McMasters said: ‘There’s no more than two of ’em out there.’
It was dawn and a light smurr of rain was falling. A grey and miserable day. At the mouth of the cave, the four of them shivered in the cold. The Indian girl fetched them hot coffee—almost the last they had.
‘So where are the others?’ Pilar asked, expressing their thoughts.
Blade and McMasters looked at each other.
‘Could be,’ McMasters said, ‘they know a way down from the hill. There has to be a way down into the canyon, Joe.’
Blade nodded: ‘I’ll go take a look.’
Pilar followed him into the cave, saying: ‘I’ll come with you.’
‘George needs you.’
‘He and the others can hold off two men,’ she replied. He looked at her with both irritation and respect. He had never known a woman to know her mind like this one did.
As they went through the cave, Blade stopped in front of Annie.
‘Take your Sharps and get out there with George, Annie,’ he said.
She went to argue, but there was a note in his voice that made her obey. Without a word, she picked up her rifle and walked out of the cave. Charlie snored blissfully on. Blade and Pilar made their way down the narrow passageway. As they neared the chimney, Blade halted and laid a restraining hand on the girl’s arm.
‘Listen,’ he said.
She heard men’s voices and was startled by their closeness. Instinctively, she turned her head as if she would find somebody standing near to her in the darkness. She felt Blade’s mouth near her ear and heard him whisper: ‘They’re right above us, near the chimney.’
They tried to make out the words, but they could not. Softly, they went on their way. When they reached the canyon, they could hear no sounds but that of the animals moving about and the distant sound of the water.
The girl shivered close to Blade. The canyon was grey and dank. There was something unwholesome about it in the cold dawn light. Blade looked around and motioned the girl into the cover of some nearby rocks. He knew that there might be men here already.
He said softly to the girl: ‘Watch the far rim and cover the entrance to the tunnel.’
She turned her face to him and smiled. He could see that she was a little afraid.
‘Anything happens,’ he said, ‘you fire a shot and get back to George as fast as you can.’
‘And you?’
‘There are two walls to this place. I have to watch the rimrock right above us.’
‘At the end of the day,’ she said, ‘it must get dark. We cannot guard this place after dark.’
‘I know.’
He touched her face with his fingertips and walked away, taking the worry of what she said with him. His mind flitted to the chimney. Maybe the answer lay there. If he could climb that chimney and catch them with their pants down, he could finish this and ride on for Taos. He realized grimly that if they were to win this fight, there would have to be wholesale slaughter. These men would keep on coming to the last man for the sake of the gold. They were men who had been nurtured in an environment of violence and death. The sight of their companions dying would not make them run. He sighed softly to himself. He had enough of killing.
He reached the foot of the waterfall, his eyes on the rimrock one moment, the untidiness of the rocks and brush the next. His muscles and nerves were tensed for the sound of a shot and the impact of lead in his flesh. It was a sensation he had never liked.
Now he reached the waterfall, he circled along the eastern wall of the canyon and started to work his way south again. He saw their bull grazing calmly on the good grass. The great animal raised his head and stared at Blade belligerently and then, seeing Blade pass, went to grazing again. Halfway along the wall, Blade stopped and hunkered down with his back to the rock wall, his eyes lifting to the rim opposite.
Nothing moved there.
Through a gap in the brush, he could see the entrance to the tunnel.
He stayed there for maybe five minutes not moving.
He became aware that he could see Pilar behind her rock and that she could see him. They lifted their hands in silent salute to each other.
He lifted his eyes to the rimrock again and his heart jumped.
Something was moving against the face of the wall.
It was some moments before he could make out what exactly had caught his eye. It was something thin that swayed almost imperceptibly. With a jolt, it came to him what he was staring at.
He was looking at a rope dangling from the rimrock.
Involuntarily, he started to his feet. He went to shout to Pilar in warning and then stifled the cry. Desperately, he waved to her, but she was looking down-canyon and did not see him. She was staring intently. Had she seen a man?
Suddenly, he heard her cry out shrilly:
‘There, Joe, there.’
She dropped out of sight abruptly.
There came a rifle-shot away to his right. He heard the lead strike rock and whine away. Then the girl was firing back.
A man shouted.
The sound alarmed Blade, for it came from his left. There were at least two men down in the canyon. Urgently, he turned this way and that, praying he would catch sight of a movement, a drift of gunsmoke. But there was nothing.
His only possible advantage was that the men might not know where he was. Yet he knew that when he walked to the waterfall, he must have been near the man to his right. His fear now was wholly for the girl.
The man to the right yelled: ‘Cover me, Harry!’
There was at once a light pounding of feet and the crash of brush. Blade whirled and saw a man running half-shielded by brush and trees. He lifted the Winchester to his shoulder and fired a shot. Careful, his mind told him, every shot was precious.
The man continued to run. Pilar was up and shooting at him. Blade caught sight of him again and fired
another shot. Then the fellow to the south started shooting at Pilar.
Blade jumped forward and began to cross the canyon. At once there was another shot. This shot had a different note to it, for it was from above. Blade looked up and with some difficulty made out the head and shoulders of a man above the rimrock directly in front of him. Blade halted and fired once. He lifted the man’s hat from his head and the fellow pulled himself back out of sight.
