The Romantics

by Peter Brandvold

  It was almost over. They had the treasure. Cameron needed only to get the others safely out of here. When and if that was accomplished, he would return for Bachelard.

  The Cajun was not what filled him with dread, however. What did, was his knowing that soon he would be saying good-bye to Marina. He could not take her from Clark, despite the fact Clark was who he was and that their marriage was a loveless one. It just wouldn’t be right, and it would always be between her and Cameron.

  She was not a woman who could break a vow and be content with the decision, no matter how empty the vow may have been. No, it just wasn’t in the cards. Besides, Cameron fully expected to die when he went back to kill Bachelard. It was just as well. He didn’t want to live with another woman haunting his past.

  After a while, Jimmy returned. Cameron got up, stretched, looked around.

  All was quiet. The canyon was velvet-black with a milky wash of stars hovering low over the jagged peaks. Below, a horse whinnied and fires flickered—a half dozen or so spread a good distance away from each other. Bachelard wasn’t taking any chances. No doubt he had men posted around the cliff, not far from the cave, to make sure no one in Cameron’s group slipped away.

  It appeared he was indeed going to give them until dawn to decide, apparently hoping that the tension would drive them to a desperate, foolhardy decision. That way he wouldn’t lose any men, and the gold would be his without a fight.

  Cameron, Jimmy, and She-Bear took turns staying awake and keeping watch. Cameron’s vigil was first. He woke She-Bear at one o’clock, then lay down, snugging his back against the wall, crossed his legs at the ankles, folded his arms across his chest, and fell fast into a sleep troubled with dreams of tunnels—one dark corridor after another, curling deep into the earth with no light, no end in sight.

  “HELLO THE CAVE … Cameron, what’s your decision?”

  The words came to him as if from deep underground. He stirred but couldn’t wake.

  Someone had grabbed his shoulder and was jostling him. “Jack! Wake up! It’s Bachelard!”

  Cameron suddenly opened his eyes. Jimmy was kneeling over him, silhouetted by a sky filled with golden light. It was morning.

  Holy shit!

  CHAPTER 37

  HE JUMPED TO his knees, drawing his revolver.

  “What happened?” he demanded. From the light in the sky, he could tell he should have been awakened at least an hour ago.

  Jimmy slid his gaze guiltily to She-Bear, kneeling just inside the cave with her rifle butt snugged up against her shoulder. “I—I fell asleep,” Jimmy said repentantly.

  Cameron couldn’t blame him—he hadn’t had much sleep in the past few days, and had been through holy hell to boot—but it was a perilous blunder. He’d hoped to sneak back into the corridor as soon as the first rays of dawn pinkened the sky, well ahead of Bachelard’s stirring.

  “I’m going to count to three,” Bachelard yelled. “You’d better tell me your decision by then, or we’re going to start shooting.”

  Gun in hand, Cameron got down and crawled to the lip of the ledge. He was about to drop his gaze over the side when he saw a half-dozen unshaven faces staring up at him from the tier just below. They were only about twenty yards away, spread about six feet apart, and they all had their rifles trained on him.

  Bachelard was counting: “ … three!”

  Cameron pulled his head back and scrambled inside the cave as a volley of shot pinked the ledge and outside walls of the cave, spanging and throwing up dust and rock chips.

  “Charge!” Bachelard yelled below.

  She-Bear squeezed off a round, slipped another shell into the chamber of her single-shot, fired again. Cameron heard the growing sound of footfalls. A face appeared on the left side of the cave’s opening. The gun in the man’s hand barked. She-Bear flew backwards, dropping her rifle.

  Cameron lifted his Colt, fired, and watched the man grab his throat and stagger backwards off the ledge. Another man appeared on the right; before he could fire, Cameron shot him in the belly, and Jimmy blew a hole through his knee. The man yelled, crumpling and crawling out of sight.

  “Jimmy, go!” Cameron yelled. “Tell the others to run for it down the back corridor! Go!”

  “Here!” The boy tossed Cameron his gun and disappeared through the low door at the back of the cave.

