by Carl Dane
The sudden quiet was unnerving because I could hear a whistling in my ears and wondered if I’d jarred something loose in my head.
There was not a lot of time to think, but I paused and took stock. We were still alive, and that was good. But any hope for a surprise rescue had disappeared at the start of a protracted gun battle that continued noisily for five minutes and had just culminated in a brain-jarring explosion.
The threat from above had, for the time being, been neutralized, up and until the time when they figured out they could drop rocks or boiling oil or something on us without having to expose themselves.
We had no idea who was in cave three, but Harbold could comfortably pick off anybody who ventured forth.
Cave two ostensibly held our target and an unknown number of bad guys. There may or may not be bad guys remaining above. And beyond the next pass lay uncharted territory where for all when know there could be a regiment of bad guys massing at this moment.
I’d had too much experience in this sort of thing to be drawn into any sense of security. A novice to battle might expect that the opposition had shown all its cards by now, but things play out differently in the real world. Now, to us, it seemed as through we’d been shooting all day. But probably no more than ten minutes had actually passed, and ten minutes goes by pretty quickly if you’re caught by surprise and planning a counterattack. It takes time to figure out what’s happening, grab your gun, get dressed if you need to, confer with your allies, and gather together a group and devise a plan.
Chances are whoever was left – whether it be three, thirty, or three hundred of them – were back there right now, drawing plans in the dirt with a stick. Any survivors of the gun battle were now regrouping and confronting the reality that they were dealing with some hard men.
And we still had the problem of cave number two. We’d heard nothing from inside, but why should we? Anyone in there had no immediate prospect of gain by exposing themselves or giving away their position; just the opposite was true.
But now the balance of power had tilted. We’d won the first round and were in a position to storm the center cave. In fact, we had to. Time was now on their side.
We knew that.
Chances are, they knew it too.
And, of course, they did.
“I’ve got a gun pressed right to her temple,” said a voice from deep inside the cave, oddly muffled by distance and at the same time given a sharp edge by the echo of the hard-rock chamber.
Then we heard a female voice. But it was deep. Really deep. In music it’s called a contralto. Contralto voices have great carrying power and clarity, and we could make out every word as clearly as if she were speaking from a pulpit.
“You can’t shoot me, asshole. I’m assuming they’re here for me, and if you kill me, there’s nothing to stop them from killing you and the other two guys.”
Munro raised his eyebrows.
“I am impressed,” Munro whispered. “She’s got a gun to her head but has the presence of mind to tell us there are no other friendlies in there and that there are three hostiles total.”
The contralto rang out again.
“And when I get out of here I’m going to shove that gun up your scrawny ass.”
“I am very impressed,” Munro said, nodding.
Chapter 36
Again it became church-like silent, except for the remnants of that whistling noise in my ears.
And then Carmody heard something. He hears things other people can’t, and when he does, he has a habit of tilting his head like a dog, first to the left, then to the right.
“Permission to scout through the next pass,” he whispered to no one in particular.
‘Do it,” Munro said. “Keep hugging the wall and ride right in front of the opening to the third cave. Nobody inside can react that fast to shoot you. Then cut to the left so Harbold has a clear shot at anybody who pokes his head out. I’ll watch the ledges above.”
Carmody nodded and was off like a foxhound.
Munro talked to me while he looked up, squinting as the sun began to pour straight down through the jagged lightning-bolt opening at the top.
“A few things you ought to know, Hawke. First, Carmody probably thinks he heard men and horses massing in the next bowl. I would expect that to happen. Second, take a close look at your friend. He’s trying not to show it, but that bullet went clean through his arm and is lodged in his side. I can see the hole in his shirt and the blood. I don’t think it hit lung or guts, but he’s losing a lot of blood and I don’t think he’s going to be much help in a few minutes.”
I’d figured as much, so I just nodded and waited for Munro to continue.
“Third, I just checked my timepiece. We’ve been here for eighteen minutes. And I’ve just used up thirty seconds running my mouth. I figure there are more hidey-holes here, and more gunmen, maybe good ones this time.”
Munro jerked his head toward the end of the pass. “Carmody told us the next bowl is where he saw horses. Think about it: You have men scattered all over the place, you hear gunfire near the front, somebody who escapes says there’s a troop of heavily armed men who know what they’re doing…what do you do?
“I’ve thought about it. You gather up your weapons, round up every available man, and plan an attack.”
“Which is probably coming any minute.”
“Yep.”
Munro cut his steel-blue eyes away from the sky for just a second, looked at me, and shrugged.
“And I’m out of ideas, Hawke.”
“I’m not,” I said.
And then I drew my mount up next to Miller and reached in the saddlebag.
Chapter 37
“I make no guarantees,” Miller said as he shook the gray powder from his hands. “This is all eyeball work on my part and we have no idea of the logistics inside.”
I nodded and lashed two coal oil lamps on either side of the saddle of the spare horse, making sure the metal rested against the leather. The outsides get hotter than hell and I didn’t want to burn the horse. What I didn’t know is whether the outside would get hot enough to ignite the leather and wood of the saddle. I doubted it, but what I don’t know about fires is considerable, except that I don’t like them.
