Sidewinders:#3: Cutthroat Canyon

by Johnstone, William W.

  Bo thought the same thing. He couldn’t help but wonder what that meant. If Davidson was getting ready to use the machine gun for something, it couldn’t be anything good.

  “What do we do now?” Scratch asked.

  “Let’s take a look around,” Bo whispered. “Maybe we can find the gun.”

  They couldn’t risk poking around for too long, though. They had no way of knowing when the guards were supposed to change. If a new pair came to relieve the ones he and Scratch had killed, their presence in the canyon would be revealed. They needed to be out of Cutthroat Canyon before that happened.

  They checked the other storage sheds, but the crates that had contained the Gardner gun were nowhere to be found. Trying to slip into the headquarters building was too much of a risk; they couldn’t chance it. Both Texans knew they represented the last hope for the people of the valley to live normal lives again, free of Davidson’s reign of terror.

  Bo motioned toward the far end of the canyon, signaling that they were leaving. He and Scratch catfooted past the shed where the blasting powder was kept. It would have been nice to blow the shed to kingdom come, but Bo hadn’t thought to bring matches or anything to make a fuse with him.

  They slipped past the bodies of the guards they had killed, and reached the end of the canyon a short time later. The rope still dangled there. Pepe would be waiting up above for three tugs on the rope, which was the signal for him to throw down the other lariat.

  Instead, Bo only pulled sharply on the rope twice, which meant that he and Scratch were coming back up.

  This time, he was able to grasp the rope himself and walk up the canyon wall with the Winchester under his arm, rather than having the others lift him. Pepe was there when Bo reached the top, ready to reach out and grasp his arm to help him over the rimrock.

  “What happened?” Teresa asked in a tense voice. “What about the gun?”

  “Gone,” Bo said. “Lancaster must’ve assembled it already. Chances are it’s in the headquarters building, ready to be used whenever Davidson gives the word.”

  “Used for what?”

  “Nothing good,” Bo said, echoing his earlier thought.

  Pepe helped Scratch scramble out of the canyon. “What now?” the silver-haired Texan asked. “We head back to San Ramon empty-handed except for the Colts and Winchesters we got off those varmints we killed?”

  “I don’t see that we have much choice in the matter,” Bo said. “We’re still outnumbered and outgunned. We’ll have to figure out some other way to make the odds more even.”

  But as they started out of the hills, Bo had to admit, at least to himself, that he didn’t see any way of doing that.

  The look of disappointment on Evangelina’s face when she heard that their mission had failed sent a pang of regret through Bo. Everyone in the village had suffered under the iron fist of Porter Davidson, of course, but the scars on her cheeks were a poignant reminder of just how much suffering the people had undergone.

  “Don’t worry,” Bo told her. “We’ll think of something else.”

  “What can we do?” Evangelina asked dejectedly. “We are only a handful against an army.”

  “I wouldn’t go so far as to call Davidson and his men an army,” Bo said.

  “Anyway,” Scratch said, “I recollect a time when a handful of men stood up to a whole army and did pretty well for themselves. Place called San Jacinto.” He added hastily, “No offense, you folks bein’ Mexicans and all.”

  “You think we care about such things now?” Teresa demanded. “Evil is evil, whether it takes the form of General Santa Anna or that dog Davidson. He is as much a dictator as Santa Anna ever was.”

  “You’re right about that,” Bo said. He glanced at the window, where gray light was beginning to come in around the curtain. “It’ll be dawn soon. Scratch and I will get back in our hiding place and try to figure out what to do next.”

  “You must have some breakfast first,” Evangelina said. “Sit down, and I will prepare it.”

  Bo knew she couldn’t keep feeding them for much longer. The few people in the village who knew of their presence were helping out, but these folks didn’t have much to start with, and having to provide food for him and Scratch was putting a serious drain on their resources.

  That was just one more reason, as if they needed it, to put a stop to what Davidson was doing down here.

