by Tim Champlin
“What’ve you got in mind?” Thorne asked, frowning.
“The way both sides have been blasting away at each other since yesterday, they must be low on ammunition. The Newburn party had five men. Subtract Silas and Darrel, here, and that leaves only three. The Claytons had six. Old man Walter is out of the picture, so they’re down to five. That’s a total of eight fighting men left, and Darrel said two of them have minor wounds. We create a diversion, and the three of us should be able to get the drop on those eight, and arrest them.”
“How do you plan to flush ’em all into the open at the same time?” Thorne asked.
“Tres Lobos Cañon slopes slightly out of the mountains toward the flatter land. Run-off is what created all those dry washes. I saddle two horses and have Darrel lead me around to that quarry at the mouth of the cañon.” He fingered a stick match from his vest pocket and held it up. “It’s time to reveal the treasure.”
Chapter Twenty
Even with a bullet in his upper left arm, Darrel proved to be a good rider. He led Rasmussen in a half circle, two miles in length. They circumvented the shooting so as to be out of range of any stray lead, but still within earshot to retain a sense of direction. They rode up and down the broken terrain, often following the beds of deep arroyos until a shallow spot afforded egress for the horses.
The sun bore down from overhead when they drew rein downslope of the deep quarry. Rasmussen looked up at the high walls of Tres Lobos Cañon rising above on either side. The gray-white slash of exposed rock lifted its enormous wall above their heads, and only then did Rasmussen begin to appreciate the size of this quarry—and the amount of water it held.
They dismounted and tied the horses to small shrubs, then began climbing the scree and tumbled boulders to the level of water. It was a long, tiring climb with the sun beating down in the windless air. Sweat stung his eyes before Rasmussen reached the edge of the huge rock basin. If Darrel’s arm was paining him, he never let on as he paused and pointed at the sweep of dark, still water.
“I’ve been told the water’s as deep as the climb we just made. Wanted you to see it. Now, let me show you where I planted the dynamite, ’cause when she blows, the rock should fly up and out that way.” He gestured. “The water’ll come roaring out like last year’s Johnstown flood. It’ll cover everything down into the flats, but should dissipate before it reaches the village a few miles east on higher ground.”
Rasmussen’s gaze traveled down the steep incline and out through the mouth of the cañon across the sloping desert floor to the low stone morada in the distance. “Good thing we told Ortiz and Nellie to get on the roof.”
“The force of the water will probably wash out the railroad embankment, but that can’t be helped.”
Rasmussen took a deep breath and steeled himself. “Then let’s get to it.”
Darrel led the way, angling down across the jumbled rocks, stepping carefully over the exposed fuses as he pointed out the places where he’d set the charges into the solid rock to keep from merely blowing loose boulders off the slope.
“You ever done anything like this before?” Rasmussen asked when they finally reached the last charge and were following the single, long fuse down to the bottom.
“Hell, no. You think I’m crazy?”
“Then how do you know it will work?”
“This is one of those things you can’t practice. I convinced old Silas that I knew all about dynamite and had some experience.” He turned his face up toward Rasmussen, squinting in the sun. “I lied.”
Rasmussen grinned at his audacity.
“Figured if I was the dynamite man, I could somehow get out of defending that damned treasure in a showdown. Didn’t work that way. Caught another slug, to go with the one I’m still carrying in my back.” He sounded more disgusted than pained.
When they reached the bottom, Rasmussen was out of breath as much from nervousness as from exertion. Gunfire popped in the distance.
“This is a fast-burning fuse with a lot of imbedded powder to keep it from going out.” Darrel picked up the loose end of the fuse as thick as his finger.
Rasmussen’s gaze followed it upward until it disappeared over the tumbled rocks. Somewhere above, it connected to other fuses that were connected to the dynamite. Darrel had inspected each of these connections to be sure all of them were secure.
“We’ll have to ride like hell,” Rasmussen said.
Darrel nodded. “But not so fast that our horses might stumble in these rocks or step into a hole. I figure we have about ninety seconds from the time we light the fuse.”
Rasmussen felt an icy lump in the pit of his stomach. They couldn’t get a mile away in the rough terrain before the rock dam went sky-high.
