Annie ignored him, but spoke to Charlie.
‘Nobody ain’t goin’ to hurt you, my darlin’. Annie’s lookin’ out for you. Don’t you be scared now. I’ll kill any bastard that comes near you plumb dead. On my oath I will.’
‘Gimme a gun,’ whimpered Charlie. ‘I gotta have a gun. Any man in his right mind can see I gotta have a gun.’
McMasters could picture to himself the men creeping quiet as Indians down the tunnel. Blade and the girl must be dead.
His head ached almost unbearably. He laid it back against the rock and realized he was very tired.
‘Now,’ the girl called.
With something like horror, he realized he had closed his eyes briefly. But not briefly enough. Again the running figure was no more than a momentary blur of movement in the corner of his eye.
The Indian girl came running back to him. Her eyes were alarmed. Accusingly, she said: ‘He is in the rocks. There, there, close to the cave.’
‘I know,’ he said quietly. ‘Get out of sight and stay still. I shall kill him when next he shows.’
There was a high-pitched scream from Charlie: ‘Gimme a gun!’
Annie’s Sharps went off with a deafening roar. As McMasters crouched there stunned by the sound of it, he heard the soft musical clatter of the empty shell brassily hitting the rock floor of the cave.
‘Now,’ the Indian girl shrieked.
McMasters tried.
He turned his head toward the cave-mouth and he tried. His eyes scarcely focused on the moving figure, scarcely saw its dim dark shape against the grey sky outside, when suddenly the darkness of the figure seemed stabbed clean through by the sharp bright light of the muzzle-flame.
With a kind of despair he felt the bullet strike him.
In that moment, the half-breed son of the great trader knew an entirely unselfish thought. The whole of his being seemed to exclude the terrible pain that burst through him and his whole care was for the people he felt responsible for. In that terrible moment of final truth, he told himself he had failed them.
There was lead in his guts, his mind told him, but there was still the power of will in that battered aching head of his. That will controlled the hands and the eye. Together they kept the carbine pointed at the enemy, the fast-moving enemy that he wanted so much to stand still so that he could keep his fast-dimming eyes on him.
He fired.
He knew at once that he missed. He heard the lever work and he seemed to dwell on the satisfaction of that movement for a long time. The whole element of time seemed to go awry. It took an age to get a fresh round into the breech, but obligingly the figure of the enemy seemed to stand still for him. The Indian mouth was wide, the nostrils flaring, the eyes savage, the two braids standing out from the head as they whirled in violent motion and yet did not move. Some magic hand seemed to have stopped the clock so that he could get his last shot in.
The Indian girl was moving forward, throwing herself between him and the enemy, hoping desperately to save him. And there was time in this strange moment to ponder on that, too. She was a good girl, the best. He felt the Winchester jump in his hands.
There was a long, infinitely prolonged roaring sound that he knew was Annie firing another shot.
Suddenly the enemy’s braids fell against his dark face. That mouth that had been distended tautly in a wild yell was gaping slowly. The bullet hit him in the middle of a long jump as he cleared the entrance to the cave. As he landed on his feet, his legs gave way under him as if they were made of water-soaked paper. The hand that had been thrown out to save him in his fall seemed to melt into the ground.
McMasters sighed with profound satisfaction.
The Indian girl hurled herself on the fallen man, screaming and striking at him again and again with something bright in her right hand.
‘Come off him,’ McMasters told her. ‘Come off. It ain’t seemly,’ forgetting that she knew no English.
He jacked a new round into the breech of the Winchester and pulled his knees up tightly into his chest to stop his belly bleeding, just as he had done ten years back when the grizzly had ripped him.
‘Good girl, Annie,’ he called. ‘You’re doing just fine. Load ’er up.’
Charlie was yelling falsetto: ‘Kill the bastards.’
Somebody fired a shot from the mouth of the tunnel and McMasters thought in despair: ‘Here we go.’
