Cato killed a horse on his wild ride for Van Horn, literally running the animal into the ground. Luckily, he was within a few miles of his destination and he shouldered his saddle and rifle and started walking.
There was a full moon and he had no difficulty in staying on the trail. He came within sight of the town just before sunup. The buildings were silhouetted against the false dawn, a band of pink and gray, shot through with orange that reminded him of the flames he had left behind in Juarez as the cantina burned to the ground. He had dumped Keller on the steps of a medico’s house across the bridge in El Paso, grabbed the first likely looking horse he had seen and lit put, lickety split.
There was a pale amber light washing through the deserted streets of Van Horn as he staggered into the town. Then at the same time as he saw the barricades further along the street, a harsh voice commanded him to stop dead and throw down his arms. Cato let the saddle drop and lifted his hands shoulder high, frowning.
“Drop that sidearm too, mister!” cracked the voice. “Easy-like!”
Cato let the rig thud to the dust, swaying with fatigue, blinking, wondering if he was dreaming this. But, no. As the sunlight spread rapidly across the land, there were harsh shadows now in the street, and he saw that men were up on the roofs, with guns. As he glanced up, shading his eyes, sunlight glinted on blued steel rifle barrels. He lowered his gaze at a sound to one side. A door opened in a cafe and a man stepped out, grim-faced, double-barreled Greener slanted across his chest. Another door opened on the other side and he saw the reflection of light on a brass badge.
He released a sigh slowly. For a while there he had figured he was too late, that Burdin had already taken over the town.
“Name yourself, mister!” called the badge-toter; his was the voice that had given the earlier commands.
“Cato, John Cato. Enforcer for the governor of Texas.”
There was silence for a while. Then, “Prove it.”
“Have to lower my hands.”
“Do it easy. You’d be loco to do it any other way. There’s forty guns trained on you.”
“I’ve no hankerin’ to see what a coffin looks like from the inside,” Cato said quietly, fumbling at his big brass belt buckle. There was a four-inch, honed steel blade welded to that buckle, encased in a secret pocket in the belt itself. He released the buckle-knife by pressing the stud through the slot in the leather and let it drop to the ground. He knew all eyes would go to that, for it was an unusual weapon and these men would never have seen its like. Then he probed deep into the pocket and pulled out a small oilskin package. He unfolded it and took out some thin papers.
“Bring ’em over,” ordered the lawman. “Slow.”
Cato walked across, hand extended and looked at the hard-faced sheriff. The man stared at him, taking in every line of his face, before reaching out for the papers, one-handed. He kept his rifle pointed at Cato as he read swiftly. When he looked up, his expression was just as hard as previously.
“Bannerman told us to be on the lookout for you,” the lawman said suddenly, but he made no move to take the gun off Cato or to give the man permission to lower his arms. “Said to ask you one question so’s we’d know it really was you.”
“Ask away,” Cato said, his mind seething with questions about Yancey.
“What was the name of the town where you and Bannerman first met?”
“El Moros,” Cato said without hesitation.
“Where is it?”
“Mexico. Matancero Province. It was two years ago.”
The sheriff stared at him a moment longer then, unsmilingly, nodded for him to lower his arms.
“Where the hell is Yancey?” Cato asked, rubbing at the stiffness in his wounded arm.
“Gone up into the Sierra Blancas.”
“He knows about Totem Canyon?”
“Seems so. He ran some hombre named Calhoun to ground and had to kill him. But he found papers in the man’s saddlebags that told about this Burdin hombre plannin’ to take over this here town. We set up barricades right off and sent word to the army post at Orogrande. But Bannerman said he couldn’t wait for ’em to show and he took off into the hills to try to find this canyon.”
Cato swore. “He’ll never do it unless he knows what to look for. How long since he was here?”
“Sundown. He stayed only long enough to eat, grab some ammunition, and a fresh horse, then took off.”
“I’ve got to get after him. Can I get a good mount?”
“You can have anythin’ you like,” the sheriff told him. “Guns, men, horses.”
“Just a good fast horse. I can travel faster alone.”
Cato picked up his belt-buckle and gun-rig. One of the townsmen lifted his saddle for him and, with the sheriff, they hurried through the light-flooded streets towards the open maw of the livery behind the barricade.
“Sorry about the welcome,” the lawman apologized. “Figured you could be one of Burdin’s crew, sent in to throw us off-guard.”
“You did good,” Cato told him. “Don’t relax until you hear from Yancey or me. Burdin’s gonna take some stoppin’.”
