Brian Garfield

by Tripwire

The next thing was to make a ladder that would get him from the creekbed up onto the bank. He used a fallen log for that and trimmed the branches until he had just enough knobs left on it for footholds. Then he jammed it securely at the bottom.

  He had to decide on the placement of the tripwires. Not too far down the canyon because that would give them the opportunity to scramble back around the bend, behind cover, invulnerable to the Gatling gun. So he strung the wires not more than fifty feet downstream from his gun position. It meant they would be perilously close to him and if a few of them got through they might swarm right up the bank and overrun him; but then there was another way of looking at it: the closer they came, the harder they’d be to miss.

  He tied the wires taut; his anchors were the exposed roots that stuck out of the cutbanks on both sides of the defile. He strung the wires at two levels. The first rank of them hung about six feet off the ground where it would catch a man right across the chest and knock him off his horse. The second rank he placed ten yards closer to the gun position; he strung them lower, just a couple of feet off the creekbed where they would trip the horses.

  He thought about it a while and then he strung eight or ten wires across the canyon at both levels because if the light was good enough for shooting it would be good enough for men to see the wires; they would duck under the high ones if they had the chance but if there were enough wires it would be like a spiderweb, they wouldn’t get past all of them.

  He counted the kegs of blasting powder. Four of them. Not enough.

  “Well you don’t need to knock down the whole canyon, Boag.” He rummaged through his packs and found a can of coffee, which he emptied and filled with blasting powder, and Jackson’s canteen which was a spare now; he filled that too. He could make a couple more charges simply by packing the powder under rocks. The rocks would make good shrapnel but of course that wouldn’t work if it rained even a few drops. It didn’t look like rain but there was a feeling of weather in the air, a dampness that got into his nostrils and made his injuries creak.

  He buried the charges in the banks and in the floor of the canyon. One of them he put in the ground at the bottom of the canyon wall just beneath his gun position; he relied on the overhang to protect him from the blast and he wasn’t planning to set that one off unless things went bad and they swarmed too close to him.

  The next thing to do was to make damn sure they stayed down in the canyon where he wanted them; it would get uncomfortable if they got over the banks. Even the ten-barrel gun wouldn’t chop down trees and if they got behind him he’d be finished. He had to prevent that; he had to keep them down in the creekbed where they’d be as exposed as a baby’s butt.

  He did it with trenches and a log. He measured the log to make sure it would span the canyon from the Gatling gun to the far bank. He cut a deep groove in the log from end to end and he laid it across the gorge like a bridge, with the groove side up like a flume. Then he scratched trenches from both the near end and the far end of the log; the little trenches were maybe a foot wide and six inches deep and they ran down an easy pitch along the crests of both banks, all the way down to a point near the approach bend where the creek bottom had a wide rock depression in it. He fed both trenches down into that dry pool. Then he tested it by pouring water from his canteen into the grooved log.

  The water ran across the log and followed Boag’s trench along the far bank. There wasn’t enough water in the canteen to get all the way to the dry pool, but he saw it would work and that was all he needed to know.

  He wired the blasting charges with fulminate-of-mercury detonating caps and wedged the caps where he could see them from the gun position. You couldn’t string a fuse that long; some of the charges were nearly a hundred yards from the Gatling. He had brought the kerosene and the lassos because he’d expected to unravel the ropes, soak them in kerosene and use them for fuses; but that wasn’t going to work and he would have to explode the charges by shooting at the mercury blasting caps. They had to be in plain sight.

  But now he had a better use for the kerosene and he might find a use for the ropes too.

  The last thing to set up was the rifles.

  There hadn’t been any .38-56 in camp but Captain McQuade had got him a .40-90 repeater and Boag would keep that for his saddle gun; it had enough wallop to knock down a horse and enough range to do it at four hundred yards if you were good enough to hit what you aimed at that far away. Boag was good enough. He still had to sight it in, but that would be later.

