by E. R. Slade
Riley realized that the men on the rock above were waiting for a sign from him, since the situation was different than had been expected. Perhaps, for the moment, it would be better to hold off on shooting Calloway, find out what he was up to. There was something mighty peculiar about this. After leading a chase way out into the desert and then up the hill, for Calloway to be sitting in plain view with no attempt to hide himself was mighty strange. Mighty strange. There had to be some trick, and it would be better not to trigger something before he’d got it figured.
“Where’s the gold?” he demanded of Calloway, for starters.
Calloway grinned and jerked his thumb at the rock.
“You put it in the cabin and then rolled the rock down on it?”
“I saw you had the lady with you. I had figured to shoot it out with you, but I wasn’t interested in endangering the lady’s life. So I put the gold where you’d know where it was, but you’d have one devil of a time tryin’ to get at it. Reckon Miss Carmen and I’ll leave you to it—unless she has some objection to you havin’ the gold.” He looked at Carmen questioningly.
Carmen glanced at the rock and then looked at Calloway.
“I guess,” she began in an uneven voice, and then cleared her throat. “I guess it’s not worth dying for. I ...” She stopped and blinked her eyes and looked away.
Riley, watching this, considered the situation. The damned clever coyote. Drops on top of the gold a boulder it would take a twenty mule team to haul away. If the gold was under the rock at all. Supposing it was all a trick? With Calloway, anything was possible.
“I reckon you ain’t goin’ anywhere, Calloway. You can stay around to help us move the boulder off.”
Calloway chawed on the end of his stalk of grass, spun the Colt idly around and around his trigger finger, and then shrugged.
“It’ll be a long while,” he said. “The lady said you could have the gold. I ain’t interested in stoppin’ you. I’ve had enough. I figure if you manage to get that boulder off’n the gold, you’ve earned it. Why don’t you just let the lady and me ride off? For us the game is over. I personally guarantee you won’t have no trouble at all from us. Right, Miss Carmen?”
She nodded.
“No, you won’t guarantee it,” Riley said emphatically. “I reckon I’ll guarantee it myself—by havin’ you two right here while we move the rock.”
“What, you think I’m maybe lying about the gold? Why should I come way out here with a wagon load of gold—Carmen can swear I had the gold all right—and then roll a big rock down and not put the gold under, but haul it off somewheres else? Think I could find anyplace harder to get to than under that rock? There’s the wagon. There are the horses. Ain’t no way for me to go anywheres else with the gold without them. And if I had, I’d be there, not here. What’s hard to figure out?”
“I don’t know. I ain’t takin’ any chances.”
“Suit yourself,” Calloway said, and stood up, stretching as if he had been sitting in one place too long and wanted to get the kinks out. He put his gun away and went over to look at the boulder and the crushed cabin under and around the sides of it.
~*~
As night fell, the camp was quiet. Carmen and Lee sat side by side next to the fire, watching the flames, drinking coffee, part of the circle of men. They had exchanged accounts of what had happened since they last saw each other. No one seemed interested in bothering their discussion. Pirate was telling blood-chilling tales of sea adventures. If they were even half true, Pirate had killed at least a thousand men. Lee was just glad that they hadn’t brought along enough whiskey to get everyone drunk. Only a couple of men were habitual bottle carriers, and they were stingy with their supplies when they found out no one else had thought to bring anything. Lee was grateful for this because he didn’t care to think what might have happened to Carmen in the midst of a lot of drunken revelry.
But it was also a serious setback to the escape plans he hoped to set into action tonight. Now he would be dealing with a group of sober, vigilant men, instead of drunken ones who couldn’t see or shoot straight.
Riley was smoking, the hand-rolled cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, the smoke rising in lazy curls. He sat on the ground with his knees drawn up and his forearms hooked around them, fingers interlaced. His black eyes darted incessantly around the group. Lee had the idea that Riley was waiting for trouble from another source besides himself and Carmen. After observing Riley for some time without seeming to, he became quite sure that it was Pirate who worried Riley.
