Bannerman the Enforcer 3
Page 10
Governor Dukes pursed his lips. “I see your point, but we can’t leave Yancey and Cato up there like that! Another thing, there’s a fellow named Nathan Cross after the treasure too, and they could easily have themselves some visitors if they bring the cannon to light ... Cross is the villain behind that mob on the pier right now. He’s been doing some fancy land-dealing, changing survey boundaries and so on, and he’s the local cattle agent. So he’s not at all happy to see this boat upriver, Rupe.”
“All the more reason to start moving, Uncle,” Harwood said. “From what I know of Yancey he can take care of himself.”
“Rupe!” exclaimed Kate, shocked.
“I didn’t mean just abandon him,” Rupe explained hastily. “But Yancey’s a capable man. I’m sure he’d rather we got your father to safety than risk his life by hanging around here. And I’m afraid that if we stay here, that’s just what we’d be doing.”
Suddenly, Kate’s face brightened. “Well, do we have to stay here?”
Harwood frowned. “Well, Kate, that’s just what I’m saying, that we should start back downriver and—”
“No, no,” interrupted Kate, shaking her head. “Why can’t we head upriver? To where Yancey is working?”
Harwood raised his eyebrows at that and turned slowly to look at the governor. “Well, I’m not any too sure, but I think by the charts that the river gets narrower past this point. I doubt if the Queen could make it very far.”
“Couldn’t you make your own channel, with that grab line?” Kate asked. “As we have been doing in shallow stretches?”
“We could dredge,” Harwood admitted. “But it’d be time consuming …”
“Not all that much,” Kate said persuasively. “And we could maybe help Yancey recover the cannon, using that same winch and grab line! It’s possible, isn’t it?”
“Well, Governor, what do you think? It could be risky and we could run aground and never get off and we might just have to abandon the Queen ...”
Dukes had been studying his daughter’s face. He said abruptly, “I reckon we could give it a try.”
Then there was a crash of gunfire from up on deck and Harwood ran to the door, whipping out his Smith and Wesson American. “Stay here! Both of you!” he ordered as he ran out the door and slammed it behind him.
The river was swarming with small boats and canoes, loaded down with men, who were making for the Texas Queen. Their guns were rattling and bullets chipped the hardwood rails and made the smokestacks ring hollowly. Glass shattered in the wheelhouse windows and the men on the riverboat were forced to keep their heads down, unable to fight back.
Harwood ran up the ladder to the wheelhouse, lead spitting around him. The ship’s mate opened the door for him, crouching, and Rupe dived through headlong. He crouched by the window.
“Thanks, Randy,” he said, without looking at the mate. “Hell! Cross must have all the hardheads in the territory after us!”
“Looks that way, Skipper ... We gonna get underway?”
“Haven’t got time,” Harwood said, thoughtfully. “They’ll swarm aboard before we can turn and get moving. But we might be able to buy some time. Signal the engine room half astern as soon as I reach the winch and grab line.”
“Hell, don’t go out there, Skipper!” the mate protested, but Harwood already had the door open and he dived out, his gun holstered now.
He gripped the iron rails of the ladder and his boots didn’t touch any but the top rung as he launched himself down to the deck below. As soon as he hit the teak, he sprawled forward on his belly and began worming his way across. Lead was sending splinters flying from the low rails and now the crew were able to retaliate in some measure. Some wisps of steam rose from the couplings to the donkey-engine which had been rigged-up in case the grab line was needed to dredge out the channel on their approach to Tyler’s Landing. As it happened, the line hadn’t been needed then, but it sure was now ...
Harwood slid the last few feet to the winch, got it between himself and the approaching boats, ducking as a stray bullet ricocheted from the steel cable. He signaled the wheelhouse and, through the racket of gunfire, he heard the distant clang of the engine room bell and, a minute later, the vessel shuddered as the screw was engaged and there came the rushing sound of churning water at the stern as the big-bladed wheel began to turn.
