Tall Rider Read online

‘Yeah, but talk is all it is,’ said Tom. ‘It don’t get us any further forward.’

  Rusty coloured up almost as red as her hair, but she didn’t say a thing.

  ‘If it’s action you want,’ I said, ‘I’ll tell you what we’ll do. Let’s say Calthrop robs the wagon train. Once he’s got the twenty-five thousand, he’ll hightail it for the Bar-T so he can go to ground. But there’ll a surprise waiting for him. By then word will have got around and the rest of the men will be long gone. When he finds nobody at the Bar-T, he’ll come on out here to find out what’s been happening from the range hands he thinks are still clearing the cave. By then, we’ve got to empty his loot out of the cave and find a safe place to stash it so he can’t get his hands on any of it.’

  ‘How’re we going to do that?’ asked Rusty. ‘We don’t have the manpower to clear us a way through the fall. Job’s too big.’

  ‘So we won’t try it. We’ll go in through the back door.’

  ‘But I thought the tunnel was narrow,’ she countered. ‘You said you were crawling on your belly most of the time.’

  ‘True. But nearly all the loot I saw was small items,’ I said. ‘Most of it was silverware, jewellery, coin, the sort of thing goes in bags or small chests that can be hauled and dragged. Whatever’s too big to carry, we leave. But most of the stuff we can get out easy.’

  ‘What would we do with it?’ asked Harry.

  I hadn’t got that far with my plans. But here Rusty chipped in.

  ‘There’s another cave a little way up the valley,’ she said. ‘Found it when I was taking a look-see the day you got back here all tuckered out. It don’t go back very far but it’s big.’

  ‘Rusty,’ said Harry. ‘You’re a marvel!’

  There were now seven of us: Rusty, Harry, me and Tom plus John, Pete and Billy Rively who said he’d make himself useful somehow. When we reached the canyon, I gave Rusty sentry duty. She took up a position high up on the hillside overlooking the plain. She was to let us know if she saw riders approaching.

  We set to work clearing the mouth of the tunnel I’d blocked up. I posted Billy there so that if Rusty spotted trouble, she would sing out to him and he would call into the cave so we could get out. Then the rest of us crawled in one after the other. But we didn’t all go the whole way. Harry took up a position on the outer side of the siphon. Then the four of us let ourselves down into it. Pete and John stayed put, while Tom and me climbed up the other side and crawled into the treasure chamber.

  Tom and I ferried the merchandise as far as the inner lip of the siphon and handed it down to John and Pete who passed it up to Harry, who hauled the last stage of the way and handed it out to Billy.

  After a couple of hours, I called a halt and we all came out for air, a drink and a smoke.

  Rusty’s cave was fifty, sixty yards further up the valley and well hidden. A large rock hid its mouth. We transported Calthrop’s hoard and then wiped out our tracks. We re-sealed the tunnel making as sure as we could that only a pair of Indian eyes could have said that the way we left it didn’t look natural.

  By the time we were through, the shadows were lengthening once more.

  ‘What now, Brad?’ said Harry.

  ‘Way I see it, Calthrop, Ames and any of the hired guns who’ve stayed with him will be here tomorrow, maybe tonight. So we got to be prepared.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Tom. ‘We need to dig ourselves in, get us some cover.’

  ‘Harry,’ I said. ‘You go scout out up there, where you’d have a line of fire on anyone entering or leaving the canyon. Build yourself defences to hide behind. You, Tom, take the grandstand view of the cave and do the same up there and make sure you’ve got cover.’

  Harry took Billy and John, while Tom, Pete and me climbed the hill overlooking the defile and started building our hides.

  It was now pretty late. We all had a bite to eat then tried to get some shut-eye: I had missed out on whole nights and was feeling bushed. We arranged a rota for sentry duty, so that we wouldn’t be taken by surprise.

  At first light, Rusty went out through the defile to check the horses and make sure they were good and hidden. When she’d tended to them, she came back into the canyon and went into the cave she’d found, and started organizing the supplies into two lots, one for Harry’s team, one for mine.

  She was still inside when Pete, who’d taken over the sentry watch gave a shout.

