Mystery of the Haunted Mine

14 End of a Killer

The rain was drumming on the Espectros, streaming from a real buster of a cloud that hung over the mountains. The cloud was a huge and threatening mass with a distended belly of gray and black which held a mighty tonnage of water. The Espectros had long been notorious as the breeding place of storms, and when the Thunder People rumbled their great drums in the deep canyons and lanced the streaming skies with their shafts of lightning tipped with flashing death, it was no place for frail man to stand up against nature. The wind bellowed through the gorges and lashed the scrub trees. Water had begun to course through the dry stream beds at the bottoms of the canyons, rising with frightful speed and sweeping everything before its fluid power.

Gary Cole knew it had been pouring rain for most of the night while he and his companions were burrowing in the belly of the Lost Espectro. There had been other rainstorms of more than average intensity over the Espectros that summer, but he could not recall any as fierce as this one. It was almost like dusk in the canyon country as he peered from behind the breastwork to spot the killer who haunted the canyon rim. Then he saw a movement in a clump of brush at the very edge of the chasm. "Ready?" he asked over his shoulder.

"Hold it a minute," hissed Tuck from within the cavern. "I'm not finished with my makeup!"

Gary turned to look at Sue and his heart went out to her. Her great brown eyes looked like those of a frightened doe as she hunched back against the rock face out of the driving rain, holding onto Lobo's collar. "Remember, Sue," he said quietly, "I want you to release him only if things turn against us."

She nodded. "I'll remember," she said.

Gary looked at the shotgun beside her. "It's loaded. I showed you how to throw off the safety catch. Don't fire both barrels at the same time! If anything happens to Tuck and me, lay low. He might not find you. If he gets too close let the dog go at him, then use the gun."

She closed her eyes, swallowed hard, then nodded again.

Gary crawled around the edge of the tumbledown breastwork and bellied down the slope behind a screen of wet rock. In no time at all he was wet to the skin, but it didn't matter. The hunt he was on and the tension of it was enough to keep his mind from his discomfort. He was halfway down the slope when he looked back. Tuck's head popped up. The lean one waved, then vanished again. Gary gave him time to get into position, then crawled on.

The killer was well hidden in the tangled brush that covered one side of a huge tilted slab of rock at the very brink of the canyon. Gary could just make out the outline of his prone figure. Gary inched along, cradling his Winchester in the crook of his arms, until he reached a place to one side of the slab of rock where the ground was a little higher. He was no more than thirty yards from his quarry.

He waited again, feeling the cold rain beating steadily against his back. Minutes ticked past and then he saw a furtive movement to his right, beyond the slab of rock. Tuck was in position now with Asesino's old rifle.

Gary bellied down the harsh wet slope. Then he stopped short, for there had been a movement in the tangle of brush. He saw two boots protruding from beneath it. They were small boots and the heel on the left one had been set crookedly in place. The sight laid nerve-chill upon rain-chill. It was too far away to distinguish the double crescent of nails set into the crooked heel, but as sure as his name was Gary Cole, he knew that the crescent was there.

The rain slackened a bit. Gary picked up a fist-sized rock and threw it over the brink. He hardly heard the sound of it striking far below, but the killer heard it. He must have hearing like a dog. As he moved, Gary saw the wet dark hair, bound with the dingy cloth, but the man's painted face was turned away from Gary as he peered intently down into the canyon.

Gary moved closer. He eased the hammer of his Winchester back to full cock. It would be an easy shot. He could hit the killer and he'd never know what had hit him. But it wasn't in Gary to kill that way. An intense curiosity came over him. Gary wanted the man to turn his face so that he could see it plainly, for his other views of it had been too short to know who he was. Maybe he would not know the man at all.

Gary shifted to raise his rifle, and the metal-shod stock struck a rock. The effect of the noise was instantaneous on the killer. He turned and was on his feet, crouching flat against the rock. As he raised his rifle he was looking directly at Gary. It was no one Gary recognized.

Higher on the slope a heavy rifle crashed. The killer's eyes widened. He looked past Gary and his mouth squared like that of a Greek tragedy mask. He was trying to yell or cry out. Gary turned to see a tall, gaunt figure striding down the slope — a figure wearing ragged clothing, with long black hair bound by a dingy cloth and bands of white paint drawn across his nose and upper cheeks. A heavy Winchester was in his hands and as he came down the slope he gave forth with a piercing, wailing cry that seemed to congeal Gary's blood.

"Asesino!" screamed the killer at last.

"Throw down that gun!" yelled Gary.

