“You don’t scare me. You’re too damned honorable to just kill me outright. No, you’ll do your duty even if it gets you killed.”
Longarm untied the man’s hands and wrists that he’d bound to the tree. Oakley still wore handcuffs, and Longarm had his six-gun in his fist when he said, “Lead the way.”
Oakley’s legs had gone dead and it took him several minutes to unlimber them. Then he grinned and said, “I sure slept well last night, Marshal Long! How’d you sleep?”
“Fine,” Longarm lied. “Just fine.”
“No, you didn’t,” Oakley said. “You didn’t sleep a single damned wink and you look like death. Your eyes have big bags under them and-“
“Move!” Longarm ordered, stepping in behind the big outlaw and prodding him in the spine.
Oakley moved off alongside the river. The day was already warming up and the river looked cool and refreshing. In this place, it was narrow and surprisingly deep. Longarm could well see how its current was a lot stronger than it first appeared.
“Up this way,” Oakley said, angling up a steep path that led up the side of the sandstone cliffs. “Some folks claim that all these caves were made by the Paiutes that lived in this country. I always thought that they were made by birds.”
“Birds?”
“Sure,” Oakley explained, “for their nesting. Inside those caves, they’d have shelter and they’d have the water and the trees along the river. Either it was the birds or some muskrats.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Longarm said. “These caves are far too big for birds or muskrats.”
“Well, maybe the first trappers shot out all the really big ones and all we see left are the runts.”
“Shut up,” Longarm growled, finding the whole conversation ludicrous. “How much farther to this cave?”
“It’s one of them big ones near the top of this path. What’s the matter, tired already, Marshal?”
Longarm didn’t answer. He just kept climbing the little footpath until they reached a cave that was about four feet in diameter and went back far enough that you couldn’t see where it ended.
“This is the one,” Oakley announced. “There’s four thousand dollars piled up at the back wall. Go on in and you’ll find it all except for the little I kept and already spent.”
“Where’s the cut that you said marked this cave?”
“Musta washed away in a hard rain,” Oakley said, his back to the cliff. Then, he stepped a little aside. Why, here it is!”
“You just made that X.”
“No, I didn’t!” Oakley smiled and looked down at the water far below. “When I was a kid, I used to ride over here with my friends and dive off this cliff into that water. Had a hell of a good time.”
“No, you didn’t,” Longarm said. “You grew up in Oklahoma and you worked at odd jobs. You never had any friends.”
Oakley’s eyes tightened at the corners. “Are you going in to get that money, or not?”
“You go in,” Longarm said, not about to crawl into that cave and leave his prisoner unguarded.
“Me?”
“That’s right. Get the money and crawl back out.”
“What if I got in there and decided not to come out?” Oakley asked. “Would you have the balls to come in after me?”
“I think I’d just hike down and get that shotgun that Marshal Wheeler gave me. A couple barrels of shot would pretty well put an end to your foolishness.”
“Yeah,” Oakley said, looking impressed, “I guess it would at that. All right, I’ll go in and get the money. But our deal about the whiskey, good cigars, and food still stands. Right?”
“Right.”
“Fair enough,” Oakley said, stooping down and then entering the cave on his hands and knees as Longarm stood perched on the narrow path and waited.
“How far back does it go!” Longarm called.
“About thirty feet,” Oakley shouted between his legs as he disappeared into the darkness. “I wanted to pick a deep cave so that animals or kids wouldn’t go all the way back and then destroy or steal my money.”
Longarm waited. And waited. Finally, he yelled, “Okay, you’ve had long enough. Come on out! The game is over!”
“Coming!” Oakley yelled. “Here I come.”
Longarm heard his prisoner grunting, and pretty soon he could be seen crawling back out, face first.
“There must have been more room in there than I thought,” Longarm said, “if you could turn around.”
“There was,” Oakley said. “See these saddlebags? They got the money!”
Longarm was really surprised to see Oakley pushing the bags along through the dust in front of him. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said. “You were telling the truth.”
“Why, sure!” Oakley said as he came into full view. “Here, reach in and take ‘em!”
Longarm reached for the bags, but Oakley must have planted a six-gun with his bounty because, the very next thing that Longarm knew, he saw a muzzle flash and felt his left arm go numb. He jumped back from the mouth of the cave, lost his balance, and dropped off the cliff, arms windmilling.
Longarm struck the water on the flat of his back and sank to the muddy bottom, then kicked back up to the surface. Maybe that was a mistake because Oakley had dragged himself out of the cave and was firing right down on him.
A bullet plinked a small geyser of water in Longarm’s face, and he raised his gun but it didn’t fire. Oakley began to laugh, and when another bullet grazed Longarm’s scalp, he dove back down and swam like hell for the cover of some nearby trees. Longarm knew that Oakley would either be waiting for him to surface so that he could take aim and kill him, or else would already be on his feet and trying to scramble down the cliff to be the first to reach Longarm’s rifle, the shotgun, and the horses.
Longarm dropped his useless gun and swam for all his might. He was sure that, if Oakley reached their camp first, the game was over and he was going to be the loser. He swam underwater until his breath was fire, and then he swam some more until he reached the trees. Surfacing, he tensed, half expecting Oakley to shoot him in the head. But there was no shot and when he looked up, he saw the outlaw trying to navigate the path as fast as possible. Trouble was, the path was narrow and had a lot of switchbacks.
Longarm jumped to his feet and splashed out of the river, running as hard as he could for the camp. Oakley spotted him and began to fire. Longarm ran a zigzag pattern and didn’t dare waste even a second to look back. He knew that he had to get to the camp first and put a rifle in his hands.
Oakley must have realized that too. In a rage of frustration and when he was still a good ten feet above the river, he jumped. Longarm heard him strike the water, and then he heard another shot. Apparently, the outlaw’s gun was still functioning.
During the last few yards to the camp, it felt to Longarm as if he were running through a sea of quicksand. His legs were made of stone and he had no wind. Staggering into their camp, Longarm reached the horse with the rifle scabbard and tore the Winchester free. He levered in a shell and fired with Oakley halfway out of the water. His bullet struck the outlaw in the chest and knocked him back into the river. Feebly, with blood spilling from his lips, Oakley made a final attempt to kill Longarm, but coughed his last bullet up at the rising sun. Then the man sank into the river and his body disappeared. Longarm stood beside the water and watched until he saw Ford Oakley’s body bob to the surface far downriver.
Oakley had dropped the money-filled saddlebags on the footpath before he’d jumped into the Humboldt in his desperate attempt to reach the camp first. Longarm retrieved the saddlebags, and he was very pleased when he opened them and saw that Oakley hadn’t been lying after all.
“Three thousand, nine hundred,” he announced after counting the money.
Satisfied with the way things had gone, Longarm tied the saddlebags to his saddle, then led his three horses down to where Oakley’s body had run aground in the shallows. It took every ounce of his strength to hoist the big man over a spare horse and tie him down so he wouldn’t slip off and spill into the brush.