Dead Man’s Cañon

by Paine, Lauran; Burns, Traber;

  He tried cocking himself upright so he could lean his back upon the manger. It took a lot of straining but he eventually did that, and at least in this somewhat more normal position he could think clearly.

  Barney Whitsun and the others, waiting up at Mather’s place, would ultimately weary and become impatient. In his own desperation he cursed them for not being more impatient and coming right now, to stamp around in his office.

  That was his only hope for salvation, or, more properly, that was the only hope for saving Arch Clayton. He speculated on how to draw the attention of the vigilantes when they eventually came to the jailhouse. Straight in front of him was a propped up post that had rotted off at the ground four or five years earlier.

  He’d always intended to replace it but never had; instead, he’d leaned another post against it to keep the rickety little warped wooden shed wall from collapsing outward. The longer he leaned there gazing at that post, because there was nothing else to gaze at, the more he began figuring out an ideal way to attract attention.

  There was some peril involved for a man who was inside the little shed and who couldn’t move quickly or far when the wall fell because he was tightly bound. He studied the wall, the rotten post, the cant and lean of the partition, and was convinced, if he kicked the supporting post clear, the wall would fall outward. If he guessed wrong and it fell inward … He shrugged. Since there was no alternative, he’d have to take that chance.

  Time ran on, seemingly without end. Claude tried to guess how long it had been since Bríon had left town with his captive, and estimated it at roughly two hours. He swore violently behind his linen gag. What in tarnation was keeping those idiots up at Jack’s saloon from coming down to seek him?

  They came; he heard their loud, angry voices before they even flung open his office door and stamped inside. He even heard one of them swear because the sheriff was missing. He got scooted as low as he could, raised both lashed legs and rested them upon the supporting cedar post, tested the thing and found it solid, tested it a little harder and made the whole warped old wall shiver.

  Someone had walked back out of the office accompanied by other men. He heard that garrulous voice say, “Hell no, he ain’t far off or he’d have taken his hat. You know as well as I do, Claude Rainey wouldn’t be caught dead without his hat.”

  He slowly straightened his legs from the knee, slowly heaved his weight against the upright post. The wall groaned, boards popped, dust belched downward from the overhang roof. Claude pushed hard, outward, and bit down hard upon his gag with the effort. There was a creaking groan from the overhead rafters. He paused to roll up his eyes. He hadn’t counted on the whole roof falling in. He looked to make certain when the wall went he had a clear path to roll back up as close as he could get to the protective side of the cribbed manger. It was going to be dangerous at best.

  He sucked back a slow, deep-down big lungful of air and struck out, making his body rigid. The support post broke loose, the wall buckled with a sound as loud as a pistol shot, then it fell outward, which was exactly as Claude had intended for it to do. But the roof, no longer adequately supported, creaked ominously as it began very slowly to fall in. By looking straight upward before slow-rising dust filled the little shed, Claude could see the nails pulling loose up there. They were, for all their age, bright as daggers and pointing directly at him.

  He heard someone let off a startled squawk from around front as he frantically rolled like a cocoon up against the manger. But the roof only sagged; it never did let go. At least not while Sheriff Rainey was inside the shed.

  Someone with a deep, rough voice ran back to the shed, looked in, and Claude, straining and breathless, saw the astonished face of burly Jack Mather. Jack reared back and yelled to the others.

  “Hey, the damned fool’s napping in this old shed!”

  Claude’s neck swelled and he almost strangled on his anger behind the gag as the others came trooping back. Barney Whitsun and big, old, rawboned Newton Douglas bent nearly double to peer in at him. Newton exploded a hard curse, grabbed Claude by the shoulders, and bodily tugged him out where they could all crowd up and see him. “Well don’t just stand there, god dammit,” snarled the cowman. “You can see he’s trussed up. Set him free.”

  They removed the gag last, which was just as well, for by then Claude’s blood pressure had dropped considerably. He tried to spring up and had to lean upon Newt Douglas’ big arm as circulation began painfully to return to his extremities.

