by Joe Millard
The hunter shook his head sadly. "I'm afraid you're just a nasty, miserable old misfit, doomed to go through life unloved and unwanted."
"Oh, shut up," his rival snarled, "and start using that thing your hat sits on to figure some way out of this, or neither of us will have very much life left to go through."
The conference ended with Lupo setting off at a trot. Apachito gestured with his pistol.
"Bring these two along, then saddle up and get ready to ride."
"Where we goin', chief?" demanded a small, pallid, hatchet-faced bandit whom the hunter identified as Tug Leeper with a two-thousand-dollar bounty on his narrow head.
"To pick up a half-million dollars," Apachito grinned.
The canyon was roughly in the shape of a letter U, with the tunnel opening at the extreme tip of one arm. The two captives were marched around the base curve of the U, through the edge of a dense woods. They could hear a number of horses snorting and stamping somewhere close by but hidden by the trees.
They emerged from the denser woods into the left-hand arm of the U. Here the ground was more open, the trees further apart, the rockfalls confined mainly to the base of the cliff. Back where the woods began to thin out, a number of log cabins were tucked under the trees.
Close by these were more than a dozen wagons of various sizes and descriptions, together with one stagecoach. Obviously these had been taken in holdups and robberies, probably to haul the loot back to the hideout. One of the wagons, more massively constructed than the rest, still had some kind of load covered by a tarpaulin in the wagon bed. A sign painted on the side read LUCKY NUGGET MINE.
"I told you so," the hunter murmured from the corner of his mouth. "There's the missing gold wagon and from the look, I'd say the gold is still on board."
Just behind him one of the outlaws snarled, "Cut out the gabbing, you! Apachito'll give you a chance to yell your head off when the time comes."
A well-beaten road ran from the wagon park up the left-hand arm of the U to the end, where it disappeared into a slot just wide enough for wagons to ease through. This was clearly the main entrance and exit, but how its outer opening could have eluded discovery for so long was a baffling mystery.
Apachito led the way to the edge of the woods in front of the cabins and wagon park and called a halt. He stood looking around, scowling fiercely as if something displeased him. Lupo came around from behind the cabins, carrying two sets of jingling handcuffs.
"These are the longest chains I could find, chief."
"No good," Apachito growled. "Around here the trees are either too big or too small."
Lupo leaned close, talking urgently and gesturing toward the wagon park. His words were inaudible to the prisoners, but Apachito finally nodded.
"It might do, at that, if it's stout enough. Come along and we'll find out."
"I don't know what he has in his little mind," Shadrach murmured softly, "but I have a feeling we aren't going to like it one bit."
From just behind them the rasping voice of an outlaw snarled, "One more peep out of either of you and I'll introduce you to something else you won't like."
CHAPTER 17
The prisoners watched, narrowed-eyed, as Apachito and his lieutenant circled the gold wagon, studying it intently. The two rear wheels came in for special concentrated attention.
Apachito shook them, kicked them, tried the iron tires for tightness. He tested each individual spoke for solidity, then he and Lupo together pulled on them with all their might. The stout oak refused to break or even to bend under their combined strength. He nodded with satisfaction.
"They will do perfectly, old friend." He turned and motioned to his men. "Bring the two over here and stand them, one facing each wheel."
The two were prodded forward to the gold wagon's wheels and ordered to thrust their arms through the indicated spokes. Apachito snapped handcuffs on the hunter's wrists, locking his arms around three of the heavy spokes, while Lupo did the same with Shadrach. He stepped back, grinning.
"Make yourselves comfortable, amigos, but don't waste your energies trying to move the wagon. It required all the strength of a four-horse work team to haul it here and I do not think you can match that."
He chuckled at his own wit and the outlaws guffawed obediently.
"Ha-ha-ha," the hunter said sourly. "The next time you see Dandy Deever, give him a demonstration of your humor and he might give you a job as assistant clown."
"I can be even funnier, as you will see," Apachito said, patting the hunter's back. "Since you first met some of my men, I have had much time to think and I have thought of a great many exciting and amusing things for you. Now, when we return, it will be even better because you and your friend Shadrach will be able to share the fun."
The hunter's head snapped around. "How did you know?"
Apachito chuckled again. "The description and the reputation of the deadly Shadrach have long been as well known to us as yours. Now the name of Apachito will become even more famous as that of the one who destroyed the two most notorious bounty killers in the West."
He turned and gestured and the outlaws followed him around the cabins and back into the woods. Their horses must have been picketed close, because almost immediately the prisoners could hear the slap of heavy saddles on blanketed horseflesh and the usual chorus of profane complaint. "Stand still, damn yuh!" and "Open your goddam mouth for the bit, you jughead!"
The hunter leaned far over to look past the rear of the wagon to his rival. Shadrach was sitting on the ground, grimly and methodically banging his handcuffs down on the inside of the wheel hub. The hunter sighed.
