As they rode into the hills, Cusie Ben was uneasy. He was no coward, but he wasn’t a damned fool either and he knew when he was living under the threat of a violent death. He knew that if somebody had cooked up a case of murder against Spur they must want him dead awfully bad and what went for Spur went for him and the Kid. Gaylor back there in Sunset certainly had a tough crew working for him and right that moment they would be on the trail of the trio. Cusie Ben in his usual cautious way, the way that had kept him alive under pretty trying circumstances for a good many years, had wanted to spend time on hiding their tracks, but Spur would have none of it. He had the bit between his teeth and he was on the rampage. He had not forgotten that his old friend Rube Daley was dead and it looked as if he would not be satisfied until he had caught the man who had killed him.
That was all very well and Ben was willing to play his part in catching up with the murderer. That didn’t mean he should not take the usual precautions. He liked to play a cool hand. In Spur’s boots, he would go deep into the hills after wiping out his sign and play possum for a while. Then come back and catch that sonovabitch Gaylor with his pants down when he least expected it. In Ben’s book you didn’t challenge a man who had a loaded and cocked gun pointed at you.
He was worried about Spur, too. The man was down to skin and bone. His eyes still bore the haunted look of a man who had looked closely into the eyeless sockets of death. The spring had gone from his movement, he slumped wearily in the saddle. Now he was headed back for Daley’s mine and that in Ben’s book was tantamount to committing suicide. The key to the old man’s murder lay in that mine and some of the men concerned in the murder could be around there. Spur thought so or else he wouldn’t be headed that way.
They reached the mine at noon. Ben was relieved that at least Spur had the sense to approach it from above and not to ride straight in from the Sunset trail. Spur halted his horse on a bluff above the camp, deep among the pines. Their needles had blanketed the sound of the horses’ hoofs.
‘There she is,’ said Spur.
Ben found himself looking down through a break in the trees to a rocky shelf through which ran a fast-moving stream and on the far side of which, almost backed up against a wall of rock that reared up some two hundred feet, a small cabin typical of the kind a miner would throw up when he intended to winter in a locality. It was a snug little cabin and Ben approved of the way it was built. He prided himself on his own ability to construct a weather-proof shack and he recognized a similar skill in others.
Off to one side was a small corral. That struck Ben as slightly incongruous for some reason. It was empty now with the gate poles thrown to one side. A sign that it was not the owner who had released the animals. The door of the cabin gaped open. It looked utterly deserted and forlorn. Deserted the place might look, but Ben smelled trouble and his nose for trouble never failed him.
He could see the narrow trail going down from the ledge and joining the Sunset trail in the valley below. Ben didn’t miss a thing. The trail was well-used. Too well-used to be the trail of an old man who lived by himself and searched for gold. Ben found himself intrigued.
He looked at Spur. His friend caught his eye.
‘I’m goin’ down,’ Spur said. ‘Cover me.’
Ben said. ‘If n I cover you-all, boy, I covers you from alongside.’ He jerked his head toward the Kid. ‘Let him cover us. That’ll suit him fine.’
‘Sure,’ the Kid said unabashed, ‘suits me fine. This could be a trap an’ I don’t aim to walk into no trap.’
‘All right,’ Spur-said, ‘you stay up here, Kid, an’ you keep your eyes skinned. You watch the mine an’ you watch the trail. Pretty soon our friend the sheriff’s goin’ to end up here.’
‘Trust me,’ said the Kid.
‘That’ll be the day,’ Ben told him. He ignored the boy’s killing look.
‘We’ll go down kind of quiet, I reckon, Ben,’ Spur said.
‘Precisely,’ said Ben. They dismounted and tied their horses.
Ben took his carbine from the saddle boot and filled his pockets with shells. Ben started down toward the trail, but Spur stopped him.
‘This way, Ben.’
The Negro grunted approval as he turned and followed Spur back into the trees. Maybe Spur was cooling down a mite.
