Rope Burn

by William W. Johnstone; J. A. Johnstone

  “He probably would if he thought he could get away with it. But Major Sughrue wouldn’t stand for that. His wife always made sure we had a little church service in the mess hall. We don’t do that anymore, but the major still says no work on Sunday except for essential duties.” Costello rolled over and added over his shoulder, “Now shut up and let the rest of us sleep.”

  Ace and Chance tried to doze off again, but they still hurt too much for sleep to come easily. They sat up and leaned against the wall, talking in whispers.

  “Have you thought of any way we can get out of here?” Chance asked.

  “Not yet. How about you?”

  “Not a blasted thing. You agree, though, that we ought to try to escape if we can.”

  Ace sighed. “Yeah. We can’t hope for any help from somewhere else. I don’t like the idea of being a fugitive, but if we can get away, maybe we can locate some authorities who’ll actually listen and get to the bottom of what’s happening here.”

  “Where do you plan on finding someone like that?”

  “Smoke is friends with the governor of Colorado. He’s bound to know somebody in Washington.”

  “Smoke . . .” Chance repeated. Smoke Jensen, the famous gunfighter and now a highly successful and respected rancher, was their uncle, and they had fought side by side with him against various enemies, numerous times in the past. “You’re right. If we can ever get to a telegraph and get in touch with Smoke, Olsen’s liable to feel like all hell’s blown up in his face.” That prospect made a grin stretch across Chance’s face, and Ace liked the idea, too.

  The guards didn’t bring breakfast, but at midday, after all the prisoners were awake, they showed up with fried chicken, potatoes, greens, canned tomatoes, and buttermilk. Simple fare, but a veritable feast compared to what the prisoners had been eating. They were allowed to sit outside against the guardhouse wall while they enjoyed the food.

  “Don’t wolf it down,” Costello advised the Jensen brothers. “You’ll regret it later if you do.”

  “We’ve been hungry before,” Ace told him.

  “Although maybe never this hungry and tired,” Chance added.

  “And sore.”

  “But we know what you’re talking about,” Chance said as he gnawed another bit of meat off a chicken bone.

  When the meal was over, a soldier Ace hadn’t seen before appeared at the guardhouse. He was older than most of the troopers, somewhere in his thirties, and wore a pair of spectacles perched on his hawklike nose.

  “That’s Lieutenant Driscoll,” Costello told Ace and Chance. “The post surgeon.”

  One of the guards said, “All right, anybody who needs medical attention, come on up and we’ll see whether you need to go to the infirmary with the lieutenant. But no shamming. You know what’ll happen if you say you’re sick or hurt and there’s nothin’ wrong with you.”

  Chance leaned over to Costello and whispered, “What happens in that case?”

  “Forty-eight hours in the box.”

  Ace didn’t know what the box was, but it didn’t sound like anything good.

  “Unless you’re in really bad shape, you don’t want that quack doctoring you anyway,” Costello added.

  The Jensen brothers probably would have left it at that and not requested any medical attention, but then both of them caught sight of red hair flashing in the sun behind Lieutenant Driscoll.

  Chance instantly shot to his feet.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “Blast it, Chance,” Ace said under his breath. He reached for his brother’s arm but was too late. Chance was already striding forward.

  Chance held out his hands so that the blisters on his palms were visible. “How about these, Doc?” he asked. “Is this bad enough to need your attention?” Then, as if noticing Evelyn for the first time, he smiled and went on, “Hello, Miss Sughrue. I didn’t see you there.”

  Several guards had lifted their rifles to their shoulders and aimed them at Chance as he walked toward Evelyn and Lieutenant Driscoll. The one who’d been giving the orders barked, “Hold it right there! You ask permission before you do anything like that, prisoner.”

  “But you told us to come up,” Chance protested. “How do I know whether I need to go to the infirmary unless the doc takes a look at me?”

  Evelyn stepped around Driscoll and said, “It’s all right, Private. With all you guards around, I don’t think these men are going to try anything. Lieutenant, would you take a look at this man’s hands?”

