Canyon of the Long Shadows

by Carl Dane

  “Same here,” Miller said, piping into the flow of conversation like a badly played, raspy oboe. “I went in three times, when I was a kid. Used to live about on hour south. It was Yellow Fever country – still is – but Yellow Fever doesn’t make you sick in an hour, so that couldn’t be it. But something got to me.”

  “What else do you know?” Munro asked.

  “Well, I never saw it, but I heard tales of flash fires out of nowhere. People just burned up sudden-like. But that was fifty years ago. Never heard people talk about it until now. The Elmira lady says the deputy here rode in and spotted outlaws and the victim.”

  “I didn’t ride in,” Carmody said, still giving Miller the sideways glance he sometimes subjects me to when he doesn’t believe what I’m saying or just wants to get on my nerves. “I rode around the other side and found a trail to walk and crawl in. Didn’t get sick or burned up though.”

  “That’s how you’re going in this time?” Miller asked.

  “No,” Carmody said. “Frontal assault. You men couldn’t navigate the climb.”

  Munro cleared his throat, sort of a volcanic, phlegmy rumble of disapproval.

  “No offense meant, Major,” Carmody said, but I wasn’t convinced he wasn’t getting in a gratuitous dig.

  “We have to listen to Carmody,” I said. “He understands terrain better than any man I’ve ever known and if he says we can’t get in, we can’t.”

  “And if we climb and crawl in, we sure as hell can’t get the lady out, if we are lucky enough to find her,” Carmody said.

  “Good point,” Miller said. “So we go in and out the front door. I assume you’ve come up with a way to do that without getting killed.”

  Harbold was getting impatient.

  “We’ve got a four-hour ride to give you the details,” he said. “And we don’t know if you should come along. No offense, but if you slow us down or screw up, it’s our lives on the line. You said you had some experience in things like this. What’s that mean?”

  “That’s my business,” Miller said. There was no anger in his voice. Just a matter-of-fact statement of what he considered plain fact.

  Harbold wasn’t angry, either. He knew, better than most, that a man sometimes wants to keep his past his own property.

  “Whether you come along,” Harbold said, “is a decision that’s up to the senator.”

  Miller sniffed. “Who the hell is the senator?”

  “I mean the major. He’s also a senator.”

  “But I’m not a major anymore,” Munro said.

  “Damn it,” Carmody said. “Everybody here has two names and three titles.”

  Carmody turned to me.

  “Lieutenant Marshal, or Marshal Lieutenant, or Your Highness, or whatever you would like to be called, for the rest of this trip may we just dispense with the titles and call each other by our names? It might be helpful to us when we’re getting our asses shot full of holes to be able to figure out who’s who.”

  “OK,” Harbold said. “Anything to get this show on the road. Call me Tom.”

  “That ain’t gonna work,” Carmody said. “I’m Tom too.”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake, then I’m Harbold.”

  “And I’m Carmody.”

  I shrugged.

  “I’m Hawke.”

  “All right, I’m Miller.”

  And then he snapped the reins and, without waiting for permission, began the procession to the Canyon of the Dark Shadows.

  “Captain Miller,” he added, softly, speaking to no one in particular.

  And that was all he would say on the subject for the rest of the trip.

  Chapter 29

  Even though we’d dropped the honorifics, Munro remained in charge. We agreed on that. Among other qualifications, Carmody noted, Munro had a hell of a loud voice.

  Carmody would be the first into the canyon. He had the best eyes and had some recent familiarity with the territory. We’d follow him to where we thought Lydia Davis was being held.

  Munro would ride in next. He would order me and Harbold to fight or scout according to how he sized up the situation.

  Miller would cover us from the rear. He would also lead us out when and if we snatched Lydia.

  As we came over the final rise I saw Taza and some braves on horseback.

  They were there to provide the grand finale.

  The last quarter mile, only path into the canyon, was totally exposed. We had to assume we were being watched, and assume we’d be spotted, and therefore there was no point in trying to sneak in.

