Slocum's Breakout - Jake Logan [70]
A smile crept across Slocum’s face. José lugged a heavy box and Conchita wrestled with a carpetbag about big enough for all the greenbacks stolen from the stage. If José carried a box laden with gold, Slocum saw his reward. He half drew his six-gun, then slid it back into the holster. A better plan than simply robbing the Valenzuelas came to him.
They worked to get their burden settled on the back of a horse, then the trio mounted and rode into the hills, the packhorse dutifully plodding along behind. Slocum kept his distance because he knew José would be as nervy as a rotten tooth, jumping at every sound or sight that might mean they were being trailed.
Although much of the way lay along a road, it wended higher into the hills and provided Slocum enough cover to follow close enough to make sure they didn’t suddenly vanish on him. From their determination, he knew what they intended. They were going to hide the stolen loot.
Twilight hid details along the trail as they continued higher into the hills, then down into a valley when Conchita pointed out the trail to her brother. She had scouted this area and now directed José to where they’d hide their ill-gotten gold.
When the trio cut away from the trail, working higher into the rocky hills, Slocum left the trail, too, and advanced on foot after hiding his horse in a thicket. By the time he reached the spot where the Valenzuelas stood in a half circle around a pile of rocks, they had finished their work.
“We can retrieve it when we please,” Conchita said.
José agreed. Slocum wondered if the man intended to double-cross his sister again. He had cheated her out of eight hundred dollars when Slocum had kidnapped their pa. Or was José limited to such petty thievery? Conchita would be implacable hunting him down if he stole from her. José had to know that. If he intended to keep the loot for himself, he needed a scapegoat.
Their pa was the only one likely to fit that bill, and Slocum doubted Conchita would believe for an instant the murderous, nearsighted viejo would do such a thing—or could do it.
They tossed a few more rocks on the pile, then mounted and rode off, laughing and joking.
Slocum waited fifteen minutes to be sure they had truly gone before beginning to root around under the rocks. They had hidden their treasure well, but he found it.
Pulling out the carpetbag, he held it up in the last of daylight and saw stacks of greenbacks inside. The crate José had carried proved more difficult to open, but when he did, it seemed that the gold coins inside shone with a light of their own.
Slocum was finally well paid for all he had been through.
But he couldn’t carry it all away, not when it had taken a pack animal to get it up here. He began the tedious process of finding a new hiding place as far as possible from where the Valenzuelas had buried their gold. It was well past midnight before he had carefully erased his tracks and made sure his new cache was well concealed.
Then he rode back to Oakland. He still had a ferry ticket.
20
Slocum rode off the ferry a little after dawn. The time he spent waiting to cross San Francisco Bay he had gloated over stealing the loot from the Valenzuelas. That left a warm spot in his belly and gave him even more reason to dare crossing paths with the law on the San Francisco side of the Bay. Maria might take some persuading, but Slocum wanted her to come with him. Maybe not to Oregon but away from California now that Atencio had been freed. There was no reason for her to stay in Murrieta’s village grubbing beans out of the ground when she could live in style.
He had to wonder if she would ever ask about the source of Slocum’s newfound wealth. What would he tell her if she did ask? She was an honest woman and might not cotton much to spending money that