"You're wasting your time and your energy, old man. I happen to be familiar with these particular cuffs. They're the newest type, specially designed not to fly open at a sharp rap, the way the old style ones often would."
"I suppose you've got a bright idea for some better way to get loose," Shadrach snarled.
"I will have," the hunter said brightly. "I'm giving the problem a lot of serious thought, and when I do that something usually comes of it."
Shadrach swore at him.
The outlaws came streaming back out of the woods on their horses. Apachito reined in and grinned down at his prisoners.
"Don't wait up for us or worry if we're late getting back. If we're lucky enough to locate the circus and conclude our business tomorrow morning, we may be back by tomorrow night. But, of course, if Dandy Deever has taken flight or gone into hiding, it might take us weeks to find him and get the chest of money. But you two needn't worry. We're not coming back until we have it."
He gestured and the whole band raced off up the left arm of the U and disappeared into the slot that obviously led to an exit.
"Oh, great," Shadrach said. "Now try and imagine what we'll look and feel like after even a week or ten days handcuffed to these wagon wheels without food or water. Maybe it will spur your self-styled genius to figuring out some means of escape while we still have the strength."
"Oh," the hunter said, "I had that all figured out long ago. I'm just waiting for them to get well out of sound-range before I start the ball rolling."
From the direction of the slot came a muted rumble, like the mutter of distant thunder, followed by minutes of silence, then the rumble again, terminating in a muffled crashing sound.
"I figured that's how it had to be," the hunter said cryptically. "So now we're in business."
"Keep it up," Shadrach said sourly. "I'm beginning to think maybe you weren't fooling when you told about getting thrown off a horse on your head when you were still a brown-pants kid."
The hunter brought his left arm up tight against the wagon spokes, his right hand cupped under the sleeve. He pressed and there was the muted click of a spring clip being released. The little double-barreled derringer slid out of the sleeve into his hand.
He said, "Duck down below the wagon bed and stay down until I tell you. Lord knows where these slugs might ricochet if that oak is as hard a
s it seems."
He cocked the twin hammers and by a mild feat of contortionism got the muzzle of the derringer up close to the middle of one of the wheel spokes encircled by his arms. The little gun blammed with a noise all out of proportion to its size. Splinters flew from the spoke but when he hauled the handcuff chain against it hard, it still resisted. The hunter swore.
"Dammit, I don't have many bullets of this caliber and I was hoping one to a spoke would do the trick. Oh, well..."
He fired the other barrel. Again oak splinters flew and this time, when he brought pressure on the damaged spoke, it snapped in two. By pressing his body tight to the wheel, he managed to get two fresh bullets from under the poncho and reload the derringer.
"I've got two of those toys," Shadrach said, "sewn into my coattails, but they're not much help when I can't reach them."
"I'll make it with this," the hunter said. "You'll find plenty of use for yours later."
The second spoke separated after one shot; the third again required two. Then suddenly, except for the handcuffs confining his wrists in front, the hunter was free. He stood up.
"Now, don't go away. A pack like this with a price on their heads can't just ride into town when they need blacksmithing. They'll have their own shop around here somewhere, complete with the tools I'll need to cut you loose and get us both out of these steel bracelets. I'll find them and be right back."
"Don't rush," Shadrach said, yawning. "I'm really quite comfortable here and I didn't have any place of importance to go this afternoon, anyhow."
On his way the hunter detoured to glance into the nearest cabin. He found it to be, as he had suspected, merely a slovenly dormitory, the walls lined with bunk beds in double tiers, the floor littered with dirty clothing. He started to close the door when an obscure impulse made him glance upward. A set of deer antlers were nailed above the door and resting across these was a Winchester rifle. He got it down and levered the chamber open. It was fully loaded, which proved to be fortunate, since a search of the cabin turned up no spare shells.
Carrying the rifle, he went around the cabin and into the woods, following a well-beaten path. Beyond a thin screen of trees was a large, grassy clearing, dotted with picket pins for the horses. Fronting on the clearing was unmistakably a well-equipped blacksmith shop, a shimmer of heat waves still rising from the coals in the forge. The walls were hung with tools, the rafters overhead festooned with horseshoes. Attached to the forge was an immense leather bellows for fanning the coals to maximum heat.
The hunter searched vainly for a hacksaw that would have simplified the task of cutting off the handcuffs. Failing to find one, he reluctantly settled for a three-cornered cutting file, a cold chisel and a heavy blacksmith's hammer. Neither an axe or a wood saw could be found so the chisel would have to serve for cutting both the wheel spokes and the handcuff chains. They would be awkward jobs at best with the chains limiting the spread of his hands to a scant eight inches.
Back at the gold wagon Shadrach greeted him indignantly. "When I told you not to rush, I was only being polite. I had no idea you'd decide to go and come by way of San Francisco."