The shot may have put the man out of action for a few seconds, but he was an acute threat up there. Blade suddenly felt exposed. He knew the chances were that there was at least one more man immediately behind and above him as well. He dropped into the cover of some rocks, but he knew they afforded him little protection against anybody above him. Uneasily, he knew that anybody behind him could see the girl as plain as day. He wanted her to get into the tunnel, but he dare not risk her by calling to her to run for it.
There was a moment’s silence.
Blade was poised for a shot at the man to his right, knowing that the fellow was aiming to get into the tunnel. At all costs he must stop him. One man in there and it could be all over.
The man to his left was pouring lead at Pilar, no doubt to keep her head down while the other fellow tried for the tunnel.
Now a fourth rifle joined in and Blade knew for sure there was another man on the rimrock with a rifle. It was possible he could not see Blade, for he was shooting at Pilar. Blade grew desperate for the girl. He also grew desperate to stop the man reaching the tunnel. With the girl pinned down there the man’s chances were improving.
Over my dead body, Blade told himself. And when he thought about it, that could have been a prophecy.
He lurched to his feet, jarred his wounded shoulder painfully, ran ten yards and dropped to cover again. Rolling over on to his back, he found that he had a clear view of most of the rimrock behind him. Almost at once, more from the drifting gunsmoke than anything, he found the marksman up there.
He propped his shoulders against a rock and took very careful aim, determined to knock this man out of the action
with one shot. When he fired the man dropped his rifle over the edge of the canyon. It dropped straight, not hitting rock until it reached the bottom. For a brief moment, the fellow’s head and shoulders disappeared from view, then, very slowly, he rose to his feet. He seemed to step out into space and to remain there longer than the law of Newton permitted, then plunged headlong into the canyon below. The sound of him hitting the ground was unpleasant in the extreme.
The man’s death seemed to bring a total and appalled silence to the whole scene.
This silence was broken abruptly by a shout and the sound of running feet. At once the rifle to Blade’s left started firing, aimed at Pilar. Blade now saw the drift of the marksman’s smoke and cut down on it with a single shot. He turned back as he heard the running man go past him in the direction of the tunnel.
The man came in sight and Blade snapped a shot at him. He missed and the fellow was gone from sight. Blade cursed and there was a sudden note of panic in. the sound. Hastily, he jacked a new round into the breech. Pilar, seeing how close the man was to the tunnel, tried a shot and ducked down out of sight again. As Blade fired again, the man disappeared into the tunnel.
Blade stood as if stunned for a moment. His worry rose abruptly to almost a frenzy. The four people in the cave were now totally at the man’s mercy. He hesitated agonizingly. He dare not leave the girl where she was. He had to go into the tunnel after the man in there.
He never knew how long he stood there trying to calm his racing brain.
The rifleman off to the left made up his mind for him. His shot came so close that Blade flung himself down, jarring his wounded shoulder badly in the process.
Pilar screamed: ‘He’s coming for you, Joe.’
Blade lifted his head and heard the crackle of brush to his left.
Turning, he searched for movement.
Where the hell was the fellow?
A rifle slammed and echoed in the rocky confines. Something struck violently at the heel of his boot, wrenching his ankle and jarring his leg to the knee.
He scrambled around, urgency gnawing at him, eyes searching desperately.
Light hit dully on blued metal. He jerked the Winchester into his shoulder. But he never fired the shot. He heard Pilar’s rifle.
A man said almost prayerfully: ‘Oh, my Christ.’
There was a silent pause. Then the sound of crashing movement in the brush.
Pilar shrieked: ‘Go on, Joe, go on. He’s hit.’
Blade pulled himself to his feet and headed for the tunnel. And at once he saw himself as a plain target against the daylight for the man inside. Death was a certainty for anybody in that entrance no matter how fast he moved. But he knew there was no stopping. He held the Winchester low, firing and levering as he jumped into the dark maw of the tunnel. Only when he was
inside, and became aware that his trigger pressure was giving back empty clicks, did he realize that there were no more rounds in the carbine.
As he lay there in the darkness, the fact that he had needlessly triggered on an empty magazine brought him to his senses.
He lay there and listened.
He listened till he became almost convinced that he could hear a man breathing. Only when that breathing turned into the dull sound of a heart beat did he realize that he was listening to himself.
Lying there, pressed down on the cold rock beneath him, mainly through his own fear, there grew in him a consuming hatred of the man ahead of him there in the dark.
I’m going to kill you, you bastard, he promised.
Fourteen
McMasters did not take his eyes from the shelf. He knew the men out there were drawing closer. They knew he was well forted up in these rocks and they were coming in close for the sure shot. He promised himself that they would get a run for their money. He wished that the intolerable ache in his head would stop so that he could think clearly.
He said to the girl: ‘Go into the canyon and see that all is well with Blade and Pilar.’
She looked scared.
No, she said, she would not go down that long dark tunnel, not even for McMasters she would not. Such places were evil. Maybe if somebody were with her … alone, never.
McMasters sighed. He knew there was no persuading her.
