The serpant’s head swayed slightly back and forth while the rest of its thick, muscular body slowly coiled around to the striking position. Shorty braced for the fangs to sink into his flesh, but no matter what, he thought, before I die I will light the fuse if it takes my dying breath.
The rattler drew back as if finally aware of Shorty, its tail starting to buzz its deadly warning. Shorty closed his eyes and waited for the strike that within seconds would come, sweat beading on his forehead, his breath coming short and shallow. The snake tensed pulling its head back before the strike.
Shorty heard the rush of air as the snake’s head flew by his right ear. Now the fangs would find their mark, releasing a lethal dose of venom. But there was no pain, no feeling at all! Had the snake missed? More likely it had aimed for his neck and even now was sinking its fangs in deeply.
Shorty had talked to men who had been snake bitten and lived. They told him of the instant of the hit and how they didn’t for the first few seconds realize they were even bitten. Then after the venom flowed deep into the muscle, a white, hot pain would radiate outward from the wound and finally the arm or leg would go numb.
He remembered hearing one old prospector say, “If a man’s in good health and the snake’s not too big, the poison will just make you durn sick, but you’ll live. Course’n that’s if the snake’s a small one and he only gets you in an arm or leg and not too high at that.
“If a man gets careless and puts his head down a hole and gets a snake bite, then it’s all over but the buryin’.”
The thought of white, hot pain kept going through Shorty’s mind. But he still felt no pain, nothing, not even a little sting. He opened his eyes slowly and to his great shock, the serpent’s head was pinned squarely to the dirt, an arrow stuck between its eyes, its body writhing in the last death throes.
Madigan half-dozed off in the morning heat, his head dropping to his chest before he caught himself. He glanced around quickly to see if LaRue noticed.
“What’s the time?” he asked. LaRue was the only one of them that carried a pocket watch.
“It’s been about three hours since Shorty left. Suppose we better get ready so he can start the fireworks show below?” LaRue asked.
“You’re probably right. How do you want to handle this?”
“Just pick an easy target and start shooting, I guess. I wish there was another way, but we’ve got no choice.” LaRue hesitated. “Let’s give it another five minutes to make sure Shorty’s in position,” he suggested. Madigan nodded in agreement.
“Maybe O’Neill will be an easy target then,” Madigan hissed under his breath, relishing the thought of putting a bullet in his enemy.
After O’Neill got up from his blankets, things got pretty quiet around the camp. He only glanced in the direction of Lewana once, then found himself a comfortable place in the shade of the fountain and sat back to drink coffee and light a cigar that he puffed on occasionally, although not enough to keep it lit.
What was on his mind, Madigan wondered. Lewana? Or was he trying to figure a way out of the mess he’d gotten into? O’Neill was a rogue and a mean one at that, but as much as Madigan hated to admit it, he was also a thinker when things got rough.
Something was keeping O’Neill preoccupied, and whatever it was, Madigan knew it wasn’t good. He kept watching O’Neill sitting there in the shade while Lewana was now fully exposed to the sun, and the anger started up in Madigan’s throat again. He made up his mind that no matter what, he was going to nail O’Neill on the spot if he made the slightest move toward her.
Sitting there watching the man below made the time go even slower, and Madigan was just about to ask LaRue how long they had left when a white puff of smoke caught Madigan’s eye.
“She’s going to blow!” he yelled as he brought his Sharps up to his shoulder.
With a violent explosion, the rock blocking the entrance to the tunnel shuddered once, then almost in slow motion rolled a few feet to the side. Not much, but enough to allow one man at a time to pass into the cave.
Immediately, O’Neill was on his feet and running. Madigan fired a shot in O’Neill’s direction but missed clean. Below was pandemonium, and adding to the confusion, was a large dust cloud thrown up by the blast. It now obscured their vision of what was happening below.
Madigan hastily broke the breech open on the Sharps and replaced the spent round with a good one. He needn’t have been in a hurry, for below them nothing could be seen except a giant dust cloud roiling up from the canyon floor like a storm gone mad. LaRue looked over at Madigan and shrugged his shoulders.
There was nothing for them to do but wait for the dust to settle and pray Lewana would still be all right. At least the air was fairly calm in the valley so they wouldn’t have to wait long.
“Fire a couple of rounds in the air to keep them moving. No use letting them get too settled!” Madigan yelled.
