Blade 1

by Matt Chisholm

  A man lay just inside the cave. Near him was the Indian girl. To her left, sitting with his back to the wall of the cave, mouth sagging and a look of despair on his face, was George McMasters. His rifle lay in limp hands across his thighs.

  ‘They have the girl,’ Blade said. His throat was dry and he had to force the words out. Never in his life had he experienced more fear for another, but even as he spoke, he knew he was only putting off the inevitable ending. ‘The fight’s over, George.’

  McMasters sighed. When he spoke, his voice was no more than the rustle of dry dead leaves—‘It’s over for me, Joe. That bastard yonder drilled me clean through.’

  Blade shifted his glance back to Annie.

  He said: ‘Put up your gun, Annie.’

  Charlie said in a fearful mutter: ‘I can see them there, girl. Put it up.’

  Blade could hear the men behind him, pushing forward softly. A rifle barrel poked by him and he was seized by the awful desire to grab at it and wrest it from the man. But there was always the girl.

  He was startled by Annie’s harsh voice.

  ‘The girl ain’t nothin’ to me, bub. The hell with the girl. I’ll blow the shits outa anybody comes in here. This here’s my darlin’ boy’s gold an’ no sonuvabitch gits his goddam hands on it.’

  A voice almost in Blade’s ear whispered: ‘She’s gotta put that gun down, Blade, hear? Christ, she could blow us all to hell with that damn thing.’

  ‘Annie,’ said Blade, ‘for God’s sake put it down. You can’t do any good. Enough men have died already.’

  Annie laughed. Blade knew now why they called her Crazy Annie.

  ‘You bastards think I won’t shoot, huh? You try me. Come ahead. Blade or any of you, back up or I blow daylight through you.’

  Blade said softly to the man with the rifle: ‘Don’t shoot. I can talk her out of it.’

  He wondered how badly McMasters was hit, if he could count on him for any help.

  He called to the old woman: ‘Annie, you can’t do any good now. It’s too late.’

  The end of his words was cut short abruptly by the report of the rifle close beside him. Annie did not cry out, but she seemed to tilt the Sharps toward the roof of the cave. It then went off with a roar. Blade winced as the deflected bullet screamed off the roof and struck rock near his face.

  At once the outlaws surged forward, taking Blade with them. Jumping into the cave, their guns ready, prepared to shoot at any moving shadow.

  As soon as Annie was hit, old Charlie gave a howl of anguish and hurled himself from his bed, flopping over the ground like a great injured fish. Blade glimpsed the prospector’s goal —a Colt lying on the top of some horse gear a few paces from him. The old man got a hand on the butt of the gun, but he never had a chance to use it.

  Blade glanced around desperately. At such a moment there must be some chance for him to make a move to save the girl or any of the others. A man behind him must have read his mind. He rammed the muzzle of his gun into Blade’s spine and told him: ‘You make a move an’ I break your back.’

  One man had pushed forward in front of Blade, obscuring Charlie from Blade’s sight. He must have been close enough to the old man to press his gun against his forehead, for when the gun sounded and the killer moved, Blade saw Charlie’s face and the black powder burns on it. The top of his skull was an awful sight.

  Blade stayed still. It was time, he thought, to bring this stream of butchery to an end. It had to be stopped no matter what and the cost could not be counted. For these , men, murder had come to be the answer to everything. Not a problem existed that could not be solved by a killing.

  In the confusion of the moment, the girl had managed to get close to Blade. She was shaking and he put an arm around her.

  ‘George is hurt bad,’ he said. ‘As soon as you can, get to him.’

  Duke appeared in the firelight. The pale light from the mouth of the cave struck him weakly from the other side. He looked down at what remained of Charlie Hedges with some distaste.

  ‘Boys,’ he said, ‘get this old varmint outside. He’s stinkin’ the place up. And the old woman too.’ He strolled over and took a look at the dead half-breed. He showed no emotion. ‘This one as well. Hell, this gold sure cost us.’

  The sound of the shots seemed to hang with the fact of violent death and the stench of burned black powder on the still air.

  ‘Duke,’ Blade said, ‘let the girl look at McMasters. He’s hurt bad.’

  Duke Dukar turned to look at the Indian girl as she bent over the wounded man.