They walked north through the cool of the forest. Spur led the way at an easy walk over the shoulder of the hill for maybe a quarter of a mile before he halted and pointed down.
‘Look at that.’
Ben joined him.
Below them was a narrow but plainly marked trail. It had been used for a long time and it was well-worn.
Ben didn’t say a word. There was a puzzle here, but talk wouldn’t unravel it. They climbed down the steep slope to the trail and found that it led them back due south-west. Ben reckoned it would lead them back to the locality of the mine. As the trail twisted this way and that through the soft rounded lines of the hill, it suddenly changed its nature and became a ravine between high rocks. The temperature dropped perceptibly. A short distance farther on and the rocks formed an arch over their heads. It was high enough to allow a mounted man under it. They walked down a tunnel which could have been a cave except that they could see a dappling of sunlight at the far end.
When they reached this end, they found that the mouth of the tunnel was filled with growing brush. They forced their way through this and came out on a wide ledge above the valley.
When they turned, they saw that the mouth of the tunnel was completely hidden by the brush. Just the same, it would be evident to anybody with eyes like Spur’s or Ben’s that a trail did not end abruptly at growing brush.
The trail along the ledge now led them directly south and they walked into broken wild country. After about fifty yards, they halted and saw the cabin ahead of them. They were looking at it from the west. They were now near the mouth of the mine. Ben went forward and looked up at the high bluff. The Kid was nowhere in sight. Ben hoped the boy had merely taken cover and wasn’t catching up on his sleep. Maybe he should have stayed up there with him after all. He turned back to Spur.
‘What now?’ he asked.
‘The mine,’ Spur said. ‘Maybe we’ll find the answer there.’
Ben didn’t like the idea of getting himself caught in a mine. There was only one way out of those things and one man with a rifle could pin a couple of men inside one, no matter how good they were with guns. Just the same, when Spur moved ahead, Ben went with him.
They approached the gaping mouth of the tunnel softly, making no noise. They both knew how to move silently. Ben thought it would be a good idea to have a gun in his hand and he drew his ancient weapon. Spur saw this and followed his example.
They reached the tunnel and peered in.
There were a few boxes lying around, a pick or so and a shovel. There was a wheel-barrow there, lying on one side and looking as if it hadn’t been used for a century or more. A coil of rope, a lamp.
Spur picked up the lamp and shook it. It contained oil. Ben found a match and struck it on his pants. The wick fired and they closed the storm cover. They were silhouetted against the sunlight outside and Ben was very conscious of the fact. Maybe Spur was losing his grip. Ben didn’t approve at all of such carelessness.
‘The Kid was right,’ Ben said. ‘We could be walking into a trap.’
‘You want to keep watch outside?’ Spur asked.
‘Aw, git on,’ Ben said impatiently.
Spur lifted the lamp high and started down the tunnel.
They advanced encased in the faint light from the lamp.
Dust rose and tickled their nostrils as they edged their way into the darkness. They must have worked their way slowly some forty feet into the hillside before the tunnel started to bend slightly to the right. The bright patch that was the mouth of the cave was gone and they felt suddenly and oddly cut off from life. The air was still and heavy. They were sweating. Ben was uneasy. It wasn’t that he was spooked by the dark. His intuition was working overtime.
Spur stopped, Ben collided with him and said: ‘For Chris-sake.’
The roof sloped down before them. It came down to within no more than a few feet of the ground. The tunnel suddenly diminished till it was only high enough to admit a man crawling on his belly. Across this tiny burrow was a great slab of rock that acted as a roof.
‘I ain’t goin’ in there,’ Ben said, ‘an’ thet’s for sure.’ He turned his head and touched Spur on the arm. ‘Look here.’
Spur looked.
Set in the wall to their right was what looked like a massive door. Raising the lamp, Spur stepped toward it. It was locked by two heavy staples with a padlock through them.
‘Maybe the answer’s here,’ Spur said. ‘Can you open that?’
Ben said: ‘I can have a try.’
