Dead Man’s Cañon

by Paine, Lauran; Burns, Traber;

  Barney turned reluctantly and resumed his position outside. Claude straightened up and put both hands low upon his own back. Digging that deep, that hard, was a kind of manual labor he’d been sedulously avoiding for thirty years. “Let’s take it up to the jailhouse,” he said, grimacing from the pain in his back.

  It took all of them, including Barney, to hoist the oaken old rotting box and stagger outside with it. The moon was gone and the star shine was weak and watery. They had to pause three times and finally Claude’s back gave out entirely so he traded places with Barney Whitsun, walking behind them keeping close watch in all directions. Barney grunted and staggered until they were almost up to his store, then he called a halt and said, “Mister Clayton, since this is your cache, what say we take it into my back room and open the box, then store the gold in my safe along with that ten thousand dollars?”

  Clayton was willing. Like the others he was exhausted; this had been a long, tumultuous night. Before he answered though, he glanced over at Sheriff Rainey. Claude shrugged. He said he didn’t give a damn where they took the box as long as they got it off the sidewalk and somewhere out of sight.

  Barney unlocked his front door, grunted with the others the full length of his store through pitch darkness, and led them into a musty old room with laden shelves where they finally stopped, dropped the box, and stood around in strong silence just looking at it.

  “Get a pinch bar,” said Claude, setting up their lantern and bending to light the thing. “And, Barney, take a look up and down the front roadway just in case, will you?”

  While Whitsun was gone, Arch knelt and examined the huge old handmade steel lock as well as the massive hasp that held it secured to the oaken box. “It’s going to take a right stout pinch bar,” he commented, then resumed his standing position.

  Jack Mather leaned upon a wall, gazing upon the box. He clearly was running hot and cold to see the interior of the thing. When Barney returned, Jack sprang forward to take the pinch bar and sink down on both knees beside the box. The others crowded up close. Claude said, “Barney, see anyone out there?” Whitsun shook his head without looking up as Jack set the pinch bar and began to heave his considerable heft against it to pry loose the hasp, then he looked around.

  “We got to shoot the lock off,” he panted. “Claude, this here hasp is bolted through the oak.”

  Sheriff Rainey shook his head. “Shooting will make too much noise. Keep worrying at it, Jack.”

  Mather resumed his prying, but at Arch Clayton’s suggestion shifted to a corner of the lid, and that achieved success because the lid was punky with wet rot. With a ripping sound it broke, revealing part of the interior of the box. Dull coins darkly glistened, and with Mather savagely attacking the rotten wood, the smooth end of several bars of gold bullion also showed.

  No one said a word until Mather, panting hard, rocked on his haunches and dropped the pinch bar, then Barney, bending stiffly, said, “Good … Lord!”

  Claude looked. So did Arch Clayton who owned this treasure. Claude’s voice was unchanged when he said, “Well, Bríon had reason to spill blood. I reckon a lot of men have died for a lot less.”

  They bent to lift out the treasure and lay it reverently on the floor. The gold coins came from four broken, old, rotted doeskin bags. There had been two of those bags on each end of the box, probably packed like that to prevent the six bars of smelted-down, pure gold from shifting or loosening inside.

  When it was all laid out, Jack Mather mopped off sweat and looked pale. So did Barney Whitsun. Claude Rainey made a smoke, eyed the fortune caustically, and shot a sidelong glance at the owner of all that wealth.

  Arch rocked back on his heels, solemn as an owl. In an almost funereal voice he said, “I’ll tell you honestly, men, I wouldn’t have traded it for the life of my partner. I wouldn’t even have wanted to keep it for the life of that Mexican bushwhacker I shot down below the line and fetched back up here with me.” He stood up, looked at them, and removed his hat to drag a soiled sleeve across his forehead. “Right now it sort of makes me sick, just thinking all the grief I’ve seen over getting it, and that’s not mentioning the blood and anguish the Indians put out to work it down for those old-time Spaniards.”

  Claude Rainey exhaled a big cloud of smoke, looked at the burly, younger man, and quietly said, “Arch, there’s nothing wrong with gold or money. There never has been. It’s just the way folks have been using it that’s wrong.” He held out his tobacco sack but Clayton shook his head.

