“Hold it,” the hunter said sharply. The ragged breathing sounds had ceased and the shattered chest no longer rose and fell. He squatted down to touch the figure. “Save your bullet, Tuco. He’s on his way to Sad Hill, all right, but not to dig up our money. But we’ll never make it there if we don’t get this damn bridge mined before the truce period is up.”
He led the way, wading out between the supporting timbers. The plank stretcher made a makeshift raft that helped to support its deadly burden. While Tuco lashed bundles of dynamite sticks to the bridge supports the hunter attached the fulminate caps and connected them to a single continuous fuse.
They were well past midstream and close to the Confederate-held bank when their supply of explosives was exhausted. The hunter crimped the last cap to the end of the fuse. The tramp of feet overhead had long since ceased. The burial details on both sides had fanned out along the ridge slopes, searching out the last victims of the savage bombardment, A squad of men on the Union side was rigging a scissors and tackle to hoist the dismounted mortar back on to its platform.
The bounty-hunter squatted under the Union end of the bridge. He struck a lucifer to flame on his thumbnail, held it close to the tip of the fuse and glanced up.
“Run like hell and dive under an overhang of the riverbank when this starts to sputter. There’ll be chunks of bridge timber flying all over New Mexico Territory.”
“I will fly ahead of the blast, amigo.”
The fuse sputtered to life, spitting crimson sparks. The two men ran. Some distance upstream, where the river straightened from its sharp bend, the current had deeply undercut the bank. They dived under the protecting overhang of earth and and an instant before all hell broke loose.
There was not a single explosion but a succession of ear-shattering blasts as the fire raced along the fuse from one bundle of dynamite sticks to the next. With each thunderous boom a new section of the bridge flew up, hung suspended for a moment, then broke into chunks of jagged timber and metal that filled the air. Underneath, the force of the blast pushed great holes in the water Itself, exposing the muddy river bottom for brief moments.
When the echoes of the last explosion died away the hunter climbed to the riverbank and wrung water from his sodden clothes.
“I hope the captain was still alive to hear his big bang. I’d like to know, but I don’t see any point to going back to find out. We can stay here out of sight until they start to pull out. Maybe, with luck, we can grab us a couple of horses from one side or the other. They owe us mounts.”
“They owe us more.” Tuco screwed up his face and pounded his temples with clenched fists. “What fools we have been—What stupid idiots. What unbelievable muttonheads—”
“What in blazes is biting you?”
“That wine,” Tuco growled. “All that lovely, lovely wine. We could have put the whole case on the planks with the dynamite and brought it along to celebrate our great triumph. The captain has no more use for it. Now we will sit here and spit cotton while those pigs up there drink it all.”
CHAPTER 19
SENTENZA crouched at the edge of a dense thicket on the hillside overlooking Sad Hill Cemetery. The sorrel eyes were bloodshot from strain and veins throbbed in his temples above the high cheekbones. The fingers of his right hand opened and closed convulsively on the butt of his loner barrelled pistol.
“Why don’t they come?” he muttered. “Damn—why don’t they hurry up and get here?”
His head swivelled as his baffled gaze shuttled over the endless rows of identical graves. He had tramped over every foot of the immense cemetery, scrutinising each individual grave, digging his fingers into the mounded earth to feel its freshness, testing the firmness of each weather-beaten headboard.
More than half the markers bore only the single cryptic word, UNKNOWN. Even these drew his full attention as he searched frantically for a clue—a dab of extra paint or a notch cut into a board, perhaps, for later identification. He had gone over every mound on hands and knees, looking for a rock of an unusual shape or colouration or for a seemingly casual arrangement of smaller stones that would be meaningless to anyone but the man who had placed them—or to someone looking fora sign.
In the end he knew only continuing frustration for his pains. It was all too obvious that the dead Carson—or Jackson—had depended solely upon the name of the grave’s supposed occupant as painted on its head• board. And only one man in the world—the tall blonde bounty-hunter—knew that name and could identify the grave in which two hundred thousand gold dollars lay waiting.
He stared out over the empty landscape.
Come on, damn you. Come on...
He stiffened and leaped to his feet. A great distance off a small, pale dot of dust moved against the dark backdrop of the mountains. He stared at the spot until his eyes watered and blurred. He rubbed them and stared again. It was a good half-hour before he could make out the two dark pinpoints, moving side by side, that were stirring up a steady dust.
His hand whipped to the long pistol. He slid it in and out of its holster to try the slickness of the waxed leather. He thumbed back the hammer and eased it down several times, testing the hair-trigger action. He flipped open the cylinder gate and checked the loads, replacing the cartridge whose brass case showed the faintest trace of a dent. He snapped the gate shut with a grunt of satisfaction and slid the weapon back into its holster.
His tension and impatience vanished. His quarry was coming to lead him to the buried gold. He could afford to be patient—no, he had to be patient. He sat down with his back against a tree, folded competent hands in his lap and closed his eyes.
He had time for a refreshing nap while he waited for his destiny to arrive at Sad Hill Cemetery.
“Whitey,” Tuco said anxiously. “That Bill Carson, he was dying—pretty near dead—when he told you the name on the grave, wasn’t he?”
“As good as dead,” the hunter agreed. “He barely got the name out before his heart stopped for good.”
“His voice—it was pretty weak, eh? And with his tongue swollen for want of water—he couldn’t talk clearly, eh?”
“I had to put my ear right to his lips to make out what he was trying to say.”
Naked worry clouded Tuco’s eyes. “Whitey, how can you be sure you heard Arch Stanton? Maybe he said Art Landon or Bart Blanton or some other name that only sounded like Arch Stanton. What then, eh?”
“Then,” the hunter said, “you’re going to end up with blistered hands and empty pockets.” He grinned faintly. “Stop worrying, Tuco. I got the name straight enough. What I didn’t get was the location of the grave. We may have a mighty long search ahead of us, finding that one particular grave among thousands just like it.”
“The search will soon begin, Whitey,” Tuco said, pointing. “There is Sad Hill Cemetery on that slope ahead.”
“It’s big, all right” The hunter squinted through the heat haze. “But it’s going to get a whole lot bigger when the toll from Langston Bridge starts coming in.”
They dismounted at the edge of the immense burial ground. Tuco almost fell over his own feet in his wild haste to get to the nearest grave markers. He peered around.
“Unknown. Unknown. Pete Anson. Unknown—”
“Hold it, Tuco. We’ll find it a lot faster if we organise our search. You take the first two rows and I’ll take the second two. That way we won’t miss a single head-board as we work our way through.”
Heads turning right and left steadily, they tramped up the slope to the edge of the woods, then moved inward and worked their way back down. Tuco stopped at the end of his third row to mop his streaming face.