He drew his knife and got to work. After a few minutes, he gave up and said: ‘Never do it with this.’ He sheathed his knife and rummaged through his pockets. He was a great one for carrying bits and pieces. You never knew when they would come in handy, he said. In this case, he was proved right. He brought out a piece of wire and bent it cunningly. He now went to work with great care, telling Spur to hold the lamp close. After making several adjustments to the wire, the lock clicked and the Negro took the padlock from the staples.
Spur put away his gun and pushed on the door. It creaked agonizingly as it slowly swung open.
As they stepped through the rocky doorway, the airlessness was oppressive. It was as if they had stepped into a tomb. The room was big, so big that the rays of the lamp barely reached the walls. It looked to the two friends as if it had been hacked out of solid rock.
Their first impression was that it was a store-room. The center was lined with crates and boxes, baskets, bundles cloth-wrapped and roped. The walls were lined with the same kind of objects leaving two passageways either side of the center pile. There was about it a wonderful air of orderliness.
They walked down the left-hand aisle and came on a rough table with a lamp on it. Here were several books that looked like ledgers.
Spur opened one.
A full minute passed as he leafed through it. Finally, he said: ‘Well, I’ll be goddammed.’
Ben said: ‘Do tell.’
‘Take a look in some of these boxes and bundles, Ben,’ Spur said with a smile.
Ben went to a basket that lay near and lifted off its cover. He sifted the corn through his hands.
‘Corn,’ he said. ‘Why should a man bury corn down a mine an’ put a lock on it.’
‘Dig down.’
Ben bent and dug. He could find nothing. Then his face brightened and he pulled a heavy object through the concealing corn. It was very heavy and it glinted dully in the lamplight.
‘Gold,’ he said. ‘But I’m bettin’ it didn’t ever come outa this mine.’ He turned to a bale, cut the rope and unwrapped its covering. He revealed brocades. He turned a puzzled face to Spur.
‘What the hell?’ he said.
He moved to another basket and found a number of bottles carefully swathed in cotton cloth. Picking one up, he wrenched the cork out with his strong teeth and sniffed at the contents. He said: ‘Firewater. I don’t know what it is, but it sure is strong.’ He drank. He liked it and tried some more. He wiped the neck of the bottle with his hand and handed it to Spur.
Spur drank it, sighed and said: ‘Brandy and not bad either.’ He drank some more and started to feel a little good. He placed the bottle on the table.
Ben said: ‘Let’s hear about this.’
Spur sat down on the chair by the table and said: ‘Rube Daley was a smuggler.’
‘A smuggler?’
‘One of the best in the business.’
‘An’ you knew about this?’
‘Suspected.’
‘Say, you ain’t all the lawman I thought you was.’
‘Well, smuggling ain’t all that bad,’ Spur said. ‘Some of my best friends are smugglers. They don’t do much harm. If they’re left alone.’ He waved a hand, indicating the stores, and said: ‘This was Rube’s distribution point.’
‘An’ this is what got him killed dead.’
‘I reckon. I don’t know how it went. Most likely Gaylor asked for a cut and Rube thought he was too big a man to pay up. And Rube was big, don’t have any doubt about it. He had thousands of dollars tied up in the business and hundreds of men worked for him in one way or another.’
‘An’ his front was bein’ a poor ole prospector scrabblin’ for gold. It beats all, it sure do. Now Gaylor has the whole shebang.’
‘So he thinks.’
Ben rolled his eyes.
‘Here we go,’ he said resignedly. ‘You ain’t content you’s alive. You have to be smart, the big hero.’
‘Rube was a friend of mine,’ Spur said. ‘I owe it him. He staked me once without a chance of me payin’ him back.’
‘So I’m up to my fool neck in gun-hands.’
‘You’re a special deputy.’
‘Fust I heard of it.’
‘You’ll receive the thanks of a grateful public’
‘My ass,’ said Ben.
He stopped and held up his hand.
Spur was on his feet.
‘You hear somethin’?’
Ben nodded. He reached out and turned down the light. He blew down the funnel. They stood still in the pitch dark, listening.
