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man who was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Cole explained, again shying away from mention of the railroad. “They had no grudge, didn’t even know him. He was unarmed. That happens in robberies. There were originally four robbers. These two killed their partners. One got it in the back of the head at close range. The other was shot in the back as he ran.”
    He watched the German shake his head in anger.
    â€œDo you have provisions for the mountains?”
    â€œSome,” Cole said. “I’ll be buying more in the morning.”
    â€œI will meet you at the general store at precisely eight o’clock,” the Dutchman said. “I will lead you.”
    â€œI thought you said you’d never go back.”
    â€œ
Nein
, never,” the Dutchman said emphatically. “Not the
entire
way, but there are many miles between here and there.”

Chapter 8

    â€œWE SURE ARE APPRECIATIVE THAT YOU FELLAHS LET US ride with you,” Jasper Gardner said as the four men rode though the New Mexico mountains.
    â€œLike I told you yesterday,” Ben Muriday repeated. “There’s more than enough to make every man of us rich beyond measure, but it ain’t worth a damned nickel if you got an Apache bullet in you. Four men are a better match for the Chiricahua than two.”
    â€œStill mighty generous,” Gardner added. “You figure that the Dutchman was right in saying that it’s a four-day ride?”
    â€œI reckon. He’s been there. From what I know about these mountains, four days is pretty much right. Unless we gets ourself turned around and lost up in there.”
    â€œWhat are the odds of that happening?” Gardner asked, trying to conceal a tone of alarm. “I thought you
knew
these mountains.”
    â€œBeen a lot in these mountains,” Muriday replied with confidence. “As long as we keep a south-by-southeast heading, like the Dutchman said, long as we keep an eye out for the Dutchman’s landmarks, we don’t have nothing to worry about. Only reason that Dearing’s find ain’t been found again is that it’s so far back that nobody’s gonna chance onto it. Like the Dutchman hisself says, it ain’t
hidden
, it’s just in a place where nobody goes.”
    â€œUnless he’s goin’
to
it,” his partner, Simon Lynch, said and nodded, finishing Muriday’s thought.
    Jasper Gardner fought the premature temptation to visualize the promised mountain ravine filled with nuggets the size of turkey eggs, but it was painful to deny his imagination the opportunity to envision himself presenting a bundle of these at an assay office.
    Gardner was one of those men about whom they say that you should count your fingers after shaking his hand. Some people lie to their mothers. Some people steal from their mothers. Then, there is Jasper Gardner. When he was seventeen, he stole the deed to his mother’s house and sold it to a carpetbagger. He took the money, headed west, and never looked back.
    As time went on, Gardner found a kindred spirit in the equally unscrupulous Gabe Stanton. Recognizing a symbiosis, the two men realized they could accomplish much by joining forces. Over time, they had formed a loose affiliation of men one might describe as a gang. They alternated between petty theft and hiring themselves out as enforcers. They had worked for cattlemen in Kansas and even for a bank down in Oklahoma. They came west during the railroad wars in Colorado and found that there was ready employment for men of their trade.
    Gardner and Stanton had eventually decided that there was adventure to be had in Lincoln County. However, as they were heading south into New Mexico with two of their regular followers, an unprecedented opportunity had fallen into their laps.
    On the first night after they had exercised this opportunity and had robbed the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe baggage car, they made camp and