Pryde got to his feet. They saw him stare off toward the pass that was beyond the end of the canyon. Then Brazil noticed him, hearing the hoof sounds at the same time. “Sit down,” he told Pryde, and swung the Winchester toward the pass.
As he did, Karla Demery appeared in the shadowed opening. She looked up, showing surprise at seeing them, then walked her horse toward them.
Her gaze moved from Bowen and the two men next to him to Brazil. “I didn’t think you’d be here so soon.”
“We’re full of surprises,” Brazil grinned. He saw her move to dismount. “Sit where you are. I got enough to watch without a horse standing by.”
“I wanted to see if these men had any letters,” Karla said. Her hand was behind her on the saddlebag, unfastening the strap.
“Give them to Frank,” Brazil said.
“It’ll only take a minute.” Karla brought out the letters, began going through them, then glanced at Bowen again. “Isn’t your name Bowen?”
Bowen nodded. His eyes moved to Brazil. Brazil was watching Karla.
“I thought I had a letter for you,” Karla said. She came to the last letter, then started through them again. “It seems to me it was from an attorney. The return address, I mean. Lyall Martz? Is that name familiar to you?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Bowen said.
“But now I don’t see it.”
Brazil moved toward them. “What would you be hearing from a lawyer about?”
“He’s a friend,” Bowen said.
Karla looked up. “I know there was a letter from him. Somehow I must have misplaced it. Tomorrow…I’ll be sure to bring it tomorrow.”
“He can wait,” Brazil said. “Now move out of here.”
“I remember it looked like such an important letter,” Karla said.
Brazil’s hand came down on the horse’s rump and it sidestepped away from him. Karla looked back, then reined toward the draw and Brazil called after her, “When you find Frank, tell him I want to see him!”
Manring leaned toward Bowen. “What’s this lawyer business?”
“You think it concerns you?”
“We were in it together, weren’t we?”
“You don’t fit into it, Earl,” Bowen murmured. He began taking dynamite cartridges from an open case and binding them into bundles of eight sticks.
And you don’t fit into it either, he told himself. You don’t hang on to a thread. Not now. Maybe when there was time, but now it’s a matter of minutes. You understand that? Minutes.
A convict appeared out of the draw and told Manring the charge hole was ready to be dug. He stood with hands on hips looking about idly, to the pass, up into the trees, then his eyes dropped to Bowen who was winding twine about the dynamite sticks and he moved back down the draw. Manring followed him.
Watching him go, Pryde murmured, “We could leave Earl there too.”
“All four of us walk back up here,” Bowen said.
“How’re you going to handle Brazil?”
Bowen glanced over his shoulder—Brazil was still at the edge of the draw—then raised the top from the detonator box which held the revolver. “Like this.”
“Where’d you get that?”
“I’m not saying.”
“I could guess.”
“And you’d be wrong.” Bowen closed the box.
“You going to shoot Brazil?”
Bowen shook his head.
“Let me have it,” Pryde said. “I’ll use it on him.”
“You got enough to do,” Bowen said; then asked, “Have you got it straight?”
“I think so.”
“Tell it.”
Pryde’s eyes raised to Brazil, then lowered again. “When we’re called to set the charge, you’re going first. You carry the case with the bundles in it. Then I follow. I’m carrying another case. There’re a few sticks in it and the knife. You get down to the end of the draw before you notice I’m carrying it. Then you say, ‘I got enough sticks. Leave what you got here and we’ll pick it up on the way back.’ I set the case down where you planted the charge a while ago. Right under where the fuse is hanging. Then we go around on the trail and do what we’re supposed to be doing. You light the charge and we all hurry back up the trail. We’re starting up the draw and I say that I’ve forgot the case. I lag back to get it, take the knife out of the case, cut the fuse so only five feet is hanging out of the wall, light it and come after you.”
“That gives you a minute and a half,” Bowen said, “to climb out of the draw.”
“It doesn’t take half of that,” Pryde said.
“You want to be on the safe side.”
