“Do you have dynamite or just blasting powder?” he asked as he pointed out the places to Kingman.
“We have a crate of dynamite. That’ll make it easier, won’t it?”
Conrad nodded. “Yeah, we can direct the charges better with dynamite. There’s a problem, though. Somebody’s going to have to light the fuses, and it’ll have to be timed perfectly so the explosion and avalanche will catch Hissop, Leatherwood, and the other gunmen while they’re in the pass.”
“You’re saying that whoever does that might not have a chance to get clear before the blast?”
“It’ll be a near thing,” Conrad said.
Kingman nodded. “I’ll do it.”
“Not a good idea,” Conrad replied with a shake of his head. “Selena’s counting on you staying alive, and so is everybody else. You said you didn’t want to take over this community like Hissop did with Juniper Canyon, but you are the leader of these folks, Kingman. There’s no getting around that. They need you alive and well, and they’re going to need you even more if the valley is closed off from the outside world.”
“I can’t ask one of my friends to do something I’m not willing to do myself,” Kingman argued.
“You won’t be. I’ll do it.”
“Not a chance,” Kingman said instantly. “You’ve still got those youngsters to find. Somewhere out there they are depending on you whether they know it or not.” He thought about it and grimaced. “I guess we can ask for a volunteer. Either that or draw lots. That might be more fair.”
“We’ll go back and talk it over with everyone. That’s the best thing to do.” Conrad stowed away the field glasses. “Right now we’ve determined the most important thing.”
“What’s that?”
Conrad gestured toward the towering stone walls. “If we put the dynamite in the right place and set it off at the right time, we can drop a few thousand tons of rock right on top of Hissop and Leatherwood, burying them for all time.”
“I can’t think of any two varmints who deserve it more.”
Chapter 34
Conrad didn’t think it was likely Hissop and Leatherwood would approach the valley until the next day, but since he couldn’t rule it out he set up shifts of guards, led by Ollie, who would stand watch at the other end of the pass. Kingman fetched the crate of dynamite and set the volatile stuff down carefully in front of Conrad, who lifted the lid to examine the waxed cylinders. The dynamite looked to be in decent shape. It wasn’t sweating liquid hell, the way some dynamite did when it got old and unstable.
“What about fuse and blasting caps?” Conrad asked.
“We have plenty of both. Like I told you, I thought about blasting out some of the springs to try to make them flow better, so I made several trips to the nearest settlement in Nevada to pick up supplies.”
“Paying for them with money you stole in those train robberies,” Conrad pointed out.
Kingman grimaced. “I don’t deny that we’ve been outlaws and rustlers in the past. Maybe we ought to answer to the law for the things we’ve done. But that’s all behind us now. If we can live peacefully here in the valley, we will. It’s good land, and it’ll support us.” He shrugged. “But if you feel the need to turn us in when this is over . . .”
“I didn’t say that. Maybe you’ll get that second chance Hissop was talking about. A real second chance this time.”
Kingman nodded. “Thanks, Browning. Now, do you think there’s enough light left to start rigging those charges?”
“I think we’d better, just in case Hissop shows up sooner than we’re expecting him.”
They loaded the crate of dynamite in the buggy, which was still in the barn, and hitched four horses to the vehicle.
Arturo said, “I’ll drive.”
“Are you sure?” Conrad asked. “You’ll have a box of dynamite right behind you.”
“That hardly seems more dangerous than some of the other things I’ve done since I’ve been in your employ, sir,” Arturo pointed out.
Conrad grinned. “I suppose that’s true enough. Just be careful.”
“I’ll try not to drive like a . . . how do you put it? Like a bat out of hell.”
Kingman slung coils of fuse and a bag full of blasting caps on his saddle, and he and Conrad rode on either side of the buggy as Arturo pointed the vehicle up the main trail to the pass. When they got there, they found Ollie and another man standing guard.
“Any sign of Hissop and Leatherwood?” Kingman asked them.
