Karl Sommer's first impulse was to just give them the gold. The two outlaws had caught him just as he had forded Cibolo Creek. His horse was still winded and tired from the long hard ride out of San Antonio, and he didn't think he could outrun them. Now even his Winchester was gone. They had taken it out of its saddle scabbard when they first stopped him.

Two or three times every year he made the trip south into San Antonio with a small herd of green-broken mustangs to sell at the livestock auction--such horses were in high demand by the south Texas ranchers who needed them to train for working cattle. After the sale he had left San Antonio at a trot, a handful of gold coins in his saddlebag, heading north into the hill country. When he was beyond sight of the town he kicked the horse into a run and didn't slow down until he reached Cibolo Creek. He was naturally always cautious, but this time even more so. He hadn't liked the looks of the two men who watched him pick up the gold from his sale in the lobby of the Menger Hotel. They must have ridden as hard as he had, or harder, to have been waiting for him on the north bank of the Cibolo. They had appeared suddenly from out of the brush, surrounding him on either side, so close their knees almost touched as one of them seized his horse's reins and forced it to stop. They had spoken softly, and politely, in tones so genial as to seem quite friendly. But they had been anything but friends. Karl's English was far from perfect, but he had understood perfectly well what they meant. Turn over his gold, or die. They were both carrying revolvers--a luxury that Karl had never felt was worth the expense for himself, and one of them, the ugliest one that was also holding the reins of Karl's horse, pointed his revolver carelessly in Karl's direction. They sat on their horses with sneering smiles and waited for him to hand over the gold.

No, Karl thought. He had been saving all his money so that he could pay for the passage of his beloved Magdalena. He had promised that he would bring her across to the new country as soon as he could, where they could begin building a new life together. With this last trip he had enough money to do it, and he wouldn't give it up easily. Their horses must be just as winded as his was, if they had ridden hard enough to catch him. That should even the odds a little. He stammered something in German, pretended not to understand their demand. His hand crept toward the big knife in his belt sheath.

"I guess the squarehead don't understand much English, Joby," said the thin one He was as skinny and leathery as an old whip.

So Joby was the one holding his horse's reins.

"Heh, I reckon not," agreed Joby. His face was greasy with sweat and was covered with pockmarks, and his small, thin mouth looked like an old scar. "I reckon we better just--"

Joby's words were abruptly cut off as Karl dug his heels into the horse and it lunged forward. The reins went taut and they whirled in a wild dance around each other as Joby held on with one hand while trying to aim his revolver with the other. Karl's big knife came out and in two deft strokes the reins were severed. Joby, off balance, dropped his weapon and made a grab for the horse's halter but his hand only closed in the razor-sharp blade of the knife. He screeched and fell backwards, blood spraying out of his mutilated hand onto his horse's face, which panicked, reared, and threw him.

Karl didn't hesitate. He bolted his horse straight into the other one--the horse that the thin one was riding. As the horses collided they both almost went down, but Karl's sure- footed little mustang caught itself just as the other bigger horse went back down the creek bank, rolling over on top of the man and spraying water in a huge splash as it hit the shallow creek at the bottom of the incline.

Karl knew his horse needed rest but there wasn't time for that now. He pointed its nose north and kicked it to a gallop. He didn't slow down for a long time.

It was late night with a sliver of a moon high in the sky before Karl stopped. He and his horse were both exhausted. He knew he had to stop before the horse stumbled and lamed itself, even though he had wanted to cross the Guadalupe River before quitting for the night, but the horse was too worn out to risk swimming the river, especially in the dark. He led the horse down to the river for water, splashed some on his face, drank, and refilled his canteen. Now late at night, the air seemed to vibrate with the sounds of countless chirping frogs and the weather was almost cool enough to be comfortable. Somewhere out across the water something splashed. He quietly led his horse away from the river into the nearly green darkness of a thick clump of live oaks. For a moment he considered leaving the horse saddled, in case he had to make a quick escape, but he knew that would probably be a mistake. He still had a long ride ahead of him, and there was no sense in risking saddlesores. He slid the saddle to the ground and rubbed the horse down briefly with a handful of the dead leaves that carpeted the ground. The horse was already standing slack-legged and dozing before he finished. Karl managed to eat a few strips of venison jerky he had stowed in a saddlebag before his weariness overcame him and he fell asleep, sitting on the ground against the trunk of an oak tree, his hand resting on the big knife.