Fifteen
As Blade lay inert and listening on the hard cold floor of the tunnel, he was aware that every second he lay there in fear of his own skin added to the danger of the people in the cave and to McMasters, who guarded its entrance. So, no matter if he would be silhouetted against the light of the canyon and offering a sure target for the man who crouched there in the darkness ahead of him, he had to move. He had to stop this man from going any further.
A deathly stillness hung in the darkness around him. When he started slowly forward, his boot scraping against rock seemed to make enough noise to be heard in the cave beyond.
He eased the Winchester forward for a shot.
He was startled to hear a voice ahead of him: ‘Back up, Blade, or you’re as good as dead.’
His blood froze. The man was no more than a dozen feet ahead of him.
Glancing back over his shoulder, the blinding light from the canyon hit him. The girl was silent. Had they jumped her?
He felt sideways with his left hand, trying to feel if there was any slight shelter offered to him in the wall of the tunnel.
The voice said: ‘You won’t find it, Blade,’ and he knew the man could see him.
‘You’re caught like a rat in a trap,’ Blade said. ‘Throw down your gun. The mouth of this tunnel is guarded. You can’t get out of here.’
The man laughed. It was a convincing laugh.
‘Here’s where I blow your head off,’ he said.
Blade drove a shot blindly into the darkness.
The man fired back instantly.
The bullet struck rock right in front of Blade, ricocheted to the roof and made its way echoing and screaming down the tunnel. Blade stood there almost deafened. He gritted his teeth and levered and fired again.
He dimly heard the man scuttling away. Blade looked at his mental map of the tunnel and knew the fellow had turned the first corner. Blade reared to his feet, ran a half-dozen paces and dropped down again. He heard the man curse. The tunnel was new to him and he had run into a wall.
Blade’s hand was busy, searching desperately for cover. Almost at once he discovered a niche about one foot deep. He stood up and pressed himself into it.
Another silence followed.
Then the man’s voice came again —‘Blade … you hearin’ me?’
Blade stayed very still.
‘Blade, let’s do a deal. We want the gold. Them folks’ lives have to be more to you than gold. Use your head. If we have the gold, you an’ the other folks don’t mean nothin’ to us.’
Blade allowed some more silence to work for him.
‘Blade … I know you’re there, for God’s sake. Blade—’
Blade fired and levered and fired again.
When the lead had stopped howling its way along the tunnel, while the smoke drifted and stank acridly, the man said: ‘You bastard.’
He was frightened. His voice told it.
Blade eased himself out of the niche and then threw himself back as the dark was stabbed again and again by the man’s gun. Once more lead shrieked and hammered. Blade pressed hard back into the rock until the stunning silence dropped on them again.
Now, yelled the voice inside his head. He moved out of the niche and went forward as silently as he was able on the tips of his toes, his left hand held out stiffly in front of him.
A boot scraped on rock. He heard a gun come to full cock. He was moving to the left when the gun roared almost in his ear. His face contacted the wall, hard, and he staggered back. His groping left hand touched cloth. Startled, he brought the Winchester sharply up an
d felt it contact flesh. The man shouted in sudden alarm and Blade heard a violent intake of breath. He stepped back to give the Winchester room and, as he did so, the man must have struck at him with his gun. The barrel caught him on the chin and the chest. The jolt of pain brought him a sudden sharpening of the senses. He ducked low and hurled himself forward, dropping the carbine and wrapping his arms around the man’s legs. The fellow went down and Blade heard the wind go out of him like the air out of a hard-pressed concertina.
At that moment, there came the rattle of rifle-fire in the canyon.
The girl.
A boot caught Blade on the side of the head and he fell against the wall as he was in the act of staggering to his feet.
He heard the man start past him, going back in the direction of the canyon. Instinctively, Blade stuck out a foot. The man’s speed meant he went down very hard.
The girl was screaming. The scream was prolonged. It went on and on and on.
He could hear scuffling sounds in the tunnel. The man came off the ground and hurled himself at Blade, his hand groping for his throat. Blade struck it aside and drove his fist into the fellow’s belly. The man sagged against him and he brought his knee up into his groin.
