Shadow River by Ralph Cotton

Author:Ralph Cotton [Cotton, Ralph]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Westerns, General
ISBN: 9781101636169
Google: CY7wAAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2014-03-04T08:00:00+00:00

Chapter 14

With his loose rope wrapped a turn around his forearm, and the other two ropes tied around him chest high, Sam climbed down the side of the crevice, feeding his rope out a little at a time. Above him on the other side, Burke and Black handled their ropes expertly, keeping tension even on both ropes and feeding them out sparingly as they watched him descend.

Sam found good footing step after step, lowering himself smoothly, slowly, steadily. Eighteen feet down the rocky dirt wall, he stopped on a two-foot-wide stone ledge that had been to the floor of the crevice back when he’d hidden the gold there. Now, looking down, sunlight spilling deeper into the gaping chasm, he still saw no bottom, only a narrowness that sank deep into the hillside, then appeared to gradually close over two hundred feet below.

“Is that the spot?” Burke called down, getting anxious, excited.

“It’s the spot,” Sam said, standing sidelong at the thinner crevice in the rocky wall. He rooted his arm and shoulder into the wall and pulled four fist-sized rocks one at a time and let them fall behind him. “And here’s the gold,” he called up to Burke and Black.

Watching intently, the two saw him pull out a large bulging canvas sack, then a second, then a third, pitching each one down onto the ledge at his feet.

“Holy Mother Amanda!” Burke said to Black, his eyes wide. “I have to be honest, Stanley. I didn’t believe it would happen.”

“Well, it sure enough has,” Black said, equally elated at their good fortune. “What do you need us to do for you, Jones?” he called down to Sam.

“Nothing right now . . . stand by,” Sam replied up the wall.

He drew his rope up and cut a length of it off with the brass-handled knife from his boot well, leaving plenty of rope length to accomplish what he needed to do.

“What’s he doing?” Burke asked Black, both of them staring down as Sam tied the sacks together.

“I don’t know, Clyde,” Black said, getting a little bit put out with Burke. “You see everything I’m seeing.”

“Don’t get cross with me, Stanley,” Burke warned.

Black ignored him and watched Sam down on the narrow ledge. Sam hefted the length of rope over his shoulder, two bags hanging down his chest and one down his back for balance.

“Get ready up there,” he called out to the two faces peering down at him.

“Tell us what you need, Jones,” Black replied.

“Take a taut hold on me,” Sam said. “I’m going to back off this ledge onto your ropes and let myself fall slowlike, over the other side. Soon as I get there, start hauling me up. I’ll be climbing too, to help pull me up.”

“Hold up, Jones! I’m getting a bad feeling about this,” Burke called down to him.

“You’d better get yourself a good feeling about it, Clyde,” Sam called back to him. “I’m coming up with the gold, or I’m staying down here with it.”

“Don’t pay him any mind.

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