  “Certainly,” Driscoll said. He stepped forward, took hold of Chance’s wrists, and studied the young man’s palms. After only a few seconds of cursory examination, he dropped Chance’s hands and said, “Just typical blisters. I see them all the time. These are already starting to heal.”

  The spokesman for the guards glared at Chance. “I warned you, mister—”

  “This man is new,” Evelyn said. “I don’t believe he should be punished for not knowing exactly how things are done here at Fort Gila.”

  “But I told them—” The trooper stopped short, grimaced slightly, and took a breath. “Yes, miss, that’s fine.” He jerked the barrel of his rifle at Chance. “You there, consider yourself lucky Miss Sughrue spoke up for you. Now go back and sit down with the others.”

  Chance did so, but not before smiling at Evelyn Sughrue again. The smile she gave him in return was weak and tentative, but it was there, Ace noted.

  When Chance sank down crosslegged on the ground beside him, Ace whispered, “You reckon flirting with her is going to gain us anything?”

  “We won’t know unless we try, will we?” Chance replied. “Besides, I got a smile out of her, and that’s worth something by itself.”

  Maybe it was worth something to Chance, but Ace didn’t see how it really helped his brother, or any of the rest of the prisoners.

  One of the other men had gouged his leg with a missed pickax swing the day before. That was the only injury the surgeon deemed serious enough to take the man to the infirmary. As they walked off, Evelyn lingered. Ace thought Chance might try to say something to her again, but before he had time to do that, the gates in the wall at the other end of the fort swung open and a man rode in, followed by a buggy pulled by a fine-looking black horse. Several more men trailed behind the buggy.

  Ace recognized the rider in the lead as Lieutenant Frank Olsen. He hadn’t known that Olsen had left the fort, but the lieutenant didn’t keep Ace or any other prisoner apprised of his comings and goings. The other men all appeared to be civilians. The riders trailing the buggy wore range clothes and struck Ace as a hardbitten bunch.

  The man in the buggy itself was a different story. He drove the vehicle over to the major’s quarters and smoothly brought it to a halt. Olsen reined in beside him. The lieutenant swung down from the saddle while the visitor climbed out of the buggy. He wore a tan suit and white hat, both of which looked expensive even from a distance. As the coat swung back a little, sunlight winked on the grips of a pearl-handled revolver hostered on his right hip.

  Evelyn hurried in that direction. As she did, her father appeared from the house and shook hands with the well-dressed newcomer. They exchanged words, but Ace was too far away to catch anything they said. Then the man turned to greet Evelyn, taking off his hat as he did so. That revealed a well-barbered head of crisp, dark hair. He smiled as he reached out to clasp Evelyn’s hand.

  “Let me guess,” Ace said quietly to Costello. “That’s Eugene Howden-Smyth.”

  “It sure is,” Costello said. “He visits from time to time.”

  With a frown, Chance said, “I don’t like the way he’s smiling at Miss Sughrue, and he’s hanging on to her hand a lot longer than he needs to.”

  “He’s got his eye on her, that’s for sure. It wouldn’t surprise me a bit if he intends to marry her one of these days.” Costello laughed humorlessly. “That would make his grip on the major even stronger. He’d never be able to cross Olsen and Howden-Smyth if that happened.”
>
  Chance leaned forward. “Somebody needs to do something about that.”

  “Sure, but who and what? We don’t exactly have a lot of options here.”

  Costello was right about that. Ace kept coming up against stone walls when he tried to think of a way out of their predicament. Even though he worried about his brother’s tendency to fall for pretty girls and get in trouble because of it, he had to admit that appealing to Evelyn Sughrue might be their best chance of putting an end to the villainy going on at Fort Gila.

  He saw now, though, that that was probably hopeless. With Major Sughrue deeply implicated in the scheme hatched by Olsen and Howden-Smyth, Evelyn wouldn’t risk crossing them. She was too devoted to her father for that. And Olsen was too smart to allow such an opportunity, anyway.

  This day of rest was welcome, but Ace knew it would be over all too soon—and then it would be back to hell for the prisoners of Fort Gila.