That should have finished any normal man, but there still seemed to be some fight in this one. He brought the barrel down blindly on Blade. This time it struck him on the shoulder. Blade went for and found the wrist of the hand holding the gun. He smashed the hand against the rock face and heard the weapon clatter on the ground.
Before he could dive for it, the man’s fist took him in the throat. That blow almost finished him. He fell against the wall, gagging and choking, fighting desperately for breath.
Two hard fists came into his belly, one-two.
I’m finished, he thought, but he didn’t believe it, because he couldn’t afford to believe it. The girl was in trouble and needed him.
He struck a blow into the dark and missed. The force of it carried him across the tunnel and into the far wall. While he was there, the man pinned him there with all his weight, smashing his face against the rock. His injured shoulder seemed now to be a mass of insupportable agony. When the man planted a terrible blow to his kidney, he almost passed out.
Fighting to retain consciousness, he slithered along the wall and heard the fellow strike the wall and curse with a kind of insane fury.
Blade reached out and found hair. He tore the man’s head back and struck with all his remaining strength below it. He aimed for the throat and struck the chin with the result that he nearly broke his hand. The man let out a muffled cry and simply collapsed in a heap. Blade felt his way around him, ran his hands over the ground and found the man’s revolver.
Holding this in his ruined right hand, he ran stumbling back toward the light. As he did so, memory hit him like a lethal pang of conscience. During the fight, he had heard shooting, shooting which he was sure had not come from the canyon.
McMasters must be in trouble in the cave.
It seemed that he could still hear the girl screaming. Terror for her ripped through him. As he turned the corner, the light almost blinded him. He should wait for his eyes to accustom themselves to the light. But he ran on. He seemed to explode into the light.
His eyes sought the girl. With a deep sense of shock, he was aware of the silence pressing in on him.
The girl had gone.
‘Pilar,’ he called. ‘For God’s sake, Pilar ...’
He was in the rocks, searching for her. She had been right here. He could see where the bullets had chipped the rock. His eyes searched the ground. There was no sign.
There was the faintest sound behind him.
As he whirled around, his thumb pulled back on the hammer of the gun. The grinning face of the man was no more than a dozen paces from him. Blade pulled the trigger. The hammer dropped harmlessly on an empty shell. The man’s grin stayed on his face.
Annie’s Sharps boomed so loudly that it could almost have been fired in his ear. There came several other lighter shots, funneled to him noisily down the tunnel.
The man said: ‘Take it easy, Blade. Look behind you.’
Holding the useless gun still, Blade turned.
He saw the slender figure of the girl standing on top of the flat slab of rock. She was fifty yards away, but he was conscious of little else but her eyes, huge and scared in her thin pale face.
In Spanish she said: ‘Don’t do anything crazy, Joe. Do anything they say.’
The man behind Blade said: ‘I savvy Mex. She’s talkin’ sense, Blade. You try anythin’ smart, we hurt the girl. She tries anythin’ smart, we hurt you. It’s simple, but it’s a cute arrangement. All right, boys, bring her over.’
The man walked up to Blade and took the gun from his hand.
Blade got a grip on himself. He had to stay cool and he had to think for everybody. He watched the girl climb down off the rock. Three men appeared. They were all hard cases.
Blade said to the man: ‘You have to be Duke Dukar.’ The man smiled.
‘You’re right,’ he said, ‘I have to be. My fame must have spread or did you see me some place before?’
‘I have your description,’ Blade told him. ‘And a warrant for you.’
The man’s smile slipped a little.
‘A warrant?’ he said. Then a look of amazement spread over his face. ‘You must be out of your head to tell me a thing like that.’
‘I’ve been on your trail for several months,’ Blade told him. ‘I never knew you would come to me like this.’
‘Well,’ Duke said, ‘you can’t exactly say I came to you. I mean, you’re kind of my prisoner.’
Blade smiled.
‘The day’s still young,’ he said.
