‘Now,’ said Dimsdale. ‘I would like to pass this information on to the marshal, Samson Rule.’
‘All right,’ said Blade, ‘but don’t mention my name. Though most likely every member of the Ring is after my hide already. Can you rely on the army for any support, governor?’
‘Forget the army, I’m ashamed to say. Alpert is so keen on martial law I tremble for it. Alpert is my great unknown. My God, I have begun to suspect everybody. When you didn’t show tonight, Joe, I even suspected you.’
Blade laughed – ‘You’re the only person I haven’t suspected so far, governor.’
The general gripped Blade’s arm – ‘Watch your back, boy. I have a feeling this will get nasty before we’re through.’
Blade said: ‘Do you know George McMasters?’
‘Indeed I do.’
‘He’ll report next if I’m not able.’
‘All right. Now I must go in. Go carefully.’
They shook hands and the governor crossed the patio and entered his office. He left the doors open. The night was mild. In a moment his wife would come to tell him it was time for bed. They might have a last drink in the mildness of the evening. He sat behind his desk and picked up a sheaf of papers. After a few minutes, he found that he was not reading. His mind was on what Blade had reported to him. An awful fear hit him, a fear that must come at some time to men in positions of responsibility. It was the fear that his career as a territorial governor would be a total fiasco, that his little bit of power would crumple about him. A shiver ran through him.
I must be getting old, he thought. I never had a thought like that before.
The door opened softly and he looked up, expecting to see his wife. He was surprised to see Alpert, the territorial secretary, on the edge of the lamplight. He could not see distinctly, but he was under the impression that there were more men behind him.
Alpert advanced into the room saying: ‘I’m so sorry to disturb you, General.’
Dimsdale was not a man easily moved to anger, but he was angry now. He had told this man that he was not to be disturbed. That was a plain instruction.
‘I told you quite distinctly, Alpert,’ he said in his best martinet’s voice, ‘that I was to be left undisturbed.’
There were three men with Alpert. The last of them to enter the room closed the door behind him and turned the key in the lock.
The governor was on his feet.
‘What the devil?’ he exclaimed.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw the lamplight glitter on metal. He turned his head and saw with astonishment and alarm that one of the men held a gun in his hand.
A voice rumbled deeply.
‘Do not raise your voice, Governor.’
Dimsdale squinted at the dimness beyond the circle of lamplight. He thought he saw Milton Draper.
‘Is that you, Draper?’ he demanded.
‘Yes, indeed,’ Draper said.
The governor said: ‘Alpert why is there an armed man—’
He got no further. A powerful hand planted on his chest thrust him back into his chair.
Draper said: ‘Remain silent, General, and you will come to no harm. One word or action out of place and you will bring grief not only to yourself, but to those nearest and dearest to you. Do I make myself clear?’ He picked up a chair in one hand as if it weighed nothing and placed it alongside the governor’s. He went on: ‘Steefen, sit beside your cousin.’
At the name Steefen, the governor started as though somebody had thrust a knife-point into him.
‘Steefen,’ he exclaimed and looked with surprise and horror at the man who walked out of the shadows. He did not take his eyes from him as he filled the vacant chair. He had not seen his cousin for five or six years. They had last parted under unhappy circumstances. There had been hard words and threats between them. Few people parted company with Manning Steefen with anything else. He might be the image of his cousin who had risen to the rank of general in the army and was now governor of a United States territory, but that likeness was only external.
Manning Steefen now wore a heavy beard and moustache. He turned now and grinned maliciously at Dimsdale.
‘I’d be a liar, cousin,’ he said, ‘if I pretended this wasn’t the happiest day of my life.’
Dimsdale said in an indistinct voice: ‘What in heaven’s name do you intend?’
Still smiling, Steefen gripped his beard and peeled it off. He then did the same with his moustache. The governor sat there staring at a living image of himself. He looked from his cousin to the faces of the other men, horror showing on his own.
Draper said in a mocking tone: ‘Behold the new governor. Now, Dimsdale, if you behave yourself, your good lady will come to no harm. If she behaves herself no harm will come to you.’
