Lost Banshee Mine

by Jackson Lowry

  But the banshee call set his spine and firmed his resolve. Nobody scared him away. And if it was an animal, its skin would sell for a fortune back East. There had never been anything like it before.

  He led the stallion out. The horse balked at the now slow rainfall, but by the time they made their way to the canyon floor with its broad, shallow, fast-running stream, the rain had faded into a drizzle. Riding back to the mouth of the canyon set off the banshee. It positively cackled in triumph at running him off. Without hesitation England Dan wheeled the horse about and retraced his course, going deeper into the canyon. He had gotten lost, so it hardly mattered if he became even more turned around if he found the cause of the spooky cooee.

  Riding slowly, he scouted both walls of the canyon. On his left the rock rose at a steep angle to a mesa. Here and there abandoned mines showed gaping black mouths. Tailings dribbled down the side of the hill like tongues sticking out. England Dan had seen this too often to find any of it as an ill omen. The far side of the canyon soared almost vertically. Getting to the ridge running along that wall required either clever rock climbing or finding a trail wide enough to accommodate a horse. Riding to the rim would have been out of the question. The thought of hiking up such a trail, coaxing Whirlwind to keep moving and not panicking, made England Dan discard the idea of scaling the wall. He kept riding. The only way out had to be ahead.

  The mines became fewer, but the tailings spewed out in longer falls, showing their ore had been more profitable. From the look, they had been abandoned within the last year. He wished his map had led here. Any of these mines was accessible and capable of being restarted—if any gold remained.

  He jerked upright when the banshee cry sounded again. The horse tried to buck. Rather than fight Whirlwind, he dropped to the ground and clung to the reins. The mocking shrieks came from a mine uphill from where he listened. The way the horse’s ears twitched proved he wasn’t being deceived about the direction.

  It took some coaxing to get the stallion onto an old double-rutted road leading to the mine almost at the top of the sloping side. England Dan fastened the reins to a signpost with a weather-beaten sign declaring this to be the Top Hat Mine. The horse tugged and tried to get away, but the post proved strong enough to hold him. When he saw the horse wasn’t going to pull free, he drew his six-shooter and began trudging up the hundred yards of trail to the mine.

  “Who’s in there?” he shouted at the mouth of the mine. It was time to put the banshee claim to the test. Finding out what had caused the wailing drove away any fear that Big Owl might actually exist. All he heard was his question echoing away. A quick search of the area revealed nothing of note. The heavy rain wiped out any chance of finding footprints around the mine.

  Footprints or hoofprints?

  “What’s Big Owl’s track look like?” he said aloud. He mentally kicked himself for thinking the Indian ogre was real. Something had made the hideous screeches, but the supernatural wasn’t possible. Ghosts and leprechauns and fairies didn’t exist, no matter what his upbringing said. His mother had gone into the garden every morning to watch for fairies. When he was younger, he had accompanied her, but what she saw was always just beyond his sight.

  His disbelief in such things continued to bring woe onto him during his years at Sandhurst, where dogma tended toward belief in the divine right of kings more than the wee folk. For him, the two beliefs were the same.

  Six-shooter out, he pointed it into the mine. If he had enough ammo, a few shots into the dark shaft might produce answers. If whoever was trying to spook him dodged the bullets, he’d find out the truth fast. Only three rounds left made him hunt for other ways of flushing out anyone in the mine. If they were even in the mine.

  A more thorough search around the mine convinced him that whoever—whatever—made the noise had taken refuge inside rather than hiding outside. No trace of boot prints on either side of the mine opening was apparent, but scuff marks just inside hinted at someone entering. He reared back and looked to the top of the slope. From the way the rocks curled about, a mesa stretched out of sight. With enough time Big Owl could have scrambled all the way to the top, but England Dan felt he would have spotted him—it.

  He shook himself. Keeping his thoughts fixed on finding the man crying, he stepped into the mine. Instinct took over. He reached up to a ledge just inside the mine and found a mostly melted miner’s candle and a tin of lucifers. With practiced ease, he lit the candle and held it in front of him to cast dancing shadows along the walls and floor. He stuffed the tin of lucifers into his pocket.