  “Mister Whitsun,” he said, “let’s stow this stuff in your safe out of sight before someone else gets shot over it.”

  They solemnly bent to this new task. It took a half hour, and afterward, trooping outside to the night, they were surprised to find that their grim and ghostly world had brightened toward dawn in their absence.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Barney, Jack, and Sheriff Rainey were dog tired. Arch Clayton was also weary, but he was in a kind of shock. They had tried, each in his own way by his own measures and values, to estimate the value of that golden hoard. The lowest figure was so high Arch Clayton had felt breathless. Now, when the others said they had to head for their beds, he struck out for the café across the road that was just opening for the new day’s business.

  Claude watched him cross the road and gave his head a little caustic shake. Claude couldn’t rightfully say he knew how Clayton felt, but he had some idea of the weight of the responsibility the younger man was carrying. Claude turned and headed for his room at the hotel. If Bríon was coming back, it wouldn’t be for a while yet—perhaps not even for several days or a week, because there were no more guerillas this side of the line.

  Claude stopped in midstride. No? Like hell there weren’t. The only difference was that Bríon would have to pay a high price for them, and they wouldn’t be the color of old shoe leather, but in Arizona, if Fernando Bríon chose to do it that way, he could hire all the professional gunfighters and killers he’d need. He wouldn’t have to go any farther than the border towns to find men like that.

  In fact, Claude thought, standing on the landing of the rooming house, if Bríon got the idea as it had just struck Claude himself, Bríon could have his hired murderers and be back in Springville by tomorrow night.

  He started climbing again toward his upstairs room. Tomorrow night. That still gave him most of today and all of tonight to get caught up on his rest.

  It was unusual, going to bed just as others arose, but Claude had been there before; it did not appreciably trouble him. Once, as he gazed out the window and down into Springville’s main roadway, he saw the queues of curious, questioning people and realized that the entire town was full of sensible curiosity about the fight last night. He was glad he was in his room.

  He slept soundly until two o’clock in the afternoon when someone came to peck diffidently on his door. He called out asking who it was. Hank Smith, the blacksmith answered. Claude groaned under his breath, rolled out, tugged on his breeches, boots, stood up to shrug into his shirt, then he reached for his six-gun, and finally went over to open up and confront Smith.

  Hank was a durable, muscular man with a serious manner. He very rarely smiled and never laughed aloud. He wasn’t laughing or smiling now, either. He was looking very solemn.

  “Newt Douglas sent a man in looking for you. When he couldn’t find you at Jack’s place nor at the jailhouse, he come up to my shop. Claude, Newt’s sighted a band of men heading for Springville over the southeasterly desert.”

  Sheriff Rainey was nonplussed. “Bríon …?” he whispered.

  Hank nodded. “Newt’s cowboy says if it ain’t Bríon, then it’s got to be some other kind of trouble from below the line because Newt told ’em at their cow camp the approaching men are armed to the teeth and ready for war.”

  “All right,” murmured the lawman, turning back into his room. “Much obliged, Hank. Much o
bliged. I’ll come down as soon as I’ve finished dressing.”

  It took him a half hour. He had two days’ growth of whisker stubble to shear off, and he also had to get all the cobwebs out of his brain with a vigorous washing. Then, when he walked out into the afternoon sunlight, three men saw him and converged like hungry hawks. Barney Whitsun reached him first. “Claude,” he said. “We got to get shed of that damned treasure out of my safe. I was up at Jack’s place when Newt Douglas’ cowboy was sipping a beer and talking. I know who’s coming and I also know why, and, Claude, if he thinks the gold’s in my safe, he could fire the whole blessed building. We’ve got to …”

  “If you could hear yourself, Barney, you’d be ashamed,” Rainey said, looking at Jack Mather and Arch Clayton. Elsewhere, up and down the roadway, men were coming together here and there, somber and careful with their talk. Evidently that cowboy of Newton Douglas’ had spread the word very effectively. Claude wished he could have been at the Oasis when the range man was doing that; he’d have run him out of town with his ears ringing.

