Blade 2

by Matt Chisholm

  ‘If it’s hurtin’ her, I gotta stop,’ he said.

  ‘God bless you,’ said Mrs Dimsdale.

  Blade had never moved faster in his life. The certainty of his own death at the end of this trail prompted him to take a suicidal risk. He had nothing to lose.

  The heel of his right boot caught Billy Cross in the face and drove him the length of the wagon-bed back into the tail-gate. The little man tried to grasp the edge of the gate, but he could not save himself and, with a mangled yell, he went out of sight on to the trail below.

  Long before Billy had reached the other end of the wagon, Blade had whirled and snatched the gun from the holster of the man beside the driver. As the gun came free, the man’s hand slapped down on leather in a vain effort to reach the butt.

  The driver dropped his whip and reached back for his gun. As he cleared it from leather Blade hit him with the barrel of the gun. He fell forward on to the rump of the offside wheeler and the animal went crazy and tried to kick the wagon to bits.

  With his left hand, Blade struck the remaining man and knocked him from the seat. The mules tried to get moving. They hit into their collars raggedly.

  Mrs Dimsdale screamed.

  Blade turned and saw Billy Cross coming back into the wagon over the tail-gate. He saw the gun in Cross’s hand. Blade cocked and fired. The heavy slug took Cross off the wagon as if he weighed no more than a feather.

  Blade started to climb on to the driver’s seat. He could see the driver at the side of the trail, lying inert. The other man was staggering to his feet and looking around wildly. Blade put a shot past his ear and the man weaved away, wanting to get out of the fight. A man stood no chance without a gun. Blade thrust the gun into his empty scabbard, got hold of the lines and tied them around the brake. The mules were still acting up.

  Blade leapt down from the seat and took the knife from the unconscious driver’s belt. The unarmed man was running back down the trail. Cross was floundering around in the centre of the trail like a landed fish.

  Blade climbed back into the wagon and used the knife on Mrs Dimsdale’s bonds. He then took time to relieve the driver of his gun and ammunition. After that he walked around the wagon and took a look at Billy Cross. Blade saw that he had hit the little gunman in the right shoulder. Billy, his face creased up with pain, was in the act of picking up his fallen gun with his left hand. Blade took it from him.

  ‘Unbuckle your belt, Billy,’ Blade ordered, ‘I’ll need the shells.’

  Cross said: ‘You don’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell, Joe, an’ you know it.’

  ‘The belt, Billy,’ Blade said.

  Cross cursed him and unbuckled his belt with his left hand.

  Blade took it from him and said: ‘Be sure to let Draper know that Mrs Dimsdale is free, Billy. I’ll let the governor know.’

  Cross grimaced – ‘Nobody ever put lead into me before, Joe. I’ll have your liver an’ lights for this.’

  ‘If you have any sense,’ Blade said, ‘you’d saddle a fast horse and put some distance between you an’ me, Billy. I’ve taken enough from you and your bunch.’

  Blade hurried now. The horsemen with the other wagon would have heard the shots and they’d be raising the dust down this trail any minute now. He climbed back on to the driver’s seat and yelled to Mrs Dimsdale to hang on tight.

  He let off the brake, used whip and voice and those four mules hit their collars as one. Mrs Dimsdale screamed as she was thrown to the floor of the wagon alongside her grisly companion. Over his shoulder, Blade bellowed: ‘Watch our back-trail.’ If she heard him, she gave no sign. She recoiled with horror from the corpse. Mentally, Blade was busy deciding which manner of escape they should use. He could cut a couple of mules loose from the wagon and ride them into pretty rough country. But they would be without saddles and stirrups and it was doubtful if Mrs Dimsdale would stay astride for any length of time. One thing was certain, they could not stay on this trail for long. There were enemies in front and behind on it. The gunshots may even have reached men at the mine. To leave the trail on foot was probably the safest way. That way they could take cover in country where horses and mules could not go. But that way would be slow and would leave them as helpless prey to any Indians that might be about. It was questionable that Mrs Dimsdale would be capable of walking far.