  Still, there was no point in making a lot of noise and calling attention to ourselves.

  So after we ground-hitched the spare horses, Munro kept his voice low when he gave the order to charge.

  Chapter 30

  The first thing you noticed was the smell. It was a mixture of rotten cabbage, dead buffalo, and moldy basements.

  Then it became dark during a brilliant Texas mid-day. The walls were steep, and the sky was reduced to a narrow, jagged bolt overhead.

  And then I got lightheaded.

  Carmody shook his head like a dog – you could hear it flopping – and glanced backward. We were still in tight formation and he was only two lengths ahead of me.

  Harbold looked over at me.

  “What the fuck is this?” he said. “Poison gas?”

  “Keep moving!” It was Miller. His voice retained its oboe honk but now seemed to carry a ring of command.

  “Now that I smell it again, I know exactly what this is,” Miller said. “I was an engineer before the war. It’s swamp gas. There’s a backed-up stream to the right and no ventilation or air movement at all because of these high walls. This rock formation traps the gas. The gas itself won’t hurt you, but it keeps you from getting air.”

  We’d slowed the horses to a canter because we couldn’t see well in the gloom.

  “Will it clear up?” I asked.

  Carmody pointed ahead.

  “The canyon has to open up soon. What I saw from the other side was a lot wider. Press on and hope we make it. Can’t be more than a few hundred feet.”

  My mount stumbled a little. Horses, even cavalry mounts, stumble on rocky terrain all the time. But under the present circumstances, it made me worried.

  “Miller,” I said in a burst, trying to save my air, “will it affect the horses?”

  “I said I was an engineer, not a veterinarian. How the fuck would I know?”

  We rode on and I began to see little gray sparkles in the corners of my eyes.

  “Miller, should we hold our breath?”

  “Use as little air as you can. Start conserving it by shutting up with all these questions.”

  Munro pulled up alongside Carmody.

  “It opens up in fifty feet,” his basso profundo resonating in the small chamber. “We’ll have plenty of air. But we’ll also be exposed. If they’re going to start shooting, it’ll be as soon as we see sunlight.”

  The man knew his business. As we charged into the open, I got my hat shot off for the second time in one week.

  Chapter 31

  Even though the canyon had opened up it was still a tight bowl, and the echo made it impossible to locate the source of the shot.

  Munro was the first to see the tell-tale smoke, and he opened up on the shooter.

  The shooter was now Munro’s business, and we let him handle it. Each of us knew not to get distracted by the first shooter because there would inevitably be more.

  Carmody was up on his stirrups when he saw the glint of the gun-barrel behind some rocks on the right-hand side of the bowl. I saw it too, and we both twisted and fired.

  It’s not easy to fire a rifle from horseback because you have to maintain your balance and sometimes, if you’re keeping the stock on your shoulder and aiming with one eye, you have to twist your body as much as 90 degrees. That’s harder than it sounds, but once you learn the technique, it gives you the advantage of using the superior firepowe
r of the rifle over a handgun.

  We both missed but were each able to get off a quick and steady second shot because the horses were completely gun-broken. Teaching a mount not to react to gunfire can take upwards of six months, but in combat it’s worth every minute of the effort. Our horses were rock-solid and our second shots were dead on target. The gunman’s head exploded in a burst of gore and his shiny revolver spun out of his hand down the hill.

  Miller started firing from the rear. I could hear the clicking of the bolt and the unusually high-pitched crack of the German rifle. I wasn’t sure if he were aiming at gunmen or just laying down cover fire. In the long run it didn’t matter because we had guns and bullets to spare. If we lived through this, I thought, we could open a gun store.

  But for now, we were in a bad spot. The bowl was like a theater or an operating room, with seating almost encircling us, all with clear lines of sight for the outlaws’ shooting pleasure. Having said that, the vegetation was low and there weren’t many rocks, so we had a pretty good view of them, too. And although we were caught in a crossfire, our targets were elevated, so for the time being we didn’t have to worry about shooting each other.