“We got men willin’ to join a posse,” the lawman offered, but Cato shook his head and swiftly told him how it was up in the sierras.
“Just couldn’t get a bunch of men in there,” he concluded. “We’d spook Burdin and his crew. Could maybe use a little dynamite, though.”
“No problem.”
“Some empty coffee cans, too. With lids.”
The sheriff looked at the man toting Cato’s saddle.
“I can fix it,” the man said and added by way of explanation, “I run the general store.”
They strode through the large doorway of the stables, the sheriff yelling for the liveryman to get the hell up here and break out his fastest horse for Cato.
~*~
Yancey rode through Totem Canyon for the seventh time, walking his mount slowly under the towering walls, rifle in hand, stifling a yawn. He was damned tired and would have liked nothing better than to stop and curl up in some protected corner where he could sleep for a few hours. But time was running out and he still hadn’t found a way past this rock-studded, desiccated canyon.
There had to be some hidden entrance to another place, for this wouldn’t hold an army and there were no signs at all that Burdin and his men had ever been here. Yet, the papers he had found in Calhoun’s saddlebags named this place and something called Hanging Rock. No one in Van Horn had ever heard of any such place, and the only landmark in the canyon that came close to the description was that mighty slab that seemed to have been split from the main wall by some giant axe. Yet it didn’t appear to go all the way to the bottom, so there could be no entrance behind that. But there was thick tangled sagebrush growing around its base and there was a reference to Sagebrush Pass in the papers. Could be there would be something that would ...
He froze, hauling rein fast, rifle coming around, ready. He heard a horse. It was moving slowly, picking its way into the canyon from the southwest, the way he had come. He knew just where it was by the sounds its hoofs made on the hollow-sounding pebbles that were scattered around the bed of a long-dry waterhole, just beyond a patch of sand. The sound carried far in this sounding-box of a canyon.
Yancey eased his mount back into the thick sagebrush, aware of the spicy aroma, hoping the pollen floating about on the dry air wouldn’t make him sneeze. Whoever the rider was, he wasn’t taking too much trouble to keep his passage quiet. That meant either some innocent drifter or one of Burdin’s men riding confidently for the hidden entrance to the canyon.
It turned out to be neither. It was John Cato, and he rode in swiftly, though not carelessly. He was standing in the stirrups, cocked rifle in one hand, eyes travelling around the canyon constantly. He spotted Yancey at the same time as the big man recognized him and they both lowered the hammers on their rifles, rode out to greet each other.
“Lucky I didn’t blow your head off and look to see who it was afterwards!” Yancey said, smiling faintly.
“I knew you weren’t that good a shot,” retorted Cato, answering his smile. He threw Yancey a brief salute. “Good to see you, pard. Hear you downed Calhoun.”
Yancey arched his eyebrows. “Then I guess you came by way of Van Horn. Which likely means you caught up with Keller.”
“Down in Juarez, of all places. You find a way into the canyon yet?”
“No. Was going to start looking through this here sagebrush when I heard your horse.”
“Had to take a chance you were still hanging around the canyon. But you’re on the right track. There’s an entrance behind this sagebrush, according to Keller.” Cato gestured to the huge, split slab of rock. “They call this Hanging Rock. There’s a defile behind it that leads to Burdin’s camp in another canyon.”
“Figured it had to be something like that. They tell you in Van Horn I’ve sent for the army?”
Cato nodded. “No good, though. Defile’s so narrow they would only spook Burdin and he’d get out before we could do anythin’ about it.”
Yancey swore briefly. “That means it’s you and me against—how many?”
“Twenty, according to Keller. Seems he spoke gospel about this place so no reason to figure he wasn’t speakin’ it about the number of men, too.”
“High odds,” Yancey said, lips pursed.
Cato tapped his saddlebags. “Can shorten ’em a mite. Got some dynamite from Van Horn.”
Yancey looked at him sharply. “We’ll have to get close to use it.”
Cato grinned. “Mebbe. But you was just tellin’ me how you come close to blowin’ my head off. Now’s your chance to show just how good a shot you are.”
“After you tellin’ me I’m a lousy marksman?”
“Prove me wrong!” Cato invited with a wide grin.
“Might just do that. Okay. Lead on. You seem to know your way about these parts.”
“In theory.”
