Tall Rider Read online

  Was Calthrop the sort who’d relish digging out twenty yards of rubble with only one man to help him? That didn’t seem likely. That left two possibilities. Either Calthrop was prepared to sacrifice his plunder rather than let somebody else get his hands on it, or else he knew of another way into the cave. And if he could find it, then I sure could too.

  While I was cogitating thus, my candle burned down. Before it went out I lit another. By its light I made my way back to the treasure room. As I went, I kept any eye open for any other glims that might have been left in niches along the way. I didn’t know how long it would take to find a way out. But I did know that my chances of doing so would be greatly reduced if I had to work in the dark.

  I found that the cave didn’t end at Calthrop’s dump but continued beyond it. It narrowed quickly and started rising as it went. Pretty soon I could no longer walk, however low I crouched, and had to crawl. This slowed my progress, but the tunnel didn’t seem to get any smaller. The walls were less rocky too as though they had been smoothed by rushing water. I guessed that is how the cave had been formed in the first place.

  From time to time I stopped to take a look at the flame of my candle. It continued to burn straight and upright. I’d been hoping to see it flicker. If it flickered, it would indicate a current of air, and air that moved had found a way in. And if it had found a way in, I could find a way out.

  The further I crawled the hotter it got. It wasn’t a good sign. I began to get thirsty. I took another pull at my canteen which was now considerably lighter. If the cave had been gouged out by water as I thought, there wasn’t a drop to be had now, not even a suspicion of any dampness oozing through the cave sides. Soon I’d be sucking pebbles to stop my tongue sticking to the roof of my mouth. This was not good news.

  I changed candles again and crawled on.

  Then all of a sudden, the angle of the tunnel began to rise steeply and it got hotter still. Not only did my candle refuse to flicker, but I noticed the flame began to burn lower. I knew this happened in confined places where there was not enough good air to feed it. Soon I was finding it harder to breathe.

  The air got so bad I wondered if I could go on. And then the problem was solved for me.

  Without warning the tunnel came to an abrupt end. One moment I was painfully edging forward on my elbows. The next I was face to face with a solid wall of sheer stone. It looked as if at some time long ago, there had been a fall and a section of rock (and how big it might be I had no way of telling) had cut into the tunnel and strangled it. I had no choice but to shuffle back the way I had come.

  It took some time before I reached a point where I could turn round.

  I was by now pretty exhausted and rapidly running out of ideas.

  Both on the way up the passage and on the way back, I had kept an eye open for anything resembling a fork or an opening in the walls or roof that might be worth exploring. But I’d seen nothing like that by the time I got back to the vaulted chamber.

  My spirits had fallen almost as low as my water and my stock of candle-ends. If I didn’t find a way out soon, I’d be reduced to looking for it in complete darkness.

  I checked through Calthrop’s loot to see if there was anything I could use, something to drink or eat, anything I could use as a tool. But in all the wealth he had heaped up in that cave, there was nothing of any practical value. There were plenty of bottles, but strong liquor and patent medicines were no use to me.

  Rack after rack was filled with goods that had value only in the market place. I would have exchanged them all for a jug of cool water.

  It was hard to reckon exactly how long I had been keeping company with all that wealth. A good few hours at any rate. The sun must have gone down long since, so it must be night outside. Maybe it would be dawn soon.

  My candle end burned down. I lit another.

  I made a tour of the chamber looking to build up my small store of glims. I had used up most of the ones that were in the obvious places already but I found sufficient replacements to keep me going for a good while. Some were only an inch or two long and good for half an hour or so. But others were three or four times that length, and all of them had smooth sides indicating they had burned down evenly, as you’d expect in a place where the air was still. All that is save one which I found standing on a box near a large crudely made press or cupboard made of rough planks with doors held by rope-hinges.

  A column of tallow had formed on one side. I stared at it. And then I understood.

  If tallow had dribbled down one side only, it was because the flame had pushed it in that direction. And if the flame had pushed it, it had not been burning straight. And if it hadn’t been burning straight, there was a reason for it.

