Rope Burn

by William W. Johnstone; J. A. Johnstone

  “Getting there,” Ace replied.

  The day crawled on. The Apaches cut down the bodies of Shoemaker and Barnes and dragged them off somewhere. The air freshened slightly after that. The heat grew worse as the sun climbed higher, and the prisoners dozed. With their time quite likely running out, it seemed as if they would want to spend every second awake, clinging to every last bit of life they had left, but that wasn’t the way it worked. Heat, fear, and exhaustion all took their toll. It was hard to stay awake.

  Evelyn leaned against Chance’s shoulder and slept soundly, despite the small, continual movements he made as he tried to work the bonds loose. After a while, those movements stopped, and Chance’s head sagged forward.

  Ace was in a semi-stupor himself, but after a while he came awake with a jerk of his head. He didn’t know how long Chance had been sitting there like that, either asleep or passed out.

  “Chance!” he hissed. “Chance, wake up!”

  Chance blinked, lifted his head, shook it vehemently. “Wha . . . what happened?”

  “You went to sleep,” Ace told him. “We both did.”

  “Ace—” Alarm filled Chance’s voice. “The brooch is gone.”

  “Don’t panic,” Ace said. “It probably just slipped out of your fingers when you dozed off. Can you feel around behind you and see if you can find it?”

  “Yeah . . . Lemme try . . .” Chance’s shoulders twisted back and forth as he searched for the brooch. After a minute or so that seemed longer than it really was, he heaved a sigh of relief and said, “I’ve got it.”

  “What’s goin’ on over there?” MacDonald asked.

  “Nothing,” Ace said. He didn’t see any point in explaining how close their plan had come to being ruined. They still had hope, and that was all that mattered.

  Chance continued working. Evelyn woke up and spoke to him in low, encouraging tones. Ace watched the play of sunlight in the canyon and tried to estimate the time. On down the line of prisoners, Driscoll whimpered and complained until Vince MacDonald said savagely, “If you keep that up much longer, I’m gonna roll down there and head-butt you to death! The Apaches won’t have a chance to kill you!”

  That made Driscoll shut up for a while. His complaints choked off in a sniveling sob.

  “I can’t stand a coward,” MacDonald said. “Give me the rottenest man in the world over one who doesn’t have any guts.”

  Ace wasn’t going to debate philosophy with the big noncom. Instead he whispered encouragement to Chance, too.

  It was past midday when Chance suddenly took a sharp, indrawn breath. Ace looked over at him. He could tell that his brother was making an effort to keep his face impassive rather than excited and triumphant, just in case any of the Apaches happened to glance in this direction at just the wrong second.

  “You got it?” Ace breathed.

  “I got it,” Chance said. “My hands are loose.”

  Ace twisted a little and thrust his bound wrists toward his brother. “See if you can reach over and untie mine.”

  Without drawing attention to themselves, they worked on freeing Ace. The rawhide strips were difficult for Chance to untie, even with his hands loose. But even though it took a while, it was still a lot easier task than Chance had accomplished by freeing his own wrists.

  The next step was untying their ankles. Ace watched the guards closely, and when the warriors weren’t looking and none of the other Apaches were close by, he whispered to Chance, “Now!”

  They had been flexing their fingers and rolling their shoulders to restore the feeling in their arms and hands. Even so, their efforts were clumsy as they reached in front of them and started tugging at the rawhide strips lashed around their ankles.

  MacDonald saw what they were doing and exclaimed, “Hey! Get me loose, blast it!”

  The other prisoners realized what was going on, too, and started babbling questions and pleas. Ace saw one of the guards start to turn his head to look around. He hissed a warning to Chance, and both of them had to jerk their arms behind their backs as quickly as possible so it would look like they were still tied up.

  “Shut up!” MacDonald told the others in low, urgent tones. “Everybody just shut up!”

  The other prisoners fell silent. The guard studied them for a few seconds, then said something to his companion in their guttural native tongue. The other warrior glanced back, shrugged, and replied. Ace couldn’t understand any of the words, but he thought the man didn’t sound concerned at all. The captives still appeared to be helpless and mired in despair.