Each untied his mount. Rasmussen felt for a match in his vest pocket.
“I’ll light it,” Darrel said.
“You shouldn’t take the responsibility,” Rasmussen demurred.
“Hell, we’ll likely be dead in a few minutes. What difference does it make?” His hound-dog face melted into a sardonic grin.
Rasmussen still hesitated, holding the match.
“I’ve stopped two bullets defending this treasure. That gives me the right,” Darrel insisted, holding out his hand.
Rasmussen couldn’t argue with that. He handed over the match.
“Mount up and hold my horse,” Darrel said.
Rasmussen swung into the saddle and took the reins.
Darrel squatted and struck the match on a stone, then held the flame to the end of the corded fuse. The black powder flared up. Smoking and hissing like a thing alive, the blaze snaked up the hill.
Darrel watched for five seconds to be sure it was burning properly.
“Let’s go!” Rasmussen yelled, his horse prancing in a circle. Darrel vaulted into the saddle, and the two of them kicked their mounts into a dead run down the slope toward the bottom of the cañon. Ninety seconds! Maybe seventy by now, unwinding toward a minute. Rasmussen’s heart was hammering as fast as the horses’ hoofs.
Some white specks in the distance—shepherd’s flocks! He’d forgotten about them. Then he realized they were uphill, at a safe distance inside the cañon on some grassy meadows. His horse leaped a shallow wash and Rasmussen was pitched forward, nearly losing his seat. He regained his balance and focused on guiding his mount. He turned slightly as Darrel came alongside.
“Uphill into the cañon!” he yelled.
Darrel shook his head emphatically. “Too steep for the horses!” he shouted back, pushing ahead.
Rasmussen could almost hear a pendulum in his head ticking off the precious seconds. He bent over the flying, brush-covered ground, praying he could react quickly enough to avoid any obstacles. The horses carried them at a full gallop down the gradual incline, and Rasmussen settled into the saddle with an easy, rocking motion.
But still they didn’t seem to be gaining on the railroad that angled across in front of them a mile ahead. Engineers had notched the grassy embankment with a thirty-foot wide cut to allow rain and snow run-off to pass through into the desert beyond. Bridging this gap was a trestle of massive timbers. Darrel was riding to pass under this trestle to the relative safety beyond.
Over the sound of wind rushing past Rasmussen’s ears came a deep rumble. Then the rest of the charges detonated nearly together with a boom like a blast of thunder, reverberating from the cañon walls. He dared not twist to look back as his horse’s gait suddenly faltered when a shock wave shivered the ground. The animal seemed to be thrown off balance for a second, but quickly got his feet under him and plunged onward.
The grassy slope toward the railroad was open now and Rasmussen chanced a glance over his shoulder.
If he hadn’t been so hard put at the moment, his heart would have stopped. Everything behind was blotted out by a billowing cloud of dust and smoke, rising into the sky. Like an erupting volcano, the cloud was raining rocks of all sizes. He faced about and leaned over the neck of his laboring
horse, wind flattening the brim of his hat, ends of the flying mane whipping against his face. Pebbles began striking the ground around him, one cutting his wrist and another bouncing off the crown of his hat. He prayed the big boulders were falling short. Small rocks struck his horse’s flank. The hail of sharp grapeshot spurred him to stretch his drumming stride.
Rasmussen glanced back once more. What he dreaded most was pursuing them like a giant dragon. A foaming wall of solid blue-green water had burst from the shattered quarry and came roaring down the cañon, whipping from side to side, carrying everything before it—boulders, bushes, trees. No horse on earth could outrun that monstrous cataract.
But the embankment was drawing closer. At the last second Darrel veered away from the gap under the trestle and let his horse’s momentum carry him up the steep, grassy slope. Five seconds later Rasmussen’s mount lunged up after him and both men turned their horses to the left, along the tracks. Rasmussen saw Darrel’s reasoning—the eight-foot-high embankment would be little deterrent to the flood. They had to make a dash to one side, out of its path. The horses were slowing, their sides heaving like bellows. But they seemed to sense the danger and clods flew from straining hoofs as they carried their riders alongside the rail bed. Thank God the horses had firm footing, since there was no loose rock ballast on this spur line.
