THE THREE OUTLAWS were totally oblivious to anything which was happening outside the crystal canyon. They had lost all track of time as they wandered through the lethal labyrinth collecting the precious ore which appeared to be getting more numerous the deeper they ventured. As they paused their harvesting of golden nuggets for a few moments they suddenly found that their pockets were full of the hefty golden nuggets.
The sheer weight of the gold had taken their toll on the three bank robbers and they all started to feel as if their backs were breaking. One by one they straightened up even though their greed still wanted more and more of the precious lumps of gold.
Slim Hogan wiped the sweat off his face with his sleeve and glanced at both McCloud and Dale in turn.
‘We must have already filled our coat pockets with a fortune, boys,’ Hogan laughed. ‘We’ll be the richest galoots in the country.’
‘This stuff is sure heavy, Slim,’ McCloud complained.
The gang leader grunted in agreement.
‘We’d better go back to the horses and put this treasure in our saddlebags, boys,’ Hogan suggested at the same time as he rubbed his aching backbone. ‘Then we can return for some more.’
‘Good idea, Slim,’ McCloud grinned as he labored under the weight of the golden nuggets which filled every pocket of his jacket. ‘This stuff is getting mighty heavy.’
Tanner Dale rested a hand upon the crystal glowing canyon wall and nodded in agreement.
‘Phew, I never seen so much gold abandoned in one place before, boys,’ he said wearily. ‘It’s breaking my back just having it in my pockets.’
Slim Hogan dried his face with his sleeve again and then looked behind them. He was still grinning when he walked to a glowing corner and stared hard into the bewildering maze of seemingly identical canyon passageways. The dazzling throbbing glow tormented their eyes as it radiated off the canyon walls.
McCloud at his throat. ‘Man, I’m thirsty.’
‘We should have brought our canteens with us,’ Dale added as he fought with his own exhaustion. ‘I’m for heading back to our nags.’
Hogan smiled but as he looked into the pulsating light which steadily emanated from the canyon walls something dawned upon him. His smile slowly faded from his hardened features as a realization slowly began to occur to him.
The gang leader rubbed his unshaven face as he pondered on the almost identical crystal canyons. The three interwoven passageways appeared identical.
‘What’s the matter, Slim?’ McCloud asked as he staggered toward their concerned leader. ‘You look like you seen a ghost.’
The unexplained throbbing light still pulsated from the diamond like walls which surrounded the three bank robbers tormented his eyes. Hogan squinted hard but the strange illuminated canyons became no clearer.
He frowned.
‘Do you recall which of them narrow canyons we came down, Leo?’ he asked as he shuffled his feet on the dry sand. ‘How did we reach this point?’
McCloud bit his lower lip. ‘I wasn’t really paying much attention. All I was thinking about was picking up these rocks.’
‘Neither did I,’ Hogan admitted as he moved from one side to the other and stared into the dazzling bright avenues of crystal which faced his sore eyes. ‘But I should have.’
‘All I was thinking about were the nuggets scattered around here like hen’s eggs,’ McCloud sighed.
Tanner Dale pushed himself away from the glowing wall and looked at his two companion’s backs as they stared into the maze of canyons. Then he noticed something. Something very strange.
‘Just look at the ground,’ Dale suggested as he pointed at the sand. ‘We must have left boot marks in this sand when we was plucking up these nuggets.’
‘Tanner’s right, Slim,’ McCloud agreed.
Hogan took five steps forward and stared at the dry sand at his feet. He then looked back at his companions with a pained expression carved into his features.
‘I don’t see any boot marks either, boys,’ he said with a troubled expression carved into his hardened face.
Dale looked at the gang leader. ‘We must have left a trail, Slim. But where is it?’
Hogan’s face curled up in anger. ‘I sure can’t see nothing that tells us which of these damn canyons we came along. They couldn’t just vanish. Could they?’
Dale walked to the side of Hogan and fell on to his knees and stared at the sand. He had not noticed how dry it was before but it was dry. Bone dry. He dipped his hands into the fine granules and lifted them toward his face. They seemed to simply vanish through his fingers.
‘This don’t make any sense,’ he muttered.
McCloud turned to Hogan. ‘What kinda magic is this, Slim? What’s going on? There gotta be tracks.’
Panic began to grow. The three bank robbers quickly moved from one canyon to another in search of a sign that they had left tell-tale footprints upon the sandy floor. Yet no matter how hard they strained their eyes, none of the trio could see any sign that they had travelled along any of them.
It did not make any sense.
They each knew that they had disturbed the ground as they feverishly gathered up the gleaming nuggets but now there was no sign of it. Each of the canyons were identical and appeared not to have been touched.
‘How can this be?’ Hogan snarled as he desperately tried to fend off his own fear. He glared at the glowing tunnels and the countless gold nuggets which lay upon their surface and shook his head. ‘What’s going on? What kinda magic is this?’
Leo McCloud was breathing erratically as his mind raced through the numerous stories which he recalled about this devilish place.
‘This place is cursed, Slim,’ McCloud ventured angrily. ‘You only remembered part of the story about these canyons. The part that described the riches inside its walls. Think about it. What about the dire warnings of doom in some of them stories? You forgot about them, didn’t you?’
Hogan did not respond. He could not because he knew that McCloud was right. The whole story was far more macabre than the section of it that he had recalled.
Dale stood staring at the glistening golden ore which filled each of their possible choices. He glanced at his cohorts with a confused expression on his face.