  In the end, the decision was made for him. Mrs Dimsdale shrieked out that there were a couple of horsemen behind them and coming on fast. Blade looked back to see she spoke the truth. Even as he looked, one of the men started to fire a carbine at them. One lucky bullet ripped through the canvas of the wagon.

  Blade lost them for a moment as he turned a corner in the trail. Here the road suddenly steepened as it seemed to cut right into the heart of the hills. Blade saw that he had come to the ideal spot for him and the woman to leave the wagon on foot.

  He whipped the mules to a hard run, They did not like taking such a steep incline at such a pace, but voice and whip kept them going. Just ahead of him, he saw another bend. Here he brought the mules to a halt and jammed on the brake. He turned to Mrs Dimsdale and shouted: ‘Start climbing that way.’ He pointed to the jumble of boulders and brush. Without a word, she obeyed him, climbing over the tail-gate and jumping to the ground.

  By this time, Blade was out of the wagon and slashing at the traces with the knife. In no time at all, the mules were free of the wagon and heading up the trail at a brisk trot. Blade shoved the knife under his belt, took off the brake and leaned his weight into the wagon.

  He glimpsed the two horsemen pounding into sight, then the wagon, traveling at a rapidly increasing speed, cut his view.

  He heard a faint yell, then the wagon left the trail at the bend below them, seemed to hover in space for a brief moment before it plunged out of sight. As it struck rock on the way down, he heard a sound like breaking matchwood. One of the horses was down, struggling on its side. He could not see the man. The other man had ridden his horse off the trail into the rocks at the side of it. He rode his animal back on to the trail and dismounted. Blade turned and started after Mrs Dimsdale.

  Fourteen

  The woman had been silent for the last hour. Blade regarded her with some admiration. She had walked a good many miles since dawn and not one word of complaint had come from her. Her clothes were in tatters from the merciless fingers of thorn and brush. Neither of them had eaten for twenty-four hours and they had not found water that day. So far they had not seen any sign of pursuit. But, to Blade’s thinking, he did not only have the job of getting Mrs Dimsdale to safety, but also of stopping Draper and the Ring in their monstrous scheme.

  When they stopped for a brief rest, Mrs Dimsdale asked: ‘Do you know this country well, Mr Blade?’

  Blade halted and turned to stare at her.

  ‘Rose Mary,’ he said, ‘you and I have escaped narrowly from death, last night you slept in my arms – for warmth if for nothing more. I think we now know each other well enough to use our given names.’

  In spite of her being tired to the bone, she smiled through the grime of her face and her dishevelled hair. ‘Joe,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, I know this country well,’ he said. ‘It is the part of the old Spanish grant that my uncle lately sold to Draper and his crowd. I think he only did so under threat. I never knew an Espada sell land of his own free will.’ Understanding came over her face.

  ‘Espada ... Blade ... why, I had never seen the connection before.’

  ‘It’s a connection of chance, in fact,’ he said. ‘A man named Charles Blade did actually marry a Mexican girl named Espada. When I am in Mexican company I’m usually called José Santiago Espada.’

  ‘Sounds more dignified than Joe Blade,’ she said.

  They went on.

  By noon he had found water for them. This was what the Mexicans called an ojo, an eye, which was a small spring of crystal clear water hidden away in the hills. Blade went to it first while Rose Mary remained under cover. He read the sign
s around the spring and found that nobody had been near it for several days.

  He and Mrs Dimsdale drank their fill and washed themselves. The woman said she felt renewed. They walked on until night-time when they came on the primitive camp of a Navaho sheepherder in the pay of Don Sebastian. He had not learned yet that the land on which he grazed his sheep no longer belonged to the Espadas. His Spanish was poor but his hospitality was sufficient for their needs. They ate well on some old mutton, rested for a couple of hours and then moved on again.

  By midnight, when Rose Mary had about reached the end of her strength, Blade halted. For an hour now they had made their way carefully along a rising and narrow goat-track. The woman sank down thankfully and rested her back against a boulder.

  ‘Joe,’ she said, ‘I’m sorry. I can’t go another inch.’

  ‘No call to,’ he said. ‘We’re there.’

