The Fire of Greed by Bill Yenne

position as far as possible from Stanton’s. On a count of three, they both began firing at the ambushers, while Stanton stood to grab his old army-issue Trapdoor Springfield.
    Without hesitation, he aimed at one of the Apache who had shifted his position to fire his Winchester at Lynch.
    A high-pitched howl told them that Stanton’s .45-caliber, 405-grain slug had found its mark.
    The second attacker, now finding himself alone, decided that his position was no longer tenable, and he ran.
    A second shot from Stanton’s Springfield, fired at a moving and partially obscured target, failed to find its mark.
    Jasper Gardner leapt on his horse and urged it to clamor up the hillside in pursuit.
    The other three watched as the powerful animal lunged upward and was lost from view in the thick ponderosa. They listened as horse and rider crashed through the brush, imagining that the second Apache would have reached his own horse by now. There was the sound of shouts and then of gunfire. There was the crack of a Winchester, the pop of Gardner’s Colt, more shouts, a scream, and then nothing but the afternoon wind in the higher branches of the trees.
    The three men held their breath, staring at the unseen place up on that hillside where they had last heard the shouting. A moment later, perhaps half a whole minute, as their ears began to ring, as so often is the case when a cacophony is superseded by deafening silence, they looked at one another.
    Next, they looked around as the cool chill of apprehension seized them with the fear of an ambush, which can often materialize out of silence.
    From somewhere in the trees, a jay shrieked, and from elsewhere came a return comment in the voice of one of its own.
    A moment later, perhaps half a minute, though it seemed like ten, there was a resumption of noise from where the fourth of their foursome had disappeared.
    There was a shout as though in triumph, as Jasper Gardner reappeared. High above his head, he held a long, streaming, black thing. None of them immediately recognized what it was.
    It was only when he came near that they recognized that he had not one, but two, long, black, bloody scalps.
    * * *
    THE BOUNTY HUNTER AND THE DUTCHMAN HAD HEARD the fusillade in the distance, and each had instinctively gone low in his saddle and touched the stock of the rifle in his scabbard.
    â€œFour miles at least,” Geier whispered. “It sounds closer, but this ist how sounds carry in these mountains.”
    They counted not the shots, but the clusters of the shots, both knowing to delineate the initial volley from the separate cluster that ended the exchange.
    The Dutchman cocked his head as they heard the shouts, but his expression said that he could make nothing of it.
    â€œApache,” Cole commented.
    The Dutchman merely nodded, and after a moment to listen for more shots, they both pulled their long guns and continued, as quietly as possible, with eyes peeled at the surrounding high ground.
    For about an hour, they followed the path through the brush disturbed by the four men, but as they approached the ambush site, they made for higher ground, not wanting to follow the trail to that exact point. There was still a faint trace of burnt gunpowder in the air. The breeze that toyed with the treetops had not much intruded upon the air at ground level.
    They dismounted and continued cautiously. There was no reason to believe that anyone was still about, but they took no chances. They parted company, moving in parallel, separated by about twenty yards, to make themselves two targets, rather than one.
    â€œ
Ach, du lieber!
” Geier exclaimed.
    It was the Dutchman who had found the body of the second Apache.
    He was studying the deceased when Cole arrived.
    â€œI found another over yonder,” Cole said as he approached his companion. “Bullet in the head at some range. Probably a rifle shot.”
    â€œThis man was hit at closer range . . .