Novel 1972 - Callaghen

by Louis L'Amour

  His head throbbed as he walked slowly down the slight grade toward the stagecoach. Several times he paused in slight cover to study the surrounding hills. There was a point of rocks not far south of the Holes, and a mile or so beyond were the rocks that surrounded Rock Springs.

  When he came to the stage he saw that it was empty. Nor was there any blood. Beamis, if he was not alive, had been killed after he left the stage.

  Malinda, he recalled, had kept food in a basket under the seat, and he felt for it. The basket of food had been taken, but somebody had left a few slices of bread and ham wrapped in a napkin on the floor under the seat. Evidently one or both of the women had thought someone might come to the coach hunting for food.

  There was nothing else of value but a blanket, which he took. The mail pouch under the seat in front was undisturbed. Taking the meat and bread, Callaghen retired to a shallow dip some yards off and ate his small meal.

  Returning to the Holes, he took a long drink, and then set out to follow the trail made by the horses.

  As he walked he kept glancing at the looming bulk of Table Mountain. From its flat top an observer could see anything moving within miles, but there was no other way to get where he was going. Several times he found spots of shade, and stopped in them.

  The wound on his head from what had evidently been a bullet had taken a lot out of him. He had lost blood, and the walking had tired him. He sat down, leaned his head on his arms, his arms resting on his knees. He felt dizzy and sick, and the distance he must cover worried him. What worried him even more was that they should be going north…if they were following the map they had taken from him.

  He started to get up, but sagged back to the ground, and for a long time he sat there. Then his mind wandered off into a state bordering on delirium.

  When his mind cleared it was dark, and there was a soft wind blowing. The sky overhead seemed hazy.

  Using the rocks, he pulled himself up. When he felt for his rifle he almost fell. At last he started again, keeping along the dim trail in the darkness.

  He was close under the edge of a long ridge that cropped up from the desert, running roughly north and south. If he traveled by daylight he would be visible from the top of Table Mountain. He veered to the west, pointing toward a lower ridge that trailed out from the base of the mesa.

  Beyond, somewhere a mile or so away, would be Black Canyon, where the trail down which the horses had gone would go through. For him, without a horse, and with frequent stops to rest, it was almost daybreak before he topped out on the low ridge. Finding a hollow shaded by a boulder and masked by a cedar tree, Callaghen went to sleep.

  The sun was two hours high when he awoke, fighting his way to consciousness from a sleep of utter exhaustion. For several minutes he lay still, then he rolled over and sat up.

  A wide valley lay before him. Scanning it quickly, he saw a thin trail of smoke against the distant hills. Nearer, almost at the base of the ridge on which he sat, he saw movement. Quickly he took up his rifle and moved closer to the cedar that screened his shelter.

  It was a black horse, his horse, moving eastward at a steady walk. He whistled, but he was too far away and the horse did not hear.

  Rising, he moved down along the face of the ridge in the direction the horse was taking. Table Mountain loomed above him, and in line with it, two solitary buttes with cedars growing on each.

  He walked, ran, almost fell, and reached the bottom not far from the black horse. It was only then that he saw it was following a game trail. There were tracks of deer, and among them the track of a dog or coyote.

  He called out, and the black horse stopped, head up, looking toward him. He walked on and the horse moved away warily, then as he continued to talk, it stopped again and whinnied softly.

  Callaghen walked up to the horse, his hand out. The black sniffed at the hand, and shied only a little as he took up the reins. “I know there’s water up there, boy. Let’s go have a drink.”

  He stepped into the saddle and the black walked forward eagerly.

  Chapter 20

  THERE WERE NO human tracks around the spring, which lay among the brush and rocks close behind Table Mountain. A butte was near by, one of the twin buttes that line up behind Table Mountain. But there were deer tracks, and several made by a wolf or a coyote—more likely the latter, judging by the size. Callaghen saw badger tracks too, and those of rabbits, ground squirrels, and quail.

