Massacre Canyon

by William W. Johnstone

  “Never saw the bastard before in my life.”

  Simon Ford had devoted his life to bringing the Krolls to justice, and his feeling of duty was so strong it had overwhelmed his common sense and led him to make a deal with the Devil, in the form of Jesse Clinton. And despite that, he was still a complete non-entity to the men he had pursued. That didn’t seem fair at all to Smoke, but there was nothing he could do about it now.

  “Hate to tell you this,” Matt said from one of the windows, “but it looks like this bunch is about to charge us, too.”

  “Give us guns,” Rudolph urged. “Let us at least defend ourselves.”

  “Forget it,” Luke snapped. “I wouldn’t trust either one of you with a gun if Sitting Bull and all the Indians from the Little Big Horn were out there!”

  “We’re all going to die anyway,” Rudolph argued.

  The quiet voice that spoke next took them all by surprise. They turned to look as Valencia said, “No, señores. There is a way out . . . if you trust me.”

  Chapter 47

  Smoke didn’t see that they had much choice except to trust Valencia. Their odds of surviving an all-out attack on the house by Clinton’s men were pretty blasted small. He said to the housekeeper, “Go on.”

  “There is a secret way out. My madre, she worked here for the Valdez family many years ago when it was the Rancho Valdez. In those days, the Apaches were a great danger, so Señor Hernan Valdez had his peons dig a tunnel away from the house, so he and his family could escape if ever they were trapped here.”

  Mordecai said, “That’s the craziest story I ever heard. Rudolph, maybe you could make a deal with that fella Clinton. I got to have a doctor for this arm, or I’m liable to bleed to death!”

  “Shut up,” Rudolph said. “If you were going to bleed to death, you would have done it by now.”

  That was true, thought Smoke. Mordecai’s wound did need medical attention, but he was in no immediate danger of dying from it.

  “Go on, señora,” Smoke told the woman.

  “I can show you where the tunnel begins,” Valencia said. “My mother told me how to find it. But I do not know what lies at the other end. All I know is that she said it was the way to safety.”

  Luke said, “I vote we give it a try. We can’t be any worse off than we are now.”

  Smoke wasn’t so sure about that—things could always get worse—but he agreed they should run the risk. When he looked at Matt, his younger brother nodded.

  “All right,” he told Valencia. “Show us.”

  She turned to lead the way out of the room, but Simon Ford said harshly, “Hold it.”

  “Don’t worry, Ford,” Smoke began. “We’ll take you—”

  “No, you won’t,” Ford cut in. “Give me a couple of pistols and leave me right here. I’ll put up enough of a fight to make Clinton, Hooke, and the others think that you’re still in here.”

  “They’ll bust in sooner or later and kill you,” Matt objected.

  Ford laughed.

  “Not very likely,” he said. “I’ll probably be dead by then. I’m shot through the lungs. I can feel them filling up with blood. I ought to be dead already.”

  Smoke had heard air whistling through the hole in the former lawman’s back and knew Ford was right. It would take quick attention from a skilled doctor, preferably in a modern hospital, to save Ford’s life, and even that might not be enough.

  “Ford’s right,” he said. He held out his revolver, which he had just loaded with six fresh rounds. “Here you go, Marshal.”

  Ford grasped the weapon and rasped, “I told you not to call me that.”

  “Badge or no badge, you’re still a lawman as far as I’m concerned,” Smoke said. “Señora, are there any more guns around here?”

  “Several extra revolvers,” Valencia said. “And more ammunition.”

  “Get them quickly,” Smoke told her. “We don’t have much time.” He knew Clinton’s men could launch a full-fledged attack on the house at any moment.

  Valencia hurried to bring the guns into the gallery. Ford sat down with his back against the wall next to one of the windows and arranged the extra revolvers around him. He chuckled grimly and said, “They’ll think I’ve got a Gatling gun in here.”

  “Wish we did,” Smoke said with a bleak smile of his own. “Good luck, marshal.”

  Ford didn’t argue over the title this time. He just nodded and said, “Thanks.”

