R. Trembly - Madigan

“Give me your rifle,” O’Neill demanded of Thomas in a gruff voice, already reaching a dirty hand for the rifle the other man held. O’Neill had been too lazy to carry his own.

Thomas hesitated before unwillingly giving it up. Did O’Neill see something on the trail below or was it just a ploy to disarm him, Thomas wondered. He thought about the events of the last few days and grew uneasy inside.

As the two men rode westward, Thomas would catch O’Neill mumbling to himself. It was hard to make out what he was saying, but Thomas was able to piece together enough to know O’Neill didn’t want to share the gold with anyone more than he had to.

At times O’Neill would stare at Thomas with a cruel smile on his face, then quickly turn away saying nothing. It gave Thomas the creeps. Now O’Neill had his rifle.

“What’s down there?” Thomas asked, expecting trouble from the man before him.

“Madigan! Sam Madigan! I’m going to kill that bastard before he can get away again,” O’Neill growled, levering a round into the Winchester.

This was the perfect opportunity O’Neill had been waiting for. Dropping flat to the ground, he crawled slowly to the edge of the cliff, careful not to stir up any dust and give himself away to the man he was about to kill.

It could not have been better. From his position high on the rocks above, O’Neill had a clear shot. The sun was high and slightly over his back and anyone looking in his direction would be blinded by the light.

Ever so cautiously, he slid the barrel of the rifle into position, and braced it against the broken remains of a tree that had long since perished.

O’Neill’s breathing was hard and fast. He deliberately drew in a long breath and let it out slowly, then another several times more before being satisfied that he was calm enough to make the kill.

Carefully lining the sights on his target below and taking one last breath, he squeezed the trigger. The rifle jumped in his hands, the explosion deafening to his ears, the blast momentarily obscuring his view of the man below. When the smoke cleared enough to see, he was rewarded with the sight of his most hated enemy lying on his back in the dirt below.

“I hit the bastard!” O’Neill yelled excitedly throwing the rifle back to Thomas. “Let’s get down there and finish him off.”

It was a long and dangerous climb down to their horses over loose and crumbling rock with little, if any, handholds to steady themselves by. It had been much easier going up, and O’Neill cursed the distance as he wiped the sweat from his brow. Once in his haste he slipped toward the edge of the cliff but caught himself just in time. Only his hat suffered the fall and O’Neill cursed again. Finally they were down.

Riding cautiously, they approached the spot where Madigan lay, their guns at the ready. “Damn, he’s gone!” yelled O’Neill as he suddenly turned his horse and rode for cover, not wanting to be the victim of his own trap. Spinning his horse around a large boulder, O’Neill quickly dismounted and threw himself up against the side of the huge rock.

Nothing stirred except Thomas running up beside him.

“Where the hell is he?” Thomas demanded.

“Your guess is as good as mine. One thing’s for sure, he’s not dead!” O’Neill swore, a terrified tone to his voice.

“What you gonna do now?” Thomas sneered, not liking the position he’d been forced into by none of his own doing.

“You can start by shutting your yap while I think this thing through,” O’Neill said irritably. “He’s out there and he’s hurt. I know I hit him, so he can’t have gone far!”

The sudden shock of the bullet threw Madigan to the ground with a crushing blow. For a time he lay there unable to move. The sun in his eyes forced him to close them while he gathered his thoughts. That he’d been shot he was sure, and the realization of it made him all the madder for being so careless.

Madigan doubted it was Indians that did the shooting. He had seen no sign of unshod ponies for the last two days, and the Navajo had been at peace with the white man for several years now. Of course, you could never rule out some renegades being loose in these parts, but they usually rushed you as a bunch.

As the initial shock quickly wore off, Madigan forced himself to his feet. The front of his shirt was soaked with blood and he felt unsteady. The buckskin was standing a few feet away, and Madigan staggered over to the horse. Whoever tried to kill him would not be long in trying to finish the job, so his only chance was to escape.

The shot had come from high up in the rocks. The way he figured it, the would-be killer, after watching to see if Madigan moved, was thinking he’d killed him with the first shot. More than not, the killer was on his way down to make sure.

The buckskin moved nervously toward his master, smelling the blood on Madigan’s shirt. Taking hold of the saddle horn, it took all of Madigan’s strength to pull himself into the saddle. Once there, the big horse moved off on his own accord, it being all Madigan could do just to stay on. The packhorse followed a short distance behind.

Fighting to stay conscious, Madigan vaguely heard hoofbeats in the distance, then nothing as a curtain of darkness fell over him.

Pete LaRue and his partner had been riding slowly through the twisting canyon floor when the distant sound of a rifle shot came echoing off the canyon walls.

What do you make of that?” Shorty asked his friend.

“Maybe a hunter, although I haven’t seen a deer track since we entered these canyons.”

Me either,” Shorty replied matter of fact. “You think it might be O’Neill and the boys?”

“Who else would it be way out here? Nobody but fools be riding in this country,” LaRue said, shaking his head in disgust.

Lightning cracked off in the distance. “Looks like we’re in for a storm. Better find some shelter on high ground before it gets here,” LaRue suggested.

The two men spurred their horses to a gallop, hoping to find an overhang of rock to shield them from the inevitable downpour. Finding such a place, they picketed the horses out of the elements before stretching out on their bedrolls to wait out the rain that was already upon them.

“At any rate,” Shorty began, “the storm will wipe out our tracks. And since we haven’t been keeping strictly to the trail, it’ll make it hard for O’Neill to follow us, if that’s what he’s doing.” The two men laughed at the thought of O’Neill left with nothing to follow.

“Course, he may not be following us at all,” LaRue said seriously. “Didn’t he say the gold was somewhere around here?”

“That’s right,” Shorty confirmed. “Now about that gold. How do you propose we find it?”

LaRue thought for a moment. “I remember where the old prospector’s cabin is. The prospector was killed less than a mile from it with an arrow the likes of nothing I’ve seen any Indian use before. The way I figure, the gold has got to be within a few miles of that spot. Why else would the old man have been killed? He prospected around these parts for years without any trouble, then the day he dies he has a gold figurine clutched in his hand.” LaRue stared off into the distance in deep thought. Finally he spoke again. “I think he stumbled onto the location of the treasure and was killed to keep its whereabouts secret.”

“Could be,” Shorty said, nodding his head in agreement. “But that doesn’t tell me how we’re going to find it for ourselves and at the same time keep our skins intact.”

“I wish I knew,” LaRue admitted. “I wish I knew.”

The rain came down in a great deluge, and the two men pressed further back under the overhang to stay dry while the horses put their backs to the wind in an attempt to ward off the chill.