Luke felt confident the outlaw wouldn’t be making a reappearance.
* * *
After double-checking to make sure the half-breed and the first man he’d shot were dead, Luke descended to the edge of the clearing. He was somewhat surprised that Burnett and Russell didn’t step out to meet him. A moment later he found out why.
“Over here, Mr. Jensen,” called Russell’s voice. He rose up from behind a nest of boulders, revealing himself to be bare chested. He motioned with one hand, adding, “The marshal has been hit!”
Luke hurried forward. When he got to the boulders, he found Russell kneeling beside Burnett, who was lying on the ground with his head and shoulders propped against some rocks. He was grimacing and pressing a bloodstained sleeve against his left side. The make-do bandage had been torn from Russell’s shirt.
“Can you believe the damn luck?” Burnett growled. “A ricochet from the last shot that lousy half-breed got off, and it finds me. It passed all the way through, at least, but I’m pretty sure it busted some ribs during the trip.”
“We’ve got the bleeding in front pretty well stopped, but it’s still flowing some in back,” reported Russell as he continued tearing his shirt into long strips. “We need to sit him up and get his own shirt off so we can make a tight wrap all the way around his middle.”
Burnett scowled at him. “I thought you were studying law, not medicine.”
“Believe it or not,” Russell replied, “in either practice there’s room for a bit of common sense, like direct pressure to stop a bleeding wound.”
“Okay,” the wounded man said. “Then here’s some more common sense you can use—the two of you leave me and get on into the cave where that bastard Kelson dragged my daughter! I’m not bleeding so bad I can’t hold out for a while on my own. Millie and the rest of those gals have been through enough hell already, and there’s no telling what more those scurvy dogs are putting them through. Leave me and go get them!”
Luke and Russell exchanged uncertain glances.
“Get going, damn it!” Burnett urged. “I’ve been shot before. I know what I can stand and what I can’t. I’m telling you, I’ll be all right until you get back.”
Luke stood up and began reloading his guns. “I think the man has a point, kid. We don’t know how many are left in that cave or what they’re up to. And the longer we wait to find out, the more time it gives them to plan and get set up.”
Russell looked troubled, undecided. His eyes went from Luke to Burnett then back to Luke again. Then he reached for his Henry rifle and also stood up. “Okay, if you both think that’s the best way, just give me a minute to reload and then—”
His statement was cut short by a sudden rumbling sound from the direction of the cave. The ground underneath them trembled. All three men looked around sharply and saw a billowing yellow-brown dust cloud come rolling out from under the slanted cliff where the cave entrance was.
Russell breathlessly blurted another half-finished exclamation. “What the—”
Burnett pushed to a sitting position, wincing at the pain it caused him. Through gritted teeth, he groaned, “No! Millie!”
Chapter 46
The dropfall worked to effectively seal the passage—but it came at a heavy price. To Kelson’s way of thinking, it was yet another sign of the jinx still wreaking havoc, not yet being done with them.
The price was Old Man Crowley’s life. It resulted from the oldster’s insistence on being the one to wield the sledgehammer to knock out the wedge that released the overhead pile of boulders and timber. When the wedge gave way easier than expected, the momentum of Crowley’s hard swing of the heavy hammer pulled him sharply off balance. This, combined with the limited mobility of his game leg, made it impossible for him to right himself and jerk back out of the way in time. He stumbled a stuttering step and a half forward, directly into the avalanche of crushing debris. He had no chance to scream or even let out a yelp before he disappeared under tumbling rocks and boiling dust.
Millie screamed for him as Craddock and Kelson jumped back from the sudden release, yanking her along with them. The men joined her with bitter curses, but the rumbling, roaring clatter of the falling rocks echoed through the passage and on into the cave, drowning out all other sound.
The passage promptly filled with a dense haze of dust that blurred vision and caused choking and coughing. Kelson led the way out of it, the three of them moving deeper into the cave, hacking to clear their throats as they swatted the dust from their clothing and rubbed grit out of their eyes.
The women in the stockade, not knowing what to think of the sound and dust cloud that rolled out of the cave, were in a frenzy. They clamored and howled to be freed, not left trapped. It was only Kelson’s threat of silencing them with a couple of shotgun blasts that settled them down. All Millie could do was look on, agonizing for the imprisoned women yet at the same time thinking how their fate might actually be better than what seemed to be awaiting her.
Kelson and Craddock wasted no time descending on the strongbox and proceeding to fill the pouches of wide money belts that Kelson provided for each of them.
“Poor old Crowley,” Craddock muttered. “I’m beginnin’ to think you’re right about some kind of damn jinx, Kelson. It’s almost like this whole cave and the area around it is suddenly cursed. I can’t wait to get the hell clear of here!”
“You think you’re telling me something I don’t already know?” Kelson grunted. “I just hope the jinx is broken by putting some distance between us and it.”
“You know,” Craddock said as he continued stuffing clumps of money into the pouches around his waist, “if we took a couple of spare horses so we could keep switchin’ back and forth to fresh mounts, we wouldn’t have to stop at that layover cave. We could just keep on ridin’ until we made sure we was clear of this place and all the bad that goes with it.”
