Kitabı oku: «The Plunderer», sayfa 8
Two men came running down the street with weapons in hand; and the moonlight, which had lifted until it shone white and clear into the squalors of the camp, picked out dim blazes from the stars on their breasts. They were the town marshal and a deputy sheriff, summoned from some distant saloon by the turmoil, and hastening forward to arrest the rioters, not suspecting that men were wanted for a graver offense. Standing alone in the moonlight, in the middle of the road, with her hands clenched before her, the three men discerned another figure, and, when they gained it, saw that in the eyes of The Lily swam unshed tears.
Dick and the smith hastened onward toward her rooms; but Bill abruptly turned, after they had passed her, and spoke. They did not hear what he said. They scarcely noted his pause, for in but two or three steps he was with them again, grimly hurrying to where lay the man they had come to love.
CHAPTER XII
A DISASTROUS BLOW
In after years it all came back to Dick as a horrible nightmare of unreality, that tragic night’s events and those which followed. The grim setting of the coroner’s jury, where men with bestial, bruised, and discolored faces sat awkwardly or anxiously, with their hats on their knees, in a hard stillness; the grave questions of the coroner, coupled with the harsh, decisive interrogations of the prosecuting attorney, who had been hastily summoned from the county seat across the hills; and there in the other room, quiet, and at rest, the faithful old man who had given his life in defense of his friends.
Dick gave his testimony in a dulled voice that sounded strange and unfamiliar, telling all that the engineer had said of the assault. He had one rage of vindictiveness, when the three men from Denver were identified as the ones who had attacked the engineer, and regretted that they were alive to meet the charge against them. He but vaguely understood the technical phraseology of Doctor Mills when he stated that Bells Park died from the shock of the blows and kicks rained on him in that last valorous chapter of his life. He heard the decision placing the responsibility on the men from Denver, saw the sheriff and his deputies step forward and lay firm hands on their arms and lead them away; and then was aroused by the heavy entrance of the camp undertaker to make ready, for the quiet sleep, the body of Bells Park, the engineer.
“He belongs to us,” said Dick numbly; “to Bill and me. He died for the Croix d’Or. The Croix d’Or will keep him forever, as it would if he had lived and we had made good.”
He saw, as they trudged past the High Light, that its door was shut, and remembered, afterward, a tiny white notice pasted on the glass. The trail across the divide was of interminable length, as was that other climb up to the foot of the yellow cross on the peak, and to the grave he had caused to be dug beside that other one which Bells had guarded with jealous care, planted with flowers, weeded, and where a faded, rough little cross bore the rudely carved inscription:
A DISASTEROUS BLOW
MEHITABLE PARK
THE BEST WOMAN THAT EVER LIVED
Those who had come to pay the last honor to the little engineer filed back down the hill, and the Croix d’Or was left alone, silent and idle. The smoke of the banked fires still wove little heat spirals above the stacks as if waiting for the man of the engines. The men were shamefacedly standing around the works and arguing, and one or two had rolled their blankets and dumped them on the bench beside the mess-house.
Two or three of them halted Dick and his partner as they started up the little path to the office building where they made their home.
“Well?” Bill asked, facing them with his penetrating eyes.
“We don’t want you boys to think we had any hand in any of this,” the old drill runner said, taking the lead. “They jobbed us. There were but three or four of the Cross men there when they voted a strike, and before that there wasn’t a man that hadn’t taken the floor and fought for your scale. The meeting dragged for some reason, because old Bells kept bringing up arguments–long-winded ones–as if holding it off.”
He appeared to choke up a little, and gave a swift glance over his shoulder at the yellow landmark above.
“If any of us had been there, they’d never have gotten him. We all liked Bells. But they tell me that meeting was packed by that”–and he suddenly flamed wrathful and used a foul epithet–“from Denver, and the three thugs he brought with him. Mr. Townsend, there ain’t a man on the Cross that don’t belong to the union. You know what that means. You know how hard it is for us to scab ourselves. But there ain’t a man on the Cross that hasn’t decided to stick by the mine if you want us. We’re making a protest to the head officers, and if that don’t go–well, we stick!”