“But why a five-foot fuse?”
“We want this charge to go off as close as possible with the main one,” Bowen said. “If they blow too far apart, somebody down below will start to think about it and come up too soon to find out why. But we couldn’t put on just five feet when we planted the charge, because Brazil would notice it being short and wonder about it.”
“But with the draw caved in,” Pryde said, “nobody could get up here anyway.”
“This way is called not leaving anything to chance,” Bowen said. “Maybe there’s a quick way up out of the canyon we don’t even know about.”
“All right.” Pryde nodded, then asked, “When do you pull the gun?”
“As soon as the draw blows,” Bowen said. “Whether it goes before or after or at the same time the main charge does, Brazil won’t expect it. He’ll be off guard.”
“Then we tie him up,” Pryde said.
“That’s right.” Bowen glanced at the row of long-fused dynamite cartridges next to him. “While Earl cuts the fuses on those.”
“Why don’t we do it now?”
“For the same reason that charge down in the draw has a ten-foot fuse,” Bowen said. “Brazil isn’t that dumb. If he sees six-inch fuses sticking out of these he’ll know damn well what they’re for.”
“And the rest is up to luck,” Pryde said.
Bowen shrugged. “Maybe we’ll make our own.”
The convict who had come for Manring a few minutes before appeared again at the top of the draw.
“Here we go,” Pryde said.
Brazil looked toward them and called, “Ready for the stuff.”
Rising, lifting the case to his shoulder, Bowen said, “Take your time. Cut the fuse right where it touches the ground and you’ll have five feet.”
Pryde nodded. “Don’t worry about it.” As Bowen walked off, he picked up the second wooden case and followed him. Brazil fell in behind going down the draw. No one spoke and there was only the sounds of their steps in the loose gravel. Then, as they reached the shelf, Bowen looked back.
“Ike, what’ve you got that for?”
Pryde stopped. “Didn’t you say bring it?”
“I got all we need,” Bowen said. “Set it down there and we’ll pick it up on the way back.” His eyes moved to Brazil. No reaction. No change in his tight-jawed, narrow-eyed expression.
Bowen turned the corner and moved down the shelf, along the thirty feet which they had not yet dynamited, then over the widened, graded section—roughly fifty feet of this—to the place where they would set off the next blast.
Manring was waiting there. The grading crew had moved out and were already at the bottom of the trail. “Ready?” asked Manring.
Bowen only nodded. He stepped into the closet-sized space that had been cut into the wall and began placing the charges. The horizontal chamber that Manring had prepared was waist high and ran parallel with the wall of the canyon. It was deep enough to hold all of the charges, but it was too wide; and with each charge that he placed Bowen would tamp sand into the chamber so the dynamite would fit snugly and there would be no air space. When he finished, only the fuse could be seen extending from the packed sand.
Bowen looked at Brazil. “You said you wanted to light it.”
“I’ll hold your rifle,” Pryde said.
“I g
uess you would,” Brazil said. He waved the barrel of the Winchester. “You all get out of the way. Start moving up.” He drew a match and stooped over the fuse, then called after the three men, “This one’s ten feet?”
Bowen turned and nodded. “Three minutes’ worth.” He watched Brazil strike the match and hold it to the fuse. “Give him room,” Bowen murmured.
He turned again, now hearing Brazil coming up behind them, and started to walk faster.
Brazil called, “What’s the hurry?”
Bowen glanced back. “That one’s bigger than the others. We got to get all the way up to the top.”
Pryde let Bowen pass him. He was next to Brazil as they turned into the draw. Then he stopped. And as Brazil went on, Bowen and Manring ahead of him, he stooped quickly, took the knife from the wooden case and cut the fuse so that less than a foot of it remained. Bowen looked back as he brought the knife down.
“What’s the matter?” Bowen called.
Brazil stopped.
Pryde stepped in front of the cut-off fuse and waved up to Bowen, the knife palmed in his other hand. “Go on. I got to get this box is all.” He watched Bowen and Manring move up through the draw. Brazil turned to follow them.
