“Where’d you get that?”
“I’m not saying.”
“I could guess.”
“And you’d be wrong.” Bowen closed the box.
“You going to shoot Brazil?”
Bowen shook his head.
“Let me have it,” Pryde said. “I’ll use it on him.”
“You got enough to do,” Bowen said; then asked, “Have you got it straight?”
“I think so.”
“Tell it.”
Pryde’s eyes raised to Brazil, then lowered again. “When we’re called to set the charge, you’re going first. You carry the case with the bundles in it. Then I follow. I’m carrying another case. There’re a few sticks in it and the knife. You get down to the end of the draw before you notice I’m carrying it. Then you say, ‘I got enough sticks. Leave what you got here and we’ll pick it up on the way back.’ I set the case down where you planted the charge a while ago. Right under where the fuse is hanging. Then we go around on the trail and do what we’re supposed to be doing. You light the charge and we all hurry back up the trail. We’re starting up the draw and I say that I’ve forgot the case. I lag back to get it, take the knife out of the case, cut the fuse so only five feet is hanging out of the wall, light it and come after you.”
“That gives you a minute and a half,” Bowen said, “to climb out of the draw.”
“It doesn’t take half of that,” Pryde said.
“You want to be on the safe side.”
“But why a five-foot fuse?”
“We want this charge to go off as close as possible with the main one,” Bowen said. “If they blow too far apart, somebody down below will start to think about it and come up too soon to find out why. But we couldn’t put on just five feet when we planted the charge, because Brazil would notice it being short and wonder about it.”
“But with the draw caved in,” Pryde said, “nobody could get up here anyway.”
“This way is called not leaving anything to chance,” Bowen said. “Maybe there’s a quick way up out of the canyon we don’t even know about.”
“All right.” Pryde nodded, then asked, “When do you pull the gun?”
“As soon as the draw blows,” Bowen said. “Whether it goes before or after or at the same time the main charge does, Brazil won’t expect it. He’ll be off guard.”
“Then we tie him up,” Pryde said.
“That’s right.” Bowen glanced at the row of long-fused dynamite cartridges next to him. “While Earl cuts the fuses on those.”
“Why don’t we do it now?”
“For the same reason that charge down in the draw has a ten-foot fuse,” Bowen said. “Brazil isn’t that dumb. If he sees six-inch fuses sticking out of these he’ll know damn well what they’re for.”
“And the rest is up to luck,” Pryde said.
Bowen shrugged. “Maybe we’ll make our own.”
The convict who had come for Manring a few minutes before appeared again at the top of the draw.
“Here we go,” Pryde said.
Brazil looked toward them and called, “Ready for the stuff.”
Rising, lifting the case to his shoulder, Bowen said, “Take your time. Cut the fuse right where it touches the ground and you’ll have five feet.”
Pryde nodded. “Don’t worry about it.” As Bowen walked off, he picked up the second wooden case and followed him. Brazil fell in behind going down the draw. No one spoke and there was only the sounds of their steps in the loose gravel. Then, as they reached the shelf, Bowen looked back.
“Ike, what’ve you got that for?”
Pryde stopped. “Didn’t you say bring it?”
“I got all we need,” Bowen said. “Set it down there and we’ll pick it up on the way back.” His eyes moved to Brazil. No reaction. No change in his tight-jawed, narrow-eyed expression.
Bowen turned the corner and moved down the shelf, along the thirty feet which they had not yet dynamited, then over the widened, graded section-roughly fifty feet of this-to the place where they would set off the next blast.
Manring was waiting there. The grading crew had moved out and were already at the bottom of the trail. “Ready?” asked Manring.
Bowen only nodded. He stepped into the closet-sized space that had been cut into the wall and began placing the charges. The horizontal chamber that Manring had prepared was waist high and ran parallel with the wall of the canyon. It was deep enough to hold all of the charges, but it was too wide; and with each charge that he placed Bowen would tamp sand into the chamber so the dynamite would fit snugly and there would be no air space. When he finished, only the fuse could be seen extending from the packed sand.
Bowen looked at Brazil. “You said you wanted to light it.”
“I’ll hold your rifle,” Pryde said.
“I guess you would,” Brazil said. He waved the barrel of the Winchester. “You all get out of the way. Start moving up.” He drew a match and stooped over the fuse, then called after the three men, “This one’s ten feet?”
Bowen turned and nodded. “Three minutes’ worth.” He watched Brazil strike the match and hold it to the fuse. “Give him room,” Bowen murmured.
He turned again, now hearing Brazil coming up behind them, and started to walk faster.
Brazil called, “What’s the hurry?”
Bowen glanced back. “That one’s bigger than the others. We got to get all the way up to the top.”
Pryde let Bowen pass him. He was next to Brazil as they turned into the draw. Then he stopped. And as Brazil went on, Bowen and Manring ahead of him, he stooped quickly, took the knife from the wooden case and cut the fuse so that less than a foot of it remained. Bowen looked back as he brought the knife down.
“What’s the matter?” Bowen called.
Brazil stopped.
Pryde stepped in front of the cut-off fuse and waved up to Bowen, the knife palmed in his other hand. “Go on. I got to get this box is all.” He watched Bowen and Manring move up through the draw. Brazil turned to follow them.
“Hey!” Pryde called sharply, bringing Brazil around. He waited. Brazil frowned. Now Bowen and Manring were reaching the top of the draw. Pryde waited a moment longer, until they were over the rim. Then he said, “Come here.”
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-