Burying Secrets in the Desert

Three men can keep a secret…only if two of them are dead.

The scorching morning sun was beating on Randall Chisholm as he stood on the plateau of Raccoon Ridge overlooking Deadman’s Valley for a good place to hide something. The twin nickel plated pearl handled pistols that he carried on his hips glimmered in the sunlight. The brim of his worn, dusty black Cattleman hat was tilted slightly to block the sun, and his tattered and equally black duster coat flapped gently in the breeze. The light wind felt cool on his glistening skin as it swirled into the valley below and made small dirt devils that were gone just as quickly. A tumbleweed lazily rolled down the ridge from somewhere below him while a squadron of vultures circled overhead, possibly in anticipation of Randall becoming their next meal. Fat chance you buzzards, he thought.

He stood, watching the valley for a few more moments before he stepped away from the edge of the ridge. He clicked twice with his tongue. “Onyx…c’mere boy,” he called.

The chestnut colored Arabian appeared to ignore him for a moment before dutifully raising his head and trotting over to him. “Good boy,” he said and gave the animal a loving pat. Onyx neighed appreciatively. “Not far now.” He turned his head to look back on the way he had come.

Two hazy figures had just appeared over the horizon and were approaching him. They were his brothers, George and Thomas. He could tell it was them even though the desert snakes that were rising up from the hot ground were distorting the image. Their bumbling forms would have been recognizable in a sandstorm. Even when they were toddlers his brothers hadn’t been the sharpest tools in the shed, but Randall’s mother had made him promise to look after them when it became apparent that what she had was more than just a nagging cough.

Randall took one more look over the valley before he heard his brothers approaching. The youngest, Thomas, was already beginning to lengthen his vowels, which let Randall know that both of his brothers had probably been celebrating since they got up this morning.

They certainly had cause to celebrate, no way that Randall could argue that. They had just pulled their biggest job since they split up with the Lincoln County Regulators, after the McSween fire in 1878. They had robbed a bank in Santa Fe, about two days east of where they were now, and they had gotten away with over seventy-five pounds of gold bricks. Each of them was carrying twenty-five pounds in their horse’s saddlebags. Randall knew that while they might be out of immediate danger, the law could still be hot on their trail, not to mention the Santa Fe Ring. It was one of their banks that they had robbed. He wanted to stash the loot somewhere and circle back for it in a few days, and he found a perfect spot that he would remember just below the ridge where he was standing.

“Wee diid iit booys!” Thomas said and fired his black, redwood handled Colt .45 in the air. “Whoo,” he shouted.

“We sho did, hoss,” his brother George parroted. He was about to pull out his pistol and echo that action as well before he saw the look that Randall had on his face.

Randall sighed. Please Lord, give me the strength to not shoot my brothers, he thought. “Shut up you two!” Randall barked. “Get over here.”

They lowered their heads and rode the rest of way to their brother in silence. “Sorry,” they said in tandem when they arrived.

“Forget it,” Randall said. “We just gotta get this loot stashed and get the hell outta Dodge. You understand?” He waited for them to show their understanding, as he so often did.

They nodded.

“Good,” he continued. “There’s a good spot right over that cliff yonder.” He pointed. Their eyes followed. “There’s a tree in the valley. An old, rotted tree. Probly been standin’ for over a thousand years,” he said. He waited again for them to show their understanding.

Again, they nodded.

“Alright. We dig a hole by the tree, mark it with something…a rock or something, but we try and remember it too. In case the rock ain’t there no more. Got it?”

They nodded, but he already knew that there was no way that they would remember where they had hidden the stash. It would be up to him to remember if the rock was gone. Fine by me, he thought.

They had all agreed to split the very substantial take and go their separate ways. Thomas had said that he was going to buy all the whiskey and whores that he possibly could on the numerous occasions they had talked about it beforehand, and his brother George, not having much of an imagination, had just said that he wanted to do that too. All Randall wanted was buy himself a nice pile of land on a river somewhere and tend a crop or two. Maybe settle down with a nice girl and have a couple of kids. The simple life.

He always felt a tinge of guilt at the thought of leaving his brothers to their own devices, even hearing his mother’s voice as she made him promise to look after them at times, but he was not getting any younger and he had to make his way in the world. They would be fine, he thought. They just need to keep their traps shut. As soon as the little voice inside his head said that a trickle of doubt crept into his mind. It was the first time, but it would not be the last.