Ollie shook his head. “Nope, and we been watchin’ good, too, Dan.” He held up a telescope. “I brought me a spyglass.”
Kingman clapped him on the shoulder. “Keep up the good work. We’re going to plant that dynamite so it’ll be ready for tomorrow.”
Conrad dismounted and looked up at the rock walls looming over him. He had brought a pack with him. He loaded sticks of dynamite into it, along with fuses and caps, and slung it on his back. It was a nerve-wracking feeling, carrying that much leashed destruction.
“I can do that,” Kingman offered.
“No, I’ve got it. I’ve handled explosives before.” Just not to any great extent, Conrad added to himself, and not while climbing up a cliff.
“Now it’s my turn to tell you to be careful, sir,” Arturo said as Conrad got ready to climb.
“I appreciate that. If I get up there and fall, there’s one thing you have to remember.”
“What’s that, sir?”
Conrad smiled. “Try not to be where I land.”
“I assure you, I’ll be going in the other direction as fast as humanly possible.”
Conrad started the ascent. There were three cracks on that side of the pass where he wanted to wedge in bundles of dynamite, and four on the other side. He had to take it slow and careful, so he knew the job was going to require the rest of the day.
It was painstaking, nerve-tightening work. The climb itself wasn’t easy, and the knowledge of what he was carrying in the pack on his back made it even worse. He climbed to the highest spot where he wanted to put the dynamite and found a place where he could brace himself with his feet while he worked. He tried not to think about the sixty or seventy feet of empty air underneath him as he slid the pack around and reached into it for the dynamite.
The cylinders tied together in bundles of five would provide a big enough explosion to blow a huge chunk of rock off the wall. He pressed a blasting cap onto the end of one of the sticks. When it detonated, it would set off the other sticks. After attaching the fuse to it, he unrolled some of the powder-laced cord and began climbing down to the second location he had picked out.
When he had the dynamite in place there, he cut a length of fuse from a second coil, attached one end of it to the blasting cap, and twisted the other end securely around the fuse leading up to the first bundle. He continued unrolling fuse as he descended to the third blast site, where he repeated the process. The lowest of the three charges would go off first, but he thought he had the fuses cut properly so the explosions would follow each other very closely, one after the other.
By the time he finished preparing the explosives on the other wall, the light was fading fast, his muscles trembled with weariness, and he was soaked with sweat from the exertion and from the nervous strain of working with dynamite. But he had a length of fuse reaching almost to the ground on both sides of the pass. The stuff would burn fast. If the fuses were lit just as Hissop and the others entered the pass, the blasts ought to occur while they were still between the walls.
Of course, that meant not only would whoever lit the fuses be in danger from the explosions themselves, he would also be smack-dab in the gunsights of the bloodthirsty avenging angels as he did his job and then lit a shuck out of there.
“I’ve got to admit, I was sweating for you, and I wasn’t even up there,” Kingman said. “It looked like you did a fine job.”
Conrad nodded. “We’ll see. We won’t know for sure what’s going to happen until the dy
namite goes off.”
“Even if it doesn’t completely block the pass, the falling rock ought to wipe out Hissop’s bunch.”
Arturo said, “The proof is in the pudding, as the old saying goes. Of course, in this case, I don’t believe there’ll actually be any pudding. Shall we go?”
Conrad chuckled. “Yeah. Ollie, keep your eyes open.”
“Will do, Mr. Browning!”
Conrad, Arturo, and Kingman returned to the settlement where Selena had supper ready for them. Conrad washed up and put on a clean shirt before he sat down to eat. His nerves had settled down, and he felt fairly good, although he was still worried about what Hissop and Leatherwood were planning. Chances were, it would be a straightforward attack, but Conrad couldn’t rule out some sort of surprise. Both men were cunning enemies.
After supper, Kingman said, “I think I’ll ride back up to the pass and make sure the guards are staying alert.”
“I’ll come with you,” Conrad offered.