  After a moment, the first guard laughed, made some sort of comment, and both warriors resumed their negligent attitudes. They didn’t consider these white men to be much of a threat.

  MacDonald leaned over to the man on the other side of him, who happened to be Brunner, the trooper with the broken foot who had been the key to their escape. He whispered orders for the men to be quiet and pretend that nothing was going on and told Brunner to pass that along to the others.

  Then MacDonald whispered to Ace, “I still don’t trust Driscoll, but there’s nothing we can do about that now. We’ll just have to hope he doesn’t give us away. You’d better make it fast, though, and get me loose! If nothin’ else, I want to kill some more Apaches before I die.”

  Ace understood that feeling. If there was no way out, it was better to go down fighting.

  As soon as it seemed safe again, he and Chance went back to untying their ankles. They pulled the knots free but left the rawhide strips looped around their ankles so it would look like they were still tied.

  When that was done, Ace reached behind MacDonald’s back and started working on the sergeant’s bonds. Farther down the line, Driscoll whined again.

  “I don’t know about this—” the surgeon began.

  “Blast it, Driscoll, keep your mouth shut!” MacDonald warned him. “If you don’t, the first thing I’m gonna do when I’m loose is come down there and rip your tongue out! I don’t even care if we get away, as long as I get to close your trap for you!”

  Those threats made Driscoll subside. He grimaced again from the pain of the arrow wound but didn’t say anything else.

  While Ace was working on MacDonald’s bonds, Chance freed Evelyn. As the rawhide fell away from MacDonald’s wrists, he growled, “Are you sure the three of us shouldn’t just grab the girl and get outta here?”

  “We’ll stand a better chance of fighting our way clear if we all stick together,” Ace said.

  “Yeah, yeah,” MacDonald muttered. “I suppose.” He went to work untying his ankles, glancing up at the guards every few seconds to make sure they still weren’t paying attention.

  More than once, Ace had to hiss a quick warning when one of the Apaches wandered in the direction of the overhang where the prisoners were being kept. They all sat as still as possible and hung their heads as if in the throes of despair. Only when the Apaches had gone on did they resume their stealthy efforts to escape.

  By late afternoon, everyone was free. MacDonald kept insisting it was time they make their move, but Ace counseled, “Wait a little longer. Let the shadows start to gather.”

  MacDonald didn’t like it, but he controlled the impulse to act. Ace worried that the sergeant might not be able to restrain himself much longer and wished that twilight would go ahead and get here.

  Finally, when he saw the women beginning to gather firewood again, he knew they couldn’t wait. Soon, warriors would come for two more prisoners and drag them off to be tortured before they were strung up over the flames to have their brains cooked.

  During the afternoon, whispered instructions had been passed along the line. Ace and Chance would jump the two guards and get their rifles. MacDonald would herd Evelyn and the other three prisoners toward the far end of the canyon and get them up the slope there as quickly as possible. But now, at the last minute, MacDonald changed the plan.

  “Listen, Jensen . . . Ace,” he said. “You take charge of the girl and th
e rest of this bunch. I’ll help your brother with the guards.”

  “Wait a minute, MacDonald,” Ace said. “You’re wounded. I know you haven’t said much about it, but you lost quite a bit of blood—”

  “You reckon I don’t know that, kid?” MacDonald snorted. “Even with half as much blood as I’d normally have, I’m more’n a match for any of those dirt-eatin’ savages. I want a gun in my hands just as soon as I can get one, understand? Anyway,” he added grudgingly, “your brother did most of the work gettin’ us free. He deserves a better chance of gettin’ out of here.”

  Chance would have argued about that, but just then Evelyn squeezed his arm and when he looked around at her, he could tell that she wanted him to go along with MacDonald’s suggestion.

  Ace saw that, too, and reluctantly said, “All right, MacDonald, we’ll do it your way.” He was so accustomed to fighting alongside Chance that any other option just hadn’t occurred to him, but he knew from experience that MacDonald was quite an effective battler, too.

  He looked along the line of prisoners and asked, “Is everybody ready?”

  Grim nods of agreement came from all of them, even Lieutenant Driscoll with the arrow stuck in his shoulder.