For a moment, it seemed that Dimsdale struggled in vain to speak. Finally, he managed to get out: ‘Do you mean you intend for this blackguard to take my place?’
Steefen answered with a sadistic joy – ‘In all respects, dear Bogart – as a governor and as a husband.’
Dimsdale sprang to his feet with a sharp cry.
Draper, big though he was, moved with the speed of lightning. His right hand flashed out and the edge of it caught the governor across the throat. Dimsdale fell back in his chair, choking and no more than half-conscious.
‘Get those clothes off him,’ Draper snapped. ‘Quick, now!’
The other two started stripping the clothes from the governor, not caring how rough they were. The man with the gun thrust it into his face and said fiercely: ‘Another sound from you, Dimsdale, and I’ll blow your goddam head off,’
Blade waited until the governor was seated at his desk, then he approached the high rear wall of the patio and prepared to climb back into the alleyway. He was about to leap with hands outstretched for the top of the wall, when he heard a sharp sound from the direction of the governor’s office. He hesitated, decided to go on and climb the wall, then changed his mind and turned back. There was something about that sound that was wrong. From habit, he reached inside his coat for his gun. It was in his hand when he approached the opened doors of the office.
There were four men in the room, clustered around the governor’s chair. The man facing the governor held a gun and it was pointed at Dimsdale. Without any further hesitation, Blade stepped forward and was about to call out when something hard struck him on the back of the head.
He lunged forward blindly groping for support with a hand. He gripped a door and it swung inward under his weight. The floor came up and hit him in the face. The world turned over a couple of times.
His mind screamed: The gun. Get the gun.
He groped for it, but there was no gun.
His mind ordered him: Get up. On your feet. Raise the alarm, you’re finished.
He tried to shout and only a useless croak came from his throat. A boot caught him in the ribs. He managed to get to one knee and that hard object crashed into his head again. His whole skull seemed to explode. The world was vivid with bright lights and demon flames. He was very vaguely aware of the men in the room turning towards him. The floor came up and hit him again.
When he came slowly back to consciousness he found that he was lying on a hard smooth floor and he was retching painfully. The toe of a boot caught him none too gently on the hip bone and a voice said: ‘On your feet, Blade, or I’ll kick your ribs in.’
He stood up and found himself facing a hard-faced man he had never seen before. Beyond this man, seated on his office chair was the governor. Beside the governor was a man with a beard and moustache who would have looked like the governor if he had been clean-shaven. To one side was a man of immense size with eyes as cold as agate.
The big man said: ‘Blade, I’ll say it once and only once. So you hear this good. You will walk out of here as meek and mild as a mouse. Every step you take there will be a gun pointed at you. You do anything you shouldn’t do and not only General Dimsdale but his lady as well will
suffer for your thoughtlessness. Do you get that?’
Blade nodded – ‘I get it.’ And he did, thoroughly. This big man meant business.
The big man pointed at the man with the beard: ‘As you will gather sooner or later, Blade – the man with the beard is General Dimsdale.’
Blade blinked. He could have sworn that the man sitting in the governor’s chair was Dimsdale himself.
The real Dimsdale said from his depth of bitterness: ‘What he says is true, Joe. They have you and me, both, by the short and curlies. They’re taking over the whole goddam territory, so we may as well face up to it.’
Blade said: ‘A little more than being mayor of Crewsville, huh, Draper?’
With a good-humored chuckle, his eyes twinkling, Draper turned to Steefen and said: ‘All right, you’re on your own, Governor. You know what you have to do. You shouldn’t make mistakes, not with Alpert at your elbow.’
With a grin Steefen said: ‘You don’t come to bed with me, Alpert.’
Alpert laughed – ‘You’re on your own there, Manning. But from what I hear you won’t find that so difficult.’
Steefen said: ‘I bet the lady’ll know the difference right off when she gets a real man in bed with her.’