  ‘Riders coming!’

  I joined him on the shoulder of the spur. Their dust was clearly visible in the early morning light. They were maybe a mile off but coming fast. I made out half a dozen mounted men and a flatboard wagon. They’d be on us in minutes.

  I called across to Harry and told him to hunker down.

  Then Tom and me and Pete settled down behind the low stone wall we had built.

  Below I heard the horses slow and then stop.

  ‘You stay here with the wagon, Nat,’ said a voice which I recognized as Calthrop’s. ‘The rest of you come with me.’

  I peered through a firing hole to check on my view.

  It figured. The defile was too narrow to let the wagon pass, so it had to stay outside. And if Calthrop’s right-hand man was posted to guard it, then you could be pretty certain that it had the army’s money on board.

  My field of vision covered the entrance to both caves.

  But I didn’t pay it much attention, because out of the corner of my eye, I saw something move.

  Rusty had just come out of her cave.

  10

  EAST TO THE BORDER

  I couldn’t warn her. It was too late: Calthrop and his boys were now directly beneath me.

  But then I breathed again.

  Rusty had heard them as they clattered single file through the boulders. Without waiting to find out more, she turned on her heel and disappeared back into the cave.

  I turned my attention to Calthrop who dismounted and climbed up to the cave where his squad of range-hands should have been hauling rubble but weren’t. His men stopped and watched him go. The canyon was so quiet you could hear the stones squeak under his boots.

  He called out, but got no answer.

  ‘Nobody at the Bar-T and nobody here neither,’ said one of his men, a tough-looking brawler, and he loosened the six-shooter in his holster.

  ‘They run out on you, boss?’ said another. ‘What’s going on?’

  Calthrop stood at the entrance to the cave, pushed up his hat so it sat on the back of his head, and thought.

  ‘Why were there men out here in the first place, clearing a fall in the roof of a cave? ’Tain’t work for range hands. Don’t make sense’, said the brawler.

  ‘Hold your talk, Shad,’ snapped Calthrop. ‘There’s a lot at stake here. Come up. Take Shorty and go check inside. See if you can come up with anything. Nobody ever ran out on me before. Must be a reason for this.’

  After a while, Shad and Shorty came back out into the sunlight.

  ‘Nobody there. Don’t look like there was a fight or any trouble. I’d say they threw down their tools and got out fast.’

  ‘Don’t matter a hill of beans,’ said Calthrop. ‘They’re gone. Too bad for them, They brought it on themselves. The joke’s sure on them!’

  ‘Joke? What’re you talking about, boss?’ said Shad.

  Calthrop got to his feet and called to the men who were watching events from the canyon floor, to come up.

  ‘Boys,’ he said, when they gathered at the cave mouth, ‘it’s time to move on. We done pretty good out of Berry’s Crossing, but it’s time to cut our losses.’

  ‘What’s this cave all about, boss?’ asked Shorty. ‘And why were cattle hands clearing it? Don’t add up.’

  ‘It adds up fine. I know you boys been grumbling about your cut. You’ve been comparing yours and mine and thinking mine’s a lot bigger than yours. It’s only natural. Well, I been keeping you on a tight rein on purpose. If I’d made your shares bigger, you wouldn’t have had a reason for stayi
ng; you’d have run out on me. And by now you’d have spent every cent and be left with no more than a couple of dollars between you. Well, I been keeping a part of your cut back so that when the time came for us all to go our separate ways I could send you off with full saddle-bags.’

  ‘You’ve been holding out on us!’ said Shad, and there were murmurs of resentment from his companions.

  ‘Sure I have,’ said Calthrop, ‘but it was for your own good. Just stop and think for a minute about the cowboys who’ve walked off the job. They’ve gone, so there’ll be fewer to have shares, and because there’s fewer to have shares the shares will be bigger. You get me? You’ll all be rich!’

  ‘Shares of what?’ said a gunslinger in a red bandanna.

  ‘The proceeds of the jobs we’ve pulled. It’s all in the cave.’

  The men looked impressed.

  ‘Well, what are we waiting for,’ said Shad. ‘Let’s start clearing a way through.’