Hoofbeats thudded in the distance. It was Carmody. Moving fast. Not a good sign.
I hated the idea of sacrificing the horse. But it wasn’t certain death for the horse. Just probable. Like the situation facing all of us at this moment, it occurred to me.
I nodded to Miller and said, “Proceed.”
Miller began lighting the fuses on sticks of explosive he’d trimmed down. Each stick had a percussion cap and maybe an eighth of a stick of explosive left; Miller had dumped the rest and folded the paper tube back. The man knew his business. Whatever his real business was.
He moved to the side of the cave mouth and underhanded the bombs in one-by-one.
The thuds were dull, but we could feel the shock waves come through the mouth and see the light of the explosions and glimpse crazy shadows through the mouth.
I slapped the lantern horse on the croup and yelled “charge.” Horses can’t be trained to recognize words, but they do pick up on things, and “charge” seemed as good a word as any.
He plunged into the unknown, snorting. snarling. If horses could roar, I’m sure he would have.
I came in right behind him with my pistol in hand. The horse looked like a crazy ship in the night, lit up with those lanterns on the side, as it tossed in a violent storm. Somehow, I think he knew his job was to pose a distraction, and he created a wild, insane, haunting one.
As the horse turned crazily, I could see three men and a woman lit up periodically in crazy bright scenes that dissolved into darkness and reappeared again with the people frozen in slightly different positions. It was as though they were standing in front of an insanely spinning lighthouse beacon.
One of the men had been seated at a table and had been knocked to the floor by o
ne of the concussions. He was mesmerized by the display and holding a gun while trying to decide where and what to shoot. He took aim at the spinning horse.
I shot him twice in the head before he could fire.
Then a rifle cracked behind me.
The horse whirled faster.
For a half a second of wild, haunted illumination I saw three people. One was Lydia, still intact after the improvised stun grenades and scowling. The second was a tall man with wide, terrified eyes holding her by the collar of her frilly blue dress and pointing a long revolver at her head. The third was a shorter man who’d dropped his pistol and hugged his chest where Munro’s slug had torn into his heart. He’d melted to the ground by the time the light made its next lunatic revolution
“I’ll shoot her,” the tall one shrilled. He pulled Lydia close and buried his head into the back of her neck and pushed her to the cave opening.
He was smart. He pasted himself up against her and turned her and turned her and turned her again like they were dancing a mad waltz toward the mouth of the cave. Each twirl was caught like some sort of crazy series of ghostly daguerreotypes by the revolving beacon of the spinning horse, who began to snort and whinny and kick, knocking over the table.
The tall one speed-waltzed Lydia into the dim sunshine.
“We’re taking a horse,” he said. “If I see you follow, she dies.”
His gun hand was trembling violently. I was afraid that we’d come all this way with a purpose to save her and she was about to die by accident.
I was outside the mouth and Munro was behind me. Harbold still sighted a line in front of the third cave.
And beyond him was Carmody’s horse. It was riderless. I felt a sickness gnaw somewhere deep inside.
“Hold all fire,” Harbold commanded.
“What?” Munro said.
It didn’t make sense to me either. Was he talking to the gunman? Why?
To us? Why?
And then the answer arrived from the sky.
Chapter 38
“Flying friendly incoming,” Carmody yelled from above, the words still being spoken as his great jumble of long arms and legs avalanched on top of the gunman.
The impact was astonishingly sudden and violent. Carmody weighs, I would guess, upwards of 220 pounds and I have no idea from where he launched himself, but it must have been a high ledge because he hit with an impact that shook the ground.
Carmody managed to strip the gunman off Lydia’s back while inflicting minimal damage on her. She was, in any case, a sturdy woman.
Carmody had managed to wrap his right hand around the gunman’s wrist, and for the moment the barrel of the weapon was flat on the ground, pointed away from Lydia.
The gunman tried to work his wrist out of Carmody’s grasp and looked like he was succeeding.
And then Lydia Davis stomped down. She was wearing a fancy lace-up boot with a buckle – I guess she liked secure garb, the female equivalent of wearing a belt and suspenders – that had a two-inch heel that curved back under to form a small square that no scientist in the world could have improved upon as a hand-mashing tool.
The man screamed. The gun came loose and lay in the dirt.
Carmody tried to grab it but it was beyond the reach of even his long arm and his palm flopped into the dust six inches away.
Lydia picked it up.
The gunman scrambled back on one hand and his heels, the recently mangled hand shielding his face.
There wasn’t much he could say.
He tried, “No!”
It didn’t work. Lydia shot him six times.
“Asshole,” she said.
Chapter 39
Carmody dragged himself to his feet and stumbled.
“There’s no time to fuck around,” he said, and I noticed his chest was heaving. “Probably ten men are gonna be riding through that pass any minute.”
Munro led the horse out of the cave and cut the lanterns off. They lay burning dimly next to the empty gun, which still emitted a faint plume of smoke.
