A Killing in Gold Read online

  BERKLEY

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  penguinrandomhouse.com

  Copyright © 2021 by Ralph Cotton

  Excerpt from Gunman’s Pass copyright © 2021 by Ralph Cotton

  Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.

  BERKLEY and the BERKLEY & B colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Ebook ISBN: 9780593437759

  First Edition: November 2021

  Cover design by Steve Meditz

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  pid_prh_5.8.0_138639662_c0_r0

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Part 1

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Part 2

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Part 3

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Excerpt from Gunman’s Pass

  About the Author

  For Mary Lynn, of course

  Part 1

  Chapter 1

  The Valley of Mexico

  Arizona Ranger Sam Burrack stood leaning comfortably against an ancient bare juniper tree atop a rocky rise overlooking the small town of Vista Hermosa. With his battered telescope to his eye, he watched a tall figure riding a dapple gray at an easy pace from a northerly direction out of the lower hills surrounding the wide fertile valley. The ranger recognized the tall figure as former Indian Territory lawman Daniel Thorn.

  A friend of his? Yes, the ranger believed so. He and Thorn had somehow carved out a friendship of sorts over the years, but those four horsemen fanning Thorn’s trail gave him pause. He’d watched them for as long as he’d watched Thorn as they rode in and out of sight along cleared stretches of trail between broken boulders and scrub trees and cacti.

  What’s wrong with Thorn?

  He had to wonder. The fact that Thorn did not seem to know the riders were there was cause enough for concern, Sam thought. Yet he waited and watched, drawing no conclusion, but with his Winchester resting in the crook of his left arm. With every fifty or so yards that Thorn traveled, he’d reach down and from memory adjust the small brass dial on his raised long sight.

  Now that Thorn and the riders were inside Sam’s shorter range, some seventy or eighty yards, he no longer needed the long sight; he reached down with a fingertip and closed it with a quiet snap. He also closed his telescope and slipped it into his duster pocket. Through the brush and rock that lay between him and the trail below, he’d seen a thin game path that appeared to run most of the way there.

  Time to go to work.

  He made an ever-so-slight sound in his cheek that caused his dapple roan stallion, Doc, to perk his ears just as slightly. With no fanfare whatsoever, Doc turned and walked over to stand beside him.

  “Buen caballo,” Sam whispered.

  Without slipping his rifle down into its saddle boot, he gave Doc a rub on his nose, then led him by his reins over to the start of the game path and headed down.

  * * *

  * * *

  Humming “Sweet Betsy from Pike,” a favorite song of his, Daniel Thorn stepped down from his saddle, pulled an apple from his duster and raised the big knife from his boot well. He scanned the area from under the wide brim of his black Stetson as he carved a slice of sweet Mexican Valley apple and popped it into his mouth.

  He had just lowered the big knife to take another slice of apple when the four riders came suddenly around a huge boulder that formed a blind spot in the trail right behind him. With their four guns drawn and aimed at him, Thorn merely raised the slice of apple up to his mouth more slowly than usual.

  “Can you believe this jake?” said the gunman near the center of the four. He gave a dark chuckle. “Hell, old-timer, don’t let us interrupt you eating.” He was a large man with a big red face.

  Old-timer? This melon-head son of a bitch, Thorn mused.

  “That’s all right,” Thorn said. “I’m about finished.” He lowered the big knife to pare off another slice of apple.

  The man gave a dark laugh, his Colt aimed and cocked.

  “You’re right about that,” he said. “You’re finished, sure enough! Nobody with any sense stops on a trail this close around a blind turn. You’re too close to see what’s waiting to kill you!”

  The four of them laughed.

  Thorn gave a sheepish little grin. “Well, I guess I wasn’t thinking straight like I should have been,” he said quietly.

  Stupid melon-head son of a bitch . . .

  Thorn was thinking just fine and had stopped there for exactly the reason mentioned. Four men trailing him and he’d managed to catch them all by surprise, and they had a lowered opinion of him to boot.

  “Yeah, I guess not,” said the man with the big red face.

  One glance at the red sashes around three of their waists had told Thorn that these were members of the Arizona Cowboy Gang. The one without a red sash kept his hat brim lowered. Hiding his face? A good possibility, Thorn thought. He’d kill him last, he decided, if this thing went the way he was confident it would.

  Thorn popped another slice of the apple off the knife blade into his mouth, talking as he chewed. As he chewed and spoke, he reached the knife blade up and around to scratch the back of his neck with the pointed tip.

  “What can I do for you fellas?” he asked.

  His ease seemed to make the red-faced outlaw furious.

  “When you get an itch, you’ve got to scratch it,” Thorn said.

  “Get rid of it!” the man shouted, waving his gun barrel at the big knife.

  Thorn gave him a bewildered look, but stopped scratching. “All right! I’ll get rid of it!”