  I opened the doors of the rickety press. Several others like it stood at irregular intervals around the cave walls. While the open shelves fixed by brackets to the rocky walls held candlesticks, mantel-clocks, silver teapots and other stuff of the sort, Calthrop had filled these cupboards with anything that might be damaged by any wildlife that came sniffing through the cave: rolls of cotton, linen goods, carpets, sacks of seed and meal.

  I removed the contents and ran my fingers all round the interior. As far as I could see, it was what it looked like: a cupboard. But there had to be some reason to account for the candle with the grease that had run down one side.

  The cupboard had been roughly knocked together out of unplaned planks. They were thick and stout and very heavy and had been made into a rough box some six feet wide by eight tall and three deep.

  There was no way I could move it even though it was now empty. I looked around and found a nail, a solid silver statuette, and a length of curtain cord. Standing on the smallest treasure chest, I used the statuette as a hammer to drive the nail into the top of the cupboard. To it I tied the curtain cord, which I used double for extra strength. Then I got down, heaved on my improvised rope and pulled her down. It wasn’t child’s play, but she gave in the end.

  The fall raised more dust. As I waited for it to settle, I got my breath back.

  The cloud cleared slowly, like a muddy pond when the dirty water is run off out of it by fresh. And that, if you say air for water, was what was happening. Most of the wall emerged as a uniform sandy-colour. But in the middle a large circular patch, maybe three feet in diameter, stayed black as though someone had painted a small solid cartwheel on it. The dust was being pulled into it. It was an opening, the opening to a tunnel!

  I scrambled over the fallen cupboard and knelt at the entrance. The flame of my candle flickered.

  I had found Calthrop’s back door. It wasn’t as wide as a church door but, if he ever had to use it, it would be plenty big enough to let all the goods he had stacked up in the cave pass through without trouble.

  I reckoned the fact he had kept it deliberately hidden meant I was on to something.

  I thrust the candle into the blackness which retreated before it.

  I could see maybe four or five feet, enough to tell me the tunnel did not get any wider and led downwards. Holding my light before me I lay on my belly and crawled.

  As I went I could feel the air cool on my face.

  The tunnel levelled out after a while, dipped, levelled out again, widened and then came to an end in a sheer drop. I held my candle as far down as I could but couldn’t see how deep the hole was. I picked a sizeable stone and dropped it. It hit something pretty quickly and then there was silence. I guessed what I’d heard was not a ricochet but the stone making a soft landing: it had not bounced. I guessed it had fallen into a mound of sand not too far below. I liked the idea better than a heap of sharp stones.

  There was just enough room for me to turn round. This I managed with some difficulty. Then extinguishing my candle which would be of no use, for it would go out as I dropped and probably get jolted out of my hand when I landed, I slipped it into my pocket with the others, stretched my legs into the void and let go.

  I couldn’t have fallen more th
an eight or ten feet. Even so, my landing knocked the breath out of me.

  Then I heard the sound of a match and saw a hand lighting a candle.

  A voice said, ‘Hold it there, mister! Don’t move if you want to go on breathing!’

  7

  GOD’S FRESH AIR

  A gun fired in church during the Sunday sermon wouldn’t have given me a bigger shock than those words did.

  ‘Who’s there?’ I said.

  The sudden light made the surrounding gloom even blacker. The flame hovered about three feet above the sandy floor of the cave. It was perched on top of a short stub of candle that had been stuck with its own wax to a rock a yard high. It cast a small circle of light around it. Within that circle were a few loose stones. I made out a set of footprints among the stones. Nothing I saw moved.

  ‘Toss your gun into the light so I can see it. Take your time. Do it slow. Don’t make me nervous. When I get nervous, my trigger finger is liable to twitch.’

  It was a strong voice. I couldn’t place the accent, but it was from back East. I couldn’t place the voice either. It reverberated in the enclosed space and seemed all around me. I narrowed my eyes but still couldn’t make out any shape or movement. For no good reason I got the idea that whoever was there was alone.