The man turned to stare at Gary. Gary ran forward. The rifle came up and the stock struck Gary on the shoulder. He dropped his own rifle and then ducked under another blow of the rifle, staring into the wild, dark-blue eyes of the killer. "Tuck!" screamed Gary. He jumped to one side and saw the disguised Tuck fall headlong over a rock, his rifle clattering down the slope.

It was no time for niceties. Gary kicked the killer in the belly, and as he came down with his head in a reflex action, Gary rammed his right knee up to meet the down-coming chin. The man grunted in pain. He staggered to one side and fired his rifle. The blast of flame and smoke half-blinded Gary. He threw his hands over his face and fell backward against the rock slab as the killer levered another round into the smoking rifle. A lean figure hurtled down the slope. The rifle roared and Tuck hit the ground an instant ahead of the bullet, but the stock struck his head and kept him down there.

The killer jumped back to reload his rifle. Gary could hardly see him. At this moment a dark shape came roaring into battle — it was Lobo. The dog rose cleanly from the ground and struck savagely at the killer. The man fell backward. His feet clawed for a hold on the crumbling brink of the canyon, then with a wild, piercing scream he went down. There was a thudding noise just below the rim of the canyon, then the distant clattering of the rifle as it struck far below.

Thunder roared in the canyons and lighting etched itself across the dark sky to lance into a distant peak. Gary rubbed his eyes and then crawled to the edge of the canyon to look down. Twenty feet below him was a narrow ledge, and lying flat on the ledge was the killer with his wide dark eyes staring right back at Gary, but they could see nothing. Gary rubbed his eyes again. The man's hair was no longer thick and black, but rather thin and blond. Just above his head lay a rain-soaked black wig.

Tuck bellied alongside Gary. He stared too. "The Candyman," he said in an awed voice.

Gary nodded. He began to feel his intense weariness, the pain in his shoulder, and the bitter coldness of the lashing rain. "You played a great part, Tuck," he said. He gripped his partner's shoulder.

"It was your idea, Gary."

Gary stood up. "It was too close to suit me."

From somewhere up the canyon came a subdued roaring that gained intensity as they listened. Then it seemed as though the canyon was filled with a towering wall of gray and white. It was water — a great mass of drainage water trapped in the narrow canyon and raging along through it to seek an exit. It leaped from side to side like some insensate and blinded primeval beast, as it battered at the walls, carrying within its swirling liquid belly tons of rock, brush, shattered trees, and anything else it could gobble down, using the rough mass to scour the bottom of the canyon like some gigantic sanding machine.

It was a mad orgy of sound; a world of insane water and crackling lightning underscored by the rumbling of the thunder. From high on the canyon rim came silvery streams of rainwater to add to the flash flood. The water swirled with incredible speed up the slope below the cliff upon which the boys were standing in wide-eyed awe. It swept against the cliff base, rising higher and higher until it seemed as though it might even lap around the feet of the two watchers, then slowly, ever so slowly, it began to subside. The swirling surface was stippled with drowned animals, tangled mats of thorny brush, and splintered trees.

Despite the danger and the cold rain they could not leave until the flood began to recede. Farther along the canyon the crest still roared and raged.

Gary dropped to his belly and stared down at the base of the cliff as the water trickled off. Where the great rock that marked the site of the Lost Espectro had been was now a smooth area of gravel and sand, overlaying the original rocky slope. Even as he watched, great masses of rock fell from the cliff face and shattered on the slope. There was no way he could locate the shaft now. Perhaps it was lost forever. No one could ever trace it without the cryptic symbols left by the Mexicans over a hundred years ago.

They did what they had to do. They got the nylon ropes, and Gary let himself down the crumbling ledge where the Candyman lay. They hoisted the body and placed it beneath the rock slab, covering it with rock to keep the coyotes from it. They did not look back as they returned to Sue. Despite the pouring rain, none of them wanted to take shelter in Asesino's cave.

They packed their gear. Now they had only three gold bricks since one had been left behind somewhere along the winding drift. But nothing in the world could have made them go back after it. Even the gold they had saved didn't mean much to them. They wanted, above all, to get away from the dripping mountains of violent death.

They were south, a good mile away from Asesino's cave, on the rugged mesa top when the lightning struck with fearful intensity against the bald rock face high above the concealed cave entrance, the back door to the Lost Espectro. Slowly at first and then with gathering power, a great side of rock and rain-loosened earth cascaded smoothly down the slopes until the once rough facing was a smooth mass of rock and mud at rest, with Asesino entombed, perhaps forever, beneath the great new covering.

They did not look back again as they picked their way down a crumbled cliff into a wide canyon, which Gary recognized as the lower part of the canyon where the water hole that had been formed by the great landslide of years past was located. Three horsemen urged their mounts toward them, and the worn-out trio recognized Sheriff Larry Gray, Jim Kermit, and the dark smiling face of Jerry Black.