  “Get your horses and guns,” he gasped at them. “That damned Mexican slipped into town and took Arch Clayton right out of my jailhouse.”

  Douglas peered down. “What damned Mexican?” he mildly asked.

  Claude jerked away. “Fernando Bríon, that’s what damned … Just go get your horses and guns. I’ll explain on the trail. Meet me down at the livery barn where I’ll saddle up and be waiting.”

  They scattered, finally, galvanized into sudden movement by the intensity of Sheriff Rainey’s fiery look and angry words. Newt Douglas loped along behind the younger men bellowing for his cowboys to get mounted.

  Claude returned to the jailhouse for his booted carbine. He still had that extra carton of Winchester bullets in his pocket he’d taken with him that morning he’d gone down to Dead Man’s Cañon to save Clayton’s bacon from the big Mexican.

  By the time he’d trotted to the livery barn and shouted for the nighthawk to saddle and bridle his private mount, the tingling sensation was gone from his limbs. He still ached though, and probably would continue to do so for several days, but he ignored that and kept ranting at the bewildered night hostler to hurry up at the saddling and bridling.

  Newton Douglas with six of his range riders appeared first. The others, he explained, hadn’t all had their horses saddled, but they’d be along very shortly.

  Claude went back to get his horse. As he led the beast outside, he could hear Jack Mather’s bull-bass roar back up by the saloon. If that racket didn’t awaken the entire town, nothing else would.

  Barney Whitsun and Hank Smith appeared, armed and prepared to ride. Mather eventually got down there on his sorrel mare with the flaxen mane and tail. He had a shapeless, old, ten-gallon Stetson pulled down almost to his ears as though he’d jammed the hat on as an afterthought.

  Altogether there were eight of them. Counting Sheriff Rainey the number was nine. He turned without a word and led them in a lope straight up through town then beyond, and swung off to the left, went almost a hundred yards, and yanked back suddenly to stop. The others piled up behind him, looking perplexed and doubtful.

  “Wait right here,” he said, and went dashing back down the same alleyway Bríon had used to ride out of town, jumped off and charged into his office, snatched up his hat and Clayton’s little black notebook, ran back out and sprang again astride his startled horse. When he returned, the posse men were muttering and looking troubled. He still didn’t explain everything as he resumed leadership, but he looped his reins, let his horse walk slowly at its own gait, tipped back his head so as not to lose any of the weak starshine, and opened the black book.

  Newton Douglas looked, wrinkled his leathery brow and looked closer. “Claude,” he said. “What’s wrong with you? If we got to rescue this feller Clayton, believe me, we’re never going to do it riding at a walk while you read a damned book.”

  Claude said nothing. His eyes were flared wide open as he rocked along in the saddle, holding the little book almost against his nose. Finally, with an angry curse, he halted, stepped down, and said, “Jack, hold a match for me so I can see this map.”

  Mather obeyed, but without the slightest inkling of what any of this was about. He held up seven matches, in fact, before he finally growled at the sheriff, “Claude, you out of your skull?”

  Claude lowered the book, looked around, saw the pained, baffled expressions, and started to explain. The longer he
talked the more bewildered his posse men became, until, moving right up to the time Bríon had abducted Archer Clayton, the entire story began to straighten out and make some kind of sense.

  By the time he was finished with his recital, not a man among the vigilantes spoke or took their eyes off Sheriff Rainey. He put the black notebook into his shirt pocket, carefully buttoned down the flap, and reached for the reins of his horse. But he didn’t mount up. He simply held the reins in one hand, looking at the others.

  “We won’t have to try and track them in the moonlight. All we’ve got to do is set up a real good ambush … and wait.”

  Newton Douglas said, “Wait? Claude, you said he’s going to lead this Mexican to the cache. Now the way I see it, from a lifetime of being around Mexicans, when he leads ’em to that gold, they’ll shoot him and dump his carcass in the same hole they dig that gold out of.”