  All we could do was fan out so as not to present a concentrated target, pick off whoever we could spot, and follow Carmody in whatever direction he felt would lead to Lydia.

  Munro and Harbold were opening up at gunmen nested in the sides of the hills. I saw three men leave their positions and break for the top of the rise. They hadn’t expected this. Victims were expected to clutch in a panicky knot while you picked them off from your elevated perch – not fan into formation and blast back with rifles.

  The gunmen were each about fifteen feet from the rim of the bowl, and I could see two more snipers lying flat on the rim. It was not an ideal perch because they had no choice but to be partially exposed. A man lying level with you can sink into the grass and shoot up from almost complete cover. Here, the snipers had to look down and expose their heads when they leaned over.

  “Carmody,” Munro bellowed, pointing, “take those snipers.”

  Carmody took aim, zeroing in for an uncomfortable amount of time. Bullets were buzzing by him, and me, but I don’t think the shooters were practiced – they’d given that much away by taking up a bad position to begin with – and were undoubtedly distracted by Miller’s cover fire. I assumed Carmody was banking on the notion that two perfect shots were worth the risk of taking time to set them up.

  I didn’t have time to watch as I had my own business to deal with. I opened up on the shooters running up the hill. They ducked and ran in jagged spurts that they thought would make them hard to hit.

  There was no way to tell who hit whom as they scrambled in what were perfectly predictable patterns and conveniently ran into our line of fire as we led them by a pace or two. I believe I hit all three. I’m sure Munro, Harbold, and Miller all felt the same way.

  Carmody’s rifle cracked twice while I was firing, and when I looked up I could see one sniper lying outstretched, apparently lifeless, with his rifle more than an arm’s length away. The other was clutching the rifle on one hand and his side with the other while struggling to get to his feet.

  There was another crack from Carmody’s rifle, but I ignored it and turned back to surveying the bowl. I was sure Carmody’s second shot would be on target, and playing spectator could get me killed.

  I’d lost track of how many shooters we had cut down. Normally I’d keep count, but because we didn’t know how many there were in total it didn’t matter. There could be none left. Or there could be a hundred.

  The only way to tell would be to follow Carmody through the next pass to get to the grotto where Lydia Davis was supposed to be held captive. The pass was steep and sheltered by trees and a narrow rock pass. It looked safe, but probably opened up into a new shooting gallery. I had a feeling whoever had escaped this aborted ambush would be there, at the next staging ground.

  Instinct told me that for the moment we weren’t going to be shot at. Stage one of the battle was over; they’d retreated to the next staging ground.

  I looked at Carmody. Instead of heading to the pass he pointed to a rock next to a fallen tree. A gun came spinning out from behind the rock and two quivering hands eased up gradually but fitfully were drawn back down, as though the man behind the rock was afraid of getting them shot off.

  Chapter 32

  In a different time decades ago, in a now-foreign environment of books and slate boards and chalk, I’d been adamantly opposed to torture.

  My younger self would have said the practice is wrong according to basic moral reasoning based on principles that exist in nature. And if the practice is wrong in theory it’s always wrong. Even if you invent right-sounding justifications it still has to be wrong, because if you can concoct your own excuse for breaking a moral code, there’s no sense in having a moral code to begin with.

  The war and my ten years or so as an itinerant lawman didn’t make me less moral. Just the opposite, I think. Experience has just made me more aware that sometimes you have to trust that doing what you would normally classify as the wrong thing can produce a greater good.

  The decision about whether to torture the guy with the huge, bobbing Adam’s apple we’d captured was further complicated by the fact that time was very limited. We didn’t have time to light our pipes and stroke our beards and think abstract thoughts about right or wrong. We believed a woman’s life was at stake, and so were ours. Every second we delayed gave the enemy time to mass and plan a new attack.

