.45-Caliber Deathtrap

by Peter Brandvold

  A second before he’d identified the smell, his heart leapt.

  He edged his eyes above the lip and stared through small rocks and stage tufts.

  A man’s silhouette sat before him, holding a quirley to his mouth. The quirley glowed, dimly lighting the man’s narrow, unshaven face, hawk nose, and the underside of his soiled hat brim. Bandoliers crisscrossed his chest.

  The man blew out cigarette smoke as he lifted his rifle in one hand, aimed the barrel at Cuno, and laughed.

  “Lookee what I found here!”

  The rifle boomed, stabbing flames.

  17

  CUNO DROPPED HIS head beneath the ridge’s lip, gritting his teeth as the .44 round carved a furrow across his right temple. Wincing against the instant headache, he pressed his forehead to the stone and clawed his .45 from its holster.

  There was a sharp, metallic rasp as the man atop the ridge raked another shell into his rifle’s breech.

  Digging the fingers of his left hand into the ridge crest above his shoulder, Cuno raised the Colt’s barrel above his head and fired three shots.

  A grunt and heavy footfall.

  Cuno lifted his head to peer into the darkness above the ridge. The man stumbled to Cuno’s right. Cursing, he dropped to a knee, clutching his belly with the hand that had been holding the rifle.

  Blood dribbling down his temple, Cuno hoisted himself up and over the top, quickly gaining his feet and striding toward the night guard lying in the brush. The man was trying to draw a pistol from a shoulder holster worn over a beaded leather vest. His chest and belly glistened with fresh blood.

  Cuno shot him through the forehead, then turned to the ridge, breathing through his mouth as he listened. Below, men were yelling and the horses were stomping around, nickering.

  A man yelled, “The Chink’s gone!”

  A scurry of footfalls beneath the creek’s rush, then: “Goddamnit. Someone nabbed her. Saddle the fucking horses!”

  Cuno cursed his own blue streak as he sheathed the six-shooter and ran back to the ridge’s lip. He grabbed the rope and looked down to where the girl made a vague outline against the rock face. Her face was a brown oval canted toward him.

  “I’m haulin’ you up!” he yelled loudly enough for only her to hear. “Use your feet if you can.”

  “I can,” came the girlish voice, thin and brittle with fear.

  “Now!” Cuno ground his heels into the turf and pulled hand over fist, leaning forward and putting his shoulders into it, his thick neck bulging.

  From below sounded the scrapes and scuffs as the girl rose toward him, kicking off the wall, giving little fearful grunts and groans as she spun and knocked a hip or shoulder against the unforgiving stone.

  A man yelled from the other ridge, “Shots came from over there.” The voice echoed. Cuno shunted his gaze across the canyon. The other picket was probably standing atop the opposite ridge, pointing in his direction. The man had seen the gun flashes. He could probably even make out Cuno and the girl’s figure toiling along the ridge.

  “Come on, girl!” Cuno rasped.

  Li Mei didn’t weigh much—probably not even a hundred pounds—so he had her within an arm’s reach in under a minute.

  A rifle cracked, an orange flash on the other ridge, directly across from Cuno. The slug shattered against stone well below the girl.

  Holding the rope taut in one hand, Cuno reached down with the other and grabbed her arm. The picket on the opposite ridge fired again, the slug cracking off a rock a good ten yards below and left. Cuno pulled the girl straight up and set her down beside him.

  She tripped over her own feet and fell. She was a gamer, though, and quickly pulled herself to her feet. She’d heard the men and the horses scrambling around in the canyon, as Cuno had. Panting, she shook her hair from her eyes and looked up at Cuno expectantly.

  In the canyon below, the men yelled more shrilly, arguing over who’d been watching the girl, no doubt. There were indistinct thumps and rustles as the killers scrambled to saddle their horses.

  Two rifles barked almost at once, the slugs plunking into the brush and rocks at Cuno’s and the girl’s feet.

  A couple of hard cases, keying on the pickets’ shots, were shooting from directly below.

  Cuno grabbed the girl’s arm and pulled her away from the ridge lip, then crouched to regard her gravely. “I’ve got a horse about two hundred yards that way. Think you can make it?”

  “I can make it!”