‘Somebody comin’ along the tunnel,’ Ben whispered.
‘Could be the Kid.’
‘The Kid don’t have four feet,’ Ben said. ‘Man, we sure is caught.’
‘There’s just a chance,’ said Spur. ‘Bring the lamp.’ He took hold of Ben’s arm. ‘Keep together. You’re good in the dark. Can you find the small tunnel, fast.’
‘You ain’t a-goin’ in there?’
‘You bet I ain’t. Move.’
Ben led the way unerringly along the right-hand aisle and out to the doorway. Here they paused a moment and listened. Spur could now hear the sound of the approaching footsteps. He knew that not for the first time he had been saved by Ben’s acute hearing. He saw the light of the approaching lamp touch a wall of the tunnel. Ben moved off. They went forward with a hand feeling for the sloping roof. They found it and felt their way to the low mouth of the small tunnel.
They crouched there, the roof against their shoulders. Neither man liked it much.
Spur whispered: ‘Crawl backward into the tunnel. That’ll give you some cover.’
‘You,’ said Ben.
‘Get on.’
Ben said: ‘You’re white. They’ll spot you for sure.’
The men had reached the bend in the mine and it was too late to move. The bright lamplight hit the eyes of the two crouching men. Two men walked to within fifteen feet of them. They held their breath. The men were Jim Tabor and Stace Golite, the deputies. They were walking with caution like two men expecting trouble. Each held a belt-gun.
They stopped dead in their tracks when they saw the open door.
Golite swore incomprehensively.
Tabor said: ‘Jesus, they been here.’
Golite backed up a little and said: ‘Maybe they’re still here.’
Tabor cocked his gun.
‘We go in there, we could git our heads shot off.’
Spur groaned to himself. He wanted the two men in the storeroom so he and Ben could escape through the tunnel. His mind started working. There was a chance that Gaylor and the others were outside the mine-shaft. But that was a chance that he and Ben had to take. He and Ben couldn’t move till Tabor and Golite were in the store-room.
‘Maybe I should fire a shot to warn Wayne,’ Tabor said. ‘I don’t much care for this.’
‘Me neither,’ said Golite. ‘Go ahead.’
Not once had they turned their eyes in the direction of Spur and Ben.
Spur lifted his gun from leather.
‘H’ist ’em, boys,’ he said.
The two deputies froze.
Spur said: ‘Lay your guns down on the ground very carefully and reach.’
Stiffly, scared, they obeyed. They looked around them not sure where the voice was coming from. Tabor had difficulty in holding his left hand above his head with the lamp in it.
Spur said: ‘Go inside, boys, an’ leave the lamp alight.’
They walked ahead and entered the store-room.
‘Let’s go,’ said Spur.
‘Gaylor’s out there,’ said Ben.
‘You know of a better idea?’
‘Can’t say I do.’
They walked forward and each scooped up a gun and stuck it in the top of his pants. Not a sound came from the men in the storeroom. Spur and Ben reached the turn in the tunnel and saw the bright patch of light ahead of them.
Suddenly, they both stopped. One of the men in the store-room was yelling his head off.
Ben cursed.
‘You should of cut their fool throats,’ he said savagely.
‘Maybe I should at that,’ Spur said.
They backed up against one wall and waited a moment, both wondering if the men outside had heard the yelling. It went on and on.
They weren’t left in doubt long.
They heard the crack of a rifle and a bullet hit the wall of the tunnel and sang in furious ricochet. They both flinched at the sound.
‘I guess that settles it,’ Ben said. ‘We goes forward and gits killed like sonovabitchin’ heroes or we goes back and we stays put till they come in after us.’
They heard the heavy door of the store-room slam.
Ben complained: ‘Most likely that means we can’t give ’em what we owe ’em.’
At least the yelling had stopped.
They started walking back down the tunnel. They reached the bend and stopped. Spur wondered if Tabor and Golite had any more weapons on them and whether they constituted a threat.