  “Come,” Valencia told the others. She led the way to the stairs that descended into the crude dungeon underneath the house.

  “What the hell?” Luke said. “I’m not fond of the idea of going back down there.”

  “You will see, Señor Jensen,” Valencia said. “I give you my word.”

  “All right,” Luke said grudgingly. “But you’d better not be double-crossing us.”

  Smoke and Valencia went first, followed by the Kroll brothers with Luke right behind them, holding a gun on them. Matt brought up the rear. Above them, in the main house, shots began to boom as Simon Ford opened fire on Clinton’s men.

  When the group reached the bottom of the stairs, Valencia hurried toward the cell, where the door still stood open. Light from the bracket lamp on the wall cast a long shadow in front of her.

  “You’re going in the cell?” Smoke asked.

  “You will see,” she said again.

  Smoke hoped so. If not, they were really going to be trapped, even more than they had been to start with.

  Valencia went into the cell and started running her hands over the rear wall. Her movements became more frantic as she didn’t seem able to find what she was searching for.

  But then Smoke heard a faint click, and when Valencia pushed hard against the wall, it swung back, all in one piece, and revealed the black mouth of a tunnel.

  “Son of a bitch!” Luke said from the corridor. “You mean that door was right there the whole time I was locked up in here?”

  Rudolph Kroll said, “I’m just as surprised as you are, Jensen. Do you think I would have put you in there if I’d known about it?”

  “I reckon not,” Luke admitted.

  Smoke said, “It’s a good place to hide an escape tunnel. Matt, go back and get that lamp at the end of the corridor.”

  When Matt returned with the lamp he handed it to Smoke, who took the lead now as the group started into the tunnel. The floor and walls had been hewn from the stone and left rough, never smoothed. The passage ran straight and level for what seemed like hundreds of yards. Utter blackness loomed in front of them and closed in behind them, and the small circle of light cast by the lamp was the only sign of life in what might have been a vast, stygian universe.

  It was enough to give a man the fantods, that was for damned sure, Smoke thought.

  They could no longer hear any gunshots coming from the house. Smoke didn’t know if that was because of the millions of tons of dirt and stone surrounding them, or because Clinton’s men had stormed the house and finished off Simon Ford. If the killers were in the house, it was only a matter of time before they found the escape tunnel. Smoke wanted to be out of there, along with his companions, before that happened.

  Rudolph Kroll said, “If I had known this tunnel existed, I would have stashed all that loot down here. That would have been a lot handier.”

  “Where is it?” Luke asked.

  “Don’t tell him, Rudolph,” Mordecai urged.

  “Why not?” Rudolph said. “It’s not like he’ll ever have a chance to find it. There’s an old abandoned mine higher in the mountains, a couple of miles from here. Mordecai and I are the only ones who know how to get there. From the outside it looks like it’s all boarded up, but it’s really not. There’s close to a quarter of a million in gold and greenbacks in there.”

  Matt let out a low whistle.

  “That’s a lot of money,” he said.

  Luke said, “There are old abandoned mines all over the Superstitions. Lost mines, too. I wouldn’t be surpr
ised if that’s part of the reason these hills got their name.”

  “Maybe so,” Rudolph said, “but that one’s not lost. Mordecai knows where it is, and so do I. Nobody else will ever find it, though.”

  “Sounds like that might be a challenge worth taking.”

  “You do that, Jensen,” Rudolph said dryly. “If you get out of here alive.”

  That was still a mighty big if, Smoke thought. It was starting to look like this tunnel was never going to end.

  But then, mere moments later, the floor started to slope upward slightly. That slope quickly grew steeper. Smoke didn’t see any light ahead of them, however. If the other end of the tunnel was closed off, then all their efforts had been for nothing. They could sit down here in the dark and die of thirst, or they could go back and be gunned down by Jesse Clinton and his men.

  Suddenly, Smoke’s eyes were drawn to the lamp. He watched as the flame bent slightly to one side, then straightened, then bent again.

  “Air’s moving,” he said. “There’s an opening somewhere ahead. Matt, you still have matches?”

  “Yeah,” Matt replied. “Why?”

