Luke's Gold by Charles G. West Page A

of Sioux and Cheyenne. Their concern was not great, however, for they were fairly confident that, with two Winchester repeating rifles, they could hold their own against a sizable war party.
    â€œAt the pace we’re goin’,” Luke speculated, “we oughta make Fort Ellis in six or more days.”
    Cade, busily building a fire at that moment, only nodded in reply. This was new country to him, so whatever Luke said, he had no choice but to accept. He was not inclined to be concerned with it at any rate. He was happy to be riding west toward the high mountains, free of bawling cattle and the dusty trail they left behind them. He gave very little thought to the prospect of finding the lost packs of gold dust Luke had hidden. He had never owned anything of value that did not come from hard work, so it was difficult to believe there would be riches waiting for him to simply come and fish them from the river. That’s the way things had been for him since childhood.
    Even as a small boy, he had always been good with horses, a trait passed down from his father. Cade had worshiped his father, and strove to walk in his footsteps from the time he stood on his own two feet. There was not a better man in Pueblo, Colorado Territory, than John Hunter, but that was not enough to save him from stopping a bank robber’s bullet in an unsuccessful robbery of Pueblo’s only bank. John Hunter had just withdrawn money from the bank to buy some supplies. It was not a large sum of money, but John refused to part with it when accosted by one of the robbers as they burst into the bank with guns drawn. Infuriated by the man’s lack of fear, the outlaw shot him down with his revolver. The bank robbery was foiled when the sheriff and his deputy ambushed the pair of gunmen as they fled from the bank.
    Lodged in the jail, the two outlaws awaited trial. That event was never to occur, however, for both men were shot through the bars of the one window in their second-floor cell by an unknown assailant. Due to the fact that the back wall of the jail was built adjacent to the rear wall of the sheriff’s house, with barely two feet of space between the two, there was much speculation as to the possibility of a grown man being able to climb up in such a cramped space. Some argued that it would require a smaller person, maybe like Hunter’s ten-year-old son to accomplish it. Others countered that it was hardly likely that Ada Hunter’s grieving son had the nerve to do such a thing, even if he was capable of shinnying up between the two buildings, pulling up Hunter’s nine-and-a-half-pound Henry rifle. At any rate, it was never determined for sure who the killer was. The boy never volunteered any information on the matter, and as far as his mother knew, he was asleep in his room that fateful night. Most folks, including the sheriff, figured the executions were deserved, and considered it a closed book.
    Two years after his father’s death, Cade’s mother married again, this time to an attorney named Samuel Whitsel, and moved to his house in town. Young Cade never cared for the union. Samuel Whitsel was certainly taken by the widow Hunter, but he was not keen on the acquisition of a twelve-year-old son, especially one who many citizens of the town suspected of cold-blooded murder. Repulsed by the sight of his mother’s doting upon the slick, nattily dressed lawyer, Cade avoided contact with his stepfather, spending the majority of his time out at the ranch with the horses. He stuck it out for two more years until Whitsel decided to sell the Hunter ranch and all the stock. When the horses left, so did Cade. The only possession left to him was old Billy and his saddle. The farewell to his mother was brief with little emotion, it being apparent to the fourteen-year-old boy that the parting made things easier for her new marriage. Nothing came easily to him after that, so it was just natural for him to expect