CAMERON TURNED TO Jimmy. “Where’s my rifle?”
The kid looked at once somber and frantic. “He … The Indian took it away from me, threw it in the rocks down by the horses.”
Cameron cursed, standing and walking over to the pit. He couldn’t see them in the failing candlelight, but he knew their pistols were down there where the Indian had tossed them. They’d need them now; those were all the weapons they had, except for Cameron’s bowie, and he sure as hell didn’t want to have to rely on only a knife against twenty or thirty of Bachelard’s men; without his rifle he was handicapped enough.
Knowing it was the only way—Jimmy and Marina couldn’t hold him on the rope—Cameron got down and dropped his legs over the side of the pit, turning to face the edge and feeling for footholds. Slowly but deliberately he descended, one hand- and foothold at a time, having to move several feet sideways, at times, when the holds in his direct line of descent played out.
It was a hell of a chance he was taking; one misstep and he could end up on the bottom of the pit with a broken leg, a crushed skull, or worse. Any of those injuries would mean certain death, under the circumstances and so far from civilization.
But he had no choice. Worse, he had no time to spare. At any moment Bachelard and his men might take the cave, and that would mean death for them all, except Marina—what it would mean for her, Cameron could only imagine.
Six feet from the bottom, he put his right foot on a protruding rock that wasn’t secure. It crumbled, and he slid the remaining distance to the pit floor, with several smarting face and hand abrasions to show for it.
Cursing, he felt around in the dark for the pistols. When he had his own Colt Army in his holster, and the others tucked in his waistband, he wiped his bloody hands on his jeans, reached for a handhold, and started climbing again.
The ascent was relatively easy, and he was at the top in a few minutes, breathing heavily as he clawed his way onto the floor above. He gave Jimmy the old Remington, handed Marina her Colt .38, and kept Clark’s Bisley tucked behind his cartridge belt. Clark was sitting against the cave wall, cursing as Marina bandaged the knife wound in his chest.
“What’s up, Jack?” Clark asked, his gaunt face pale and sweaty, his dark hair plastered to his skull. His breath was raspy and he coughed every few minutes, bringing up thick gouts of blood which he spat to the side. This humid air wasn’t doing him any good at all.
“I don’t know,” Cameron said. “That’s what I’m going to find out.”
He shifted his eyes to Marina, who was pressing a handkerchief to the knife wound above Clark’s breast. “You two stay here. I’ll come and get you if I think we can get out of here.”
Clark said, “What … What about the treasure?” He turned his expectant gaze to Cameron.
“It’s there,” Cameron told him. “I just don’t know if it’s going to do us any good.”
Then he was gone, heading up the corridor, Jimmy following close behind.
They found She-Bear kneeling about five feet back from the cave’s opening, rifle in her arms, peering down the cliff face. Cameron moved quietly up behind her, careful not to be seen from below.
She-Bear turned her round, lugubrious face to him. She looked even more fatalistic than usual, and Cameron knew that wasn’t a good sign.
“What’s going on?” he whispered.
His answer came in the form of voices from below, the thud of horses on hard-packed ground. The voices were raised in excited inquiry. Commands were yelled.
Cameron recognized Bachelard’s screechy Cajun tenor. “Goddamn it! I thought they were farther behind us. They must have followed some shortcut,” Cameron said, to no one in particular. He was trying to make sense out of the situation, which appeared pretty close to hopeless.
Their horses had no doubt been confiscated. Clark was too injured to make a break for it even if they had a place to make a break for—which they didn’t. And She-Bear was the only one with a rifle. There was no way in heaven or hell that Cameron, Jimmy, and She-Bear, with or without her rifle, would be able to hold off Bachelard and Montana for more than a few hours.
Jimmy must have seen the doubt in his face. “What are we gonna do, Jack?” he said quietly.
Cameron didn’t say anything. He got down on his hands and knees and crawled to the entrance of the cave, lifting his head to peer over the ledge. Several riders were milling on the canyon floor, looking up the cliff, rifles held high in their hands.
Two were Mexicans in fancily-stitched vests and sombreros, bandoliers crisscrossing their chests. Cameron could make out another man taking cover behind a mesquite and two more leading their horses off behind a rise. Those three all looked like gringos dressed in dusty trail garb.
From the voices and sound of boots stumbling up rocky grades and pushing through brush, there were many more men near the cliff base where Cameron couldn’t see them.