The low whicker of his horse suddenly awakened him. He moved cautiously and slowly toward the horse, careful not to make too much noise, thankful that the roar of frogs and crickets would probably cover any slight sound he made. He held the horse's mouth and whispered softly to it to keep it from making any more noise, and in the dim light of the crescent moon watched the two men walk their horses by within fifty feet of him. They were talking.

"I'm tellin' ya Buck, when we catch that bastard I'm gonna cut his goddam hands off! How'm I gonna handle a gun with my hand all cut up like this?" That would be Joby. So the other one's name was Buck.

"Just calm down," replied Buck. "Once we catch up with 'im, you can do anything you want. Guess you'll just have to learn to be a southpaw for a while."

"I don't even care about the gold no more," continued Joby. "I just want him!"

"You kiddin'?" said Buck. "Those mustangs brought him six months worth of mendin' fence and workin' cattle, and I ain't never been one to work too hard if I could help it."

"Well, anyways, I'm tuckered," said Joby. "Let's bed down and pick up his trail in the morning."

For a moment Karl heartily wished he still had his Winchester. At this distance it would be so easy to just shoot them down. Buck first, then Joby, because Joby wouldn't be able to handle a gun very well...He shook his head. Wishful fantasies wouldn't help him at all. He would have to elude them for a couple more days. The two men moved farther away and melted into the darkness. Karl breathed a sigh of relief and slumped back onto the ground, reassuming his position against the bole of the oak tree. His horse, still exhausted, had already gone back to sleep. A plan began to form in his mind...

The caverns. If he could get them into the caverns he could take their horses and ride away. They would never be able to follow him without horses, and if they weren't entirely stupid they would be able to live off the land until they could get to the nearest town. He wasn't the only one who knew about the caverns, but very few knew them as well as he did. A quarter-century before, the Confederate Army had used the bat guano there to make gunpowder during the war; in one cavern there were still a few empty kegs left behind from the cache that had been stored there. He had heard the story of the famous outlaw Sam Bass, who had died in those caverns. He had used them for a hideout, and when the law finally tracked him down he had been trapped there. It had been easy for the posse to just sit outside and wait, and they had shot him down when he tried to fight his way out. It was because of this that most people thought the caverns were a dead end. The only problem was, Sam Bass hadn't gone far enough...

He started early the next morning, before dawn was even a glint on the horizon, holding to the saddlehorn as his horse swam them across the river. He didn't try to fight the current, just let it carry them downstream as they slowly made their way across. At this point, the river was fairly sluggish anyway; they came out of the water only 50 yards or so downstream from where they had entered it. During the next several hours, he began to hope that he had managed to elude them. Around noon, when the sun was high overhead, he rode around the curve of a hill and then came back up its north side. Leaving the horse ground-tethered far enough down the lee of the hill that it couldn't be seen from the south, he crawled up to the peak and crouched behind a lonely cedar bush, slowly chewing more jerky while he looked out over the country. Suddenly his heart sank.

There in the distance, maybe two, two-and-a-half miles away, he saw the shapes of two men on horses top a hill. They must have found his trail again. He cautiously crept back down to his horse, mounted, and trotted down the hill.

The next two days were almost torture--a seemingly unending nightmare of long rides and little sleep. He went northwest, up into the craggy hills around the headwaters of the Blanco River, then more riding back to the northeast and down into the dales where he swam his horse across the broad clay-colored expanse of the Pedernales. Still farther to the northeast, until midafternoon of the second day when he reached the massive, towering, sprawling dome of pink granite called Enchanted Rock.

"Verzauberter Felsen," he whispered to himself as he pulled the horse to a stop for a few minutes and looked up at it. "Enchanted Rock." He had heard stories about this place, stories that other settlers had picked up from the Indians. It was supposed to be haunted. Oftentimes at night, strange flickering lights could be seen fluttering like small silver ghosts across its hulking expanse. It served as a prison, the Indians said, to an old god who lay half-slumbering, half-dead, inside it. Sometimes there were strange sounds heard here also. Dull booming noises that seemed to come from within the rock itself. Yes, said the Indians, that was the old god awakening and trying to escape.

But in the clear light of midafternoon with the sun overhead it looked safe enough, though eerily impressive as it glowered above him. Today it would serve Karl a very practical purpose.