  “I’m coming in. Give up and you won’t get hurt. I’m sick of you trying to scare me.” England Dan edged forward, half bent over. The ceiling hadn’t been cut out for a man his height. Only gnomes would have been comfortable in here. The walls were rough-hewn, but what he noticed was the lack of rails on the floor. Getting ore out from the depths of the mine was always a chore, but rolling it out sped up recovery of gold. Whoever had dug this mine relied on dragging bags of ore out rather than rolling them.

  He looked harder at the floor. A mule pulling a sledge made sense. If so, he wanted to avoid stepping in any piles left by an animal.

  Every few yards he stopped and listened closely. Sometimes a mine creaked. This one was solid. He pressed his ear against a wall, not sure what he expected to hear. Another of the legends miners told was of tommy-knockers, the ghosts of dead men warning the living of impending doom. He felt nothing but contempt for such a notion. Anyone foolish enough to work in a mine should know the danger.

  The candle dripped wax around his fingers. He slid his six-shooter back into the holster and switched hands. As he held the candle stub in his right hand, he felt the ground shake. A sudden gust of fetid air snuffed out the candle. He shied back in surprise, landed flat on his butt and slid fast into a dark pit. As he fell, the banshee wailed again.

  Then he hit the bottom of the abyss.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  HE HAD ALWAYS wondered if being hanged was painful. Lars Jensen considered that to be his fate. In spite of all the gunfights he had been in, he never thought a bullet in the gut was the way he’d check out. The law hunted him all the time. But they wanted him to stand trial for a few crimes. His brother, Poke, was a constant threat. Fast with his gun and faster to anger, though, Poke was as likely to pistol-whip him as shoot him.

  “Shot from behind. Figgers.” He coughed and spat blood. Jensen took in a slow breath and choked again. If the bullet had gone through a lung he was a goner. Forcing himself to sit up, he probed his wound.

  The hole in his chest showed the bullet had entered his back and sailed on through his body. That was good. He had no way of digging around to get the bullet out if it had stayed inside. But his lung. Jensen pressed down on the oozing hole until his fingers were coated with his own blood. Then he examined his bloody fingers only an inch or two from his eyes. The world didn’t focus right, but after careful study, he saw that only bright red stained his hand.

  “No pink. No foam.” He sank back to the ground. The bullet hadn’t punctured his lung. For all the pain hammering away at his brain, he was in pretty good shape. Other things inside had been torn up, but nothing serious enough that he’d just lie back and let death take him.

  Jensen worked to open his vest and shirt. He used his knife to cut off a long strip of his shirt and pressed down hard over the exit wound. The pain hit him like a sledgehammer. Only iron will kept him from passing out. Working to doctor himself took longer than he expected, but the front wound was stanched. The back wound proved harder because of the way he had to twist himself around. Eventually he had a bandage secured around his body and both wounds sealed off.

  Whether he slept or passed out hardly mattered. When he came to his senses, it was well past sundown. The exact time wasn’t important, but from the stars, he guessed it was midnight. Crawling to the stream, he drank what he could. Wh
en he woke up again, he thanked his lucky stars that he hadn’t drowned. His face rested on a rock inches away from the running water. He pushed away and found a grassy area where he slept until sunset. He awoke feeling better. Movement hurt like fire in his veins, and where once he could whip his weight in wildcats, a kitten or two would have had no trouble beating him now.

  He worked out what had happened, and it galled him. Anger built and he propped himself against a tree, plotting his revenge.

  “You’re a dead man, Cooley. As if I hadn’t planned to kill you, anyway, but now? Dead. And the girl. I’ll string you both up and let the wolves rip the flesh from your living bodies. I’ll watch every minute and to hell with the map.”