The tree that Randall had chosen was a short gallop from the ridge, so it only took a few minutes before they were riding up to the tree. It stood tall, easily thirty or forty feet with long, crooked, broken and gnarled branches. The branches had no leaves, and the tree appeared to have been dead for some time. The wood was no longer that deep brown of a healthy pine or spruce in a forest, but a dark gray, almost black. The tree made Randall very uneasy from the moment that he spotted it, and that was exactly the deterrent that he was hoping for whenever some opportunistic sneakthief might be snooping around for unguarded treasures.

The blazing sun was just beginning to turn downward when they started digging. Another squadron of vultures, or perhaps the same one, circled above the tree now. Insects and other small animals chittered in the cacti that surrounded them. They moved quickly, working in shifts of twenty minutes or so, and before the orange and purple hues of sunset had broken the horizon, they had a hole big enough to bury over a hundred pounds of gold.

They all stood around the hole in nearly matching undershirts stained with sweat, whiskey, tobacco, and who knew what else and drinking greedily from a large bison hide canteen that was being passed among them. When each of them had had their fill, they let out a loud belch. George’s had been the most impressive by far as it echoed in the small valley. All the brothers laughed at that. There was another round of water drinking, belching, and laughing before they got started putting the bricks in the hole. Like with digging the hole, they worked together quickly and in less than an hour, they were back on the top of the ridge setting up camp for the night.

Randall exercised his privilege as the older brother to stay at camp and build the fire while the other two were sent out to scrounge up something for supper. He had the fire going strong in no time and when he noticed that he hadn’t heard any gunshots in the distance since his brothers had left, he began to wonder if they were okay. That concern was almost instantly replaced by dreams when he leaned up against a rock by the fire and drifted off to sleep, but in the instant between the time he closed his eyes and the time that he had fallen asleep, a single thought passed through his mind.

Three men can keep a secret…only if two of them are dead.

Randall was unaware of exactly how long he had been asleep, but it couldn’t have been very long because the sun was still peeking over the mountains to the west. The sky to the west was a deep red, almost purple that stretched into the dark skies of night overhead. His brothers had already cleaned the three rabbits they had caught, and they were roasting on makeshift spits over the fire. The aroma was heavenly, and he hadn’t realized how hungry he was until he smelled it.

Randall’s empty stomach grumbled. “When we eatin’ boys?”

The brothers glanced at one another for a moment. “Bout…ten minutes,” George called from where they were huddled around the fire.

The glance between his brothers was only a moment, but it was long enough to make that trickle of doubt from earlier become more of a brook. He wondered for a moment that was every bit as miniscule as the one shared by his brothers if they might have had similar thoughts. Maybe they were even thinking that there would be more to split without me around, he thought. He despised the way that thought made him feel and he did his best to shake it from his mind, but…

“Alright,” Randall said. He got up and stretched with a series of grunts and groans, walked to a nearby cactus, watered it, and joined his brothers at the fire. He knelt in between his two brothers and put an arm around each of them.

They both smiled at him. “We really did it, didn’t we?” Thomas said.

“We sure the hell did,” Randall said and gave both of his brothers a squeeze. Suddenly he let out a loud, rattling fart. The release felt exquisite, and he closed his eyes. “Ahh. Gotta make room boys.”

“Aw, that’s worse than my horse,” Thomas said, covering his face with his under shirt. “My eyes are waterin’”

George quickly covered his face too. “Oh, my Lord!”

Randall had started walking back to his horse to grab a smoke and he was laughing the entire way. They had always laughed at farts, no matter how old they got, unfortunately for their dear mother. When the sneaky gas attack had dissipated, all of the brothers were laughing together and for a brief moment, it was like when they were young again.

Sadly, it would never be that way again.

When the rabbit was cooked, they each grabbed a rabbit and tore into it like they were rabid animals. The conversation around the fire momentarily consisted of nothing more than primitive snarls and grunts of approval. They each followed up the delicious and well-deserved meal with a deep slug of water from the bison hide canteen and a smoke. There is something amazing about the cigarette after a meal that just hits the spot like no other cigarette can.

Randall was the first one to break the relative silence while they were all enjoying that after meal smoke. “You boys ever think about comin’ out west with me? Maybe helping me out with the farm,” he said.

