Dead Man’s Cañon

by Paine, Lauran; Burns, Traber;

  “You sure?” asked Barney.

  Mather growled. “Of course he’s sure. I heard ’em myself.”

  Claude returned to his position and waited for Newton Douglas. In the back of his mind was the very real risk to Arch Clayton. No matter how this turned out, he was confident they’d get the Mexicans, but he was also certain that Fernando Bríon, being anything but a dolt, wouldn’t permit Clayton to get very far from Bríon’s gunsight. It would be a miracle, Claude somberly concluded, as Newt strolled up, if Arch Clayton came through this alive.

  “All set,” stated Douglas, grounding his Winchester and gazing quietly at Sheriff Rainey. “Only one thing sticks in my craw, Claude. Clayton and his chances.”

  “I know,” mumbled the lawman. “I’ve been thinking on that, too. Maybe, if we held off and gave Bríon terms, we could save him.”

  Douglas shrugged with no more to say. They’d have to improvise as they went along, and while this offered no guarantees, it was the only course available to them. Ten minutes passed. The stillness was so deep it almost had a sound of its own. Claude forced himself to stand and wait, but when another ten minutes had passed and they still heard nothing, his nerves began to crawl. If Bríon’s horsemen had been coming, they’d most assuredly be close enough by this time for the waiting vigilantes to hear them. Then it struck Claude.

  “Hell,” he whispered. “They’re on foot. They left their horses out a ways and are slipping in on foot. Bríon’s figured out if there’s to be an ambush, it’ll be among these doggoned mud huts.” He’d scarcely said that when a man’s quick, rising bleat of astonishment rang out, then one solitary gunshot erupted. After that it was a nightmare for Claude Rainey.

  No one ever knew who fired that gunshot or made that bleat, but it was afterward considered probable that one of Bríon’s men must have stuck his nose inside a jacal out of curiosity, saw the vigilante in there with his gun drawn, and tried to cry a warning before he was shot. It was as good a guess as any and immediately after it happened hell broke loose in among the jacales where Sheriff Rainey’s signal to open up would have also been a gunshot—exactly the sound that had just erupted.

  Claude and Newt Douglas, though, were momentarily left out of it. The fight that began raged exclusively over near the east side of the jacales not very far into town at all. They went there, slipping back and forth as they advanced.

  Gunshots brightened around them each fraction of a second then winked out, leaving the night gloomy again.

  The Mexicans were putting up a stiff and stubborn battle. When Newt Douglas eased around a hovel, two Mexicans blazed away at him immediately. He grimaced and tried again. The second time those gunmen, one eastward, one southward, chipped away big chunks of the adobe wall, making Newt dive back to cover again.

  Elsewhere the same furious fighting was in progress. Sheriff Rainey wasn’t nearly as interested in shooting Mexicans as he was in locating Archer Clayton. He was very much afraid of what he’d see when he eventually found him, too. Bríon would be enraged at what had happened. He’d blame Clayton for it exclusively, Claude felt, and to avoid Clayton’s murder—if it hadn’t already occurred—he went swiftly back and forth, trying to find some area where Clayton might be.

  Someone took a hard hit and screamed. Just for a second that scream attracted enough attention to divert everyone. The gunfire became sporadic and gave Sheriff Rainey enough time to whisk across a little crooked byway and get up near the forefront of the battle. There, when the firing was resumed, he could see where some of the Mexicans had run together into a hovel where they were putting up a fierce fight. Elsewhere, less fortunate invaders were sniping around the corners and from deep in dark shadows.

  Rainey’s vigilantes had most of the advantage in this battle although there was no safe way for them to get around the invaders either to capture or kill them. It was, in the vernacular of the Southwest, a Mexican standoff. Neither side could achieve total triumph.

  Jack Mather slipped up behind Claude and said the Mexicans were trying to drop back, were trying to pull back out of town. He wanted to know whether Claude thought they hadn’t ought to leave off the fighting and try hard to get out there on the dark plain between Bríon’s men and their horses. Claude didn’t think so.