  Firing another round at the canyon floor and keeping his eyes on the opening, hearing yelling and the sound of boots pounding rock, Cameron knelt on one knee beside She-Bear. He was about to check for a pulse when he saw the bullet hole in her forehead, dripping dark red blood.

  “Goddamn it!” he said tightly.

  A blindly fired bullet struck the cave ceiling, ricocheting dangerously before it died. Cameron fired a round at the opening to hold the hordes at bay, turned, and ducked through the door.

  He was halfway down the corridor when he stopped suddenly. He’d heard something. It sounded like the rat-tat-tat of a woodpecker.

  It was a rapidly firing gun.

  The Gatling gun.

  Cameron smiled. The rurales had caught up to him—or to Bachelard, he should say. It couldn’t have happened to a better guy at a better time.

  The yelling picked up, and so did the rifle and pistol fire, only this time it sounded as though the shooting was directed away from the cave; Cameron could no longer hear the muffled pings of slugs hitting the walls and ceiling.

  Curious, wanting a grasp of the situation, while knowing he should go on after the others, he made his way to the door and stepped back into the cave. He could hear the Gatling gun clearly now above the din of rifle and pistol shots.

  The rurales had indeed ridden into the canyon and joined the fray. Apparently Bachelard and his men were well occupied, for no more men or bullets appeared in the cave.

  Smiling with satisfaction, Cameron turned and jogged down the corridor, feeling the way with his hands. When he came to the room with the pit, the candles burned down to nubs told him the others had gone down the corridor.

  Suddenly his stomach filled with bile. The pit in the floor of the corridor. He hadn’t mentioned it to Jimmy!

  “Wait! Stop!” he shouted, tearing off through the dark chasm, feeling his way with his hands, knocking his head on low-bulging stones. “Jimmy! Wait, goddamn it … Hold up!”

  Dead ahead a light appeared. Someone yelled.

  “Wait!” Cameron returned. “Don’t take one more step.”

  He approached the group breathlessly, relieved to see them all together. Marina and Jimmy were standing sideways, facing each other, holding candles. Jimmy had the bulky saddlebags draped over his shoulder. He and Marina looked at Cameron fearfully, wondering what had happened now. Clark sat against the wall with his knees up, looking tired and weak.

  “I forgot—the way is blocked by a pit,” Cameron said. “I’ll have to find it.” He took Jimmy’s candle and turned to Clark. “How you doing?”

  “I’m not going to make it. I’ve lost too much blood; I’m too weak.”

  “You’ll make it, come on.” Cameron reached down and gentled the man to his feet, throwing one arm over his shoulder. Starting out, he held the candle out with his right hand.

  “Why don’t you just leave me?” Clark said. “You know you want to.”

  Cameron made no reply to this. He didn’t want to think about it.

  “She’d like you to, too,” Clark said dryly. “You two would be as snug as two bugs in a rug.”

  “Shut up so I can hear myself think,” Cameron said, holding the candle down at waist level as he searched for the pit. He should have counted his footsteps last night.

  His candle went out. So did Marina’s. He took a deep breath and smelled fresh air.

  “There!” Marina said excitedly. “Do you see it?”

  Peering ahead, he saw what appeared to be a dim pinprick of light. There was an opening about one hundred yards ahead!

  “I see it,” Cameron said. “But I don’t see the pit. Yo
u two stay behind us a good four or five feet. I’m going to walk slow until I run into the same stone I ran into last night.”

  He’d walked maybe thirty feet when he found the rock. Gently setting Clark down against the wall, he lit his candle and held it over the pit, cupping the flame with his free hand.

  The flickering flame revealed a pit about five feet in diameter. It also revealed a fairly shallow bottom, only about six feet deep—an apparent sinkhole sucked under by a water table that had lowered at some point in the last two or three hundred years. The stones around it must have been heaved up from the floor much later, when the ground had contracted.

  Cameron took a giant sideways step across the narrowest end of the hole, then held out his hand for Clark. “You’re going to have to stretch,” he said.

  “I don’t have the energy,” Clark groused.

  “Hold out your hand, goddamn it!” Cameron ordered.