He gave a sigh. There was no doubt about it—these were Bachelard’s and Montana’s men. They had seen the horses and pack mules of Cameron’s party, and knew they were here. They were positioning themselves for a showdown.
Cameron looked for a possible escape route. There was no way they could get down off the cliff without being seen. They could go up, keep climbing the tiers, but the tiers stopped a good hundred feet from the top of the canyon wall—a sheer wall, at that, impossible to climb, especially with men flinging lead at you from below.
Voices grew louder and men came near, boots thumping on the gravelly stairs in the cliff to Cameron’s right. They were beneath his field of vision, but he could hear them approach, whispering and breathing heavily from the strain of the ascent.
“Look—that there’s a bootprint,” one of them said.
“Sí,” another replied.
Boots scuffed, the breathing grew louder. Someone gave a low yell, tripping on one of the steps, no doubt.
“Pick up your goddamn feet, Carmody!” someone hissed.
Cameron crawled farther onto the ledge, dropped his gaze over the side. To his right, three men appeared on the tier beneath him—one Mexican and two Americans.
Cameron grabbed his pistol and brought it up, thumbing back the hammer. Breathing heavily, the approaching men were looking around, open mouths sucking air and showing teeth. The Mexican, lifting his head, saw Cameron lying on the ledge above him.
“There!” he cried, bringing up his rifle.
Cameron aimed the Colt and fired. The man screamed and flew back over the ledge, dropping his rifle. The other two, seeing Cameron and the smoke puffing around his head, brought their own rifles up to their shoulders. With two quick shots, Cameron plugged them both off the ledge, hearing their bodies smack the next tier below, their rifles breaking on the rocks.
A bullet spanged off the side of the ledge a few inches from his face, spraying him with sharp flecks of stinging rock. Looking down at the canyon floor, he saw dust thinning around a rifleman who was smiling and jacking another shell into the chamber. A second bullet buzzed over Cameron’s head and barked into the side of the cave behind him.
That slug had come from the left.
Turning that way, Cameron saw another rifleman on the ledge below him, a tall, angular Mexican with a pencil-thin mustache and tattered serape. She-Bear, who had crawled up beside Cameron, brought the butt of her rifle to her cheek and squeezed off a round that chipped the rock wall where the man’s head had been a half-second before.
Jimmy sidled up to the cave wall at Cameron’s right, planting the barrel of his Remington on his left forearm, aimed, and squeezed off three quick rounds, puffing up dust around two riflemen crouched on the canyon floor.
Seeing a gray-clad figure move practically straight down the cliff, Cameron fired. The man disappeared behind a boulder. Cameron was sure it was Bachelard. He squeezed off another round, out of anger, and heard a bullet buzz past his face and tear through the crown of Jimmy’s hat.
“Jesus!” the kid yelled.
“Back! Get back!” Cameron yelled at him and She-Bear, turning and scrambling several yards back into the cave, where they couldn’t be seen or fired upon as easily. “We’re just sitting ducks out there.”
The three of them hunkered down on their knees, weapons held high, staring off across the slowly darkening canyon, listening and watching, trying to get a grasp of the situation.
As many times as he went over it, sweat furrowing the dust on his face and neck, soaked tunic sticking to his back, the smell of gunpowder hanging heavy in the air and the sound of conspiratorial voices reaching his ears from only about fifty or sixty yards away, Cameron could not figure a way out of the pickle they were in.
At least, one that wouldn’t get them all killed.
Behind a boulder at the bottom of the canyon, Gaston Bachelard crouched beside Miguel Montana, removed his hat, and lifted a cautious gaze up to the cave opening on the third tier of the ruins.
“Well, compadre—any suggestions?”
Montana looked carefully over the boulder, squinting his eyes and biting down hard on the thin cheroot in his front teeth. He shrugged.
“How many do you think there are?”
Bachelard turned to call to one of his men hunkered down by a boulder about fifteen yards behind and to his right. “How many are in the cave, Jumbo?”
“I’ve seen three. Looks like only one has a rifle, though.”
Bachelard turned to Montana, who frowned. “Only three?”
“That’s what the man said.”
“Where are the others?”
“Maybe there are no others.”
“This gringo—Clark—he came down here with only two other people?”
Montana was incredulous. He sucked the cheroot, puffing fragrant smoke, and blinked his mud-brown eyes. His face had been sunburned nearly black; he never wore a hat. He feared a hat would make him go bald, and he was vainly attached to his impeccable thatch of tight, curly black hair; the touch of gray in his sideburns lent what he considered an air of distinguished maturity.