“I’d like to blast away into the valley only I’d be afraid of hitting the girl!” LaRue yelled back as he fired off a couple of rounds from his Winchester.
What seemed like hours, but really was only minutes, passed and the dust settled to the point where they could see again. When it cleared sufficiently, Madigan took careful aim at a man standing in the open and pulled the trigger.
“That’s one we won’t have to worry about,” LaRue said as the man hit the ground.
“You might say that,” Madigan answered grimly as he jacked another round in the Sharps. Madigan could tell by LaRue’s tone of voice that he was feeling the same as he was about what they were forced to do. No true Western man likes to kill, and to kill this way, like shooting prairie dogs on the north range, was something that nagged at Madigan’s stomach.
Yet they had no choice. These men wanted the Indians’ gold and didn’t mind killing for it. And before they killed, they would rape the women and torture the men and boys. These men gave no mercy and deserved none in return.
Madigan was about to find another target when a barrage of bullets swept over the rim of the canyon at them, ricocheting off the boulders around them like deadly lead hornets. For the better part of ten minutes the outlaws kept up the bombardment. When things had settled down so Madigan could take a look again, he was sick at what he saw. Lewana was gone!
Madigan quickly looked for O’Neill, but the madman was nowhere to be found. His heart sank in a pool of despair as he realized O’Neill had made his escape and taken Lewana with him, and there was only one place they could have gone-into the tunnel to try to make it to the outside.
When Madigan had first realized that the rock blocking the tunnel had to be removed, his plans were for Shorty and the Indians to set the bomb in place, light the fuse, and run like the dickens to get out of the tunnel before O’Neill’s men might get close enough to get a shot at them. Madigan had given Shorty enough fuse to burn three minutes.
But what if Shorty decided to stop for some reason? He would be able to hear someone coming behind in the dark but wouldn’t know that Lewana was with O’Neill as his hostage, and she might be killed by mistake.
Madigan said a silent prayer, one of the few he’d said in his life, for her safety. He wanted to go as fast as he could to her rescue and started to get up to leave when LaRue’s voice stopped him cold.
“Madigan! I know what you’ve got in mind, but don’t do it! Lewana put herself on the line for her people to give them time for you to get here. Now, for Lewana’s sake, help me drive her enemies out of the valley!
“Once they’re in the tunnel, the villagers can roll the rock back in place. Then we’ll go after O’Neill. And if he’s hurt the girl in any way, I swear I’ll drag him back and let the Indians have him. I promise you that! And from what I hear, they know how to kill a man slowly so he begs to die.”
With as much anger as Madigan carried inside, he didn’t want to listen to anyone, but LaRue made sense, and Madigan knew in his heart that LaRue was right. He settled back for the job at hand.
Most of the men below were well hidden behind the fountain or low wall that surrounded it. Once in a while a head would pop out as if testing to see if the men above were still there. Madigan and LaRue both held their fire, waiting for a target they couldn’t miss. Madigan’s shoulder was bothering him some and he didn’t want to aggravate the wound any more than he needed to.
The trouble was, the longer they waited, the more time O’Neill had to get away, and the less chance Madigan would see Lewana alive again. Something would have to be done, and done quick.
“I’m going to hike over to the far side of the rim,” he told LaRue. “With the Sharps, I might be able to drive them out of hiding. It’ll be up to you to keep them moving in the right direction.
“Any of them head for the tunnel, let ‘em go. If they try for the village, we’ll have to stop them or we’ll have a slaughter on our hands.”
Madigan didn’t wait for LaRue to answer. He grabbed his gear he was up and moving at a fast walk for the other side of the canyon rim. He’d have to stay well back from the inner edge so as to not give his position away before he was ready.
At least this end of the canyon was narrower than at the village end and wouldn’t take long to get around. In ten minutes of pushing himself, Madigan was settled in place.
His heart beat so hard it felt like it was coming out of his chest, so Madigan made himself breathe deeply until his body became calm again. Couldn’t afford to miss any shots. He noticed the wound was bleeding through his shirt again and it hurt like hell, but pain was something a man can block from his mind if he needs to bad enough.
Carefully edging up until he could just barely see the fountain area below, he checked the wind, figured the distance, and brought the heavy buffalo gun up to his shoulders, all in one deliberate motion.
Almost by itself, the gun slammed against Madigan’s shoulder. When the smoke cleared, another man lay dead in the hot sun. The others were scattering in all directions.