  Clark did as he was told. Cameron pulled him across and Clark cried out in pain as he fell into Cameron’s arms. Cameron eased him down against the wall, then turned to help Marina and Jimmy across the pit.

  Giving Clark a moment to rest, Cameron squatted on his haunches. Marina did the same, mopping the sweat from her husband’s brow with a handkerchief.

  “I don’t know why you’re doing this,” Clark said, his voice pinched with pain. “You know you two would like nothing more than to have me out of the picture.”

  “Please be quiet, Adrian,” Marina said, her voice not so much admonishing as sad.

  He looked at her keenly. “Can you tell me it’s not true?”

  Marina said nothing. Clark scoffed, and squeezed his eyes shut against the fatigue and pain racking his body. He crumpled, coughing.

  “I’d give my share of the gold for one slug of brandy,” he moaned.

  Frowning with puzzlement, Marina looked at Cameron. “The woman … ?”

  “Dead.”

  Marina softly closed her eyes.

  “The rurales arrived just as we were pulling out,” Cameron said. “That might be why Bachelard isn’t behind us. We have to keep moving, though, because sooner or later one of them will be on our tail—either Bachelard or the rurales … Whoever wins, I s’pose.”

  He turned to Clark. “You ready? We’re almost there.”

  “No,” Clark groaned.

  Cameron pulled him to his feet and led him down the passage. After several yards there was enough light from the opening to see any other possible sinkholes.

  The rumbling grew louder and louder, vibrating the floor and walls of the chasm. The humidity was rising. The air funneling down the passageway smelled freshwater-clean and refreshing.

  Sure enough, Cameron thought, it’s a river. And this must be where it spills out of the mountain.

  As they approached the end of the tunnel yawning wide before them, the ceiling lifting and the walls fanning gradually out around them, he realized he was wrong. The tunnel gave out on a slope terraced by the river. In a bed about twenty feet below, the river broiled loudly between limestone banks about thirty feet apart.

  The three of them stood looking hopelessly around the room, about fifty yards wide and a hundred yards long. Fluted columns of pink limestone rose up along the walls, like sacred reliefs straining toward the heavens. Several swordlike stalactites hung from the domed roof as well, now lit an iridescent salmon by the rising sun, sliding shadows across the red, rocky floor.

  Looking around, Cameron saw that they were not outside, but deep in the mountain, in a high-domed chamber. The light was coming from a high, open dome about a thousand feet above the river.

  The chamber appeared to be the inside of a volcano. Years after the volcano blew its top, the river had apparently carved a passage through the heart of the mountain. It entered through one tunnel it had carved through the ages, and left by another.

  The ancients must have seen the place as sacred, and carved a passage to it. They maybe worshiped here or—who knew?—sent sacrificial victims plummeting to their deaths.

  Clark sank down against the wall and started to laugh. The laugh grew until it resonated off the walls and the high-domed ceiling, rising even above the thunder of the river gushing through the chasm below. It was a laugh of desperation, expressing the horrible futility of their situation. It was a mocking laugh, as well, mocking Cameron for even trying. There was no humor in it at all.

  Cameron stared down at the river and sighed.

  BACHELARD LIFTED HIS head up from the cave where he’d been pinned down when the rurales had opened up with the Gatling gun, thumbed back the hammer on his old Gunnison revolver, and loosed a ball at the gray-clad horsemen swarming down the canyon and yelling in Spanish.

  He couldn’t tell if he hit any of them. Just then the Gatling gun was trained on him, and about five quick rounds chipped rock from the ceiling above him, raining shards down around and on him.

  Of all the lousy luck, he moaned. Rurales!

  They’d caught him and his men by surprise as they’d charged up the old stone staircases toward the cave where Cameron and Clark had bastioned themselves, laying out nearly half of Bachelard’s and Montana’s force in one fell swoop. The others were pinned down on the various tiers, returning fire with their rifles and revolvers, a feeble reply to the metallic barks of the Gading gun backed up by the riflemen nestled in the rubble at the bottom of the canyon.

  Those sons-of bitches bean-eaters really wanted them dead, and they didn’t give a damn if they back-shot them all!