  He pointed off into the darkness and she saw a small glimmer of light.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘That’s the old mine,’ he told her. ‘I think its tunnels are the deep holes Milton Draper intended to drop us down.’ She shuddered. ‘I want you to stay here till I get back. How does that sit with you?’

  ‘I’m scared,’ she said honestly.

  ‘You wouldn’t be human if you weren’t,’ he said.

  He took off his jacket and put it around her shoulders. Then he gave her one of the pistols, loaded.

  ‘You ain’t really scared,’ he said. ‘You’re a damn brave girl.’

  She smiled wanly. ‘Do you think you can save my husband?’

  ‘If we keep you out of the Ring’s hands,’ he told her. ‘You stay here still as a mouse. I’m going to wipe out the tracks leading up here. See those rocks up above us? You go up there. I used to hide up there when I was a kid. There’s a narrow trail up there, the only way to approach it.’

  He bent and kissed her and she clung to him for a moment.

  ‘Go carefully, Joe,’ she said.

  ‘You bet,’ he told her and then walked away into the darkness.

  She stayed where she was for a moment, trying to hear the sounds of his going, but she heard nothing. She stood up and, clutching the gun in one hand and holding Blade’s coat around her with the other, went up the narrow track to the rocks above. As she crouched down in the little natural fortress, she had never felt more lonely and helpless in her life.

  Having wiped out their tracks, Joe Blade walked on down the steep and narrow trail until he came to a fork. He took the right-hand path and went carefully down it as it slanted along the face of the hill. Within thirty minutes he had reached the great flat shelf of land on which the old mine stood.

  Keeping the slope of the hill close to his right hand, he worked his way along the shelf until he could see a glimmer of light ahead of him. Now he halted and mentally braced himself. He thought of the violence which he would experience in the next hour or so. He knew that this business would not be finished until men had died. He had no liking for killing, nor violence of any kind for that matter. But there was no other way. These men were greedy and they were attaining their ends through the spilling of blood. These were the men who had tried to kill him and had shot down the girl, Charity. The only things that would stop these men were bullets or a hangrope.

  He thought over the words of the commission given by General Dimsdale. That piece of paper had tied him to his duty by an unbreakable bond. He had taken the oath:

  ‘… that I shall uphold the laws of the United States ... shall hold the interests and safety of the Territory of Arizona above all else … without fear or favor … so help me God …’

  He wondered, as he always wondered at such a time, if he would come out of this one alive. The odds were not the kind he liked. If the rest of Billy Cross’s gang were here, he was going to have his work cut out. They were the toughest outfit this side of the mountains. And that was saying something.

  He drew the Colt gun, checked the load, and slipped the gun back into leather. It was a Frontier model, and built for a fast draw and an accurate shot. He wondered if just before dawn he would be climbing back up the hill, as he had planned, to RoseMary Dimsdale. His thoughts wandered to old Don Sebastian. All this would have been so much easier if he had thrown the Espada weight in on the side of the governor. But ‘if only’ was a waste of time and breath. He hitched his gun holster forward and went on.

  As he approached the mine buildings, he went over the mental map he had of the place. There was a lamp alight in the biggest shack. That stood within fifty feet of the main shaft. This was a horizontal shaft driving into the heart of the hill. There were other, far older, horizontal shafts which were most likely Draper’s “deep holes.” They lay to the extreme west of the shelf. Between the big shack and these borings were a number of old, mostly derelict cabins.

  He now worked his way, using all the cover he could in what was now clear moonlight, near the lip of the shelf until he had passed the large shack and then circled around it. He came on a wagon and crawled underneath it. Now he lay and listened carefully.

  There were men’s voices coming from the large shack. From the sound of them, there were certainly more than three or four. There was another wagon standing some thirty feet further to the north and nearer the hill. He indianed his way to this and lay and listened once more. This manoeuvre took him nearer to one of what he thought were deserted cabins.

  Now he heard another sound which was over-ridden by the voices of the men in the main shack. The sound puzzled him and he failed to interpret it.

