“No, I don’t believe you will,” Luke said, and then he swung up into his own saddle.
The sun was halfway above the eastern horizon to their right as they started off in a generally northerly direction.
Aaron rode with one arm around Badger to steady him and the other hand holding the reins. Luke took the lead and looked back over his shoulder to say, “If you spot a familiar landmark, Badger, sing out. We’re looking for the Black Castle, remember?”
“I ’member,” Badger mumbled. “Lookin’ for . . . Black Cass . . . Black Castle.”
Luke wasn’t sure how things were going to turn out with Badger in such bad shape, but pushing on was the best option they had. He didn’t think he stood a very good chance of saving the old-timer’s life on his own.
After a while they stumbled upon either the same rough trail Luke had been following earlier or another one like it. It led in the right direction, so he followed it. An hour later they came to a tiny creek that flowed from west to east along a rocky bed between two high walls of stone. The trail led down to a ford. The creek itself wasn’t big enough to present any obstacle to crossing, but getting to it anywhere else would be difficult because of the steep banks.
Luke called a halt to let the horse and the mule drink. “Stay on the mule with Badger,” he told Aaron. “The shape he’s in, he doesn’t need to be climbing in and out of the saddle if it’s not necessary.”
“Sure, Mr. Jensen,” the youngster said. He sat straight and his head turned from side to side as he scanned their surroundings. “I’ll keep an eye out for trouble.”
“That’s a good idea.” Luke He took the canteens and stepped upstream to fill them while he had the chance. He hunkered down next to the stream and began filling one of the canteens.
The skin on the back of his neck prickled again as if someone were painting a target on him. He lifted his head sharply and looked around.
Aaron noticed the reaction and asked, “What’s wrong?”
“I just got a feeling that somebody is watching me,” Luke replied. “Somebody who’s probably not a friend.”
“I don’t see or hear anything out of the ordinary. There’s a lizard sunning himself on a rock over here. Nobody’s come along to spook him lately.”
“The last time I got this feeling, it was you following me.”
“I’m sorry,” Aaron said. “I guess I should have told you I wanted to come along, but if I had, you wouldn’t have let me, would you?”
“Probably not.” Luke corked the full canteen and set it aside to fill the other one.
Suddenly, Badger said, “I know this place.” His voice was a little stronger than it had been earlier and sounded fairly coherent. Luke glanced up from what he was doing to see that Badger was looking around. The old-timer craned his skinny neck to peer both ways, up and down the narrow cut where the creek ran.
“You’ve been here before, Badger?” Luke asked.
“Yeah, I . . . I remember this creek and the way it runs through here. This ford.”
“Are we getting close to the Black Castle?”
“I . . . I dunno.” Badger raised a hand and massaged his forehead with his fingertips. “I’m tryin’ to think, but it’s kinda hard . . .”
“Take your time,” Luke told him. The second canteen was full. He corked it and stood, carried the canteens over to the mounts, and handed one to Aaron.
“What we need to do . . . what we need to do is follow this creek,” Badger declared with a decisive nod. “I remember now. We got to follow the creek.”
“How can we do that?” Aaron asked. “There’s no trail on either side, just the creek.”
“We got to ride in it.” Badger waved a gnarled hand toward the west. “That way. Upstream.”
Luke frowned at the creek bed and decided it was just wide enough for him and Aaron to ride single file along it. But they wouldn’t be able to turn their mounts around, so if the passage became too narrow for them to proceed, they would be in quite a fix. They would have to back the horse and the mule all the way out.
“Are you sure about this, Badger?” he asked.
“I’m plumb certain,” the old-timer insisted. “I recollect doin’ it before.”
“Is this the way to the Black Castle?” Luke guessed. That seemed to make sense. An outlaw sanctuary would need to be hard to find and difficult to get in and out of.
Badger looked confused, though. “I-I dunno,” he stammered. “I think so, but I ain’t sure. Why else would I have—” His words stopped short as his eyes suddenly rolled in their sockets and he slumped to the side.