  Ace and MacDonald drew their legs up. Each braced a hand on the ground to give themselves some balance. They looked at each other in the gathering dusk and exchanged curt nods.

  Then, with no more sound than the rustle of clothing and the whisper of boot leather, they sprang into action.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  The guards heard them coming and started to turn around. Ace leaped at the man closest to him and caught hold of the Winchester’s barrel as the warrior swung it toward him. He lashed out with his other fist and crashed it into the man’s jaw.

  MacDonald reached his man in time to get an arm around the guard’s neck from behind before he could bring his rifle into play. MacDonald grabbed that arm with his other hand to lock it into place and the muscles in his back and shoulders bunched as he heaved and twisted with all his massive strength. The Apache’s neck snapped with a brittle crack like a branch breaking. He slumped bonelessly in MacDonald’s grip.

  Ace tore the rifle out of the other guard’s grasp and drove the butt into the man’s throat, crushing his windpipe. The man gagged and struggled for breath as he stumbled backward, but he wasn’t out of the fight yet. He clawed at the bone handle of the knife sheathed at his waist.

  So far, the battle had been relatively quiet. Neither guard had managed to raise a cry of alarm, and with one dead and the other unable to breathe, that wasn’t going to happen now. But the commotion was going to attract attention within a matter of seconds. There was no avoiding it.

  From the corner of his eye Ace saw Chance, Evelyn, and the rest of the captives sprinting toward the far end of the canyon, and he knew there was no more need for stealth. When the choking guard pulled the knife and lunged at him, Ace turned the rifle and shot the man.

  The bullet fired at close range struck the Apache in the chest and flung him backward. Ace turned toward the village, where several more warriors were already running to see what was going on. He opened fire, spraying lead among them as fast as he could work the Winchester’s lever. A couple of the Apaches tumbled to the ground as Ace’s shots found their mark. A few feet away, the rifle MacDonald had taken away from the other guard barked a deadly rhythm, too.

  Ace stopped after four rounds and bent to rip away the bandolier of ammunition from the first man he had shot. “Let’s go!” he called to MacDonald.

  The sergeant loosed one more shot that knocked a warrior sprawling, then he grabbed the bandolier from the man whose neck he had broken. He and Ace both turned and ran for the far end of the canyon.

  MacDonald’s gait was more ragged and unsteady, and he puffed heavily. Ace figured the untreated wound in the big man’s side had taken more of a toll than MacDonald was willing to admit. But MacDonald’s longer legs allowed him to keep up even though he was staggering.

  Ace reached out with his left hand to grab hold of MacDonald’s arm and steady him. MacDonald snarled and jerked away.

  “I don’t need your help!” he yelled. “Just keep moving!”

  Shots began to ring out behind them. A few arrows flew through the air around them. Ace felt the wind-rip of a bullet near his right ear.

  Ahead of them, Chance and Evelyn had reached the slope and started up it, with Chance holding her arm to help her. One of the other captives—a trooper whose name he didn’t even know, Ace realized—wasn’t far behind them. That left Driscoll, who stumbled along holding the arrow shaft so it wouldn’t move around as much as he ran, and Brunner, who was hobbled because of his injured foot and couldn’t move very fast.

  Brunner stumbled, cried out, fell to his knees, and struggled back up again. He turned toward Ace and MacDonald and put out his hands toward them.

  “Vince! Vince, you gotta help me—”

  He stopped short, his eyes widening as his head jerked back. A black hole had appeared suddenly in the center of his forehead. Ace realized that one of the shots fired at him and MacDonald had missed them and gone on to strike Brunner. Brunner reached out to them again, but that may have been purely a reflex action since he already had a bullet in his brain. His knees buckled and he pitched forward on his face as Ace and MacDonald hurried past him.

  “Poor devil,” MacDonald muttered. It was more of an expression of sympathy than Ace expected to hear from MacDonald.

  They reached the base of the slope. MacDonald stopped, waved Ace on, and said, “I’ll slow ’em down!”

  “We fight together!” Ace told him. He started to turn back toward the pursuing Apaches as another bullet sang past them.