“Hey!” Pryde called sharply, bringing Brazil around. He waited. Brazil frowned. Now Bowen and Manring were reaching the top of the draw. Pryde waited a moment longer, until they were over the rim. Then he said, “Come here.”
Brazil started toward him, but stopped, as if only then remembering the burning fuse down on the trail. “Pick it up…we got to move!”
Pryde stared at him. “You’re not going anywhere.”
“What’d you say?”
“You heard me.”
Brazil’s gaze went beyond Pryde and abruptly his eyes opened wide. “What’d you do to that fuse!”
Something was wrong. Something was going on that shouldn’t be happening. But even as he realized it, even as his nerves came alive and he reflexively brought up the Winchester, it was too late, Pryde was on him.
He tried to go back, tried to leave the Winchester, but Pryde’s left hand pushed up on the barrel. Brazil’s arms went up with it and he half turned to wrench the Winchester from Pryde’s grasp. As he did, Pryde’s right hand drove the knife into his side. Brazil gasped and the shock of it was in his eyes and in his straining, open-mouthed expression as he slumped to the ground.
Pryde was at the fuse again. He struck a match, touched it to the fuse and started to run. A ten-inch fuse—time enough to climb out of the draw, but not for Bowen to come down after Brazil. You had to think of Bowen doing things like that.
He was twenty feet from the rim when the main charge went off and the suddenness of it made him stumble. His ears rang and there was dust in the air and the echo up canyon and suddenly Pryde fell again.
His hands clutched at his stomach. He felt a wetness and looking down saw that it was his own blood. He could not believe it, but it was there. He had been shot and the bullet had gone completely through him. But there had been no report! Only the ringing and the echo and the slamming against his back that could have been a rock—
He rolled over and felt himself sliding and then he saw Brazil at the bottom of the draw. He was lying on his stomach aiming the Winchester.
“Ike!”—above him, Bowen’s voice.
Pryde saw the Winchester raise and he called out to warn Bowen.
14
Bowen had already seen Brazil. He went down, rolling away from the slope, hearing Pryde’s one-word scream lost in the high-whining, dust-kicking report of the Winchester.
There was no time to think, yet it was in his mind to help Pryde. He had returned to the defile in time to see only part of it—Pryde lighting the fuse and running, Brazil rolling to his stomach, bringing up the Winchester, then the blast going off down on the shelf and Pryde stumbling—
And now, even knowing it was too late, Bowen thought of Lizann’s revolver. He pushed up to his hands and knees, then was moving, running for the row of detonator boxes when the draw erupted behind him.
The force of it slammed him to the ground and he covered his head with his arms as the sand and rock fragments showered down on him. Then he was up again, the hissing ringing of the explosion still tight about him, seeing Manring coming toward him, Manring looking past him to where the draw had been.
The left wall of the draw had been blown in, completely filling the narrow depression, so that now a steep slope of shattered rock dropped to the shelf and covered the section of it that had curved into the draw.
“Ike’s under there,” Bowen murmured. “He cut the fuse short, tried to leave Brazil there, but Brazil shot him—”
Manring looked back toward the trees. What had happened to Pryde meant nothing—not with Mimbres about to appear. He said urgently, “We got to move!” and started back toward the equipment.
Bowen stared down the slope. Was it worth that? You didn’t do it—it was his own fault!
“Come on!” Manring’s voice.
Bowen’s gaze went down into the canyon. He saw the convicts, small figures far below, and a rider moving up canyon. He turned and ran toward Manring. “Cut the fuses!”
“With what?” Manring looked at him helplessly. “Ike had the knife!” He turned to the trees nervously. “With what, damn it!”
“We’ll cut them,” Bowen said. “Hold on to yourself.”
“We got to get out of here!”
Bowen’s eyes went over the equipment. No knife…but the hand axe.