  ‘The squaw’s lookin’ out for him,’ he said.

  ‘The Mexican girl is good with wounds.’

  Duke stared at him from under his brows for a moment, then said: ‘All right. But I want the gold, Blade. Where’s the gold?’

  They were dragging Charlie’s dead body out of the cave. Blade pointed—‘Pokes are stacked yonder with the gear.’

  There was a blanket spread over the gear to one side of the cave. Duke walked over to it and pulled it aside. He cleared a saddle out of the way and there under his avid gaze were piled the small rawhide pokes of gold dust.

  He turned wide astounded eyes on Blade. For once Duke’s cynical eyes were affected by emotion. He glanced back at the pokes as if to reassure himself and then stared at Blade again.

  ‘My God,’ he said softly, ‘I knew there was gold, but I never reckoned on …’ He laughed quietly to himself. ‘I’d of killed a goddam army for this much gold.’ He shouted to the other men. ‘Boys, we’re rich. There’s a fortune here.’

  Blade looked around carefully. As the men laughed and shouted, Blade’s eyes searched for a gun. Pilar was crouched over McMasters with the Indian girl. He heard the sound of water and guessed that she was trying to clean the wound.

  One of the outlaws was dragging the dead half-breed out into the open. His bootheels rattled loose rocks, his head lolled grotesquely. The firelight hit something that glinted dully on the ground.

  It was the gun old Charlie Hedges had managed to touch but not to use. Blade took a careless pace toward it. One of the outlaws was attempting to drag Annie’s corpse out from behind the rocks. He cursed the woman’s heavy weight.

  ‘She weighs more’n a goddam buffalo,’ he complained.

  Duke Dukar weighed a poke in his left hand. The right hand dangled his Remington revolver by the trigger guard.

  ‘If this is good quality dust,’ he said, ‘I reckon we have thirty-forty thousand dollars here.’

  Blade said: ‘You have the gold, Duke. Be satisfied. Call it a day.’

  Duke smiled quite pleasantly: ‘I have to admit, Blade, sudden riches paint a different picture. The world has taken on a rosy tint. Maybe I’ll be a mite generous at that. I’ll think about it.’

  Blade shifted another few inches nearer the gun.

  A man walked across the cave and kicked the gun from his path. It spun into the shadows close to the loose rocks. Blade cursed silently to himself. Pilar rose from beside McMasters. When she reached Blade, she said: ‘George is not seriously hurt. He is very bloody and the outlaws must believe that he is dying. The bullet hit the belt-buckle which was driven into his flesh. He says he will follow whatever you do.’

  Duke took hold of the girl by the arm and pulled her away from Blade.

  ‘You keep away from him, missy,’ he said, ‘an’ if you want to talk, you talk in English.’

  Bill Weyland was watching Blade.

  ‘Duke,’ he said, ‘I want my share of the gold. Then I want this bastard, Blade. I owe him good.’

  Duke smiled.

  ‘Keep an eye on him then,’ he said.

  Blade shifted in the direction of the gun again. Pilar went and sat on a rock near McMasters. The Indian girl was sitting motionless with her hands in her lap. One of the outlaws threw some wood on the fire, sparks flew and the fresh wood crackled in the flames. Suddenly, the scene looked almost cheerful.

  When the cave was cleared of
the dead, Duke said: ‘Boys, before we bring our horses up, I think we should take a look at the gold.’

  They all agreed.

  One of them said: ‘Then leave us get the hell outa here. Hell, a feller with gold don’t want to get snowed up in these here hills.’

  Another laughed and said: ‘I don’t know about that. There’s grub here an’ two mighty pretty women even if one’s a Mex an’ the other’s a squaw. Who turns his nose up at a free winter’s screwin’?’

  That got a laugh.

  Blade put his foot on the gun. He sat down on a rock and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees like a man very tired. The gun butt was now within a foot of his right hand. There was a sort of comfort in that knowledge. Now he was faced by the terrible problem of what to do next.

  The entrance to the cave was a couple of dozen paces from him one way, the entrance to the tunnel was a dozen paces the other. Pilar was six paces south of him near the cave wall. McMasters and the Indian girl were between him and the open air and slightly to the left. He wondered if McMasters had a gun within reach. George had said for him to lead and he’d follow. That must mean he was armed.

