There was no question of silence any more. I was coughing and choking, and couldn't seem to stop. But I knew that at any moment the others might come.
When the last of the gold was loaded, I climbed up to where the horses stood, not more than six or eight feet above where the gold had been hidden. I fell down, pulled myself up, and then untying my horse, I got a leg over the saddle.
The dun wasted no time, but started for the steep trail up the mountain. It was that which saved us. I was coughing so hard I could scarcely do more than stay in the saddle. Harry Mims was right behind me with the gold. We had started up the trail when far back behind us we heard a clatter of hoofs and saw several riders come into the canyon. The first thing they saw was Hooker, and then the marks of our horses' hoofs where they had waited while we loaded the gold. They saw the hollow among the rocks, where I'd climbed down to get at the gold, and they saw the empty hole. While they were flocked around it our horses were still scrambling up the steep trail.
We were still within rifle range when they saw us. The gold had been there ... and now they were seeing it slip away from them.
Which one of them fired the shot, I will never know, nor how many of them there were. I know Tex Parker was there, or somebody riding his horse, and a man wearing a Mexican sombrero, who might have been Charlie Hurst. There was no sign of Bishop, nor of Penelope. All that I saw at that one quick glance, for I never got another.
One man whipped his rifle to his shoulder and fired, I saw the leap of flame from the muzzle, and then the whole world seemed to blow up in our faces. There was a tremendous explosion and an enormous flame shot up out of the canyon.
I hit the ground with a jarring thud, and I never knew whether I was blown from my saddle or thrown by my startled horse. Only I lit on my hands and knees, looking down into the canyon but well back from the edge.
Flame was streaking out in rushing streams from the point of the explosion, seeming to seek out every hollow, every low place among the rocks, and then it hit a three-foot-wide hole in the rocks. We'd seen that hole, but we hadn't gone near it. Now the mouth of the hole was a great jet of flame, and the air was filled with a terrible, continuing roar.
Pulling myself to my feet, I staggered away, filled with horror, and trying to get away from the sound of the roaring.
There was no sign of my horse, and none of Harry Mims or the pack horses, but for several minutes the only thing I could think of was that I wanted to get away.
I climbed up, and had gone almost half a mile before I saw Mims. He was still in the saddle, and he had the pack horses with him. He was trying to round up the lineback dun, but the mustang was frightened and would have none of him.
Slowly, I limped along the mountainside toward them. The dun shied several times, but finally he stood still and let me get into the saddle.
We rode straight away toward the west, with no thought in our minds but to get away from that dreadful sight and that terrible sound. I'd seen men die before, but never like that.
And where ... where was Penelope?
Chapter 12
Neither of us felt like talking. We rode straight ahead, but we had no destination in mind. It was simply that we wanted to get away from the box canyon, away from that awful scene.
It was Mims who finally spoke. "Must be some kind of gas ... or oil. You hear about that feller back in Pennsylvania who drilled him an oil well? Supposing something like that caught fire?"
I didn't know the answer, but it seemed as if it must have been something of the sort. Even the fact that we had the gold, three hundred pounds of it, was forgotten in the shock of what had happened in the canyon.
What brought me back to myself was the thought of Penelope. ... Where was she?
Loomis, I was sure, had not been among these in the canyon. There had been at least four or five men down there, and Fryer and Ferrara might have been among them, or perhaps some other friends of Parker and Hurst.
"We've got to get under cover," I said, "and we've got to stash this gold somewhere."
I was still coughing from whatever it was I'd gotten into my lungs dawn there--the same thing probably that had killed Steve Hooker. It might have been worse for him at nighttime, or maybe his heart was bad. We'd never know about that, and I wasn't giving it much thought. It was the living I was concerned with.
Steve Hooker had charted his own course, followed his own trail. If it led him to the death he'd found, he had probably saved himself from a bullet or a noose, for he was headed for one or the other. When a man begins a life of violence, or when he decides to live by taking something away from others, he just naturally points himself toward one end. He can't win--the odds are too much against him.