Two of O’Neill’s men made the mistake of running toward the village. LaRue dropped them in their tracks before they went twenty feet. Pretty good shooting, Madigan thought as he squeezed off another round at a cowboy that was too confused to go anywhere. The man dropped with a thud, then started to get up, fell back down, and lay still.
They’d whittled O’Neill’s men down some, but there was still enough left to do some real harm if they didn’t get them out of the hidden valley soon. This wasn’t a game, and things could get desperate in a hurry if anything went wrong, like LaRue or Madigan catching a stray bullet.
Two things bothered Madigan. The first and foremost was the thought of O’Neill taking Lewana further away from him each minute he was forced to stay here. The second was the fact that it wouldn’t stay daylight forever. Once it got dark they would have no way of keeping O’Neill’s men under their guns.
They might choose to head for the escape route that lay open to them, or they might choose to go into the village for the gold and maybe a few hostages. Something needed to be done in a hurry, only Madigan didn’t know what. At least for the moment the men were making themselves scarce.
Using the momentary lag in activity, Madigan picked up his binoculars and carefully scanned the fountain area. There had to be something he could use to his advantage.
In the army he was taught to always take the high ground wherever possible, then scout the enemy’s camp for anything you could use against them. It can be something small, going unnoticed to the casual eye, yet to the trained soldier it might be used as a weapon to bring the enemy to defeat.
Madigan was hoping for something now, only he didn’t know what. Only desperation told him there had to be some tool for him to use if he could just find it. He must’ve glassed the camp several times before giving up. There just wasn’t anything he could use to an advantage.
The men were well hidden, and with the fountain standing close to the wall, it was possible for them to keep out of sight from LaRue and Madigan at the same time. They’d have to move their own positions in order to find a target below. The outlaws weren’t likely to show themselves again if they didn’t have to.
The mind acts in strange and mysterious ways, so the saying goes. You try to solve a problem, and not finding an answer, you finally give up. But your subconscious goes right on working at it. Then when you least expect it, out pops the answer you were looking for.
So it was now. Madigan had been looking over the outlaws’ camp, finding nothing but a half-raised tent and a pile of supplies. Each man carried his own guns so there was no weapons stack. Spread here and there a few bedrolls were laid out. Just inside the west wall another couple of small packages sat off by themselves.
Suddenly it hit him. Mila said O’Neill tossed dynamite at the Indians to scare them off. That was it! Those packs must hold the dynamite! Remembering back to the army, Madigan realized O’Neill always carried explosives with him in a pack like the ones he now concentrated on. Hopefully, this was the solution Madigan was looking for.
While many a man can face the thought of being shot, few can face being blown to bits. Madigan was betting these men weren’t any different. Madigan formed a quick plan in his mind and hoped LaRue was ready to keep them going in the right direction once he put his plan in action.
When a big bullet hits the dirt, it throws up a lot of dust. The Sharps was a large gun that shot a big bullet. Taking careful aim, Madigan let fly a shot just short of the packs he hoped carried the explosives. Madigan knew LaRue was wondering what he was up to, but it didn’t matter if he knew or not. It was the results Madigan was after.
Sure enough, when the bullet kicked up dirt a few feet from the first pack, every man down there took notice. A few men quickly changed positions, in the process exposing their flanks to LaRue. But LaRue held his fire as Madigan hoped he would. A second shot, this time a little closer to the packs brought a definite response. The rest of the men put anything they could between themselves and the explosives.
Madigan waited and watched as the outlaws fidgeted at any noise around them. One man coughed and they all jerked their heads down. It was plain to see they expected the worst. Often the anticipation is harder on one’s nerves than the event itself. Like dropping one boot and not the other, he’d gotten their attention. Now they were beginning to crack.
A third shot got the men up and running. Those that ran the wrong way either dropped from LaRue’s rifle fire or turned tail and ran the right way. A few more shots from Madigan’s Sharps kept the slow ones moving. In a few seconds they managed to herd all the men through the narrow hole that led to the interior of the tunnel.
With a sigh of relief, Madigan leaned back against a rock. His wound had gotten worse and the pain was fierce, yet he felt good at his accomplishment. Now to gather his breath and get after O’Neill, but first there was one more thing he had to do.