Jim Kermit shook his head as he unscrewed the top of his big Thermos and began to pour coffee for them. "You kids had everyone worried sick," he said. "My Francie found out Sue had left the house, and she called me at Millerton to tell me about it. I found the jeep you left behind and got in touch with the Sheriff here. Luckily Jerry Black was in making his monthly report to the Sheriff, so he came along. Believe you me, kids, you had everyone scared to death. Mrs. Kermit called Tucson and got in touch with your mother, Gary. She's on her way home. Your pa is all right. I also called your pa and ma, Tuck."

"Thanks, oh thanks," murmured the lean one.

Sheriff Gray looked at Sue. "I have a rough idea who is going to get the worst of this thing," he said with a sly grin.

"Yeh," said Sue. "Jolly, isn't it? Heh! Heh!"

Gary looked at Jerry Black. "Monthly report?" he said questioningly.

Jerry nodded. "The state assigned me as a special investigating agent to see if I could get any ideas as to who was killing people in the Espectros. That's why I pretended to be writing a book while I stayed at the old Mills place. It gave me an excuse to look about in those mountains. Frankly, I didn't believe much in those killings, but I liked the freedom the job gave me except when I was keeping an eye on you two characters."

"What do you mean?" asked Tuck.

Jerry grinned. "Oh, I was watching you. It wasn't easy because of that dog. He seemed to know a real Apache was prowling about. The only time I really got worried was the night you boys were coming out of this canyon and Gary took a couple of potshots at me."

"So that was you!" said Gary. "You nearly scared us to death!"

"How do you think I felt when you shot at me?" said Jerry. "Kid, you shot as fast and as accurately as any combat Marine I ever knew."

"I wasn't trying to hit you," said Gary. "Just scare you off."

"You did that!"

"Did you ever really suspect anyone?" asked Sue.

Jerry shook his head. "I had no leads at all. Of course I knew there were all kinds of oddball characters poking about those mountains. I had nothing on any of them."

"Did you ever suspect Fred Platt?" asked Gary.

"Him?" Jerry threw back his head and laughed. "The Candyman is scared to death of those mountains. He is the last person I'd ever suspect."

"That's rich," said Jim Kermit with a grin. "The Candyman! Hawww!"

The sheriff shook his head. "You kids," he said with a smile.

"Tell 'em, Tuck," said Gary.

The lean one emptied his coffee cup. He told 'em, complete with histrionic gestures and intonations that would have put a Barrymore to utter shame. At the conclusion of his harrowing tale, Sue took out the three gold ingots and handed them to the sheriff. He hefted them and whistled softly. "You say there are a lot more of 'em in that mine?"

"Enough to make all of us richer than Croesus," said Sue offhandedly. She casually inspected her dirty and broken fingernails. "Maybe buried forever, of course," she added.

"Incredible," said the lawman.

They took the three worn-out kids up behind them and rode to the jeep. Gary got the motor started on the third try.

Jerry leaned on his saddle horn and eyed Gary. "Did you know there were a number of rewards posted for the murderer?" he asked.

"No," said Gary. He was sick of talking about the Candyman.

"Amounts to somewhere between three and four thousand dollars as far as I can recollect. Dead or alive, Gary."

"We can guide you back to the body, Jerry." said Gary. "But I'd rather not talk about it now."

"I understand."

Gary drove to the graveled road and then along it toward the main highway. Tuck spoke when they were on the pavement. "Well, we found out the truth about Asesino and the Lost Espectro. I wonder what Fred Platt thought when he saw me coming down that slope. Must have been quite a jolt."

"It was," said Gary. "Enough of a jolt to kill him off. The Candyman! When I think of those four days I rode in the same truck with him, shooting off my mouth about my theories on the Lost Espectro and all the clues I had, it makes me pretty weak inside, I tell you."

"He must have spent a lot of time in those mountains," said Sue, "without even a good lead on the Lost Espectro until we showed him the way."

"Poor Lije," said Tuck. "All he probably wanted was a can of Elberta peaches from the Candyman. It was his death sentence. They'll never find Lije's body now."

"Maybe that's the way he wanted it," said Gary quietly.

"There will be more ghosts in the Espectros tonight," said Sue. Suddenly she shivered.

"As far as I'm concerned," said Gary, "they can have the Espectros. I've had my fill of them."

"Me too," said Sue fervently.

A gentle and melodious snoring came from the lean one, seemingly echoed by the low growling of thunder over the rain-misted Espectros.