  Several more shots sounded, the slugs spanging off the ridge’s brushy, rocky lip.

  Automatically, Cuno grabbed his rope from the tree and quickly coiled it over his arm. He took the girl’s hand and began running away from the canyon. “Let’s go!”

  She limped along boldly for a while, but after thirty yards she slowed, her knees bending. She sobbed. “My feet are still numb!”

  “I’ve got you!” Cuno turned, stooped, threw her over his shoulder, and resumed running, the girl flopping on his arm and down his back as he leapt sage shrubs and rabbitbrush.

  The girl didn’t weigh much, but she’d begun to feel twice her weight by the time he’d gained the opposite ridge crest and started his descent. Halfway down, he stopped, set her down against a boulder, and dropped to one knee. He canted his head, listening.

  “What are—?”

  “Shhh.”

  In the far distance, he could make out the muffled clomp of shod hooves.

  “They are coming,” said Li Mei thinly.

  “Come on.” Cuno gentled her over his shoulder and resumed his weaving course down the ridge.

  The roan stood where he’d staked it near a spring nestled in a cottonwood grove, starlight gleaming in its hide like sequins. The horse whinnied when it heard Cuno and the girl coming, and reared, pulling against its rope. Cuno set the girl on the horse’s back, behind the saddle, then grabbed the reins and climbed into the leather.

  “Hold on tight, girl!” Cuno said. “We’re gonna ride like hell!”

  He turned the horse away from the trees and ground his heels into its flanks. They bulled through brush, leapt a narrow creek, and headed south through the canyon, which he was only somewhat certain had an outlet. If he was wrong, the killers were going to have a high old time very soon, picking Cuno and Li Mei off like pintails on a back eddy…

  As the horse rode haltingly through the brush and pines along the creek, the canyon walls leaned in, blocking out the stars. Cuno’s heart fell. A box canyon.

  Then they traced a long, gentle bend, and the pines opened, leaning back against the canyon walls. Not far beyond, a crack shone in the wall ahead, salted with flickering stars. The horse balked at the rocks crowding the canyon’s back door. Cuno cooed to the mount, reining it this way and that, until they found a game path through the rubble.

  After one final leap, with shod hooves clacking off stones and rocks tumbling behind, horse and riders were through the wall, tearing off down another, wider canyon on the other side.

  They’d ridden ten minutes when shadows moved fifty yards ahead, starlight winking off metal. A man shouted, “There!”

  Feeling the girl behind him draw a sharp breath, Cuno checked the roan down. “Shit.” The canyon the killers had occupied must not have been a box canyon either.

  He turned the horse as pistols popped behind him, and galloped back the way he’d come. Seconds later, he again hauled back on the reins.

  More men were riding toward him—jostling silhouettes against the pine-enclosed game path. They had him surrounded, cut off.

  Cuno jerked his head from left to right. Up the pine-covered hill to his left, a faint opening in the trees.

  “Hold on, girl!”

  She sucked another breath, tightened her arms about his waist, and pressed her cheek to his sweat-slick back as he neck-reined the horse right. In seconds, they were bounding up the knoll, the horse’s hooves snapping branches, pistols and rifles cracking behind them, the slugs plunking into trees and spangi
ng off rocks and buzzing like hornets about their ears.

  The roan snorted, dug its hooves in as the grade steepened and the trail turned slightly right.

  Cuno cast a quick glance over his left shoulder. The riders were keeping pace, pistols popping and stabbing orange flames into the darkness. A slug whipped so close to his right cheek that he could feel the slight, tingling burn as it continued past and zinged into the stone-floored trail rising before the horse’s lunging front hooves.

  “Keep your head down,” he told Li Mei, turning his own head forward, kicking the roan’s ribs, and whipping the rein ends against its hindquarters, urging more speed.

  Behind him, growing louder, the killers yelled and whooped like demons, the hooves of their racing horses clacking over the hillside’s exposed granite. They rode single file along the overgrown wagon trail, ducking under pine boughs protruding from the forest on both sides.

  The trail forked. Avoiding bullets, Cuno followed the right fork, the horse climbing still higher.

  Too high, too steep. They couldn’t stay ahead of the gang at this pace.

