In the yard fronting the ranch-house, the three lawmen had dismounted. They had exchanged greetings with Williams and Nixon, who were standing just below the porch steps, and Williams was trying to sound nonchalant while enquiring:
“How come you brought our guards in? They’re supposed to be ridin’ herd.”
“I only brought in three of your hired hands,” drawled Rowenstock, “and three are too many for guardin’ those skinny critters your boss calls a herd.”
“As I recall it,” frowned Adams, “there are three more drovers. Where are they now?”
“Up to the mine,” said Williams.
“Why all the questions?” demanded Nixon. “What’s up?”
Not by accident, the lawmen had spread themselves and, if needs be, could make cover quickly. Rowenstock stood within a few feet of the pump; Adams and Denning were even closer to a drinking trough. The three hardcases were still mounted.
“Is Mace shy—all of a sudden?” asked Rowenstock. “I don’t see him around.”
“Sheriff ...” Nixon studied him narrowly, “it seems to me you’re actin’ mighty strange.”
“Just here to do my duty.” Rowenstock showed them a genial grin. “Just aim to satisfy myself that you ain’t printin’ a few million dollars’ worth of counterfeit way out here:”
Silence followed the mildly-worded threat. Williams, usually one of the most level-headed men in the gang, licked his lips, grimaced nervously and turned to climb the steps.
“I—uh—best fetch the boss,” he mumbled.
“Yeah,” nodded Adams. “You do that.”
He was ready when, a few moments after entering the house, Williams reappeared, but without emerging. This act of panic on Williams’ part, this staking out in a front window behind a leveled shotgun, was the impulsive gesture destined to trigger the shooting showdown predicted by the sheriff. Rowenstock didn’t need to call a warning to Adams. The deputy was drawing and firing, while Williams was hammering back. The window shattered. Williams raised a yell of pain and, as he collapsed backwards, the shotgun discharged, riddling the porch awning with buckshot.
What followed was fast, confused and, for some, lethal. Nixon made the sorry mistake of emptying his holster. By then, the sheriff had leapt behind the pump with an alacrity that belied his years, and both deputies were sprawled behind the drinking trough—small targets for the cursing hardcases on the stamping, shrilly-neighing horses. Rowenstock missed death by inches when Nixon’s Colt roared; the slug came so close as to tug at the brim of his Stetson. In calm deliberation, he leveled his .45, squeezed trigger and, simultaneous with the roar of the report, saw Nixon reel drunkenly and collapse on the steps. Thunder erupted from behind the trough, as Adams and Denning triggered at the mounted men. Two saddles emptied at once. The third man, with his gun only half-drawn, abruptly decided to quit. His hands rose fast. On the ground beside their horses, his cohorts lay quiet, one, dead, one wounded.
“Nixon!” Rowenstock’s voice was harsh, relentless. “Where are Carrick and Emhart?”
But Nixon was incapable of answering. The sheriff’s slug had lodged in the fleshy part of his right shoulder. He had dropped his gun and was bleeding profusely, losing consciousness.
The sound of shooting echoed up to the three men outside the main shaft, just as Shelley emerged to rejoin them. Grim-faced, Pat McNear opined:
“It sounds like the sheriff’s hunch was right. They’re makin’ a fight of it.”
“It’ll be our turn,” Jim predicted, “any moment now.” He was studying the surface of the shelf on which they stood, as he asked Shelley, “Did you find anything in there?”
“Nothing that wasn’t there before,” growled Shelley. “No camouflaged turn-offs. No cached printing gear.”
“So we go a little further,” muttered Jim.
“What ...?” began Shelley.
“Further, I said.” Jim nodded to the ground. “Notice the boot-marks? They lead in that direction.” He gestured eastward. “And why? I’ll offer you just one guess, Shelley. This isn’t the only shaft.”
“Hey!” breathed Pat. “Why didn’t we think of that before?”
“Rand has a point,” Shelley conceded. “For all we know, there might be dozens of tunnels bored into this mountainside. All right. Let’s take a look ...”
“Not so fast,” cautioned Jim.