“Catch him!” Luke barked at Aaron, who tightened his grip and prevented the old man from toppling off the mule’s back.
“What’s wrong with him?” Aaron asked anxiously as he held on to Badger. “Is he dead?”
“No, I think he just passed out. Let’s get him down from there, carefully.”
Aaron eased Badger down into Luke’s arms. Luke laid him on a small stretch of gravel next to the creek and wadded up Badger’s shapeless old hat to serve as a pillow. Badger’s narrow chest rose and fell in an erratic pattern, but at least he was still breathing. His face was deathly pale under the permanent tan.
Luke checked the wound, found that the dressing he had put on there before they rode out that morning had quite a bit of blood on it. “He can’t afford to keep losing blood like this. If the Black Castle isn’t up this creek, he may be a goner.”
“We’ve got to save his life, Mr. Jensen.”
“We’re going to try our best,” Luke promised. “Let me get a fresh bandage on here.”
When that was done, Luke lifted Badger, still unconscious, onto the mule again.
“I’ve got him,” Aaron said as he put his arm around the old-timer.
“Try not to put too much pressure on his side.”
Luke went to his horse and stepped up into the saddle. He turned the animal’s head upstream, nudged it into the water, and started following the narrow passage between looming rock walls.
The water in the creek was no more than a foot deep in most places, but there could be holes that were deeper. Luke kept a close watch for them, because if his horse stepped in one of them, the animal might lame himself or even break a leg, and that really would be a problem. Luckily, the water was clear enough that Luke had a pretty good view of the streambed.
However, when he was watching that, he couldn’t look ahead of them, so his head kept falling and rising as he studied the stream and then lifted his gaze to peer along the canyon where the creek ran. It made for slow going, and with every minute that passed, he knew Badger was that much closer to dying from the fever and loss of blood.
The stone walls rose sheer for fifty or sixty feet on both sides. They looked like they were leaning in, trying to close up at the top, but Luke knew that was just an illusion, a trick of perspective from where he and his companions rode. Not much sunlight penetrated, so the gloom was thick around them.
“I don’t cotton much to this,” Aaron said over the quiet splashing of hooves in the water.
“Neither do I,” Luke admitted.
“It gives me the fantods. What do we do if we come to a stone wall and can’t go on?”
“I hope Titus is good at backing up.”
“He don’t care for it,” Aaron said. “I reckon I can make him do it, though.”
The creek’s course twisted here and there, and those bends were more difficult to negotiate. The rock walls scraped against Luke’s legs during those turns.
“I never realized until now how much I hate bein’ closed in like this,” Aaron said.
Luke motioned for the youngster to stay quiet. Voices echoed in the extremely narrow canyon. So did the sounds the horse and the mule made in the water, but those were more natural and less likely to be noticed if anyone was listening. Luke wasn’t sure who that might be, but he hadn’t been able to rule out the possibility of survivors from that Apache war party.
<
br /> Also, if the Black Castle really did lie in that direction, it stood to reason Henry Stockbridge might have posted guards along the approach. That would explain why he had felt like someone was watching them earlier.
Luke estimated they had ridden for about a mile along the creek when the streambed began to widen a bit. Not much, but any relief from the looming oppressiveness was welcome. After a while the creek was wide enough that they were able to ride side by side. Luke motioned for Aaron to come on up and slowed his horse to let the boy catch up.
Badger was still unconscious but breathing, Luke saw as he looked over at the two of them. The old-timer’s whiskery face was really haggard.
Luke looked ahead of them again and frowned when he saw a wall of stone blocking their path a hundred yards in front of them. The creek emerged from a small hole in the rock, flowing fast enough that it created bubbling whitecaps before it spread out and slowed down. Luke felt a twinge of disappointment that they had come to a dead end, but at least they had enough room now to turn the mounts around and go back to the ford. They had lost quite a bit of time, though, time that Badger might not be able to afford.