“That wouldn’t be a bad idea, except for one little detail,” Kelson told him. “You see, we won’t be taking any horses with us when we leave here. The back way out is only a tunnel for the last stretch. No horse could ever fit.”
Craddock looked startled. “What the hell, man! What kind of escape plan is it without horses? How far do you expect to get that way?”
“Just as far as it pleases me,” Kelson snapped back. “These badlands don’t run on forever, you know. A few more miles to the north, within walking distance, they fade off into grasslands up near the Nebraska border. Even Crowley on his bum leg could have made it that far. In that grassland are scattered a dozen or more small ranches. We’ll be able to get horses from whichever one we make it to first.”
“And you don’t expect those ranchers will think it’s fishy, us wandering in on foot out of nowhere? What if they’ve heard about us and are on the lookout?”
Kelson scowled. “What if they are? They’re out in the middle of nowhere, too—who are they going to tell? Besides, we’ll have enough money to buy their quiet. If not, we’ll damn well take what want and make sure they stay quiet, permanentlike. It’s not like we haven’t played it that way before.”
Craddock matched his scowl. “Okay. I guess we got no choice. But I’d like it a whole lot better if we had horses to make our getaway on.”
“Yeah, well, there’s a lot of things I’d like, too. But listening to you bellyache isn’t one of them,” Kelson said. “This escape plan was in place a long time before you came along to benefit from it with more money than you otherwise stood to see in your whole life. Maybe you think sticking around to talk things over with those bounty hunters when they show up is a better plan?”
Craddock glared at him. “Okay, you made your point. Forget I said anything. Let’s just do whatever we have to so we can get the hell out of here.”
Chapter 47
“How far back do you think this cave-in reaches?” Russell wanted to know.
Luke shook his head. “Not far, I don’t think. Mainly, because I don’t believe it’s an actual
cave-in. Not a natural one, that is.”
Russell gave him a look. “What do you mean? All these fallen rocks and everything—what else would you call it?”
“That’s just it. All these rocks and everything. See those chunks of timber mixed in the rubble”—Luke pointed—“and that support beam still partially showing along the side? I think this was rigged, done intentionally. Still a cave-in, for want of a better word, but a man-made one.”
“For what purpose?” Burnett asked. “Was it supposed to be a booby trap? Meant to fall on us or something?”
After the rumble and dust of the falling rocks had demanded their attention, the three men—Luke and Russell supporting the marshal, one on each side—had made their way from the far edge of the clearing and as far as they could go into the passage before finding their way blocked. Burnett was leaning against the smoothly worn rock wall for support, clutching the makeshift bandage to his side as he watched Luke and Russell examine the dropfall. His mouth was stretched in a grimace, fighting back the pain he was trying not to show.
In answer to the marshal’s question, Luke said, “If it was meant for that, it must have gotten triggered prematurely. But no, I’ve got a hunch it was supposed to do nothing more than what it’s accomplished—seal off the cave and block us from getting in.”
Russell’s forehead puckered. “Block us for how long? You mean seal off the cave forever?”
“I doubt that,” Luke said. “It would have taken explosives to bring down enough rock for that. I’d say this was rigged to hold us back for more like a matter of hours, maybe a day.”
“Why go to so much bother to gain themselves no longer than that?” Russell frowned. “Maybe to buy enough time to set up a better trap, another ambush of some kind to have waiting for us once we dig our way through?”
“That don’t make no sense,” Burnett said. “If they wanted to make a stand and fight us off, they could have done it right here in the narrow part of this passage. A handful of men with a good supply of ammunition could hold off an army from this spot.”
“Not if it was us. With the dynamite we brought along, we could have blasted our way right through them,” Russell said. Then, after a moment, his expression brightened with an idea. “Hey. We’ve still got some sticks left, why not use a couple of them to make short work of this blockade they plunked down in front of us?”
“Speaking of that dynamite,” Luke said, “why didn’t you use some more of it to finish off the last of those varmints out there in the rocks? It would’ve saved burning up a lot of powder and likely have kept the marshal from stopping that ricochet.”
It was Burnett who answered. “After we realized how close the cave entrance was and then saw Kelson dragging Millie toward it, I worried about which way the cave ran underneath and for how far it stretched. I made the decision we couldn’t risk setting off any more explosives for fear of causing a collapse inside the cave and possibly endangering Millie and the other women who must also be in there.”
Luke nodded. “Good to be cautious.”
Russell’s expression turned sour. “Making what I said just a minute ago pretty stupid. If there was risk of more dynamite possibly endangering Millie and the others before, it would be even greater if we set off something here, even closer.”
“You were right about one thing, though,” Luke told him. “We need to concentrate on digging through this blockage as quickly as possible. If the rest of my hunch is right, we won’t have to worry about an ambush waiting on the other side. In fact, I doubt we’ll find anybody waiting on the other side at all except, hopefully, the abducted women.”
“How so?” Burnett said. “We saw Kelson go in there. And that Craddock skunk ducked in after him. So there’s at least those two, plus maybe some other Legion men inside.”