“Nah, we miss ridin’ with Billy and Doc and Charlie,” Thomas said. “We was always gettin’ drunk and gettin’ into fights. It was fun…ridin’ from place to place…never knowin where we was gonna end up.” He held up what was probably his third whiskey in a toast.

“Yee haw!” George said and held up what was his fifth whiskey in reply.

Randall held up his first. “Well, you boys will know where to find me,” he said. “I’m gonna hit the sack. We better skin outta here at first light. You boys hear me?”

They both gave him a drunken wave of acknowledgement. Randall shook his head and grabbed his bedroll off his horse, but for the second time that day, a single thought went through his mind just before he fell asleep.

Three men can keep a secret…only if two of them are dead.

Even if he was unable to admit it to himself during waking hours, deep down he was afraid that his brothers would pose certain risks to his freedom being on their own. He had to face facts. They both liked the drink a little too much, Randall wondered on more than one occasion. Eventually that stuff catches up with you and you get sloppy. When you get sloppy you get caught. If they get caught, what would they do? Would they give him up to save their own skins? Would they simply betray him to take his share?

Randall would never truly know what caused him to do what he did next, but his subconscious thoughts must have risen to the surface while he slept because from the moment he awoke, he knew what he had to do. His eyes opened and for the final time, that single, malignant thought flashed in his mind. Three men can keep a secret…only if two of them are dead. Once the creek of doubt in Randall’s mind had opened into a rushing river, it took him only moments to come to his decision, as it so often does in these situations. I have no choice, he thought. If they get caught, and they will, they’ll sing like canaries.

Randall stood in between where his brothers slept peacefully and watched them for a moment. Then, he slit their throats quietly in the night while they slept, like the sneakthief with which he had been so earlier concerned. Life was so often amusing that way. Their faces were frozen in silent, drowning screams of terror just as the first morning rays were breaking the horizon. He winced, feeling nauseated by the gurgling sound they made as they slowly expired.

Randall spent most of the day digging up the gold, much harder with only one person, and moving the gold to the saddlebags on the horses. At several points during the task, he stopped to take a drink from the bison hide canteen and had to fight back tears over what he had done. Each time, he rationalized that it was what he had to do and got back to work.

He split the gold evenly among the three horses and decided that he would just tie the horses in a line and bring them to the next town. From there, he could catch a train headed west. By the time he was done with the gold he briefly considered just leaving his brothers for the buzzards, but he decided that that wouldn’t be right and buried them in the hole. Mother would never approve, he thought. Like she would have approved you killing them? Then he pushed them into the hole and covered them with earth. He said a short prayer over the grave before he made camp on the ridge for the second night.

Perhaps it was guilt over the betrayal of his brothers, and his mother for that matter, or perhaps it was plain and simple fear of getting his precious gold stolen, but either way, the result was the same. Randall didn’t sleep a wink that night. The images of horror on the faces of his brothers as he stole their lives haunted his dreams. They seemed to plead with him, to ask him…why?

Regardless of the nightmares and his fears of thieves preying on his gold in the night, the night went on without incident and by first light he was heading toward town. He made it there in a surprisingly short amount of time and he was able to catch the 3:10 to Yuma after selling the horses.

He never returned to Deadman’s Valley again.

A little more than a year later, Randall’s travels brought him much farther east than he had ever been. He had largely put the mess in the desert behind him, aside from the occasional nightmare, and he found a quiet cottage on Crystal Creek in Pennsylvania territory. It was a gorgeous twelve acre plot of land with the creek running right through its heart. The largest part of the land was a wide open space where he could grow a few crops like corn, wheat, or barley throughout the year and the rest was lush forests of spruce trees. There were no people for miles. It was perfect.

He had just enjoyed a wonderful first meal in his new house and was just sitting down in a chair by the fire when he heard something. A slow creak, like someone was opening a door down the hall. Who would be in my house? Bandits maybe, he thought. His heart was galloping in his chest. He heard something else too, but it was very low. It was a steady…dragging sound. Goose pimples were forming on his flesh. His palms were getting sweaty. It seemed to be getting closer. He looked around for his revolver. His heart was in his throat. Just before the sound had gotten close enough to come around the corner, there was another sound. This sound chilled him to his very bones and at once he knew that the revolver would be useless.

“Randy,” the voice called. It was a voice that Randall would recognize anywhere, even with its raspy, deteriorated quality. “How could you do that to your brothers? How could you do that to my babies?”

The cottage really was perfect. Nobody ever heard Randall’s screams.