McAllister 2

by Matt Chisholm

  “It’s McAllister.” He dared not raise his voice for fear of the approaching men hearing him. But he had to repeat the statement several times before he got through to her.

  “He said you were a prisoner.”

  “Who’s after you?”

  “Clegg—I think.”

  He hauled himself out of the hole and said: “Crawl down that tunnel. It’ll bring you to a big room. Light your candle to go down the tunnel. Hurry. I’ll settle these boys.”

  “They’re dangerous, Rem.”

  “I know, they killed old Charlie.”

  “And Ignacio.”

  “No, not Ignacio. Now, move, girl.”

  He could see the light of a candle coming around the corner not thirty feet away. She crouched down and started to crawl down the tunnel. McAllister followed her backwards. He kept moving until he saw the light from the candle at the end of his tunnel. Now his gun was out and his thumb was on the hammer. A man was bent down, trying to see into the tunnel. The girl was still crawling and McAllister guessed the man must have heard her. He heard a Mexican voice say: “There is somebody moving around in there.”

  “Give ’em a shot.” That was Jack Clegg.

  McAllister waited. He did not want to fire while he was caught like a rabbit down a burrow. But he heard the gun come to full cock and he knew he was as good as dead if he didn’t do something about it. He thrust his right arm out straight in front of him and fired.

  The noise nearly split his eardrums. He shouted to the girl to hurry and started backwards himself, wanting desperately to get out of that tunnel where a bullet could not fail to hit him. Faintly, his stunned ears heard the sound of a thin yell. Then he heard the girl screaming for him to hurry. He was hurrying all right, no doubt about it. He fired another shot to keep anybody away from the mouth of the tunnel. Somebody thrust his hand around the mouth of the tunnel and fired another shot, blind. It nicked the wall by McAllister, but did not touch him. That was a slice of McAllister luck if he had ever seen it. He returned the shot and continued to push himself backwards. As he emerged from the tunnel and threw himself to one side, a burst of shots came down it and smacked into the far wall of the chamber.

  He found himself on the floor beside the girl.

  “Now,” he said, “you can blow the light out, honey.” She obeyed instantly. He leaned over and kissed her, aiming pretty well in the dark. He found her mouth.

  She whispered: “McAllister, I’m terrified.”

  “That don’t matter,” he reassured her, “just so long as you’re brave. Now, you glue your ear to the end of that tunnel and tell me if you hear anybody comin’ down it.”

  “What’re you going to do?”

  “I’m goin’ to give our friends a little surprise. An’ it better be damn good. I’d hate to die down here in a burrow even with a beautiful girl like you.”

  He patted her bottom and rose to his feet. Now he was hurrying. His sense of direction always had been good, even in the dark. He reached the trunk and felt inside it, running his hands over the articles there. When he had what he wanted, he searched through the box beside it. Next he reached for the rifles and extracted two ramrods. He didn’t know if what he planned was feasible, but it had better be.

  He told the girl: “Now, I have to light a candle. Keep your head away from the tunnel.”

  “I don’t know what they’re up to, but there’s a lot of argument going on there.”

  As she finished speaking, they heard Clegg’s voice: “You’ll never get out of there alive, Rem, so you might as well give up.

  McAllister strolled to the mouth of the tunnel and fired a shot down it. Clegg yelled several naughty words at him. McAllister said: “I never heard such language in front of a lady.”

  Pilar said: “You should hear my father.”

  McAllister lit the candle and got to work. He struck a ramrod down the barrel of a rifle on top of a full load. Then he packed gun-wadding tightly around the ramrod so that, with luck, the charge would drive the ramrod like an arrow. Next, he opened a small coal-oil lamp and spilled some of its contents on to some wadding which he had tied to the ramrod. So far so good. He lit the lamp and set it on the floor. Now came the tricky part. There were some well-seasoned willow saplings lying in the dust at the foot of the wall. He strung one of these with a strand of the riata. One of the ramrods was wooden. In the end of this he made a notch with his knife. Then he took the high explosive from the box and lashed it tight to the end of the ramrod. He began to feel a little sick in his stomach when he contemplated what would happen if this trick went wrong. He had one chance only and he had to get it right the first time.