  By way of answer, Smoke blew out the lamp.

  Instantly, utter, crushing darkness closed in around them. Valencia gasped. Mordecai Kroll muttered a curse that had a whiny, frightened sound to it.

  The darkness wasn’t absolute, though, Smoke realized after a moment. He made out a faint gray glow ahead of them. As his eyes adjusted, the glow seemed to grow brighter.

  “Come on,” he told the others. “We need to keep moving.”

  “How?” Rudolph said. “We can’t see where we’re going.”

  But as their vision continued to compensate, they could. As they shuffled along the tunnel, Smoke began to be able to make out the walls on either side of him. He moved faster, and so did the others.

  The tunnel took a sharp turn, and the shaft of light waiting on the other side was blinding after so much time spent in the darkness. Smoke looked up and saw boards fastened to the wall to form a crude ladder leading out of the tunnel. Some of them were rotten, but he thought enough of them looked all right that they would serve their original purpose.

  At the top of the opening, about a dozen feet over his head, thick brush grew, concealing the opening.

  Smoke handed the lamp to Valencia and said, “I’ll go up and have a look around.”

  “Be careful,” Luke cautioned. “You don’t know what’s waiting for you out there.”

  “Got to be better than where we came from,” Smoke said with a quick grin.

  He reached up and took hold of a board, got his foot on a lower one, and hoisted himself. The climb would have been easier if all the boards were still intact, but it wasn’t too bad. In a matter of moments, he pushed some branches aside and pulled himself out into the morning sunlight.

  He heard a roaring sound and looked around. Less than fifty feet away, the creek that ran through the canyon emerged from a cleft in the high stone walls enclosing the stronghold. The water shot through the gap and threw up a white spray as it dropped several feet. It was a waterfall, but a small one.

  Smoke’s mouth tightened into a grim line as he realized the implications of what he saw. This end of the tunnel was still inside the canyon. He had hoped that it led outside somehow. But as far as he could see, the only way out still lay through the pass at the other end of the canyon, and Jesse Clinton and his men controlled that.

  Coming through the tunnel, though, had given them a breather, and maybe they could use this chance to figure out something else. He leaned over the opening in the brush and called, “Come on up!”

  Valencia came first. Down in the tunnel, Luke prodded Rudolph in the back with a gun barrel and said, “Up you go, Kroll.”

  Rudolph complied. Smoke covered him when he emerged from the shaft. Mordecai followed, awkwardly and complaining bitterly about being forced to climb with a wounded arm. Luke and Matt scrambled out behind the outlaw brothers.

  “Any chance we can swim up that creek?” Matt asked.

  Smoke shook his head.

  “The current’s too fast. We couldn’t make any headway against it. It’d just take us back down by the house.”

  He looked in that direction as he spoke, and a frown creased his forehead as he saw the sudden fleeting gleam of sunlight reflecting off of something. A gun barrel, maybe . . . or the lens of a telescope or pair of field glasses....

  A bullet spanged off a nearby rock and whined into the distance, followed a split second later by the boom of the shot that had fired it.

  “They’ve spotted us!” Smoke yelled.

  More shots followed immediately, and Smoke saw men on horseback racing toward them, still a good distance away but closing in quickly. Here at the upper end of the canyon, it narrowed down so there really wasn’t any place for them to retreat.

  But there were some slabs of rock near the creek, lying where they had landed when they sheered off the cliff in ages past, and Smoke waved his companions toward them.

  “We’ll fort up in those rocks and give ’em a fight!” he called.

  But it would be a fight to the finish, he thought, because there was nowhere left for them to run.

  Chapter 48

  Luke herded the Kroll brothers behind the rocks while Matt opened fire on the riders charging toward them. Clinton’s men were still too far away to be in effective handgun range, and Matt had the only rifle.

  One of the gunmen toppled out of the saddle as Matt drilled him through the chest. Another slewed to the side and clutched a bullet-shattered shoulder but managed to stay mounted. He circled away from the charge, though, out of the fight for now.