‘How can it be that each of these trails has the same amount of nuggets lying on their surface sand, boys?’ he questioned as he looked into the faces of his fellow outlaws. ‘We were picking them up as we journeyed along but now it seems that each of the canyons still has thousands of them covering the sand. How can that be, Slim?’
‘That’s impossible,’ McCloud muttered. ‘It’s all impossible, Tanner.’
A haunting whispering suddenly came at them from all sides as if they were being observed by an invisible source. A source which none of them could locate with their eyes. Then the heavens above the illuminated maze flickered as lightning snaked across its tormented clouds.
Yet they did not hear the raging thunder.
All they could hear was the strange haunting whisper which seemed to be coming out of the canyon walls.
Hogan drew his gun but there was nothing to shoot at.
The startled bank robbers stared upward passed the smooth crystal spires and then returned their attention to the arid dry sand they were standing upon. A curious thought suddenly dawned upon them. There was a tempest raging outside the glowing canyons and yet none of the torrential rain managed to fall within it.
It was yet another impossibility.
Hogan looked into each of the canyons in turn. It was as if nobody had collected any of the scattered gold nuggets in any of the possible canyons they had greedily moved along. Yet they all knew that they had and their stuffed pockets were proof of it.
Why was there was no sign that anything had been touched?
Dale moved close to Hogan and stared hard into his face.
‘Explain this, Slim,’ he growled waving his hands frantically. ‘What’s going on here?’
‘Damned if I know, Tanner,’ Hogan admitted. ‘If I knew I wouldn’t be sweating like a pig.’
McCloud strode quickly toward Hogan and was about to shake his fist at the gang leader when the ground beneath their feet started to shake as though a herd of cattle were stampeding toward them.
As they all swung around in terror their blood was frozen in their veins. A deafening noise erupted from behind them and matched the vibration of the shifting sand.
This was not a thunderclap.
This was something else. Something which none of the trio could explain. Something which they had never experienced before. Their eyes vainly searched for the monsters they could hear but there was nothing to see.
Nothing to focus upon.
‘What’s happening, Slim?’ Dale yelled hysterically.
‘Where is it?’ McCloud shouted as he listened to the sound of the indescribable phantom which seemed to be advancing from all directions.
Ignoring the trembling ground beneath his boots, Hogan reached out to his terrified henchman and grabbed his jacket collar. He pulled McCloud to his side as his eyes darted all around the crystal enclave in search for whatever was making the unearthly noise.
‘What is it, Slim?’ McCloud begged for an answer which Hogan could not give. ‘What’s making all these noises?’
‘Damned if I know, Leo,’ Hogan growled before turning away from McCloud and glancing at Dale. He nodded at the youngest of his depleted gang and waved his arm. ‘Come on, Tanner. We’re getting out of here. We’ve got ourselves a fortune and I intend turning it into greenbacks and spending it.’
Both Dale and McCloud sighed with relief. The mysterious crystal mesas had started to reveal its true colors and none of the bank robbers liked its deathly hue.
Another nerve breaking noise erupted from the glowing canyon walls all around them. Then the ground once again moved as though something beneath the sand was slithering around in search of its next meal.
‘What in tarnation is that?’ Dale screamed as he watched the sand they were standing upon move. ‘There’s something under the ground.’
‘Quit belly-aching and start running,’ Hogan snarled.
The outlaws did not need to be told twice. As they started into the closest tunnel, they dragged their six-shooters from their holsters and fired at the sand.
Their bullets vanished into the dry sand in search of the unseen prey but the sand continued to move. They fearfully ran down the crystal tunnel in the hope that they had chosen the correct one. The one which would lead them out of the mystifying glowing canyon they found themselves trapped within.
‘Is this the right tunnel, Slim?’ Dale stammered as he kept close to his burly leader.
‘Your guess is as good as mine, Tanner,’ Hogan immediately responded.
‘What’ll we do if it ain’t the right one, Slim?’ McCloud wondered as they walked along the narrow confines of their chosen canyon.
Hogan glanced at McCloud. ‘In that case I figure we’ll be dead, Leo.’
‘Dead?’ Dale piped up and waved his six-gun across the moving ground ahead of them. ‘Don’t josh, Slim. This is scary enough without you joking about it.’
‘I ain’t joking, Tanner boy,’ Hogan growled as he led his small band of bank robbers deeper into the labyrinth. They were no longer prospectors gathering up free golden nuggets. Now they were frightened men desperately searching for salvation.
The infamous glowing canyons were beginning to live up to their deadly reputation. The vague stories that they had heard about this place were no longer simply tall tales to the staggering bank robbers. Now they were coming true in a fashion which none of them could comprehend. Legend had it that no man who ever dared to enter the crystal canyon ever returned or escaped to tell of their plight.
Hogan and his men frantically carried on. Burdened by the sheer weight of the gold nuggets which filled their pockets, they moved as fast as they could through the entangled web of confusing tunnels in search of escape.
Yet the satanic canyon was not about to willingly let the three intruders go so easily. The ground beneath their boot leather started to roll like coastal waves crashing on to an unseen shore.
The tall glowing walls of the tunnels started to sway like tall grass. The hardened bank robbers tripped and crashed into the glowing spires yet they forged on.
Death was for others.
They wanted to live even though the odds were stacked against them achieving this goal. The unearthly sound grew louder all around them but they kept moving forward. To stop would be to fall into the jaws of their unseen tormentor.