Lightly, Blade said: ‘I reckon Salome best get out that little ole map of hers. She don’t know the way too well.’
Roxanne snapped back to full attention. ‘What map? She doesn’t have any map.’
Blade chuckled to himself.
Doke looked at the rock walls in a kind of despair. ‘There’s no way out of here. We gotta go back. Hell, that’s the last thing we want to do. I don’t fancy goin’ back and riskin’ runnin’ into Lister.’
Salome said: ‘Blade, go ahead there and see if there’s a way up ahead of us.’
Blade said: ‘Yessir, ma’am.’ He edged his way past Doke and Salome, his horse finding it difficult going among those loose rocks. He rode up almost to the first giant step. To one side of it, down the face of a series of ragged rock seams, dropped a rivulet of water, splashing quite noisily. The draught of air caught it and threw the spray in his face. It was as if an icy hand had touched him. He could see no way up.
He called back to Salome: ‘There’s no way up here.’
‘There has to be,’ she told him curtly. ‘Men have been this way before.’
‘The men who found the gold in the first place?’ he asked.
‘Just cut out the talk and find the trail up,’ she told him.
He dismounted and walked forward. The three watchers saw him go quickly from view. Salome made little gestures of impatience. Roxanne said: ‘Don’t fret, Sal. We know there had to be a way up.’
Salome snapped: ‘We don’t know anything of the kind. Maybe there’s been a rock fall. Maybe nobody ever found anything.’
Doke built himself a smoke. He reckoned Salome was sure lovely even when she was mad. He reckoned if he played his cards real smart ... why, there was no knowing what might happen. Maybe women were a better vice to cultivate than drink.
They heard Blade call: ‘There’s a way up.’ They looked this way and that, looking for him. The rocks played tricks with the sound of his voice. They heard him say: ‘I’m up here.’ Then Doke found him and pointed. He stood in the dark shadow of the northern wall of the narrow canyon, thirty feet or more above them.
‘Can we get the animals up?’ Salome demanded.
‘No, there’s been a rock fall most likely.’ Then he disappeared and they heard the rattle of loose rocks and a few moments later he walked towards them.
Salome was looking somewhat distraught. ‘We can’t leave the horses here.’
Blade asked: ‘How far do we go from here?’
Salome did not know how to answer that. Plainly, she not only wanted to keep her knowledge to herself but also, Blade suspected, she wasn’t too sure of the information she did have.
‘With the horses we could be there today,’ she said.
‘Not even a mule could get up there. You’ll see when you try it,’ he told her.
Roxanne said: ‘The real problem is not whether we can get the horses up there, but where we’re going to hide them so Lister and his merry men don’t find them.’
Blade said: ‘Doke, you go ahead with the girls. I’ll take the horses back a ways.’
Salome said sharply: ‘I have to know where the horses are.’
‘Why?’ said Blade innocently. ‘Don’t you trust me, sweetheart?’
Salome tried to smile beguiling, but she didn’t do too well at it. She was too anxious for acting.
‘I trust you all right,’ she said. ‘But supposing something happens to you. How do we find the horses then?’
Blade said: ‘About a quarter mile back, facing the road, there’s some timber. On the far side of the trees, I spotted grass. I’ll hobble them there.’
‘Lister could find ’em,’ Doke said.
‘I’ll put ’em so far over he won’t.’
‘All right,’ Salome said, ‘go ahead.’
Blade mounted his horse and started collecting lines from the others. When he was ready, he said: ‘I’ll catch you up in a couple of hours. I take it you’re going straight ahead for that peak still, Salome?’
That jolted her a little, but she said: ‘Yes,’ quite civilly. As he rode past Roxanne, he winked. She dimpled and blew him a kiss.
