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.
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.