Shadow River

by Ralph Cotton

  “You ever see anything like that?” Burke asked Sam, jerking his head toward the large missing gap in the hillside.

  “I have now,” Sam said calmly. He turned his dun and the white barb and rode off at an easy gallop along the sand flats.

  Burke and Black sat looking at each other for a moment.

  “He has now, he tells us,” Burke said with a bemused look.

  “I heard him,” Black said, turning his horse, putting it forward behind Sam. “He has. So have we,” he said over his shoulder.

  Burke shook his head and maneuvered his horse alongside him.

  “A man’s got to be a damn fool . . . ,” he grumbled, leaving his words trailing as he rode away.

  Chapter 13

  Looking back on the sunken hillside an hour later, they could see the dust had settled enough to reveal the rim of a black hole on the hill’s lower slope. Above the black rim stood a towering cutbank of earth and stone over a hundred feet high where the trail and its boulders and rock had been.

  “Sumidero . . . ,” Black said in Spanish. The three of them sat dust-covered atop their sweat-streaked horses.

  “A sinkhole,” Burke translated, shaking his head. “Now I can say I’ve seen everything.” He looked all around, then added, “This whole damn land could fall right out from under us, far as we know.” He paused and gave Sam and Black a troubled look. “You don’t think it will, do you?”

  “It already has,” Black replied, nodding toward the missing hillside. “That much of it anyway.”

  Burke shook his head and managed a dark chuckle.

  “None of Madson’s men is going to believe a word of this,” he said.

  “Why not?” said Black. “They’ve felt all these quakes, same as we have.”

  Burke didn’t reply. Instead he let out a breath and studied the missing hillside that appeared to have been carved off and flung down into the earth’s belly by some reckless giant.

  “I don’t know about you two,” he said, “but I’d just as soon sleep on the flats tonight, take my chances with whoever might come prowling around.”

  “What’s the difference?” said Black. “A sumidero can fall out from under us anywhere.”

  Burke stared at him.

  “If you can’t say something good, why don’t you keep quiet, Stanley?” he said.

  “He’s right,” Sam said. “You can’t hide from a sinkhole. One can drop out anywhere. All these quakes and tremors have got the earth’s insides stirred up and shifting around.”

  “At least we can shoot any son of a bitch that comes upon us. I don’t know what to do with the likes of this.” He gestured another nod back at the hillside.

  Sam gazed at the rolling sand flats all around them, then up the lower slopes beneath the steep hills. “We can camp down among the lower rocks tonight and go up first thing come morning and get the gold,” he said.

  “Yeah, if the hills are still standing when we get there,” Black added grimly.

  “All right, that does it,” said Burke. He turned in his saddle, reached back and pulled out the bottle of rye. Sam and Black watched him uncork the bottle with a shaky hand and take a long swallow. When he lowered the bottle and let out a whiskey hiss, he passed it to Black, who sat his horse nearest to him. “You’re aggravating the living hell out of me, Stanley. See if this does anything for your ugly frame of mind.”

  Black tipped the bottle back and took a long swig. He lowered the bottle and ran the back of his hand across his lips.

  “Obliged,” he said, in a whiskey-strained voice. “I’ve been needing that ever since I saw the hill fall into the ground.” He passed the bottle on to Sam, who took it, turned up a short drink for appearance’ sake and passed the bottle back to Burke.

  “You’ve had your drink. Now put the bottle away,” Sam said, taking charge. “We need to keep a clear head until this is over.”

  Burke gave him a look, but then he nodded, corked the bottle and put it away. The three turned their horses back along the edge of the sand flats and rode off into the long evening shadows.

  • • •

  Burke, Black and Sam spent the night among the cactus and smaller stone skirting the lower slopes on the hill line. On their way into the cover of rocks, they passed a forty-foot pine that had been freshly uprooted, twisted, broken and hurled down onto the slope as if it had been a twig in the hands of an angry child. They looked the tree over as they led their horses past it on a rough upward path. Thirty yards above the downed pine, they made a small fire behind a stand of rock and boiled coffee and heated more dried goat meat.