We kept heading west, riding at a steady gait for about four miles, and then I let Mims go on ahead with the pack horses while I did what I could to wipe out whatever trail we had left through the bunch grass.
When I came up to him again, walking my horse up Cienequilla Creek, he had stopped at a place barren of cover--a sandy bank rising a few feet above the shore of the creek. It was just what we wanted. We unloaded the gold and put it down close to the bank, then caved the bank over it. The sand was dry, and when we had finished there was no sign that this spot was any different from any other place along the banks where small slides or cave-ins were common. Wiping out our own tracks, we started back.
It was early--the sun wasn't more than an hour above the horizon. The sky was darkened by the pall of smoke above Rabbit Ears, but the smoke seemed to be thinning out some, we thought.
We had to find Penelope, if she was alive, and I was surely thinking she was.
She just had to be. Slipping off in the middle of the night like that ... it made no kind of sense unless she figured to get to the gold before we did, or anybody else.
But what happened to her? She had not been in the canyon, of that I was sure, so something must have stopped her, or turned her aside.
Presently I said to Mims, "I never figured to see you again after you loaning me that horse. Main thing I wanted then was distance."
"They had a rope for you, all right, and I never did see such an outfit." Mims chuckled. "Mad? They were really scratching dirt and butting heads. Fact is, they talked some about lynching me on general principles."
"What stopped "em?"
"I had me an old ten-gauge shotgun in the cabin. After you taken off I just went back and loaded her up. Time or two I've noticed that a ten-guage shotgun is quite a pacifier. Folks who get riled up and want to twist somebody's tail sort of calm down when they see one.
"Well, they rode up, just a stompin' and a-chawin', so I showed 'em the shotgun and told 'em you wanted a horse in a hurry and I let you have one.
"I just wished I'd of had that shotgun ready when Sylvie showed up. I never did shoot no woman, but there's one I figure I could shoot with a clear conscience."
By now we had picked up Rabbit Ears Creek and were working our way around to the south side of the mountain, all the while scouting for tracks. And soon we found them.
They were buckboard tracks, leading north past the east side of the mountain. We slowed our pace and followed, riding with rifles ready for trouble.
We found a camp that had been used for a couple of days, but was deserted now.
We could be only a few miles from the box canyon, and their next camp must be close by. We were getting smoke from the fire in the canyon now; it was thin, but there was a-plenty of it.
Harry Mims drew up. "Nolan, I ain't much on the scare, but we're sure askin' for trouble. That outfit's got to be close by, and they'll be in a sweat to get that gold or our hides."
"That girl needs help," I said, "and I can't ride off without seeing her safe.
It ain't in me."
"What kinda outlaw are you?"
"I ain't figured that out yet, but I surely ain't riding away until she's safe."
We had started on again, keeping under cover of brush and trees, and pulling u
p every now and again to listen.
Suddenly we came upon the buckboard--or what was left of it. It had been pushed off a little bank, brush thrown over it, and then set afire. There was little left but the wheel rims, the hubs, and some charred spokes. A smell of smoke still hung over it.
Neither of us could make much out of the tracks except that somebody had charged off the side of the hill and stampeded the buckboard horses. There had been a fight, for we found some empty shells, a bullet scar on a tree, and the earth churned up by the hoofs of several horses.
"I'll bet they didn't get Flinch," Mims commented. "From what you tell of that breed, he'd be a sly one."
It was mid-afternoon now. We listened but there wasn't a sound.
We rode on under a low sky made darker by the oily smoke still corning from the fire in the canyon. We held to the bottoms, alert for trouble. How Mims felt I could guess, and I knew that I was all in. Seemed like we'd been running and riding forever. What I wanted now was some sitting-around time and eating three square meals a day. I wanted coffee I didn't make myself, and some restaurant-cooked grub.
We had come up the east side of the Rabbit Ears and had reached the creek again.