  After everyone had eaten a meager breakfast, Bo and Scratch lifted the trapdoor and climbed back down into the hidden chamber under Evangelina’s bedroom, taking the liberated firearms with them. Once they were alone, with the door closed over them and narrow shafts of light poking down through the cracks, Scratch said, “You got any ideas, Bo? Because for the life of me, I can’t think of a damn one.”

  “Not yet,” Bo admitted. “If there was some way we could draw Davidson’s men out of the canyon and pick them off one by one…”

  He dozed off while pondering on that, but it seemed that he had been asleep for only moments when he was jerked awake again by a terrible racket. It sounded like someone pounding a giant hammer against something, very fast—bam, bam, bam, bam!

  A cold feeling of dread washed through Bo as he realized that he was hearing the Gardner gun in action.

  Scratch had been startled out of sleep, too. He exclaimed, “Son of a—” as he started to leap to his feet without thinking. His head cracked against the planks of the floor that formed the trapdoor, and he sat back down. He rubbed his head where he had hit it.

  The machine gun continued firing for another minute or so, then fell silent. Somehow the quiet was more ominous than the pounding of the gun had been.

  “People of San Ramon!”

  That was Davidson yelling. Bo and Scratch looked at each other, a little surprised that the mine owner had come to the village himself instead of just sending his men. Bo figured that someone had found the dead guards. They should have used the ropes to haul the corpses out of the canyon the night before, he thought. If the guards had simply disappeared, Davidson might have suspected that they were dead, but he wouldn’t have been able to prove it.

  Of course, under the circumstances, proof didn’t really matter all that much. More than likely, mere suspicion would have been enough to prompt Davidson to take action.

  The Texans heard rapid footsteps on the floor above them, and then the trapdoor rose to let light flood into the hiding place. Evangelina peered down at them, obviously very frightened.

  “Davidson is here with his hired killers and some of his other men,” she said. “They brought that machine gun you talked about.”

  “We heard it,” Bo said as he and Scratch climbed out. “We’ve got these rifles, so we could pick off a few of them, but they can’t keep up with that British pepperbox.”

  Enrique seemed more agitated than usual, and his grin was nowhere in evidence. “I do not like that loud noise,” he said as he flapped his hands.

  “Settle down, old-timer,” Scratch told him. “If it starts up again, maybe we can stop it.”

  From somewhere outside in the village, Davidson shouted, “Come out of your houses, now! Everyone out!”

  Evangelina looked tensely at Bo. “What do we do?”

  He thought about it for a second, then said, “Go on outside, but stay close to the door so you can get back in here in a hurry if you need to. Scratch and I will keep an eye on things from the window.”

  They moved to the window and eased each side of the curtain back just enough to see out as Evangelina opened the door. “Come with me, Enrique,” she said to the old man.

  He shook his head. “No! I will not go out there where that noisy thing is!”

  Evangelina took hold of his arm. “Enrique, you have to. I will not let anything happen to you.”

  He was trembling so hard, it looked like he might fall over, but he allowed her to lead him to the door and out into the bright morning sunlight.

  At the window, Bo and Scratch could now see that David
son stood in the plaza in the center of the village with half a dozen men around him. The Gardner gun was set up in the back of a wagon. Lancaster stood behind the gun, gripping its firing handles. A long, thin, sticklike apparatus stuck up from the weapon’s breech. A sheaf of several hundred bullets had been slid into a slot on that loading stick. The other men, including Jim Skinner and Douglas, were grouped around the wagon and held Winchesters ready to fire.

  Slowly, tentatively, the villagers began to emerge from their huts. They shuffled forward fearfully, and flinched when Lancaster swung the barrel of the machine gun toward them.

  “Give me half a second,” Scratch said, “and I can put a bullet in that Britisher’s head.”

  “Yeah, and somebody else would take over that gun and put a thousand rounds into this hut in the next few minutes,” Bo said. “Those adobe walls are pretty thick, but I don’t think they’d stand up to that.”

  “I could shoot Davidson his own self. Then he wouldn’t be around to give orders no more.”

  “Skinner would,” Bo pointed out, “and he’s just as lobo mean as Davidson.”

