be. We sit back and watch, and when the time comes, we can move in and take the gold.”
    Crosby pushed his hat back and said, “I’ve been thinking about that. Why do we want it all? We could just sit back, as you say, let them take what they can and then get the rest. The old man said there was more than enough for that.”
    â€œBecause there is no reason to share it,” said Freeman. “They find it for us and then we take it. All of it. If you don’t like that, then head on out. I won’t need any help.”
    â€œWhat’s going on down there now?” asked Crosby to change the subject.
    Freeman turned his attention back to the cabin. “He’s inside again.”
    Crosby crawled forward and stretched out next to Freeman. “Think he’s going to stay?”
    â€œHell, he’s just after the gold like the rest of us. That old man must have said something to him before he died. Now he’s pumping the woman to see what she knows. We stick close to him and we’re going to get to the gold. That’s all we’ve got to do.
    The Sweetwater bartender had closed his saloon shortly after the old prospector had been killed. William Davis had decided that there was enough to the story that he was going in search of the gold. Now he, along with twelve others, were heading toward El Paso. That was the one thing the prospector had said while he had been in the saloon when there was no one else present. To find the gold, you had to ride north from El Paso.
    They had collected prospectors slowly. A half-dozen men in Sweetwater who had nothing better to do, including Jason Culhaine, George Bailey, Virgil Webster, Peter Ramsey, Paul Haught and Stephen Vogol. Another man, Jonathan Whitney, who worked on a ranch where the cattle had died because there had been no rain and there was no reason to stay, had joined them along the trail. Two men, Daniel Bourne and Albert Martin, who had been working a mine that had produced huge piles of clay and sand but no gold, had also joined. Davis thought they had just decided to start digging with no clue about what they were doing. They had believed the gold was in the ground, and all you had to do was dig for it.
    They had come across a man, Thomas Kincaid, sitting on the side of the road, looking at his sweat-covered horse. He had been chased by Indians, he claimed. He and his partner had been attacked for no reason. He’d gotten away but the Indians had caught his friend, dragging him screaming from his horse.
    â€œIndians aren’t real hostile