12

Dusk lingered a long time there in the forbidding shadows of the narrow deep canyon, beginning long before the last traces of sunlight vanished from the tops of the high cliffs above.

While Dock excitedly whipped the tumbling stream for more big trout, Ezra got busy inducting Lily into the mysteries of outdoor camp cookery.

Using a butcher knife and long-handled spoon to cut out the frozen earth, he scooped a shallow hole beside the big fire she had built and raked it full of glowing coals. He then set the big Dutch oven on the coals, heaped dry wood over the top of it and built a new fire there.

He melted a handful of lard in a frying pan, poured a quantity of yellow cornmeal into a pot and mixed in salt and baking powder with his fingers, wet it down with cold water from the creek and poured in his, melted lard. It was the consistency of nice thick mud when he finished with it. He raked the fire off the lid of his Dutch oven and poured the batter inside the hot receptacle, replaced the lid and built up his fire on top of it again.

“All we gotta do now is keep a fire goin’ on top of her an’ leave her set an’ cook,” he explained to Lily who was watching him carefully and trying to stay out of his way. “Nothin’ like a hunk of hot cornbread tuh go with fresh-caught rainbows.”

He got out an iron pot of left-over beans and set them to heat on the edge of the big fire, filled the coffee pot with cold creek water and dumped in two big handfuls of coffee. With that set beside the iron pot to come to a slow boil, he spread the rest of the coals out evenly and placed a big rectangular biscuit pan on top of them, dumped in the three pounds of lard that Pat had mentioned for frying the fish, and settled back on his heels to roll a cigarette.

“An’ there we are,” he announced proudly. “Soon’s the grease is smokin’ hot we drop in thuh trout whole … after Dock’s gutted ’em, o’ course. The heat’ll be dyin’ down under the pan by that time, an’ the cold fish’ll cool down the smokin’ hot grease so they’ll cook slow an’ even without burnin’. Time they’re done, the beans’ll be hot an’ the cawfee boilin’ an’ the cornbread baked. Then we’ll eat.”

“It hasn’t taken you more than fifteen minutes,” Lily marveled. “Most women would spend hours in a kitchen getting a meal like that ready.”

“Women!” Ezra snorted. “Never saw one yet that’d make a good camp cook. Too doggoned persnickety.”

By that time Dock had his three big trout out of the stream. He cut off their heads and slit them up the belly as his father had taught him, cleaned them thoroughly on the bank of the stream, scraping the slime from their backs with a dull-bladed knife and dipping them frequently in the icy water.

He brought his catch up to the fire proudly and laid them before Ezra, exulting, “Did you ever see any purtier ones?”

“Lotsa times,” Ezra told him equably. “If we chance on a lake up near timberline I’ll show you some real trout, Son. Some that’ll make these here look like minnies.” He deftly salted the big fish inside and out, and dropped them one by one into the big pan of smoking-hot grease.

Lily laughed softly at the stricken expression on Dock’s face when his catch was thus belittled. “I never saw any bigger or prettier fish,” she comforted him. “And I don’t think Ezra’s such-a-much as he makes out to be.”

“Oh, yes’m, he sure is,” Dock defended his old friend stoutly. “I reckon he’s the plumb best fisherman an’ finest hunter in Colorado. An’ the best tracker too.”

“Then why doesn’t he start tracking?” Lily asked sweetly. “I haven’t seen him solving the mystery of those disappearing hoofprints yet.”

Up to this time none of the men had mentioned Ezra’s theory about a blanketed trail leading backward and over to the edge of the canyon toward the group of scrub oak trees.

Now, stretched out comfortably on his bedroll near the fire, Pat chuckled and told her, “Didn’t take Ezra long to figure out that one, Miss Lily.”

“What’s that?” She looked around in confusion. “Do you mean he already knows where the outlaws went?”

“I’ll bet money he’s right,” Pat told her easily.

“Why aren’t we doing something then? Why are we just sitting around the fire cooking supper? It’ll be dark soon. Too late to follow them.”

“That’s why we’re waitin’,” Pat told her calmly. He nodded to Dock who was listening with bulging eyes. “You listen in on this too, Son. Like I say, that lost trail didn’t fool Ezra very long. He figured right away it was the old Injun trick of spreadin’ blankets out in front of the hawses to hide their tracks. An’ he figures they turned back this way.” He gestured toward the clump of scrub oak. “We’re guessin’ them trees hide some sort of way out of this canyon. Maybe a natural crevice or maybe an old mine tunnel.”