  He stopped some fifty yards from the spring, with the surrounding area in sight, and spent a good twenty minutes scanning the cliffs and the brush around. At this stage of the game he did not want to lose his hair…somewhere Malinda was a prisoner, and if she was to be left alive and free it was up to him.

  Beamis, he thought, was probably alive. Callaghen hoped the soldier would make no precipitate move. Champion or Wylie would be quite willing to kill him out of hand…if they had not already done so.

  After a time he gave in to his horse’s impatience and went down to the spring. The black drank beside him, and he refilled the canteen on the saddle.

  Squatting on his heels on a high point near the spring, Callaghen studied the country before him. An abrupt mesa lay to the south, gray-black and layered like a cake. East of it there was a gap that was probably Black Canyon. He was riding blind, knowing little about the land that lay ahead. Somewhere south of him Wild Horse Canyon cut off to the west, and that bulk of a mesa might be Wild Horse Mesa, supposedly unexplored.

  The ground that lay between him and what he thought was the mouth of Black Canyon, some four miles distant, was covered with desert plants, and there were frequent hollows. That ground could conceal an army, though it looked innocent and empty. However, there was a thin trail of smoke down there. A cooking fire? An invitation to die? He only knew he must go on.

  Back at the spring he drank again, gathered the reins, and mounted. He turned the black, and rode south along the foot of the first butte.

  The twin buttes were five or six hundred feet high, with some cedar growing on the summits and flanks. Even where he was riding, they offered some measure of cover. The air was still, and the distant smoke pointed a finger straight into the sky. On the valley floor Callaghen could detect no movement. Several times he drew up, listening, and watching his horse’s ears.

  He kept on, and came abreast of the second butte. The smoke now lay southwest of him. To the east a mile-wide gap opened into Lanfair Valley. He rode quickly and crossed the gap, then skirting the base of the mountain, he rode toward the smoke. Black Canyon, with its wide gap, lay before him.

  Looking toward the smoke, he felt his first doubts. There could be no dodging the probable difficulties ahead. The indications pointed to the Indians being over there. Either they were careless, which he doubted, or they believed themselves safe from attack.

  Ridge was dead, and they believed Callaghen dead. Nobody was looking for a stagecoach yet, and the Indians seemed to be far from here, occupied with the army. After all, it was a big desert and there were few Indians.

  But why should Wylie and the others be in this area? Did Wylie know something he did not know? Did he have information that was not on the map?

  Allison must have told him something to enlist his aid, if that was the way it had come about, and that information might have led them to this place. There were caverns in the rugged mountains to the west, but so far as Callaghen had heard, they were not connected with the legendary caverns that lay under the whole of the eastern Mohave.

  In any event, the chase had now come down to a shooting affair, and he was going against three tough men. Worst of all, in crossing Black Canyon he might be exposing himself, for there was little cover. Callaghen turned east along the face of the mountain, utilizing whatever cover he could. He kept his rifle in its scabbard, for nothing picks up and reflects light quicker than a gun barrel.

  When he was almost a mile south of where the smoke showed, he crossed the valley at its narrowest point, coming in behind the ri
dge. He rode his horse up among the cedars, finding a cul-de-sac where he could hide him. There was some grass there, and he picketed the horse.

  Not taking a rifle, but only the two handguns, he started up into the rocks.

  It was a weird formation. Here and there it looked as if great splotches of liquid rocks had been squeezed from the mountainsides and poured down, only to stiffen and become hard.

  The rock itself was a Swiss cheese of holes. Halting behind an outthrust, he studied the odd formation and could not decide whether it was volcanic, or whether at some far distant time there had been a hot spring there, a geyser that played itself out. He had seen somewhat similar formations in other lands, where water, with chemicals in solution, had eaten away at the limestone. In among the rocks around him, which were of many colors, the heat was intense. At no place could he see for more than a few yards.

  Apparently there was a sort of passage through the rock formation. It was not a cave, but a passage open to the sky, except where rock leaned above him. The floor of the passage was of sand.

  Moving as silently as possible, a pistol close to his hand, he worked his way through the place.