Pirate was still spouting off, while the others stared into the fire, listening, sometimes shifting position, never looking especially interested in Pirate’s tales. Probably they were well used to his endless bloody epics of adventure on the high seas. Probably also they were thinking about the gold they expected to get their hands on shortly. The only person who might have been interested in the tales was Baldy Al, Riley’s half brother. He mostly seemed to take interest when Pirate came around to the especially vivid descriptions of how he had decapitated this sailor, or run through that one.
The few hours left in the day had been spent in a completely fruitless effort to pull the boulder off the crushed cabin. Riley had first tried having his men push it. Next, he’d hooked the two draft horses to it. When that failed, he’d tried to combine the haul of the draft animals with his men prying on lever poles. It shifted slightly, then refused to budge further. The problem was, the cabin had been built of logs and stones, with a board and shingle roof which had collapsed easily under the weight of the massive stone. This meant that the boulder now sat in, and mostly on, a ring of solid materials—logs and stones—which it would have to be rolled up and over. At least the way Riley had been trying to do it. Finally, as the sun was getting low over the horizon, Riley had realized that the thing that had to be done was to get the rocks and timbers out from under one side. He called it off so that they could have something to eat and rest a while before getting back to work.
Lee saw that it might not be very long before the boulder was rolled aside and it was discovered that no gold lay beneath. That made it important that he and Carmen get away as quickly as possible. Counting on them being drunk having turned out not to be an option, it appeared to come down to choosing some moment when they were too interested in trying to get at the gold to notice any escape attempt.
Then he thought of another possibility ...
Riley got up from the fire and Pirate left off the story he was telling, which was beginning to drag anyway.
“Some of you go down in the trees and cut some poles,” Riley said. “We’ll need a lot of pries. Let’s get a good big fire going over near this thing so’s we can see what we’re doin’.”
Lee chose this moment to make his move.
“Say, Riley, is it you or Pirate that’s gettin’ the gold?”
“It’s all of us,” Riley said irritably.
“Then maybe you better keep your eye on Pirate. I seen him fingering his dirk when he was looking at you. It don’t make no real difference to me, but I was always one to promote a fair fight and keep backstabbers out of business.”
Pirate, who was not an especially cunning man, took the bait as Lee judged he would.
“That’s a lie,” he said angrily. “I got a quarrel with a man, I fight him face to face.”
“I reckon for gold you’d do most anything,” Riley said disgustedly.
“You callin’ me out?” Pirate’s eye blazed, black and shiny, like a marble.
“I’m telling you to forget any notions you got about jumpin’ me while I ain’t lookin’.”
Pirate’s dirk flashed in the firelight. Lee guessed that Pirate had been itching to have it out with Riley and was simply using the opportunity to trigger a fight. Riley glared at the fierce, bearlike man.
“You recall the last time?” Riley said in a quiet voice. “I said the next time I don’t play games. I kill you. You want that now? I’d just as
soon. One less way to divide the gold.”
Pirate’s dirk arced, and Riley leaped aside, a rent now in the dirty sleeve of his left forearm. A long-bladed, evil-looking knife appeared in his right hand, gleaming deadly purpose.
As Lee had hoped, all eyes were upon the fight. The outcome was going to be final this time. No man among them cared to miss any of it. Including the stubble-bearded man who had been put in charge of the prisoners. His eyes strayed to the fight along with everyone else’s. Lee decided to wait a bit, until the fight was really under way and excitement had been worked up—and the prisoners were completely forgotten.
Riley made a lunge. Pirate dodged to his right, swinging his left arm back, his right hand carrying the dirk in a quick slice to Riley’s middle, which tore cloth and drew a trickle of blood on Riley’s flat, hard belly. Riley backed off to avoid the back sweep of the dirk and faked a cut to the heart, which Pirate responded to by dancing aside. Then Riley came up under Pirate’s right arm, slicing deeply into flesh and muscle, causing Pirate to suck in his breath. Pirate tried to respond quickly, but his arm didn’t react with the required deftness and, instead of carrying the dirk to Riley’s face as intended, fell short and again onto Riley’s knife, which rent cloth and flesh again.