He rode back down the canyon at a fast walk and he was glad to get out of that canyon and climb up into the trees. A fresh mountain breeze came through the timber and it hit him like a refreshing drink. The animals perked up and pretty soon they were belly deep in grass. He lifted them all into a brisk trot now and took them to the far side of what looked like a great meadow. Here he hobbled them and stripped off their gear. He cached this in the fork of a tree, lashing it in place with some pegging strings. All he carried back with him were his Winchester and his sixty-foot rawhide reata. Now he tramped back to the canyon and before long was once more breathing its dank unwholesome air. He found that his saddle pockets which he had left with the other three were waiting for him. He grimaced, thinking, he could carry them, but he’d bet they would be willing to eat the food in them. Throwing them over his shoulder, he started to climb.
Ten minutes later, it started to rain. He cursed softly. Within minutes, he was soaked to the skin. The rocks under his feet became dangerously slippery with water. Once or twice he stumbled and nearly fell.
After a while, he sat on a rock, loaded his pipe and after three tries at lighting it finally succeeded. He hoped to God that Doke had not gone blithely on with the girls, but had thought to wait for him. Finding anybody in his rain was not going to be easy. It was going to be impossible. He hoped fervently that the downpour would slow down Lister and the others. When he had smoked his pipe through, he got up and went on. The way grew more and more difficult. The great mountains had now disappeared behind the thick shroud of rain. Only his struggles against the steepness of the ascent kept him from freezing, but even so the cold seeped right through to his bones.
He tried to remember as much as he could of the ascent as he had seen it from below and decided to gamble on his sense of direction. He angled right and found himself tackling a rocky slope steeper even than the one he had been climbing. He thought he would have a short climb before he met the great wall of stone to the north. Here, he remembered seeing distantly a series of shelves and ledges. Here there would be shelter.
As he climbed higher, the wind hit him. It howled in from the west, driving the rain hard at him. Sometimes he had to lie flat to prevent himself being tom from the rocks and hurled on to those below.
Just as he found that his strength was beginning to wane, he came to a halt in the ascent and found himself standing on an almost flat ledge several yards wide. He hurried forward as best he could, leaning against the wind and hoping that he could escape from it. He nearly collided with a solid wall of rock. He turned into the wind and walked along the wall. Within a hundred paces, he came on a corner and huddled into it, finding himself protected from the wind. He heard a faint rattle of stone and, looking down, found that he was standing on the edge of the ledge and looking down on rocks some hundred or more feet below. If he had not turned into the corner, he would have stepped off into space.
He turned back along the wall, putting his back to the wind and walked with care, watching where he put each foot in turn. In this way, he came to his gratified surprise to a cave and at once plunged into its dark interior. He sat down with his back to a rocky wall, refilled his pipe and smoked again. It gave him a fine sense of security, leaning back there, puffing smoke and hearing the storm howl past him. But he knew the feeling would not last. He needed a fire.
The rain stopped abruptly and left behind it a silence that was almost stunning. Blade looked at the sky and saw that there was plenty more where that came from. Leaving his saddlebags and carbine in the cave, he scouted around on the ledge and found some brush. Most of it was pretty wet, but he gathered it just the same and stuffed the little cave almost full with it. Inside the cave, he used his knife to whittle some of the wood into a kind of punk and also made some kindling by stripping off the wet exterior. Within minutes, he had a fire go
ing. The damp fuel started to steam. His clothes started to steam. He chewed on some tobacco because hunger was starting to gnaw at his belly. The jerky in his saddle pockets he would leave as an emergency. Just in case he should not be able to catch up Doke and the girls. He was looking on the black side of things now. The rain had acted like a bad omen on him. As if to confirm that superstition, it started to rain again.
He told himself: That drunken bum has two beautiful women with him someplace and here I am stuck in a cave on my lonesome. There ain’t no justice.
Darkness came down on him suddenly. At the same time, the wind direction changed so that the smoke from his fire enveloped him. Luckily, by this time his clothes were dry. He killed the fire and crouched there shivering. By this time, he was so tired that he could scarcely keep his eyes open. He fell into a deep sleep and was awoken past midnight by the cold. Now, however, the wind had dropped and he built a fire again. Once more, he slept, this time lulled by the comforting warmth of the fire.