  The rest of them were assorted rusty junk. Mostly rolling-block carbines, a few old rifles. One Springfield single-shot .45-70. He plugged a cartridge into its trap-door breech and loaded the rest of them and went around looking for places to put them.

  Most of them he tied fast to trees with pieces of rope. He aimed them generally down into the canyon. They weren’t supposed to hit anybody, they were just supposed to make noise. He tied them very firmly and ran wires from their triggers to the Gatling gun position. Then he went around cocking them all and reminding himself not to trip over any of the God damn trigger wires.

  Finally he made hand bombs by packing fistfuls of blasting powder tight into two saddlebags, a gunpowder pouch, and the horns of a cow skeleton that lay bleached at the edge of the trees. He melted down his candle and sealed the horn bombs with wax that had frayed bits of rope sticking out for a fuse. He put all these things except the saddlebags into his pockets and made sure the sulphur matches were handy in his shirt pocket; he checked the box of .40-90 cartridges and loaded the repeater’s magazine full and rammed the rifle into the saddle boot. He still had three revolvers—the two he’d stolen from guards in the Ures jail and the one he’d taken off Jackson’s partner—and he loaded them all with six cartridges and dropped the hammer pins between the rims. With the seven in the repeater’s magazine it gave him twenty-five shots without having to reload. That ought to make enough noise to stir them up a little; it was all he needed.

  He ate his meager supper sitting by the Gatling gun in the twilight and considering the setup, trying to think of what else to add, trying to decide whether he’d made any mistakes. If it was going to work at all it had to work completely; he couldn’t afford any casualties to his army because if they ever got near enough to put one bullet in the right place the whole war would be over.

  After he ate he rode two hours back into the mountains and found an open stretch along the side of a razorback ridge with a southwest exposure and enough light for him to sight in the long rifle. He used up thirty rounds satisfying himself with his knowledge of it, where its bullet would fall at fifty yards and where it would fall at two hundred and roughly four hundred, and then he bellied down and got a good steady hold and laid his cheek against the stock to squeeze off four shots at a full paced-off five hundred yards.

  He walked it off to see where the shots had landed and found that they had all punctured the log within a circle that he could span with the brim of his big Mexican hat. The circle was a couple of feet higher than he’d expected it to be; he put that bit of information back in a part of his mind where it wouldn’t get lost.

  He cleaned the rifle and built a little fire. He had retrieved the lead from a few of his practice shots and he had a bar of lead from Captain McQuade; he spent an hour melting and molding and crimping, reloading the cartridges he had fired.

  Finally he rode back to the foot of Mr. Pickett’s mountain. His legs hurt like fire and he was rocking with groggy fatigue; it was weak in his muscles and gritty in his eyes, the burning starvation for sleep.

  He lay back and went limp, eyes drifting shut.

  chapter eight

  1

  The first gold bearers showed up on the wagon road in the middle of the morning and Boag was ready for them.

  There were three of them and a pack horse. They must have been riding all night; they looked half asleep in the saddle. The same detailing of men Mr. Pickett had employed back, in Arizona, Boag noticed—two reliable o
ld rawhiders and a young Mexican gunman festooned with pistols.

  Boag had strung wire across the wagon road down in the weeds where nobody was going to cotton to it in advance. The two riders hit the wire abreast and when their horses stumbled and went down on their chins the Mexican plowed into the tangle because he and his horse both were too sleepy to react fast enough.

  Boag pulled the overhead rope and the blankets dropped on them.

  The blankets fell curling like fishing nets. The looming shadows terrified the horses. Boag dodged a panicking horse and stepped out of the trees on the edge of the road with cocked .45’s in both hands. The three rawhiders were batting at the blankets and Boag found the outline of a hatted head under a blanket and swatted it with his gun barrel. There was a moan from under the blanket.

  The Mexican pawed clear and spotted Boag but Boag was close enough to make it suicidal and the Mexican just put his hands up in the air. Boag whipped around behind him and shucked the guns out of the Mexican’s holsters and when the third rawhider crawled out from under the tangle Boag had a bead on him.