Pirate roared in fury and pain and passed the dirk to his left hand in a sudden action which flowed into a jab at Riley’s side. The dirk tore cloth, but only scratched flesh before being knocked away. Riley then did an unexpected thing: he punched Pirate hard on the jaw with his left fist.
The stunned Pirate reeled. Riley kicked the dirk from Pirate’s hand, then came up with a quick jab of his knife towards Pirate’s belly.
Pirate caught the hand just in time, and his vise grip held Riley’s wrist immobile for some seconds. Riley tried to swing with his left again, but Pirate caught that wrist as well.
Lee took Carmen’s hand, and their eyes met. Lee looked at the man who was supposed to be guarding them, saw he was absorbed completely in the fight. Lee moved backwards, leading Carmen, until they were both out of the ring of men. Then Lee suddenly pulled Carmen to her feet and they turned and ran.
There was a horrible scream from Pirate. They knew it was his death scream, but neither Lee nor Carmen turned to look. They gained the pines.
Shouts and gunfire sounded. Bullets whistled in the air around them. Carmen tripped and fell. Lee tried to pull her to her feet, lost his own footing and fell also. By the time they got up, three men were standing there with guns trained on them, just looking for an excuse to shoot.
Riley appeared.
“Tie ’em up,” he said shortly. “This ain’t goin’ to happen again.”
Chapter Eighteen
Amanda Littleton had sent for Walter Bingham nearly two hours earlier. She sat beside her husband, watching over him as he slept. Harold Ford, the boy, was lying very still in his cot, which she had had set up in the same room that her husband lay in, so that she could see to them both as best she could. The doctor had been sent for also, but it would be at least two more hours before he could get here, assuming he was not out seeing someone at the time the hand got to town. She only hoped her husband and the boy could hold on until the doctor arrived.
Tommy had been crying off and on since the brutal shooting of the San Pablo sheriff took place right before his eyes. Now to see his father hurt, and Ford also, was very difficult for him to understand. She had tried to keep him from seeing his father and Harold Ford, but Tommy came running to her while she was in the midst of bathing Spike’s head wounds. He stopped suddenly, seeing his father, and clutched her, burying his face in her dress. Now he was in his room asleep, or at least he had seemed asleep the last time she looked in on him.
She was just getting up to take another look, when she heard the clatter of hooves outside in the dark. That sound now sent shivers through her since, with Riley and his gang loose, you couldn’t be sure that a visitor would be friendly.
Walter Bingham’s bulldog face, when he came in, was serious and deeply troubled. He took off his hat and stood awkwardly in the entryway when she invited him in.
“Your hand told me that Spike had been hurt, and that you wanted my help. What can I do? Is he able to talk to me? I’d like to see him.”
“He’s asleep. I sent for you because Mr. Calloway needs help. Riley took Carmen from here, shooting Sheriff Hawkins of San Pablo, and may very well have tortured her to find out what Mr. Calloway has set up for a trap to catch him. Carmen told me that Mr. Calloway loaded a wagon with rocks to make Riley think he had the gold. Then he left Carmen off here, where he thought she would be safe, and drove away into the desert. Mr. Calloway is alone against them all, if he’s still alive. My husband and Harold Ford, one of our hands, went to help but were badly hurt and came back. Ford said send a lot of men, so I’m asking you if you will find some and go help Lee Calloway and Carmen.”
Bingham stepped uncomfortably from one foot to the other and then back again. He fumbled with his hat, looking over her shoulder into the middle distance.
“Now you don’t want to take this wrong,” he said diffidently. “But Riley is part Injun. If we mess with him, he’s apt to bring Two Fingers’ band down on the town, burnin’ and lootin’ it. Includin’ the ranches. Do you want that? I don’t. So I’d rather not try to do anything about Riley. Calloway, he’s from somewheres else. None of us here knows who he is, or what he wants. That sheriff from San Pablo said he killed a man there and has been sentenced to hang. Looks to me as though he’s just a fortune hunter like the rest. If he gets himself killed, that’s his business, far as I’m concerned. As for Carmen, I’m sorry as all get out about her, but we got to think of everybody else in town as well as her. If we get Riley mad at the rest of us, a whole lot of people may get theirselves killed, instead of just Carmen. I know she’s a friend of yours, but try to think of the good of everyone.”