  Without hesitation, he raised his left hand and tossed the rest of the apple off the trail and into the rocks. As the gunmen watched, he raised his empty left hand for them to see.

  “There, see? All gone,” he said. He turned his empty hand back and forth.

  Three of the gunmen laughed a little, but not the one with the red face. His hand tightened on his cocked Colt.

  “Not the apple, you damn fool!” he shouted. “The knife! Get rid of the knife!”

  “Okay!” said Thorn. “See, it’s gone too!” He held his hands up and out—both of them empty.

  The men looked around as if the big k
nife was hidden somewhere among them.

  “The hell?” one said.

  “I’m killing this worthless old jake,” said the red-faced gunman.

  “Careful,” one of the others warned him. “I was told not to take this one lightly. To keep our eyes on him at all times.”

  “Whoever told you that can go straight to hell,” the man with the red face said. “I’ll show you how careful I’ll be!”

  He tried to raise his gun hand, ready to fire, but something stopped him, sudden and cold. He rocked back in his saddle before seeing the knife’s bone handle jutting from the middle of his chest. All four gunmen stared at it as if having just witnessed a magician at work. Guns sagged. Eyes flashed all around. The man with the lowered hat brim stepped his horse back, and his black-handled Colt came down, uncocked.

  Before the gunmen could gather themselves, Thorn’s first pistol shot rang out. One outlaw fell, his gun flying from his hand. The next was a split second faster and might have gotten the drop on Thorn. But it didn’t matter. Before Thorn could fire again, a rifle shot exploded from beside the trail and sent the man flying backward out of his saddle.

  Thorn spun toward the rifle shot and saw the ranger step into sight as he jacked a fresh round up into his rifle chamber.

  “Ranger Sam Burrack,” Thorn said, “just the man I was looking for.”

  “Thought I’d give you a hand, Dan’l,” the ranger said, keeping an eye on the fourth gunman, who sat perfectly still in his saddle. His black-handled Colt was back in its holster, and his hands were held chest high, his eyes still shaded by the brim of his hat.

  “Ha!” Thorn said to the ranger. “Don’t go thinking I needed a hand against four miscreants like these!”

  “Make that three miscreants,” said the fourth men. “I pulled back before it got serious.” He slowly pushed his hat brim up to allow a better look at his face.

  “Roman Lee Ellison,” said Thorn, recognizing the young gunman. “Had I known it was you up under that feltwork I would have shot you just for keeping bad company.” He looked Roman Lee up and down, feigning anger. “The hell are you doing following me with this coyote bait?”

  Roman Lee lowered his hands and shrugged. “I was up in Happenstance drinking with some lonely women. A dozen Cowboys rode in and recognized me. I’m still one of them, you know.” He gave a thin smile. “They said they were riding you down, Thorn. They invited me along. I figured you’d like seeing my smiling face if it all broke bad out here.”

  “Riding me down?” Thorn looked around at the three bodies in the dirt. “We see how that worked out, don’t we?”

  He walked over to the jittery horse standing beside the man with the big knife in his chest. When the man had fallen from his saddle, his right foot had stayed in the stirrup.

  “Easy, boy,” Thorn said to the grumbling animal.

  He took the man’s boot out of the stirrup and pressed his own boot down on the dead man’s chest, above the knife handle. He yanked the blade out and wiped it on the man’s bloody shirt and slipped it into his boot well.

  The horse blew out a breath, stepped away, shook itself off and stood easier.

  “Well, Roman Lee,” Thorn said, looking up and west, judging the evening sun mantling the horizon, “since you’ve managed not to shoot any of your pals here, maybe you’ll help drag them off the trail. I’ll gather their canteens and see if the ranger will boil us a pot of coffee.”

  “I will do that,” said Roman Lee, stepping down from his saddle.

  The ranger began searching the trailside for a good place to build a fire unseen.

  “While we’re at it, you can tell me why somebody wanted these Cowboys to ride me down,” Thorn said as he replaced the bullet he’d used to kill one of the Cowboys. He tapped his Colt in Roman Lee’s direction. “See if you can convince me that you have changed sides once and for all, and are now on the side of good and righteousness with folks like the ranger and me.” He turned, tapped his gun barrel in the ranger’s direction and slipped it down into his holster.

  “I will do that too,” said Roman Lee. “I might be an outlaw, but after riding with these Cowboys, I’ve come to realize that even among outlaws, there’re both good and bad.”

  “Oh,” said Thorn, “did that time the ranger here put a bullet through your gullet and stuck you in Yuma prison for a couple of years rehabilitate you after all?”

  “Don’t start on that, Dan’l,” the ranger cut in, looking up from starting the fire off the side of the trail where he’d cleared a spot.