Glancing to his left, Rasmussen saw the rushing wall of water tumbling along its load of débris. Twenty seconds later it smashed into the railroad embankment. A huge wave spewed rocks and trees skyward, a second before the force of water carried away the embankment like piled sand. Tracks bent and disappeared under the onslaught that breached the puny obstacle. Trestle timbers floated away like twigs on the brown water that flooded down the valley, filling dry arroyos, spreading over the desert landscape.
Darrel and Rasmussen pulled up their lathered mounts and jumped off, breathless, but safely above and to one side of the flood.
Exhilarated, heart pounding, Rasmussen raked off his hat, ran his fingers through his hair. He gazed at the tortured landscape that was awash in swirling, brown water. The flood circled the base of the stone morada in the distance before losing its momentum and spreading wide over the flats, quenching the thirsty desert. He couldn’t see any horses or humans struggling in the water. Everyone below had certainly heard and seen the explosion. They would’ve had time to get away before the water cascaded down on them.
Above Tres Lobos Cañon the cloud of smoke and dust was shredded by a breeze, its remains drifting slowly off to the northeast. Except for the water still sluicing through the breach in the railroad embankment, an eerie silence had settled over the scene.
“It’s almost like playing God,” Darrel said in an awed whisper.
“Yeah. Thank God and these horses, we’re still upright and breathing,” Rasmussen said. “We better cool ’em down gradually.” He took the reins and began walking along the right of way, leading his mount. Darrel followed.
After a few yards, Rasmussen’s knees suddenly felt as if they were pivoting on greased ball bearings. Reacting to the shock of their narrow escape, he sank to the ground before he collapsed. “Let me just rest a minute,” he said gruffly. “Here, walk my horse a ways. I’ll catch up.”
“Hell, I’m feeling pretty shaky myself,” Darrel said, clinging to the saddle horn for support.
* * *
Like many desert flash floods, this one dissipated quickly, soaking into the wide flats, leaving fresh layers of mud and sand, small desert shrubs half buried, the arroyos cut ever deeper. But it still took more than an hour before Darrel and Rasmussen, leading their tired mounts, sloshed through hollows of knee-deep muddy water around the perimeter of the flood to the morada. Some three dozen curious villagers were scattered within a few hundred yards, gazing at the devastation and talking among themselves.
Rasmussen and Darrel found Thorne, Ortiz, and Nellie guarding Silas Newburn and Johnny Clayton. The two prisoners, wet and bedraggled, sat on two wooden boxes in the sun against the outside wall of the morada.
“Thank God you’re both safe!” Nellie cried. She ran up and embraced Rasmussen. “I prayed for you,” she breathed in his ear.
“Figured that was the way of it,” Johnny sneered. “You were hoping I was drowned like a rat, so you could take up with that blond bastard. But I fooled you.”
“Shut up, Johnny!” she snapped.
“Where are the rest of them?” Rasmussen asked. He had a flash of guilt for wishing Johnny had not been captured alive.
“Walter Clayton had an apparent heart seizure and drowned,” Thorne answered. “According to these two, the rest of them managed to get to their horses and escape. From the roof, we saw a few riders scattering through the mesquite.”
“You’ll pay for killing my grandfather,” Johnny said, black eyes venomous.
“He wanted the gold, and we exposed it for him,” Darrel said lightly.
“You’ll pay,” Johnny repeated. He pushed back the wet, black hair plastered to his forehead. His oversize glove was missing and Rasmussen noted his reddened, bullet-deformed hand. “Hadn’t been for this hand and my bad leg, I’d been able to snatch a horse and been gone.”
“How many years will he get for robbery and kidnapping?” Rasmussen asked Thorne rhetorically for Johnny’s benefit. “Maybe thirty?”
Silas Newburn stared silently into space, as if in shock. Normally fastidious about his appearance, his clothes were soaked, white beard streaked with red mud, eyes bloodshot, mouth slack. He looked every day of his seventy-eight years.
Rasmussen glanced at Nellie.
“He’s been like that since we pulled him out of one of those half-buried wagons,” she said, tears welling up in her eyes. “I know he’s done a lot of bad things, but he’s still my grandfather. I remember the good days when I was a little girl. He was always kind to me.”