  “This way we have cover. Out there we’d lose a lot of men. Neither Bríon nor that damned gold is that important to me. By the way, Jack, have you seen where Bríon himself might be? He’ll have Clayton with him. We’ve got to rescue Clayton if we possibly can.”

  “No sweat on that score, Sheriff,” rumbled the big, dark man. “Clayton’s up with Barney and Hank in that jacal near the north end.” At Claude’s astonished grunt, Mather explained, “That’s what the first shot was about. One of Newt’s cowboys saw a Mexican raise his pistol to shoot a white feller they had with ’em, and the cowboy shot first. Clayton dived headfirst into the hovel, and the fight started when a couple of ’em ran after him. Claude, we piled up three dead Mexicans faster’n you could draw a gun.”

  Claude eased back along the rough mud wall, looking at Mather. “Which one of Newt’s cowboys did that?” he inquired. Mather didn’t know which one; all he knew was that it had to be one of Douglas’ riders because they were separated from the townsmen before the battle started, and the gunshot came from up where they were.

  Claude turned back to gauging the force of combat beyond his shelter. It seemed that Bríon’s men were dropping back through the hovels toward the eastward plain, which was the way they’d come into town. He decided it would be fine like that. He had Clayton back alive, and that was, after all, his primary objective. He told Jack to go on around back and pass the word they wouldn’t push after the Mexicans beyond the jacales.

  Later, checking the loads in his six-gun after firing a few rounds at blue-lancing streaks of gun flame, he heard some of the cowboys give a triumphant yell as they ducked back and forth, going in after the Mexicans. He called to them angrily. So did Newton Douglas. The range men then remained where they were, firing and hooting derisively at the withdrawing invaders, catcalling and taunting their enemies.

  The fight, savage, deadly, and fiercely prosecuted on both sides as it had been, probably hadn’t lasted a full fifteen minutes although to Claude Rainey it seemed to drag on for hours. Newt and his men came over where there were calls for swift pursuit. Claude was dry about that.

  “One thing you can say for Mexicans,” he told them. “They’re some of the best bushwhackers in the world. You boys go charging blind down there now, and they’ll drill every damned last one of you. Where’s Clayton?”

  Arch elbowed through. He and Rainey stood a moment, gazing at one another. “Close,” said Claude. “Damned almighty close that time.”

  Clayton seemed less grim. “Not until we finally got back here to Springville, then I was sweating. There was no way for me to know whether anyone’d even found you in that old shed, let alone have any idea whether you’d figure out from the black notebook where we were going to end up. I reckon, come daylight, I’ll have a few gray hairs, Sheriff.”

  Newt Douglas said, “Claude, they killed two of my men and we’ve had four wounded.”

  Rainey nodded. “Get the wounded taken care of, Newt. We’ll bury the dead come sunup. How did they make out?”

  “Five killed an’ two inside a jacal who couldn’t get away, captured.”

  Claude smiled coldly. “Lead me to the captured ones. I’ll lock them up and have a long talk with ’em.”

  The men turned and began trooping along to where the prisoners were, Sheriff Rainey and Arch Clayton in the lead.

  Chapter Twelve

  One of the prisoners wasn’t more than eighteen years old. That one was terrified. The other one was a man of perhaps forty with the scarred visage, dark and wary eyes of an old, seasoned Mexican guerilla. He was fatalistic. In his own country of Texas, he knew precisely what to expect
. A bullet through the head. From the fierce expressions on the faces of Newt Douglas’ cowboys he could find ample reason to believe it was also going to happen in Springville, Arizona. When he saw Arch Clayton, he showed surprise, almost astonishment, for by this man’s code of existence, Clayton should have been among the first to die.

  They took the unarmed captives up through town to the jailhouse and locked them in. Afterward, Claude and Arch went with the others to rout the local physician out of bed to care for the wounded. But they found him wide-awake, sitting in a lighted room with all shades drawn, reading a book and waiting. He was caustic when someone murmured surprise.

  “Put ’em in there,” he said of the wounded, flagging with a hand. Then, looking around into the faces of the others, he said: “What did you expect? You made enough confounded noise down there to awaken the dead. I’d bet you a hundred dollars you couldn’t find a household in Springville right now that isn’t wide awake. Just because there are no lights doesn’t mean a blessed thing. Now get out of here. I don’t need an audience when I work.”