Then Luke looked up, tracking the wall to its top, and his heart suddenly slugged harder in his chest as he saw the battlements rising black against the sky. Luke had never been to England, had never laid eyes on a real medieval castle, but he had seen plenty of pictures of them in books and that seemed to be what he was looking at.
Aaron followed Luke’s example and gazed upward. Eyes wide, he whispered, “The Black Castle.”
“Yes, I think we’ve found—”
The unmistakable sound of someone working a Winchester’s lever came from behind them, followed by a harsh voice ordering, “Get your hands up and keep ’em away from those guns, or we’ll blow you out of the saddle!”
CHAPTER 18
From the corner of his eye, Luke saw Aaron start to reach for the Henry’s stock where it stuck up from the scabbard. He said quickly, “Don’t do it, Aaron. Hang on to Badger but put your other hand up.”
“But Mr. Jensen—”
“Just do it.”
Luke understood the instinct that made Aaron want to reach for his gun. He felt the same thing himself. Any time he was threatened, his first impulse was to fight back.
But he also knew the men behind them had the drop on them. So close to the Black Castle, those hombres would be outlaws standing guard over their haven, just as he expected. They wouldn’t hesitate to shoot intruders. Sometimes you had to do what your brain dictated, not your heart.
Because of that, Luke slowly raised his hands to shoulder level, keeping the reins in his left, and made sure both were in plain sight.
“Take it easy, boys,” he said in a calm, steady voice. “We’re not looking for trouble.”
“What are you looking for?” challenged the man who had just spoken.
“I think you know that as well as we do. We’re looking for the Black Castle.”
“Go ahead and shoot ’em,” a second voice urged. “They don’t look like anybody who’d be welcome here.”
Without turning around, Luke said, “I thought anyone who can pay what Henry Stockbridge demands was welcome.”
The response came quickly. “You know the Black Knight?”
“Never met the man,” Luke answered honestly, “but my friend here told us about him and this place.” He inclined his head toward Badger. “He’s been here before. And he’s hurt and badly in need of help.”
“Who is that? Don’t move, mister.” One of the guards walked along a narrow ledge that Luke hadn’t noticed.
He figured the man was trying to get a better look at Badger, and said softly to Aaron, “We’re outlaws running from the law, understand? Nothing about—”
“You don’t have to tell me,” the boy replied, equally quiet. “I know what you mean.”
The sound of the creek was enough to keep the guards from overhearing their whispers. Luke and Aaron sat silently after that while the guard stepped down from the ledge and waded through the creek to move in front of them, covering them with a Winchester the whole time.
The man was a lean, roughly dressed, beard-stubbled hardcase with a tightly rolled and creased black hat on his head. He looked up at the three newcomers and said, “Hey, I think I know that old man! His name’s Badger, ain’t it?”
“See, I told you he’d been here before,” Luke said. “An Apache shot him in the side a few days ago. He’s running a fever and needs medical attention.”
The outlaw scoffed. “You think you’d find a sawbones here, mister?”
“Maybe not, but I was confident that I’d find someone with experience at patching up bullet wounds. Hell, I can do it myself as long as there’s some hot water and whiskey and an actual bed where he can rest. I’m sure those things are available, aren’t they? For the right price?”
The other guard stepped into view on the ledge and pointed his rifle at the riders. He was a tall, burly man with a blond beard. “What’s your name?” he demanded.
“Luke. The boy is Aaron. And as your friend already said, the old pelican is Badger.”
Luke didn’t offer any other names. One name was enough for most riders of the dark trails. They tended not to be inquisitive because they didn’t want anybody poking into their background, either.
“Don’t reckon I’ve ever seen anybody bring a kid here,” the dark-haired owlhoot commented.
“He didn’t bring me,” Aaron snapped. “We ride together, that’s all.”
The two guards exchanged quick grins.
“Proddy, ain’t he?” the blond-bearded one said. “All right, I reckon we don’t have enough reason to go ahead and kill you, so it’ll be up to somebody else to decide what to do with you. Ride on ahead, but I’ll be over here keepin’ an eye on you, and if you get a hand too close to your guns or try anything else that looks funny, I will shoot you. Got it?”
