The heat from the blazing brushwood hit him like a solid wall of scorching heat and he started back from it. Then something that he did not understand happened to him, something abrupt and violent which was too sudden for him to comprehend. He flung himself down and back from the flames. Lister’s yells were filling his ears. Where he thought the stone rear wall of the cave would stop him rolling, there was nothing.
He seemed to float out into space. Then abruptly the earth came up to meet him, knocking every ounce of breath from his body and apparently breaking every bone in it at the same time.
Maybe he was knocked unconscious. He never did know for sure. The next thing he knew was that he hurt. He hurt like hell. When he gasped for breath, it felt as if his ribs were piercing his lungs. When he tried to sit up, it felt as if there were a trapdoor in the top of his head, a trapdoor which a little man was slamming hard at regular intervals.
His first thought was for the Winchester. His hand groped around, but he did not find it. He fixed his battered mind on the weapon and continued to grope for it. His searching hand found a solid wall of rock at his back. Only then did it begin to sink in that he had fallen into a deeper part of the cave. The thought did not comfort him. In fact at the first onset of it, panic ran cold and icy through his body. He could die in here while the men guarded the exit to the cave.
He tried to stand up, but his left leg failed him and he fell against the rock wall. He sank down to the floor of the cave and rested his back against the cold stone wall. He had never known a time when he felt less happy.
A man’s voice came seemingly from a spot just a foot or so above his head. It startled him and he went stiff with apprehension.
‘The son-of-a-bitch has to be down there.’
Lister’s voice sounded, apparently from the same spot: ‘Throw some brushwood down there. For chrissake move, man.’ There was near hysteria in the man’s voice.
A moment later brushwood came down on Blade from above. He kicked it away from him with his good foot. He had no sooner done so than a second lot came down, more this time, and a voice saying: ‘A match.’ Light flared softly above him. He heard a crackle of flame. A bright light floated down through the darkness and the black velvet seemed to peel back for a moment. The light touched rock. He saw his own boot. He kicked at the light. A voice—‘The bastard’s down there.’
He had kicked the burning brush into the other brush. It flared. He edged back against the wall hard. The voice again—‘There, there. For God’s sake, can’t you see him?’
More brush came down. Lister’s voice rose to a scream: ‘Kill him kill him kill him.’
Blade reached back for his gun. His hand found the butt, but it was so bruised that he could not work it. The fingers refused to close on the butt. He heard himself groan in pain or frustration or both. He moved himself sideways. A gun seemed to roar deafeningly in his ears. The bullet struck rock, whined away, struck rock again and again as if screaming into the bowels of the earth.
Blade caught a finger into the trigger-guard of the gun and pulled it from the scabbard. Reaching over, he took hold of the weapon with his left hand. As soon as the butt rested in the palm of his hand, he cocked the hammer and fired upward. The bullet struck rock and ricocheted back at him. It hit rock near him and howled away again. Above him, a man shouted hoarsely. Blade started crawling. Again the voice came: ‘There, there. See?’
Several shots sounded, blurred into one another by their closeness to each other and the confines of the rock. The sound echoed and distorted. It confused Blade. He was outside the circle of light, trying to plunge into deeper darkness. All around him there seemed to be the roar of guns and the rush of bullets. He rammed his head into rode and nearly knocked himself out. On his knees, he felt his way over rock, touching stone in the darkness, searching for a way of escape. And now he stumbled on his Winchester, and tried to hold it in his one good hand, while with his ruined hand he rammed his revolver hard into the holster. He turned and saw the muzzle flash of the guns. His good hand raised the Winchester and his right hand fought to keep hold on it. Pain reached up his arm as he levered and squeezed the trigger. The muzzle flame stopped and the men shouted. Blade was on his feet stumbling away into the darkness, hearing Lister bawling: ‘Get after him. Kill him.’
Chapter Ten
Blade stopped and listened.
He could hear Lister and the others, so he thought, far off. But down here there was no knowing distance or time. He sat down and he thought about his situation. In a hole in the mountain, no water and little food. How long could he last?
What of Doke and the two girls?
They would be a pushover for Lister and his crowd. The thought that had nagged at Blade for days nagged at him now, worrying him like his sore hand. How much in the right were Salome and Roxanne? If Blade was doing something crooked, he liked to know precisely what it was.
He heard a faint sound. He cocked his head, turning to listen at different angles. No more than a light sssh of sound. Only after listening intently for some time did he realize that he was in some kind of wide tunnel and that it acted as a whispering gallery. He was listening to men whispering or speaking in low voices together. How far off they were he had no way of knowing.
He turned and went on, going as softly as he could, guessing that, if he could hear them, they could hear him. He fought off a feeling of claustrophobia, pulling great breaths of air into his lungs. It was now that he was taking in comparatively sweet air. Somewhere not far off there must be a source of fresh air. But where?
He went on, slowly, limping badly. So going, he stumbled on something on the ground and went down. He could not avoid making considerable noise. At once the whispered tones became loud booming ones. The sound of them seemed to come out of the very rock on either side of him. It was like being in a waking nightmare. Unthinkingly, he put out his injured hand to raise himself up and nearly fainted from the pain. He cursed the weakness of human flesh. For a moment, he lay down flat on his back and closed his eyes, telling himself he must get up and push on.