  It was very late by the time they stopped by Jack Mather’s place for a drink, and there Newton Douglas and his men departed for their cow camp leaving Arch Clayton and Sheriff Rainey with only the three or four townsmen including Whitsun, Smith, and Mather.

  It took that long for the smokiness to die out of their eyes and the flare of anger from their thoughts. The best way to bring things back to normal perspective was another drink. They all had one. In fact, they all had two more, then Clayton and Claude Rainey headed for the jailhouse, leaving Smith, Whitsun, and Jack Mather in the Oasis to ruminate and relax. It was by then close to one o’clock in the morning.

  At the jailhouse Claude brought forth the youngest captive. Without a word Claude took out his six-gun, laid it upon his desk close at hand, sat down, and stonily stared. Arch did the same. He eased down in a chair next to the door, shoved his legs out, tipped down his hat, and looked straight up at the youthful brigand. Over in the big strap-steel cell the older man sat on a bunk, gazing out. He seemed callous and resigned about the younger man’s fate.

  In Spanish, Claude asked the young vaquero three questions: (1) Would Bríon return to Mexico? (2) Had Bríon sent for those other men he’d detached earlier toward Raton? (3) Did any of the vaqueros know why they were over the line with Mexico?

  The youthful captive was pale and big-eyed when he answered. He had no idea where Don Fernando would go now, he said. As for the men who had been sent north, Don Fernando had already sent for them to return, before the fight. Finally, he said it was rumored secretly among the vaqueros that there was a great store of Gachupin gold buried in some hidden cache around the town of Springville. It was also said among the vaqueros that Don Fernando would bring an entire army to Springville if need be to get that cache of gold.

  Clayton said, “Muchacho, if I opened that door and let you walk out of here … where would you go?”

  The youth’s large dark eyes rolled. “Back to Mexico,” he said in tolerable English. “Never more to return to this wild place, Arizona, señor. I have always wanted to be in a fine fight before.”

  “And now, muchacho?”

  “¡Ai, caramba! I was escairt to death, señor. I theenk I be badder to go hoe the maize of my father.”

  Clayton looked at Claude and raised his eyebrows. Sheriff Rainey nodded, then he said, “Son, take off those silly bandoleers. That’s right. Now go on, but remember one thing … if either one of us ever so much as sees you this side of the line again …” Sheriff Rainey raised a rigid finger and pointed it like a pistol. “¿Sabe, usted?”

  “¡Sí, capitán!” exclaimed the youth. “I understand. Much thanks, señores. Much thanks!” He dashed out the door and was almost immediately lost in the yonder darkness. Arch grinned and Sheriff Rainey’s tough old eyes briefly glowed, then he strolled over, flung back the cell door, and ordered the tough-faced, older cowboy out.

  The routine was almost the same but when they came to the place where they’d released the youth, neither of them made any such offer to the older man. He didn’t expect them to, but he said in passable English they were good men to allow the very young a second chance.

  “And the older ones?” inquired Claude.

  The vaquero eloquently shrugged. He wasn’t as old as Claude and yet he was older than Arch Clayton. He said, “In some ways, jefe, it has been a long life for me.” He stood, waiting for the gringos to lead him around back into the alleyway.

  “Will Bríon come back?” asked Rainey.

  The Mexican nodded. “Sí, señor. He must come back. There are things you do not know about. He must have that gold. Even though he die, he must try to get it.”

  Claude caught an inference here he’d failed to meet in the younger captive. “Why so?” he asked.

  “Señor jefe, Don Fernando is a pronunciado. He is going to pronounce himself in revolt against the central government and raise an army. He does not have enough money for this alone. But with the old Spanish treasure he’d not only be able to raise and equip an army, you understand, but he would also be able to buy some government officials in Mexico City, who would join him in his war against the presidente.”

  Claude was surprised and showed it. Finally in a very dry tone of voice he said, glancing from the guerilla to Arch Clayton, “That’s nice. That lousy gold of yours is going to cause a revolution in Mexico.”