  “Anybody called the vigilantes together again?” he asked, looking straight at swarthy Jack Mather, the saloon man.

  Jack scowled and shook his head. “Been waiting for you to show up,” he muttered.

  With great forbearance Claude nodded and said, “All right, Jack, I’ve showed up. Now send out word for ’em to gather at your place … and fast … because if Newt Douglas’ man saw those Mexicans this morning coming across the south range, they could reach Springville by milking time without having to hurry at all.”

  Arch Clayton waited until Jack was briskly walking away, then he said if Claude thought it best, he’d move his cache out of Barney’s safe and hide it somewhere else. Claude was caustic about that.

  “Where, my friend? Just where could you lug that big a bunch of booty in broad daylight without half the town seeing you at it? And just where could you hide it? Back in the same danged hole we dug it out of last night?” Claude didn’t give Clayton an opportunity to answer any of those questions. He turned on sweating Barney Whitsun with an unpleasant expression and said, “Well …?”

  Barney withered. “All right, leave it there. But, Claude, they’ll find out sure as hell, and you know that. Somehow they’re going to find out where that blasted stuff is.”

  Claude’s caustic manner lingered. “That’s what Bríon’s returning for, isn’t it? Well, then, of course he’ll find out. Barney, sometimes I wonder about you. That man has sacrificed a half dozen lives already to get at that cache. You’re damned right he’s going to find out it’s been moved, and he’ll undoubtedly hear where we put it, too. Our problem’s not trying to keep all that quiet, our problem’s keeping him from getting it.”

  Claude took Arch Clayton with him across to the jailhouse where he contemplated his hungry prisoner and was in turn regarded steadily by the black-eyed Mexican. The man was smoking a brown-paper cigarette. He gravely inclined his head and said, “Good morning, señores.”

  They nodded. Sheriff Rainey asked if the Mexican was hungry. He retorted that he was, indeed, very hungry, but if the jefe was too busy he could wait.

  Claude picked up his booted carbine, gave his head a hard shake, and went back outside. He said something uncomplimentary about the Mexican, and led the way to the café where, from the doorway, he left word for the man to be fed, then he and Arch walked on down to the livery barn without Sheriff Rainey explaining what he had in mind until he’d growled at the lazy day man to fetch their horses.

  “I’m not doubting Newton Douglas’ man,” he said, “but I want to see Bríon’s new crew for myself.”

  The way Claude said that made it sound as though he were skeptical regardless of the disavowal, but Arch Clayton was shrewd enough to see through Sheriff Rainey’s remark and say, “I’ve been wondering a little myself, Sheriff.”

  Claude looked around. “Wondering about what?”

  “If he has more Mexicans with him, or another kind of gunfighter.”

  Claude puckered his eyes at their outer corners in a critical little squint. “You’re going to get by in this life just fine,” he said gruffly. “All you’ve got to do is keep both eyes open like you’re doing now, and stop finding hidden darned caches of other folks’ gold.”

  They left town by going southward, then eastward, and around upon the yonder desert where not many townsmen would see them riding out. As Sheriff Rainey said, the town’d had enough upset stomachs for one night and day, no point in making the ailment chronic.

  They headed in the general direction of Dead Man’s Cañon. “For some reason I don’t exactly understand,” said Claude, “that seems to be the area everyone makes for lately.”

  “Not anymore it won’t be,” contradicted Clayton. “Before, probably because my partner tried to bury the box of cash there before he was shot down, Bríon’s men must have figured the rest of the cache was buried thereabouts somewhere. But you can bet on it, Sheriff, he knows a damned sight better now.”

  “Mebbe,” muttered Sheriff Rainey, and kept right on riding toward Dead Man’s Cañon through the blue-blurred, smoky heat waves, as though this kind of full-force, dehydrating summertime scald didn’t really bother him very much at all.

  They came around upon the far northward plateau above Dead Man’s Cañon and for the second time left their animals a fair distance to the rear, took their carbines, and crept up where they could lie belly down upon the hot soil like a pair of skulking Apaches, and slit their eyes for a slow, meticulous, and long study of the empty world all around.