  Calthrop again held up one hand.

  ‘No need. There’s a quicker way. Shorty, take a couple of men and get some lamps out of the cave. Shad, there’s a box of dynamite inside. Go fetch a stick and then follow me.’

  ‘I don’t get it, boss,’ said red bandanna. ‘If there’s a quick way in the back, how come you set the cowboys digging out the front?’

  ‘I pulled them off the Bar-T because I wanted them here for when we got back from raiding the army wagons. I’d planned it to be our last job and I wanted to settle up accounts with all my boys. I sure didn’t want them busting through before I got back because they wouldn’t have waited. They’d have helped themselves and been gone long before we got back. Right?’

  ‘I guess so,’ said the man in the red bandanna.

  Shad brought the dynamite and a length of fuse to where Calthrop was waiting outside the rear entrance to the cave which I had blocked up.

  He stared at the spot and for a moment I thought he had seen through my handiwork. But he was only looking for the right spot to place the dynamite which he then rammed into a crack between the stones. He fixed the fuse, took cover, called out for his men to keep their heads down and struck a match.

  The charge was too big for the job. It blew out the scree and exposed the tunnel all right. But it also blew out a chunk of tunnel above the mouth and left a large wedge of rock hanging over it. But a couple of men shored it up and made it safe. Then Calthrop told them what they had to do.

  ‘Just think of it as gold-mining for dudes, boys,’ he said with a smile. ‘No question of breaking your backs digging out ore. Just bend down and pick up gems, silver, gold trinkets, whatever you can find that comes to hand, and haul it out. Now go to it. Get those lamps lit!’

  Nat had come in through the defile to see what all the noise was about.

  He and Calthrop talked together in low voices. I couldn’t hear what they said. Then Nat took up a position at the mouth of the tunnel while the whole gang, with Calthrop leading the way, crawled inside. When they’d disappeared, he sat on a rock, reached into his waistcoat pocket, and rolled himself a smoke. After maybe fifteen, twenty minutes, he toiled up the hill to the cave, went inside and returned holding a length of rope in one hand and a stick of dynamite in the other. He fixed one end of the rope to the prop which shored up the rock hanging over the tunnel mouth, danced down the loose scree to the valley bottom, turned, dug his heels in the ground so he had good leverage and then pulled hard on the rope.

  The area which had recently been blown out was unstable and with his second heave, it started moving.

  He didn’t need the dynamite.

  He let go the rope and ran out of harm’s way while a section of the hillside slid and covered the entrance to the tunnel.

  It made no sense to me.

  Unless, that is, Nat had decided he didn’t need Calthrop any more. He had the army money loaded on the flatboard and was ready to go. If ever he wanted more, he could always come back and reopen the cave. That must be it: Calthrop had been double-crossed! Left to rot inside that hell-black cavern with the rest of his men!

  And I and Harry and Tom Earle had been cheated out of our chance of getting our own justice for all the beatings and murders and mayhem he had committed!

  But instead of turning away and making for the defile, Nat sat on another rock and rolled another smoke.

  It was as if he was waiting for something.

  He smoked his cigarette, threw the end away, and thought a while more.

  What was he playing at?

  And then I had my answer. My eye caught a movement, maybe fifty yards along the valley bottom, and then a flash of red hair, and Rusty appeared.

  My first thought was that she’d got tired of hiding in her cave and, when everything went quiet and stayed quiet, she’d decided to come out and take a look.

  I was wrong, for the next thing I see is Calthrop back of her, with a gun in his hand, pointing it at her and walking her down to where Nat was sitting.

  I looked up and caught Tom’s eye and cursed myself for a fool. I’d been so pleased with myself for finding Calthrop’s back way out of his treasure cave that it had never crossed my mind that if there was one overflow tunnel, there might be others too.

  The cave Rusty had found was fifty or sixty yards from the tunnel Harry and I had escaped from. That should have tipped me off: there was a whole network of tunnels. Calthrop had checked it out; why hadn’t I?