  Claude nodded solemnly. “That’s just about the way Bríon’s figuring to do it, Newt. You’re plumb right.”

  “Then what are we sitting here for?” snapped the cowman.

  Claude pointed back toward town with a rigid arm. “Because the lousy cache is in Springville, according to this map. I know every doggoned landmark on this map, Newt, and that cache is buried down there at the south end of town among those old Mex hovels.”

  Barney Whitsun gasped and rolled his eyes. “You plumb certain?” he whispered. “You mean to stand there and tell us after all the sweat and struggle we put into making this a decent town to live in … all the time there was a damned fortune in gold buried right under our noses we could’ve used to … good Lord!”

  Claude turned his horse and began leading it back toward town. The others dutifully turned and followed along in his wake. They spoke a little among themselves in low, incredulous voices. Only Newton Douglas stepped off and strode on up to pace along beside Sheriff Rainey. “Claude,” he said gravely, “if you’ve read that map wrong, you’re going to feel almighty bad when we find Clayton’s body.”

  “I’ve been thinking that,” admitted the lawman. “I want a decent light as soon as we reach Mather’s saloon to study the map again.”

  They returned to town like ghosts, wordlessly tied up out front of the Oasis, and then grimly trooped inside. Jack went after a lamp in his storeroom, lit the thing, and put it down squarely on the bar top where Sheriff Rainey was standing. Then, as Claude took out the black notebook and hunched over it, lips pursed, eyes slitted in hard concentration, Jack began setting up glasses and bottles up and down his bar where the anxious, silent vigilantes leaned and were tensely silent.

  Claude eventually reared back, impassively stowed the book a second time, and reached with both hands for a bottle and a glass.

  “Well?” demanded Newt Douglas.

  “I’m right,” Claude growled, and drank off a straight shot of green rye whiskey that made tears spring to his eyes. “Either I’m right or the map’s wrong, and Arch Clayton himself drew that map.”

  A low sigh of sound passed over the crowded bar. Newt ruminated briefly, then said, “Well, boys, Clayton can’t stall those Mexicans too long. He’ll have to commence leading ’em back to the south end of town pretty soon. Seems to me we ought to start laying plans and drinking less.”

  Chapter Eleven

  They went to the south end of town and when Barney asked Claude where, precisely, the cache was, Claude just gave Barney a sour look.

  “What d’you want to know for, ya doggoned nosy old cuss. Even if I told you, all that’d happen would be a bunch of Mexicans’d come after you for it.”

  They made a careful study of the jacales with Claude leading the way. Someone suggested that they fetch some lanterns. Claude growled at that man, also; if there was one thing they didn’t have to do it was let anyone, townsmen or Mexicans either, know that they were down among the jacales.

  Every one of them was put in the vicinity of some particular jacal, either inside it, outside it, on top of it, with strict orders to do nothing at all until Sheriff Rainey gave the orders. After that, with Newton Douglas, Claude sat in the watery-lit darkness both worried and wearied.

  “I figure,” he confided to the cowman, “Clayton has got to make out like he’s picking up one landmark after another as he leads them back and forth out there stalling for time. I also figure he’s hoping like the very devil that I remembered the black notebook and went after it to figure out where he’d have to lead them eventually, once I got loose.” He and Newt Douglas exchanged a look. Newt’s expression was skeptical so Claude nodded and said, “I know, it’s an awful lot of just plain figuring, whereas, if we trailed them, we’d be damned certain. The trouble with that is, Newt, they’d darned well be listening for pursuit and on a quiet night like this one they’d hear us long before we even got close. The second trouble with trailing is … on a night as dark as this one you just can’t do it with any speed at all.”

  There could be small doubt but that Sheriff Rainey had chosen the ideal solution to his problem. The question was would it work as it should work?

  Newt made a smoke, lit up by ducking around with his head inside the jacal at their back, and said it sounded too easy, that old Spanish cache right here in Springville; if it actually was here, how come a feller from as far off as Raton knew about it and no one locally did?