  Suddenly another rifle cracked from somewhere nearby, and one of Clinton’s men went backwards off his horse as if a giant hand had brushed him loose from the animal. Smoke had knelt behind one of the boulders with Valencia, and he looked around in surprise at the rifle’s report.

  A familiar, buckskin-clad figure stood beside the creek where it emerged from the gorge. Preacher was hatless, but he had a carbine at his shoulder. The repeater cracked again, and as usual the old mountain man’s aim was deadly accurate. One of Clinton’s men crumpled and rolled out of the saddle.

  Coupled with Matt’s shots, Preacher’s assault was too much for the charging gunmen. They veered aside and peeled off, abandoning their attack for the moment.

  “Come on!” Preacher shouted as he lowered the carbine. “We better get outta here whilst we got the chance!”

  “Get out how?” Smoke asked as he took Valencia’s hand and led her toward the gorge. “Where in blazes did you come from, Preacher?”

  “There’s a way along the creek,” Preacher replied as he jerked his grizzled chin toward the gorge. “You got to be sure-footed, though. I slipped off once and might’ve got busted to pieces in the rapids if that gal hadn’t helped me.”

  “What gal?” Matt asked. He and Luke, along with the Krolls, had come up. “You don’t mean . . .”

  “He means it’s a good thing I didn’t pay any attention to you,” Darcy Garnett said from the mouth of the gorge. “I found Preacher clinging to a rock, about to be washed away. But I was able to tear some strips off my petticoat, knot them together to make a rope of sorts, and haul him in with it.”

  “She’s mighty resourceful, as well as stubborn as a mule,” Preacher added.

  “You followed Preacher instead of staying where we left you,” Matt said.

  “And brought her rifle along, too.” Preacher gestured with the carbine. “Now come on, we ain’t got any time to waste.”

  He showed them the narrow ledge that ran just above the fast-flowing stream. It was difficult to see unless the person looking for it was standing right in the mouth of the gorge.

  “That’s the back door that goes along with that tunnel,” Smoke said.

  Mordecai objected, “It ain’t wide enough. We’ll fall off.”

  “You can stay here and take your chances
with Clinton if you want,” Luke said, “but chances are he’ll try to torture the location of that cache of loot out of you.”

  Preacher asked, “What loot? Who’s Clinton?”

  “It’s a long story,” Smoke told the old-timer. “Right now let’s see if we can just get out of here.”

  Smoke didn’t know who Darcy Garnett was, either, but Matt and Preacher seemed to trust her, so he didn’t protest as she took the lead. Valencia went next, then Smoke. Rudolph and Mordecai Kroll followed them, with Luke close behind them. Matt and Preacher brought up the rear.

  The eight figures strung out along the ledge. Smoke knew it was only a matter of time before Clinton and the others came after them. The killers wouldn’t wait very long before charging the boulders at the head of the canyon again, and when they did, they would discover that their quarry was gone. Since the gorge was the only possible way out, chances were they would find the ledge pretty quickly.

  Smoke saw what Preacher meant about needing to be sure-footed. In places the ledge was less than a foot wide. Spray from the racing creek made it slippery, too. He could see that Darcy and Valencia were terrified, but the women kept moving. They didn’t hurry, because rushing could be fatal, but they didn’t waste any time, either.

  Yard by yard, the fugitives made their way along the perilous escape route. There was no sound except the water’s roar, but then a shot blasted somewhere behind them. The sharp report bounced back and forth between the stone walls, setting up deafening echoes.

  Matt returned the fire, carefully bracing himself so the Winchester’s recoil wouldn’t knock him off the ledge.

  “We got company coming up behind us!” he called to the others. “Better keep moving!”

  “Nobody’s stopping!” Smoke said. “Preacher, how far does this ledge run?”

  “’Bout three hundred more yards, I reckon,” the old mountain man replied, lifting his voice to be heard over the racket. “And part of the way it widens out! That’ll bring us to a spot where we can climb up outta the canyon!”

  But they couldn’t climb out with Clinton’s men coming up to take potshots at them, Smoke thought. They would be easy targets. It looked like once more they would have to stop and make a stand. But now they had an advantage because only one man could attack at a time along the ledge.