  He looked across at Pilar and their eyes met. Pilar’s told him that she trusted him completely. He let his gaze fall and saw that the gun lay in such deep shadow it was almost invisible at any distance.

  Duke Dukar bent down to pick up some of the pokes of gold dust. His laugh was full of excitement as he hefted them, one in either hand.

  ‘Who wants some gold?’ he shouted suddenly.

  ‘Who don’t?’ cried Bill Weyland.

  ‘Catch,’ Duke said and threw first one and then the other.

  Weyland’s hand snapped down on a poke in mid-air. Another left hand caught one on the other side of the cave. There was a sudden wild gala atmosphere in the cave where but a few minutes before death had been in command. Gold pokes flew and hands caught them. Everybody was laughing and shouting. The four prisoners stayed very still. Blade reached down and touched the butt of the gun. His eyes were on the men. Their eyes were full of a kind of drunken and uncontrolled delight. One of them danced a kind of crazy jig. Pokes seemed to fly everywhere. Duke seemed to be carried away by his efforts.

  ‘Catch.’

  ‘Did you ever see so much goddam gold in one piece?’

  ‘Christ, the old man would of been a goddam millionaire.’

  The noise grew louder. Fingers fumbled hurriedly with the rawhide whang that held a poke-mouth tight. A man put his gun away so he could pour the precious contents of a poke into the palm of his hand.

  Duke was yelling: ‘We’re rich, boys, we’re rich.’

  Suddenly a man shouted something else. The others continued yelling, not hearing him.

  The man bellowed frantically: ‘Quit your goddam yellin’ for crissake.’

  They grew silent and stared at him.

  Duke asked: ‘What’s up, Stew?’

  ‘This ain’t gold.’

  ‘What?’

  The man’s face was distraught in the firelight. His eyes looked around them, sad with profound and unbelievable disappointment.

  ‘This ain’t gold. It’s dirt.’

  Duke rushed forward close to the fire, gun away, hands fumbling with a tie-string. He poured the contents of a poke out on a flat rock. He stared incredulously for a moment.

  In a quiet awed voice, he said: ‘It’s dirt all right.’

  For a moment, it seemed as if his rage would never come.

  He straightened up and hurled the empty poke into the fire with an inarticulate cry of fury. He turned and faced Blade. His face was contorted.

  ‘Where is it?’ he asked. He found difficulty in getting the words out.

  Blade knew he and the others were closer to death than ever.

  Seventeen

  ‘I don’t know,’ Blade said.

  Duke pointed a shaking finger at him.

  ‘You tell me,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Blade repeated. ‘That’s the truth. I never saw the old man make a switch. I thought we had the gold here.’

  ‘You tell me,’ Duke said again.

  ‘He’s telling the truth,’ Pilar said. ‘All the time we thought the gold was there under the blanket. It was not our gold. How should we know the trick the old man had played?’

  Bill Weyland dropped his poke on the ground.

  ‘I’ll make the son-of-a-bitch talk, Duke, don’t you fret,’ he said. ‘I owe him. By the time I’ve finished with him you won’t be able to stop him talkin’.’

  Blade said: ‘I’m not a fool. I know what you’ll do if we don’t give you the gold. You can take me to pieces—I still can’t tell you where it is.’

  His hand was on the butt of the gun.

  Weyland said: ‘I’m goin’ to beat the livin’ shits outa you, any road, Blade.’

  He moved forward lightly on his feet, a strongly-made man, honed down to muscle and bone from years in the saddle. If the damage Blade had done him back at the river gave him any trouble, he gave no sign. The mark was on his pride.

  Blade lifted the gun. As it showed in the firelight, Weyland stopped.

  ‘Stay still, all of you,’ Blade said.

  They froze.

  A voice said: ‘Blade, I have a gun in the girl’s neck.’

  A wave of physical sickness broke over Blade.

  ‘Is it true, Pilar?’ he asked. There were men now between himself and the girl.

  ‘It’s true,’ she replied. ‘But they will kill me later if they do not kill me now. Save the others, Joe.’

  His mind seemed incapable of clear thought. Suddenly, from out of nowhere there came a thin thread of an idea.