“Mr. Bingham,” she said icily, “I believe you are a coward. You don’t want to help because you are afraid. It hasn’t got anything to do with the good of everyone, and you know it. My husband was wounded in the head, and he went riding off to help anyway. He came back only when he and Harold Ford were so badly hurt neither of them could do much more than stand up. I believe Spike would have kept after them still if he had had a horse, and if Harold Ford had not been needing help so badly. Now, I want you to come with me.”
He looked down at his hat, crumpling the brim in his hands. She thought for a moment that perhaps she was being too harsh. Perhaps he really was concerned for all the people in town and the surrounding area. It was certainly possible that Riley could seek vengeance by bringing down Two Fingers and his band of Indian raiders on the town.
But she still felt strongly that Lee Calloway and Carmen should be helped. Carmen, she knew, was the sort who would help someone else, if needed, and Calloway seemed to be the same way, from what Carmen had said of him. She said he’d been falsely accused of the murder, and Mandy had enough faith in Carmen’s judgment of him to be willing to believe it. The man had courage at least, to purposely decoy Riley away from Carmen by giving the impression he had the gold. That didn’t seem to her the act of a man who’d kill someone over cards.
People should band together, she thought, and make sacrifices to help one another. If they did, all were the better for it. And no man like Riley would be able to withstand the combined force of what the town could put forward to fight him with, if only they were willing to.
She led the way into the bedroom, to her husband’s bedside. She didn’t want to wake him, for he needed his rest. But she also knew that Spike would be the first one to insist that he be awakened if it was possible his words could make a man like Bingham change his mind and decide to help.
She shook him very gently.
“Oh, please don’t wake him,” Bingham said in a whisper.
“Spike,” she said as her husband’s eyes opened and looked at her. He smiled a little, seeing her, and she smiled back. “Spike,�
�� she said, “Walter Bingham is here. I want you to tell him what you can to help him when he goes after Riley.”
Bingham became obviously uncomfortable. He rubbed his face with his hand, and looked everywhere but at Spike.
“You’re goin’ after ’em?” Spike said in surprise. “I didn’t know you had it in you, Walter. Take your pick of my guns. You know where they are.”
“Well, I ...” Bingham began. Amanda looked at him with raised eyebrows, silently challenging him to tell Spike the reason why he couldn’t go after Riley. Bingham truly did have a cowardly streak in him. He didn’t try to get out of it to Spike’s face. He was afraid of Spike’s opinion. “Well, tell me where you saw them last and what you know that I should know,” he said heavily.
“Ain’t much I do know,” Spike said. “Just what I expect Mandy’s already told you about the wagon load of rocks and Carmen bein’ taken captive by Riley. I don’t know if they’ve tortured her yet. I expect they have by this time, if they was going to. But they’ll be followin’ the tracks, I reckon, to wherever they lead. Calloway’ll be waitin’ on the other end of those tracks. He may be dead by now too. What time is it?”
“Nearly eleven o’clock,” Amanda said, looking at the pendulum clock on the shelf across the candle-lit room.
“If you go as hard as you can, you might still do some good,” Spike said. “Let me see if ...” He tried to get out of bed, but Amanda pushed him back down firmly. “No,” he said. “I want to try.”
She continued to object, but he sat up in bed and then squeezed his eyes tightly shut. He teetered, then fell back moaning.
“I guess it’s no good,” he said. “You’ll have to do whatever can be done, Walter. Good luck.”
Amanda showed Bingham out, watched him go off into the night, looking trapped. He would ride, she knew, because Spike’s good opinion mattered to him. He admired Spike. Bingham was not a bad man, and most of the time he was quite helpful. But when he was confronted with something that was going to be very dangerous to himself, he was not able to face it easily and, as now, not without prodding. It was only because he wanted to be well thought of by Spike that he was going. It was his pride, in other words. Sometimes, she thought, it must be very difficult to be a man.