“Up,” he commanded Lydia, the need to whisper now obsolete. His basso profundo echoed as he heaved her into the saddle. For a man in his 60s and being so lean he demonstrated considerable strength.
“Lydia,” Harbold said, “I’ve spent an entire day watching this cave. Is there anyone in there?”
“I don’t know,” she thundered in that booming contralto, and despite the fact that I may have had only seconds to live, I couldn’t help but think she and Munro could put on a hell of a performance in a German opera.
“If there is anybody in there,” Lydia said, “they’re assholes. I’m the only non-criminal in this shithole.”
“Well then,” Miller said, lighting a fuse on a full stick, “fuck them.”
He galloped in front of the mouth and threw the explosive in. Dust and small rocks blew out the cave opening like it was from the mouth of a cannon.
Harbold, bleeding off what I imagine was a considerable tankful of steam brought on by frustration, fired three times into the mouth, blindly.
“Just for the hell of it,” Harbold said. “I haven’t shot anybody all day.”
He looked genuinely aggrieved, like a petulant child. And then he shot once more and headed toward the way we came in.
We all followed.
Chapter 40
Carmody slumped forward and began to slide off his mount. He was unconscious.
“Shit,” Munro said, riding alongside and grabbing a handful of his shirt.
I rode up and tried to push Carmody back on. He was more or less centered, slumped against the withers and crest. We could ride three abreast and keep him from falling, but it would slow us down.
“Move out of the way,” Lydia said, riding up from behind me.
I don’t know why, but I did what she said.
She pulled up alongside and vaulted off her horse and mounted behind Carmody’s saddle, straddling the Morgan’s croup. Just like that. Like she did it every day.
“Simple rodeo trick,” she said. “It’s only hard the first time you do it. Kind of like everything else in life.”
And she reached over Carmody and grabbed the reins and dug those hand-crunching square heels into the Morgan’s flank and bolted to the front of the pack.
“Full speed,” she shouted.
“Full speed,” Munro echoed.
They both kept yelling in unison and I couldn’t help but envision them in helmets with horns, wailing out the finale of something by Wagner.
We entered the bowl where we’d had the first gunfight, and then a bullet shrieked by me, and then two. And then I heard the crackle of gunfire. The lag between the buzz and the bang led me to believe they were some distance behind us, and not shooting from above. It was a guess, based on the fact that rifle fire usually travels a bit faster than sound. I couldn’t locate the source of any sound in the crazy echo chamber, but if they were shooting from perches in the bowl we’d be dead by now.
I fought the temptation to turn around to see what was in back of us. No one else turned around, including Lydia. Looking back slows you down. I don’t know why, and I know it doesn’t make sense, but it does. You also stand the risk of riding into something you would have seen if looking forward. Looking back also makes you a bigger target. And it also makes it more likely you’ll get shot in the face instead of the ass, so I made it a point to hunker down and urged the Morgan on.
And then it occurred to me.
“Shit. Lydia, take a deep breath and hold it. Everybody, hold your breath.”
Lydia shrugged, and, as though she were accustomed to accommodating lunatics, inhaled deeply as we entered the pass.
The noise of the horses in full gallop in the confined walls was like being physically battered.
The riderless horse was in the lead and pulling away. A little less weight makes a big difference in an all-out sprint. And so does more weight: The horse bearing Carmody and Lydia was lagging.
“I’m
going to fall behind and hold them off,” I shouted, though I wasn’t sure if anybody could hear me. And then I forgot and inhaled a lungful of that foul air and started coughing.
“I wouldn’t shoot a gun in here,” Miller said. “This is methane.” And then he coughed.
“What the hell is methane?” Lydia sputtered.
“Shut up and ride,” Munro roared, and we did. Ahead, at the opening of the canyon, there was a glow of sunshine, like a distant star.
I fell back anyway because this time I actually needed to turn around and take a look. When we broke into the sunshine I wouldn’t be able to see the pursuers in the darkness and I had to know what we’d be up against.
As near as I could tell in the dim light of the pass, there were a dozen men, all of them wearing bandanas over their mouths. Why that would help you breathe with a gas that robs you of air I didn’t know, but it was obvious they’d traveled this route before. Maybe they just wanted to keep the stink out.
I looked forward and saw that Miller was out in the open already. He was light and an excellent rider. He maintained his balance while nonchalantly digging into the saddlebag for the dynamite and matches with both hands.
Munro broke through next, followed by Harbold. They knew what was coming and needed to get a couple hundred yards ahead before turning to fire.
I was only a length behind Carmody and Lydia.
“Keep going,” I yelled. “No matter what you see, just ride right into it.”
I was momentarily blinded when I broke through.
Then I heard the pounding concussion of the blasts and put my head down and spurred the Morgan.
When my vision cleared, I could see the Apaches.
Chapter 41
Taza and his half-dozen men had done magnificent work.
When our pursuers broke through, they took a look and turned back immediately, their horses bumping and circling as their riders cursed and yelped and bickered.
We opened fire on them, and they panicked.
They retreated back into the opening of the canyon.