Free Massacre Canyon by William W. Johnstone

could explore the wall’s surface with his hands. It felt like the same sort of thick, slightly rough planks that were underneath him. He twisted, pushed with his feet, and worked himself up into a sitting position with his back leaning against the wall and his legs drawn up to the side.
    Luke had been on a few boats in his time. The rocking motion reminded him of being at sea. It wasn’t bad enough for that, he decided. He became aware of a steady, rhythmic thudding, and that told him what he wanted to know.
    The sound came from the hooves of a horse or mule team striking a road. He was in an enclosed wagon with the bed suspended on leather thoroughbraces that were old and not very strong anymore, hence the swaying and bouncing.
    Luke scooted himself along the wall to his left until he reached a corner. The sound of the horses’ hooves wasn’t as loud here, so he assumed he was farther away from the team, which would make this a rear corner.
    Inch by inch, he slid over to the other rear corner. His best estimate was that the wagon was eight feet wide.
    He continued his awkward explorations and determined that the closed wagon bed was roughly eight feet by ten feet. He got his feet under him, braced his back against the wall as best he could with his hands tied behind him, and tried to stand up. That took him a while, as well. He hadn’t straightened to his full height when the top of his head bumped the ceiling.
    The dimensions of his temporary prison were familiar. Even though he hadn’t found them, he would have bet that steel rings were set into the floor so that chains could be attached to them.
    He was in a jail wagon, the same sort of vehicle into which he had prodded countless prisoners at gunpoint over the long years he’d been a bounty hunter.
    That realization made him lean his head against the wall and laugh. It seemed as if the universe was having its own private little joke at his expense.
    After thinking about it for a while, he decided that it was night outside. Even a tightly constructed prison wagon had tiny gaps between the boards in places, and daylight would come through them.
    That theory was confirmed after an interminable time when a very faint gray glow appeared here and there. Dawn was approaching.
    Luke had already figured out that the rain had stopped because he couldn’t hear it anymore. He wondered what direction his captors had gone from Skunk Creek.
    He also wondered if somebody in the settlement would let his prisoners out of the smokehouse when the Swede told everybody about what had happened. If the men who had captured Luke had left the Swede alive.
    Luke hoped they had. He didn’t really care what happened to Andy Eggleston or the three outlaws who had stolen horses from the Block K. If the blacksmith had any sense, he would turn Eggleston over to the law himself and collect the reward. The three horse thieves might wind up being hanged as, well, horse thieves.
    Once they tried to kill him, they deserved whatever they got, as far as Luke was concerned, although they had seemed more stupid than vicious.
    The light coming through the cracks got brighter. Luke saw that he’d been right about the steel rings bolted to the floor. He was surprised that his captors hadn’t fastened his bonds to one of them. Maybe they had figured he was trussed up good enough like he was that he couldn’t get away.
    So far they would have been right.
    The light got brighter, and eventually the wagon lurched to a halt. Luke lifted his head and yelled, “Damned well about time! Get me out of here!”
    He didn’t see any point in pretending not to be awake. They were going to be checking on him anyway, he was sure of that.
    He heard a clunk that he recognized as the sound of a padlock being unlocked, then the lock rattled in a hasp. The door swung back, and after being locked up in absolute darkness and then thick gloom for so long, the light that came into