Harwood threw the donkey-engine into gear, swung the big grab on the end of its boom out and over the bow, on the opposite side to the attacking men. The gunfire had increased and so had the swearing as men urged the rowers and paddlers on in a desperate effort to reach the Queen before she got under way. Harwood hit the release lever and dropped the grab down into the muddy river waters as the riverboat began to go astern.
He drew the Smith and Wesson, working the winch one-handed, and snapped a shot at the first couple of wild-eyed townsmen coming over the side. Sailors ran forward with marlin spikes and billets of wood and there was a wild tussle on the port side and he felt the big boat begin to tilt as the weight of a hundred men was thrown on it. The donkey-engine clanked and groaned and hissed as he reversed the lever. The line drum spun and then the huge grab came up, dripping, overflowing with tons of mud and waterlogged driftwood and rocks. Harwood shot a man who ran at him with blazing Winchester, spun the boom wheel and slowly, ponderously, the huge grab swung around across the bows and came to a swinging rest directly above the crowded canoes and boats and swarming men. Some saw what was about to happen and began to shout warnings or dive over the side.
Others were completely unaware of their danger as Rupe yanked the release lever. The grab’s jaws opened and the odorous river mud and tons of garbage from the bottom spewed out, to thunder and crash down onto the attackers. Some logs hit the boat’s rails and splintered them. Men screamed only to have the sounds abruptly cut off as their mouths filled with black mud. Boats splintered, canoes were holed. The river was alive with thrashing, swimming, shouting, cursing men.
The decks were almost clear now, the sailors fighting off the few men who had managed to get aboard, and throwing them over the side. And the Queen had gathered way now and was going astern at a good clip. Harwood let the grab swing, locked it, and ran back to the wheelhouse ladder, shooting at a couple of fanatical rannies who were still aboard. He hit one and a bunch of sailors grabbed this man and his companion and heaved them over the side.
Harwood burst into the wheelhouse, nodded to the mate and took over. He rang down for full ahead and the water churned and boiled at the stern as the paddle-wheel changed direction. The big steering wheel spun round and round and the bows of the ponderous steamer came around and headed upriver, leaving the threshing men in the water to make their own way back to shore.
Kate Dukes stood on the lower deck now, looking up at the wheelhouse and at Rupe Harwood’s face through the broken glass. When the governor saw the admiration in her eyes, he wasn’t so sure, after all, that Yancey had nothing to worry about.
The Texas Queen’s siren boomed derisively as she pulled away upstream from Tyler’s Landing.
~*~
Cross was almost beside himself with fury at the defeat of his hired troublemakers in the attack on the Texas Queen. He stared at Brodie and some of his other wet and bedraggled and wounded men and he cussed them out soundly, stalking up and down their lines in the yard behind his office.
“Damn you to hell! You didn’t even try to set fire to the lousy boat!” he raved.
“You try it with twenty tons of river mud pourin’ down on top of you, Nate!” invited Brodie sourly. “You can cuss us out all you like, but we done our best ...”
Cross turned on him savagely. “Sure you did! You let ’em get away! Without any damage You call that your best?”
“I wish you’d been there,” Brodie gritted fervently. “I wish you’d had your mouth and ears and eyes full of stinkin’ river mud and the taste of river water in your belly, churnin’ around so you want to throw up! That’s what I wish, Cross!”
“The governor’s aboard,” Brodie pointed out.
“He was aboard when we hit it before!”
“But the men didn’t know that then. Or they wouldn’t have attacked, Nate. Not in a coon’s age.”
“We’ll worry about that later ... But the main thing to do is to get hold of some cable—”
He broke off and all heads turned at the sound of a racing horse, coming up the lane behind the building. Guns were drawn but no one triggered when the rider was recognized. It was Reardon, panting and sweating as he yanked his lathered mount to a halt in the yard and ran forward at a staggering gait. His eyes were bugging in his head.
“Nate!” he panted. “They found it! They found the treasure!”