  He gave a short barking laugh.

  ‘There ain’t much I can do about it,’ he said. ‘This gun’s empty.’ He dropped it on the ground.

  Weyland took one long pace forward and hit him. It was a long swinging blow and it caught him in the throat. Blade fell back against a boulder and choked painfully. The fall jarred his injured shoulder. He was no more than half-acting when he sank to one knee. He sucked breath desperately into his starved lungs and started to retch.

  The outlaw yelled ‘Haaa!’ as though he were striking a horse and lashed out at him with his booted foot. Blade acted instinctively, his right hand flicking as fast as it would fall on to the butt of a gun holstered at Weyland’s side. Weyland went over backward and Blade rose. Before anybody could prevent him, Blade stamped down hard on the man’s belly. The wind went out of Weyland noisily. He rolled over on his face, rose very slowly to his hands and knees and fell flat.

  Blade heard the man coming from behind, a jingle of spurs, a quick hard intake of breath and Blade knew that the right hand was raised to bring a hard object down on his head. He turned and went in low, wrapping his arms around the man’s legs below the knees, driving forward hard with his shoulder. He felt the pain of his injury and then the man landed. Blade was half to his feet in a second and dropping forward with his knees. The man below him gave a shuddering groan of agony. He made a feeble attempt to strike at the man above him, but Blade was already gone and charging the man who was advancing on him with a rifle held like a club.

  This fellow was taken completely by surprise by the speed of the attack. He struck a blow at the man who was already on him, but it was too late. The air in the cave seemed full of the sound of blows and men yelling. Blade’s head took the man full in the face. As the fellow staggered back, off balance, Blade caught him by the arm, whirled him a half turn and released him. The man tripped on his own feet and fell into the fire. He screamed shrilly as a hand touched a red ember. He thrashed about insanely to escape the flames.

  Blade was now berserk, wanting only to get his hands on these men, unthinking of any future, living entirely in the present of ultimate violence.

  A man was yelling: ‘The girl! I’ll kill the girl.’ But the words meant nothing to Blade. The dark figure of a man loomed near him and he charged it.r />
  Something hard smashed into his face and every feature of it seemed to explode.

  He found that his face was pressed into the hard rock of the floor. Somebody turned him over roughly with the toe of his boot. He looked up into cold eyes of Duke Dukar.

  ‘Where’s the gold, Blade?’ he asked.

  Blade tried to speak, but he could not produce a word. He passed out.

  Eighteen

  He knew it was night.

  To a man who has lived in the open for years, the. sounds of the night are different from those of the day. It was night and he was lying in the cave just where they had felled him. Through his closed eyelids he could tell that he was near the flickering light of the fire. He could feel its warmth on right side of his face. His feet, therefore, must be toward the tunnel. McMasters was behind him.

  Where was the girl? Was Pilar still alive?

  The only sound he could hear was the crackling of the fire. He listened intently, wondering if there was a man actually watching him, ready for any sign of returning life to show on his face.

  He thought he could hear voices faintly, far-off, no more than a murmur of sound. After several minutes, he heard something near at hand in the cave. Then, abruptly, there came a sound in the stillness that he knew well. A man had idly turned the chamber of his revolver, just as a man would run worry beads through his fingers. It came several times, giving him the chance to locate the fellow exactly about fifteen feet from him and near the entrance of the cave.

  Blade opened his eyes and knew that he lay where he had fallen. If McMasters and the Indian girl were in the cave, he was not in a position to see them. He tried screwing his head around, but he could not see anybody. So far as he knew, he was alone in the cave with one man who held a gun. Slowly, very slowly, Blade started to move himself around and, at same time, to roll himself over. Any second, he expected a challenge from the man he thought must be a guard, but none came.

  After five or ten minutes of cautious and silent movement, he had himself in a position in which he could make out the dark entrance to the cave. Now he could feel the cold air from outside. He could also make out the dim form of a man sitting near the entrance with his back to a large rock. The fellow was profile on to him. Blade himself was in shadow. He raised his head carefully and looked to the left of the entrance. Vaguely, he could make out the shape of a man sitting with bowed head and guessed it was McMasters, though he could not be sure. He moved six inches to the left to get a better look and found something hard under his hand.