  Heat rolled up out of the cañon, writhed in the air, and bore with it a scent that was partly stale, partly metallic. The men sweated hard, their clothing darkened, and still they saw neither horsemen nor the dust that inevitably arose beneath the hoofs of horsemen in this powder dry, musty country. Sheriff Rainey was dogged about it.

  Arch said, “They’ll come in from the south, if he’s got gringos with him, Sheriff, and they’ll split up so his new hirelings can drift into town maybe one and two at a time. We’re likely to lie here all day today and all day tomorrow and still not see anything. Besides that, I’m thirsty.”

  “Stick a pebble under your tongue,” grunted Claude, and kept to his vigil.

  But in the end Rainey had to admit Arch could be right, for obviously no one was coming up the broad trough of Dead Man’s Cañon. They went back to their drowsing horses, got aboard, and turned back. It was then midafternoon with the brassy, faded yellow sun slipping down a pale sky toward some smoking rims far to the west.

  When they were in sight of town again, Arch said, “Split up, Sheriff. You come in from the north. I’ll ride around and come in from the south. You’ve the badge. They’ll spot you right off. Me, I’m just another sweaty cowboy … unless Bríon happens to be along to point me out to them.”

  “Humph,” growled Claude, “Bríon’s not that stupid.” Arch loped away, heading down across the range on an angling course that would bring him into Springville down where the livery barn stood. Across the wide, old dusty roadway from the barn, and meandering still farther southward, was that abandoned, gloomy clutch of ancient jacales.

  Sheriff Rainey entered town, as agreed, from the north. He hadn’t felt particularly thirsty until he got far enough along to see the Oasis, Jack Mather’s place, then, pondering the certainty of cool beer in there, thirst began to torment him. Still, he didn’t turn in, although he noticed several horses at the tie rack out front. Instead, he poked along, heading for the livery barn to see that his mount was watered and fed first. He expected to meet Arch down there, but when he rode in Clayton was nowhere around, although his horse was in its stall comfortably eating at the manger.

  The sweating hostler came dragging up to take Claude’s animal and wordlessly lead it away. A dozen or so big blue-tailed flies aimlessly buzzed in slow, shallow circles, lethargic enough for a man
to massacre every one of them with one hard swipe with his hat.

  The town seemed quiet. So far, no one had hustled up to inquire of the sheriff the meaning of all that gunfire the night before, but then he hadn’t been around very much, so he wryly thought others such as Barney and Jack had had to make the explanations, and if that were so, he told himself as he started up the east side of the roadway toward Mather’s saloon, he could imagine what kind of lurid rumors were abroad by this late afternoon time of day.

  He had no inkling of trouble at all, wasn’t even thinking of violence, when a stranger stepped off the plank walk over in front of his jailhouse, walked twenty feet onto the road, and called, “Lawman! This is it!”

  Claude was taken completely by surprise, and that was ordinarily fatal, as that gunman apparently knew very well when he yelled his challenge, because he then went for his gun. Claude not only had to gather his wits, he also had to twist his body and go for his gun all at the same time. But before he could complete his draw another man stepped from a doorway, yelled, and fired. The travel-stained stranger was caught hard by that slug and knocked down. He twisted, as did Claude, and saw Arch Clayton—too late. He collapsed, his unfired gun sliding out into hot roadway dust.

  Claude had his gun up and cocked. For five seconds he looked from Clayton to the dead man then back again, before walking out to take a closer look at the corpse. Clayton came only as far as the edge of the plank walk. He looked slowly up and down the road, then punched out the spent casing, plugged in a fresh load, and dropped his six-gun into its holster.

  “I saw them setting it up,” he said into the deathly silence as people moved out to crane down toward the sheriff and the dead man at his feet. “Good thing we split up, Sheriff.”

  Claude stepped across the body and walked on over. “Who’s them?” he asked, halting in front of Clayton.

  Arch jerked a thumb. “The others are over at the Oasis. Four of them were at a table including this one. If you want, we can go arrest the other three right now.”