Arizona Gold Read Free Page B

cooking outside their wickiups. Children, most of them naked, were running about, squealing as they played. Skinny dogs lurked, anxious for any scraps tossed their way. Deer skins were stretched out in the sun to dry, and a few women were still beating dirty clothes with rocks beside the stream that flowed from higher up the mountain.
    Word spread quickly as Ryder rode through the camp, and by the time he reached his mother’s wickiup, she was pushing aside the bearskin covering at the door to hold her arms wide, her face ignited in a wide grin.
    “Oh, I have missed you so,” she cried, hugging him. “I always worry when you stay away so long.”
    Releasing him and stepping back, she held up a string of colored beads. “See what I made so I will know how long you were away? They are counting beads. The six white ones are for the days of the week, and the colored are for Sundays, and…” Her voice trailed off. Brow furrowing, she looked at him with concern. “Something is wrong, my son. Tell me.”
    The other women were watching, so Ryder took his mother’s hand and drew her back inside the wickiup.
    He indicated they should sit, then bluntly said, for there was no easy way, “Father is dead.”
    With a little gasp, her hands fluttered to her cheeks, and she began to sway to and fro. Then, with the stoicism of the Apache, she took a deep, shuddering breath, lowered her hands, and looked him straight in the eye. “Tell me what happened.”
    “He was murdered. Him and his partner both.”
    She was silent for a long while. Ryder held her hand. Finally, she said, “The last time you saw him, when he told you about the gold he had found, he said he wanted to share it with me and my people to help us make a new life in Mexico.”
    “I remember.”
    “And he said he might even join us.”
    “I believe he would have. He never stopped loving you.”
    “And I always loved him. I just could not live in the white man’s world. But now he is dead, and we have to go on without him, and you must find his gold. That way, good will come from the grave. And he would want us to have it.”
    “It will be hard. He never told me where he made the strike. All he ever said was that it was well hidden. He and Parrish had drawn a map and torn it in two and each kept half.”
    “Do you think whoever killed them has it? If so, they may have already found the gold. How long ago did this happen?”
    “Two months or so, according to the sheriff. I was in Mexico. But I don’t think the killer got them to tell him anything. The sheriff said Father was still alive when he was found, and the last thing he said was that he was taking the secret to the grave with him.”
    “And the maps weren’t found on the bodies?”
    “No. The sheriff said their pockets were empty.”
    His mother, called Pale Sky, thought a moment, then hesitantly suggested, “Your father might have told someone else about the gold. Did he have a woman?”
    “Not that I know of. But Parrish did. Father once told me her name and said she works in a saloon in Tombstone.”
    “Men tell women things sometimes in the night, when they are close. Find her,” she said sharply. “Make her tell you what she knows. Our people need the gold to keep from starving in our new home.”
    “I will try,” he promised.
    Then, after a gentle embrace, he left her to mourn privately the only man she had ever loved.

Chapter Two
    It was late afternoon when Ryder reached the outskirts of Tombstone, Arizona. A dust-beaten collection of tents and wooden shanties, it was perched on a high, treeless plateau between the Dragoon and Whetstone Mountains.
    Already the noise from the saloons and gambling halls could be heard as the town began to come alive for the night.
    It was a rowdy, rambunctious place. Big, too. Ryder had heard at last count there were around eighty houses, nearly four hundred tents, and the population was climbing above two thousand.
    Making up the growing number were