  ‘Hurry it up,’ said the voice.

  Then I thought this: how did I know he really had a gun? For all I could tell, he might be there in the dark pointing the stem of a corncob pipe at me.

  Slowly I reached for my right hip. I took my gun out. Real slow, like the man said.

  ‘That’s better,’ he said. ‘Now just throw it into the light.’

  ‘What’ll you do if don’t?’ I said.

  ‘Don’t push me, mister. You can’t see me but I can see you. I can blow your head off any time.’

  I decided for the moment to hang on to my gun and see what happened.

  ‘Listen,’ I said. ‘I could loose off a shot right now. I may not hit you but I’ll see where you are in the flash. And my second shot won’t miss.’

  ‘I’m a reasonable man,’ said the voice in an even tone. ‘You tell me how you got here and why. I’ll hear you out and then I’ll decide if I’m going to kill you. I got time for it. Go ahead.’

  Now, Pa had always learned me that talking was better than shooting. Added to that, I wasn’t sure I could do what I said, I mean about bringing him down in two shots. Was I that fast? And though I had my doubts, I couldn’t be certain he didn’t have a gun after all. Anyway, what was he doing there alone in the dark? It didn’t feel to me like he was there under his own willpower, as if he’d been passing by and had decided to spend the night under a roof rather than the stars. Our voices boomed like we were in an echoing chamber. Not a cave, then, but an enclosed place. It struck me it could be he was as trapped as I was. If that was so, then we needed each other. Four hands would be better than two.

  ‘Your offer is pleasantly made, mister,’ said I, though I kept the barrel of my Colt up in readiness.

  I missed out the details and gave him the gist.

  I told him how me and Squawking Crow had followed tracks into the canyon, how my friend had been shot by one of two men I knew—

  ‘Name of?’ said the voice.

  I gave names.

  ‘Calthrop,’ I said, ‘and Nat somebody.’

  ‘Ames,’ said the voice. ‘Nathaniel Ames.’

  Then I described how I’d found the cave, began to explore it, tripped the snare and brought the roof down and blocked the tunnel—

  ‘You mean there’s no way out?’

  There was an edge of panic in the voice.

  ‘Nope. Not that way.’

  I heard the sound of boots shuffling across the sand. Then I saw them in the circle of light.

  ‘Put your gun up,’ said the voice. ‘We got no quarrel with each other. We’re in the same jam.’

  A man appeared from my left and held out his hand.

  My eyes were now accustomed to the dim light and I made out a tall figure, maybe in his late thirties, beard. He wasn’t carrying a gun.

  ‘Bridger’s the name. Harry Bridger. And you?’

  I told him my name, holstered my Colt and shook his hand.

  ‘Now your turn,’ I said. ‘Who are you, Harry Bridger, and what in hell’s name are you doing here?’

  ‘Is that a canteen of water you have there? Anything in it? A man with a dry mouth ain’t likely to tell a good story.’

  ‘Let’s see how you go, Harry. If I like what you got to say, you can have a couple of sips. Canteen’s running pretty low. But I’m a reasonable man.’

  ‘I got no more cause to like Calthrop and Ames than you have. But this ain’t the place to go into all that. We got to find a way out of here.…’

  ‘First tell me how you ended up in this place,’ I said.

  ‘Been tailing them for a couple of months. I got my reasons, but I’ll save them for later. Last time was just a couple of days back. Saw them setting out from the Bar-T just before daybreak with a team of pack mules all loaded up. I guessed what it was: the loot they got from holding up banks and robbing honest folk, ’cos that’s what Calthrop and his gang are up to these days. They drove the team out here, just him and Ames. But when they headed into the canyon I had to keep my distance for fear they’d spot me. By the time I followed them in, they’d clean disappeared. I reckoned there had to be another way out but I couldn’t see it. So back out I went and rode round looking for it. I only found out for sure there was no such thing when I got back to the place I started from. Rode a complete circle. I was just in time to see them driving the mules back towards the Bar-T. By then the mules weren’t carrying anything.’