‘Go into the cave and listen,’ he said. ‘Hurry, I need you here to watch.’
The man almost directly ahead of McMasters bobbed out from behind cover, ran ten paces and dropped from sight. Now the man was closer, McMasters saw the two braids of his hair and knew he was either an Indian or a half-breed.
That makes two of us, you son-of-a-bitch, he told himself.
The other fellow, off to the left, tried the same thing, jumping up and running forward a short distance before he dropped from view. McMasters held his fire. Ammunition was precious. When he fired he was going to hit something.
Now the man with the braids tried it again. McMasters let him come. Pretty soon, they would feel they were getting away with it and try to lengthen their running distance. Whichever one tried that one was dead. The thought pleased McMasters immensely.
The girl came silently to his side. She was excited.
‘There is shooting,’ she told him. ‘I heard Pilar cry out.’
McMasters did not like that. He fretted about it for a moment, though he knew the information meant almost anything he liked to make of it.
He asked: ‘Was there shooting in the tunnel?’
‘Yes,’ the girl told him.
No, McMasters didn’t like it one little bit, not sitting here watching out for these two with the possibility of the enemy coming down that tunnel.
Annie came to the mouth of the cave. She was on her hands and knees to remain hidden from the men out there on the bench. She looked grotesque in her fear. It was so strong that McMasters reckoned the Indian in him could smell it.
‘They’re in the tunnel,’ she said.
‘I know it,’ he told her.
‘Jesus Christ,’ she said, ‘why don’t you do somethin’ about it, for God’s sake? The bastards’re goin’ to kill us all. Give ’em the goddam gold. I ain’t ready to die, not for a few pokes of son-of-a-bitchin’ gold I ain’t.’
‘Annie,’ he said firmly, ‘you take that gun of yours, you hide behind the rocks in there and you watch that tunnel like you never watched anything before. Hear? But you make sure you don’t kill Blade or the girl. Go ahead now.’
‘Give ’em the gold for crissake,’ she howled.
‘You think that can save us now?’ he demanded. ‘They’ll kill us any road. Go on now, cover the tunnel. I’m coming back in with you in a couple of minutes.’
She glared at him in bewilderment and terror for a moment and then retired backward like a great sow going back into her sty.
The Indian girl struck him sharply and urgently on the arm. His whole attention was instantly back on the shelf. The man to the left was taking a long run as if he knew perfectly well McMasters had allowed his attention to wander.
McMasters hit him in midstride. It was a beautiful shot and he was proud of it.
He watched the man kick out his life on the ground, then said: ‘That’s better.’
He motioned the girl back into the cave and followed her, going backward and not taking his eyes from the rocks behind which the man with the braids was sheltered. The fellow had witnessed his shooting skill and did not want any part of it.
In the cave, McMasters found Charlie awake as he had never been awake before, scared nigh out of his wits. He was petrified into a kind of awesome silence, utterly robbed of speech. His eyes seemed to wander perpetually around the cave as if seeking for a hidden assassin. McMasters had intended giving him a gun, but the sight of the old man made him think better of it. He would probably end up shooting one of his own side.
He saw that Annie had obeyed him and was settled behind some rocks with a pile of shells beside her. She was sweating and blinking ponderously. He felt a twinge of pity for her.
&
nbsp; ‘Build the fire up,’ he told the Indian girl.
He settled himself so that he could watch the wide mouth of the cave and also the entrance to the tunnel. If a man came shooting from the tunnel and the fellow out front came charging in, McMasters reckoned he was going to have his work cut out. When the girl had the fire blazing, he sent her to his old position, telling her to keep him informed of all movement out front.
He watched her and thought that she was the best woman he had ever had. They didn’t come like her every day of the week. When this was all over …
After a while, she called: ‘He is running forward. Soon you will be able to see him from where you are. Can you see that rock shaped like the head of a man? That will be his next hiding place. There is nowhere else for him to go.’
‘You’re a good girl,’ he told her.
She turned her head and smiled at him. When she smiled, she looked like an innocent girl. He reckoned she was getting under his skin. He wondered if with her along he would forget his powerful hankering for white women. Yes, he told himself, that seemed like a real possibility. They could have a son and that son would almost be a full-blood. The thought pleased him. Maybe he would teach him the old ways. Those things of the old days that could survive in this modem changing world.
‘Now,’ the girl called.
McMasters’ eyes had been turned in the direction of the tunnel, for down it he had heard the distant, distorted and almost ghostly sound of a rifle-shot in the canyon. As he swung his gaze toward the bench, he caught no more than a glimpse of the crouched, running figure.
‘Goddamit,’ he said out loud and he was surprised at the calm of his voice.
At that moment there came the sound of a shot in the tunnel. McMasters knew it was in the tunnel itself, because the hollow tube of rock caught the sound in the natural sound-box, compressed it and hurled it amplified out into the echoing cave. It put a real and almost tangible fear into McMasters. It brought with it an absolute dread.
Yet his voice was still calm when he said: ‘You take your eyes off that tunnel, Annie, and I’ll have your guts for galluses. And you be damn careful you don’t shoot Blade or the girl.’
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