  He went to the girl and crouched down beside her.

  “This is what I’m goin’ to do,” he told her in a whisper. He carefully stated each detail. When he was through, he asked her if she understood and she said she did. She added: “But isn’t it risky?”

  “You mean bein’ here at all isn’t? Now I don’t know for sure how the arrows will go, girl. If the first one falls short, it won’t matter too much. If the second falls short, God help us. Now, you fire the first arrow out of the gun and get out of the road, fast. I’ll light the fuse and I’ll tell you to go an’ you shoot that gun as straight as you ever shot a gun in your life.”

  “I can’t see in the dark.”

  McAllister did not comment. He gave her the old Remington and heard her cock it. He picked up the bow and notched the arrow to the string. He found that his heart was beating a little faster than normal. He struck a match and lit the oil-soaked wadding on the ramrod in the rifle. He said: “Go,” and lit the fuse on the high explosive, holding the arrow firm with the forefinger of his bow-hand. The girl crouched down at the mouth of the tunnel and McAllister prayed that neither of the men used their guns.

  She fired and jumped clear. McAllister got down on one knee and saw that the girl’s arrow had struck the side of the tunnel and fallen near the mouth of it, but inside it. That was better than nothing at all. At least he had a clear sight of the inside of the tunnel. He knew where to aim his crude arrow. But was it possible to aim it surely at all? The stuttering fuse confused him. For one terrible moment, he was convinced that he could not do it. He saw the girl being blown to pieces. He licked his dry lips, saw that the fuse was alarmingly short and let fly.

  He had learned archery from his Cheyenne foster-father, Many Horses. The old man had taught him well. He parted his holding fingers gently. The willow wand could not have shot far, but it did the job well enough now. Or so it seemed. At least it appeared to be going straight. But the weight it carried was too much for it. It fell just short of the flare.

  McAllister hurled himself at the girl, dropping the bow as he went. He tackled her high so that, when they hit the floor, he covered her almost completely. From a long way off, he heard an alarmed yell from one of the men.

  The sound was blown apart by an explosion which seemed to rock the whole sierra around them.

  The blast came out of the narrow tunnel with the force of a charge from a howitzer. It seemed to rip at their clothing and to snatch their lungs totally empty of air.

  It was a full minute before they recovered enough to sit up. They sat choking on the dust and the fumes. There was so much dust that they could scarcely see across the chamber.

  Blasts were mighty funny things, McAllister thought. There, dimly through the dust, he could see the lamp standing, still alight. He got shakily to his feet and pulled the girl up.

  “You all right?” She nodded.

  He went to the mouth of the tunnel and found it too full of dust for him to see anything immediately inside it.

  “We’ll let the dust settle and go see what the damage is,” he said. “My guess is, the roof is down.”

  “Does that mean we’re buried alive in here?”

  It did mean that, but McAllister was not going to believe it, not even to himself. He emptied the remaining bag of gold, then he looked around for someth
ing to dig with. He didn’t have to look far. What miner ever went without a shovel?

  Half an hour passed before he could enter the tunnel. He was convinced that it was blocked because the place was heavy with silence. He soaked his bandanna with water from old Charlie’s canteen and tied it around the lower part of his face. He crawled inside, dragging the parfleche and shovel. He hit a solid wall of stone and dirt within ten feet and he groaned. This meant he had a lot of digging to get through, which, in its turn, meant that he would not be in the open air before Southern and his cohorts arrived.

  Pretty soon, he was wet with sweat. One thing heartened him and that was the girl. He might have had a strong peasant woman with him. She worked. No sooner did he have the parfleche full of dirt and rubble than she was dragging it from the tunnel and emptying it in the chamber. Once, when he rested, she asked him: “How long can we stay alive on the air in here?”

  “Days,” he replied. “Don’t fret about that. Just keep your mind on how we stop Southern from walking off with the gold.”