With a cry of inarticulate fury, Dimsdale hurled himself at his cousin. But he scarcely managed to get his hands on him, for Draper’s massive hand shot out, caught him by the scruff of the neck, swung him out from behind the desk and hurled him into the centre of the floor. When he picked himself up, his face working with rage, he found the gun of the hard-faced man rammed into his neck. He stiffened and remained still.
Blade said: ‘It’s no use, General.’
Draper chuckled.
‘I knew you were a sensible man, Blade,’ he said. ‘By the way, only a short while back I had a report you’d been taken off the Tucson stage. You’re a smart cookie and no mistake. But you’d best believe your smartness stops here. All right, let’s get them safely locked up. We’ll leave the new governor to get on with his affairs of state.’
Alpert hurried to the door and unlocked it. He opened it a couple of inches and peered outside. Then he turned and nodded to Draper.
Draper said ‘Go ahead.’
He came around the desk and shoved Blade in the direction of the door. A moment later, they were making their way down a long hall to the entrance of the building. To one side of this heavy oak door was the guard-room. Inside, Blade saw a corporal and a couple of soldiers. Alpert spoke a brief word to the corporal who opened the door to the street. They passed through into the cool of the evening. Here there was just one soldier on guard. He was lounging and smoking a cigarette.
Alpert turned right and led the way along the street. They walked no more than a hundred paces when they turned through an arched gateway. The two prisoners stumbled here in the darkness. Then a door opened ahead of them and they were in bright lamplight. Alpert picked up a lamp from a table and led the way down a narrow passage. They stumbled down some steps and came to a trap in the floor. Blade looked down into a pitch dark cellar. He saw that there was a crude ladder for descent.
Behind him Draper’s voice boomed: ‘Go down!’
Blade turned and started down the ladder. Above him there was a commotion as the general refused to be locked up in the dark like an animal. There was the sound of a blow and a cry of pain.
The hard-faced man’s voice reached Blade – ‘Give the general a hand, Blade, he don’t feel so good.’
That was true enough. The man that Blade helped down the ladder was almost unconscious. With some difficulty, Blade got him to the bottom of the ladder and stretched him out on the floor. He had no sooner done so than, without a further word, the men above dropped the trapdoor into place and Blade and the general were left in total darkness.
Blade’s first thought was for Dimsdale. Dropping on his knees beside him he examined him as best he could with his hands in the dark. There was a sticky wet patch on his head.
Dimsdale groaned and tried to sit up.
Blade said: ‘Take it easy, General. That lump on your head was raised by a gun barrel.’
‘For God’s sake, where are we, Joe? What have these animals done to us?’
‘I reckon we’re in a kind of storm cellar under Draper’s house,’ Blade explained. ‘No more than a few minutes’ walk from your house.’
Blade’s next task, after he had bound his bandanna around the governor’s head, was to go around the walls carefully with his hands. The result of this exploration was that their prison was about twelve foot square and possessed no windows, indeed no exit of any kind except for the ladder.
The general said: ‘I have a feeling we won’t get out of this alive, Joe. I gather that cousin of mine intends to declare martial law. That means Mark Rally, the damned volunteer colonel will have a more or less free hand. They mean to take over the territory, you know. They can’t afford to keep us alive.’
Blade said: ‘They’ll keep you alive all the time they need your signature. Hold out as long as you can so I can fix to get us out of here. How well do you know George McMasters?’
There was a puzzled silence from the governor for a moment, then he said: ‘Pretty well. Knew his father better.’
‘If I don’t turn up in Crewsville, George is to come into Tucson to report to you. Just as I did. Does Alpert know him?’
The governor said: ‘Alpert is new to the West. He wouldn’t know McMasters at all.’
‘Nor will your cousin.’
‘That’s a fact.’
‘So George may smell a rat if Steefan shows surprise or puzzlement at seeing him. But it won’t be for a few days.’
‘They could have cut our throats by then.’
‘So we have to dig ourselves out,’ said Blade. The governor was irritated by his matter-of-fact tone.