  “Don’t get notions now.”

  The rawhider blinked in baffled incomprehension. His sleepy brain hadn’t caught up with the things that were happening to him. “What the fuck?”

  “Gun belt off,” Boag said.

  The rawhider had to absorb it and stare at Boag for a minute before he squeezed his eyelids tight and popped them open as if to clear his head. But Boag was still there and the rawhider nodded bleakly and disarmed himself.

  Boag kicked the blanket off the third one, the one he’d hit on the head. The man was on his knees bent far over with his head almost touching the ground; he was holding his head in both hands and rocking back and forth in pain.

  Boag said to the Mexican, “Get him on his feet and bring him.”

  He prodded the three of them back into the woods to the little clearing where he’d left the lengths of cut wire. “You. Wire the Mexican’s hands behind his back. Do it tight, I’m going to check it.”

  When the three of them were wired to trees too far apart for them to reach each other, Boag went after the scattered horses.

  He kept listening for the approach of more riders. He didn’t know how close they’d arrive together; he was expecting to have to let some men get by him but he meant to intercept as many as he could.

  He’d seen the pack horse bolt to the north; that was the only animal he was really interested in. He rode that way looking for sign and found plenty of it; the horse had crashed through the forest in blind fear but naturally it hadn’t kept that up very long. A quarter of a mile back in the woods he found the horse grazing.

  He led it back to his little clearing and tied it up. Had a quick look at the gold and checked the lashings on his prisoners. He didn’t answer any of their questions or threats. He went back to the road and hiked up the blankets and tightened the tripwires and waited for the next bunch.

  2

  He had nearly a two-hour wait. He heard them coming; one of them was whistling Dixie and it made Boag’s lip curl.

  Only two of them this time, a team like Jackson and Smith: a fat one and a thin one. Otherwise they had the same stamp of the other rawhiders: the short-brim Border hats, the double-cinch Texas saddles, the flannel shirts and beat-up Levi’s and scuffed Missouri boots and the same hard half-shaven faces. As they came up the road he recognized Sweeney, the one who was whistling.

  When they hit the wire he dropped the blankets on them and stepped out into the road with a .45 in his fist. With his free hand he grabbed the lead-rope of the pack horse.

  He couldn’t find a head to beat on; he just waited for the rawhiders to get untangled.

  Sweeney’s partner rolled out from under the blanket; he’d been hurt—maybe hit by a horse’s hoof. Boag watched him for a second and then holstered his gun and bent down to pluck the man’s gun from his holster. The man didn’t even notice; he’d been clipped on the elbow and was holding it cupped in his other hand, rolling around in a silent agony, too hurt to scream.

  Holding the man’s gun Boag turned to look for Sweeney and found him coming up from the blanket trying for his gun.

  Boag would have been dead there if Sweeney’s fall hadn’t hitched his gun belt around. The holster was somewhere behind Sweeney’s butt and he was still trying to find it when Boag cocked the revolver and leveled it.

  “Quit that, Sweeney.”

  “You.”

  “Yeah me. Unbuckle that thing and leave it drop.”

  So now he had five men neutralized and two pack-horse loads of gold.

  When he got Sweeney and his partner wired up to trees in the clearing he rigged up the blankets again and inspected the wires. One of the tripwires had snapped and he replaced it.

  Assume these loads were the same size as the one Jackson had cached. If all the gold was split up this way, there’d be maybe six more loads on the way in. But most likely Mr. Pickett had already spent some of it and had kept some more. Mr. Pickett had got a lot of paper scrip from Don Pablo of course and he’d probably used that, rather than the gold, to pay off the corrupt officials of the Pesquiera regime; but he wouldn’t have let all the gold out of his reach. Boag expected that if he managed to shanghai two more loads it would do the job; three more would guarantee it.