He picked it up, gathered the five dynamite sticks he had prepared and had lined up on the ground, ran his hand down all five fuses at once, drawing them together, then chopped down with the hatchet—once, twice, again, until he had chopped through all of them and only eight inches of fuse remained with each cartridge.
“There!” Manring was still looking at the trees. “I saw one!”
Bowen looked up. Off through the trees he could see a movement. Now you have to be careful, he thought. Not too close.
He struck a match, held it to a fuse, then picked up the stick and threw it. The dynamite exploded as it struck the ground ten yards out from the trees.
He told Manring, “When I throw the next one, run.” And he thought: You don’t even have to light it. But it’s better to be sure.
He struck a match, touched it to a fuse and threw the stick in the same direction. It was end over end in the air as Manring started to run, striking the ground and exploding as Bowen took the revolver from the detonator box and shoved it inside his shirt and into his waist. He picked up the three remaining cartridges and ran after Manring.
They ran for the pass that wound through the rocks beyond the end of the canyon, followed its narrow, shadowed course and as they came out Bowen lighted and dropped another stick. They were running down the length of the meadow when it exploded behind them.
Now the Mimbres from the other side, Bowen told himself. He turned to stand in the open, in the thick grama grass that moved in slow waves with the wind.
Manring turned, hesitating. “Come on!”
Bowen motioned to him to go on. “I’ll catch up.” He turned back to face the rocks, hearing Manring moving through the tall grass, the hurried swishing sound becoming fainter. This is something, he thought. Covering for him. No, you’re covering for yourself too. This is the way to do it. It’s a once-and-for-all thing. If it works. If they scare easy.
He saw them then—the six riders slightly off to the right coming down through the rocks. They had seen him, he was sure of that, and now they had reached the meadow and were coming directly for him.
You can spot them by the way they ride, Bowen thought. Straight on and no games this time. All business.
He struck a match with his thumbnail, held it as he judged the distance closing between him and the Mimbres, then touched it to the dynamite and threw the stick.
It struck and exploded twenty yards in front of the Mimbres, and they swerved right and
left. They started circling back out of range and Bowen threw the last stick, arching it higher into the air. It exploded closer than the first one and the next moment they were galloping back up the slope, winding through the rock formations.
Bowen ran on through the meadow, came out of it and started up the slope ahead of him. Near the wagon road that skirted the shoulder of the hill, he caught up with Manring.
“Now Pinaleño,” Bowen said.
Frank Renda had descended the five-shadowed grade and was approaching the camp when the main charge went off in the canyon. He heard it faintly in the distance and in his mind saw a section of wall high above the shelf buckle out, seem to rise and hang suspended, then disappear into thick dust—as the previous blasts had appeared from the floor of the canyon.
But he pictured this for only a moment. His thoughts returned to Lizann Falvey. She was the business at hand. Something to be dealt with now. You let a woman get a little bit sure of herself and pretty soon she makes you sick to your stomach watching her pretend she’s a man. Lizann had gone far enough. Riding into the canyon had been, in fact, too far.
He had forbidden her ever to come near the road construction. “Ride anywhere you want, but stay away from the convicts when you got a horse.” That meant stay out of the canyon. But this morning she had come down the new road—telling him without words what she thought of his authority.
Maybe she was bluffing. Maybe she was only trying to worry him. But she seemed too sure of herself. Maybe she did have a plan. Whichever it was, he intended to find out now.
There was no guard at the gate. He had shifted one of the night men to day work when the dynamiting began. Why, he was not sure; but it seemed to him there should be another guard on hand while they were working with high explosives.
The night man was sleeping now and the gate was open. As Renda passed into the compound, the sound of the second explosion reached him. He reined in abruptly and sat listening.
An echo?
That’s all. He relaxed, nudging the big chestnut to a walk, thinking: Brazil’s there. He’ll shoot if anybody even looks at him sideways.
He dismounted in front of the Falveys’ quarters and entered the open doorway without knocking. As he did, Lizann came out of the bedroom. She had changed from her riding suit and was fastening the top buttons of her dress. She showed no surprise at seeing Renda.