  “Well, you could shoot him while I shoot Davidson,” Scratch said. It was a logical argument.

  “That might do it, but Lancaster could squeeze off a hundred rounds into that crowd of villagers and mow them down.”

  “Blast it, there needs to be three of us! Then we could end this right here and now.”

  That might well be true. And it was possible that the Texans could shoot fast enough to kill Davidson, Skinner, and Lancaster before the Englishmen could fire the Gardner gun. But if that turned out not to be the case, a heap of innocent people might die here, Bo told himself.

  “Let’s wait and see what he’s going to do,” Bo suggested.

  Scratch grunted. “Nothin’ good, I’ll bet.”

  Davidson climbed into the back of the wagon and stood next to Lancaster. “I know that Creel and Morton are here!” he shouted. “Tell me where they are, and no one will be hurt!”

  “’Cept us,” Scratch drawled inside the hut. Bo flashed a grin over at him.

  The villagers shuffled their feet nervously, but no one said anything.

  “They’ve caused me a great deal of trouble!” Davidson went on. “They killed two of my men last night! I’m convinced they killed two more in El Paso last week! Turn them over to me, and there’ll be no more trouble! You know that I’m a man of my word!”

  “Yeah, he says he’s gonna run roughshod over these poor folks and make their lives a livin’ hell, and then he does it,” Scratch said. “That’s keepin’ his word, all right.”

  Davidson glared at the people of San Ramon from the back of the wagon, but only silence continued to meet his demands.

  “I know you’re hiding those two Texans!” Davidson said, his voice growing ragged with anger. “Give them to me, or I’ll make this whole village sorry!” He turned to Lancaster and pointed at one of the huts. “Fire into that shack!”

  Lancaster said something instead of obeying the order instantly. Bo couldn’t make out the words, but evidently they were some sort of objection, because Davidson yelled, “Do what I told you, damn it!”

  With a shrug of resignation, Lancaster tightened his grip on the gun’s handles and swung the twin barrels, one set above the other, toward the hut Davidson had indicated. He tripped the trigger and the Gardner began to spew lead, alternating so swiftly between the barrels that it appeared flame was pouring constantly from both of them. The weapon quivered a little on its tripod as the long yoke of bullets moved down the stick and the empty brass cartridges went flying out to fall like shining rain.

  Bo and Scratch could see the target hut from where they were. Villagers scrambled to get out of the line of fire as the slugs pounded into the adobe. Women and children screamed in fear. The terrific onslaught of lead raised a cloud of dust and threw chunks of the dried mud and straw into the air. Lancaster directed his fire at one area. After only a moment, large pieces of the wall began to collapse as the hail of bullets continued striking sledgehammer blows. Lancaster fired until half the bullets in the stick were gone, then eased off on the triggers and looked over at Davidson to say something. Davidson jerked his head in a curt nod.

  Bo felt a twinge of disappointment. If Lancaster had emptied the machine gun, that would have been the time for the Texans to strike. They could have killed Davidson and Skinner without having to worry about Lancaster being able to slaughter the crowd of villagers. As it was, though, the ugly threat remained.

  “You’ve seen what I have the power to do!” Davidson shouted at the huddled citizens of San Ramon. “Look at that hut!”

  The machine gun fire had knocked out a large, ragged hole in the wall. If a human being had been caught in that storm of lead, what was left wouldn’t even resemble anything that had once been human.

  “I can do the same thing to you!” Davidson threatened. “But if you give me what I want…if you give me Creel and Morton…you’ll be safe!” He paused for a second to let that soak in, then went on. “Not only that, but I’ll reward whoever tells me where to find them! If you’ve got a son or a husband or a father working in my mine, he can come back here to the village permanently! But only if you give me those damned Texans!”

  Scratch let out a little whistle. “That’s gonna be a hard offer to turn down, partner.”

  “Yeah, I know it. Can’t say as I’d really blame anybody who took him up on it.”

  “There’s probably a dozen or more of those folks out there who know that we’re in here.”

