Wellspring (Paskagankee, Book 3) Read Online Free

made off with their
money.
    This
time the conversation was brief, and when Juan returned, he said simply, “If
you drink the liquid, you will live forever.” He refused to meet Jackson’s eyes
and stood shuffling his feet uncomfortably in the dusty South American night.
    Jackson
Healy smiled. He had come to this desolate spot in the wilds of Peru in search
of riches, and would leave with so much more.
    ***
    The slaughter was sudden,
efficient, and brutal. Jackson instructed Juan to take the tube containing the
golden gel-like liquid from the hands of the shaman priest. He accepted it from
the boy and walked over to his burro, placing it into the saddlebag already
weighted down with the golden disk. Then he strode back to his position in
front of the fire, which had begun to wane but was still burning brighter than
any campfire he had ever seen.
    The
Peruvian tribesmen and the American outlaws faced each other, with Juan
standing on the side of the gringos only because he had been forced there. The
night breezes were humid and carried on them the promise of a coming storm. Off
in the distance, thunder rumbled through the heavy air. The hint of a
flickering glow appeared over the horizon, winking once, twice, three times,
and then disappearing like the end of a nightmare.
    Without
warning Jackson turned and nodded to the Krupp brothers. The three men raised
their Colt revolvers in perfect unison and began firing, and Peruvian tribesmen
began falling, and within seconds it was over, the sound of the dying men’s
moans barely discernible over the screams of the young boy the outlaws had
hired as their guide. Juan stood off to the side, rooted to the spot in shock
and disbelief, staring with wide, frightened eyes and screaming into the muggy
night.
    And
then Jackson turned his pistol on Juan and fired.
    And the
screaming stopped.
    ***
    The smell of gunpowder hung in
the air as the three outlaws prepared to flee. Jackson Healy surveyed the
devastation, the fallen bodies littering the flat plain in front of Puerta de
Hayu Marka like a child’s dolls after a tantrum. Wesley Krupp asked, “How long
d’ya suppose it’ll be before someone finds this mess?”
    Jackson
shrugged. “Couple of days. The kid’s ma and pa will wait for him to come home
tomorrow, and when he don’t, they’ll get a search party together and head out
here at first light the next day.”
    “So
we’ll have about a day-and-a-half head start on the locals. That ain’t much.
We’ll have to ride non-stop for the next few days.”
    “One of
us will,” Jackson agreed, and then he drew his Colt again and gut-shot Wesley
Krupp, then turned and fired on Amos almost before Wesley had hit the ground.
Amos was so stunned he never even reached for his gun.
    “Sorry
about that,” Jackson said agreeably, aiming his voice in the direction of his
fallen partners. “It’s nothin’ personal, but you fellas have outlived your
usefulness. Know what I mean?”
    He
waited for an answer, but none was forthcoming. Pained gasps, punctuated by the
occasional shocked curse, seemed to be the limit of the Krupp brothers’ current
vocabulary.
    Jackson
shrugged, unsurprised. He gathered the reins of the four burros into one hand
and began walking away from the carnage in what he hoped was the direction of
Puno. He had no intention of entering the village—to do so would be the
height of stupidity, given what he had just done to the twelve year old former
resident of the place—but intended to skirt it to the west, then head
north toward the good old U.S. of A.
    Three
of the burros he would release into the wild shortly, and the fourth—the
one carrying the saddlebag containing a fortune in pure gold, not to mention
the fountain of youth—would transport Jackson Healy until he could steal
a horse to use to escape South America and move on to his suddenly limitless
future.
    As he departed,
leaving in his wake bodies and blood and devastation, he could hear the
muttered