  “Cowards … Oh, you greaser cowards!” Bachelard roared.

  What troubled him more than anything, however, was the gold. He had to get to the cave where Cameron and Clark were pinned down. He’d deal with the rurales once he had the gold.

  He thought briefly of Juanita, hidden in the rocks. She’d be safe there until he could rally his forces with the gold. Then he’d fight his way through the rurales, and rescue his damsel in distress.

  Above the raucous clatter of gunfire, Bachelard heard boots thumping near, saw shadows move on the ledge outside the cave. Then four men stumbled into the cave, one falling and grabbing his leg, the others turning and slamming their backs up against the cave walls, panting, their eyes filled with terror.

  They were all Montana’s men. Bachelard wondered if any of his own Texans were still kicking.

  “Reload your weapons and get ready to storm the cave with the gold,” Bachelard ordered. “It’s just above and to the left.”

  The men looked at him with dumb cows’ eyes, as if they hadn’t comprehended his orders. He knew they’d understood. They were just scared.

  “Do you hear?” Bachelard intoned. “Do you want the gold or don’t you?”

  One of them opened the cylinder of his revolver and started filling it from the bandoliers crisscrossing his chest. The others looked at each other in silent, conspiratorial council. Fortunately for Bachelard, they were only half-reluctant. They were nothing if not loyal, even to this crazy gringo, and if he’d wanted them to try for the gold at the very gates of heaven, they probably would have done it. He was the one with the brains, after all. Who were they but ignorant peon banditos? If it hadn’t been for him and Montana, they’d probably all be dead or moldering in prisons.

  One by one they shrugged and began reloading their revolvers. Bachelard smiled to himself and peered out over the ledge, where the gunfire was growing more and more sporadic. The Gatling gun had gone silent.

  “I think it’s time, my good men,” Bachelard said through a smile.

  Groans rose nearby. Shuttling his gaze, Bachelard saw Miguel Montana crawling on his hands and knees around the entrance to the cave. He clutched his stomach with a blood-soaked hand.

  “Gaston!” he cried. “I’m injured.”

  “Oh, Miguel,” Bachelard said with theatrical lament, feeling a thrill.

  Even in such a situation he was not unhappy to see Montana taken down, something he had been secretly yearning for, for some time. H
e hadn’t wanted to be the one to do it, for Montana’s men might have turned against him and joined forces with some other revolutionary faction. Now it appeared the vain little greaser was indeed on his last legs—gunned down by rurales, no less!

  Vive le Bachelard!

  His face the very picture of concern, he ran crouching to the man, helped him sit back against the wall. The other men, murmuring despondently, gathered around. One of them offered his canteen.

  “Let me see, Miguel,” Bachelard said, gently lifting one of the hands crossed over the gushing belly wound.

  “Does … Does it look bad?” Montana asked in a pinched, grunting stammer.

  Bachelard sighed and shook his head, thoroughly enjoying himself. “It doesn’t look good, Miguel. I tell you what—these men and I are going to go after the gold and try to secure our position. When we’ve done that, we’ll return for you.”

  “Don’t leave me, Gaston—I’m dying,” the little Mexican cried, rolling his head to his chest.

  Looking embarrassed, Bachelard glanced at the men, then lowered his head to Montana’s ear. He whispered something. Montana nodded sorrowfully. Bachelard stood and turned to the men.

  “He told me he wants us to go get the gold in his honor. What do you say?”

  All four men heartily agreed, even the one with the bullet in his leg.

  “Let’s go, then,” Bachelard said, stepping back to let the others lead the way.

  When they’d run out of the cave for the steps angling up to the next tier, firing their guns into the canyon, Bachelard hesitated, turned back into the cave, and squatted next to Montana. He lifted his revolver, thumbed back the hammer, pressed the barrel to the Mexican’s forehead, and said, “Here, this will make you feel better, Miguel.”

  The dark eyes widened with horror as the pistol fired, drilling a slug through Montana’s brain.

  Bachelard turned and followed the others up the stairs, firing into the canyon to cover himself. The Gatling gun had not opened up until he and the other four men were inside the cave where Cameron and Clark had bastioned themselves.