“But you haven’t even looked?” Lily exclaimed. “Why don’t we go see?”

“Yeh, Dad,” Dock put in. “Gosh A’Mighty! You want me to …?”

“I want you to stay right where you are. We’ll wait till it’s dark an’ act like we don’t even suspect what’s maybe hidden behind them trees. You see, it’s a good bet the Runyons were warned last night that we’d be trailin’ them today. Could be they’ve got a lookout posted on the rim above watchin’ us right now. If so, we want him to see us bedded down for the night like we was stumped. Come dark, we’ll take a look-see.”

“Then what? Will you try to follow the trail tonight?”

“I dunno. If it’s just a mine tunnel leadin’ in to the mountains, maybe we won’t have to follow them. If they’re cooped up at the other end of a tunnel, all you got to do is walk in an’ tell ’em who you are. How’re the fish comin’, Ezra?”

“’Bout done,” Ezra reported, testing them with a long fork. He inspected his bean-pot and found it bubbling, sent Dock to the creek for cold water to settle the coffee grounds, and raked the embers off his Dutch oven. Lifting the lid, he disclosed a beautifully browned, round fluffy cake of cornbread nested inside the heavy cooker. He cut it into big wedges, and then forked the crisp fish out onto tin plates, split them down the back with a sharp knife and peeled each half away from the bone structure, making six delicious portions of solid pink meat without a single bone to get in anyone’s way.

There were only five of them to eat the six portions, so Ezra and Dock split the remaining half after the others refused to share it with them.

It was quite dark inside the canyon by the time the hungry quintet had finished supper.

Lily struggled to her feet determinedly and said, “I’ll heat some water and wash the dishes, Ezra. You can go on with your tracking.”

“You stay here and help her,” Pat directed Dock, “an’ sorta keep guard on her an’ on camp,” he added quickly when he saw disappointment on the boy’s face. “Load up yore carbine an’ use it if anybody tries to get close.”

The three men got up and strolled away from the campfire across the rough floor of the canyon toward the clump of oak. None of them were in the least surprised when they stepped around the screen of trees to see the round gaping mouth of a tunnel in the solid rock wall of the canyon. Their logical minds had told them this was the only possible answer to the puzzle of the disappearing hoofprints.

The tunnel was hewed from the solid rock to a little more than the height of a man’s head. “Too low to ride a hawse in,” Ezra pointed out, “but plenty high to lead ’em. You want me tuh go in an’ strike a match tuh make shore thuh tracks are here, Pat?”

“No. They have to be here. A match at this end of the tunnel would flare up like a beacon to anybody watching from the other end. Let’s squat an’ figure this thing out.”

“It don’t make good sense to me,” Sam Sloan muttered. “Even if there’s a big mine workin’ at the other end of this tunnel, it makes a hell of a hideout tuh stay in very long at uh time. They’d have tuh have a heap of chuck an’ hawse-feed stored up inside.”

“An’ what about water?” Ezra put in. He was on his hands and knees at the mouth of the tunnel, feeling around carefully. “There ain’t no moisture seepin’ out this end,” he reported. “But I tell you what there is in place of it,” he went on excitedly. “There’s a draft of cold air blowin’ out.”

Sam and Pat moved forward beside him to incredulously check his words. He was right. There was a distinct draft of cold air blowing out of the tunnel. It was clean, untainted air.

Pat rocked back on his heels to think about this discovery, shaking his head in puzzlement. “Could be there’s an air-shaft at the end, I reckon. But goshdang it, it’d take a shaft half a mile long from the surface down to this tunnel.”

“Stands to reason the tunnel cain’t go right on through the Divide,” Sam argued. “That’d be twenty or thutty miles long.”

Pat got to his feet. “Only way to find out,” he said grimly, “is for a couple of us to follow her out. You an’ me’ll take it, Ezra. You stay here with the gal and Dock,” he went on to Sam. “If we ain’t back by midnight, you better send Dock ridin’ to Fairplay after the sheriff and a posse.”

“Gonna take yore hawses?”