  On a slight, level shelf in the hillside, Cuno reined the horse to a skidding halt and slipped out of the saddle. He grabbed Li Mei in both arms, ripped her off the horse’s back, her hair flying, the girl shrieking with shock.

  Cuno had seen what looked like the frame of an old digging on the left. The cover was the only chance he and the girl had to hold the killers at bay.

  Holding the girl’s left arm, he slipped his Winchester from the horse’s sheath, then rammed the butt against the roan’s right hip. The roan gave an indignant whinny and galloped up the hill, stirrups batting its sides, shod hooves slipping on the slick, uneven stone.

  Running, half-dragging the girl behind him, Cuno glanced back the way he’d come. The killers approached in a mass, triggering shots and shouting angry curses.

  “They’re on their feet!”

  “Run ’em the fuck down.”

  “Damnit, I want that girl back. Whoever took her is gonna die slow!”

  Cuno stopped, shoved the girl forward. “Run into that mine and get as far back as you can.”

  A bullet streaked past his face, chewing bark from the tree behind him. He rammed a shell into the Winchester’s breech and dropped to a knee. He fired three quick rounds into the dark, shadowy horde approaching now within thirty yards.

  Hearing more angry curses and the scream of a wounded horse, Cuno bolted forward through the pines. Ahead, the girl climbed the strewn mine tailings on her hands and knees. Once past the rubble, she turned into the timbered frame of the mine portal.

  Cuno followed her, holding the Winchester in his right hand, his leather boot soles slipping along the strewn rocks and gravel, twisting his ankles. Falling, he cut his wrist, scrambled quickly to his feet, and continued lunging over the ore.

  From what he could tell in the darkness, the tunnel was low but deep, and it dropped quickly into the hill. It smelled like minerals, gunpowder, and bat guano. Hearing the shouts of Cannady’s men, he turned toward the forest beyond the tailings. Shadows moved toward him, spread out amongst the trees, often indistinguishable from the tree trunks. Several men fired toward the portal. Cuno knelt, snaked his Winchester around the frame, and, keying on the bursts of orange, let go several blue whistlers.

  The shooting paused. The shadows dropped or scrambled for cover.

  “Oh, God…oh, God….” It was the girl behind him. When Cuno paused in his shooting to turn to her, she said in a quaking voice, “There’s nowhere to go. We’re trapped.”

  Cuno ejected a smoking shell, aimed at a moving shadow, and fired.

  “Shit!” a man screeched, dropping down behind a tree.

  Cuno ejected that shell and levered a fresh one.

  Watching the shadows spread out around him, he knew the girl was right. They had nowhere to go. Cuno probably had a dozen .44 shells in his pistol belt, maybe six .45s for the revolver. Doubtful there was a back door to the mine shaft.

  The gang could simply wait them out.

  One of the gang members seemed to be reading his mind.

  “All you done is found a grave, you son of a bitch!” Laughter pitched the man’s voice high. “Why don’t you throw the girl out? No point in her dyin’ when it ain’t necessary. I was just gonna give her to a friend has a whorehouse to Sundance.”

  “Better she die of the clap than lead poisoning,” another man called.

  Several more shots rapped the weathered frame of the shaft, spraying slivers. Cuno and Li Mei moved back into the shaft and lay prone on the dusty, wooden floor strewn with rocks fallen from the ceiling.

  Cuno returned fire, keeping the brow of the floor before him, which absorbed most of the hard cases’ fusillade.

  He’d just fired another round when, ejecting the casing, he glanced back at Li Mei cowering against the wall off his right shoulder.

  “I reckon all I did was take you out of the frying pan and throw you into the fire. Maybe you best do what Cannady wants. Take your chances in Sundance.”

  “I will not,” Li Mei said resolutely. “I will die here with you. The man who tried to save me.”

  “You’ll be dying with a copper-riveted fool. I couldn’t have dragged you into a worse situation if I’d tried.”

  The sentence had barely left his lips than the floor dropped an inch or so, the wood planks cracking beneath his weight.

  Cuno’s heart stopped. He held his breath, looking down. The planks hadn’t been laid on solid ground. They’d been laid across a hole. The eerie screech and whine of ancient wood slowly giving beneath him assaulted his ears.

