Chapter 12

The Three Musketeers were careful as they rode toward Joe Hostler's hideout. They didn't want to be spotted and get into a premature gun fight. They knew that they had to catch Hostler this night or face a long struggle over finding him, again.

As usual with any sensibly cautious outlaw leader, Hostler had chosen a hideout off the beaten track and hard to reach if you didn't know the exact route. In Hostler's case, the hideout was in a cave in a very high hill, virtually a small mountain. Had Hostler known enough or cared enough, he would have discovered that this hill was the remains of an ancient volcano cone, and the cave was actually a lava tube. As a result, the cave was long and narrow, with no branches. The cave extended back into the hill with little change in diameter until it suddenly ended in a wall of rock. The cave was nearly 200 yards long and Hostler had his office and living space at the dead end. This put all of his minions between him and the entrance, but gave him no avenue of escape; an honest appraisal of the strong hold showed a number of drawbacks, foremost being this lack of an escape route.

The three lawmen arrived at the cave about 4:00 AM. They saw two guards at the entrance and no one else around. The three spent about half an hour watching the two guards and assessing the situation. Sam recognized the cave for the lava tube that it was, though he didn't know it by that name. Sam told his friends that anybody inside was trapped if they could seal off this one exit. This inspired Caleb to send Jake to town to fetch some dynamite, caps, and fuse in preparation for doing just that in an emergency. Meanwhile, Caleb and Sam would try to keep the criminals bottled up inside the cave until Jake got back.

Caleb knew that they needed to capture Hostler so that they could extract information from him about the next higher level in the criminal gang, but they would settle for killing Hostler to keep him from escaping.

Caleb examined the hideout and its environs from his concealed position and worked out a plan of attack for when Jake returned with the dynamite. Caleb also resolved to keep some dynamite handy so that he would not be caught short like this again. Caleb almost laughed when Jake returned, he had bought 20 sticks of dynamite, 36 fuses, and 150 feet of fuse; it looked like he planned to blast out his own cave. However, it was not so funny when Jake explained his reasoning. He had heard of somebody making hand grenades from a fraction of a stick of dynamite and a 10-second fuse, and he wanted to try that here. Jake spent some time working out the length of a 10-second fuse and making up a dozen hand grenades. When he was ready, they put the rest of Caleb's plan into operation.

The first step in the plan was to shoot the two guards. They were able to do this without any difficulty, since the guards were caught completely by surprise. The guards were standing together, talking, and smoking cigars when the shooting started. Both were dead before either fully realized that they were in mortal danger.

As soon as the guards fell, Jake picked up the dynamite hand grenades he had prepared, and the three lawmen ran to the cave entrance. Jake lit the fuse on one of his hand grenades and threw it as far into the cave as he could reach. He threw in two more grenades before the first one had exploded. The resulting series of explosions was devastating!

The lawmen had all ducked away from the cave entrance before the first explosion, so they were not adversely affected by the noise or the pressure wave, even though the effects were enhanced by the shape of the cave. The noise and pressure wave roared down the tunnel for a good 30-40 yards. Even those criminals who were beyond the immediate reach of the force of the explosions were deafened by the sound as it echoed down the length of the cave.

Most of the men in the cave were caught by the effect of the exploding dynamite, since they had started running toward the entrance when they had heard the gun fire. Three of the bad guys were killed outright by the explosions, and everyone else was scared by the thought that the roof might have collapsed. The remaining men shouted that they wanted to surrender, so the lawmen gave them that chance. Each surrendering man was taken to the mouth of the cave and tied hand and foot. When asked, none of the prisoners could, or would, identify Joe Hostler.

They had to assume that Hostler was still hiding in the cave, and that they would have to go in after him. Sam stayed back to guard the prisoners while Caleb and Jake made the dangerous trip deeper into the cave. The search part of the task was easy, since there were not many places of concealment inside the simple lava tube, but they were made very conspicuous by the torch that Caleb carried. They had nearly reached the end of the tube when they heard a shouted command, "STOP, OR I WILL BLOW YER FUCKIN' HEADS OFF!"

Caleb shouted back, "IFEN YA DON'T GIVE UP, WE'LL THROW SOME MORE DYNAMITE AT YA!"

"YA WOULDN'T DARE!"

"WHY NOT?"

"'CAUSE IT'LL GIT Y'ALL, TOO!"

"WE'LL TAKE THAT CHANCE! YA GOT 15 SECONDS TA MAKE UP YER MIND! ONE ... TWO ... THREE ... FOUR ... FIVE..."

"OK! OK! I GIVE UP! I'M COMIN' OUT!"

"COME OUT WITH YER HANDS UP! TRY ANYTHIN' AND WE'LL SHOOT YA IN THE GUT!"

That was enough of a dire warning to frighten anybody, even the bravest or most fool hardy of men. Joe Hostler came out of the dark end of the tunnel with his hands raised high. The lawmen tied his hands behind him and marched him toward the front of the cave. When they got there, they conferred for a few minutes.

Caleb and Jake took Hostler out of earshot of the rest of the men and preceded to question him. It took some persuasion, but they finally got Hostler to talk without resorting to physical torture. Much to their surprise, he said that he had been hired by a group of men from outside the county. Some place called Ardmore, in Henderson county.

"I only met one of the men, a guy named Beckwith. He lives in Ardmore, and I meet him at his house on the north side of town once a month. In fact, I'm 'sposed ta meet him in 5 days. I wuz gittin ready ta leave fer the meetin' when y'all showed up."

Further questioning produced a description of Beckwith; sure enough, he was one of the men at the bosses' meeting that Caleb attended the day Higgins was shot. They now knew who he was and where to find him, so that part was settled. In the process of the questioning, they discovered that there were two more gangs like Hostler's operating in this county. Destroying these gangs would have to wait, stopping Beckwith was more important.

The gang was delivered to the sheriff in Hobbs City, and arrangements were made to hold them in the county jail until a trial could be arranged. The Three Musketeers then checked out of the hotel and rode for Ardmore without delay. Caleb managed to write a report for Judge Hughes during their nightly stops so that the judge would be brought up to date in case something fatal happened to Caleb. The lawmen pushed hard on their journey and made it to Ardmore in only 3 days. Jake, the least likely to be recognized, went into town to mail the letter and pick up some more supplies, while Sam and Caleb found a good camping spot outside of town. They wanted to be sure that Beckwith wouldn't get a hint that they were looking for him.

Sam had found Beckwith's house and had scouted it while there was still enough light to see everything. He concluded that there were two routes they could choose for their approach, and it didn't really make much difference which one they took. One of the routes had a better place to hide their horses, so they chose that path.

Caleb was a little surprised and concerned that an ex-Army man had left such an opening in his defenses, so he was extra cautious as they approached the house. It was a good thing, too, because they did find a guard who was blocking their way. Fortunately, the guard was not taking his job seriously enough, he was lounging and smoking a cigar; they smelled him before they saw him! This guard was easily overpowered, bound, and gagged before he could raise any sort of alarm. They did question him about other guards and were informed of two guards who wandered at random and might spot them at any time. They figured that they had better take out these two guards before going any farther; it wouldn't do to be surprised at the wrong moment.

They didn't exactly split up, but did separate far enough to cover a significant amount of ground as they began a sweep of the property for the roving guards. In the process, they found and overpowered two more fixed guards. The lawmen were about to give up the search when they found the two roving guards hunkered down in some bushes smoking cigars and splitting a bottle of whiskey. Their respect for Beckwith's security efforts were pretty low by now and fell to zero when they caught up to these last two bumpkins.