“What for? We’d have to lead ’em. Nope. We just want to see where this thing goes. We’ll be back for the hawses an’ the rest of you after we see what’s what. Let’s get goin’, Ezra.”

Ezra led the way forward into the tunnel. It was pitch-black inside, but the floor and walls had been drilled out smoothly so it was easy going without any light. Ezra moved along sure-footedly and rapidly, and Pat stayed right on his heels. The tunnel was bored into the mountain on a slight upgrade, but it wasn’t steep and walking wasn’t difficult.

After they had gone perhaps a quarter of a mile, Pat turned to look back over his shoulder and was surprised to see a circle of dim light behind them. It had seemed quite dark in the canyon before they entered the tunnel, but in contrast to the absolute absence of even faint starlight in the interior, the darkness of the canyon now appeared quite bright.

They went another two hundred yards before Ezra stopped with an abrupt exclamation. He turned and muttered to Pat, “The sidewalls widen out right here, Musta hit a cross-vein.”

“You take the right-hand wall an’ I’ll follow the left,” Pat muttered. “It’s a cinch there ain’t no men or hawses been cooped up here lately.”

He began circling about a large chamber under the mountain, keeping contact with the rough rock wall with the tips of his fingers, and suddenly he came to a dead stop. Directly ahead, though it seemed a long way off, he could see a round circle of dim light marking a tunnel outlet. For a moment he was confused and thought he must have circled all the way to the tunnel they had just left, but he realized he hadn’t passed Ezra on the way.

No! This had to be a second tunnel. Driven into the mountain at an angle to intersect the one they had first found. He stood there for a moment figuring it out, and then he heard Ezra approaching him from the other side. He waited until Ezra reached the end of the second tunnel, and then asked, “What do you think of this?”

“I’m right back where I started from,” Ezra muttered. “I kin see the end of thuh tunnel ’way off yonder.”

“This is another tunnel,” Pat explained. “It shows where the draft of air came from, and where the outlaws went to. They followed the first tunnel in, an’ then went out this one.”

“Out to where?”

“Let’s follow it out and see. It doesn’t look any longer than the one we came up.”

Pat moved into the lead this time. He went along swiftly but quietly, taking care to make no noise as he neared the outlet. If the outlaws were keeping any guard at all, this would be where the man would be stationed, Pat reasoned. He didn’t believe there’d be a guard though. If they had a lookout posted, he would certainly have reported back to the outlaw camp that the pursuers were safely bedded down for the night.

He had his gun drawn when he stepped out the end of the second tunnel, but it was an unnecessary precaution. No one challenged him.

In front of him, Pat heard the tumbling roar of the same mountain stream that rushed past their camp behind him, and looking up he saw the same thin slit of starlit sky that was visible from the canyon below the snowslide block.

He realized at once what had happened. They had emerged into the same canyon above the portion blocked off by the slide. The two tunnels formed two sides of a triangle with its apex far beneath the mountain and with the blocked portion of the canyon forming the base of the triangle. From this point on the old stage road followed the floor of the canyon right on up to Timberline Pass and down into Sanctuary Flat.

When Ezra emerged from the tunnel to stand beside him, Pat quickly explained the situation.

“The Runyon brothers must have mined up in this country and knew about those tunnels. Maybe they dug ’em themselves. Anyhow, it made a perfect getaway for ’em after a holdup. As long as no one found that entrance back there behind the oaks, they couldn’t be followed.”

“Where d’yuh reckon their camp is?”

“It might be anywhere up ahead. Wherever the old road tops out of the canyon, I reckon. They wouldn’t want to stay down in here with this roaring in their ears all the time. Let’s go back an’ get the others, Ezra. We ought to come through the tunnels tonight while we’re not expected and they’re not guarded. One man could hold the mouth of this tunnel against all of us till hell freezes over if they ever see us start in.”

Ezra agreed with him at once. “An’ we kin camp somewheres up the canyon an’ wait till daylight,” he suggested. “Then it’ll be easy tuh trail ’em to their hideout. Don’t you reckon we better collect that reward while we’re about it, Pat?”

“No.” Pat’s voice was hard. “I promised to let Miss Lily have her chance at ’em first. And we’ve got to get down into Sanctuary Flat. Let’s go back an’ get started.”