  When those words escaped his lips, a lance of cold drove into his heart. Poke wanted the map as bad as he’d ever wanted anything. Giving himself up and being caged in the Yuma Penitentiary had been bad, but he and Barton Beeman had ridden together for close to a year. That was as long as any partnership had lasted. Lars was family, and Poke expected the blood tie to be forever—or until he ended it. But having a partner to rely on was different for him, more than blood, more than something religious. Lars wondered if his brother knew who’d killed Beeman. If he did, there was a man who would know the frightful meaning of torture that would turn an Apache’s stomach.

  He drifted off as rain began to fall. The downpour stopped eventually, and he woke up, soaked to the skin but feeling better. Weak but steady on his feet, he went to his horse and dragged himself into the saddle. There wasn’t any reason to see if Cooley had left a trail. Time, wind and rain worked to erase it. Barely hanging on, he turned his horse toward Oasis. The miner returned there over and over. If Lars had a chance of finding him and the map, the town gave the best odds. More than that, there must be a doctor who could be sure he got patched up right.

  Jensen fell from the horse once on his way back to Oasis. It shook him up but enough strength remained for him to get to his feet. Resolve hardened. Coming this far as hurt as he was counted for something. He stood on a rock and flopped into the saddle. This time he tied himself on and somehow got back to town.

  Everyone who saw him avoided him like he was a leper. That suited Jensen just fine. Taking care of himself mattered. It took longer than he thought to find the doctor’s office. He cut the rope around his waist and tumbled to the ground, staring up into the sky.

  “Mister, you look like you’re in a bad way. You want some help?”

  “You the sawbones?” The world swam around. The man had a kindly look, as if he fixed up wounded men.

  “He left town. Went to Bisbee. Everybody’s going there because of the copper strike.” The man shook his head sadly. “They’re swapping one yellow metal for another, and if you ask me, gold’s the better one to hunt. You ever see how they pull copper ore from the ground? They dig a huge pit and—”

  “I’ve been shot. There’s no way I can get to Bisbee. Who’s able to tend me? A midwife? You must have one around.”

  “Well, sir, I’m the vet. Been rummaging through the doctor’s surgery to see if he left behind anything I can use. Horses and cattle aren’t much different than people, you know.”

  “Fix me up.” Jensen reached for his six-shooter but left the iron in its holster. Killing this fool now doomed him if the gunshot was as bad as it felt inside. There was plenty of time to shoot him after he worked on Lars.

  With that comforting thought, Jensen hardly groaned as the veterinarian got an arm around him and heaved him upright.

  “Let’s get you inside. I never used that operating table. Looked inconvenient for big animals. Working on horses is my specialty, and getting one to lay down on a table’s silly, don’t you think?”

  Jensen restrained himself and let the vet ramble on as he worked. He passed out once or twice but finally focused on the man as he washed blood off his hands.

  “You’ve got an iron constitution, mister. That, I’ll give you. I went into the wound and closed off a couple arteries leaking to beat the band. Drained the fluid inside so you won’t puff up and—”

  “Shut up.” Jensen tested the limits of motion in his arm. It’d be a while before he was back to speed in clearing leather. Holding his hand out and seeing how it shook told him he had better wait on using his six-shooter at all.

  “The shakes’ll go away soon enough. They did with that other fellow. Maybe I ought to hang out my shingle. Cows and cowboys. Work on both people and animals. That’s the way to make a better living since everyone’s so eager to leave for Bisbee.”

  “You stitched up somebody else? Here?” Jensen looked around. The vet had cleaned up the place if there’d been another patient here.

  “Naw, went over to Madam Morgan’s. She had a fellow in a back room recuperating.”

  “One of the whores shoot him?”

  “He didn’t look the sort to cavort with the likes of Madam Morgan’s ladies of the night. This fellow was a lawman.”

  A lawman? There was no lawman in Oasis anymore, thanks to him. But . . . could it be? “A deputy marshal?” Dizziness hit him like an ax handle between the eyes. “Alberto Gonzales by name?”

  “Might have been. Madam Morgan never told me what to call him, but he had a badge. A badge and a couple holes in his chest.”

  “And a head wound?”

  “Only a scratch. Head wounds bleed like the devil. Whoever took him to Madam Morgan had cleaned him up a mite, and he still looked a fright. Why, when I first saw him, I thought he was a goner. Just like you.”