  He had never seen anything like this. The hair on the back of his neck rose with suspense and dread. It was such a place as one might imagine to be inhabited by monsters; there was something evil and grotesque about it.

  He touched his tongue to his dry lips, and longed for a swallow of water. Then he could smell smoke…wood-smoke.

  He listened, and heard faint voices. He moved ahead cautiously, from one rocky projection to another. The passage had many turns, and the rock was pink or red, and in some places of an odd greenish hue. Just ahead of him the passage branched—one branch seemed to end in an abrupt wall; the other twisted among boulders and offered access to the top.

  Hesitating, he heard a sharp click and looked up. He could see Spencer standing on the ledge at the top of the rock wall with a rifle pointed straight at him. Callaghen had heard the cocking of the rifle.

  He drew and fired, the pistol leaping in his hand even as the rifle belched flame and the bullet clipped rock only inches above his head.

  He dived for cover, risking another shot as he moved. A second bullet struck rock near him. Only the fact that Spencer was shooting down at his target and misjudged it had saved him. He felt sure that he himself had scored a miss.

  He ran swiftly forward, scrambling up the rocks, gun in hand. He had to get close now, and fast.

  He heard startled yells, and somebody was demanding of Spencer what had happened. He heard the answering yell: “It was Callaghent!”

  “You’re crazy!” Wylie called back. “Callaghen’s dead—I killed him myself!”

  Callaghen ran forward lightly and eased himself between two slabs of rock and up into a corner overlooking a cove in the side of the mountain. From there, on a sandy stretch, a sort of half-moon surrounded by rocks, he could see their camp. He was looking right into it from behind a slab of limestone whose face on his side, was covered with the ripple marks of an ancient sea. On the other side the rock bulged out. Perhaps it had long ago been heaved up from the floor of that prehistoric sea.

  He could see Malinda and Aunt Madge, hands and feet tied, sitting against the rock wall. There was a fire, a coffeepot on it, and he could see Beamis a few yards off. He, too, was tied, but he was lying on his face and there was blood on his head.

  Champion appeared suddenly, wearing a dirty buckskin coat with fringe, and the same battered hat he always wore. He was a big man, not so tall as broad and powerful. “You set still,” he said to Malinda. “I’ll be a-comin’ back. Kurt may not have much use for you, but I do—the both of you.”

  Then Spencer came into sight. There was blood on his face. Wylie was with him. “What did you see?” he was demanding.

  “I seen Callaghen, I tell you! He was down in a hole back yonder. I drawed a bead on ’im an’ when I cocked he looked up. How he got that gun into action so fast I’ll never know. I fired, but he shot a shade ahead of me, an’ if that durned Spencer didn’t kick so much he’d of nailed me!”

  “Now talk sense!” Wylie was angry. “You say there’s a hole back yonder. Even if Callaghen was alive, how would he get here and get into that hole? I ask you that.”

  Champion had hunkered down on his heels. “You all better quit your squabblin’ an’ find ’im. If’n he’s hereabouts he surely ain’t gone far, an’ if’n I know Callaghen he’s huntin’ scalp right now. Yours an’ mine.”

  “I killed him,” Wylie insisted. “I shot him dead.”

  Champion shrugged. Spencer took a bloody hand away from his head. “If you shot him, he’s sure got a lively ghost.”

  “We should’ve scouted yonder,” Champion said. “I never figured it was anything but a wall of rock an’ boulders.”

  “You never seen anything like it—looks like it’d been burned out by the fires of hell. It’s like one great big clinker.”

  Callaghen eased his position slightly. His firing position was excellent, but to shoot from here would endanger everyone in the camp. His eyes went suddenly to Beamis. Had he seen a movement there?

  “Wylie,” Spencer said, “we’d better light a shuck.”

  Wylie shook his head. “No. This is where they said they’d come, and here is where we’ve got to be. Champ, you’re the woodsman. Why don’t you go down in there and find out who it was that shot at us?”

