Ambush Valley

by Johnstone, William W.

  “And stampede the rest so they couldn’t come after us?” McCoy asked.

  “Well, we’d almost have to, or they’d be on our trail too quick.”

  “They could unhitch the horses from the wagons and ride them,” McCoy pointed out.

  “Those are draft animals, not saddle horses. I reckon we can outrun them.”

  Frank heard a faint rasping sound and figured that McCoy was rubbing his fingertips over the beard stub ble on his lantern jaw as he thought over the problem. After a few minutes, McCoy said, “What we need is a distraction. Something to keep all the guards so busy that we could get to the wagon with the Gatling gun before they realized what we were doing.”

  “That would work, all right,” Frank agreed. “But what could it be?”

  “That’s going to take some more thinking,” McCoy said.

  The heat inside the Dark Cell made it difficult to think or even stay awake. Eventually, both men dozed off. Frank had no idea how long he was asleep, but when he awoke there was the germ of an idea in his mind. He thought it over for a while before bringing it up to McCoy, fleshing it out and trying to consider all the angles. When he did broach the subject again and started talking about what he had come up with, McCoy saw right away what Frank was getting at. He laughed softly and said, “It might work. With a little bit of luck, it just might work, Morton.”

  They continued talking about the escape plan, and the time in the Dark Cell passed faster than either man would have dreamed that it could.

  That didn’t mean that they weren’t damned glad to get out anyway when the time came. Both were cramped up and weak from hunger and thirst, and they blinked against the harsh light as they stepped from the Dark Cell.

  But even though they were the only ones who knew it, they firmly believed that those were their first steps toward freedom, no matter how unsteady they might be.

  As Frank had expected, neither he nor McCoy were put back on the road detail right away. For Warden Townsend to do so would make it look too much like he wanted them to escape. But that was all right because the delay gave them both time to recuperate from the time they had spent in the Dark Cell. And to recruit the help they would need to make their plan work.

  Gideon was the first one they approached. “It’s simple,” Frank said to him one day when they were in the prison yard. “A fight breaks out among the men working on the stagecoach road, and while the guards are trying to deal with that, we grab some horses, stampede the other mounts, and take off for the tall and uncut.”

  Gideon frowned. “It’s been tried before. Some fellas did that while they were comin’ in through the sally port. There was enough confusion that they were able to slip away, but the guards ran ‘em to earth pretty quick and brought ‘em back in chains.”

  “That’s because they were right here at the prison when they made their escape. We’ll be out away from it. And if we scatter the other horses, we’ll be long gone before any pursuit can get started after us.”

  Gideon rubbed his jaw. “Well … it might work. You say McCoy’s part of this?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I reckon we can give it a try. We’ll need more men in volved, though. And the guards’ll have to believe it’s a real fight, not somethin’ that we staged.”

  A grim smile played over Frank’s face. “That’s why it’s going to be a real fight. I’m counting on Jessup and Nash to see to that.”

  Gideon’s eyebrows rose. “Jessup and Nash? They hate your guts, Fred. And with that bum knee you gave him, Jessup ain’t gonna be put on no road gang.”

  “He might drive one of the wagons. He’s getting around pretty good now, and they’re going to have to find some sort of work for him to do. That’s about the only chore he can handle.”

  “Yeah, they might do that. Could be a long time before everything lines up just right, though.”

  “Then we’ll wait,” Frank said. There was nothing else they could do.

  More time passed. Days stretched into a couple of weeks. A dozen men agreed to take part in the riot in hopes that they could escape during the confusion. When he was alone, Frank worried a little about that. He didn’t want to be responsible for freeing any vicious criminals back into the territory. For that reason, he tried to recruit men whose crimes hadn’t been particularly violent. Yuma housed more thieves than any other sort of crimi nal, so there wasn’t any shortage of men who were more than willing to break the law, yet didn’t have any his tory of wanton cruelty. Anyway, if everything worked out as Frank hoped, he and Cicero McCoy would be the only ones who actually escaped.