“We’ve got it.” Luke lowered his hands, but only part of the way, and used his knees to nudge the horse into motion. Aaron had to bang his heels against the mule’s flanks to start it walking along the creek bed again.
As they approached the towering stone wall, Luke saw some things that hadn’t been visible from farther away. The wall had a deep crack in it that, because of the angle at which it slanted into the stone, was almost invisible except from certain angles. He thought that the two guards probably had been concealed in a similar fissure back up the canyon.
A ledge slanted up the cliff face as well, then doubled back on itself and continued that zigzagging pattern as it climbed toward the top. Luke frowned as he studied the path. It didn’t look natural to him. Someone had hewn it out of the rock, going to a lot of trouble and expense. Henry Stockbridge? Luke didn’t see who else could have done it.
He wondered if Stockbridge had climbed that stone wall to escape the posse pursuing him. It would have been a harrowing ascent, but desperate men were capable of desperate things. Later, when Stockbridge had decided to establish his stronghold there, he could have brought in laborers to cut that trail, as well as to build the great stone house that was supposed to be up there.
Once the work was done, had Stockbridge murdered the laborers so they could never reveal his secrets, as the Egyptian pharaohs had done with the slaves who built the pyramids? Luke didn’t know, but he had a hunch he shouldn’t put it past the man. Until he met Henry Stockbridge, he had no way of guessing what he might be capable of.
Three more heavily armed hardcases stepped out of the crack in the rock near the creek’s origin and the bottom of the trail. One of them called to the blond-bearded guard, “Who’s that, Hannigan?”
“Says his name’s Luke,” Hannigan replied. “The boy’s Aaron, and the old man is Badger.”
“Badger O’Donnell? Hell, I remember him!”
“You do?” Hannigan said. “I never heard of him.”
“That’s because you’ve only been in these parts for a couple o
f years. O’Donnell and his gang robbed banks and held up trains all the way from Texas to California!”
Luke and Aaron looked at each other for a second. It seemed like Badger hadn’t been entirely forthcoming about his history. He wasn’t just some old desert rat of a prospector after all.
But he had fought side by side with them against the Apaches, so whatever Badger had done in the past didn’t matter all that much. Luke still wanted to save the old-timer’s life if he could.
“He’s hurt, ain’t he?” continued the man who had heard of Badger.
“That’s right,” Luke said. “An Apache war party jumped him a few days ago and a bullet left a deep crease in his side. He’s lost a lot of blood, and now he’s got a fever, to boot. He said this was the closest place to get help, and since the boy and I were headed here anyway, we were glad to bring him along.”
“Why were you coming here?”
“Now, why do you think?” Luke asked with a note of impatience in his voice. “We need to lie low for a while, until some folks who are trying to find us give up and go home.”
“You tryin’ to tell us you got a posse on your trail?” another man said. “Hell, that fella with you is just a kid!”
Aaron bristled. “I may be young, mister, but that don’t mean I can’t use a gun when I need to. If you want to find out—”
“That’s enough,” Luke said sharply. He looked at Hannigan and the other guards and added, “I wouldn’t push too hard if I were you. Like he said, he’s young, but he’s also a little loco. You don’t mind if I say that, do you, kid?”
Aaron played along and grinned. “Hell, no. Nobody else better call me crazy, though.”
Hannigan said, “He looks like a farm boy, but Billy Bonney didn’t look like all that much, either. Listen, boys, if this old man really is an outlaw who’s been here before, I reckon we ought to let ’em go on up. If Stockbridge don’t like it, he can kill ’em once they’re inside the castle.”
“If he gets riled up because we let ’em in, he’s liable to kill us,” one of the other men argued.
Luke looked at Badger’s gray, haggard face and said, “To hell with all this wrangling. Come on, Aaron. We’re going to get Badger the help he needs.”
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