  “It doesn’t look like it was as bad here as it was back along the trail,” Black said, sipping coffee, his newly acquired straw sombrero off his head, sitting atop his raised knee. “Maybe this will be easy pickings.”

  “‘Remain hopeful but expect the worst,’” Burke quoted with a raised finger for attention’s sake. “That’s what my uncle Paul always said.” He sipped whiskey-laced coffee and chewed the stringy jerked goat.

  “That makes no sense at all, Clyde,” Black commented.

  “I never said it made sense,” Burke replied. “I just said he said it.”

  “Maybe he was a lunatic, your uncle Paul,” Black said, the tension of the day coming out.

  “Maybe if you’d been there, you could have told him that to his face,” Burke said, half snapping at him. “I bet he would’ve been obliged to hear—”

  “All right,” Sam said, standing, picking up the small coffeepot from a writhing bed of flame and ember. He rubbed his boot back and forth through the fire, breaking it up, and poured the remains of the coffee onto the smoldering twigs and brush.

  “Hey! I would have drunk that,” Black said testily as the coffee steamed and hissed.

  Sam just looked at him in the failing light.

  “It’s been a long day,” he said. “Let’s back away from here and get some sleep.” He tossed a nod up the hill. “No telling what we’re looking at come morning.”

  “Well,” Burke said, standing stiffly, “I’ve seen enough for one day—saw a hill turn into a sinkhole. That’s enough for me.”

  The three backed away to their horses and led the animals twenty yards higher up the slope and into another stand of rocks overlooking the darkened campsite. Throughout the moonlit night they shared watch on the lower slope and the wide, rolling desert floor. Before first light they had eaten more goat meat and drunk tepid water from their canteens. They’d watered their horses from their upturned hats the night before, and now the horses breakfasted on a handful of grain from a feed bag in their supplies. They saddled and readied the animals for the trail.

  Atop their horses, they sat for a moment gazing up, negotiating the dark grainy upward stretch of rock, stone ledges, boulder and earth all held together one by the other, the whole of it standing tall, penetrating a gray-silver sky. Their eyes moved sidelong across each other; their breaths wafted thin curls of steam in the chilled air. The horses milled and scraped their hooves.

  “Let’s get to it,” Sam said quietly, nudging his horse forward, leading the white barb beside him. The barb probed its muzzle against his sleeve and blew out a steamy breath.

  Behind Sam, Burke and Black rode single file, checking the land on their way up for any signs of yesterday’s earth turbulence.

  “So far, so good,” Black said under his breath, as if in fear of the hill itself overhearing him, somehow taking offense. In front of him, Burke only gave a short nod as he looked from side to side and felt for anything unusual beneath his horse’s hooves.

  After winding along a rock-strewn switchback trail for the better part of an hour, the three stopped as they came upon another long huge pine twisted diagonally across the trail. The broken root ball of the tree stood twenty feet high on its side, circling upward filled with dirt and rock. The top of
the tree rested against a stony cliff abutment on the other side of the trail and served as a stop for a mammoth unearthed boulder that had rolled that far and halted. It appeared to loom perilously, as if deciding whether to stay there and reembed itself over time, or crush the large pine into splinters and roll on.

  “Damn . . . ! Don’t nobody breathe,” Burke said. Yet he nudged his horse forward behind Sam, who turned the dun and the supply horse wide enough to circle below and beneath the root ball hanging half out over the edge of the trail.

  Behind Burke, Black rode forward, the three of them smelling sweet fresh pine sap from the tree’s bruised innards and the dark musty smell of overturned earth as root tentacles bobbed overhead and trickled fresh dirt onto their hat brims and their horses’ manes. To their right, the hillside dropped straight down over a hundred feet of merciless stone and onto spiked treetops a-sway on a thin morning breeze.