Ben said; ‘Wait till dark an’ try slip past ’em.’
‘They’ll smoke us out before that,’ Spur said. ‘Gaylor don’t give a damn for those two in there.’
‘I reckon that leaves us with what we’re both thinkin’ about,’ Ben offered.
‘That damn hole back yonder.’
They thought about that and they didn’t like it. Spur wondered who should go. Both the man who stayed behind and the man who went would be in a perilous position. Was there any call for them to split up? Could two men make it down the small tunnel? No, there might not be enough air in there for them both. Did it lead anywhere at all? It might be just a dead end to a mine face.
That was a chance they would have to take.
‘Stay right here,’ Spur said. ‘I’m goin’ to make a try.’
‘I’m real glad you said that,’ Ben told him.
‘Give me the lamp.’
Ben pushed it into his hand and said: Tm goin’ to give you two smokes, then I come after you.’
‘No, I’ll come back for you.’
‘Will you hell. Jest anythin’ could happen, man.’
‘Maybe it ain’t far. I’ll whistle if it ain’t. Two whistles come ahead. One, stay right where you’re at. All right?’
‘Keno.’ Ben thrust a handful of lucifers into Spur’s hand.
Spur slapped Ben on the arm and turned away. He didn’t like the idea of leaving Ben there and he didn’t like the idea of crawling down that tunnel. He wished he’d drunk more of the brandy while he had the chance.
As he passed the store-room door, he heard no sound from within. He bent double as the roof of the tunnel sloped and ended up crouching in front of the smaller tunnel feeling around with his hands. He wet his finger and held it up to feel if any faint breath of air touched it, but he could feel nothing. He had a bad feeling that he was starting on a fruitless journey.
Placing the lamp in the hole, he pushed it ahead of him. Then he tried his shoulders and found that there was room to wriggle forward. A dead stale smell entered his nostrils. He got his hips into the tunnel and then caught. He had to heave with his hands pressed tight against the floor to get himself forward. He stopped, suddenly not wanting to go on. The utter darkness seemed to press tangibly against his eyeballs. His lungs were fighting for air and the sweat was starting to pour off him. He wiped it from his forehead to prevent it from dripping into his eyes and felt the grit on his arm scrape his face.
He fought to get a grip on himself and partially succeeded. He went on, slowly dragging himself forward. Once he stuck fast again and had to force himself on. Suddenly, he thought of himself coming to a dead-end. He would never be able to turn to go back. He stopped and the sweat on him was ice cold. Could he push himself backward through so narrow a hole? He’d find that out if he came to a dead-end.
He went on, pushing the lamp ahead of him, wondering whether he should light it. Maybe there were explosive gases down here. He decided against it because he reckoned if he could see the walls of the tunnel pressing down on him he wouldn’t want to go on. He hit a routine, pushed the lamp, reached out with one hand and bent one leg slightly to push himself forward.
Then he would do a kind of wiggle with his hips and thighs, dragging himself like some giant worm through the bowels of the earth.
There was no knowing how long he strained his way along the narrow hole, a human mole blindly feeling his way into the hillside. His sense of time died. Maybe he had been in there a few minutes, maybe an hour. He had no idea in which direction he was going, though he suspected that the tunnel was gently curving. He prayed that old Rube had intended this for an escape route and had succeeded in using it for one.
He thought of the girl on the Cimarron Strip who had sworn that she would come to him in the fall. She seemed a long way off in another world. Even Ben back there in the main tunnel was in another world.
After a while he stopped again and thought: I’ve been crawling a long time. Maybe they rushed Ben. Maybe I should go back.
A bit more, he decided.
He went on.
Another unmeasured length of time and suddenly there was no constriction on either side of him. Nothing pressed against his elbows when he moved. He lifted a leg experimentally and touched the roof with his heel. He reached up a hand and felt nothing. He reached out forward, running his hand over the floor and felt the chill of stone. He realized too that the atmosphere had changed. There was a strange dankness in the air. He became aware of a soft insidious sound,
My God, he thought, it’s water.