  He managed to catch Warden Townsend’s eye one day when the warden was making his rounds of the prison. The next day, Townsend sent his bespectacled assistant to fetch Frank. A couple of guards escorted him to Townsend’s office. Since Frank’s two visits to the Dark Cell, he had been a model prisoner. He believed that the guards figured his spirit was broken now and he wasn’t as much of a threat to cause trouble or attempt to escape.

  “You have a visitor, Morton,” Townsend said when Frank was ushered into the office. He waved a hand toward a man who wore a dusty black suit and the white collar of a priest. As the man turned toward him, Frank recognized the face of Bob Bardwell, one of Abner Hoyt’s crew of bounty hunters. With his bland, unmem orable face, Bardwell had no trouble passing for a priest.

  “Howdy, Padre,” Frank muttered.

  “My son,” Bardwell said, then put his arms around Frank and hugged him. “It’s good to see you again, Uncle Fred.”

  Townsend motioned for the guards to leave. When they had done so, he said in a low voice, “What the hell’s going on here, Morgan? You’ve been in here for more than a month now!”

  “You don’t have to tell me that,” Frank said “I remem ber every single miserable day of that time. But I think I’ve just about got everything set up the way we want it. McCoy trusts me.”

  “You’ve befriended him?” Bardwell asked.

  “I didn’t say that. I’m not sure a man like McCoy ever has any real friends. But he thinks he can use me to help him escape, and that’s all he really cares about.” Frank shrugged “He’s liable to double-cross me as soon as we get out … but we’ve known that was a possibility all along.”

  “What do you need me to do?” Townsend asked.

  “Send these men out to work on the stagecoach road.” Frank gave the warden the names of the men he and McCoy and Gideon had convinced to join them. “It doesn’t matter who else you put on the detail … as long as two of them are Jim Nash and Conner Jessup.”

  Townsend looked surprised. “Nash and Jessup!”

  Quickly, Frank explained about the trouble he’d had with the two men. “As much as they hate me, no one is going to question that the fight is real.”

  “Then what?” Townsend asked. “You can’t count on something as simple as a riot to provide enough of a dis traction.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Frank said with a smile. “That’s where the avalanche comes in.”

  “Avalanche!”

  “When we were working out there before, I spotted several boulders up on top of the bluff that borders the road. There were others down in the bed of that wash on the other side. They told me that rocks roll down the slope sometimes. The wagon with the Gatling gun on it was parked right in the path of some of the boulders that are still up on the bluff.”

  Bardwell nodded slowly as he frowned in thought. “So when the trouble breaks out, you’re going up the hill to start those rocks rolling. They crash into the wagon with the Gatling gun, which has been abandoned by the guards when they see the boulders coming at them.”

  “That’s right,” Frank said. “I thought for a while about trying to capture the gun, but we can’t risk that. McCoy might open up with it and slaughter a bunch of folks, guards and convicts alike.”

  “I don’t want a bloodbath out there,” Townsend said with a stem frown.

  “That’s why we’re doing it this way
. Once I’ve elimi nated the threat of the Gatling gun, McCoy and I will grab a couple of horses and take off. As soon as we’re gone, the extra guards who are going to be waiting nearby can move in, quash the riot, and get everything back under control.”

  “Extra guards?” Townsend repeated. Then a look of understanding appeared on his face. “I see. It won’t matter then if the other prisoners figure out it was all a setup. You and McCoy will already be gone.”

  “On your way to that eighty thousand dollars,” Bardwell said “And Abner and the rest ofus will be trailing you.”

  “Just don’t get too close,” Frank warned. “We don’t want to tip McCoy off to the fact that we’re being fol lowed.”

  “We won’t have to get close. We know the general area where you’ll be heading.”

  “That’s right.” Frank nodded. “Ambush Valley.”