“They what?”
Reardon swallowed as the men gathered around, all shooting questions at him. He held up a hand and Cross shouted for quiet.
“They blew a trail across that limestone cliff face and opened up an old cave ... I seen ’em wheel out a cannon and they brought out some other stuff too. A keg or chest, couldn’t be sure. Cannon balls and money. I seen it glinting in the sun. Gold and silver, Nate!”
In the hush, Cross nodded slowly. “Part of the legend had it that the Mexicans left one cannon in a sealed cave with powder and shot and some of the treasure. What they couldn’t stuff down the barrels of the others they ran off the cliff into the river. That damn Mex, Romero, must’ve had a good map. But it’s only a part of the find. They’ve still got to get the ones in the river.”
“I guess they’re on their way to do that now,” Reardon said.
“They lowered that cannon on ropes down the slope and they greased it up and drug it behind ’em when they set out away from that White Head area ... The girl came racin’ lickety-split from the ranch so I figure she’s onto somethin’ ... They’re goin’ to get the other guns if you ask me.”
Cross nodded slowly. “It sounds like it ... All right. To hell with the riverboat and whoever’s on board. Get every man of mine you can lay your hands on and we’ll ride for the Summers place. We’ll let ’em do all the work for us and then move in and take the lot!”
Chapter Ten – The Guns of Texas
The campfire crackled in the arroyo and mingled with the other night sounds of the wild. But there was a second campfire: it was the reflection of the real one in the bronze barrel of the cannon they had dragged from the limestone cave at Cabezablanca.
Luis Romero had gathered handfuls of river sand and, mixing it with a little water, had rubbed away the verdigris of the years while Julie prepared supper. Cato and Yancey had propped up the gun-carriage, removed the wheels and packed the bearings with grease. Beside the gun they had stacked the rust-pitted cannon balls and the wooden keg of gunpowder. The bottom was rotted and the powder about halfway up was wet but the remainder as dry and potent as Yancey had demonstrated when he had sprinkled a few grains into the campfire. They had exploded in a puff of white, choking smoke. The rammer, screw and powder measure were in their places on the gun-carriage.
“It is a beautiful piece, señors,” Romero said, standing back to admire his handiwork. The palms of his hands were raw from rubbing but it had been a labor of love ... as was the chore he now set himself: the cleaning of his grandfather’s old rust-pitted saber.
“Reckon it’d still fire without blowing up in our faces?” Yancey asked, speaking to Cato as he was the expert gunsmith.
Cato had examined the cannon barrel and breech carefully before dark and, when the sun had gone down, he had taken a blazing brand from the fire, tied it to the end of the rammer and pushed it down the barrel. The only place light had showed had been through the touch-hole.
“She’s as sound as the day she left the foundry,” he said. “Which, incidentally, was at Sheffield, England.”
The others looked at him in surprise.
Cato smiled slowly. “That’s a ship’s cannon, a twelve-pounder, but it’s been removed from the original carriage and put on that big-wheeled affair for dragging overland ... I’d say it was captured in some sea battle and found its way ashore to be used by the old Texans, or maybe the Mexican forces. Weren’t too many bronze cannon cast in England. Most of ’em came from Spain and the Netherlands, but this broad arrow chiseled into the end of the trunion marks it as an English Naval cannon. It’ll make a fine piece in any museum. No one in their right mind would want to fire it.”
Yancey arched his eyebrows. “Well, I reckon I’m not loco, but I’d sure like to fire it. Never have set off a cannon.”
“Guess it must be the little boy in you,” Cato told him with a crooked smile.
“Could be,” Yancey said amiably. “I still get a kick out of reading yarns about pirates and sea battles.”
“And this from a man who’s a qualified attorney-at-law,” Cato told Julie Summers, and she smiled.
“A lawyer? I didn’t know that, Yancey. Perhaps your talents will be needed when it comes to determining ownership of the treasure in the sunken guns ...”