He thought he heard the voices coming perceptibly closer. Opening his eyes, he was startled to see a bright patch above him. He reached up with his good hand, thinking that he could touch it. But he could not. It could have been three feet or a hundred feet above him.
He forced himself to his feet and searched in his pocket for matches. He would have to gamble that he was separated by a curve in the cave from the men behind him. He found a lucifer with his good hand and struck it on rock. The small flame blinded him and hurt his eyes. He squinted them against it and raised it high above his head. It went out before he could see anything. He had been holding the tiny splinter of wood in the wrong position.
When he struck the next match, he held it high and behind his head. Now he saw that he was in a kind of underground chamber. Behind him was the tunnel from which he had come. Ahead of him were three other small tunnels. Now he knew that he was not in a natural cave, but a man-made excavation. So far as he could make out, above his head was a funnel going up into the mountain, going far up to an air hole above. Immediately in front of him was a jumble of loose rocks piled up into a heap about ten feet or more high against the wall of the chamber.
The match went out.
He felt in his pocket and counted. Ten matches.
He climbed on to the pile of rocks. Once he nearly fell off them, but he finally made it to the top, telling himself all the time that he must hurry. When he reached the summit, he reached up with his hands and met blank space. Taking a match from his pocket, he struck it and held it high. Now he saw something that made him doubt that he was seeing properly.
Above him he could make out a perpendicular shaft that had obviously been hacked out of the dirt and rock by human hands wielding a pick. Almost immediately above him was what looked like a wooden pin driven into the wall and, if his eyes were not playing him false, above it was another. It seemed logical that, if there were t
wo, there must be more. He knew that he must take the gamble.
The sounds along the tunnel seemed to be growing louder. He climbed down the pile of rocks and began to take some from the base to put on top. It was slow and agonizing work. Agonizing not only for his injured hand, but for his mind, for he never seemed to be able to move fast enough to race the approaching men. Finally, he thought he was high enough and he balanced himself on the topmost rock and stretched out his good hand.
He could have wept when he found that he was a good foot from the first pin. So it was climb down off the rocks again and again start heaving rock. When he had raised the pile still further, he went back to fetch his Winchester where he had leaned it against the wall. Now he listened again. This time he could near nothing.
He took some pigging strings from his pocket and with great difficulty tied several together. This he then tied to the Winchester in the form of a sling and hung it from a shoulder at his back. Once more he stopped to listen and this time heard the rattle of loose rocks. There followed the blurred sound of a human voice. Now it sounded as if the men were right on top of him. He drew his revolver and, holding it in his left hand, he fired two shots up the tunnel.
There came an immediate scramble of feet, which told him just how close his enemies were. He thrust the gun away and started the climb again.
Reaching the top was a great triumph and he could have sung with joy, but the elation did not last long, for, as he reached up for the wooden pin, he lost his balance and fell into the darkness. This was an alarming and painful experience. Agony took hold of his already battered body and he heard himself groan as he lay on the ground, cursing his weakness.
But he knew that lying there pitying himself would get him nowhere.
Get up, Blade, you damn fool, he told himself.
He rose to his knees and listened. The voices whispered in his ears like ghost voices. He got to his feet and started to climb again, taking with him a fresh rock to replace the one he had dislodged. He climbed on it and straightened his pain-wracked body.
This time, his hand touched the wooden pin, but he could not get his hand around it.
He stayed there for a moment, maintaining his balance in the darkness with difficulty, knowing that the only thing he could do was to jump and chance catching the pin with his good hand. But it was not easy to do it in the dark, knowing the odds in favor of his grasping the pin were small. He stood precariously on tip-toe and again touched the pin with his fingers. He took a deep breath and gave a short jump. His hand grasped the pin and at once his weight started to make him lose his grip. Now instinctively he raised his injured hand and grasped at the pin with it. Pain tore down his arm and he cried out with it. But the injured hand held and he slowly pulled his way up by simply bending his arms. They began to tremble and he was sure that he would fall when he made a supreme effort, held himself for a brief moment solely by his injured hand, and reached high above it to grasp the second pin. The moment his good hand took his weight a great relief flooded through his mind. He sighed with satisfaction.
Now he heard a man’s voice almost immediately below him.
‘Christ, he has to be here.’
He took his weight on his injured hand again, gritted his teeth against the intense pain and repeated the performance, praying that there was a third pin above.
His hand grasped at empty air.
The disappointment was terrible.
His injured hand started to fail him and he was forced to grasp at the pin on which he was holding to save himself from falling.
‘Shall I risk a match, Harry?’
‘Yeah. For God’s sake let’s have some light.’
Blade made another try, sweat pouring from him, his left hand waving about frantically in the darkness.
Below him, he heard the scratch of a match. Light cut the darkness below him. He was forced to bring his sound hand back to the injured by the sheer pain of his efforts. His arm muscles felt as if they would burst. They were seized by a continuous trembling. His fear that he would pitch down on to the men below was very real.