  “Oh!” Li Mei cried.

  “You know,” Cuno said thinly, pushing slowly onto his elbows, “I might’ve spoke too soon.” The wood cracked again, dropping farther. Cuno’s voice rose as he threw an arm toward the girl. “Crawl on back away—!”

  The floor opened up like a giant mouth, the wood cracking and the broken planks dropping with a great belching, thundering din.

  Cuno heard Li Mei’s shrill scream above the roar as he and the girl tumbled straight down into darkness.

  18

  CANNADY LOOKED UP from the rock he’d dived behind, glanced above the mine rubble to the portal. Smoke billowed from the mouth, ghostlike in the darkness. The other men, having heard the rumble, had held fire.

  Cannady glanced at Case Oddfellow and Ned Crockett, crouched behind a boulder to his left. “What the hell was that?”

  “Sounded like a cave-in,” said Case.

  Cannady stared at the gaping mine portal, from which no more sounds issued.

  “Hey, son of a bitch in the mine!” he shouted, cupping his hands around his mouth. “You still kickin’?”

  Nothing.

  “Let’s check it out,” said Ed Brown, standing behind a tree somewhere to Cannady’s right.

  “Hold on,” Cannady ordered. “Might be a trap.”

  “Whinnie,” yelled Brown, his deep voice booming amongst the trees, “go check it out!”

  “I ain’t checkin’ it out. You check it out!”

  “Goddamnit!” Brown shouted, his voice cracking with fury. “I done told you to check it out. You owe me two cartwheels. You check it out, I’ll call us even.”

  Someone snickered. There was the metallic rasp of a rifle lever, the tinny clatter of a spent cartridge falling in gravel.

  “Ah, shit,” said Whinnie, stepping out of the trees left of Brown—a stocky, bulbous-gutted figure in high-topped boots and a high-crowned hat, holding an old-model rifle across his chest. “I’ll check it out, goddamnit, but you sure as pig shit better call us even, or…”

  “Or you’ll what?”

  “Shut up, both of ya,” ordered Cannady. “Whinnie, haul your ass up there and see what the hell happened. Be quick about it. I’d still like to get a little shut-eye before dawn.”

  “All right, all right,” complained Whinnie, crawling over the mine rubble, keeping his head raised t
oward the portal from which only silence issued. The dust had settled. The portal crouched across the rubble like a giant sleeping with his mouth open.

  Whinnie spidered up the rocks and, breathing hard and staying low, edged a look through the mine mouth. He raised his rifle, sent several booming shots into the gaping, black hole. The shots ricocheted like firecrackers in a tin can.

  Slowly, Whinnie straightened, staring intently at the mine floor.

  Cannady chuffed. “Well, what the hell is it?”

  A high-pitched chuckle sounded as the stocky man turned his head toward Cannady. “The floor done fell out from under ’em!”

  Cannady stepped out from the tree. The others followed suit, and soon they’d all clambered over the rocks and stood outside the portal frame, staring into the cave. Like Whinnie had said, the floor had given way, the rotten planks dropping into another mine pit.

  The men stood around the hole, snickering. Whinnie kicked a stone into the cavern. Two seconds later, the dull plop rose up through the darkness.

  “Water,” Whinnie observed. “Good fifty feet down.”

  Cannady dropped to one knee, canted his head over the hole. “Hey, son of a bitch—you alive down there?”

  His voice echoed faintly before the hole swallowed it.

  “Whoever he was,” Case said, “he’s dead now.”

  “The girl too,” said Brown. “Sorry, Cannady. I know how you was wantin’ to turn her over to that whorehouse, make amends with your cousin.”

  Cannady dug around in his shirt pocket, extracted a match. He raked the lucifer to life with his thumbnail and extended his arm into the hole.

  The feeble light revealed only a foot-long stretch of the cavern walls, eight feet across, showing the chips and gouges of rock picks and shovels. Below lay darkness, thick as tar. The cool air wafting up smelled musty and humid. From deep inside the earth’s bowels rose the faintly echoing screech of a rat.

  “What a way to go.” Cannady dropped the match and rose. “Well, just to make sure…” He canted the barrel of his Remington over the hole and loosed six shots, filling the cave mouth with the smell of cordite.