Chapter 6 Hank Rollins
The next day, though it was still raining, Bart and Crandall, with his patrol, left the bivouac area to once again comb the hills and draws for signs of the three missing men, Anders and Holmes, and in Bart's case, for his older brother, Bret.
Travers, saying he had other business to attend to, begged off going. Knowing they'd find nothing, he let them go as they pleased. Holmes was dead, his body buried. Even so, he sent only one man, Hank Rollins, with the rations that day so as not to draw attention to the cave.
In his oilskin coat, Hank left the ranch house with food and canteens for the prisoners. As he climbed aboard his mare and lit out, the three ne'er-do-wells, Texas Pete, Abel Turner, and Jesse Byrne, sitting out of the slashing rain on old crates in the door of the barn, were talking together, watching him go.
"Soon as that corporal and Maverick get loose," said Texas Pete, the man with the dark Apache eye, "every lawman and soldier boy'll be on us for sure."
Pete took a pull from Abel's whiskey flask and handed it back to him, wiping his mouth on his filthy plaid sleeve.
"Those boys ought to be put o' their suffrin," he said, chortling. "That's only fair, I mean one's a spy, and the other, a no-account gambler."
Jesse remembered kneeling at his mother's knee in Ireland and how she tried to teach him about right and wrong and something of the Good Book. "We go in 'nd kill 'em?" he asked.
"Why Jesse, you never kilt no man before?" asked Abel, feigning incredulity.
"I sure myself have. Varmints, mostly, But never in cold blood like that."
Pete fingered his stubble. "We could dynamite that cow pond by the cave. Cows don't need it, what with the crick."
Travers had diverted a portion of Fossil Creek to create a cattle pond, and its water was what had been leaking through a slit in the cave wall, Maverick's 'trickle.' He'd been filling his canteen with it for days. If the pond was dynamited, as Pete suggested, it would destroy the cave below and more than likely be catastrophic to Bret and Anders.
"Flood the cave?" asked Jesse, pondering it. "Enough to drown 'em?" He thought about it. "I dunno. The boss likes the gambler, like we're not good enough to talk to, but he is."
"Rain ought to help," said Pete. Outside the barn, the torrents cascaded over the hardpan of the yard, turning it into a slick mud. "Have to stop Hank, too," he added.
Abel spoke low. "The army won't suspect anythin'?"
"Nothin' they can prove on Travers," said Pete, "or on us."
Abel laughed. "Always said, take care of ol' number one!"
"He won't let you down," said the now much more certain Jesse Byrne. He never expected to get back to Ireland, so whatever he did in the States, his mother wouldn't know anyway.
"That's our plan, fellas. Blow up the pond. It'll flood the cave, for sure. C'mon, let's get the stuff." Pete lifted his bulk off the stack of crates and hurried out into the rain to the dynamite shack. They couldn't let Hank get too far ahead of them.
The trickle of water was growing by the hour, and the floor of the cave was getting very wet. Bret didn't know if it was raining out, but he suspected the Arizona monsoon season was kicking in. He was lying against the wall next to the trickle, opposite of where Anders was, when a sudden jolt shook the whole cave.
The air, it seemed, folded in on itself, more, then more, and finally burst outward. Maverick was knocked flat on his arms which he used to cover his head as bits and pieces of ceiling fell all around him. A cut on his scalp from a rock hurled from above burned and bled into his eye. Every bone was jarred, his jaw was sore from where he'd clamped down on it, and his head rang with a drum-like tattoo.
Dynamite! He was sure of it. Had Travers decided it would be a better strategy to kill them after all, him and Anders?
At last the rock fall subsided and as the dust began to settle, water now beat its way in from the shattered ceiling, pooling on the cave floor. Bathed in a paltry light from the cracked ceiling, Maverick's thoughts couldn't help but turn to Anders. How had he fared in the blast of only a few minutes ago? The man must have been out of his mind with worry. Either that, or he was dead.
"Anders! Anders, are you alright?" he called. The air was now strangely still. Bret struggled over to him, finding Anders unconscious and buried up to the gills in rocks. He tapped the corporal's face a number of times to wake him. With a start, Anders' hands flew up in a defensive posture, dislodging some of the rocks on his upper body. Pulling his arms free, he began beating the air in alarm.
"Anders! Settle down! It's me," Bret called to him.
Anders at last recognized him. Stunned, he said, "Bret! What's happened?"
Maverick began throwing rocks off him. "Dynamite."
"Travers? He's tryin' to kill us now?"
Shaking his head to signify that he didn't know, Bret kept throwing rocks to the side.
"Hurry up a bit, Bret. Water's comin' in. I can feel it under my back."
After freeing the trapped trooper, Bret helped him to a sitting position, then with an around his waist, he lifted him onto his feet. Together, with water up to their knees, they sloshed over to Bret's water wall. The trickle down the face of the rock had now blossomed into a full-blown stream.
Everywhere, there was water. It even slipped over the boulder through the air vent, which the blast had widened some. It was almost man-sized now, Bret could tell, even as he hoisted Cpl. Anders up onto the rock stool. Anders stood up and gazed through the vent.
"I can't see what's below!" he said. "Too dark! It may already be flooded."
"I'm going to push you through. Can you swim?"
Anders didn't answer.
He began to give Anders an 'assist' through the vent, while Anders shrunk in his belly, his arms flailing inside the other room. Then, hearing voices all of a sudden outside the cell, Bret stopped cold. Perhaps Travers' men, who must have been the ones to use the dynamite, had come back to see their handiwork and to finish off any survivors?
"Oh, if I ever get out o' here, Travers," Bret exclaimed, tasting blood from his eye, "I'll find you!"