Using every ounce of his diminishing strength, he made one more effort, clinging to the pin desperately with his injured hand and pulling himself up on his right arm.
The back of his left hand touched something. He turned his hand and found that he was grasping at a pin with his hand turned the wrong way for good effort. But even this was a great relief to him and he hauled himself higher. The pin complained at his weight and it seemed to shift slightly under it.
By now, he was almost at the end of his endurance and it was with profound thankfulness that he could now get a knee on to the first pin. He rested for a brief moment.’
‘Look, there’s a goddam great hole there.’
He knew the men were looking up. He wondered desperately if they could see him.
He reached up into the darkness above him. There was no pin. He moved his hand to the furthest extent possible and still found no pin. But he found something else.
The wall up which he was creeping finished just above his head. He explored with his hand, standing on the first pin.
His heart started to pound with excitement. There was some sort of ledge above him. Hope seized him. He placed a foot on the second pin and for a moment was in a perilous position. He straightened his legs and at once he had his elbows on firm ground. Going carefully so the Winchester would not clatter on rock, he pulled himself on to what seemed to be a narrow ledge.
It seemed to him that his body had never been so relieved from effort. He lay there panting like an injured animal and rejoiced that he was still alive.
‘The man ain’t been born that could get up there.’
‘For crissake, Harry, leave us get outa here.’
‘There’s three tunnels there. He could of gone down any one of ’em. I don’t aim to crawl about in this dark no goddam more. He ain’t goin’ to stay alive down here.’
‘Ain’t he? You think that? Christ, I know the bastard. Oh, how I know the bastard.’ That was Harry Lister.
Blade lay there, breathing against his aching ribs.
The men were quarrelling now. Lister, for once, was not getting the best of it. ‘All right, we go back. But you’ll regret it. I should have killed the son-of-a-bitch when we first caught up with him.’
They started back.
Blade stayed still, hardly able to believe his luck.
Yet, when they had gone and he could no longer hear them, he wondered just how much luck he was enjoying. Here he was, stuck on a narrow ledge, heaven only knew how many feet underground.
He took a match from his pocket and struck it.
The first thing he saw was that he was not lying on a narrow ledge. He could not see the wall of the funnel on one side. He held the match as high as he could, but he still could not see it. He crawled a yard or two and struck another match. This time, he found the wall. As the match went out he thought his eye caught a faint glint of metal or something similar. He struck another match and was astounded to see on the ground almost at his elbow a tallow candle. This he lit at once and knew a wonderful sense of luxury at having so much wonderful light.
But there were more wonders yet.
When he held the candle up, he saw that his eye had indeed caught metal. He crawled along the ledge and stopped. A gunny sack lay in front of him with its contents spilling out on to the ledge. Those contents could only be gold. He reached out a hand and picked up a softly gleaming coin. His eye picked out the double-eagle. This was old Spanish coin. All along he had thought the trouble between the two girls and Harry Lister’s crowd was new gold dug out of these mountains. His eyes saw the small pokes and gunny sacks on the ledge. There had to be a fortune here, if all those containers were full of gold.
He heard a faint sound behind him. It must, he thought, be a rat or some other small animal, for he was alone here. But instinctively he turned his head to stare back into the darkness. Something cold pressed its
elf against his cheekbone. Cold and circular. He knew that it could only be the muzzle of a gun.
A voice whispered almost in his ear: ‘You move so much as an eyelash an’ I blow you to hell, bub.’
Blade knew as well as the next man when immobility is advisable. He froze.
But he reckoned that did not put a censor on his tongue.
‘This must be your gold I’m looking at,’ he said.
‘Right first time,’ whispered the voice.
‘Or at least it’s gold you found,’ Blade said.
‘Finders keepers.’
Blade chuckled and it almost sounded like a sincere chuckle, though it isn’t easy to be sincere about a chuckle when you have a gun ready to blow your brains out. He said in the most neighborly voice he could summon: ‘I met two young ladies who think it’s theirs. Then a short while after I met a bunch of men who wanted to kill the girls for the gold. Now here you are.’
The voice said: ‘Don’t get smart, son. Never get smart with a man that has a gun at your head. Didn’t your ole daddy tell you that?’
‘Yessir,’ said Blade promptly, ‘he sure did and it was mighty good advice. I’m grateful for you reminding me of it.’
The man holding the gun said: ‘While you’re here I’m damned if I don’t make use of you.’
‘Anything to oblige,’ said Blade.
‘Shuck your weapons.’
By now Blade was forming some picture of his captor, though he could not see him. From the voice, he judged the man to be getting on in years, an old hill-nutty who had most likely been poking around these hills for a long time. Somewhere not too far away his burros would be staked out on grass. One thing puzzled Blade—how did the gold get here when the girls had hidden it in the floor of their wagon? Had they cached it here some time ago when Lister and his bunch had been after them? Scared of Lister’s crowd, they had only dared to come back for it when they had the support of Blade and Doke.
Blade said: ‘I hope that trigger of yours ain’t too light. Now I’m going to move awful slow and careful.’
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