“Too bad Black Rogers got away,” Darrel said.
“We don’t know that he did,” Thorne said. “He could be out there somewhere, buried under the mud.”
“It’s almost noon,” Ortiz broke in. “We should go back to the village, get cleaned up, and eat. We can put this one on my mule,” he added, pointing at Silas Newburn.
Everyone, including himself, Rasmussen noted, seemed to be reacting and talking very slowly, as if in a dream. He shook himself, hoping to wake from his lethargy.
“I know how you feel,” Darrel said, evidently interpreting his action and manner. “We’ll be all right when the shock wears off.”
“You’ve still got a bullet in your arm,” Rasmussen said.
“We do not have a doctor,” Ortiz said. “But Señora O’Reilly, who runs the hotel, has treated many wounds. She has good, gentle hands and does much beautiful sewing. She will help you.”
“Just what I need,” Darrel said, rolling his eyes. “A seamstress.”
Chapter Twenty-one
“Don’t know that I’d do that, even for gold,” Darrel said, looking down into the drained quarry at four local Mexican laborers, shoveling stinking, half dried muck.
It was four days later and Rasmussen, Darrel, Nellie, Thorne, and Ortiz stood on the upper lip of the old quarry supervising the removal of the longhidden treasure.
As Rasmussen watched, a man pulled on a bag. The rotted leather ripped apart, and a golden shower of coins jingled over the Mexican’s muddy boots.
“They’re hired hands earning wages,” Nellie said. “They won’t get any of that gold. It means no more to them than shoveling gravel.”
“Don’t bet on it.” Darrel laughed.
“They’ll be searched before they leave the job each day,” the ever-practical Thorne said, “just to make sure a few double eagles haven’t fallen into the pockets of their overalls.”
Rasmussen couldn’t shake a feeling of unreality. From the time Nellie first told him of the treasure—and he finally believed her—he’d thought of it only in vague images, picturing it as the pot at the end of the rainbow, a va
st and remote heaven of riches. Yet, here it was at his feet, covered with the muck and dross of earth, loot from everywhere dumped into the flooded quarry secretly by night over a period of more than twenty-five years.
The workers used coal shovels to scoop the silver and gold coins, jewelry and ingots into two makeshift sledges with foot-high sides. A mule was hitched to each, and, when loaded heavily enough, pulled the sledge to the lower edge of the quarry where the side had been blasted away. Another Mexican stood by to off-load the sledges and slide the load down a steep wooden flume laid over the jumbled rocks to a pair of heavy freight wagons below.
The wagons were guarded by two U.S. marshals, standing nearby with shotguns in the crooks of their arms. They were there because of the boy, Blanco, who’d ridden out of the village with Thorne’s written message four days earlier. Blanco had made it to Santa Fé and paid Western Union to send it over the wire to the federal marshal service in Albuquerque. The reply had been immediate; the sender was instructed to wait at the depot for two deputy marshals to arrive. They’d loaded Ortiz’s horse into a stock car, then Blanco had joined the marshals for the ride north on a passenger coach to within a quarter mile of the devastated trestle.
The boy was now struggling to adapt to the role of hero. A reporter, who’d been on the train, was taking down his story for the Santa Fé newspaper.
“He’s the most famous man in the village,” Ortiz said gravely, but with a sly grin. “I hope he doesn’t take another job and leave my store.”
“Speaking of jobs, are you still bent on becoming a Harvey Girl?” Rasmussen asked, guiding Nellie a few feet away to speak to her alone.
“Yes. I’m excited about it. I’m going down to Albuquerque and apply.” She smiled at him. “Finally on my own, doing what I want to do.”
He didn’t know what to say. He had no claim on her. She was still legally married to Johnny, who would likely be in prison for a long time. To Rasmussen, the idea of divorce was distasteful, and one that she might not even consider. Besides, his mother and sister still awaited him—needed him—at least until their Minnesota farm could be sold for enough money to resettle them in town and have some extra cash in the bank. This adventure with Nellie had taken several weeks out of his life and left him only a couple of hundred dollars richer, after expenses. But love and money were two things he’d never been adept at acquiring.