He rode his horse around to the north side where he tethered it within reach of a small pond and then began to laboriously clamber up the long, slow slope of the towering mound of granite. It took him nearly an hour to reach the top. He found a hollow in the rock where rainwater had collected and paused to take a swallow and run a few drops through his hair with his fingers.. The water was warm, almost hot from being exposed to the sun all day, but still refreshing. A few feet away some soil had somehow gathered in a crack and a tiny cactus was pushing its way through, appearing to almost magically grow out of the solid rock. Looking back down the way he had come, he could see the small pond winking in the sunlight like a tiny blue diamond several hundred feet below him, his horse an ant-like brownish dot near its edge. He crept the few feet to the very top of the mound where he lay and surveyed the country to the south. From this vantage, it seemed the entire state of Texas was spread out beneath him.

The rock was hot and uncomfortable to lie on, but he didn't want to expose himself by standing or sitting where he could easily be seen. After a few minutes of squinting into the distance through the glare of the sunlight that bounced off the rock, he could see a thin tendril of dust and then once more saw the shapes of two men on horses as they topped a hill less than two miles away.

"Gottfluch!" he cursed to himself. They were still following him. No matter. He would make it to the caverns soon. He hastily crept down from the peak of the mound and began scrambling back down to his horse.

"Dammit!" exclaimed Joby, as he and Buck drew their horses to a halt atop yet another hill. Even from this elevation, the huge mass of Enchanted Rock towered over them in the distance. "I don't like this place, Buck. You know the Injuns say it's haunted, don't you?"

"They say a lotta things," replied Buck. "Besides," he continued, "I been thinkin'. I been thinkin' that this fellow prob'ly lives up around here somewheres, and this prob'ly ain't the first time he's been down to San Antone to sell horses. I reckon wherever he lives, he's prob'ly got even more gold than what he's carryin' on him right now. We follow 'im to where he lives, we're gonna get us enough gold to live mighty high on the hog for a while."

Realization dawned on Joby's pockmarked face. "I hadn't thought of that," he said.

"Guess that's why I do all the thinkin'," replied Buck. "Now shut yer yap and hurry it up. He cain't run from us forever."

Karl Sommer didn't bother trying to hide his trail after leaving Enchanted Rock; he wanted them to be able to follow him easily. He crossed the Colorado River several hours later, as the green countryside was changing into the muted greys of twilight. More hard riding all through the night, until he couldn't force his horse any farther. He stopped to snatch a few hours of restless sleep just before dawn, then pushed on again until he came to a small, secluded chaparral where he left his horse and concealed his bag of gold coins beneath the dead leaves that had collected around the base of a prickly pear cactus. Taking only his knife, he made his way across the uneven ground to the caverns a few hundred yards to the west.

Joby and Buck stared down into the small gully where the entrance to the caverns opened. The chill air of the inner earth wafted up around them; it was a welcome relief after the heat of days of riding through open country. It was almost sundown before they had found Karl's horse still dozing in the small chaparral. A feverish search of the area had uncovered no gold, but had disturbed a particularly annoyed rattlesnake. The encounter with the snake had left neither of them in an especially pleasant mood, and now they scowled down into the shadowed gully, muttering vague promises of vengeance on the man who had led them on this wild chase.

"His tracks are clear enough, all right," muttered Joby. "He musta gone right into that cave there."

"It ain't just a cave," answered Buck. "It's a whole bunch of caverns down there. This is where they caught ol' Sam Bass--remember him?"

"Why, heck yeah!" replied Joby. "In that case, we got 'im! There ain't no way outta there except the way he went in. We still got a quart of coal-oil from that fire job we did a while back--we can make torches with it. All's we gotta do is go in and take 'im."

"Yep," agreed Buck. "Poor dumb bastard prob'ly thinks he got away from us. Almost makes me feel sorry for 'im."

"Aw shucks," said Joby. "I didn't know you were such a sensitive fella, Buck."

They leered at each, amused at their own humor. They dismounted and scrambled down the steep, rocky bank toward the yawning mouth of the caverns.