  Chapter 15

  “What was that about?” McCoy asked when Frank was brought back into the prison and joined the men in the yard. “The warden’s not going to throw you in the Dark Cell again, is he? He seems to like doing that.”

  Frank gave a grim laugh. “No, not with the way I’ve been careful to behave myself. All of us need to make him and the guards think that starting more trouble is the farthest thing from our minds … until the right moment comes to get the hell out of here.”

  McCoy and Gideon nodded in agreement with that.

  “I had a visitor,” Frank said, explaining why he had been taken to the warden’s office. “My nephew.”

  “It ain’t visitin’ day,” Gideon said. “Anyway, you never had nobody come to see you before, Fred.”

  “The boy’s a priest,” Frank said, deliberately putting some scorn in his voice. “He’s my sister’s boy. He thinks he’s doing the Lord’s work by coming to see his poor convict uncle. Townsend went along with him, even though it’s not the regular visiting day.”

  Those days happened once a month, on the first Sunday. It made sense that someone who was a priest wouldn’t be able to come to the prison on that day. The Sabbath wasn’t a day of rest for men of the cloth.

  “Something interesting did happen while I was in the warden’s office,” Frank went on. “Townsend mentioned that he’s going to put us all back on the road detail soon. If enough of the men who are in on our plan are part of the same detail, we’ll be out of here before you know it.”

  “Can’t be soon enough to suit me,” McCoy said. He gave Frank a meaningful glance, and Frank knew the bank robber was thinking about that eighty thousand dol lars. They were the only ones who had talked about it. They didn’t know if Gideon was aware of the loot or not. The man had never mentioned it. All Gideon was really interested in was his freedom.

  The next couple of days dragged even more than usual. But at last, the guards came and marched Frank, McCoy, Gideon, and nearly two dozen more men out of their cell blocks and got them loaded onto wagons. Frank saw the men whose names he had given to Townsend among the group. And Conner Jessup sat on the driver’s seat of one of the wagons, just as Frank had requested. Nash was there, too, sitting right behind the seat.

  At long last, everything was falling into place.

  The wagons rolled out, surrounded by guards as usual. The wagon with the Gatling gun mounted in the back trundled along behind, also as usual. There was nothing to indicate that this was anything other than a normal work detail going out on a normal day-just the way Frank wanted it.

  The men swayed back and forth in the wagons as they rocked along the road. Even though the weather had been bone-dry at the prison, there had been a downpour in the hills about a week earlier, which meant the stage coach road along the arroyo could have been partially washed out again. That must have happened; otherwise, the work detail from the prison wouldn’t be sent out like this. Frank looked at McCoy and Gideon and gave a tiny nod. They passed it along to the other members of their escape plot. If any of them found it suspicious that so many of them had been assigned to this detail, none of them showed it. Everybody worked hard at Yuma Prison. Being given a chore like this was nothing unusual.

  It took a couple of hours for the slow-moving wagons to reach their destination. When they came to a stop, it was in the same place as they’d been before, on the stretch of road between the dry wash and the rocky bluff. Frank eyed the slope and tried to pick out the best route to the top. He’d have to cover that ground in a hurry, and if any of the guards noticed what he was doing, he’d probably have to dodge some bullets on the way, too. But if he made it, there were several of the boulders perched precariously enough that he thought he could put his shoulder against them and get them rolling with a good hard shove.

  The prisoners climbed down from the wagons, claimed their shovels and wheelbarrows, and got to work. Frank noticed that several of the convicts seemed to be friendly with Jim Nash and Conner Jessup. That was good. Having two distinct factions among the pris oners would make the fight look more real. Hell, it would be real. He intended to make sure of that.

  He also studied the place where the Gatling gun wagon was parked in relation to the boulders on the out cropping above it. He knew which rocks to push; now he just had to wait for the chance to start them rolling. It wouldn’t be much of an avalanche, he thought … but he wouldn’t need much of one. Just enough to wipe out that Gatling gun.