But the government man was already hustling up the track with an eager Pat McNear close behind him. They were advancing on a section at which the track took a turn, and Jim was filled with apprehension, as he bounded after them. If they turned that bend too quickly, they might find themselves in plain sight of more of Carrick’s guards—wide open and without cover. With Benito at his heels, he dashed towards the bend and called a warning.
His loud voice mingled with the angry barking of a rifle. He was only a few feet from the bend, when Pat stumbled, fell off the track and rolled five yards down the slant to drape grotesquely over an outcropping of rock. One anxious glance downward satisfied him that the cowhand was still alive. His eyes were wide open. An expression of pained surprise was stamped on his youthful countenance. Blood welled from the angry gash at his left side.
Cursing bitterly, Jim reached the bend, paused a moment, then sidled around. The rifle was barking again. From here, he could see the entrance to the second shaft. A clump of brush grew almost directly in front of it, shielding it from view, but not at this angle. The staked-out rifleman was a small target. Shelley, groaning, had flopped to his knees, and in those few tense moments Jim saw red trickling down the hand gripping the pearl-butted .45. The guard had scored on the Treasury agent and, but for the arrival of the champion pistolero of the 11th Cavalry, might have finished his victim off. Jim raised his right arm, squinted along the long barrel of his Colt and squeezed trigger. The guard rose into view, dropping his rifle, clasping both hands to his bloodied face. His dying yell caused Jim’s scalp to crawl, and then the body, like some gigantic bird, flopped outward and over the edge of the track, to tumble down the slope.
Shelley lurched to his feet' and stumbled on to the shaft entrance with Jim and the Mex in pursuit. They were crouched at the opening with guns drawn and eyes fixed on a distant glow of lamplight, when Carrick rounded the bend.
Once, twice, thrice Carrick fired, and the fast-triggered bullets caused just the reaction he had counted on. Benito leapt for the most available cover—the tunnel—and Jim followed, grasping Shelley’s good arm. Once inside the shaft, he muttered a command to the Mex.
“You take Shelley along the tunnel. Keep your eyes peeled and your gun ready. I’ll stay here and keep Carrick busy.”
He hammered back. Shelley gritted his teeth against the agony of his wound and trudged on along the passage, sided by Benito.
From where he lay, Pat heard the boss-swindler’s voice, a voice he would never forget. Carrick was yelling a taunt to Big Jim.
“Are you listening, Rand? You’re boxed in! There are more of my men in there! If you think you’re coming out ...!”
“Carrick!” This was Jim’s voice, booming, threatening. “You have just one chance of being taken alive! Surrender here and now!”
“That’ll be the day!” jeered Carrick.
“You aren’t just bucking a couple of drifters, Carrick!” warned Jim. “One of my sidekicks is a government officer, an agent of the Treasury Department. He’ll find that press, and then what ...?”
Jim’s was the only voice audible to Pat now, and this seemed ominous. He couldn’t define his reason for beginning that painful climb back to the edge of the mountain track, the compulsion that drove him to put such a strain on his weakened constitution. He was suffering from loss of blood, but every instinct spurred him on, forcing him upwards—upwards ...
Carrick had dashed back down the track to the small shack near the entrance to the first shaft. When he emerged from it, he was toting dynamite, a small bundle of sticks to which a short fuse had been attached. His eyes
were dilated. A mirthless grin creased his flushed face, as he returned to the bend and yelled to Jim again.
“Rand—I got sad news for you! You—and the government agent! I can’t be arrested for operating an illegal press if the press is never found—and it won’t be found, Rand! I’m about to abandon the business! Offer my apologies to Marv Emhart—while you’re all suffocating! You’ll find the press, but it won’t do you any good!”
Pat raised his head and gun-hand above the edge of the track just as Carrick scratched a match and held it to the fuse. The boss-swindler was less than five feet away from him, but well-shielded from view of the big man crouched in the shaft entrance. All he needed to do was swing his left arm, hurling the bundle, letting it drop immediately in front of the opening. There would be no time for Jim to leap at it, to seize it and hurl it clear. The fuse was too short.