Cato pushed his sweating horse past Yancey and the big Enforcer turned his horse and followed him through the sagebrush. It was thick and the roots were half above the ground, finding it hard to grip the earth in this wind-blown canyon. The horses stumbled and Cato’s whinnied once. They stopped dead, listening, rifles ready. But there was only the eerie moaning of the wind between the Hanging Rock and the canyon wall proper. It was a massive split and writhing veins of crumbling ironstone crawled over the ancient rock like fossilized snakes.
They put their mounts forward again and found the defile well in from the canyon proper. The brush was thicker than ever here, like a living wall, and they had to literally push it aside to squeeze past. It sprang back at them, raking the horses’ flanks and their own bodies. But then the rock dropped away in a series of natural steps and they were in a narrow chasm with red ironstone walls. When they looked up, the walls were so close they felt their breathing quicken with a sensation of being crushed. Cato had been right: no mounted soldier troop could get through here without spooking Burdin’s men if they were indeed beyond.
The walls brushed the horses’ legs and made them uneasy. In one part it was so narrow that they had to take their boots from the stirrups and place them on the mounts’ backs. Even so, the stirrup irons scraped along the rock. Then it widened so that they were able to ride abreast and they could feel their horses relax beneath them.
They didn’t speak. There was brilliant sunlight ahead, striking rock outside the defile and reflecting back in. There was sand underfoot now and it muffled the horses’ hoofs, so that they were able to reach the end of the defile and surprise the dozing guard.
He was hunkered down with his back against a boulder, in the shade, a coffeepot standing in the dead coals of a campfire near his leg. His rifle had slipped from his fingers and flies crawled over his chin and around his slack mouth as he gently snored.
Cato, slightly ahead of Yancey, started to dismount and his saddle creaked. It was enough. The guard started up, the movement beginning before he was fully awake, hands groping for the rifle. Yancey slammed his spurs into his mount’s flanks, jumping it past the half-dismounted Cato, swinging his rifle by the long barrel. The guard got his hands on his gun and was bringing it up when the brass butt plate of Yancey’s Winchester cracked against the side of his head and lifted him clear off his feet. He fell with a clatter and lay still, blood oozing thickly from the wound in his temple.
Yancey fought his horse to a standstill and hipped in leather. Cato was standing over the man. He looked up, shaking his head.
“Killed him. He won’t give us any trouble.”
Yancey grunted. “Likely only had the one man. That entrance is so well hidden they’d be confident with just the one guard.”
They walked their mounts around the big, marble-like boulder where the guard had been stationed and stopped dead.
Below them, down a slope, was a green canyon, thick with trees at the far end and splotched with patches of wildflowers. They could hear birds calling and chirping. A stream meandered lazily across the canyon floor. It was a beautiful, fertile place, peaceful, remote.
What spoiled it was the encampment of armed men over against the west wall. A dozen of them were trundling around a big-wheeled cannon that glinted in the sun, while others were setting up and taking down a Gatling gun.
“Well, if Burdin got them in here, he didn’t do it the way we came,” Cato said, gesturing to the heavy weapons.
“Which means there’s an easy way out someplace. And we’ve got to see they’re cut off from it before we make our move,” Yancey said slowly, glancing up at the sky. “Sun’s westering. It’ll be dark in here, long before it is outside.”
“And we’re gonna use that darkness. It’s gonna be one of the few advantages we’ll have,” Cato said grimly.
They were lucky. Apparently the guard they had killed had only just come on duty, for no one came out to relieve him while they waited for darkness by the big boulder.
They weren’t idle. Cato took out the empty coffee cans he had collected in Van Horn and the half-dozen sticks of dynamite.
“No fuses,” Yancey commented. “Or detonators.”
“Only fuse they had was perished, crumblin’,” Cato replied. “They didn’t have any detonators at all. Reckoned they must’ve been stolen. Even this dynamite’s unstable, startin’ to ooze. Don’t have much call for it around Van Horn, I guess.”
“What’s your idea?” Yancey asked.
“We got four cans, but only two with lids that fit tight. Before I left Van Horn, I got another carton of shot-shells. I figure we pack thick sticks of dynamite into each of the two cans and fill up the space inside with powder and shot poured out of the shot-shells.”
“The shot, too?”
“Hell, yeah. It’ll be blasted everywhere by the explosion, like a giant shotgun.”
“Okay, I get it. We clamp the lids on and make two bombs. But how are we going to explode ’em?”
Cato merely grinned and then took out his hunting knife and began scratching the labels off the coffee cans. When they had been removed, he scraped away at the surface of the tin until it shone like silver, glinting brightly in the sunlight.