"Bitch, bitch, bitch!" the hunter said, dropping his tool collection on the ground. "If I didn't have to have your help to get my own cuffs off, I swear I'd go off and leave you here to rot."
"Ah, dry up and get to work. My bladder's crowding me and I can't even get my hands close enough to unbutton my p—what's that?"
On his knees, the bounty hunter swung around, his head cocked to the muted rumble they had heard before. This time the sound was not repeated, nor was there the muffled crash.
"It's the gate or door or whatever they use to conceal the entrance. Somebody's coming." He scrabbled up the tools and rifle and got to his feet. "If it's Apachito and his bunch coming back for some reason, don't give anything away. Tell him I chewed off those spokes and headed out through the tunnel to drum up a posse. I'll try to stay close enough to cover you with this rifle if the going gets too sticky."
"But what about my bladder, dammit? I can't hold out much longer. What'll I do?"
"Do what you did when you were just a little bastard," the hunter yelped and galloped for the nearest trees.
He was still diving for cover when the slot at the top of the U disgorged a body of horsemen. Even before he identified Apachito and his lieutenant in the lead he knew that for some unguessable reason the outlaws had abandoned their search for Dandy Deever and the money chest.
He found temporary cover in a dense patch of underbrush near enough to the wagon park so that he could hear everything that was said. With his hands shackled so close, the use of the cold chisel was necessarily a two-man job, one holding the chisel and the other wielding the hammer. He hid those under a pile of fallen leaves where he could find them again when the opportunity arose to put them to use. The file he tucked into his pocket to use later when there would be no one close enough to hear the rasping sound against the tempered steel of the cuffs.
He could hear the angry voice of Apachito yelling something above the thunder of hoofbeats but he could not make out the words. Then the noise of hoofs dwindled and died. There was a loud creaking of saddle leather, followed by the thump of boots on the ground.
The voice of Shadrach said, "You fellows had better get while the getting's good. My partner got loose right after you left and went out through the tunnel to round up a posse and lead it back here. He ought to be clear to Hangville by now and telling his story to the sheriff."
"Don't bother lying," the voice of Apachito said coldly.
"We saw him running into the woods as we came out of the pass. Chico, you and Sam ride to the tunnel on the double and stand guard until you're relieved. Tex, you and Marty go back and guard the pass."
Lupo said, "You want the rest of us to fan out and search the woods, chief. He can't have gotten very far."
"Don't bother," Apachito said. "With the only two exits from the canyon sealed off, he'll come in soon enough on his own when he gets hungry. As a matter of curiosity, how did he manage to break those spokes when Lupo and I together couldn't even bend them?"
"He gnawed them through," the bland voice of Shadrach said.
"Oh, yes. I see that now. And he spit powder marks and lead streaks on them at the same time. Lupo, old friend, you were to see that they were completely disarmed. I think we will have a little talk, you and I, about carelessness."
"I thought you started out to find Dandy Deever and get that half-million dollars he stole," Shadrach said. "Don't tell me the fearsome Apachito gives up that easily."
"The fearsome Apachito, as you so truthfully describe me, has learned a valuable lesson. I have often heard it said that all things come to him who waits. Until today, I never believed it. Now I do. I waited, and you two walked right into our hands. Not only that but you brought me the news of what became of the bank's money. I still refused to believe, until now. At this moment, my friend, Mister Dandy Deever's three wagons are just entering Crazy Woman Pass to deliver the chest with the half-million dollars to me here."
"You've got to be out of your mind," Shadrach blurted, his voice shaken. "Why on earth would Dandy Deever come here?"
"Because," the voice of Apachito bubbled with mirthful triumph, "Mr. Deever doesn't know yet that he is coming here."
*****
In the lead wagon, Dandy suddenly bawled "Whoa! Whoa!" and hauled back hard on the reins. The wagon came to a jarring halt, the noses of the team only inches from a wall of sheer rock.
From close behind Molly called, "What is it, Dandy? What did you stop for?"
"Because something's wrong, Mol—completely wrong. Remember when we came through Crazy Woman Pass last year? I remarked that it was the first dead-straight pass we'd ever hit—so straight I said it could have been blasted out by engineers."
"Of course I remember, and it was. I noticed it myself."
"Then do you remember this right-angled turn?"
Molly scowled
up at the towering rock face confronting them, then at the beaten road that unmistakably executed a right-angle turn into a narrower pass.
"No, Dandy, I don't, and that's strange. I usually remember every twist and turn of every road we ever travel." She leaned out to call back, "Hunk, you remember coining through the pass here last year. Do you remember that we had to make a sharp right-angled turn?"
"No'm," the big man called back. "I don't remember any turns at all. But it don't seem possible the good Lord'd put this here twist in between then and now, just to plague us sinful mortals."
"Well," Dandy shouted, "whether we remember it or not, the road goes this way and we either follow it or run into a cliff, so let's go."
