R. Trembly - Madigan

Green grass stretched across a valley of about twenty-five hundred acres, interspersed by long, smooth paths. Along the far side of the valley, where the cliffs seemed to climb right into the clouds, stood a two-story adobe building covered with ornaments of what could only be gold. The reflection in the morning sun was almost blinding.

Scattered in small groups around the building were smaller buildings also of adobe. To the south of these structures there were many livestock corrals filled with goats, pigs, chickens, and to the surprise of the men, peacocks, their tails bristling with color.

O’Neill was quick to point out that the gold was to be found in the two-story building, and it would be their objective to seize the building and remove its contents for their own use.

One thing puzzled O’Neill as he scanned the valley with his field glasses: there was no sign of life. Where were the inhabitants of this mysterious valley before him? Had they all fled in fear of their lives, leaving the treasure to be carried off without a fight? O’Neill pondered these questions for quite awhile as his men waited silently behind him.

Finally a rooster crowed somewhere in the distance and a goat bleated in answer as if signaling for a time for action.

“Let’s go!” O’Neill said abruptly as he stepped out into the light of the new day.

They had walked into the valley for only a few hundred feet when from behind they heard a heavy object crashing into place. When the dust settled they saw a huge bolder was now blocking the tunnel’s entrance, and on a ledge overhead, partially hidden by a stone wall, were ten bronze men armed with the same bows the Indian in the tunnel had carried.

Several guns snapped out of their holsters, and in an instant, bullets began flying toward the would-be ambushers who simply dropped out of sight where the bullets could not reach them.

O’Neill soon realized it was of no use to attack the Indians. They were well hidden from his guns and since the Indians used a ladder to obtain the ledge, then pulled it up after them, there was no way to drive them out of their hiding place.

“Several men cover us with your rifles while we get some distance from that ledge,” O’Neill ordered. “Then we’ll cover you.”

Soon the men were safely out of range and could walk with a little more ease. The village lay a quarter mile to the west and between it and O’Neill’s men was a many-layered fountain surrounded by a low wall made of reddish-brown bricks.

As the men got closer, they could hear the water flowing down from one tier of the fountain to the next. At any other time it would have been a pleasant sound, but here and now it blocked all other sounds from reaching the men’s ears. And one of those sounds was the movement of warriors crawling up to the other side of the low wall in front of them.

O’Neill was a crafty man, and as he walked, he thought the situation over in his mind. The wall ahead bothered him. Although he saw no movement, he sensed something was not right. Except for the Indians that blocked the tunnel, everything was just too peaceful.

The closer he and his men got to the wall, the more that little voice deep inside told him that it meant danger.

“Everybody stop,” O’Neill said at last. “Morgon, bring your pack over here. The rest of you get ready with your rifles.”

Taking the pack, O’Neill quickly opened it and withdrew several sticks of dynamite.

“Damn it! I never knew that’s what was in that pack when O’Neill told me to carry it,” Morgon said to the man beside him. The man looked up and smiled nervously.

“If I’d known, I’d a walked a mite further away from you.”

It didn’t take long before O’Neill had the dynamite wrapped together and a short fuse protruding from it.

“You men ready?” O’Neill asked as he took a match and put it to the end of the fuse. The men dropped to one knee and brought the rifles up to their shoulders. At the same instant, O’Neill hurled the dynamite over the wall in front of them. It no sooner dropped from sight behind the barrier than a dozen bronze bodies jumped up and took to their heels in a mad scramble to get away from the explosion that was sure to follow.

“Fire!” O’Neill screamed and the men let loose a barrage of bullets that literally mowed the retreating Indians down before they got ten feet from the wall. When the smoke cleared, all the Indians lay on the ground either dead or wounded.

Suddenly with gun in hand, O’Neill ran forward and dropped over the barricade.

“The dynamite!” someone yelled as O’Neill bent down behind the wall. When O’Neill came to his feet again he had the deadly package in his hand. The fuse was still smoking as he tossed it back toward Morgon, who instinctively caught it before he had time to think about what he was doing.

“No blasting cap,” O’Neill laughed as he walked past Morgon, — *who was still holding the dynamite in trembling hands.

“We’ll set up camp by the fountain. One of you men figure a way to shut that damn thing off,” O’Neill ordered, jerking his thumb at the fountain. “I don’t want to be surprised because we can’t hear anything. The rest of you men push those dead Indians over the outer wall and make sure its downwind of us.”

One of the men hesitantly came over to O’Neill. “Boss,” he said, “some of them Injuns ain’t dead yet. What you want done with them?”

“Use your knife and make them dead!” O’Neill ordered.

Lewana watched the killing of her warriors with horror. Her plan had been foolproof, yet instead of O’Neill and his men being her captives, they were now firmly entrenched within rifle shot of her village. She hadn’t planned on O’Neill’s use of dynamite to gain the advantage or on his cunning mind.

Since her escape, with the help of the man called Madigan, she knew that O’Neill or someone like him would return to threaten her people. And this was confirmed when two of her most fearsome warriors’ bodies were found a few days before, one with his throat cut and his body hidden amongst some rocks by the outside entrance to their valley. The other was shot in the head and left where he fell just inside the hidden valley. She had heard the shot, but her warriors were too late to catch the killer before he escaped.

This new situation called for another plan, one that dare not fail. For to fail a second time would most certainly mean death for her people. Watching O’Neill’s men methodically cut the throats of the wounded warriors assured her there would be no mercy if these men captured her village.

She could offer them gold, she thought, for surely that is what they came to steal, but would that be enough? No, there were many beautiful girls in the village and these men would not be satisfied until they had forced their intentions on every one of them.

Lewana shuddered at the thought of these dirty, vulgar men touching the women of her tribe. No, gold would not be enough. She would have to find a way to rid these trespassers from her sacred valley once and for all. And that might require time-time that was fast running out for her and her people.

As Lewana pondered what to do next, a feeling of helplessness came over her. O’Neill, with his superior weapons, was at the one strategic location where he could control the valley around him. With the greater range of his rifles, he could pin down the men on the ledge or in the village while at the same time being out of range of the Indians’ arrows.

There was fresh water for them to drink, and depending on their food supply, they could stay for weeks if need be, keeping her people from tending their stock or moving about at all, except on the far side of the village itself where the buildings gave some protection.