“Provided we find ’em,” Yancey cautioned.
“Oh, we will,” Julie replied confidently. “I’m sure I’m right now. This arroyo and the one next to it is the dried-up bed of the old twin lakes. I proved it with Luis’ other map. Believe me, I’ve been able to work it all out.”
“I believe Julie’s evidence is sound, señors,” Romero told Yancey and Cato, who were still a trifle skeptical.
“Well, maybe it is,” Yancey said, “but I don’t like our chances of getting those cannon up into the light of day. I can swim and dive, and so can Johnny, but I don’t reckon we’re good enough to get those cannon up.”
Julie tried to hide her disappointment.
“I will bring them up,” Romero said quietly and all eyes turned to him. “At least, I will dive down and put ropes around them. We will have to use brute force to pull them to the surface.”
“Supposing they are there, in that bend of the river, as Julie claims,” Cato said, “they’ll likely be stuck in feet of mud or have all kinds of tangled weeds and deadfalls around ’em. Be a mighty risky business divin’ down there, Luis.”
The Mexican shrugged. “I am used to diving risks.” He smiled as he saw the surprise on their faces. “I was a pearl diver once, off the island of Santa Margarita, the old Spanish ‘port of pearls’ in Mexico. I have fought sharks and an octopus and I have been trapped in undersea caves, but I have survived and I will survive the river, too.”
“How long since you were a pearl diver?” Yancey asked.
Romero looked a little ill at ease. “Five years.”
“That’s a long time to be out of practice ... And there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you, Luis. How come you took so long to show up here after this treasure? And how’d you happen to turn up just when there were signs of it?”
“Yancey,” Julie warned quietly, seeing how Romero had flushed and wouldn’t meet Yancey’s gaze.
They waited in silence as the Mexican weighed the old saber in his hands, knuckles showing white about the hilt where he gripped it. Then he looked across the fire at the girl, and spoke directly to her.
“I was not given the leather chest by my mother for many years and then, after I found the maps and realized what they meant, I—well, a pearl diver’s pay is poor. Some of them smuggle out the pearls instead of handing them in to the supervisor. It is a risky business, but to survive, the risk has to be taken ... I was caught. They used to cut off the hands of any men found keeping pearls for himself, but perhaps we have progressed a little since those days. I was only flogged and given four y
ears in prison.”
Julie’s face reflected her compassion and she reached out to place a sympathetic hand on his knee. Yancey and Cato kept their faces blank. It was nothing to hold against Romero, though he seemed ashamed to make his admission.
“That explains the delay,” Yancey said quietly. “But how about turning up here just at this time?”
Luis Romero smiled slowly. “It was pure coincidence, Yancey, I assure you. I had managed to keep some pearls hidden from the supervisors, which is why I was flogged and tortured at first. When I was released, I recovered the pearls and bought myself a horse, some guns and these clothes. But the supervisors have long memories and I was watched. Men chased me and I rode for many days before crossing the border into Texas. But they still pursued me and, finally, they cornered me in a river town called Beaumont ... I had no choice but to shoot it out and I was joined by another Mexican who had arrived by the river in a canoe. He had been working the north around these parts, trapping or punching cows, whatever work he could find. He got me away and, in one of our camps, he told me that there was a rumor of treasure in the river around the Spanish Peaks and that some gold had actually been found on the Summers ranch ... We went our separate ways and I considered that meeting with my amigo was a sign that maybe I should come on here and search for the treasure.”
There was silence as the others digested this and then Julie Summers, much more woman than historian since Luis Romero had appeared, moved closer to him and told him quietly, “I’m very glad you decided to come and help us, Luis.”
His teeth flashed whitely in a smile. “So am I, Julie ... And tomorrow, we start dragging for the guns and I will dive for them and we will all be rich, eh?”
His enthusiasm was infectious but Yancey sobered them all when he stood and lifted his Winchester rifle, starting out of the camp slowly. “I’ll stand first watch,” he said.