  As their mounts rounded under the tree root and ascended the other side onto the trail, Sam kept his two horses moving forward as he’d decided he would do now until they reached the crevice where he’d hidden the three sacks of gold Marcos and his rebels had paid for their French rifles.

  Behind Sam, Burke pulled his horse to the side long enough to look back at the tree, the unseated boulder and the large root ball and shook his head.

  “Sometimes I think being a rake and a thief is the hardest damn work in the world,” he said.

  Sam and Black rode on without reply.

  • • •

  As morning spread fiery white along the far horizon, the three stepped down from their horses on a wide level terrace that encroached into the hillside. Across the level ground, the steep hillside continued reaching skyward. A narrow game path led up around a boulder, through brush and trees, around and over rock until reaching the hill’s uppermost peak.

  “This is it,” Sam said, looking all around.

  Burke and Black looked at each other.

  “Are you sure?” Burke asked quietly.

  Sam just looked at him.

  “Of course he’s sure,” said Black. Seeing Sam step forward leading the dun and the barb behind him, Black jerked his head toward him in a follow-him gesture and led his horse along behind him.

  Halfway across the level terrace, Sam stopped for a moment and looked all around at large rocks he didn’t recall lying there before. He looked up at the towering hillside and appraised it closely.

  “This is it, but it’s been shaken up,” he said. “The boulder there looks different.”

  Black and Burke squinted at the large boulder.

  “Different how?” Burke asked.

  “Just different,” Sam said. “But this is the place.” He gestured at wagon marks and fading hoofprints on the rocky ground. Then he led the horses across the terrace and tied their reins to a stand of scrub ironwood. Burke and Black followed, looking all around, and tied their horses beside his.

  Rifles in hand, the two followed Sam on the path around the boulder. But rounding the boulder, they immediately stopped. Sam stared down into the crevice he had climbed up through leading to where he’d hidden the gold. The crevice had been shallow, easily climbed. Not now. The recent quakes had widened the crevice to twice what Sam remembered it to be. The depth of it was now unfathomable in the slanted morning sunlight. Looking down the newly shaped walls of stone and clinging surface dirt, he could see the crevice had turned into a wide slice of blackness seventy feet down.

  They stepped back from the edge as a small rock broke free and tumbled down. They listened, and listened, and listened. Finally they heard a clattering sound falling farther away from them.

  They stood in silence for a moment, waiting expectantly. Finally Black broke the silence.

  “I never heard it land,” he said.

  “Maybe it didn’t yet,” said Burke.

  After another pause, Black shook his head and said, “I’m not a man to quit easily—but we ought to think about quitting this.”

  “Neither am I . . . ,” Burke said, trailing off.

  “Neither are you what?” Black said, he and Sam staring at Burke.

  “A man who quits easy,” Burke finished.

  “But you quit too?” said Black.

  “Yes, I do,” said Burke. “Unless you know a way we can get out there and hang on to the sides and—” He stopped short, seeing Sam let out a breath, turn and walk back to the horses.

  Following Sam, Burke reached out to untie his horse’s reins and swing up into his saddle. “I don’t know about you two, but I’m damn glad we’re turning back, getting with Madson and his men and—” He stopped short again, this time seeing Sam take the coiled rope from his saddle horn.

  “The hell are you fixing to do, Jones?” he said. As he asked, he saw Black taking the rope from his saddle horn as well. “Stanley, damn it?”

  Black shrugged, shouldering his coiled rope.

  “Tying off on these rocks, I’m thinking?” he said with uncertainty, glancing at Sam for confirmation. “Going down over the side?”

  “You’ve got it,” Sam said with deliberation. He turned with his rope on his shoulder, rifle still in hand, and started to walk back to the path around the boulder.

  “Damn it, pards, you might not believe this,” said Burke, reaching for his own coiled rope. “But I thought the same thing a while ago. I just didn’t say it.” He hurried and caught up with Black and Sam. “Hear me?” he said. “I just didn’t say so.”