The dawn cold woke him. Or so he thought. The fire was out and he was stiff. He crawled out of the cave to exercise himself and bring some of his blood’s circulation back again.
He froze when he heard a man’s voice close at hand. So close that he turned in alarm, expecting to find somebody close behind him. Then he realized that the rocks were playing tricks with the sound. The man was coming up from below, roughly following the steep ascent that Blade himself had climbed. Blade darted back into the cave, strapped on his Colt and picked up the Winchester. At first, he wondered if it had been Doke’s voice that he had heard, but, when he thought about it, he knew the voice he’d heard was too deep for Doke’s. He backed as far as he could go into the cave, sweeping the remains of the fire away from the cave mouth with his feet.
Some minutes later, he was again startled by the closeness of the voice. This time, it was really close. He heard booted feet scraping on stone just outside his vision. For all he knew the man could be looking suspiciously at the cave in which he, Blade, was hiding.
A man said: ‘I’m goin’ purely on memory and a bit of guesswork. It could be this ledge or the one further on. We’ll have to search every cave of size we can find. One thing I’m sure of—we’re within a mile of the gold.’ Blade knew that the words had come from Harry Lister.
Another man said: ‘Wouldn’t it save a lot of time if we found them goddam women?’
‘Better if we could find the gold without ’em.’
‘It could be in this cave here.’
Blade prepared to lever a shot into the breech and fire.
Lister said: ‘No, that’s far too small. Now that one yonder, that could be the one.’
Blade saw a pair of muddy booted feet. They passed the low cave mouth and passed out of sight. Another followed, and then another.
Blade was struck by the uncanniness of their finding their way up here so close behind him. In the next second, some of the mystery was cleared up. He heard Lister say: ‘Dad, you’re the only one of us that’s been here before. Can’t you remember somethin’,’
He heard an older man’s voice; ‘It was thirty years ago, Harry. Could you remember back that far perfectly?’
‘Try, old man, try,’ said Lister. Then they were out of earshot. Blade lay still, waiting, knowing that he had to show patience. There was silence for a long time and he wondered where Doke and the girls were. They must have gone on further, higher up the mountain. The girls must have a map. He could only hope they wouldn’t come wandering back this way. If Lister and his bunch were here, he wondered if they’d spotted the horses and mules where he, Blade, had left them. He didn’t much fancy the four of them being stranded in these hills without mounts. He had just made up his mind to crawl out of hiding and see what was going on when he heard returning voices and footsteps. A man said: ‘We’ve searched every goddam cave on this ledge, big an’ small. The old hombre must of lost his marbles. There ain’t no gold on this ledge.’
The older voice came, shaking with anger: ‘It’s in a cave off this ledge. A small one. I can remember now. It’s started comin’ back to me, Harry. There, that one yonder, it was like that. You ain’t searched that one.’
Lister’s voice answered. ‘Nor we have. Let’s get at it.’
Blade backed up till he could go back no further. Or so he thought. The roof of the cave sloped down almost to the floor level, going back into the utter darkness. Pushing himself backward, he became aware that his feet were free. He felt backward with his hand and found that the floor of the cave dropped suddenly away. He continued to push himself backward and found himself with his eyes at the level of the cave floor. He realized that he was now lying below the level of the cave floor. No sooner did he realize this than a man entered the cave. He was so close to Blade that he was convinced that the man must see him instantly. He held his breath. But the man seemed to be speaking quite naturally to somebody outside on the ledge—‘This sure ain’t it. It ain’t no more’n a few feet deep.’
Another man entered the cave and there seemed scarcely room for the two of them. The next second, Blade knew that he was in danger. One of the men said excitedly: ‘Somebody built a fire here.’
‘You’re right. My God, it’s still warm. You know what this means.’
‘We don’t know for sure. But mostly likely it means Blade or some of his bunch were here. Not so long ago either. Hey, Harry, come an’ look at this will you?’