  She said: “You know what this gold is, don’t you, Rem?”

  “I don’t know what it is, but I know what it ain’t. It ain’t Spanish and Charlie did not find it.”

  “It’s the Colheanty Treasure.”

  “It’s what?”

  “Colheanty is a crazy Irishman who made a fortune in the Nevada diggings,” she told him. “This is ancient Irish gold.”

  “How did Charlie come by it?”

  “He stole it, but not from its owner.”

  McAllister chuckled. This was the kind of story he liked. “Don’t tell me, old Charlie and Ignacio stole it from the man that stole it from the Irishman.”

  “Southern. He and a gang of thieves took it from an armed railroad train.”

  “I read about it.”

  “To cut a long story short, Charlie and Ignacio, while they were searching for gold in these hills, found the robbers’ cache and helped themselves. They hid it here, but dared not get it out of the mountains for years. Southern must have heard about Charlie’s treasure and put two and two together.”

  “And you are after it too,” he said.

  He expected her to deny it, but she did not. “Sure, I heard of it. And I meant to find it. I think that you think that I meant to steal it and keep it. That didn’t strike me as a good idea, not when there’s a reward of twenty thousand dollars on it.”

  McAllister felt his relief surge through him. He kissed her grimy face by the light of the candle and said: “Back off from me, woman, you’re distractin’ me from my honest toil.” She laughed and backed up.

  He dug for a couple of hours. He was making good progress. What he was shifting was loose-packed and easy to shovel. He came out and they ate some ancient canned beef, and were so hungry they found it good. They washed it down with water from the canteen. McAllister said it was the finest meal he ever ate. Pilar said it was the company that made the feast—that was an old Mexican saying. He loaded his handgun and went back into the tunnel again. If anybody was alive out there, there would be some shooting. He did not look forward with any pleasure to the moment when he broke through on the other side. If he ever did so. He knew full well that the large tunnel might be blocked. Or maybe, just maybe, the ancient stone was stronger than he thought.

  Now, as he started digging again, the roof of the tunnel showed itself to be unstable and this was what he feared most. The blast had ripped the roof away here. He did not have anything to make props with. So he would just have to go ahead and risk it. But he did not intend to risk the girl and told her to stay back in the chamber. She refused. He swore at her and she swore back. So she stayed and they shared the risk while he hated every moment of it.

  “Don’t I have enough to worry about,” he said, “without knowing you might be buried any minute?”

  “You damn fool,” she told him, “what happens to me if you’re buried?”

  “You dig yourself out,” he said. “You’re wasting valuable breath.”

  He went on digging. He was getting as tired as hell now. He stopped hurrying and settled down to a steady pace. It was not easy digging in such a confined space, but with the roof down he had more than he’d had previously in there. She brought him a drink of water and he said: “We’re mighty near where the big tunnel ought to be.”

  Within the next half-hour he came to a spot where the walls and roof were firm. He was nearly there. He began to dig with caution, studying the material he was digging. He told the girl that he must be near now. She should crawl back. She refused and he showed her some real rage. She was endangering them both. He had to be able to back up quickly. She did as he asked.

  A few minutes later, the nature of the stones he moved changed, and he knew he was digging rubble from the main tunnel. When his break-through came it was so sudden that he was startled almost out of his wits. The whole bulk of what faced him collapsed abruptly, half burying him. He yelled to the girl to bring the lamp because the candle was out. A piece of masonry had struck his head and he was half-stunned. His left shoulder felt as if it had been broken. He turned in some pain to find her worried face near. But he knew that he was lucky to be alive. When he looked up, he didn’t care how much masonry had struck him. He knew that he was looking over a pile of rubble into the pitch dark of the main tunnel beyond.

  “We’re there,” he said. “Now let’s see if we get shot at.”

  ~*~

  It was another half-hour before he crawled over a heap of rubble and held the lamp high. What else could he do? he asked himself. But he had his gun in his right hand.

  No shot came.