  Champion chuckled without humor. “Kurt,” he said dryly, “you got plenty o’ sand, an’ it is surely your idea. I had a look at that hole. You want somethin’ down there, you go get it. I wouldn’t go into a place like that even if there was nobody down there. I think Spencer saw somethin’ move, an’ shot. I think he was hit by his own ricochet.”

  Spencer started to speak, then he merely swore and walked off, dabbing at his head with a torn red neckerchief.

  Wylie, six-shooter in hand, went through a cleft in the rocks. He disappeared from sight, but after a few minutes he returned.

  “Can’t see nothing. That’s quite a hole back there—looks like a volcanic blowhole or something. Anyway, if he’s down there he can’t get out. It must be sixty feet straight down—maybe twice as much. He’d have to have wings to fly out of there.”

  Champion remained squatted against the rock wall. Callaghen had to smile. The old mountain man had his back to the wall, and he could be seen only from in front. He might not believe all this, but he was taking no chances.

  “Who’re those folks you’re a-waitin’ for?” he asked. “How’d they come to know of this place?”

  Wylie lit a cigar. “Ever hear of Webb Bolin?”

  “That renegade who was in Sonora? Sure, I heard of him.”

  “He was a stepbrother to Allison, and he has the other map.”

  Champion looked up. “Other map?”

  Wylie’s smile was not pleasant. “There were two that fitted together, but each was made to look as if it was the whole map. Bolin and Allison got the map from their pa, who spent most of his life down Mexico way. Where he got it nobody knows.

  “Somebody, a long time back, spent a lot of time in this country and took out a lot of gold. He also explored a lot, and he claimed there were half a dozen entrances to the cave that he knew of, scattered miles apart. He located two of them—one on each map.

  “The story is that he gathered a lot of nuggets. Had them sacked and ready to take out, but then the Indians located him and he had to fight his way out, leaving most of the gold behind.”

  “Webb Bolin is comin’ here?”

  “With two friends of his. They should be here today or tomorrow.”

  Although the speakers were fifty yards away, Callaghen could hear the conversation easily. Bolin he knew, a thoroughly bad one, known to have robbed churches of their altar services, to have looted homes in Sonora, and to have killed several men. And he had a good idea who would be with him. Bigelow and Barber were two occasional horse thieves, claim jumpers, and wo
rse, who had caused trouble in the gold fields of California and around the silver mines in Nevada.

  Whatever he was going to do had better be done before their arrival, but all he wanted to do now was to get Malinda, Aunt Madge, and Beamis free.

  Suddenly he realized that Beamis had moved. The soldier still lay on his face, but he was more than a foot from where he had been, judging by the edge of the rock near which he was lying.

  Nobody had so much as glanced at him, taking it for granted he was unconscious; but he had edged, ever so slightly toward that rock…and closer to the women.

  He was not only conscious, but he was alert. Though he was bound, he was obviously thinking of getting himself free and setting the women free; but he could not move much farther without being observed, unless the attention of the men at the fire were distracted.

  Spencer had seated himself a dozen yards off and was holding his head in his hand. Callaghen had an idea that he had been badly frightened by his escape from death. Spencer had been a soldier only a short time, and had seen no action that Callaghen knew of.

  Beamis needed some help, and he had to give it. Choosing a fist-sized stone, Callaghen hurled it so that it would fall into that deep hole beyond the fire. It flew through the air, struck a rock and rebounded, and fell into the pit.

  Wylie turned sharply, drawing as he turned. Spencer came half to his feet, hand grasping a rifle, but whether to run or to fight it was hard to judge.

  “Something moved over there, Champ,” Wylie said.

  “A rock fell. Maybe it fell by itself.” Champion got easily to his feet. “We better take a look.”

  Both men disappeared among the rocks, and Callaghen, knowing there was very little time, took his long chance. He left the ground, vaulting the natural rock wall and landing lightly on the ground not ten feet from Spencer, whose back was toward him.

  The soldier turned sharply around, and as he did so Callaghen took two quick steps and laid a pistol barrel back of his ear. Spencer dropped as if he had been hit with an axe.