He decided to chance a light and, feeling with his fingertips he found the lamp and lifted the glass. He fetched one of Ben’s lucifers from his pocket and scraped it on the stone. He lit the lamp and dropped the glass.
He looked around.
His head and shoulders were free. His hips and legs were still in the narrow tunnel. He was lying on rock. There was rock several feet on either side of him. The ceiling was too high for him to see by the light of the lamp. He could not see anything but blackness in front of him. He reckoned he was in a large cave.
For the moment, he could not locate the water. It wasn’t a drip but a steady flow. This puzzled him. Had he come to the edge of an underground river?
Dragging himself forward a couple of yards and coming clean out of the burrow, he discovered that he was on a rocky ledge. The water, which he could not see, flowed below him.
As his eyes adjusted to the light, he thought that he could see a rocky wall to his right, but could not be sure. He dangled the light over the edge and tried to strain his eyes to see below. He could see nothing. He was about to raise the lamp again when something to his left caught his eye, something that snaked down the rocky wall on the top of which he lay.
He crawled to the left.
What looked like a miner’s drill had been driven deep into the rock of the shelf. There was no more than a few inches of it showing above the surface. To it was tied a thick rope of rawhide. It hung down the face of the wall.
He knew if he thought about it, he wouldn’t go on and he knew he had to go ahead. He looped the light to the side of his belt, gripped the rope in both hands and, praying, lowered himself over the edge. He didn’t know when he had experienced a more unpleasant sensation, dangling on a rope above an unknown depth. Still, he thought, the rope was there for a purpose and the chances were men had lowered themselves down it before. It looked like a strong fairly new rope and he didn’t see why it shouldn’t hold him. These thoughts encouraged him a little and he lowered himself slowly, hand over hand, in a more cheerful mood. He just hoped that this wasn’t leading him to another of Rube’s hidden caves.
His arms started to ache painfully, for he was still very weak from his ordeal in the hands of the sheriff and he began to wonder if they were going to fail him.
However, he hit bottom suddenly. So suddenly that he shocked himself almost out of his skin. He took the lamp from his belt and had a good look around. There was little doubt that whoever had dug that burrow back there had come out into a natural cave. He walked toward the sound of the water and found himself on the edge of a strip of dark water some six feet across. On the far side was a wall of rock. He followed the stream along and saw where it had driven its way over the centuries through the hillside. It disappeared into a tunnel the roof of which was some six feet above the surface of the water.
He got down on one knee beside the water and peered into the darkness of the subterranean tunnel, seeing the water speeding into the maw of black beyond the light of his lamp.
Something touched his cheek.
Hope blossomed.
He wet his finger with his mouth and felt the cold touch of moving air on it. There was a chance that there was an opening farther along the water course. He had to take a chance. Ben was back there in a tight. Right this minute Gaylor and his men might be coming into the mine after him. He would make them pay for their temerity, but he was outnumbered.
Spur heaved off his boots and tied them by their mule-ears and a piece of rawhide from his pocket around his neck. He put the two guns inside the boots and lowered himself carefully into the water. It was more powerful than he had thought. His feet were almost plucked from beneath him. He took a pace forward and stumbled and almost floundered into the water. It was so cold that it took his breath away. Struggling back to the side, leaning against the current, he reached for the lamp on the side and once more stepped forward. Two paces and he was in the tunnel, the water up to his waist, holding the lamp high out of the water.
Leaning back against the powerful flow, he found that he was weaker than he thought. The crawl and the climb had taken it out of him.
He went forward a dozen or more paces, feeling the air fresher on his face. He found that his heart was pounding with excitement.
Suddenly, he missed his footing, fought to regain it, failed and went under. The lamp went out and he dropped it. He fought his way to the surface, but the current now took him and he found himself being carried helplessly forward. Something hard struck him on his head. He felt consciousness being snatched from him. He tried to fight that too. And failed. The water rushed him on through the darkness.