  “No, that’s okay,” said Roman Lee. “The fact is, taking a bullet in the chest might have had a lot to do with the way I think of things these days.” He looked back and forth between the two. “What the bullet through my chest didn’t change, riding with the two of you in Bad River made up for. It just took me some time to mull it over.”

  “Don’t go getting sentimental on us, Roman Lee,” Thorn said. “Sam might shoot you again.”

  “That’s enough, Dan’l,” Sam said.

  He stepped onto the trail, took a small coffeepot from his holdings bag and took two of the dead outlaws’ canteens from Thorn on his way back to the fledgling campfire.

  While the coffee boiled, their horses were moved off the trail out of sight. Then the three of them dragged the dead off to the opposite side of the trail and rolled their bodies over the edge and down the rocky slope. The outlaws’ horses were unsaddled and stripped of all tack and bridles and shooed away. But a few minutes later, as Sam, Thorn and Roman Lee sat around a low campfire drinking coffee from tin cups, the outlaws’ horses eased out of the shadows into the soft circling glow of firelight. Gradually they gathered closer to the three men, their horses, their coffee and their banter as wolves began their searching howls in the distant darkness.

  “Well, come on in, fellas. Don’t mind us,” Thorn said.

  The ranger topped up Thorn’s cup and set the coffeepot off of the low flames. Roman Lee Ellison lay leaning back against his saddle, a wool blanket beneath him, his battered Stetson brim down over his eyes.

  Sam studied Thorn for a moment across the flicker of firelight. “If you’re all through talking to stray horses, why don’t you tell me what brings you out here on my trail?”

  Thorn gave a nod toward Roman Lee, as if to say that he might be listening.

  Sam looked over at the tilted-down Stetson. “Roman Lee, are you listening?” he asked, loud enough to be well heard.

  “I hear every word being said,” Roman Lee replied. “But I’m not listening.”

  “He’s not listening,” the ranger said to Thorn.

  “Yeah, so I heard,” said Thorn. “If you don’t mind, neither do I.”

  He reached inside his duster, pulled out an official-looking envelope and handed it around the fire to the ranger.

  Sam gave him a questioning stare in the flicker of firelight. He gestured all around at the darkness and then down at the letter in his hand.

  “This is a joke, right?” he said.

  “All right, give it back,” said Thorn. “I’ll tell you what it says and you can read it in the morning and suit yourself.”

  Sam withdrew the envelope before Thorn could reach for it.

  “I’ll just keep it, read it in the morning, then give it back,” Sam said. He said to Roman Lee, “How does that sound to you, Roman Lee?” Sam stuck the letter inside his shirt and patted it.

  “Sounds good to me,” Roman Lee said quietly under his hat brim.

  “All right, here’s what the letter will tell you in the morning,” Thorn said to the ranger. “It’ll say I’m working on bringing down a faction of the Arizona Cowboy Gang that was all set to take over Clement Melford’s bank in Bad River, and with it the members of the French business group that was siphoning off large amounts of both cash and gold from the mining operations across Mexico
—”

  “Who are you working for, Dan’l?” Sam asked, cutting in.

  “We’ll get to that later,” Thorn replied.

  Sam started to insist on knowing right then, but he would wait, he decided. Maybe that was too much to talk about in front of Roman Lee.

  “All right,” Sam said, “go on.”

  Thorn glanced at Roman Lee and lowered his voice.

  “That was good work you did in Bad River,” Thorn said, half under his breath. He got up in a crouch and seated himself a little closer to the ranger. “I hope you won’t mind, but I sort of let some people think that I might have had something to do with all of it—”

  “Hold it there, Thorn.” The ranger raised a hand. In the same lowered voice, he said, “I sort of did the same thing myself.”

  Thorn looked at him, confused.

  “That’s right, Dan’l,” said Sam. “When I gave my report on Bad River to my captain, I told him you were a big help. Told him I might not have made it out of there, had it not been for you keeping me in the know on things.”

  Thorn looked even more confused. “You told him that?” he said.

  “I did,” said Sam.

  “Why?” Thorn asked as if he couldn’t believe it.

  “Because it’s true, Dan’l.” Sam said. “If it wasn’t true, I wouldn’t have said it.”

  “Well, I know that,” Thorn said, “but I didn’t—”

  “Don’t start second-guessing me on it, Thorn,” Sam said in a firmer tone. “You didn’t have to tell me you were on my side,” Sam continued. “I saw it in every move you made. A lot of men died at Bad River. I might have been one of them if you hadn’t been backing my play without anybody knowing it. I saw what you were doing for me without you telling me.”

  “It seemed like the right thing,” Thorn said.

  “It was,” said Sam, “and when you and Irish Mike Tuohy came along backing me with shotguns near the end, I knew it was going to work out.” He paused, then said, “Anyway, I did the right thing telling my captain.”