High Plains Massacre by Jon Sharpe

head and said, “What the hell?”
    It bore investigating. Taking the reins, he led the Ovaro.
    He’d assumed that the water flowed down from higher up and on out the gulch. But he hadn’t gone twenty yards when he discovered he was mistaken.
    The stream was like the Rogue River in Oregon Country and a few other waterways. It didn’t carry runoff down from a mountaintop. It flowed up out of the ground.
    A dark cavity opened in the earth before him.
    Now and again the water splashed against partially submerged boulders and made that hissing sound.
    On either side was flat granite. Wide enough, Fargo noted, for a horse and rider. Hell, it was wide enough for a wagon.
    He peered into the hole but couldn’t see much. It appeared to incline gradually down but there might be an abrupt drop-off.
    No one in their right mind would go into a hole like that but Fargo had another of his hunches. He tied the Ovaro to a spruce and gathered kindling and enough broken limbs for a fire. He also found a short, stout piece that he set aside.
    He hated to cut his blanket but he had nothing else to use. He wrapped the strips around one end of the stout piece and knotted them so they wouldn’t slide off.
    When he put his makeshift torch to the fire, it caught right away.
    Fargo moved to the hole. He didn’t have a lot of time. Ten minutes at the most, and his torch would go out. Quickly, he descended, holding it in front of him so if there was a drop-off, he wouldn’t go over the edge.
    It was eerie, what with darkness all around and the water lapping at his boots. He hadn’t gone far when he realized the sides had opened out and he was about to enter a cavern or underground chamber. He went a little farther and the truth dawned. It wasn’t a cavern. It was a tunnel, created by the rushing water back when a lot more of it issued out of the earth.
    His torch flickered in a gust of air, and he debated going deeper.
    A new sound gave him pause, a faint
chink-chink-chink
, like that of metal striking rock. Cocking his head, he tried to figure out what it was.
    The torch flickered again, and this time not from any breeze. It was going out.
    Reluctantly, Fargo retraced his steps. He wasn’t quite to the surface when the last tiny finger of flame died in a puff of smoke, plunging him in pitch-black. A few more steps, though, and he was awash in daylight from above.
    Once out of the hole, Fargo stood scratching his chin. He could make more torches but they might not be enough to see him through to the far end and he’d be left in total darkness.
    Fargo looked up. Above the hole, a forested slope rose to more granite. It was a steep climb but he would like to see what was on the other side of the mountain.
    He turned and walked to the Ovaro and was reaching for the saddle horn when he glimpsed movement out of the corner of his eye. He whirled, dropping his hand to his Colt, and thought he saw a two-legged form gliding away from him.
    Fargo broke into a run. Whoever it was, they were heading up the gulch toward the settlement, and the troopers.
    He moved as silently as an Apache. So did the man he was pursuing. He moved more swiftly than most, too, just to keep up.
    Not until the last bend before the settlement did Fargo get a good look at who he was following, when his quarry stopped.
    It was the small man with the eye patch and the scar, the same deadly Metis who had tried twice now to kill him.
    Crouching, Fargo closed in. He was near enough to shoot but he wanted the man alive. Unexpectedly, the Metis began climbing a tree. Fargo flattened. He wondered what the man was up to and it hit him that if the man climbed high enough, he could see past the bend to the settlement.
    Smiling grimly, Fargo crawled. The small man had blundered. What went up must come down, and he would be waiting.
    The man’s agility was amazing. He leaped from limb to high limb, his body tucked tight. At one point he hooked his