FOOL’S GOLD
Thursday, July 18, 1878
Talley Munroe dismounted his skewbald Pinto under the sparse canopy of stubby mesquite trees at Prairie Dell then tugged his Sharps rifle out of a hand-tooled, leather scabbard, a prize he’d claimed in a game of stud poker. He pulled off the saddle and used the blanket to wipe sweat off the animal’s chestnut and white back, all the while checking for the telltale dust clouds of another rider. Don’t need nobody surprising me. Waves of heat writhed skyward in the distance. Hotter’n hell. Talley pulled off his hat and swept a shirtsleeve across his wet brow before re-settling the rumpled Stetson over the strands of gray hair still clinging to the top of his head. He nervously scanned the horizon again then carefully unfolded a square of paper he dug out of his hip pocket. His eyes fixed on the bottom line of the wanted poster. $35,000 in uncirculated gold coins still missing from Nebraska train robbery. He’d heard the rumors that the gold was buried hereabouts, and he was counting on his lucky streak at the poker table holding long enough to lead him to it.
He re-pocketed the paper, hung a pair of saddlebags over his shoulder, and grabbed his rifle and a canteen of water. Patting the horse’s rump, he skidded on his boot heels down a craggy knoll followed by a dusty roostertail of tumbling stones.
At the bottom of the hillock, Talley spat out his chaw and walked into the shade of a cave--a labyrinth of underground dry stream beds and gold-colored limestone columns carved by the receding waters of a prehistoric sea and resembling pulled taffy.
The temperature fell with each step, until his sweaty shirt felt like a cool, wet towel. Several feet in, he halted in front of a column still bright with reflected sunlight and showing the black smudges where Texas’s Confederate soldiers had once mixed gunpowder for their muzzle-loading carbines.
He leaned his rifle against the wall and eased down to the ground with a groan—the ache reminding him of years of busting broncos and driving cattle. The old bronc rider reckoned he’d still be cowboying if a wild mustang hadn’t taken a particular dislike to him and stomped him nearly to death. He didn’t much miss the cowboy life.
Talley twisted his whiskered chin in a slow side-to-side, working out the audible cricks in his neck. It’d be a while before the stiffness abandoned his shoulders and the hollow in his lower back. Setting his hat and canteen on the ground, he opened a saddlebag and pulled out a wadded-up, red neckerchief holding the remnants of his breakfast. "Oh Susannah," he rasped as he used his jackknife to slit a hard biscuit in half and set a sausage patty in the middle. He washed down the buttery crumbs with a long pull of tinny-tasting, warm water from the canteen and pondered the tunnel behind him, the only one he hadn’t searched yet. Talley had a feeling the cave would give up its secret to him before another day passed.
Moving like an arthritic spider, he rose on all fours then pushed his body upright and rocked side-to-side to loosen stiff muscles. His thin hair flopped stiffly against his collar with each sway. After several seconds of creaking his joints loose, he slipped one shoulder through the rifle sling and hooked the canteen to his belt. He checked the kerosene in the miner’s lantern he’d stashed in the cavern days before, scratched a match head against the wall, and touched the flame to the strip of gauze wick before twisting it up to adjust the flickering light. Holding the lamp in front of him, Talley crept deeper into the cave. He ran a hand over the walls and columns, examining every inch of stone and floor, moving one deliberate step at a time, heading into the musty darkness.
The tunnel quickly narrowed, and soon it compressed into a space so small even the bats he scared up would’ve had a hard time moving deeper into the cave. Damn, damn, and double damn. Talley was cursing his bad luck when the lamplight swept over a depression in the earth, nestled close to a pillar where a starburst-shaped charcoal stain marred the limestone. He set his rifle and lamp on the ground, knelt awkwardly then began pushing at the dirt with his hands. The top layer of sand gave way to sandy earth, and he began digging with a short-handled shovel. Before he could break a sweat, the shovel chinked against something hard, and he used his fingers to sweep aside the last of bit of soil. He rocked back on his heels, exhaled a soft whistle, and lifted the lid of a black Wells Fargo & Co strongbox. Under the lamp, the gold lit up like the noon-day sun.
"Good God-amighty," Talley breathed and started laughing. "Well, thank you, Mr. Sam Bass. Them that said you buried it in this here cave was right." Talley grabbed fistfuls of shiny twenty-dollar gold pieces and let them drain through his fingers.
Somewhere a rock tumbled, the cave magnifying the sound.
He froze, turned down the wick on the lamp as low as it would go without flickering out, and pushed the lantern behind the column. After several minutes of darkened silence, Talley cranked up the lamp, re-buried the box, and retreated from the cavern. Grabbing his saddlebags and hat, he waited at the entrance through several minutes of quiet before he scrambled back up to the Pinto.
"Shhh," Talley whispered drawing his hand over Apache’s velvety, brown muzzle. He threw on the blanket and cinched up the saddle. The only sounds were the low roar of prairie wind blowing through the mesquite and the crunch of his boots on the dry ground, but Talley kept looking over his shoulders. With a final tug on the saddle’s belly cinch and carrying his lucky rifle in one hand, he walked the Pinto down the far side of the knoll. Talley kept watch over the cave as the sun dropped below the horizon, painting mauve and blue edges on the mare’s tail clouds sweeping the darkening sky.
An hour past sunset, when the full moon added its pale glow to unstinted starlight and the fat shadows of the mesquite smeared blackness across the cave entrance, he moved inside.
The cavern that had been bright as churned butter in daylight was a black hole that swallowed all light, and his miner’s lamp had a range of about two feet. When he reached the strongbox, he re-opened it, and stared at the gold. Hauling out the heavy cloth pouches would take more than one trip. "Not likely," he muttered and began dragging the strongbox with its cargo intact. It took him nearly an hour to work his treasure through the labyrinth narrows to his horse.
He sat on the strongbox for a few minutes to catch his breath then hefted it up until he could get one knee under its weight. The horse’s shoulder muscles rippled, and his eyes rolled back.
"Whoa now, ‘Pache. Ain’t nothing to be afeered of. They been a-calling me a fool, but looka here. We got us our pot o’ gold."
The skewbald sidled away when the box brushed against him.
"Hold still, hoss," Talley growled as he pushed the box until it sat balanced on the horse’s rump behind the saddle. "We get this done, and it’ll be a soft bed with white linens and smooth whiskey for me, green pastures and sweet water for you"
Apache snorted and jerked his head up.
"What’s the matter with you?" Then Talley heard a bell jingling in the brush.
He twisted around, just as a rifle muzzle spat fire. Talley spun into the horse’s side, clutching the saddle horn to stay upright. Apache reared, pitching wildly against the reins tied around a mesquite limb and bucking the strongbox to the ground. His heavy body shoved the old cowboy into the open. The rifle flared again, and Talley Munroe was dead before the echoes resounded from the cave.