“Uh-huh,” Luke allowed. “But that doesn’t mean whoever was inside has to stay there. I’m guessing there’s a back door to that cave. Kelson may be a lot of things, but he’s not a fool. At least not a big enough one to bottle himself up without an escape route. I see all of this as a way to keep us busy in order to give Kelson and whoever he’s got with him the time they need for using that back door and making their getaway.”
“In that case,” Russell said, “rather than do what he wants by wasting time here, we should circle around and find wherever the back door empties out. Stop that devil dead in his tracks.”
“You make finding that back door sound mighty easy,” Luke pointed out. “If we miss Kelson on his way out, you’ve already seen how difficult it is to track anybody over this godforsaken terrain. We could spend days trying to catch up with him again that way.”
“And in the meantime,” Burnett said, “what about the women we believe are still here in the cave? Our first and foremost thing all along, remember, has been to save those women.”
“Of course. I never meant to imply we’d lose sight of that,” Russell said defensively.
Luke’s expression took on an added somberness. “The other thing, much as he’s not going to want hear it or admit it, is that the marshal is clearly in no shape to continue on with any kind of chase or track down.”
“Now hold on. Don’t be so damn sure about that, mister,” Burnett protested. “If somebody finishes patching me up and binds my middle good and tight, you just watch and see if—”
“Save it,” Luke cut him off. “We’ll patch and bind you, like you said. Russell and I will go to work on clearing this blockage while you rest up from your wound. Depending on what we find on the other side, then we’ll decide on the who and how when it comes to proceeding from there.”
* * *
After first tending to the marshal and making him as comfortable as possible in an out-of-the-way space along one side of the passage, Luke and Russell dug—literally—into the task at hand, working feverishly through the balance of the day.
Using a folding shovel from Luke’s saddle gear and a length of split timber to serve as a pry bar, they removed rock after rock and scraped away heaps of loose dirt and gravel. For the larger, boulder-sized pieces, they tied lariats around them and used their horses to pull them free and drag them away.
When darkness fell and visibility in the passage turned impenetrable, they rigged torches and lodged them in crevices on the rock walls in order to see well enough to keep working. Through all of it, Luke and Russell maintained a punishingly steady pace. They stopped rarely and only briefly to drink from their canteens and catch a moment’s breather.
At one point in the middle of the night, Burnett, moving slowly and painfully, made a fire from some pieces of broken timber over which he cooked a pot of coffee. He insisted the other two stop long enough to drink some as well as eat from the jerky and hardtack he laid out in order to sustain their strength.
Shortly after dawn broke on the outside, Luke and Russell pulled down some smaller, crumbled boulders from near the top of the heap and suddenly saw an open space with the faint illumination of firelight behind it. They had broken through. The cave lay just beyond!
They continued yanking away more rocks, and shovelfuls and handfuls of dirt, digging like groundhogs until they had an opening large enough to pass through. With difficulty, they restrained themselves from barging through right away. First they took a couple of minutes to catch their breath and trade their digging tools for their guns. Then, with Russell’s Henry rifle covering him, Luke slipped through the opening and over to the other side. He next covered Russell while the young man came over. Together, they made their way cautiously through the remainder of the feeder passage and on into the cave itself.
Back on the other side of the rubble, in the outer section of the passage, Burnett waited with gnawing anxiety for what seemed like an eternity. On the brink of going after the other two, he considered dragging himself forward even in his injured condition in order to find out what was going on.
Russell suddenly reappeared in the opening atop of the rubble pile. “The cave is empty,”
he reported, “except for the women. They appear safe and unharmed!”
Chapter 48
While Russell was fetching Burnett, which involved widening the gap at the top of the rubble heap a bit more before assisting the marshal through, Luke took care of freeing the women from the stockade. They were naturally elated and grateful and for several minutes their reactions ranged from tears of joy to an excited babble to a flood of questions.
As Luke endured this emotional outpouring, he tried to get in some questions of his own. What could they tell him about Kelson and Craddock and any other Legion men who’d been in the cave? What was the fate of Millie Burnett, who was glaringly absent? Only one of the women, a handsome, middle-aged redhead who identified herself as Lucinda Davis, seemed to grasp the urgency of what Luke was asking and calmed herself enough to provide some answers.
Luke immediately recognized her name as that of Arapaho Springs’ café owner and Burnett’s betrothed. He wasn’t surprised when, in the midst of their discussion, she spotted Russell arriving with the marshal and broke away to go running to them.
All of the women, in fact, were quick to huddle around Burnett and Russell. In spite of playing a part in their rescue, Luke was basically a stranger, so it was only natural they gravitated more to those who were familiar. Plus, the sight of Burnett’s wounded condition also triggered their concern and an immediate desire to provide care and comfort.
To facilitate the latter, a fresh fire for light and warmth was stoked in the central fire pit and Burnett was laid out close by on a pile of thick blankets. Lucinda took primary charge of the proceedings and didn’t hesitate to bark orders to the other women, who scrambled to do as instructed, preparing hot water and rummaging through the supply pile to find appropriate material for bandages and clean shirts for the marshal and Russell.
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