One by one the men clung to the wall as they inched their way across to safety. It would have made them feel no less apprehensive to know that the Indians moved along this same unforgiving walkway without hesitation or even a light to guide them by.
After what seemed like hours, they were all safely across and on solid ground again, the only casualties being a few skinned knees and scraped hands. But what overshadowed these minor inconveniences was the small point of light glowing at the end of the tunnel.
“Get those torches out!” O’Neill ordered. “And keep your mouths shut. We’ll be lucky if you whimpering jackasses haven’t given us away already.”
The men hated the insults O’Neill unleashed on them at every opportunity, but not one of them dared risk calling him on them. O’Neill ruled with an iron will, and the men, like the tree to the woodsman’s ax, could do nothing to ward off his cutting remarks.
When they had proceeded to within a few hundred yards of the tunnel opening, O’Neill signaled the men to gather round him so he might give his orders for the imminent raid.
“Now listen carefully,” he began. “I don’t want any mistakes. When you men chose me as your leader, it was to lead you to the treasure that I had told you about. All I knew was that at the time of the full moon, these people came out from some hidden location carrying large amounts of gold.” O’Neill paused to take a long breath. “They used gold idols in some kind of ritual to worship the moon, or some crazy thing like that.
“I really don’t know what they worship and I don’t care. The point is that I have since found the place where all their gold is stored.” O’Neill waited a moment for what he had just said to sink in. When he was sure he had the full attention of the men, he lowered his voice and spoke again. “And that, men, is right here at the end of this cave,” he said, pointing at the distant light, a devilish look coming over his face.
“Men, instead of a few saddlebags of gold for each of us, we will have wagon loads!”
At this statement, it was hard for the men to contain themselves, but contain themselves they did, either for fear of being overheard from the outside, or of their boss’ vengeance.
“What’s the plan, boss?” Ted Tworol asked.
“We simply go in and take the gold by force. Anybody get in our way, we shoot him down. Everybody check your weapons and get ready to go. The hidden valley is just around the bend a few hundred yards.”
“What if they don’t give up easy?”
“Then we settle in and make camp. That’s what I been lugging that tent around for-in case we have to stay awhile. I want to be comfortable for as long as it takes.”
The hidden valley spread before them like a picture from the past. Never in all their days had O’Neill’s men seen anything like what they now experienced. It was if they had stepped into another world, a land of beauty with none of the harshness of the outside world.
Green grass stretched across a valley of about twenty-five hundred acres, interspersed by long, smooth paths. Along the far side of the valley, where the cliffs seemed to climb right into the clouds, stood a two-story adobe building covered with ornaments of what could only be gold. The reflection in the morning sun was almost blinding.
Scattered in small groups around the building were smaller buildings also of adobe. To the south of these structures there were many livestock corrals filled with goats, pigs, chickens, and to the surprise of the men, peacocks, their tails bristling with color.
O’Neill was quick to point out that the gold was to be found in the two-story building, and it would be their objective to seize the building and remove its contents for their own use.
One thing puzzled O’Neill as he scanned the valley with his field glasses: there was no sign of life. Where were the inhabitants of this mysterious valley before him? Had they all fled in fear of their lives, leaving the treasure to be carried off without a fight? O’Neill pondered these questions for quite awhile as his men waited silently behind him.
Finally a rooster crowed somewhere in the distance and a goat bleated in answer as if signaling for a time for action.
“Let’s go!” O’Neill said abruptly as he stepped out into the light of the new day.
They had walked into the valley for only a few hundred feet when from behind they heard a heavy object crashing into place. When the dust settled they saw a huge bolder was now blocking the tunnel’s entrance, and on a ledge overhead, partially hidden by a stone wall, were ten bronze men armed with the same bows the Indian in the tunnel had carried.
Several guns snapped out of their holsters, and in an instant, bullets began flying toward the would-be ambushers who simply dropped out of sight where the bullets could not reach them.
O’Neill soon realized it was of no use to attack the Indians. They were well hidden from his guns and since the Indians used a ladder to obtain the ledge, then pulled it up after them, there was no way to drive them out of their hiding place.
“Several men cover us with your rifles while we get some distance from that ledge,” O’Neill ordered. “Then we’ll cover you.”
Soon the men were safely out of range and could walk with a little more ease. The village lay a quarter mile to the west and between it and O’Neill’s men was a many-layered fountain surrounded by a low wall made of reddish-brown bricks.
As the men got closer, they could hear the water flowing down from one tier of the fountain to the next. At any other time it would have been a pleasant sound, but here and now it blocked all other sounds from reaching the men’s ears. And one of those sounds was the movement of warriors crawling up to the other side of the low wall in front of them.
O’Neill was a crafty man, and as he walked, he thought the situation over in his mind. The wall ahead bothered him. Although he saw no movement, he sensed something was not right. Except for the Indians that blocked the tunnel, everything was just too peaceful.
The closer he and his men got to the wall, the more that little voice deep inside told him that it meant danger.
“Everybody stop,” O’Neill said at last. “Morgon, bring your pack over here. The rest of you get ready with your rifles.”
Taking the pack, O’Neill quickly opened it and withdrew several sticks of dynamite.
“Damn it! I never knew that’s what was in that pack when O’Neill told me to carry it,” Morgon said to the man beside him. The man looked up and smiled nervously.
“If I’d known, I’d a walked a mite further away from you.”
It didn’t take long before O’Neill had the dynamite wrapped together and a short fuse protruding from it.
“You men ready?” O’Neill asked as he took a match and put it to the end of the fuse. The men dropped to one knee and brought the rifles up to their shoulders. At the same instant, O’Neill hurled the dynamite over the wall in front of them. It no sooner dropped from sight behind the barrier than a dozen bronze bodies jumped up and took to their heels in a mad scramble to get away from the explosion that was sure to follow.
“Fire!” O’Neill screamed and the men let loose a barrage of bullets that literally mowed the retreating Indians down before they got ten feet from the wall. When the smoke cleared, all the Indians lay on the ground either dead or wounded.
Suddenly with gun in hand, O’Neill ran forward and dropped over the barricade.
“The dynamite!” someone yelled as O’Neill bent down behind the wall. When O’Neill came to his feet again he had the deadly package in his hand. The fuse was still smoking as he tossed it back toward Morgon, who instinctively caught it before he had time to think about what he was doing.
“No blasting cap,” O’Neill laughed as he walked past Morgon, — *who was still holding the dynamite in trembling hands.
“We’ll set up camp by the fountain. One of you men figure a way to shut that damn thing off,” O’Neill ordered, jerking his thumb at the fountain. “I don’t want to be surprised because we can’t hear anything. The rest of you men push those dead Indians over the outer wall and make sure its downwind of us.”
One of the men hesitantly came over to O’Neill. “Boss,” he said, “some of them Injuns ain’t dead yet. What you want done with them?”
“Use your knife and make them dead!” O’Neill ordered.
