Chapter 17
The serpant’s head swayed slightly back and forth while the rest of its thick, muscular body slowly coiled around to the striking position. Shorty braced for the fangs to sink into his flesh, but no matter what, he thought, before I die I will light the fuse if it takes my dying breath.
The rattler drew back as if finally aware of Shorty, its tail starting to buzz its deadly warning. Shorty closed his eyes and waited for the strike that within seconds would come, sweat beading on his forehead, his breath coming short and shallow. The snake tensed pulling its head back before the strike.
Shorty heard the rush of air as the snake’s head flew by his right ear. Now the fangs would find their mark, releasing a lethal dose of venom. But there was no pain, no feeling at all! Had the snake missed? More likely it had aimed for his neck and even now was sinking its fangs in deeply.
Shorty had talked to men who had been snake bitten and lived. They told him of the instant of the hit and how they didn’t for the first few seconds realize they were even bitten. Then after the venom flowed deep into the muscle, a white, hot pain would radiate outward from the wound and finally the arm or leg would go numb.
He remembered hearing one old prospector say, “If a man’s in good health and the snake’s not too big, the poison will just make you durn sick, but you’ll live. Course’n that’s if the snake’s a small one and he only gets you in an arm or leg and not too high at that.
“If a man gets careless and puts his head down a hole and gets a snake bite, then it’s all over but the buryin’.”
The thought of white, hot pain kept going through Shorty’s mind. But he still felt no pain, nothing, not even a little sting. He opened his eyes slowly and to his great shock, the serpent’s head was pinned squarely to the dirt, an arrow stuck between its eyes, its body writhing in the last death throes.
Madigan half-dozed off in the morning heat, his head dropping to his chest before he caught himself. He glanced around quickly to see if LaRue noticed.
“What’s the time?” he asked. LaRue was the only one of them that carried a pocket watch.
“It’s been about three hours since Shorty left. Suppose we better get ready so he can start the fireworks show below?” LaRue asked.
“You’re probably right. How do you want to handle this?”
“Just pick an easy target and start shooting, I guess. I wish there was another way, but we’ve got no choice.” LaRue hesitated. “Let’s give it another five minutes to make sure Shorty’s in position,” he suggested. Madigan nodded in agreement.
“Maybe O’Neill will be an easy target then,” Madigan hissed under his breath, relishing the thought of putting a bullet in his enemy.
After O’Neill got up from his blankets, things got pretty quiet around the camp. He only glanced in the direction of Lewana once, then found himself a comfortable place in the shade of the fountain and sat back to drink coffee and light a cigar that he puffed on occasionally, although not enough to keep it lit.
What was on his mind, Madigan wondered. Lewana? Or was he trying to figure a way out of the mess he’d gotten into? O’Neill was a rogue and a mean one at that, but as much as Madigan hated to admit it, he was also a thinker when things got rough.
Something was keeping O’Neill preoccupied, and whatever it was, Madigan knew it wasn’t good. He kept watching O’Neill sitting there in the shade while Lewana was now fully exposed to the sun, and the anger started up in Madigan’s throat again. He made up his mind that no matter what, he was going to nail O’Neill on the spot if he made the slightest move toward her.
Sitting there watching the man below made the time go even slower, and Madigan was just about to ask LaRue how long they had left when a white puff of smoke caught Madigan’s eye.
“She’s going to blow!” he yelled as he brought his Sharps up to his shoulder.
With a violent explosion, the rock blocking the entrance to the tunnel shuddered once, then almost in slow motion rolled a few feet to the side. Not much, but enough to allow one man at a time to pass into the cave.
Immediately, O’Neill was on his feet and running. Madigan fired a shot in O’Neill’s direction but missed clean. Below was pandemonium, and adding to the confusion, was a large dust cloud thrown up by the blast. It now obscured their vision of what was happening below.
Madigan hastily broke the breech open on the Sharps and replaced the spent round with a good one. He needn’t have been in a hurry, for below them nothing could be seen except a giant dust cloud roiling up from the canyon floor like a storm gone mad. LaRue looked over at Madigan and shrugged his shoulders.
There was nothing for them to do but wait for the dust to settle and pray Lewana would still be all right. At least the air was fairly calm in the valley so they wouldn’t have to wait long.
“Fire a couple of rounds in the air to keep them moving. No use letting them get too settled!” Madigan yelled.
“I’d like to blast away into the valley only I’d be afraid of hitting the girl!” LaRue yelled back as he fired off a couple of rounds from his Winchester.
What seemed like hours, but really was only minutes, passed and the dust settled to the point where they could see again. When it cleared sufficiently, Madigan took careful aim at a man standing in the open and pulled the trigger.
“That’s one we won’t have to worry about,” LaRue said as the man hit the ground.
“You might say that,” Madigan answered grimly as he jacked another round in the Sharps. Madigan could tell by LaRue’s tone of voice that he was feeling the same as he was about what they were forced to do. No true Western man likes to kill, and to kill this way, like shooting prairie dogs on the north range, was something that nagged at Madigan’s stomach.
Yet they had no choice. These men wanted the Indians’ gold and didn’t mind killing for it. And before they killed, they would rape the women and torture the men and boys. These men gave no mercy and deserved none in return.
Madigan was about to find another target when a barrage of bullets swept over the rim of the canyon at them, ricocheting off the boulders around them like deadly lead hornets. For the better part of ten minutes the outlaws kept up the bombardment. When things had settled down so Madigan could take a look again, he was sick at what he saw. Lewana was gone!
Madigan quickly looked for O’Neill, but the madman was nowhere to be found. His heart sank in a pool of despair as he realized O’Neill had made his escape and taken Lewana with him, and there was only one place they could have gone-into the tunnel to try to make it to the outside.
When Madigan had first realized that the rock blocking the tunnel had to be removed, his plans were for Shorty and the Indians to set the bomb in place, light the fuse, and run like the dickens to get out of the tunnel before O’Neill’s men might get close enough to get a shot at them. Madigan had given Shorty enough fuse to burn three minutes.
But what if Shorty decided to stop for some reason? He would be able to hear someone coming behind in the dark but wouldn’t know that Lewana was with O’Neill as his hostage, and she might be killed by mistake.
Madigan said a silent prayer, one of the few he’d said in his life, for her safety. He wanted to go as fast as he could to her rescue and started to get up to leave when LaRue’s voice stopped him cold.
“Madigan! I know what you’ve got in mind, but don’t do it! Lewana put herself on the line for her people to give them time for you to get here. Now, for Lewana’s sake, help me drive her enemies out of the valley!
“Once they’re in the tunnel, the villagers can roll the rock back in place. Then we’ll go after O’Neill. And if he’s hurt the girl in any way, I swear I’ll drag him back and let the Indians have him. I promise you that! And from what I hear, they know how to kill a man slowly so he begs to die.”
With as much anger as Madigan carried inside, he didn’t want to listen to anyone, but LaRue made sense, and Madigan knew in his heart that LaRue was right. He settled back for the job at hand.
Most of the men below were well hidden behind the fountain or low wall that surrounded it. Once in a while a head would pop out as if testing to see if the men above were still there. Madigan and LaRue both held their fire, waiting for a target they couldn’t miss. Madigan’s shoulder was bothering him some and he didn’t want to