‘Joe,’ Dimsdale said, ‘you don’t seem to realize the gravity of the situation. We’re dealing with unprincipled ruffians.’
‘General,’ Blade told him, ‘my profession is dealing with any kind of ruffian. Take it from me, we’ll get out of here and we’ll hang these bastards before they’re through.’
The general groaned and said: ‘I wish I could share your optimism.’
‘You can share my digging, that’s more useful.’
‘Digging? What the hell do we dig with?’
‘I’ve found a pair of big old rusty nails in the walls. This placed is lined with timber and adobe. The way I see it, we dig at an angle from the corner here and that’ll bring us out into the patio.’
‘Have you also thought where we’re going to hide the dirt we dig out?’
Blade said: ‘Back under the ladder against the wall. It’s not ideal, but the best there is.’
The general groaned again. He wasn’t thinking of the danger he was in. He was thinking of his wife and that brute Manning Steefen who might even now be preparing to get into his, Dimsdale’s, bed. He thought: Rose Mary will know. She’ll know right off that Steefen is not me. Then the awful thought struck him – she had always been attracted to the man. It was as if they were two sides of one man, the good and the bad, and the total evil of Steefen held its own kind of fascination for her. His mental agony was almost more than he could bear. When he got out of here, he would kill the bastard with his own hands. That suddenly became the only reason why he wanted to escape, to kill Steefen.
I’ll strangle you, you bastard.
Did he speak the words out loud?
Blade said: ‘That’s the spirit, general. Now come over here and dig.’
Ten
Few men are the makers of their own destiny. What happens to each one of us is usually dependent upon the actions of innumerable others. And so it was with Blade and General Dimsdale. Their fate depended upon the actions and inclinations of three people – George McMasters, Charity Clayton and the young Mexican vaquero who took Blade’s message from Crewsville to his uncle Sebastian. The young man’s name was Juan Pacheco.
First, Juan Pacheco—
He was in the yard by the corral when Blade rode in with the beautiful gringo girl. It was he who fetched a fresh horse for Blade when he rode off into the night at a reckless pace for the city of Tucson. Juan turned to his uncle, who was Don Sebastian’s corporal, Luis Donoso, and said: ‘It is not fitting that an Espada should ride alone in great danger, tío.’
The older man shrugged and said: ‘Are such things for you and I to decide, hijo?’
‘If a man is a man, he decides,’ said Juan confidently.
Luis smiled. He had been young once and had not forgotten what it was like.
‘Which means,’ he said, ‘that you have decided. I suggest you take my bay with the blaze.’
His nephew embraced him with gratitude. Five minutes later, those near the corral heard the hoof-beats of his horse following Blade’s in the direction of Tucson.
Don Sebastian said: ‘Do my ears deceive me or do I hear a second rider going towards Tucson?’
Luis replied ‘Your ears do not deceive you, patrón. It is Juan Pacheco. He rides for me on urgent family business.’
‘Bah!’ exclaimed the don and strode towards the house, holding the arm of the gringo girl.
Juan Pacheco knew every inch of the road to Tucson. He also knew the cut-offs. He followed his quarry without great difficulty right into the old city itself. He was like a shadow to Blade all the way to the alleyway behind the governor’s palace. He even watched him climb the patio wall and disappear into the shadows.
To say that Juan was alarmed when he saw Blade disappear into the patio of the governor’s residence would be an understatement. His lively imagination saw Blade doing a number of illegal things, one of which was the assassination of the governor himself. But Blade was an Espada and Juan owed allegiance to the family. Beside that, he had a genuine liking and respect for Blade. Finally, he could taste risk and adventure, which seemed like a good thing right then.
He stood in the alleyway and listened for a while. He could hear the murmur of voices and, though he could recognize one of them as Blade’s, he could not make out what was being said. When the voices stopped abruptly, he heard the sound of footsteps going in the direction of the house. There was then a silence so long that he reached for the top of the patio wall and raised himself so that he could see into the patio. There was a lighted open doorway towards which a man was walking softly. Though the light was poor, he was pretty sure that the man was Blade.
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