Karl Sommer commended himself on having left an extra lantern and some oil cached just inside the entrance to the caverns, though he wished he had spent the money for an extra rifle and stashed it there also. He had never intended to go this deep inside again. He had been this far in only twice. Past the rough, rocky floors and wedging himself through cracks in the rock into deeper and deeper caverns, he had finally emerged into a vast open room where he could see an opening in the ceiling high above. The walls were almost perfectly sheer and smooth from erosion; it must have been thousands of years before when the caverns was full of water that churned down through the grotto and given the walls of this cavern an almost polished appearance. The air was heavy and pungent from the stench of the bat droppings that covered the floor like a thick, soft carpet. Overhead hundreds of small bats hung by their feet from the rough ceiling; it bore countless tiny crags and crevices that, unlike the walls, the rushing water had seemingly never touched. At about midday the sun would send a single shaft of wan yellowish light into the gloom of the cavern for just a few minutes--otherwise, the cavern was filled with a blackness that nearly swallowed the light of his coal-oil lantern. He still remembered--would never forget--that first time when he had found another crevice in the wall, so narrow he had to push the lantern through first and then slide through sideways after it. Beyond the narrow crack, another cavern had opened up, a cavern so deep and vast he couldn't see the end of it. The ceiling of that final cavern was low, only a few inches above his head, but it stretched away to the left and right, and forward into the undisturbable darkness farther than his lantern could send its feeble light. He had never explored beyond that point, because there was only a few square feet of smooth, flat stone to stand on. At the edge of the stone floor was water--an underground lake that lay quietly, unperturbed for countless centuries by the small breezes that always give a constant motion to such bodies of water that lay on the surface of the earth.

It was uncannily quiet. Karl had never been able to convey the sensation to anyone. The surface of the lake was perfectly still and smooth as polished glass. There were no tiny waves to lap reassuringly at the banks, no quiet splashes as water slapped against a piece of driftwood--it was simply still. For the first few feet, as far as he could tell, the water was only a few inches deep and he crawled to the edge on his hands and knees to peer at strange, almost-transparent crayfish that scuttered across the sandy bottom of the shallows. After inspecting the ceiling above him he had found a narrow, cylindrical tunnel through the rock, boring straight up. It was close enough to the wall that after a few failed attempts, he managed to clamber up the few handholds he could find and wedge himself into the tunnel. Cursing his own curiosity, he had left his lantern behind and continued upward into the darkness, keeping himself from falling back by bracing himself against the tunnel walls and feeling carefully for each tiny crevice that could afford a purchase for his questing hands and feet. After a time--he was uncertain exactly how long, but was surely no more than a quarter of an hour--his head had emerged from a tiny sinkhole that was entirely concealed from above by a bushy prickly-ash tree. Several seconds later he was lying upon the solid ground, tired but otherwise none the worse for his long climb up the almost vertical tunnel.

He had returned the next day, bringing with him a long cane pole which he maneuvered carefully through the series of caverns and finally pushed it ahead of himself through the last crevice. Once again he stood on the edge of the water, this time pushing the pole down into the lake. As he had seen before, the first few feet near the bank was only a few inches deep, but then it dropped off abruptly to an unknown depth; he could feel no bottom at all with the long pole.

He had had to bring another lantern, since he had left the one behind the day before. He moved carefully along the narrow strip of dry rock to where the other lantern was and found it, but he stared at it curiously when he saw that it was lying on its side and appeared to have been scuffed and the glass broken. He looked up into the dark hole of der Kamin--the Chimney, as he had begun to think of it. He had left the lantern almost directly beneath the Chimney to provide light for his initial climb. Of course, he thought, he must have knocked some loose rocks down during his climb that had knocked the lamp over and broken the glass. That was it.

He had then opened a small leather bag that was tied to his belt and pulled out a length of string to which was attached a fish hook. He fastened the string to the end of the cane pole. It was easy to catch one of the weird, transparent, and apparently blind crayfish and drive the hook through it. With a sidearm throw, he flung the line out into the water. There was a small splash which echoed eerily away into the distance, and a few seconds later the tiny ripples came back to him out of the darkness and lapped silently against the smooth rock where he stood. He sat on the rock and waited. The line was at least 20 feet long, and it didn't feel as if it were touching the bottom. He had only waited a few minutes when there was a tug on his line that suddenly became a sharp jerk as the hook sunk home. It was difficult to pull the line back in with such a low ceiling, but after a few minutes of work he pulled his catch out of the darkness into the dim light of the burning coal-oil.

© 1998 by Alan D. Peschke

Return to Contents Page
Return to Mythos Tales of the Weird West
Return to Innsmouth

This page hosted by Get your own Free Home Page