Gunsmoke for McAllister by Matt Chisholm Read Free Book Online Page B

saddle, he spurred the animal away to the south. Looking back over his shoulder, he saw that so far nobody was in sight.
    * * *
    He spent the remainder of the day hiding his tracks and looking for a place to hide the canelo. This he found some five miles from the basin; a good spot with grass and water for the animal. He hobbled it, consumed some canned tomatoes from Sam’s store and set off into the night, after he had cached his gear, chewing jerky.
    Unerringly, his instinct for the lay of the land led him to the basin, coming into it from the east. Around midnight he came over the rimrock and looked down, saw the lights of the cabins and slowly started to work his way down. It wasn’t easy to do so without sound in the almost pitch dark, but he didn’t make too much noise and pretty soon stood on the floor of the basin. He lay on the ground and listened for some time now. There were a number of sounds to interpret and it took him some time to get them clear in his head.
    First, he could hear a murmur of voices ahead of him in the main cabin, the one with the chimney, from which he had seen the sheriff and the girl come. From the other, over to his right, came the soft notes of a guitar.
    Beyond these sounds, he could hear a faint and distant chinking sound. It was as though it were muffled. At first this puzzled him, but after a while he realised that it came from the bowels of the earth. He was listening to men working underground.
    He wormed his way to the left and saw a faint light, which he knew came from the mine shaft which ran horizontally like a tunnel into the side of the basin down which he had just climbed. Another sound now came and he lay still, watching and listening.
    A trolley was being run out of the tunnel. On it was a lamp and its faint light cast the figures of the men pushing the tip-truck in heavy shadow. McAllister could hear the clank of their chains and it seemed to him that he was watching not real men, but the ghosts of men. However, the man who now strode out of the tunnel wasreal enough. As the men brought the trolley to a halt and stood for a moment recovering themselves from their efforts, this fellow, rifle in hand, came among them, shouting for them to get back and get on with their work. Stooped and tired, they slowly obeyed him. He cursed them, struck one man with his fist and knocked him down. One of the other men turned and shouted at him and he stood there bellowing and threatening them. The man who had fallen picked himself up and went slowly into the shaft. The guard followed them, still shouting.
    McAllister was sure that Sam had not been among that party. If he could, he must get into the tunnel and see who was working there. Slowly, he wormed his way forward, stopping every now and then to look and listen. At long last, he came to the mouth of the tunnel. Once more he heard the sound of steel wheels on rails and the party of men came into sight, laboriously pushing the tip-truck, being shouted on by the guard. McAllister crouched back against the mouth of the tunnel and waited until the truck had been rolled almost to the crushing mill where it was halted. He waited again as the guard drove his charges back to their work.
    McAllister worked his way into the mouth of the tunnel and saw the light disappear around a bend. He knew that what he was doing was dangerous. Only too easily he could be caught in there. He started to work his way forward, feeling along the side of the tunnel with a hand, treading carefully, stopping to listen. After a very short while, he heard the sound of men working ahead of him and, coming around a bend, he saw lights ahead. Some thirty yards away the tunnel opened out to about four or five times the width of the tunnel and this he knew must be the work-face. Here were more men, all stripped to the waist, covered in sweat and grime, wielding picks and shovels, hacking ore out of the face and shovelling it into waiting trucks. He found a niche