“Easier to see in the dark if it reflects,” he said by way of explanation and Yancey, started to get the idea then.
The big Enforcer kept watch on the men in the canyon while Cato constructed his first bomb. The sticks of dynamite were bound together tightly with string. He stood them in the center of the can, then opened shot-shells and poured in the black-powder and buckshot charge. He used a stick to tamp this down tightly around the dynamite. Then he made a small slit in the top of each dynamite stick and inserted the brass end containing the primer cap of one of the shot-shells, which he had cut free of the cardboard tube.
“It’ll help ignition,” he explained briefly.
Then he pressed the lid home after the can had been filled to the top with the powder-and-shot mix. To be sure the lid stayed in place, he used lengths cut from a coil of cord fishing line which he always carried in his saddlebags, wrapping it tightly around and around the can, end for end.
“That ought to hold up, even when it gets tossed around,” he opined. Yancey, standing by the boulder, watching the men through field glasses, turned and nodded briefly.
“Fine. Looks like they’re dragging the cannon and the Gatling back to the camp. Figure they’re about to finish up for the day. Been some good riding down there, especially the fellers dragging that cannon around. They know just where they want to put it and get it there pronto.”
“Been practisin’ a long time, I guess,” Cato said as he commenced to make the second bomb. “Likely aim to use ’em when they take over Van Horn.”
“Which we got to see they don’t do. Yeah, they’re washing-up at the stream now and I can see the cook at his wagon lining up tin plates.” Yancey lowered the glasses and glanced at the sun. “In half an hour’s time shadows ought to be crawling across the canyon floor. Be dark in an hour and a half.”
“Which will give us just enough time. Yance, might be an idea if you scrape the bluing off the blade of your foresight and the inside curve of the buckhorn. You’ll see ’em easier in the dark.”
Yancey nodded and came back to squat down by Cato. He picked up Cato’s hunting knife and started scraping at the metal bluing gently with the tip of the blade.
~*~
Sam Burdin was easy to recognize as he stood in the firelight in the circle of tents. He was tall, slab-bodied, hawk-faced, with thick yellow hair and a blond mustache which drooped around a mean mouth. There was a puckered scar on the tip of his chin and his eyes had the glint of a fanatic, as he briefed his men about the proposed raid on Van Horn the following day.
He strode about, gesturing, hammering one fist into the palm of his other hand to drive home an important point. He frequently slapped his hand against the holstered six-gun on his hip. It was a regular army-style holster, with buttoned flap and worn high on a Sam Browne belt. His trousers were gray with deep blue stripes running down the outsides, the cuffs tucked into polished half boots. His shirt was dark gray with yellow shoulder-flashes. He wore a battered campaign hat with a single metal star pinned to the front. The Lone Star of Texas. Most of the men squatting around the campfire, lounging, smoking, but attentive, were dressed in similar manner, except there were no shoulder-flashes on their shirts.
“Looks like a regular troop of soldiers,” Cato whispered as he and Yancey bellied forward to a vantage point. They were on a flat slab of rock that jutted out over the camp below and the chill night wind made them shiver. The ancient rock surface creaked and cracked at the sudden drop in temperature now that the sun had gone below the canyon rim. These natural noises covered any small slithering sounds the two Enforcers made as they worked their way into position.
The canister bombs were dangling around Cato’s neck, slung on some fishing cord, each can wrapped around with their spare shirts so they wouldn’t clang together. They couldn’t make out Burdin’s words, but they could tell from his gestures and the tone of the voice as it drifted up to them that he was forcefully driving home his orders for the raid on Van Horn, a name they caught on several occasions.
“He’s loco,” Cato opined with a kind of matter-of-fact emphasis: there was no doubt in his mind.
“Yeah,” Yancey agreed. “Dangerous kind of loco. If we hadn’t gotten onto the fact that he was building up his so-called Texas Freedom Army, he might’ve made one hell of a mess of Texas. And Dukes.”
“Well, we ain’t stopped him yet, Yancey, old pard,” Cato said, easing the cans from around his neck and untying them. He pulled them out of the shirts and they glinted clearly in the faint glow of the stars. “You ought to be able to see ’em plain enough in the firelight.”
Yancey nodded settling himself firmly into a patch of sand, getting the Winchester up to his shoulder. He eased back the hammer as Cato laid his own rifle within easy reach of his hands and took out his Manstopper, placing the big gun beside it. He eased forward on the rock and studied the camp below, then slithered back fast, reaching for the first can.