  Claude wasn’t certain, but he explained how Clayton and his dead partner had evidently stumbled on to a much smaller cache of coins up in the Raton country somewhere that gave the location of this other cache.

  Newton Douglas was a hardheaded, hardworking, eminently practical man. He tilted his head, blew smoke, and said, “Y’know, Claude, I been all my life hearing those old tales of buried Spanish gold, and this is the first time I’ve ever run across anyone who’d really had any of that stuff in the palm of their hand. Now, I’m not saying I don’t believe …”

  “Quiet,” hissed Claude suddenly, stiffening as he leaned away from their jacal, listening to the southward night.

  Newt also strained to hear. A full minute passed and Newt heard nothing. He eased back, resumed smoking, and considered the ancient sky. “Probably loose cattle or horses down on the southward range,” he muttered. “Claude …? Are you plumb certain this whole thing isn’t some kind of hoax and Clayton’s in cahoots with the Mexicans to rob Barney’s safe of that ten thousand dollars?”

  Claude was flabbergasted, initially, but afterward he was scornful. “Newt, I thought you of them all would have better sense to pick up a rumor like that and believe it. Why, Clayton’s own partner got killed by those Mexicans.”

  “You only got his word for that, Claude.”

  “I have like hell. I was standing right there when one of the Mexicans admitted in his dying words this Fernando Bríon had that lad killed.”

  “Oh, well, you see, I didn’t know any of that.”

  “So,” growled Claude, shooting a waspish scowl at his friend, “that makes it easy for you to make wild guesses. Humph!”

  They stood on, waiting and smoking. Claude went over in his mind Arch Clayton’s map as he now was able to recall it, and felt irritated with himself. The cache was exactly underneath the mud floor where that Mexican assassin had died. Why in the devil hadn’t he wondered more about why Clayton had stayed down here among the jacales rather than up at the hotel?

  Well, he consoled himself, it was the old story of hindsight being a heap better than foresight. He flexed his sore arms and studied the position of the moon. It was slightly past midnight according to his calculations. Bríon and Arch Clayton had been gone almost three hours. They’d have covered a lot of country in that length of time. Big Jack Mather came gliding up soundlessly and said, jutting his chin eastward, “Band of riders coming from the far side of town, Claude. They’re moving slow and easy with two men out front. I heard ’em a while back and slipped around for a look. They’re beginning to angle off southward l
ike maybe they figure to come into town over the stage road.”

  Claude told Mather to go back to his position and keep out of sight, then he took Newt with him and passed in and out of the deep, square shadows until they were at the lower extremity of Springville. There, they halted and stood like stone, waiting to pick up the sound of these oncoming strangers.

  As it turned out, though, while they heard the horsemen southward, they couldn’t see them, and Mather was incorrect at least in one surmise; they didn’t turn and enter town from the stage road at all. They walked their horses straight on across the road heading easterly. Newt screwed up his face in deep perplexity but Claude Rainey stood quietly thoughtful. He had an idea what those men might be doing if they were the Mexicans with Clayton. Arch was deliberately seesawing with his captors out there, bringing them in a little closer with each change of course, so that if Claude was up there waiting, he’d have plenty of warning. In fact, Sheriff Rainey smiled, while his companions stood out there with him, scowling.

  He tapped Newt’s arm. “Split up,” he said quietly. “You take one side while I take the other side. Warn the boys they’re coming. Tell them to stay inside those jacales for cover and hold off until I give the signal to cut loose. Meet me back up by our hovel, Newt.”

  The two older men turned at once and started back up through the eerie night where swaying shadows appeared here and there in the Stygian doorways of mud hovels to listen and nod, then step back out of sight again. Barney and Jack Mather, in adjoining jacales, listened to Claude carefully, gripped their carbines tighter, and gazed southward where the bland, hot night was still without sound of horsemen.