  * * *

  Lieutenant Frank Olsen, who had some surveying experience, had laid out the route for the road to Eugene Howden-Smyth’s mine in the Prophet Mountains. Costello had explained this to the Jensen brothers during the first few days of their captivity. Olsen maybe wasn’t as good a surveyor as he thought he was, though, because the next day the route reached a solid wall of rock well before noon.

  “It would take a year to get through that with pickaxes,” Corporal Parnell declared as he stared disgustedly at the barrier. He looked around at the troopers guarding the work detail and went on, “Somebody’s going to have to ride back to the fort and let Lieutenant Olsen know what we’ve run into. He’ll need to blast that rock out of the way.” He paused. “Any volunteers?”

  None of the troopers said anything or moved, except for a couple who nervously shuffled their feet.

  “All right, then,” Parnell said impatiently. “Higgins, you’ve got the job.”

  “Aw, Corporal, why me?” the trooper said. “You know how them redskins like to catch a man out on his own.”

  “We haven’t spotted any Apaches for several days now.”

  “Maybe not, but they could still be watchin’ us. If they see me ridin’ off by myself, there ain’t no tellin’ what those savages might do.”

  “Then you’d better not dawdle around and waste any time getting back to the fort,” Parnell snapped. “If you start now, you can get to the fort and back here with Lieutenant Olsen in time for us to get rid of this big rock today.”

  Higgins whined and delayed a few minutes longer, until Parnell threatened him with being put on the work detail himself. Despite his fear and reluctance, Higgins didn’t want that, so he mounted up. As Higgins rode off to the east, toward Fort Gila, Ace saw the trooper’s head swiveling back and forth quickly. Higgins was already searching for any signs of the Apaches.

  If they were out there, there was a good chance Higgins would never know about it until it was too late.

  Parnell faced the prisoners and said, “Put those picks and shovels back on the cart. As much as it pains me to say this, there’s nothing we can do until the lieutenant gets back with some dynamite and blows up that rock wall. You men might as well hunt some shade and sit down.”

  The prisoners weren’t going to argue with that. They did as Parnell said. Shade was in short supply, but in this heat-blasted landscape, even a sliver of it was welcome. Ace and Chance found some by sitting against a smaller boulder and leaning their heads back. Former lieutenant Costello joined them.

  Ace already had his eyes closed, but when he heard someone else sit down nearby, he opened them to slits and glanced in that direction. His eyes opened wider and he sat up straighter as he recognized the brutal, bullet-headed Vince MacDonald.

  Costello sounded as surprised as Ace felt as he said, “What in blazes do you want, MacDonald?”

  “Take it easy,” the big three-striper said. As far as Ace knew, none of the people running things at Fort Gila had bothered with the formality of a court-martial, so technically, MacDonald was still a sergeant. “I’m not looking for trouble, Costello. I just want to talk to you and these two new friends of yours.”

  “I’ve never known you to say anything I was interested in hearing.”

  MacDonald ran a big hand over his sunburned head. “How about this? My boys and I are going to get out of here.”

  “Oh? How do you plan to do that?”

  In spite of his dislike for MacDonald, Ace was interested to hear what the noncom was going to say.

  Costello went on, “We outnumber the guards, but not by much, and they have guns while we don’t. Even if you jump them and manage to overpower them, most of you will die in the process. I don’t think you can sell that to anybody as an escape plan.”

  “We’re not gonna try anything out here,” MacDonald replied. “The key to everything is back at the fort.”

  “Where there are even more soldiers to shoot you down like a dog,” Costello pointed out.

  “That’s not all that’s there,” MacDonald replied with a smug smirk.

  “Talk plain, blast it.”

  MacDonald shook his head. “Not yet. I’m not gonna spill my guts and have you sell us out to Olsen. What I want to know, Costello, is whether you and your bunch are willing to throw in with us.”

  “What makes you think I have a bunch?”

  “Don’t give me that,” MacDonald scoffed. “I know how most of those poor varmints look to you to do their thinkin’ for them. I’m not askin’ you for a decision right now. You go ahead and mull it over . . . But don’t take too long, because we’re not gonna suffer in this hellhole any longer than we have to.”