  He called out: “Jack, you there?” and felt stupid as he did so. He called back to the girl: “Come on out, Pilar.”

  Somebody called softly: “McAllister?”

  That was Ignacio. McAllister called back to him. The girl came clambering after him. He held the lamp and took a good look at her. She looked terrible. And, at the same time, he thought she was the finest-looking woman he had ever seen. Together they made their way to the wounded man. As they went, McAllister took a look at the walls and roof of the tunnel. The walls were intact, except immediately opposite the smaller tunnel and a part of the roof.

  They found Ignacio at the entrance of the next narrow side-tunnel. He had crawled there when he heard the explosion.

  McAllister said: “You all right, Ignacio?”

  “Now that you two are alive, I am fine.”

  “I’d best look for Clegg and Manuel.”

  It did not take him long to find them. He did not see all of Clegg, but he came on one booted foot sticking out of the rubble. Manuel was lying against the far wall. He did not make a pretty sight. McAllister began to shake as he did always after violent action. Not for the first time in his life he told himself that he should have been a chicken rancher.

  Just the same, as he made his way back to the others, he was thinking out what he should do next.

  He asked Ignacio: “Do you have any idea of the time?” He asked it so wryly that the other two could not prevent themselves from smiling. The Mexican drew a fine old hunter from his vest pocket, snapped it open and said: “Five of eleven.”

  “Night or morning?”

  “Night.”

  “Good,” said McAllister. “If old Southern and his buddies are here, we’ll hit ’em at dawn.”

  “We?” said Ignacio.

  “We,” said McAllister, “all have our part to play.”

  Pilar said: “After your last exploit, I tremble to hear your latest suggestion.”

  Twenty-Two

  McAllister was tired to the bone. He seemed to have forgotten what sleep was like. The tiredness, he knew, would slow his reactions down and this made him extra wary. When he came to the T-junction in the underground passages, he thought that he had come to the tunnel down which the party had originally reached the canyon. But he would not be sure until he saw daylight. It was still too early for that, though it coul
d not be far off. He eased himself down the right-hand arm of the tunnel and almost at once felt a cool waft of air on his cheeks. It became stronger as he advanced and finally blew the candle out. He let the wax cool so that he could drop the nearly-exhausted stub into a pocket.

  He stopped when he heard the water. That meant he was pretty near the creek. If the camp were still there, it would be at an angle from him to the left. He still did not know if Southern had arrived. What he was sure of was that the sheriff’s hash had to be settled here and quickly if he was to get Ignacio and the girl safely out of the hills. Ignacio’s presence would slow their pace and they would be a sitting target on the open trail if Southern was still around and hunting them.

  He reached the mouth of the tunnel and found himself looking across the canyon in the first grey light of the day. As he watched he saw details of the place slowly coming into focus—the sleeping forms of the Mexicans, the loose band of horses and burros between himself and the water’s edge. A light mist hung over the surface of the creek, lifting even as he stood there. The smoke from the dying fire in camp drifted. No more peaceful scene could be imagined. Yet, something was wrong and he couldn’t say what. That something kept him for a moment in the tunnel. He laid his right hand on the butt of his gun and started to draw it.

  A whisper of sound came from behind him. His nerves jumped. As he heard the gun being cocked, he hurled himself out of the tunnel, struck hard with the right shoulder and somersaulted, twisting himself and coming down facing the tunnel, his gun lined up with it. The boom from the other man’s gun died away.

  He thought: Maybe he thinks he hit me.

  So he’d play possum for a while and see what happened. That might work the oracle if there was nobody behind him.

  There was somebody behind him. A voice said: “Roll over, McAllister, and see what’s looking at you. But first lay down your gun or I’ll break your back.”

  McAllister sighed. He laid down the gun and rolled over.

  Southern was standing twenty paces away with a Spencer repeater pointed at him. A man coughed to his right. He turned his head and saw the deputy, Billy Lancaster, standing there holding a Colt steadily on him. Behind him he heard footsteps and turned to see Tully walk into the open from the tunnel.