Now we smelled woodsmoke, and we took our horses down to the damp sand along the edge of the creek.
There was a pack of trouble standing out for us somewhere close ahead, and we both knew it. You just don't ride up to a crowd like that without expecting trouble. And there'd be one woman there, maybe two. The women worried me most of all. You might figure out what a man would do, but never a woman.
And old outlaw told me one time, "Look out for the women. You never know whether they're going to scream, or faint, or go for a gun."
And they were there, all right, both of them. When we rode up the two of them were facing each other alongside the fire.
Jacob Loomis was sitting on a rock facing, toward us, his blanket roll beside him. Noble Bishop was there, his face still, eyes watchful, missing nothing. And Fryer ... I'd sort of figured him for one of those who died back in the canyon, but here he was, big as life and twice as ugly. And the Mexican was beside him.
Flinch worried me most of all. He wasn't there.
Loomis' eyes took on an ugly shine when we rode up through the trees. Bishop looked at me, but he made no move of any kind. With Bishop and me it was a cut-and-dried thing. Each of us had a reputation as a fast man with a gun, and each of us knew that if it came to shooting somebody was going to get hurt.
Neither was eager to try the other, but each of us knew that events might push us that way.
What was going on when we rode up I didn't wait to find out, but I knew it was something that had to be stopped.
"Penelope," I said, "it's all over now. We'll ride with you to Santa Fe."
Bishop turned his eyes to me. "What happened over there?"
"That canyon must have been full of gas from oil underground. It seeped out and, being heavy like, it held close to the ground in the low places. Me an' Harry here, we were up on the rim, and one of them--I don't know who--got skittish and fired a shot.
"You know how this black powder is. A flame jumped from the muzzle when he shot, and the whole canyon blew up all to once, with streamers of fire wherever gas had gathered. Those men never had them a chance."
"We rode over that way," Bishop said. "We couldn't make out much, and we didn't stay long. All we could see was rocks blackened by fire and that hole in the rocks shooting out a jet of fire."
"How long do you reckon it will burn?" Fryer asked.
"Who knows? Years, maybe. It'll burn as long as there's anything left to burn."
"What about the gold?" Ralph Karnes demanded.
I shrugged. "What about it? Looks to me like nobody's going to get at that gold for a good long time."
"Unless," Slyvie said, looking right at me, "somebody got it out before the fire started."
"There's always that," I admitted. "But it looked to me like all those fellows got it to once. I don't think any of them got out alive."
"I wasn't thinking of them," Sylvie said. "I was thinking of you."
Nobody said anything for a minute, but Penelope was looking at me, her eyes bright with the questions in them. I was hoping they would wait.
"Well," I said, smiling easier than I felt like, "if I had that gold I'd be splittin' the breeze for Denver right now. I surely wouldn't be wastin' time talking to you folks."
"Neither would I," Fryer said. "What would he come back for?"
"For her," Sylvie said. "Can't you see he's got an itch for Penelope?"
They were all looking at me, and I just shrugged.
I wasn't looking at Pen when I spoke. "You're funnin' me, Sylvie. With all that money no man's going to have to look for women; he'll just have to look out for them. Why, if a man rides into Denver with all that gold he'll be combin' them out of his hair.
"Now, Penelope here is a nice girl. We promised to see her safe into Santa Fe.
Mims here is a relative of hers."
I knew about where we stood. Fryer believed me easy enough, and so did the Mexican. Bishop ... well, he was holdin' court in his mind--he hadn't come to any decision yet. Sylvie and Loomis, they were so crooked they wouldn't believe anybody and they were suspicious of everybody. Sylvie, I knew, would never let us ride out of there if she could figure some way to do us in. And I knew that, money or not, Jake Loomis wanted Penelope. He wanted her right out in these hills with nobody around. I could see the purpose in him, and the cruelty.
Right then, I guess, I made up my mind it was going to be a shooting matter.