  He got another installment somewhere around one o’clock. Two riders again, the pack on a mule this time. One of the horses got through the first line of tripwires but fell over the second line. The blankets were getting ripped up by now and one of the men showed an inclination to fight but then like the others he discovered he was looking into the black orifices of two steady forty-five caliber muzzles and he thought better of it. You didn’t fight the drop; that was a first rule of anything.

  That made seven prisoners and close to a hundred-thousand dollars U.S.

  It was a lot of hard men to be leaving off by themselves in the woods. He kept re-checking their wire lashings at close intervals because it only took one loose wire to bring all seven of them down on him.

  He made a cache of all their weapons and kept it close to his position by the side of the road. Most of their saddle horses had drifted off somewhere and perhaps some of them would wander up into Mr. Pickett’s fortress. That was all right, that was fine. He wanted Mr. Pickett to get nervous.

  Mr. Pickett had to be nervous by now anyway. No gold had showed up yet. Mr. Pickett was going to get angry and worried.

  That was part of the idea.

  He hadn’t bothered to try putting gags in his prisoners’ mouths. Right now they could yell all they wanted to; nobody except Boag was going to hear it. They wouldn’t have any way of knowing when their friends were approaching— he had them tied up beyond earshot of the road—so they couldn’t warn the approaching gold riders. There wasn’t much they could do with their mouths right now except complain.

  Then at half past two he was in trouble. He could see them coming up the road toward him and they were too many. Five men and two pack horses.

  Obviously it was two groups who had met on the way in. They’d joined up and now they were spinning yarns happily and Boag didn’t see what the hell he could do about it because in one minute they were going to hit the tripwires.

  3

  They were strung out along a forty-foot patch of road and when the leading pair of riders hit the tripwires Boag dropped the blankets on them and spun his guns onto the other three, stepping out in plain sight and talking loud:

  “Now freeze. Right now.”

  But it was no good, they were fighting men and they’d been ambushed before; they were yanking reins and ducking before the words were out of Boag. Boag shot one of them out of the saddle and dived back into the trees and their guns opened up; Boag wheeled behind the pines and saw one of the rawhiders lift his leg over, light on both feet and fire from a crouch under the horse’s belly. The bullet hit the tree right by Boag and drove wood splinters into his left hand; he almost lost his grip on t
he revolver.

  He answered the shot but the horse got in the way and he heard the horse scream; the man was dodging into the pines.

  The other one was somewhere in the trees on the opposite side of the road; Boag could hear his horse crashing through the brush. The pack horses were still in the road, rearing.

  Boag moved ten feet through the trees and put his attention on the tangle of blankets and horses and men in the road where he’d netted the first two; the men were getting out from under it now and the shooting had told them what was happening. Boag got down on one knee and laid the righthand pistol barrel across his left forearm and when the first man batted out from under the blanket Boag shot him in the chest.

  The other one came out shooting, throwing the blanket off him in violent rage. But he made the mistake of looking at his wounded partner and that gave Boag plenty of time. Boag’s first shot hit him somewhere in the upper chest and the second one a little lower.

  He still had one on each side of the road, both of them in the woods.

  Boag moved fast. He didn’t care about the noise because the rawhiders were just as deaf as he was now: you didn’t hear much of anything for a little while after firing off guns close to your own ears.

  He went back into the woods looking for the one he’d last seen afoot. The man would be advancing on Boag’s roadside position; Boag got away from there as fast as he could and then began circling back so that he might come up behind his stalker.

  He’d fired five out of the right-hand gun. It was one of the revolvers he’d taken off a rawhider; he had four of them stuck in his belt. It was a Smith & Wesson .44 and he had no more cartridges for it so he dropped it and drew out a .45 and slowed his swing through the trees now; he kept swiveling his head fast to pick up movement in the forest shadows but he couldn’t see anything stir and his ears were still jangling from all the hard racket.

  This was when you got fully scared. There just wasn’t any way to know when the other fellow would spot you and take a bead on your back.