“Looks like they’re about to turn in,” he said and Yancey saw the men standing and stretching as Burdin walked away from the group, shoulders hunched as he cupped his hands around a vesta flame, lighting a stub of cigar.
“Now, Johnny! Before they scatter!”
Cato lifted the can and drew back his arm, sighting down into the camp. “Let it drop as close as you can before firin’!” he said and then his arm snapped forward and the glinting coffee-can bomb arced out from the rock and was momentarily lost in the darkness.
Then it began to fall, towards the dispersing men who were walking towards their tents in groups of twos and threes. Yancey lifted the rifle barrel and because he had removed the metal bluing from the foresight tip and the buckhorns of the rear sight, they glinted, and he was able to center the blade easily and hold it on the flashing metal of the coffee-can as it reflected the firelight.
When the can was about ten feet above the ground, the rifle barrel leading it just a fraction, Yancey squeezed trigger.
The detonation was tremendous, greater than either he or Cato had expected. There was a momentary, monster fireball that briefly lit the canyon like a second sun. Then the shattering thunder smashed into the walls and reverberated, drowning the screams of mortally wounded men. Those who were still alive had been knocked flat by the blast and, dazed, were slowly picking themselves up now, deafened, disoriented by the suddenness of the attack.
Horses whinnied in the rope corrals and crushed against the restraining ropes and poles. A tent was blazing. Wounded men moaned. Sam Burdin was on his feet now, staggering about, yelling, trying to organize, but it was doubtful if he could make himself heard. Then someone got a gun out and working, though it was likely a purely reflex action, for Yancey and Cato didn’t hear where the bullets went. But Burdin was rapidly regaining his senses now and he was running unsteadily towards the gleaming metal of the Gatling gun.
“Here goes the second one!” Cato bawled and tossed the second bomb as far as he could. This time it hit the ground and rolled and Yancey swore as it was harder to see. He saw a glint, fired, missed, spotted the can still rolling and drew a swift bead, squeezing trigger gently.
The second explosion seemed louder than the first somehow, and there was an upward blast of dirt and broken men and tents. When the dust cleared, they could see that the Gatling gun had been blown over onto its side and Burdin was crawling away on all fours, shaking his head. Some of the men had their position pinpointed now and were blazing away with their guns. They were highly trained, Yancey had to give them that. Despite the surprise attack, they were determined to put up a fight. Bullets ricocheted from their boulder shelter. Cato snatched up his rifle and began blazing away at the running men. Burdin was on his feet now and stumbling back into deeper shadow. Guns were hammering from many directions, but the campsite was strewn with bodies. There couldn’t be too many of the Texas Freedom Fighters who had escaped those terrible blasts.
And yet shadows flitted about down there; tongues of fire licked out into the night; gunshots echoed from the rocky walls. The horses began to mill and a rider broke away, silhouetted hazily against the lighter ground. Yancey drew a swift bead on the mount and fired. The horse went down sideways, threshing, throwing the rider. He staggered up and Yancey put him down with two swift shots.
Cato picked off a man who was running for the corrals and the horses that were smashing down the barriers now, running wild through the chaos of the camp, knocking down men who leapt at their bridles or manes, whickering, wild-eyed, kicking. Some men mounted and were bucked off almost immediately. Others clung to the manes and were dragged until, eventually, they were forced to release their grips and fell hard, sometimes under the racing hoofs. Guns barked intermittently. Yells and shouts were lost in the general din. Tents were knocked down. Somehow, the cannon, too, had been knocked over onto its side and one big spoked wheel spun crazily on a warped axle.
Then, abruptly, there was silence down below, an absence of movement and sound, the echoes fast fading. The dust slowly lifted and the two Enforcers stood up slowly, staring down at the ruins of the Texas Army’s camp. They waited, listening and, distantly, could hear the swift movement of horses towards the south end of the canyon.
“Someone’s gotten clear, anyways,” Cato opined.
“Yeah. More than one. But there are a lot of bodies down there, Johnny. Let’s go check.”
It was a grisly job and the moon was climbing over the canyon rim now, flooding cold, silver light over the carnage. They counted sixteen men in all, every man dead.
“Four got away then,” Cato said.
“Five,” Yancey corrected him. “Burdin had twenty men under him. That would’ve been twenty-one altogether.”
Cato looked at the death all around him.
“I didn’t find Burdin, did you?”
Yancey shook his head. “Looks like he got away,” he said and Cato nodded in agreement.