  After about ten minutes, the voices of the men in the big shack suddenly went silent. Now he heard the second sound more clearly.

  A woman’s voice.

  Then there was silence until the men’s voices rose again. He heard the woman’s voice again. Now he was certain that it did not come from the building in which the men were.

  He crawled some twenty yards west and stopped to listen again.

  Again he heard the woman’s voice; and another woman’s voice interrupted it. He now realized that there were two women not far off. He squinted through the moonlight and saw that he was not far from one of the smaller cabins. He crept to this and lay close against the wall. Now he was certain that the women were inside. And they were in the dark.

  Standing up, he found the nearest window. It was covered with torn oiled paper.

  He heard a woman say: ‘I tell you, honey, Blade’ll get us out of this.’

  His heart turned over. He would have known that voice anywhere. He was listening to Charity Clayton. He was about to make his presence known when he heard the voice of Davida Dunfield – ‘Charity, I’m sure your faith in Joe Blade does you great credit, but I fail to see how he can help us when he is about to be dropped down a deep hole with us.’

  He was fascinated to know Charity’s reply to this.

  ‘Davida, you don’t know Joe Blade.’

  Blade grinned to himself. Charity was up to scratch.

  ‘That’s my gal,’ he said out loud.

  There was an audible gasp from somebody inside the cabin.

  ‘Joe? Can it really be you?’ Charity sounded breathless.

  ‘It can,’ he said. ‘Stay right where you are.’

  He walked around the cabin and came to the door. Here he stopped and listened. The talk in the big shack seemed to be continuing. He pushed open the cabin door and stepped inside. The fact that the door was unlocked told him that the women must be tied up. His hand went back for the hilt of the knife.

  The pale faces of the two girls showed in the moonlight coming wanly through the oiled paper.

  ‘Soon have you out of here,’ he said, dropping to one knee.

  Charity flung her manacled sums around his neck, kissed him and said: ‘I was beginning to wonder if you’d get here before they dropped us down the hole. And I have some bad news for you, Joe – you can’t cut through chains.’

  Blade groaned.

  As if he could
not believe Charity’s statement, he picked up a length of chain. The cold metal was like the touch of death.

  Davida Dunfield started to weep.

  ‘Oh, my God,’ she said, ‘I thought we’d be safe now.’

  Blade’s own spirits were now suddenly rock-bottom, but he said cheerfully enough: ‘It’s all right, girl, I can still get you out of here. Chains just means I’ll be a mite longer is all.’

  Charity said: ‘Joe’s a wizard with locks. I often wonder why he doesn’t make a fortune at safe-cracking.’

  Blade asked, ‘Can you stand up, Charity?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘All right. Cain you get near enough to the window to look out?’

  ‘I reckon.’

  ‘See if you can see the door of the shack where the men are.’

  With a rattle of chains, the girl stood up and shuffled nearer to the window. The window on this side of the cabin was uncovered. She said: ‘I can see it quite clearly.’

  ‘Good. Now you keep your eye on that door and tell me if anybody comes out.’

  Fifteen

  Billy Cross was in some pain and was doing his best to play the part of a stoic Western hero. Lin Shultz had extracted a piece of lead from his gun-arm and Lin had never been noted for a steady right hand. So Billy had bled a little more than modestly. Sitting in the mine shack, he tried to drown some of his physical pain and mental misery in some rot-gut whiskey. Whiskey always made him quarrelsome. But not even the whiskey had been enough to make him happy about what he had to do tonight. Not to make Billy a knight in shining armour, but just what he was – a highly-paid frontier assassin, he didn’t cotton to the idea of putting to death two young and exceedingly good-looking women. He liked women. He needed them. To throw two such delicious examples of American womanhood away was a little more than he could take. Star Humbolt came out with it: ‘I ain’t no goddam woman killer. I didn’t never have no hankerin’ to go around killin’ women. No, sir. That ain’t in my book of rules.’

  Lin Shultz said: ‘Ker-ist, I gotta get good an’ drunk before I can kill a she-male, boys. I tellya. An’ I ain’t natcherly good an’ drunk enough to kill no pretty lil ole lady.’