  Bo nodded. His mouth was dry as he watched the confrontation between Davidson and the villagers.

  A part of him wanted to march out there and spare those poor people the ordeal they were going through. If he and Scratch surrendered, though, it wouldn’t mean that the villagers would be out of danger. They wouldn’t really be any better off than they were to start with.

  Bo didn’t think Davidson would bother with torture if he got his hands on them again. He’d just have them both killed as quickly as possible, so there wouldn’t be any chance for an escape or a rescue, as there had been the last time.

  “Reckon we may have to chance a shootout,” Bo said. “You take Skinner, I’ll take Lancaster. We’ll leave Davidson for last. He’s the least dangerous of those three, at least when it comes to gun-handling.”

  “What about the kid?”

  “Take him as soon as you’ve downed Skinner.”

  “Keno,” Scratch said as he lifted the rifle to his shoulder. “Open the ball any time you want.”

  Bo brought up the Winchester he held.

  Outside in the plaza, Davidson told Skinner, “Go get one of those old men and put him out in the middle by himself. Looks like these stubborn bastards are going to take more convincing.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Scratch said. “He’s gonna have Lancaster shoot some poor varmint with that devil gun!”

  “Not if we can help it,” Bo said. “Get ready—”

  Before either of the Texans could fire, though, a scarecrowlike figure burst from the crowd. They heard Evangelina cry, “Enrique, no!” She tried to grab the old man, but he moved with surprising speed and spryness and dashed toward the wagon, flapping his arms and making incoherent gobbling noises.

  CHAPTER 23

  Lancaster jerked the barrels of the Gardner gun toward Enrique as he weaved toward the wagon, and for a second Bo thought the old man was about to be chopped into pieces.

  But then Davidson yelled, “Hold your fire! What’s he saying?”

  Enrique’s cries weren’t just gibberish, Bo realized. Although his voice was hoarse and choked with fear, the old man was saying, “Over there! Over there!” He wasn’t just aimlessly flapping his hands either, but rather was waving toward Evangelina’s hut.

  “Take down that shack!” Davidson bellowed at Lancaster. “Everybody open fire!”

  Bo snapped the rifle butt to his shoulder as he used the barrel to push asi
de the curtain. He had time for one shot, and it had to count, he thought as he lined his sights on Lancaster.

  His finger froze on the trigger without taking up all the slack, though, as Enrique swerved without warning in front of the Winchester. The danger to the old man didn’t make Lancaster hold his fire. The Gardner gun began to spit flame and death.

  With a flash of white from her blouse, Evangelina flew through the air, tackled Enrique from behind, and knocked him to the ground just as the Gardner’s bullets sliced through the air above them.

  Inside the hut, Bo yelled, “Get down!” Slugs chewed the curtain to shreds and pounded into the walls, some of them coming through to whine wickedly around the room. The Texans had to retreat and dive through the trapdoor into the space beneath the floor in Evangelina’s bedroom.

  The one thing they had going for them was that Davidson and his men didn’t know about that underground space. They fired straight at the hut, well above the level where Bo and Scratch crouched, so for the moment, the only real danger the Texans faced was from ricochets.

  If they could bide their time, they might have a chance to fight their way out of this after all. It was more than a mite nerve-racking, though, to kneel there with all that lead whipping by only a few feet overhead.

  The Gardner gun abruptly fell silent. Either it had overheated, which rapid-fire weapons were prone to do, or else had run out of ammunition and was useless until another yoke of bullets was fed into that loading stick. A few more rifle and pistol shots blasted out, followed by Davidson yelling, “Hold your fire! Hold your fire!”

  The trapdoor was still open. In fact, it had been shot to pieces as it leaned against the rear wall of Evangelina’s room. From where they were, Bo and Scratch could see into the other room. It was brighter than ever in there, because the pounding from the machine gun had knocked big chunks out of the wall. All the furnishings were torn up, too. Evangelina’s home was ruined.

  “Out the back window before they have time to reload that damned thing!” Bo snapped as he lunged up from the underground space. “Go!”