The last thing I wanted was to swap lead with Bishop in that crowd. Likely he felt the same way, but Sylvie or Ralph or maybe Loomis would surely trigger trouble unless we could get out of here quick.
"Mount up, Pen," I said, "we're riding out."
Even as I spoke my mind was laying out the whole scene, taking everything in.
The bank of the creek was low and flat, just rising a mite near the edge of the trees that surrounded the clearing. There were a few good-sized boulders close by. Some of their horses were back on the left, standing under the trees.
Penelope's horse, loaned her by Mims, was over with the team from the buckboard.
The harness had been stripped off and both of them now wore Indian-style bridles, made by Flinch, I'd bet.
"She's not going," Sylvie said. "This is family trouble, and we'll settle it here."
Bishop wasn't talking. I wanted to know where he stood, but as long as I didn't make a point of it he could wait and listen.
"There's no reason for trouble," I said, "family or no family. You and Ralph go your own way and she can go hers."
"We found Andrew," Ralph said.
Well, here it was. The whole thing was shaping up now just the way I thought it would, but had hoped it wouldn't.
"You shot me, Ralph," I said, "and Andrew figured to finish the job. He didn't quite make it."
"I think you've got the gold," Loomis said. "Why else would you be so ready to ride off?"
I shrugged. "Why waste time around here? The show's over."
Sylvie suddenly seemed to give in. "All right. Let's forgive and forget. We were just getting ready for supper. Get down and I'll pour some coffee."
This had gone on long enough. "I don't like your coffee, Sylvie. It comes out a mite strong for my taste. Pen, you get your horse. We're leaving ... now."
Pen started toward the horses and Sylvie sprang at her. All I needed was to move in to help her and somebody would take a shot at me.
But Pen didn't need any help. Sylvie tried to grab at her hair with both hands, but Pen wasn't having any. She let her have it.
Well, I couldn't believe it. Seemed I'd never learn. Here was that girl I was always for protecting, and she needed no more protection than a mountain lion.
Sylvie sprang at her, hands upraised, and Pen hit her right in the stomach with a doubled-up fist. When Sylvie gasped for b
reath and brought her hands down, Pen slapped her across the mouth with a crack like a pistol shot. Then she caught up the reins of her horse and swung up.
"Stop her!" Loomis shouted. "Bishop, you stop her--or give me a gun and I will!"
Bishop never moved. He just glanced over at Loomis and said, "You better be happy, old man, that you ain't got a gun. Nolan Sackett would kill you."
So we rode out of there and started west again. But I was worried. Noble Bishop would be wanting that gold, and how much of my story he believed I didn't know.
Only thing I was sure of was that he hadn't wanted a shootout down there by the creek. There were too many people and too many guns, and it would be a matter of luck, not skill, if a man survived. There were too many chances of a wild bullet doing what you didn't mean an aimed bullet to do.
We rode fast. We were going to pick up that gold and ride out of there, and I was hoping I'd seen the last of all of them.
Chapter 13
We were northeast of the Rabbit Ears now, and the peaks were red with the dying sun. There was a dull glow over the canyon and we could hear, even at this distance, the roar.
We headed for Rabbit Ears Creek, and from time to time I turned in my saddle, but nobody was following us that I could see. By the time we were due south of the mountain the stars were coming out and it was well on toward dark.
"They won't leave it alone, Sackett," Mims said. "They'll come."
"Sure, they will."
Penelope had not done any talking, and I was just as pleased. I was still mad over her riding out and leaving us in the night that way.
Taking the bulk of Cienequilla del Barro Mountain for a landmark, I kept on west and when it was well after dark I changed direction several times until we were close under the shadow of the mountain. Then we switched and turned northeast toward the creek where the gold had been buried.
Mims drew up suddenly. "Sackett, I don't like the smell of this. Something's wrong."
Of course it was ... but what? It had gone off too easy, altogether too easy. I was sure we had not been followed, but what if there had been no need? Supposing we had been observed earlier in the day? Observed in the vicinity, even if not while burying the gold.
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