The voices went off, fading away, and the dark, wet chamber was silent again except for the sound of escaping water. Maverick turned back to the vent. Cut, scraped, and bruised by dozens of rocks, he had just enough strength to push Anders past the point of no return into the next room of the split cavern.
Could Anders find a way out of that part of the cave, perhaps by climbing some of the blast debris, and emerge topside? Anders fought his way through like a salamander, and landed with a loud splash on the other side.
Maverick hoisted himself up onto the rock cairn and, hearing a lot of splashing, shouted through the vent, "Are you okay, Anders? Anders! Talk to me!"
"I can't swim, Bret, and it's… so deep here!"
When would the military ever teach its recruits to swim? Even those posted to the desert? Maverick shook his head and shouted again, from his side of the boulder. "Try to find a place where you can put your feet. Climb up on something, if you can."
He didn't hear Anders' answer, if there was one. He called out again and hoped for a reply. This time, Anders didn't fail him.
"I'm drownin'!" came the faint reply. Maverick heard some more splashing and a couple of outcries that didn't sound human. He was determined to help the boy, but how?
Worming a little ways in through the vent, he tossed a stone in, hearing the splash it made. He figured that the second room, fast filling up, was deeper than the first. His part of the cave must have been on a shelf of some sort in the stream.
"Anders!" he yelled. "Anders! Can you still hear me?"
A bit of furious splashing greeted his straining ears. Realizing he had to do something, fast, he put both arms through the vent above the boulder and began to struggle for every inch. At some point, he made it through, letting himself fall into the water on top of Anders, his legs coming last.
"I knew you could do it," said Anders, laughing and treading water. "Help! Help me!" the young corporal called in a high, falsetto voice, then he admitted, "I swim like a fish, Bret, but I had to do somethin' to get you to try it, too."
Maverick grabbed a hold of the top half of Anders like he was a life preserver and Bret was drowning, thrusting the smirking corporal under the water. "Drownin', huh?" he asked.
Anders was sputtering even as he was overcome by laughter when Maverick let him up again.
The gambler, finishing teaching the upstart a lesson, turned about and looked for some hint of the light outside. It was lighter in here! There! He saw it. Light in the corner, dismal and full of rain. He swam over to that side of the cave, dragging Anders along for good measure. The light was above them, with rocks and debris forming a kind of stairway up to it.
Anders, holding his breath, scampered to the top and began to yank out roots and earth, clearing a path through the tangle, then the corporal disappeared into the stream. Maverick followed, both hands widening the hole even further as more of the stream poured in around him.
He made it to the upper world, thrust his head above the water and gulped the fresh air, but for a moment, he couldn't tell rain from stream. Luckily, the latter wasn't very deep where they were, allowing him to drag himself out onto the muddy bank.
His face to the rain, he lay back on his elbows and breathed deeply in and out for all he was worth. Anders lay next to him, blinking rain out of his eyes and rubbing them with a bleeding right hand. Maverick didn't have the strength to ask him how he was, or even to take a look at his hand.
After a few moments, he sat up and gazed around, looking for Texas Pete and his bunch, then he looked down at Anders again, who appeared to be asleep. "So you could swim all along?" he asked.
Hank, holding a bag of sandwiches from Carla and a canteen apiece for each prisoner, thought he'd been hit by a freight train. His head pounding and his ears ringing, he picked himself up from the floor of the cave and made his way to the sealed-off room where the prisoners were. Something bad had happened. He was certain dynamite must have played a part in it. Was this Texas Pete's doing?
"He's tryin' to drown 'em!" he murmured to himself. Struggling over the debris to the door, he took down a lantern from a hook on the wall and lit it, then lifted the iron bar and cast it aside. Holding the lantern high, he peered into the dark, calling out, "Bret?" No answer. Swirling water met his legs as he stepped inside, stumbling over rocks on the floor. "Bret!" he yelled, swinging the lantern around in an arc.
He didn't see anyone. He didn't hear any breathing, either. He figured that Bret—and maybe Anders, too—had crawled over the boulder to get to the other side. Hank, though he had always gone along with Travers, obeying him in everything, was relieved his friend hadn't drowned, though he felt pretty foolish bringing a sack of food to them when the prisoners weren't even there!
Before the water had a chance to reach his eyeballs, Hank turned and fled the room, dropping the lantern as he hightailed it out of the cave altogether. His horse was cropping grass on the plain above. He clambered aboard her and rode around a short bluff to see the dynamite-mangled area for himself.
What he saw made him hoppin' mad. Texas Pete and the other two were just then riding off, just then disappearing around a bend in the rocks. Their dynamite had almost killed him in that cave! He made up his mind then and there to ride back and let Travers know how they had blown up the cave, possibly killing his prisoners, and then let him decide what to do with them.
But he was arrested for a moment. Squinting in the downpour, he could just make two other figures. These were hiding in the brush on the other side of the pond. Had to be Maverick and that trooper. Hank kicked his horse that way and rode down the rocks towards the section of brush where they were. When he came alongside, he dipped his hat in honor of the two men who had escaped the flooded cave.
Lowering his hand from the brim, he untied the sack of food from the saddle horn and handed it over to the gambler, who apprehensively took it as if it held a rattler.
"Just food, Bret. Two canteens," said Hank. "I owe you that much. Been nice workin' with you!"
Hank had said his piece and now rode off, towards Travers' ranch house, thinking he wouldn't tell his boss about the two runaways. Let 'im think they'd been blown up in the blast set by Texas Pete. Hank was tired of all this rustling business himself, and the only thing he looked forward to was getting revenge on Texas Pete. For that job, Hank would volunteer!