Escape from Five Shadows - Leonard Elmore John - Страница 27

But there were a lot of problems and one more didn’t make much difference. Shooting Willis Falvey, though, was not one of the problems.

Lizann’s plan, when he realized it, was very simple. It was not a question of running away. That had no part in it. If her husband were killed, there would be an investigation. Someone would come down from Prescott-if not for a formal investigation, at least to take over Willis’s duties. When he did, Lizann would leave, and Renda would be able to do nothing about it. It was that simple. A convict, trying to escape, had killed Willis. The convict either got away or was recaptured. That was the convict’s problem.

But it won’t be your problem, Bowen thought. And it won’t be anybody else’s problem, unless she had more than one gun.

He imagined that she would be confident, patiently waiting for it to happen, rehearsing what she would say to the man from Prescott-perhaps even taunting Renda with hints that she would be leaving soon.

Lizann had a surprise coming.

So you are left with Earl. Earl and the dynamite. And you have to be careful how you mix them if you expect to get out of this alive.

On the morning of the second day of tending the brush fire, Bowen saw Karla Demery ride down the canyon. The convicts on the slope stopped working to watch her go by; and those below, on the floor of the canyon, turned and followed her with their eyes as she crossed to Renda sitting in a shaded section of the east wall.

She spoke to Renda for only a moment, then reined her horse in a tight circle. As she did, her gaze found Bowen. She nudged her horse toward the fire, toward the motionless naked-to-the-waist figure who stood in front of the swirling, wind-caught rise of smoke. Renda called to her and she drew in the reins. Bowen watched. She was not more than fifty feet away, still looking toward him. She wanted to tell him something, he could see that by her expression. Then it was too late. Renda, mounted now, came up next to her and they rode off together toward the nearest team of horses.

A few minutes later they passed Bowen again, heading up the canyon. Behind them came a wagon carrying three convicts, one of them Manring. A guard followed, bringing up the rear.

She wanted to tell you something, Bowen thought. But it could’ve been bad news as easily as good, so don’t think about it. You’ve got enough to figure out already. But through the rest of the day his thoughts would go to Karla Demery. She was not that easily put from his mind.

That evening the convicts were in the barracks when the wagon returned. Six men were called out to help unload it and they did not return for over a half hour. When they did, Manring was with them.

The lean, bearded man came over to Bowen’s mat. He sat down at the foot of it and rolled a cigarette. “Let me have a match.”

Bowen handed him a box of matches and watched silently.

Manring struck the match. As he held it to his cigarette he said, “Boy, we just unloaded it in the stable. Enough to blow everybody clean to hell.”

12

“Wait a minute,” Renda called. “This is far enough!” He brought up his shotgun as the four men on the climbing trail ahead of him stopped.

Brazil, leading the file, called back, “He says you got to start at the top.”

“You believe everything he tells you?” Renda’s face, flushed from the climb, showed sudden anger.

To Bowen who was second in line, carrying two coils of fuse over his shoulder and a box of detonators in his hand, Brazil said, “The old man can’t take it, so he’s got to yell at somebody.”

Bowen turned and looked past Pryde and Manring who followed him to Renda. “You want to stand here with fifty pounds of dynamite and talk about it?”

Renda edged along the inside of the trail close to the wall, past Manring and Pryde. As he reached Bowen, Pryde lowered the case of dynamite from his shoulder, placed it against the wall and sat down on it.

Manring, carrying a shovel, a hand axe and a sapling pole, looked at him uncertainly. “You better be careful.”

As Manring spoke, Renda turned quickly. “What are you doing!”

“I’m resting,” Pryde said, “while you talk it out.”

“You can’t sit on dynamite!”

“And I can’t stand with it a hunnert feet above nowhere while you get over your nervous state.”

Bowen said to Renda, “I explained it once. You got to start at the top.”

“He don’t take to high places,” Pryde said. “Or marching behind fifty pounds of charge.”

Renda turned on him angrily. “Pick it up!”

Pryde remained seated, leaning back against the wall. “There’s more chance of dropping it than my hind-end heat setting it off.”

“I said pick it up!” The tight-muscled, open-eyed expression of Renda’s face was dark with anger. He was aware of the four men watching him, and wanting to show neither anger nor fear he said to Bowen, more calmly, “All right. We’ll talk about it upstairs.”

Rising, lifting the case of explosives, Pryde said, “Frank, you want to carry this a while?”

But Renda, refusing to be angered further, ignored Pryde. He remained in line where he stood and followed Bowen the rest of the way up the trail, along the slanting wall, then into a depression where the rock had fallen away and the trail was less steep. The depression cut into the wall and formed a forty-foot draw from the shelf up to the rim of the canyon.

As he came up out of the draw, Bowen saw a Mimbreno tracker off in the trees. He was there for a moment, then gone. That’s your big problem, Bowen thought.

Renda was still breathing heavily as he reached level ground. He stepped aside as Pryde and Manring came up and said to Bowen, “All right, why do you start at the top?”

“I figure-” Bowen began.

“You figure!”

“I never blew up a mountain before.”

Renda exhaled. “Go on.”

“I figure,” Bowen said again, emphasizing the word, “if you start from the bottom, as you work up you’ll be covering what you just uncovered every time you set a blast. You get your road widened and the shoulder built up, then touch one off higher up and”-he snapped his finger-“like that, no more road.”

Manring said, “That makes sense.”

Renda glanced at him. Then to Bowen he said, “What do you do first?”

“Test the fuse.” Bowen placed the box of detonators on the ground carefully and took the two coils of fuse from his arm, dropping one of them and handing the end of the other fuse to Manring. Then he walked away from them, straightening the line as he did, measuring it with the length of his hand as he unwound it. With ten feet of it played out he said to Renda, “I need a knife.”

“What for?”

“To cut the fuse!”

“I’ll do the cutting.”

Bowen shrugged. “Then over the next couple of weeks you’re going to be living on an awful lot of dynamite.”

Renda brought out a pocket knife. He hesitated, then handed it to Bowen. “Every day when we quit, you give this back to me. Closed.”

Bowen smiled. “You don’t trust anybody.” He cut the fuse, then stretched it out on the ground. “Have you got a clock with a sweep hand on it?” When Renda nodded, Bowen said, “Start timing as soon as it catches.” He pulled a match from his hat-band, struck it on the bottom of his shoe and touched it to the fuse.

The fuse hissed and a small flame spurted from the end of it. There was little smoke, but the fuse moved and seemed alive with the flame burning through its powder-filled core. “It’s slow enough,” Renda said.

“Mind your clock,” Bowen told him. When the fuse had burned all the way, he looked at Renda again. “How long?”

“About three minutes.”

“Mr. Renda,” Bowen said mildly, “we’re talking about how much time to get clear of a blast. Don’t give me any about.”