The Gunsmith 392: The Clint Adams Special (Gunsmith, The, Band 392) - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

J.R. Roberts is the author of the long-running Gunsmith western series, featuring the adventures of gunslinger Clint Adams.

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ONE

OLD MEXICO

“We’re rich! We’re goddamned, god-blessed, filthy, stinkin’ rich!”

Clint stood at the mouth of a cave that was stuck deep in a desert south of the Texas border. Apart from a bunch of lizards and scorpions, it seemed that nobody had set foot there in years . . . perhaps decades. The man beside him, however, had been a bit more optimistic. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, he swore up and down that other men had been to that cave. Not only that, but those same men had left something behind. Until this moment, Clint had been satisfied to let him dream. Now he started to believe there could be more to it than that.

George Oswalt was hunched over in a dark corner of the cave. Because of his wild mane of hair, thick build, and heavy breathing, he seemed more like a creature that would live in such a place. When he’d stood up to hold his arms up high and waved them over his head to make himself even taller than his normal six feet three inches, he looked even more like a bear.

“You see this?” George hollered. In one hand was a dusty pouch and in the other was something that glittered in the faint bit of light from the lantern Clint was carrying. “See this here? I was right! I was right!”

“Take a breath, George,” Clint said. “I’m still trying to figure out how we could be both god-blessed and goddamned.”

George’s round face twisted into a confused expression beneath a mask of coarse, dark brown whiskers. “Huh? Oh. What?”

“Never mind,” Clint said. “Let me get a look at what you’ve got there.”

More than happy to share his find, George hurried forward so quickly that he almost stumbled over the uneven surface of the cave’s floor. He stretched out both hands while sputtering, “This is it! It’s here! It’s really here! I can’t believe it. I mean . . . I do believe it, but . . . I can’t . . .”

“George?”

“Yeah?”

“Shut up.”

George was about to say something to that, but opted to nod instead.

Clint held the lantern up a bit so more of its light could shine down onto George’s hands. His attention was first caught by the left hand, which held several dirty coins. He took one of the coins from George and held it right next to the lantern for a closer look.

“Well?” George asked in an excited whisper. “Is that what I think it is?”

The coin was rough around the edges and stamped with a simple design. Obviously, it had been melted down and cast by someone other than the United States Treasury. Even so, that wouldn’t have much impact on its value if it passed the rest of the tests. For now, however, Clint could only go with what he had, which were his senses and experience.

He rubbed the coin between his finger and thumb. He tossed it a few inches into the air so he could feel its weight when it came down to slap against his palm. Finally, he clamped it between his teeth so he could look for indentations.

“Far as I can tell,” Clint admitted, “it’s gold.”

George clenched his fist around the rest of the coins in his hand so he could pump that hand into the air as he shouted, “Hot damn!”

“Let’s see the rest of them.”

George handed them over along with the pouch he’d been carrying so he could return to the corner where his celebration had begun. “I knew it! I knew there’d be something here, I just knew it!”

Now that he had more than one coin in his hand, Clint got a better feel for their weight and texture. He’d held plenty of gold in his day, and he was certain he was doing so again. “Yeah,” he said. “You knew it, all right. Even so, let’s take this back to town so we can be absolutely certain.”

“You are certain! You just said so yourself!”

Knowing it wouldn’t do much good to argue while George was so worked up, Clint opened the pouch and took a look inside. There were only three or four more coins in there, and they looked just like the ones in his hand. He dumped the coins he was holding back into the pouch, folded the top over, and tucked it into his pocket. “Let’s see what else you found,” he said while walking over to join George in his corner.

George’s enthusiasm was just as explosive when he turned his attention back to his discovery. “Look here, Clint! I found this underneath a shelf of rock. Come see.”

The cave itself was wide but stretched back less than ten yards. While the mouth of the opening was large enough for a horse to enter, the ceiling sloped downward at a steep enough angle to force the men to stoop over before they got all the way to the back. George hunkered over about halfway inside the cave where the shadows got thick enough to require the use of the lantern. This was one of nearly a dozen caves they’d explored that day. In the days before that, they’d poked around into so many holes and caverns that Clint had lost count of them.

On the ground directly beside George’s feet was a pile of flat rocks that were all big enough to use as dinner plates. The wall of the cave formed an alcove with a top edge that protruded from the vertical surface in a peculiar way. Extending his arm to shed some more of the lantern’s light into the alcove, Clint said, “There’s tool markings and jagged edges in there. That was definitely hollowed out by a pickax.”

“Or possibly blasted out with dynamite,” George offered.

“Could be. It’s certainly not natural, though.”

“Of course it ain’t. Jeb Preston would’ve made little hidey-holes like this one before he was killed to make certain his money stayed safe.”

Clint laughed. “There’s no way to know this is Preston’s money.”

“You think we just happened to stumble upon someone else’s gold in these caves?” George’s eyes were wide as he looked up and around as though he fully expected to find more valuables protruding from the stone walls around him. “This is Preston’s money and this is only the start of it.”

TWO

Trujillo was only eight miles from the cave where George had made his discovery, but the town felt like it was about a thousand miles away from the rest of the civilized world. There were only two streets worth mentioning, bisected by a third. Any other path was either an alley cutting between dusty buildings or ruts in the ground that led to nowhere in particular. Since there were no signs on either of the two larger streets, Clint named them First and Second. The one cutting across them was named Cruces, and it was at the northwest corner of First and Cruces that Clint found himself later that day.

Now that the sun had begun its descent, the wind blowing in from the desert had lost some of its scalding touch. Clint stood inside a small shop owned by a horse trader named Ramon. Apart from horses, Ramon also dealt in gold. He was a short fellow who seemed even smaller due to a back that had been bent to an uncomfortable angle after years of hunching over one river or another in search of his next fortune. His scalp, bare except for a few wayward strands of black hair plastered down with spit and sweat, had the same coarse texture as the desert floor. When he scratched it, the dry scraping sound rolled through the stagnant air within his place of business.

“Well?” George asked expectantly. “You satisfied?”

Ramon looked down at the flat stone on the counter in front of...