  He shoved himself to his feet and ambled off. The guards watched him but didn’t appear to think anything of the fact that he’d just been having a conversation with one of his enemies.

  “What in the world is he up to?” Ace asked as they watched MacDonald walk away.

  “I don’t know, but you can count on a couple of things,” Costello said. “First, anything he does is going to be good for Vince MacDonald, and second, he’s not going to care who gets hurt . . . or even killed . . . along the way.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Private Higgins didn’t run into any Apaches on his way back to the fort. That became obvious when he returned to the foothills with Lieutenant Olsen by the middle of the afternoon. A ten-man patrol rode with the lieutenant, just in case they encountered any hostiles on the way.

  Olsen also had a pack mule with him, and that mule was carrying a small wooden crate. Ace had a hunch the crate contained dynamite, and when Olsen removed the lid and revealed several red, greasy-looking cylinders cradled in wool packing, he knew he was right.

  “Sorry to have to bother you, sir,” Corporal Parnell said after he had saluted the lieutenant. “But I knew it would take a long time to get through that slab without blasting.”

  “You did the right thing, Corporal. Move the men back.”

  Parnell turned to the work detail and waved an arm. “You heard the lieutenant! Get back away from here.”

  MacDonald said, “Don’t worry, I don’t want to be anywhere near that stuff.” He and his friends retreated, and the other group of prisoners followed suit, although they stood a little apart from MacDonald’s bunch.

  “Ever been around dynamite?” Costello asked the Jensen brothers.

  “A little,” Ace said.

  “I don’t like it much,” Chance said. “It goes off too easy.”

  “It’s not as bad as nitroglycerine,” Costello said. “I’ve heard plenty of stories about how the men who worked with it while the railroad was being built were all the time blowing off hands or arms . . . or getting themselves killed. As long as a man knows what he’s doing, dynamite isn’t as touchy.” The former officer shrugged. “He may be a no-good skunk who’s a disgrace to the uniform, but Olsen’s pretty good at handling dynamite, I’ll give him credit for that.”

  Olsen took two of the cylinders from the crate and carried them over to the rock face
, along with a drill. He placed the dynamite on a smaller rock and went to work with the drill, boring two holes in the rock after studying it for a few minutes to decide on the right location for them. When he was satisfied with that part of the task, he molded two blasting caps with long rolls of fuse attached to them to the ends of the dynamite and slipped the cylinders into the holes.

  Turning to look at the work detail and the guards, Olsen waved at them. “Get back farther, you idiots! Do you have any idea how far rock is going to fly when this blast goes off? Get down behind something if you can.”

  The men retreated even more while Olsen unrolled the long fuses attached to the dynamite. It would take several minutes for fuses of that length to burn down, Ace knew, which would give the lieutenant enough time to put sufficient distance between himself and the explosion.

  “I don’t know about you, but I’m going to find a place to hunker down,” Costello muttered. He put that plan into action by kneeling behind a rock. It didn’t shield him completely, but at least it provided some cover.

  Ace and Chance looked around for cover of their own. Not finding much, they stretched out on their bellies so they would be smaller targets if any debris from the blast flew this far. From where they were, they could look straight along the road that had been hacked from the rugged terrain to the place where Lieutenant Olsen now stood, holding the ends of the two fuses clasped together in his left hand while his right took a match from his shirt pocket. He snapped the lucifer to life with his thumbnail and held it to the ends of the fuses, which sputtered for a second and then caught.

  At that instant, a flicker of movement caught Ace’s eye. He raised his head a little more and looked at one of the knobs commanding a view of the road from just beyond the huge rock slab Olsen was about to blast.

  An Apache warrior stood there, a red bandanna tied around his forehead to keep his long black hair back. A breechcloth, high-topped boots, and a sheathed knife slung at his waist were the only other things he wore.

  He held a Winchester snugged against his shoulder as he aimed the rifle squarely at Olsen, who had just dropped the sparking, flaring fuse ends to the ground.