Laughing harshly, Carrick stretched his left arm backwards, preparatory to making his throw. There was only one thing Pat could do, and he did it fast. His index finger tightened on his trigger. The six-gun boomed and jumped in his fist and the bullet slammed into Carrick’s left knee, knocking him off-balance. He pitched forward flopping at the extreme edge of the track, toppling over, still clutching the hissing bundle. When he fell, his body missed the dangling cowpoke by only a few feet. Pat dug in with his boot-toes, raised an elbow and propped it on level ground and, with a last mighty effort, struggled over onto the track. He dropped flat in the same moment that the thunderous roar assailed his ears; the dynamite had exploded half-way down the mountainside.
“Jim!” he called frantically to the big man. “Carrick is—all finished! You—stay after that doggone press ...!”
From somewhere within the shaft, Jim heard the echoing roar of .45s. He whirled and hustled through the gloom, approaching the source of the uproar, bending double as bullets whined about the side walls, ricocheting. Lamps had been extinguished at the blind end of the shaft, the cramped area in which Emhart had established his printery. He could hear Emhart’s voice. The counterfeiter was pleading with his companions to surrender. The guns roared again and flashes marked the location of the men behind them.
Jim tripped over something, and the something was a prone body. He fell on face and hands, but without losing his grip on his .45.
“Clumsy ...” It was Shelley’s voice; he sounded weary.
“Where’s the Mex?” demanded Jim.
“I am killed!” wailed Benito, from somewhere to his left.
“I think your little friend got nicked,” grunted Shelley. “It’s probably just a scratch, but he acts as though he expects an amputation—of his head.” He struggled closer to the big man. “That’s Hartnell’s voice. Martin Hartnell for sure. He’s ready to quit, but I can’t say the same for the men who were guarding him. Plague take ’em—they seem to have enough ammunition to last them a hundred years.”
“Don’t say any more,” cautioned Jim. “They might get wise and start shooting at sounds.”
“What will you use for targets?” countered Shelley. “It’s pitch-dark in here.”
“When they start shooting again,” Jim assured him, “I’ll have targets.”
He thumbed back his hammer and lay very still, right arm extended, eyes probing the gloom. The silence, thick with tension, was broken by a whimpering sound; Hartnell, alias Emhart, was in a frenzy of fear.
“I am almost dead!” Benito loudly complained, and a gun roared.
Jim aimed for the flash, squeezed trigger and quickly re-cocked. He heard a choking gasp followed by a thud, and then the second guard cut loose. Something hot and fiery fanned Jim’s face, as he swung his gun-hand three inches to the right and triggered again. This time, there was no gasp of pain, no shouted oath, only the ominous thud of a falling body.
“Stop shooting!” begged the counterfeiter. “I surrender ...!”
“Emhart—I mean, Hartnell!” called Jim. “You have any matches? Light one. Get those lamps working.”
“Don’t take any chances with him,” muttered Shelley. “He faces the prospect of growing old in prison—so he might figure he has nothing to lose by trying to get past you.”
Shelley changed his mind, however, when the lamps were lit. In the yellow glow, Hartnell was revealed as a trembling, ashen-faced wreck. His nerve had cracked like a bone too brittle to ever heal. He was actually weeping, when Jim and the government man rose to their feet and walked towards him. Benito leapt up and hustled after them, mumbling Spanish profanity. His only wound was a shallow bullet-crease at his left shoulder, barely deep enough to break the skin; he had decided not to die.
One of the guards was alive; Jim’s bullet had grazed his temple. The other had died with his eyes open and an ugly red blotch staining his shirtfront.
Shelley, fighting off nausea, trudged to the press and examined it with intense interest.
“Very professional,” he assured Jim. “Very professional indeed. I’ll thank you to help me detach the plates. They’re the most important item.”
“To be confiscated?” prodded Jim.
“Immediately,” nodded Shelley. “A good fire will do it. Under prolonged heat, the plates will buckle and soften.” He showed the big man a faint grin. “Your government is beholden to you, Rand.”
“Don’t thank me—thank young Pat McNear,” retorted Jim.
“With all due respects to McNear and the local law,” said Shelley, “all credit is due to you.”