  “We heard you, Clyde,” said Black.

  They all three stopped a few feet back from the edge.

  Sam leaned his rifle against the boulder and hung his tall-crowned sombrero on the tip of the barrel. He stripped off his bandolier and laid it beside the rifle.

  “You can both toss a loop that far, can’t you?” He gestured toward the width of the crevice that had now become a canyon.

  “I can for damn sure,” Black said.

  “And then some,” Burke said, eyeing the distance. “I was born throwing a lariat farther than that,” he chuffed.

  “Good,” Sam said. “Wait here until I call for you.”

  He walked over to the right rim of the crevice. Black and Burke stood watching, having also leaned their rifles against the boulder that had hung their headwear in the same manner.

  “Why don’t he tie his rope off on something and tie it around himself?” Burke whispered to Black.

  “I don’t know, hush up,” Black whispered back.

  Sam walked out along the broken surface in a low crouch, the edge slanted inward to the crevice, loose and unsteady, slippery with small gravel and dirt.

  “Jesus, he’s crazy, Stanley,” Burke whispered.

  Black stood staring out at Sam, afraid to say anything, as if so much as a quietly spoken word might topple him over into the gaping crevice.

  Looking down the deep rocky wall as he moved along, Sam stopped fifteen feet out and took the coiled rope from his shoulder.

  “It’s down in there,” he said quietly, gesturing to a thinner crevice eighteen feet down in the larger crevice wall.

  “All right, now what?” Burke called out to him in a hushed tone.

  “Take the end of both your ropes across from me on the other edge and tie them off real good,” Sam said calmly. “Toss them across to me.”

  “Huh?” said Burke, looking out along the other edge of the crevice.

  Seeing Burke’s fear, Black said to him, “Come on, Clyde. It’s flatter over there. We’re all right.”

  “Hell, I know we’re all right,” Burke said. “You don’t need to tell me.”

  On their way around to the other edge across from Sam, Burke called out, “Why didn’t you go down on this side?”

  “Because the gold’s in the wall on this side,” Sam called back to him.

  “Just asking,” Burk
e said. To himself he murmured, “I should have drank that whole damn bottle before doing this.”

  As the two tied their ropes around rocks, Sam tied the end of his rope around an earth-stuck stone standing five feet back from the broken crevice edge. He hurled the rest of the rope out and watched it fall and uncoil down the crevice wall.

  “Why doesn’t he tie the other end around his waist?” Burke asked Black.

  “Don’t ask me. I got here when you did,” Black said, watching Sam closely. After a moment, he said to Burke without turning to face him, “I get it now. He’s going down that side, but he’s coming up this side. We’re going to hold him, help pull him up—it’s wider over here. We’d have a hard time over there.”

  Burke looked down the crevice wall across from them to where Sam stood waiting.

  “But how’s he going to get from there over to here . . .” He stopped himself. “Jesus! He’s not going to jump, is he?”

  “I would have to say yes, he is,” Black replied.

  “All right, he really is crazy,” Burke said. He called over to Sam, “Are you going to leap this thing? It be a good fifteen, twenty feet across.”

  Sam called back to him, “Do you want to stand over here and pull me up, Clyde?” Beneath his feet, a trickle of dirt and gravel spilled over the edge.

  Jesus . . . !

  Burke fell silent; Black shook his head.

  “Are you sure this is where the gold is?” Burke asked.

  “Yep,” Sam said without hesitation. “I wouldn’t do this otherwise.”

  “Good thinking,” Burke said. “Do us a favor. Before you jump over here, how about sending the gold up ahead of you?”

  “Not a chance,” Sam said. “You’ll be pulling it up with me. It’ll keep your attention until I’m safe over the edge.”

  Black chuckled to himself. He raised a loop in his lariat and spun it slowly over his head.

  “Coming at you,” he called out to Sam.

  Burke readied his rope and shook his head.

  “I never seen nothing like it,” he murmured under his breath.