  “Blast it, boy!” MacDonald roared. “Get outta here, or I’ll shoot you myself!”

  The fierce expression on the man’s face made Ace believe that he meant it. He said, “I’ll go partway to the top, then stop and cover you while you catch up. If we do it like that, we might both get away.”

  “Just go!” MacDonald turned, brought the Winchester to his shoulder, and opened fire again. Ace saw now that he had a fresh bloodstain on his side, probably as a result of that knife wound opening up again. He didn’t think either of them had been hit by Apache rifle fire.

  Ace scrambled up the slope, bounding in big steps when he could, putting a hand down for balance or grabbing hold of a rocky outcropping or a bush when he had to. When he reached a stone slab jutting out from the slope, he threw himself belly down on top of it and shouted, “MacDonald! Come on!”

  From that prone position, Ace had a good angle to fire back down into the area between the Apache village and the end of the canyon. The warriors weren’t chasing them anymore, he saw. Instead, they had taken cover behind trees and rocks and were peppering the slope with bullets. Several slugs pounded into the front of the stone slab where he lay, but stretched out like he was, he didn’t present much of a target. He stayed cool and picked his shots, and two more warriors showed too much of themselves and went down under his lethal fire.

  He wished he could get a clear shot at Ndolkah, but so far he hadn’t spotted the chief.

  MacDonald clambered up the slope, really struggling now. Ace couldn’t go to help him, though. He had to keep firing at the Apaches, to distract them and make them keep their heads down, if nothing else.

  Rocks rattled behind him. He jerked his head around, thinking for a second that he was under attack from that direction, but then Chance dropped down onto the slab beside him.

  “I got everybody else to the top,” Chance reported. “They’re holed up in some rocks. It’s good cover, but the bad news is, I don’t know how much farther they can go. It’s kind of a box, and the walls are too sheer to climb. You and I might be able to make it, but Evelyn and Driscoll can’t.” Chance paused. “Where’s Brunner?”

  “He didn’t make it,” Ace said. “A stray bullet from the Apaches got him.”

  “Too bad,” C
hance said, but he didn’t really sound that sympathetic. Brunner had played a vital part in MacDonald’s escape plan, and that was what had landed all of them in this dangerous mess.

  About twenty yards below them, MacDonald suddenly collapsed. Ace hadn’t seen him get hit, so he thought the sergeant’s strength might have just deserted him.

  Chance saw what happened, too, and said, “We can’t just leave him there. For one thing, he’s got the other rifle!”

  Before Ace could say anything, Chance leaped up and started down the slope toward MacDonald, covering the distance in huge bounds. The Apaches threw a few shots at him, the bullets kicking up dirt and rocks when they struck, but none of them came very close to Chance, who was moving too fast for them to draw a bead on him.

  He slid down next to MacDonald, grabbed the rifle with one hand and the sergeant’s arm with the other. Ace had thumbed more rounds from the bandolier into his Winchester and opened fire again, so he couldn’t hear what Chance was saying to MacDonald, but his brother was being emphatic about it. MacDonald shook his head stubbornly at first but then started climbing again. Chance knelt and fired down into the canyon.

  When MacDonald made it to the stone slab, he slumped down beside Ace and gasped for breath. The side of his shirt was soaked with blood now.

  Ace paused in his shooting and told him, “As soon as you can, head on up. Chance said the others are holed up in some rocks at the top.”

  He didn’t mention the other thing Chance had said, that there might not be a way out up there. Talking about it wouldn’t change anything.

  Between puffing for air, MacDonald said, “You oughta . . . get outta here . . . while you can. Leave me . . . with that rifle and bandolier . . . Get your brother . . .”

  Ace stared at him. “You’re offering to sacrifice yourself for us?”

  “I just want to . . . kill more of those . . . savages! Now . . . go!”

  Ace shook his head and called, “Come on, Chance! I’ll cover you!”

  Chance retreated up the slope, throwing a few more shots down into the canyon as he did so. Between the sound of the shots fired by his brother and himself, Ace heard MacDonald cursing. But then the big noncom heaved himself up and started toward the top of the slope again.