“It is my gold, not yours. This is a private store of my own plunder. I do not share it with soldiers who are cowards. There is much more gold in the Indian temples. Go to them and get your own store of plunder. As for me, I am going to go to the other cave.”
And I could hear the Mexican’s feet ringing on the stone floor as he strode away.
“How many matches have you got?” asked Bender of me, and his voice was wheedling.
“I have a number, but we need them to get out of here,” I said.
“Strike one, just one that I may see where we stand.”
I struck just the one, and as I did so knew that I had made a mistake. For the light of that match showed me the greenish glitter of those aluminium-colored eyes staring into mine from the dark background of the cave.
“Hold that match, steady,” said the man.
I wanted to shake it out. Some inner voice told me to dash it to the floor of the cave and step on it. But I hesitated too long.
The pin-points of the eyes became rapiers, thrusting long tongues of flame into my brain. The whole side of the cave seemed to be a fathomless depth of aluminium-colored darkness from which radiated twin streamers of lambent flame.
“Give me the matches.”
The voice was low and vibrant, and I could feel my hand starting toward his with the matches. But I brought all my will power to my aid, and held them back.
Once more came the command.
“Give — me — the — matches!”
The pin-points of the eyes seared the volition from my brain. I did not know that I was holding out the matches. I knew only that I was no longer master of myself.
The next I knew, the match I was holding had burned my fingers, and a cold hand had closed about the box of matches I was holding out toward Bender.
The darkness was welcome, but I was still haunted by the memory of those pin-points in their aluminium-colored background.
The next I heard was the scrape of a match on the rock wall, the sputter of flame, and the dancing of grotesque shadows as Bender moved the light slowly along, nursing the flame between cupped hands.
In a little while he found the place in the cleft where something had been thrust into a hole in the rocks. He lit another match, put in his hand and pulled out a bit of what had been cloth. Now it was but a few rags of scattered remnants. But from the openings gleamed the unmistakable yellow of gold.
“Gold!” he cried.
Then, as though it had been an echo to his shout, the cave reverberated with a blood-curdling scream which came from the distant darkness.
Emilio Bender jumped back.
“What was that?” he asked of me.
“A woman’s scream and a man’s yell mingled together,” I said.
We waited, tense, listening.
Something was coming toward us. I could see the little flickers of ruddy light which were cast by a moving flame. The woman screamed again. I could hear the pound of shod feet.
Then, from a distance, there was a bedlam of sound.
Around the corner of a passageway came the flicker of a smoking torch, and there was the Mexican, holding to him the screaming form of a young woman.
He was laughing, and there was blood on his face, marks of where her nails had raked down the skin. In his right hand, held with his sword, was a smoking wood torch, a pine knot that was filled with pitch. The girl was Indian, young, attractive, and frightened. She was held in his left arm so that her feet barely touched the floor of the cave, and the soldier was laughing, the happy carefree laugh of an adventurer.
“Forward, amigos!” he cried. “There are other women to be had for the taking, and then there will be a splendid fight. The warriors are coming in force. This is life! And I have been as one dead for over a month!”
And he laughed again.
The woman was kicking, squirming in his embrace like an eel fresh from the water. Her lithe body was a beautiful nut-brown. Her well-turned legs writhed and twisted like twin snakes as she sought to get some purchase from which she could add to the efficacy of her struggles.
“Go,” said the soldier, and threw the torch from him in a long arc of whirling fire. Then the pitch knot hit the floor of the cave and rolled along, bouncing, giving off red embers of fire.
And the soldier was gone in the darkness with a mocking laugh.
Chapter 8
Battle
Ahead of me I saw a barrier of grim shadow outlined against the light of that pine knot, and then heard the sound of naked feet pattering upon the floor. A torch gleamed from around the corner of one of the passageways, and I saw a young buck Indian, almost naked, running swiftly, low to the ground, a spear in his hand.
He saw me as soon as I saw him, and flung up the spear.
I am no swordsman, but desperation stirred dormant cells of dead instinct in my brain. I acted without conscious skill, but I swung that sword at just the right angle to parry the thrust.
Then we were at it, the Indian thrusting with the spear, my sword seeming to bite through the darkness and ward off the thrusts as though it was the sword that guided the arm instead of the arm that must have guided the sword.
There were half a dozen torches, now, and there were others coming on the run. Arrows whizzed about me, and the cave reverberated to the thunder of a rifle. A bullet fanned my cheek and spatted against the wall back of me.
Another Indian was on my left, and I caught the gleam of a dagger as he struck. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Bender standing against the wall, his sword glittering in a mad frenzy as he fought off the Indians.
Then came more men and more torches. The red flames gave a weird illumination to the scene of battle. The black smoke went up in streamers until it clung to the distant roof of the chamber. And something thudded against my sword arm with numbing force. I tried to raise the blade and the muscles refused to function.
I sensed a hurtling body coming through the air, and the sword clattered to the rock floor. I swung my left. The fist connected and the man went down. Then the half darkness fairly seemed to rain hurtling brown shapes that ran forward in close formation. Naked arms shot around my knees and I was dragged down. Something hit me on the head, and my brain exploded into a flash of light.
For an instant or two I was unconscious. When I knew anything again I was being bound swiftly and securely. I could hear groans from my left where Bender was lying, two Indians banging his head on the rocks.
There were shouts from one of the side chambers, and my captors, finished with their job of binding me, ran toward those shouts.
I raised my head, and for a few seconds saw such a battle as few living men have seen.
Our soldier had dropped the woman now, and his teeth were gleaming in the light of the torches as he fought and laughed. They did not shoot him because the very press of Indians about him prevented a bullet’s being placed with any accuracy.
But they crowded upon him with grim and relentless fury. There were hunting knives that glittered red in the torchlight, and there were spears that were thrust forward by lean brown arms that rippled with wire-hard muscles.
And moving with effortless ease, his glittering blade flashing in a swift circle of defense, the man held them at bay and laughed at them.
Never had I believed it possible that a slender bit of steel could move with such bewildering speed, or could offer so perfect a defense against pressing numbers.
A swift circling cut, and a man jumped back, his right arm dangling, a knife clattering to the rock. A pointed thrust that made of the sword a mere glittering tongue of naked steel, and a savage cried out in pain and toppled forward to join the piled bodies that were slumped in a half circle around the soldier’s feet, forming a barrier which hampered the movements of those who sought to attack.