  Clayton shook his head. “I doubt it, Sheriff. Let’s lock this one back up, go get your friends from the saloon, and go dig up that cache and hide it where Bríon can’t find it.”

  Sheriff Rainey took the prisoner back, locked him into the cell, returned to stand beside his desk, and asked a question, “Does Bríon know where the cache is?”

  “You’re darned right he knows. How else do you think I stayed alive? He thought I was deliberately trying to lead him back here to town to get massacred. I had to talk like a Dutch uncle, and even draw him a sketch in the dust, before he decided I was too valuable to be killed. He knows all right, and if what old pepper-belly over there in the cell said was the truth, about him financing a revolution, you can damned well be sure Bríon will be back for that cache just as soon as he possibly can.”

  Clayton stood up, hitched at his shell belt, and went to the door to look up and down the night-darkened roadway. Claude Rainey made a smoke, took one deep-down drag off it, then smashed the thing out on his desk, and put on his hat. He pulled back the door and walked outside, jerked his head when he made certain the lights were still burning up at the saloon, and led the way back up there.

  Mather and Barney Whitsun were alone. Hank Smith like all the others had headed for home. Once reaction set in, after just about any fight men fought, there was dogged lethargy. Claude accepted the drink Mather duly poured and downed it, so did Arch Clayton, then the sheriff said, “Well, let’s get a lantern, some crowbars and shovels, and go down dig up that cache.”

  Barney the storekeeper and Mather the saloon man looked shocked, then incredulous, and finally they looked avaricious and began to move. Claude let all their thoughts come and go as a man might who understood exactly how the wheels in the heads of other men would react, then he said, “Get one thing straight. This is not our gold. Jack … Barney … get that into your skulls. All we’re going to do is move the cache so when Bríon comes back all he’ll find is an empty hole.”

  Big Jack Mather’s swarthy face fell. He leaned and balefully regarded Claude. “Well, hell,” he growled, “if it’s not our cache, what’re we digging it up for?”

  Claude turned vinegary. “Confound it all, Jack, I just told you. So’s the Mexicans don’t find it when they come back.”

  Barney shook his head emphatically. “After the shellacking we gave ’em, believe me, Claude, they won’t be back.”

  Claude rolled his eyes in disgust. “Just fetch tools and come along,” h
e said finally. “And just to keep you brought up-to-date, one of those prisoners we took said Bríon has to come back and make another try for that gold. Now are you coming or do Mister Clayton and I go dig it up by ourselves?”

  They came, but more out of sheer curiosity than for any other single reason. It was after two o’clock in the morning when they got to the jacal, and even if the stench of burned powder wasn’t enough to put their hair on end, no one had bothered moving the Mexicans who’d been killed in the earlier battle. The Arizonans had been carried away, but not Bríon’s dead bandoleros, and that heightened the discomfort even more.

  Claude then detailed Jack to keep watch outside while he and Barney, along with Arch Clayton, took the tools and went inside to dig, and that made them all a little more jumpy.

  Arch lit the lantern, stepped over near the identical spot where the Mexican cowboy had cashed in, and stamped his foot several times, then slammed a crowbar into the ground and started levering up flat, hard layers of packed earth.

  For the most part they dug in grim silence. Once Barney paused to wipe off sweat and swear there was nothing where they were digging but fifty miles of hardpan and on the other end of that a whole herd of queued-up Chinamen. Claude took over to give Barney a rest and later Barney went out to take the sentry chore over and big Jack Mather came in to also dig. It was Mather who was using the crowbar when they reached the cache. It was four feet down and covered with ancient rotted fir planks. Barney forgot to watch outside when he heard the others exclaim over the discovery. They all crowded up to help Jack and Arch boost the lead-coated oaken box out of the ground.

  “Heavy … as … hell,” gasped mighty Jack Mather, giving the final heave. “If that’s all gold in the box, then there’s enough there to make us all rich.”

  They grunted the box over near the lantern. Claude looked up, saw Barney standing in the doorway watching, and snarled at him. “You keep watch out there, Barney. That bunch of Mexes could sneak back here and jump the lot of us.”