The calmness of this reply seemed to anger Dukar. He took a long slow swing at Blade with the back of his hand. Without thinking, Blade moved his head back and the blow missed him. The effort nearly took Dukar off his feet. One of the men with the girl laughed at his discomfiture.
Duke recovered himself and yelled to the man: ‘Don’t laugh at me.’ This time he hit Blade in the belly. Blade sagged. When the girl tried to reach him, one of the men caught her by her long black hair and hurled her to the ground. This same man walked up to Blade and looked down at him.
‘Maybe you don’t remember me,’ he said amiably. ‘Bill Weyland’s the name. You broke a rib for me back by the river.’ He laughed. ‘That rib right there,’ he added and aimed a kick at Blade who rolled in a vain effort to avoid it. He stayed on the ground, silent, only wanting the pain to stop. He looked up at the girl. She was standing now, looking miserable and defeated.
Blade sat up, holding himself.
‘Don’t worry, Pilar,’ he said. ‘I won’t let them hurt you. They can have all the gold they want. We did enough to protect another man’s fortune. It ain’t worth lives.’
Duke said: ‘Shows you’re smart. Colly, go take a look down that tunnel. See if we can come through. How about our boy down there, Blade?’
‘I don’t know,’ Blade said. ‘I left him lying around in there. Maybe he can walk, maybe he can’t. I came running when I heard the girl scream.’
One of the men walked over to the mouth of the tunnel and called. A moment later a rather battered-looking man walked out into the daylight.
Duke laughed.
‘See what you just did, Blade,’ he said. ‘There’s another feller loves you.’
Sixteen
They stood in the darkness of the tunnel and a chill ran through Blade that was due not only to the dank cold of the place. A man’s hand grasped Blade’s right arm. The last turning in the tunnel lay just ahead of them. Blade could see the faint tail-end of the flickering firelight on one wall. The only sound was that of the breathing of the men near him.
Blade considered that the only fact in his favor now was that he had a grip on himself. There was nothing like the finality of death’s closeness to get a man’s priorities right. He knew the outlaw
s would get the gold. Just as certainly, they would kill him and his companions.
But was that so certain? Wasn’t there some way left for him to save them?
There had to be. There was always a feasible answer to every problem. All he had to do was think of it and carry it out.
Beside that there was only a possibility of a miracle. But miracles only happen when you don’t pray for them. And this did not feel like a day for miracles. When a man’s luck starts running out, miracles are pretty scarce.
Duke’s whisper came rustling through the darkness -’Don’t let Blade and the girl get near each other. Now, Blade, go ahead and do just like I said. Remember, we have the girl. We don’t kill her, but, by God, you get smart and she’ll wish we did. You got that?’
‘Sure,’ said Blade. ‘I don’t know why you’re tangling your spurs, Duke. The gold ain’t mine. I don’t have anything to lose.’
‘All right, go ahead now. And get this in your dumb head—not only the girl’s pretty face is at stake here. We’ll cut you down like no-never-mind if you get cute.’
‘All right, all right,’ said Blade. ‘How many times do I have to tell you? The gold’s as good as yours.’
The man holding him let go his arm.
Blade started forward. He was thinking about Annie and that great gun of hers. He reckoned he was in greater danger of being killed by her than the outlaws. It was not a comfortable feeling.
As soon as he saw the glow of the fire and the light at the great mouth of the cave beyond, he called out: ‘Hold your fire, it’s Blade.’
The men behind him had halted back in the tunnel, fearful of the guns ahead of them, willing enough to take risks for the gold, but not wanting to die now they thought it so close.
Blade stopped and waited. There seemed to be no movement whatever in the cave.
He could see the old man lying on the ground to his right. Charlie’s eyes were on him, unblinking. His face seemed frozen in an expression of stark apprehension, mouth open, gaps in his teeth showing.
Beyond him, crouched behind rocks with nothing but the upper part of her face showing, small eyes glinting malevolently in the firelight, was Annie. The big gun’s muzzle watched him like a third lethal eye.
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