  ‘Here, Harry, you’ve earned your drink. But go easy on it, that’s all there is. No telling when we might get some more.’

  He took a couple of mouthfuls, handed the canteen back to me and went on.

  ‘When they’d gone, I rode into the canyon and searched it pretty thoroughly. I didn’t find anything and there was too much loose stone and shale to hold any marks a man could read tracks in. I couldn’t figure it out. They brought loaded mules and they took them away unloaded. So where was the merchandise? I didn’t hang around too long, since I had no guarantee they wouldn’t be back. I returned next day. I made sure there was nobody about, did some more poking around and in the end I found the cave. I was still inside when they jumped me. Never heard them. Must have seen my horse. They had the drop on me before I knew it. Ames wanted to kill me then and there. But Calthrop was in one of his jokey moods. He puts a gun in my back and orders me to get into the tunnel you came through. Then he covered the entrance with something too heavy for me to move.…’

  ‘… a cupboard full of loot.…’

  ‘… and I been here ever since. Then you drop in and give me the fright of my life. Brad,’ he said, ‘we’re in a jam.’

  ‘You’ve had plenty time to look round. What have we got here?’

  ‘I ain’t rightly sure. It was a lucky thing I’d picked up a spare candle and still had it in my pocket, because Calthrop and Ames didn’t even leave me a glim. But I had to be sparing with it. As far as I can make out, this chamber we’re in now is a kind of dried-up siphon for some old water course that ain’t had water in it for a couple of hundred years. It’s just plain rock all the way round. So there’s nothing doing down here. But then there’s the tunnel you came in by, and just opposite, over there, there’s another the same that leads on. I tried climbing up into it, but it’s too high for one man. Couldn’t get a foothold, the rock’s too smooth. But now there’s the two of us, I reckon between us we could get a man up there so he could find out where it goes. That way we might get somewhere. Anyroad, the way I see it, that’s where we should start looking.’

  I took heart from knowing I hadn’t reached a dead-end. But Harry’s plan wasn’t as straightforward as it sounded. What if the man who was hoisted up decided not to give his hand to the one left behind? An
d if he found a way out, what was to stop him just walking away and leaving the other one there?

  ‘OK, Harry,’ I said. ‘But who’s it to be? Me or you?’

  He did not answer immediately and his hesitation told me that he had just thought what I had been thinking.

  ‘Look, Brad,’ he said, ‘you’re the one with the gun. If you hadn’t fallen out of that tunnel and made me jump clean out of my skin, I’d have for sure died down here alone in the dark. I got no quarrel with you. We’re in the same fix. We got to be pardners, like it or not. You’re the lighter man. It makes sense for you to go. I’ll trust you not to forget me.’

  I held out my hand and he gave me his.

  ‘Then it’s a deal, pardner. Come on, let’s get started.’

  The distance from the floor of the chamber to the tunnel must have been about ten, twelve feet. I stood on Harry’s cupped hands and clambered on to his shoulders. Above me the lip of the tunnel crumbled but eventually I found handholds and pulled myself up. I lit a candle and I was heartened to see the flame flicker again. I guessed the air current must flow directly from one tunnel opening to the next across the top of the siphon, for the flame burned upright down there. It was the same as those fast flowing streams which sometimes have fish feeding quietly underneath, in deep, still pools.

  ‘What can you see?’ asked Harry.

  ‘The tunnel’s like the one we came down. I got air in my face. I’m going to see how far I can get.’

  The way was level, then dipped, then straightened up. I passed a couple of larger chambers. There the air current was fainter. I guessed this was on account of the space being bigger, but each time I was afraid in case the tunnel stopped or would be too narrow for me to go on. But on I went. From time to time I shouted to Harry how I was doing. He replied. His voice got so faint until I couldn’t make out what he was saying.

  At last I reached a small chamber from which no tunnel led.