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inventoried their spoils. The net of $9,000 was more than any of the four men had ever seen in one place.
    One of the two new men, who had joined the Gardner-Stanton gang up in Colorado, calculated that when split four ways, there would be $2,250 for each of them.
    Gardner disagreed. He disagreed more with the man’s assumptions than with his arithmetic—and put a bullet into the skull of this man who had ridden with him faithfully for two years.
    Looking at the expressions on the faces of Gardner and Stanton, the other man ran, sprinting into the darkness. The man may have thought of his having invested two years of his life as part of the Gardner-Stanton gang. He probably thought of the irony of running through the desert dodging bullets fired by men with whom he felt he’d formed a common bond. He certainly felt the .45-caliber slug tear into his shoulder.
    Knocked off balance, he dropped to his knee, writhing with searing pain. Despite this, he staggered to his feet and continued running. He may have felt the second bullet strike him, but he did not feel the third.
    The Gardner-Stanton gang, its numbers now trimmed merely to its namesakes, broke camp before the bodies were cold and continued their dash toward the Rio Grande, eyes peeled for the expected posse. The cloud of dust they logically anticipated to see boiling up behind two dozen mounted riders never materialized. Nor were they intercepted as they crossed the Rio Grande and the well-traveled wagon roads that ran along its banks.
    As they turned to look back at the Rio Grande Valley one last time, Gardner and Stanton finally dared to congratulate each other on having shaken the posse. All they saw, as they looked down from their perch in the Magdalenas was a single lone rider in the far distance, making his way up the trail from Alamillo.
    Had they any doubt that Lady Luck was riding sidesaddle on their spare horse, they had only to wait for their chance encounter with Muriday and Lynch in the cantina in Santa Rita. For the second time in a week, an unprecedented opportunity had fallen into their laps.
    What does a man do when he has just escaped into secure anonymity with more money than he has ever seen in his life—and he is suddenly offered
further
riches beyond his wildest imagination?
    Greed is the fuel that feeds the fire of greed.
    * * *
    BLADEN COLE BEGAN THE FOURTH FULL DAY OF HIS PURSUIT WITH a much later start than he would have liked. The Dutchman had arrived at their rendezvous precisely on time, but the shopkeeper from whom the necessary supplies would be purchased was late to arrive at his shop. After all those days, it bothered Cole immensely that the thieves still managed to maintain a half-day lead, and this bother was not relieved by what he considered to be a mid-morning start.
    The Dutchman was an ideal traveling companion. He was efficient, knowledgeable, and, like Cole, he was used to riding alone. It was afternoon before any meaningful conversation passed between the two men.
    â€œFew white men make it a habit to travel in these mountains,” the Dutchman replied when Cole made a comment about the absence of well-used trails. “If you think like an animal, the trails are easy to see.”
    â€œNow and then, I can see evidence of our friends having passed this way,” Cole said. “But they are harder to track here than they were in the desert.”
    â€œSee that mountain?” Geier asked, pointing to a prominent snowcapped mountain in the distance. “I told your friends to follow the ridgeline and keep this mountain dead ahead for three days. They will then come to red sandstone cliffs that mark a canyon. They will follow the water in this red rock canyon upstream.”
    â€œI reckon you know a lot about where to find the gold in these parts,” Cole observed. “But I’m not going to ask, because I know you’ll have nothing to say on that topic.”
    â€œ
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