  There are two types of torture. The first is that you cause somebody pain and promise to stop when he tells you what you need to know. In addition to the inherent moral dilemma, there’s a practical issue involved in this strategy because people will say anything, including outright fabrication, to stop the torment.

  Alternately, you say you’re going to do something to him that’s permanent, like cutting off an ear, and give him one chance to tell the truth. If he doesn’t talk, or if you don’t believe what he says, you’ll do the deed. If you’re convincing enough, you’ll often get the whole story without having to do anything besides make threats.

  Munro employed a combination of both methods with a suddenness and brutality that made me uncomfortable. Carmody, who possessed no reluctance to cuff a bad guy around when necessary, has some feelings about battlefield ethics and seemed both shocked and sad when Munro, without preamble, shot Adam’s Apple in the knee.

  The man fell to the ground and screamed, flopping and twisting in the dust, the scream increasing in intensity as the shock wore off and the pain intensified.

  “A man can get along fine with one knee,” Munro said. “Maybe a limp, possibly a cane, but you’ll get around fine. But no knees is a different story. That’s a life in a wheelchair. And that’s if you don’t die out here because you can’t crawl back.”

  Munro stepped closer.

  “I can’t miss from this distance, no matter how much you flail around.”

  Miller was the lightest, probably weighing only about 150, so we tied the sobbing Adam’s Apple to his horse and they rode double. Miller took the lead. We didn’t believe for a second that anybody in this canyon would hold their fire to save Adam’s Apple, but with our prisoner positioned on the mast of the ship, so to speak, he had an additional incentive not to lead us into a trap.

  We reloaded and prepared to meet the remaining men and extract Lydia Davis from the second cave on the right.

  I thought about retrieving my hat, but it was just a cheap old one so I didn’t much care. Anyway, I had a couple spares back at the office, even if they were more embarrassingly ragged that the one I’d just lost.

  Chapter 33

  We didn’t dawdle. The element of surprise was gone, but there was no point in giving them more time to prepare.

  None of us, of course, had any idea what to expect beyond the next pass other than what Adam’s Apple had howled out to us: A rock wall on the righ
t with the opening to three caves, the second of which held Lydia and was large and deep enough to be called a cavern. It struck me that even Adam’s Apple could articulate the difference, but I was still confused.

  Beyond the cave openings lay another grassy, bowl-shaped clearing where horses and livestock were kept, according to Carmody’s scouting, and after that were more steep canyon walls that closed into a box and offered no exit except for a steep and narrow crevice up the side, a trail that Adam’s Apple had assured us was impassible. Carmody nodded to me, confirming that the crevice was indeed the trail; he’d somehow managed to do it.

  There were supposed to be ten men left, Adam’s Apple had warbled.

  Now I’d need to start keeping count of how many we killed.

  Chapter 34

  “Hawke, scout to the left,” Munro shouted as we thundered through the pass, the horses as close as they could be to each other without touching. It was a surreal journey, with men and horses bobbing in the dusky light, the thudding of hooves pounding like cannon-fire as the din echoed in the confined space.

  I kept my eyes focused on the distant glow of the exit, not so much to keep pursuing it as a destination – the horse could figure that out – but to keep my eyes from getting accustomed to the darkness and being blinded when we burst into the partial sunlight. We knew there were caves on the right. We were not sure who or what was on the left, and it was my responsibility to identify and counteract any threat from that direction.

  A few seconds later, blinking but forcing myself to look even though the brightness hurt, I observed that the territory on the left was a stepped terrace where the water that had once run through here had cut away the rock formation into a series of ledges. Most of the wall was too steep for an ambusher to climb or gain a purchase, but parts of the slope were gentler for the first twenty feet or so. I could see one or two spaces where a hostile could have climbed and secreted himself. I couldn’t tell for sure, but farther down there appeared to be a depression where a man could flatten himself and hide from view.