In less than half an hour, Madigan had set the packs of explosives just inside the tunnel mouth and had lit the fuses after first firing a couple of rounds into the darkness to be sure the outlaws were well back. It wasn’t so much that he wanted them safe from the explosion as much as he didn’t want to get a bullet in his back while he was leaving.
He knew the tunnel walls were fairly smooth for several hundred yards inside and his bullets would ricochet everywhere. Only an idiot would be foolhardy enough to stick around with lead bouncing all over the place.
He’d given himself enough fuse to get back up on the rim to safety before the charge went off. Madigan’s timing was perfect. Just as he got back in position beside LaRue, the whole thing blew with an ear-splitting roar that shook the ground like an earthquake.
When the smoke and dust cleared, they could see that the tunnel was sealed at this end for all eternity. This done, Madigan was now free to find O’Neill. He only prayed Lewana was still alive.
After lighting the fuse, Shorty and the others headed out of the tunnel at a run. Not having any experience with blasting powder, Shorty wanted to put as much ground between himself and the bomb. After crossing over the ledge that bypassed the tilting slab of stone, Mila motioned for the party to take a rest among a jumble of boulders. It was here Shorty got an idea.
When O’Neill and his men came out, they too would have to use the ledge over the tilt stone. At that time they would be very susceptible to an ambush. And if Shorty had his way, he would make sure they got one. Quickly outlining his plan to Mila and the rest, he sat down with them to wait. It was after the first explosion that they heard someone coming.
“Looks like we have company,” Shorty said quietly. “Now, everybody get ready. When they hit the ledge, we can pick them off one by one if they want to make a fight of it. Then again, if they’ll give up and drop their guns, that’s all right with me. We’ll take O’Neill back for trial and you and your people can have the rest. I’m sure you’ll want an accounting from them for your people they killed.”
Mila had a strain to her voice when she spoke. “If they have harmed Lewana in any way, we will make them pay very slowly for their evil!”
No one needed to tell Shorty what pay slowly meant. Mila’s people were descended from the Aztecs, and they knew how to make an enemy suffer for his sins.
As the bobbing torch came closer, Shorty was able to see only two people, the unmistakable form of Harry O’Neill, and the slim figure of Lewana.
“What do we do now?” Mila whispered in the darkness.
“We wait and see. If O’Neill drops his guard, we nail him to the wall, but only if we are sure Lewana will be safe. If not, we let them pass and hope Madigan can catch O’Neill before he hurts her.”
“I don’t like letting him get away, but we may have no choice.”
“May be the only chance Lewana has. O’Neill will want to put as much ground between him and Madigan as he can, as fast as he can.”
He might kill Lewana first,” worried Mila.
Shorty took her hand in his and squeezed it gently. “I doubt it. O’Neill wants the gold mighty bad. Anybody else would have used Lewana as a trade. Not O’Neill. He wants both. Now he has her and he won’t rest until he has the gold too. Madigan knows that and he’ll stop O’Neill one way or another. You can bet on it.”
When they reached the ledge, O’Neill placed his torch in a crack in the rock and ordered Lewana to light another, all the time keeping a gun pressed at her back. Then he forced her to carry the second torch while they crossed the ledge. “Just in case you drop the light,” he had told her, “I don’t want to be left in the dark.”
Never once did he let the cocked gun move away from her body, leaving Shorty not the slightest chance of a shot at O’Neill without risking Lewana’s life. In quiet frustration, he was left with no choice but to let O’Neill slip on by. But for those that followed, it would be another story.
Now that there were no longer any hostages to get in the way, they would be waiting for the rest of the outlaws and Shorty was determined to let no one else escape.
“When they come, I’ll confront them at the ledge. Those that want to surrender can. Those that want to make a fight of it. . well, I’ll be ready,” Shorty said dryly.
It felt good to have the buckskin under him again. When Madigan got to the outside entrance to the tunnel, it was plain to see by the tracks that O’Neill was gone. There in the dust was the imprint of his heavy boot, beside it the small moccasin tracks of a girl. Madigan was surprised to find no sign of Shorty and Mila.
There was no time to lose. He would worry about them later after he caught up with O’Neill. Anything could happen out here in the high desert country. O’Neill was a desperate and crafty man, and he wouldn’t leave any more of a trail than a mountain lion over rock. The slightest breeze would erase all traces of his passing, leaving Madigan with only a guess as to where O’Neill went, and taking away all hope for Lewana’s safety at the same time.