  “But both of us are alive and kicking.”

  “Kicking like a newborn colt, yes, sir. Now, I have to get out to the Lamont spread. Jake’s got one sick heifer. From the sound of it, he might have a case of Texas fever on his hands.”

  “Splenic fever,” Jensen said. “They call it splenic fever down Texas way.”

  “I’m sure their drovers do that very thing. Sounds bad having a disease named after your home state. You can stay here, I reckon. The table’s not too comfortable, but it’s better than sleeping in the livery. You want me to check on you when I get back to town? It’d be tomorrow.”

  Jensen waved him away and sagged onto the operating table. His run of bad luck refused to stop. Getting back-shot was one thing, but finding that the deputy from over in Mesilla was still alive almost did him in. He had been absolutely certain he’d killed him. He played it back over and over again in his head. Sighting down the rifle barrel, the squeeze and report, the way the deputy jerked and flopped about. Riding up and putting another round in him before going after the girl on the mule. It was all so vivid and yet had turned into a dream. Gonzales was still alive.

  “If the vet is to be believed,” Jensen grunted. Moaning from pain, he got off the table and made certain his six-gun was loaded. The way his hands shook warned him that even shooting the deputy in the back was risky.

  Never before had he felt so awkward. Even the first man he’d killed had not made him so apprehensive.

  Jensen left the doctor’s surgery and pulled himself onto the patiently waiting horse. Walking any distance still lay beyond his strength.

  Poke had gone off somewhere, but when they finally met up he’d expect to see the map. Crazy ideas flashed through Jensen’s head. His brother had no idea what the map looked like. A fake map would serve the same purpose—if that purpose was to keep breathing. Poke couldn’t expect him to accompany him to find the cavalry payroll, not all shot up like he was. That gave him a decent head start when the map proved to be a forgery.

  Jensen shook all over when he realized he was in no condition to make the forgery. Worse, his brother need only stare into his eyes to know it was fake. Poke had been like that with him since they were children. He’d never been able to lie and, after a while, had given up even trying. Telling the truth and taking the consequences had been easier.

  Up till now. Po
ke had spent time in the penitentiary and had lost the stolen payroll and his partner. Speaking the truth now would make the vet’s efforts to patch him up go for nothing.

  He had no idea where Cooley and the girl had gone after he’d been shot in the back. That girl was a feisty one, but he had ignored any threat she posed. Making that mistake a second time wasn’t in the cards.

  “The whorehouse,” he muttered. “Where else would she go?”

  The trail was cold except for Madam Morgan’s house of ill repute. Riding slowly, trying not to let the occasional dizziness compromise his seat astride the horse, he made his way down Oasis’ main street. He kept as sharp a lookout as he could for the deputy but got to his destination without running into him.

  He had bulled his way into the cathouse before. A john and the girl who looked exactly like Mandy had died the first time. The second time it had been necessary to kill the bouncer. Gus, the madam had called him. Neither time had he caught Cooley.

  “The side door,” he said softly. “He comes and goes that way so he can use the back stairs.”

  Jensen rode to the small stable behind the house, dismounted and found a decent place to sit in the shade and watch the comings and goings. He pulled the Winchester from its sheath and laid it across his knees. If he got into a gunfight, he wanted as much firepower as possible.

  The warmth wrapped itself around him like a blanket. He began drifting off to sleep, only to come awake with a jerk when he heard voices. The rifle pressed into his shoulder, but he saw only the madam’s arm poking around the side of the building. He lowered the rifle, then hoisted it again when a man came to the end of the porch and leaned against the railing.

  Alberto Gonzales!

  Jensen’s hands shook so hard, his sight picture bobbed around. He had to make the first shot count and couldn’t do it. Lowering his rifle, he got to his feet and drew his six-shooter. On cat’s feet, he went to the side of the house, then edged closer to the front porch. A quick look around between the railing supports gave him the entire picture. Madam Morgan sat between him and the deputy. Gonzales presented only a booted foot as a target, his legs stretched out in front of him.