Kingman waved that aside. “You’ve done plenty today. We never would have gotten away from Juniper Canyon if you hadn’t come up with the crazy idea of using a wind wagon, and then you handled the job of planting that dynamite. Get some rest, Browning. You’ve earned it.”
Conrad shrugged and nodded. “All right, you’ve convinced me.”
Kingman went to saddle a horse, and Arturo left to go back to the cabin he and Conrad were occupying for the time being. Conrad lingered on the porch of the cabin where Kingman and Selena were staying. It was a warm evening, with just a hint of coolness in the air to make it comfortable.
A soft step behind him made him look over his shoulder. Selena had come out of the cabin. She stepped up to the railing beside him and rested her hands on it.
“I can’t believe I’m here,” she murmured. “If Father Agony had gotten his way, by now I would have been his wife for more than a day. The first day in hell. It’s thanks to you that didn’t happen, Conrad.”
“And thanks to Arturo and Kingman and all your other friends as well,” Conrad pointed out. “I sure didn’t do it by myself.”
“Maybe not, but none of it would have happened without you.” She turned to him and rested her hand on his arm. “And you’ve done all this for . . . for a stranger.”
He smiled. “I’d say it was a pleasure, but that would be exaggerating a mite. Let’s just say I’m glad I could help, and leave it at that.”
“I can’t,” Selena said. “I can’t leave it at that, Conrad.”
He suddenly realized what was about to happen and would have put a stop to it, but she didn’t give him a chance. Before he could move, Selena leaned forward, came up a little on her toes—not much, because she was almost as tall as he was—and pressed her lips to his in a kiss.
Chapter 35
“What in the world!”
The startled shout came from somewhere nearby and caused Selena to gasp and jump away from Conrad. Kingman strode to the bottom of the porch steps and stared at them. The light coming from inside the cabin revealed his face was twisted in lines of surprise, confusion, and anger.
“Dan, please,” Selena began. “I wasn’t—”
“I saw what you were doing,” Kingman cut in. “It seems pretty obvious.” He swung his gaze toward Conrad. Anger dominated his expression. “And you, Browning, I reckon you lied to my face earlier. I wouldn’t have known if I hadn’t come back to get some extra ammo before I started out to the pass.”
“You’re wrong, Kingman,” Conrad said flatly. “Nothing happened here except Selena was thanking me for my help. That’s all it was.”
A disgusted snort came from Kingman. “Thanking you?” he repeated. “Is that what you call it? Looked to me like she was about to thank you right into bed! Was that story you told me about being a grieving widower a lie, or do you just not give a damn about your wife’s memory?”
Hot rage bubbled up inside Conrad, but he tamped it down and kept his voice calm and steady. “You’re not thinking straight. If I was going to make a play for your woman, I wouldn’t do it right out here in the open where anybody could see us, like you just did, now would I?”
“You thought I’d already ridden out to the pass,” Kingman shot back. “You thought nobody else was around.”
“Dan, that’s not true,” Selena insisted. “You’ve got the wrong idea. Maybe I was too impulsive, but I was just talking to Mr. Browning, and I felt so grateful to him for everything he’s done. I . . . I didn’t think, I just . . . I’m sorry. It didn’t mean anything. I swear.” She glanced at Conrad. “No offense.”
“None taken, I promise you.”
“Well, this is sweet as all get-out, but I don’t believe you,” Kingman said bitterly. “Either of you. There’s nothing I can do about it now because we need everybody to help us beat Hissop and Leatherwood, but I promise you, Browning, when this is over, you and I will settle this.”
“If you’re bound and determined to make a fool of yourself, I suppose I can’t stop you,” Conrad said coldly. He stood and watched as Kingman turned and stalked off into the darkness.
“What have I done?” Selena murmured in a voice taut with pain. “I never meant for this to happen. I never meant to hurt either of you.”
Conrad could have told her if she didn’t mean to hurt anybody, she ought to have better control of her emotions and impulses, but he didn’t see how that would help anything. “Maybe he’ll cool off by morning.”
“No. You don’t know Dan as well as I do. Once he gets his mind set on something, he won’t change it.”