Judging from the sign, O’Neill was in a bug hurry to get away. He was taking long strides, half dragging Lewana after him. Every once in a while he stopped, probably to get a better hold on the girl, then off he went again, still dragging her.
A short distance more and Madigan came to a place where horses were tied. The tracks on the ground showed where two horses were led away from the rest. He couldn’t tell for sure, but it looked as though O’Neill had stopped and possibly tied Lewana’s hands before they mounted up and rode off. The memory came back to Madigan of how the outlaws had tied Lewana’s and Mila’s hands before, and a rage started up within him again.
He’d ridden an hour when he heard the sound of a rider approaching from back down the trail. Madigan reined the buckskin up a dry creek bed where he could see without being seen. It was Shorty.
“Hold up down there!” Madigan yelled as Shorty came into view.
Shorty brought his horse to a halt and waited for Madigan to ride up beside him. “The others won’t be bothering anybody again,” he said grimly.
“How’s that?”
“We waited for them to gain the ledge over the tilt stone after letting O’Neill go by. No way of stopping him without hurting Lewana. When they were all on the ledge, I ordered them to throw down their guns. They answered with a shower of lead instead. Lucky to get under cover before I was killed!
“I was getting ready to pick a few of them off when all of a sudden I hear this ear-rending commotion coming from the area of the tilt stone. Next thing I know, the tilt stone along with the ledge the men were on dropped out of sight. Seems the Indians had the whole thing rigged in case they needed it in an emergency. There wasn’t one chance in a million any of ‘em survived.”
“The Indians won that battle for us. Now it is up to you and me to get Lewana back if we can.
“By the way, LaRue said he’d try to catch up with us as soon as he can. Mila asked him to blow the outside entrance to the tunnel up so it can’t be used again. I’d have done it, but just blowing that boulder out of the way scared the stuffings out of me. Of course, the snake didn’t help either!”
“What snake?” Madigan asked.
“I’d just gotten the charge in place when this big snake comes. .”
Shorty was suddenly thrown to the ground as his horse was shot out from under him. One second he was telling Madigan about a snake, the next he was on the ground with the wind knocked out of him.
For an instant Madigan watched as Shorty lay where he had fallen trying to get some air back into his lungs. There was nothing Madigan could do for him. Suddenly a second bullet whistled past Madigan’s ear. Madigan’s mind blew into a rage. He jerked the buckskin around and headed in the direction of the shot. In the middle of the trail, smoking rifle in hand, stood the killer, Harry O’Neill.
O’Neill levered another round into the chamber. Madigan saw the puff of smoke and felt a tug at his hips, but the great horse beneath him charged on straight at the killer as Madigan’s right hand dropped to his Colt. He had no conscious thought of firing his gun, but as he bore down on O’Neill the outlaw began to take on a strange, contorted look. One after another, Madigan saw splotches of red explode on O’Neill’s chest. Then another puff of smoke came from O’Neill’s rifle and Madigan felt the sharp, burning pain of the bullet strike him in the right arm, forcing the now-empty Colt from his hand. A third bullet hit Madigan in the lower right side and he slipped from the saddle and hit the ground with a jar.
Madigan must have blacked out for a few seconds. When he came to, the madman was standing over him. O’Neill looked like a rag doll that was shot to pieces. Blood was literally flowing from five gaping holes in his chest, but he stood there with a grin on his face and evil in his eye. And the rifle pointed at Madigan’s head was rock steady.
You lose, Captain!” he sneered as he tightened his finger on the trigger. As Madigan watched a blank look slowly spread across O’Neill’s face. O’Neill’s body seemed to relax a little and his right leg started to twist under the killer, while the muzzle of the gun swayed off target. O’Neill fought to again bring the barrel in line with Madigan’s head but no longer had the strength to do so. His face now took on the appearance of a man that was finally at peace as the once giant of a man slid to the ground, nothing more than a dead pile of flesh. Then Madigan blacked out again.
When he came to again he didn’t know how long he had been out. Hours, days, weeks? But somehow he was still alive!
“How?” Madigan groaned when he finally came around again.
“O’Neill died on his feet. Your first two bullets blew his heart away. He was dead and didn’t even know it. His evil just kept him going a little longer,” Lewana said, as she gently brushed a hair out of Madigan’s eye.