“What tribe makes it?” O’Neill asked quietly of the half-breed, even though O’Neill knew John wouldn’t be able to answer. He had asked it as much to make a point as anything, figuring every man there would be straining to hear the answer.
“None I know of,” came the reply. “But I’ll tell you one thing. This here bow is a work of art, the way it’s built. There ain’t an Indian I’ve ever known could even start to build it. No, sir. Whoever built this knows more about wood than any Indian alive. Look at how the wood’s joined. It looks like one piece instead of four,” he said passing the bow amongst the men clustered around him. “From the looks of this, it will not be easy to take them! These people are thinkers and they already know we are here and what we’re looking for.”
“Look at the headband he’s wearing! It’s solid gold!” someone yelled, pointing to the dead man at their feet.
Suddenly the men were in a frenzy trying to grab the golden band before any of their friends could snatch it.
“The first man to lay hands on that headband will be buried with it,” O’Neill stated flatly. “There will be plenty for all of us later. I’ll not have you fighting like a pack of dogs over this trifling little piece of junk. Now get walking! Donoven, you take the lead!” he ordered. There was dead silence as the men continued on through the tunnel.
He called that headband junk, Donoven thought as he led the way into the blackness, a torch held high in one hand while his other hand felt along the cool stone wall. That junk could keep me in money for months, yet O’Neill made us leave it there. He’s crazy, or there’s an awful lot of gold ahead, he surmised as he walked cautiously along.
The more Donoven thought about the riches that lay ahead, the more careless he became. Maybe it was his Irish blood or maybe just the promise of wealth, but soon he was moving ahead in strides that were impossible for the men behind him to follow. Curiously, O’Neill said nothing to hold him back.
Sweat was breaking out on Donoven’s forehead as he almost ran along, slowing only enough to allow his torch to stay lit. Nevermind that there might be an ambush waiting ahead, his mind was now fully possessed by the gold fever and nothing or no one could stop him until he got what he was after.
When the great swiveling rock shuddered, then tilted slightly downward beneath his feet, Donoven was taken completely off guard. Stopping in his tracks, he listened for any telltale sign of what was happening. He felt something give, but in the darkness one’s sensations often belie what is really happening. With the flickering torchlight and only the sound of the men walking behind him, it would be easy to imagine something that wasn’t real.
Slowly he took another step forward. Everything felt solid-no movement, no noises. Another step with the same results. Smiling at himself for thinking something was amiss, he shifted the torch to the other hand and took another confident step. It was then that all hell broke loose.
In the midst of a great grinding roar, Donoven flung himself flat to the ground. Beads of sweat broke out on his forehead as he tried desperately to find something, anything, to grab hold of. Panic welled up in his stomach as the reality of what was happening surged through his mind. There was nothing to get a hold on-not a crack, crevice, nothing!
He tried in desperation to dig his fingernails into the unyielding rock, but it was useless. As the floor tilted more and more, his body slipped faster toward the abyss below, just the eerie grating of his fingernails on the stone could be heard as he slid ever closer to the edge.
In less than a second it was too late for him to save himself. As the rock pivoted on its center, Donoven dropped feet first into the deep void below. By the time he hit bottom he had crashed head over heels into the rough stone sides a half-dozen times or more.
Yet, the loudest sound heard was that of his body hitting bottom with a sickening crunch. Not even then did any sound escape Donoven’s lips. He was not the kind to cry out in fear, not even in death.
As the great stone slowly righted itself, two streaks of blood and a piece of cloth were the only signs that Donoven had passed this way. The two narrow lines of blood, about two feet long, ended as abruptly as they had begun. The cloth, torn from Donoven’s shirt as he tried desperately to save himself, was wedged between the end of the gigantic rock and the floor of the cave, silent testimony to Donoven’s passing.
Harris, next in line behind Donoven, hadn’t heard or seen anything of Donoven’s plight. He had been scared half out of his mind after Charlie Scott’s death and was in no hurry to follow up too close to Donoven. He had been scanning ahead as he crept along when the piece of shirt in the rock caught his attention immediately.
“H-H-Hey, s-som-somebody get up h-he-here quick and l-l-look at th-this!” he stuttered as he literally shook in his boots. Harris was scared and he didn’t care who knew it. The thing he wanted most right now was to be some other place hundreds of miles away. He didn’t care where; any place was better than this gloomy hole in the ground that was leading them all to their demise.
O’Neill floated out of the shadows like a phantom suddenly materializing from thin air. “What’s the problem?” he asked in a flat, sarcastic voice.
“Th-th-there on the-the g-gr-ground,” Harris pointed, now visibly shaken. O’Neill bent over and examined the red blotches.
“Blood!” he exclaimed in the same flat voice, but without the sarcasm this time. Then finally taking hold of the cloth he gave it a tug. When nothing happened, he pulled harder, but still the piece of shirt would not come loose from its grasp in the rock.
A puzzled look came over his face as he studied the situation at hand. How could a piece of Donoven’s shirt become wedged in the stone like this? That Donoven was dead he had no doubt, but where was his body? These questions raced through his mind until, on closer examination, he discovered the hairline crack in the stone floor.
“You three men come here. Three more of you grab their belts and hang on.”
Showing them where to stand, he ordered them to place one foot on the other side of the crack and push as hard as they could. At first nothing. Then slowly, ever so slowly the floor began to move downward allowing the piece of shirt to drop out of sight. In the torchlight, the men could see the other end of the stone that made up this part of the cavern floor move upward at the same rate as the stone under foot moved down.
“It was a very clever trap and Donoven walked right into it,” O’Neill said with a ghostly smile on his face. “Very well done, but it will not save them. Everybody backtrack and pay attention,” O’Neill snapped.
“What are we looking for, boss?”
O’Neill thought for a moment.
“A narrow path of very smooth stone along one side of the cave. When you find it, yell out, then wait for me.”
“Why would there be smooth stone when all the rest is fairly rough? came a voice from the darkness.
“Because somehow the people who use this cave have to have a way around this trap. My guess is that there is a trail alongside that climbs up the wall and past this area. It will have to be small and narrow or we would have seen it. And it will be worn smooth because of all the concentrated use it gets. Anyone not knowing where it was would lose it in the darkness as we did.” O’Neill suddenly realized that, had he tried to find his own way out of the cave instead of following the hostage, he most surely would have fallen prey to the trap as Donoven had done. “Any more questions?”
When no more questions came forth, O’Neill ordered the men to start looking, and within minutes they found what they were looking for. There, just as O’Neill had said, hidden between two boulders was a narrow path climbing up the side of the wall. From time to time, as the men had moved deeper into the cavern, there had been such boulders scattered about, thereby causing no concern when the men passed these concealing the hidden trail.
“Now we don’t stop until we reach the golden city!”
Chapter 15
The path was narrow and precarious, at times raising from the main floor of the cave twenty feet or more. Making the men more nervous was the fact that below them, ready to engulf anyone unfortunate enough to slip from the trail, was the gaping mouth of the pit covered only by the thin slab of tilting stone.