“If you want to show your appreciation,” muttered Jim, “just remember what I told you before. The reward goes to McNear.”
Some fifteen minutes later, having secured their dead, wounded and unscathed prisoners to their horses the three lawmen gazed towards the mountain and, with raised eyebrows, followed the approach of the victorious quartet. Benito was supporting the pallid but still conscious Shelley. Pat was loafing wearily beside Jim, who was toting one dead guard and prodding the other at the end of his six-gun; the recipient of the head-wound had recovered sufficiently to manage the journey down the mountain track. Hartnell was leading, moving as an automaton, a man in a trance.
“It looks like,” remarked Rowenstock, as the warriors joined them, “you hombres had yourselves a real shootin’ match.”
Jim dumped his burden, cast an eye at the laden horses and remarked:
“You, too.”
“Uh huh,” nodded the lawman. “What of Carrick?”
“You won’t find enough of him to fit into a grave,” said Jim. “He had some notion of sealing up the second tunnel with dynamite, and I’m glad to tell you McNear discouraged him—with a bullet. There’s another dead guard somewhere back on the slope.”
Rowenstock grinned at Shelley, threw a glance at the shattered Hartnell.
“You find the plates?”
“Here they are.” Shelley tugged them from his coat pocket. “And now, if one of your deputies will kindly start a fire, I’d like to see them destroyed before—before …”
“He means before he faints,” grinned Pat. “Well, the way I’m feelin’—I’m about ready to drop ...”
“Bound to be liquor in the house,” said Rowenstock. “What you hombres need is a couple good stiff slugs.”
“While you’re fetchin’ your horses,” Denning told Jim, “I’ll get a fire goin’.”
“You lookin’ for somebody else, Rand?” the sheriff asked. “They’re all here. We’ve accounted for the whole gang.”
“All but one,” frowned Jim. “Where’s Jenner?” There was a sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach, as he glowered at the only unscathed hardcase. “Jenner? The tinhorn who called himself Burch—what became of him?”
“The boss sent him runnin’,” mumbled the prisoner. “The way I heard it, Mace didn’t take kindly to havin’ a wanted killer on his payroll. He was afeared Jenner would draw the law to us.”
“How long ago did Jenner leave?” Jim demanded. “And where was he headed?”
The hardcase jerked a thumb.
“East—towards Texas. He’s got better than a twenty-four hour start on you, big man, if you’re all that interested.”
“I’m all that interested,” declared Jim, between clenched teeth.
It should have occurred to him before, he supposed. At the moment of showing the picture of Jenner to Carrick and Emhart, he had sensed that all was not well. And now it was all too clear. He had as good as warned Carrick to expel Jenner. The brandy-swigging tinhorn was a liability. Of course Carrick had gotten rid of him.
“It begins again, Amigo Jim?” prodded the Mex.
“Just as soon as we’ve packed our gear,” nodded Jim, “we’ll be Texas-bound.”
Around sundown of that day, while all of Tascosa buzzed with excitement over the news of Mace Carrick’s double life, Jim and Benito tethered their mounts to the picket-fence of the doctor’s house and went inside to visit with two of the more important patients—Pat McNear and Bart Shelley. The cowhand and the Treasury investigator were resting easily and in a mood for conversation, but their visitors stayed only long enough to bid them farewell.
“When you find the man you’re looking for, Rand,” said Shelley, “you ought to offer your services to your government. The Department could use a man of your peculiar talents.”
“Thanks for the suggestion—and the compliment,” Jim acknowledged. “But, when my hunting days are over, I’ll be re-enlisting in my old outfit.” He grinned genially at Pat. “How goes it, cowboy?”
“Talk respectful to me, big man,” said Pat, winking. “I’m gonna be rich.”
“Can I count on that?” Jim asked Shelley.
“You have my personal guarantee,” said Shelley, “that the entire bounty will be paid to McNear.”
“I have only one regret, Pat,” said Jim. “I wish I could be there when you square your account with Molly’s father.”
“I’m sorry, too,” sighed Pat, “because I hankered for you to be my best man.”
“Well—so-long,” drawled Jim, as he made for the door.
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