“There might have been more when he started,” Bachelard said, raising his eyes and bobbing his shoulders. “I only saw three separate shooters myself, but even if there are four, or even five, they are badly outnumbered.”
“Sí. And in a very dangerous spot.”
Bachelard smiled. “There’s no way up, and there’s no way down but through us.”
“So what do we do—wait?”
“‘Fortune favors the brave,’ says Virgil.”
“Who?”
“Never mind.”
“You will lead the charge?” Montana’s face broke into a grin.
Bachelard looked at him coolly. “Yes … I will lead the charge, my friend. And so will you. We’re sharing the spoils, are we not?”
The grin faded from the little Mexican’s face. He turned back to the cave and swallowed. “Sí.”
Bachelard turned back to one of the men hunched behind the nearby boulder, awaiting orders. “Jumbo, go back and make sure Juanita is secure. Keep her out of the line of fire.”
Crouching, the man ran back to where Bachelard had cached the girl in a protected hollow across the canyon.
“And keep your hands off of her!” Bachelard called to his back. Jumbo scowled. Imagine bringing a girl along on such a journey and then not even taking your pleasure!
Bachelard turned back to the cave. He cupped his hands around his mouth.
“Hello!” he shouted. “Clark … in the cave!” He listened to the echo.
Silence followed. Then: “What?”
“Do you want to live or die?” Bachelard shouted, drawing out the words to distinguish them among the echoes.
“What about yourself?”
Bachelard chuffed. “A real funny man up there,” he said to Montana. “That can’t be Clark.” Turning back to the cave he cupped his hands around his mouth. “Who are you?”
“Jack Cameron.” The sepulchral voice echoed off the rocks.
The man beside Bachelard turned to him expectantly. Montana looked at him as well, seeing the peculiar expression on the ex-Confederate soldier’s skeletal features. “Who?” Montana said.
Bachelard waved him off. “Ah … we meet again, Mr. Cameron! The lure of gold too much for you, eh?”
“The lure of killing the dirty rebel dog who killed my friend was too much for me … you fuckin’ shit-for-brains asshole!”
Bachelard’s face colored. He fought to regain his composure. “Listen, Cameron,” he said congenially, “I am going to make you an offer. You and your friends can leave the cave, and the gold, now, and we won’t kill you. How does that sound to you?”
“There isn’t any gold.”
“Oh?” Bachelard said. “Why don’t you let us look for ourselves?”
“’Cause you’ll shoot us in the back.”
“I give you my word as an officer and a gentleman. We will give you unimpeded passage if you leave the cave now—empty-handed.”
On the heels of the last echo Cameron returned, dry with irreverence: “Kiss my ass.”
Bachelard bit his lip. One of his men stifled a laugh. Bachelard turned around sharply to see who it was. He saw four or five faces regarding him cautiously. He turned back to Cameron, said icily, “Don’t be so hasty, my friend. I have twenty men. What do you have—three, four, five at the most?”
“I’ve got a whole fuckin’ army up here.”
Bachelard chuckled loudly enough for Cameron to hear. “No … I don’t think so.” He paused. “I tell you what: We will give you until dawn to reconsider your answer to my offer.”
There was no reply.
Bachelard turned to his men, in various positions around the base of the canyon.
“Hark, you soldiers of a free and independent Texas and Sonora! Do you want more gold than you have ever seen in your life and ever will again—even in heaven?” His voice echoed loudly, resounding around the canyon like a bullet in a lead-lined room.
A murmur arose.
“Well, do you?” Bachelard shouted at the top of his lungs.
Responses of “Sí,” and “Sure,” and “Hell yes,” rose a little louder.
“Then, at dawn we will charge the cave,” Bachelard intoned. “Any man who cowers from his duty will be drawn, quartered, and gutted like a pig.”
Bachelard licked his lips and smiled at Miguel Montana, who had turned to him with an unguarded look of misgiving.
Bachelard cleared his throat and cupped his hands around his mouth, raising his voice for Cameron’s benefit: “And the first one to kill Cameron gets to fuck the lovely Marina de la Guerra!”
A soft din rose from the rocks around the base of the cliff. Someone said incredulously, “De la Guerra?”
As Bachelard had suspected, the name was well known to these Mexican honyockers. Some may have even worked for the de la Guerra family. More than a couple obviously knew of the lovely Marina, whose beauty was no doubt legendary.
Bachelard let the din settle. Then he added, with a smile, “At the crack of dawn, then: Let fly the gods of war!”