Somehow, Harry Lister squeezed himself into the cave. Silence followed, and Lister said: ‘Blade. Goddamit, Blade was here. He must of been.’ They were searching every corner of the cave. Suddenly one of the men exclaimed: ‘Look—a man could get through this openin’ here.’
‘You know what I think?’ said Lister. ‘There’s at least one of ’em further back.’
‘Christ, I ain’t aimin’ to hone in here. One man in there with a gun could hold off an army.’
Blade raised an arm and found that his hand did not touch cold stone. Slowly, carefully, he stood up and found that there was at least headroom in there. Just as carefully, he moved slowly backward, keeping his eye on the narrow slit of light that showed the opening into the first cave. Then his back touched rock and he stopped. He could still hear the men talking, but he could no longer distinguish the words. There was a shout. Blade did not know what was shouted, but he needed little imagination to realize what the men would do next. Just what he would have done in their place—throw some burning brush into the inner cave. But the brush near the cave would be wet and it would take some time before they could burn it enough to make light in here. He began to feel along the rocky wall with his hands.
As far as he could reach with both hands, there was solid rock behind him. The voices in the outer cave continued. He toyed with the idea of making a break past them, but dismissed it. That way lay certain death.
He now shifted his position to the right and found that he came up against a solid rock wall running at right angles to the wall against which he had his back. Now, he worked his way to his left. This time he had more luck. There was a protruding wall of rock sticking out of the far wall to his left. He put himself behind it and found that the slit of light from the outer cave was now hidden from his view. If he stayed where he was, at least the men in the outer cave would not be able to see him when they threw the burning brush inside.
He waited, Winchester held ready.
He knew then what a wild beast cornered felt like. He couldn’t say he liked the situation too well, but he assessed it as best he could. There were, he knew, more men outside the cave than he had at first thought. He was certain of this because of the different voices he had heard. Unless he convinced them that there was no one in this cave, he was as good as dead.
Their first attempt to get a blaze going in the cave failed. The brushwood was too wet. They threw some burning brush in and it simply fizzled out. They swore a little and decided the wisest course was to get some kind of a fire going outside and dry some bru
shwood for a good blaze. So the suspense for Blade continued. He passed the time by listening as best he could to the different voices and trying to guess how many men were out there. By the time he had decided there were six of them, they were ready to bring light into the darkness. This time they had a good blaze going. Then they started feeding it. Some of the burning brush fell almost at Blade’s feet. The whole of the inner cave except for the recess in which he sheltered was as bright as day.
He heard one of the men declare: ‘There ain’t nothin’ in there, Harry. Nary a goddam thing.’
Harry’s voice came: ‘Get in there an’ take a look around.’
‘Rather you than me.’
Lister was impatient and scornful. ‘For crissake, get aside and let me by.’ Blade knew that Lister was down on his belly and edging himself into the inner cave. He declared: ‘Christ, it’s hot in here.’
Blade could not see him, but he knew the man was now standing up. He started kicking the burning brush out of his way. A burning ember fell on Blade’s boot and smoldered there. Blade kicked it off with the other foot. He heard sounds of another man coming into the inner cave. Lister was right, it was hot in here. Blade could feel the sweat dripping from his face.
He heard Lister say: ‘Now, wait a minute—’ The voice was so close that Blade’s heart jumped suddenly. Blade found himself looking into Harry Lister’s eyes.
It was Lister’s complete surprise that saved Blade—for that second, at any rate.
As Lister stared at him in amazement, Blade did the only thing he could do. He drove the muzzle of his Winchester into Lister’s belly. The man let out a breathless agonized gasp and doubled up. Blade brought the butt of the Winchester over and clouted him across his skull. Lister reeled backward and fell in the flaming brushwood. He screamed. The other man started to yell something frantically and Blade levered and fired. Whether he hit the man, he never knew. The fellow was flat on his belly and fighting to squeeze himself out of the cave.
Blade thought: It’s getting to be a habit, getting myself caught up in caves.
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