  On the way out here, Frank had kept an eye on their back trail, too. He didn’t want a cloud of dust from the hooves of the horses ridden by those extra guards to give away the game. The men had hung back far enough so that no one would notice them. Frank gave a little mental nod of satisfaction. Everything was ready.

  He looked at McCoy and Gideon and gave them a real nod. Gideon would accompany Frank up the hill and help him shove the boulders down. McCoy couldn’t do that because of the heavy iron ball still chained to him. They passed along the signal to the others. One of the convicts sauntered over to Nash and said something to him. Frank couldn’t hear the words, but they must have been pretty vile because Nash jerked around with a sur prised glare on his face.

  “What the hell did you just say to me?” Nash de manded.

  The other convict repeated it, with even more empha sis this time. Several of the other men lowered their shovels and looked around. They started drifting toward the confrontation. Some of them were part of Frank’s plan; others were Nash’s friends.

  Make it fast, Frank thought. The guards were already starting to notice that something was going on.

  Nash suddenly lost his temper and swung his shovel at the convict who’d been baiting him. The man sprang back and blocked the blow with his own shovel. The tools rang together with a loud clang that drew even more attention. Somebody yelled, “Fight!” and instantly men were shouting and hurrying to join in the fracas. Nothing broke up the monotony of hard work like a good fight.

  And this was a good one, a yelling, fist-swinging melee that spread like wildfire. The guards who had been spread out around the work detail rushed in to try to break it up. The men with the Gatling gun were alert, but didn’t make a move. They held the trump card in case this was more than the mere ill-tempered brawl that it appeared to be.

  Frank dropped his shovel and started up the slope toward the boulders. Gideon was right behind him, he saw as he glanced over his shoulder. They had to use their hands for balance, and the leg irons attached to their ankles made it even more difficult to scramble up the bluff. But desperation gave them speed they might not have had otherwise.

  With all the shouting already going on, Frank didn’t hear it when one of the guards spotted him and Gideon and bellowed a warning. He knew that must have hap pened, though, because a bullet suddenly whined off a rock near him as he climbed. More bullets thudded into the hillside as other guards opened fire on them. They were easy targets up here on the slope, but luckily, they were almost at the top. Frank drove hard with his legs and hauled himself over the lip of the bluff. Gideon sprawled on the ground beside him a second later.

&n
bsp; They rolled over, sprang to their feet, and lunged behind the rocks. The boulders provided some cover for them now, at least for the moment. “Come on, Gideon!” Frank called to the convict as he put his shoulder against one of the rocks he had chosen to start the avalanche. He shoved as hard as he could, but the boulder didn’t budge.

  Then Gideon threw his weight against the stone, too, and it rocked forward. With grunts of effort, Frank and Gideon pushed harder, and they almost fell down as the boulder suddenly rolled forward and tipped over the edge of the bluff. Its great weight carried it straight down the slope.

  Straight toward the wagon with the Gatling gun.

  Frank couldn’t hear the shouts of alarm from the guards manning the gun, but as he threw himself behind another boulder, he caught a glimpse of them swinging the deadly repeater around and opening fire. That wasn’t going to do any good, though. Bullets wouldn’t stop an avalanche.

  Frank and Gideon threw themselves against the second boulder, which was a little smaller. It rolled over the edge and started bouncing and rumbling down the slope, taking dirt and gravel and other rocks with it. The horses hitched to the wagon snorted and whinnied and jerked around in their traces as the rocks descended toward them, faster and faster. With frightened yells, the guards finally abandoned the wagon, leaping off franti cally and running toward the riot, which was still going on along the road above the wash.

  The first boulder landed perfectly, smashing down on top of the wagon, shattering the bed and the wheels and putting the Gatling gun out of commission permanently. The other rocks pelted down around it, but they no longer mattered. The damage had been done.

  Frank headed for the edge of the bluff. He had to slide down now, join McCoy, and get both of them on horse back so they could gallop away from here.