  And now I understood. He really had decided to move on. He didn’t need his gunslingers any more. So he’d buried them alive. Quickest way of getting rid of them. He’d made sure he led the way into the cave. Once inside, he’d moved fast and got to his treasure chamber before any of them had even worked out how to get past the siphon. He must have got a shock to find the cupboard was bare. But he hadn’t stayed there long worrying about it. He’d had to get out through the other tunnel before his men caught up with him. He must have thought it was Christmas when he came out into Rusty’s cave and discovered not only her but his lost loot.

  ‘What’s this?’ said Nat. ‘Company?’

  ‘Says she’s alone,’ said Calthrop. ‘Reckons she was out riding, found her way into the canyon by accident, and then hid in the cave when she heard us coming.’

  ‘What’s your name, girl?’

  ‘Rusty McColl,’ she said, and, without hesitating, added, ‘What’s yours?’

  ‘You by yourself?’ said Nat, ignoring the question. ‘If you were out riding, where’s your horse?’

  ‘What were you doing hiding in that cave?’ asked Calthrop. ‘What do you know about the stuff that’s stored in there?’

  Faced with a barrage of questions, Rusty folded her arms and looked her captors in the eye.

  ‘I want answers,’ said Calthrop, and without warning he hit her across the mouth with the back of his hand.

  I had him in my sights. I guess Tom did too. But neither of us took the shot.

  It wouldn’t have been done in cold blood exactly. My blood was up, sure enough, but not enough for gunning even Calthrop down without him having a chance to defend himself.

  But I did put a bullet next his foot.

  He jumped as if he’d been holed and grabbed Rusty. Holding her in front of him, he gestured to Nat to stand close to him so he too could be shielded.

  He looked up at where my shot had come from.

  ‘Who’s there?’ he called.

  ‘No friend of yours,’ I said, and pulled the trigger again. A spurt of dust next to his left boot showed where the bullet had landed.

  ‘Let the girl go,’ I said. ‘She’s no part of this.’

  ‘Listen, whoever you are, I’m walking out of here and she’s coming with me. Try to stop me and she gets this.’

  And he pressed the barrel of his gun against Rusty’s right temple.

  She tried to struggle, but he was too strong for her.

  With Rusty as a human shield, and taking pot shots in our direction to make us keep our heads down, Calthrop and N
at picked their way carefully towards the boulders that marked the way out of the canyon.

  I kept changing my position, but couldn’t get a clear shot at either man.

  Harry stood up from his position further back, but he, too, was unable to get them in his sights without putting Rusty at risk. Then all three disappeared into the defile.

  All of us came out from behind our positions and, with me and Tom leading, scrambled around the shoulder of the hill, over the defile, and waited for them to come out the other side.

  They didn’t show.

  Time passed like glue being poured from a jar. Then they came out in a rush, still holding Rusty in front of them but now backtracking as fast as they could go. And I still couldn’t get a clean shot at them.

  They’d gone twenty, thirty yards, almost all the way to the flatboard, when the entrance to the canyon erupted in a deafening explosion. I was knocked off my feet but not hurt. As I picked myself up, I remember the stick of dynamite Nat had not used.

  I had lost my rifle in the commotion.

  Rocks blown high in the air were still coming down. I saw Pete catch one on the head. He went down like a felled log. Tom was already out cold and there was no sign of the others in the great cloud of dust that was slow to settle.

  I climbed the hill hoping to get a sighting of Calthrop over the top of the dustcloud. He and Nat had been too far from the blast to have been caught by it and they’d probably reached the flatboard without any trouble.

  The dust thinned the higher I went until I had a clear view over the plain. There was the flatboard, going hell for leather already half a mile away, and Rusty was on board. They probably still thought she might still be useful as a hostage.

  I scrambled back down to ground level and ran to the clump of mesquite where we’d left the horses.

  The explosion had spooked them. One, caught in the head by a shard of flying rock, was dead. The rest had panicked, broken the branches they’d been tethered to, and were probably still running. But I was in luck.

  Tom had tied his mount on the far side of a boulder. The rock had taken the force of the blast and his pony, a strong-looking piebald, was still there, trembling slightly but ready for action.