“He decided he was wrong to try to kill me and Arturo,” Conrad pointed out.
“Yes, but you forced him to change his mind by saving his life, and mine.”
“Who knows what tomorrow will bring?” Conrad asked.
While he couldn’t answer that question fully, he had a pretty good idea of some of the things the new day would bring with it . . .
Blood, and destruction, and death.
Conrad was up before dawn the next morning. When he left Arturo sleeping in the other bunk and went outside, he didn’t see Kingman anywhere, but he didn’t look for the man, either. There was no point in going out of his way for a confrontation.
He saddled a horse and rode up to the pass. A man holding a rifle stepped out from behind a boulder to challenge him, then lowered the weapon as he recognized Conrad.
“Oh, it’s you, Mr. Browning,” the sentry said. He was one of the men who had stayed behind in the valley when Conrad and the others went to Juniper Canyon to rescue Selena and the other women.
“Any sign of Hissop and Leatherwood?” Conrad asked.
“No, it’s been mighty quiet all night,” the man reported. “I reckon they’ll be here before the day’s over, though.”
Conrad nodded. “I think you’re right.” He looked at the fuses hanging down the walls of the pass. Everything appeared to be just like he’d left it the day before. The red cylinders of dynamite were hidden in the cracks where he had placed them, and the fuses themselves were almost the same color as the rock walls, so they weren’t very noticeable. Of course, once the fuses started burning, the sputtering sparks they gave off would be visible, but Conrad hoped the avenging angels would be charging into the pass in such heat of battle they wouldn’t see the fuses until it was too late.
He rode back down to the settlement to get some breakfast and found that Arturo had gotten up while he was gone and started a pot of coffee boiling on the stove in the cabin they were using. The coffee came from their supplies that had been left in the buggy, as did the bacon Arturo was frying to go with flapjacks.
“How does the situation look this morning?” Arturo asked from the stove.
“No sign of Hissop and Leatherwood yet. It’s just a matter of time, though. As soon as I’ve eaten, I’m riding back up to the pass, and I’ll stay there until they show up. I’m going to be the one to light those fuses.”
“Is young Mr. Kingman aware of t
hat?”
“I don’t care what he’s aware of,” Conrad said. “Some things he thinks he knows, he’s got all wrong.”
“Ah, yes, the kiss. I’m not absolutely convinced that he is wrong about that, although of course it’s not really my place to say so.”
“Heard about it, did you?”
“I suspect everyone in the community has.”
Conrad frowned. “Wait a minute. What did you mean when you said you aren’t sure Kingman was wrong about what happened?”
“Well . . . I’m not exactly the most astute observer of human behavior in the world, but I have been around a lot of people in my line of work, and from what I’ve seen I’m convinced Miss Webster does indeed have romantic feelings for you.”
Conrad shook his head. “That’s crazy. She’s married to Kingman.”
“Not officially,” Arturo pointed out. “As Mr. Kingman himself admitted, they simply declared themselves married. There’s nothing really binding about it, either legally or religiously. Technically, Miss Webster is still free to be with whomever she chooses, and at the moment she feels a great deal of gratitude to you. I suggest that it has influenced her emotions to the point where she’s mistaking that gratitude for something else. Add to that a degree of physical attraction, and you have a very confused young woman who’s thinking with her heart, not her head.” Arturo held out a cup. “Coffee?”
“Yeah.” Maybe Arturo was right, but Conrad didn’t like to think so. If Selena actually had fallen for him, it could only complicate things. Once Paradise Valley, if that’s what they were going to call the place, was safe from Hissop and his bloodthirsty avenging angels, it would be a good idea for him and Arturo to get out of there as quickly as possible.
If they could get out after the pass was blocked, he amended. He was convinced there had to be another way in and out of the valley. There had been no chance to explore it fully. The idea of being stuck there was unacceptable, and not just because of the potential awkwardness with Selena and Kingman.
The Loner: The Blood of Renegades Page 17