Dick impulsively put out his hand. He could not speak. He was choking.
“Want you, boys? Want you?” Bill rumbled. “We want all of you. Every man jack on the works. You know how she’s goin’ as well as we do; but I’m here to tell you that if the Cross makes good, there’ll be one set of men that’ll always have the inside edge.”
The men with the blankets grinned, and furtively flung them through an open bunk-house window. They all turned away, tongue-tied in emotion, as are nearly all men of the high hills, and tried to appear unconcerned; while Dick, still choking, led the way up the trail. The unwritten law of the mines had decreed there should be no work that day; and he saw the men of the Cross pass down the road, arguing with stolid emphasis against the injustice of the ordered strike. He knew they would return to the camp and continue that argument, with more or less heat, and wondered what the outcome would be.
He tried to forget his sorrow and bodily pains by checking over his old assay slips, while Bill wandered, like a bruised and melancholy survivor of a battle, from the mill to the hoist, from cabin to cabin, and mess-house to bunk-house, stopping now and then to stare upward at the peak, as if still thinking of that fresh and fragrant earth piled in a mound above Bells Park.
Once, in the night, they were awakened by the sounds of the men returning, as they discussed their situation and interjected copious curses for the instruments of the tragedy. Once again, later, Dick was awakened by a series of blasts, and turned restlessly in his bed, struck a match, and looked at his watch, wondering if it had all been a dream, and the morning shots of the Rattler had aroused him. It was but three o’clock, and he returned to his troubled sleep thinking that he must have been mistaken. Barely half-awake, he heard Bill climb out of his bed and don his clothing, the whistle pulled by the new hands, and the clang of hammer on steel in the blacksmith’s shop. Then with a start, he was aroused from the dreamless slumber of the utterly exhausted by a heavy hand laid on his shoulder and a heavy voice: “Wake up, Dick! Wake up, boy! They’ve got us.”
He sat up, rubbing his eyes and fumbling with the cordings of his pajamas. Bill was sitting on the edge of his bed, scowling and angry.
“Got us? Got us?” Dick repeated vaguely.
“Yes. Dynamited the Peltons, and I’m afraid that ain’t all. We’ll have to go up the pipe line to find out.”
Dick rolled out and jumped for his clothing. He did not take time to follow his partner’s kindly suggestion that he had better go to the mess-house and get the “cookie” to give him a cup of hot coffee. He was too much upset by the disaster, and walked rapidly over the trail. Not a man was in sight around the works; and as he passed the smith’s door, he saw that Smuts, too, had gone, without taking time to don his cap or doff his apron. The whole force appeared to have collected around the power-house at the foot of the hill, which was around a bend and shut off from view of the Cross. A jagged rent, scattered stone and mortar, and a tangle of twisted steel told the story; but that was not the most alarming damage he had to fear, for the heavy steel pipe, where it entered the plant, was twisted loose, gaping and dry.
He scrambled up the hill, seizing the manzanita brush here and there to drag himself up faster, and gained the brow where the pipe made its last abrupt descent. Far ahead, and walking sturdily, he recognized the stalwart figure of his partner, and knew that Bill was suffering the same anxiety. He ran when the ascent was less steep, and shouted to the grizzled miner ahead, who turned and waited for him.
“I’m afraid of it,” Bill called as he approached; and Dick, breathless, made no reply, but hurried ahead with him to the reservoir. In all the journey, which seemed unduly long and hot that morning, they said nothing. Once, as they passed the familiar scene of his tryst with Miss Presby, now ages past, Dick bit his lips, and suppressed a moan like that of a hurt animal. Bitterly he thought that now she was more unattainable, and his dreams more idle than ever they had been. And the first sight of the reservoir confirmed it.
To a large extent, the reservoir of the Cross was artificial. It had been constructed by throwing a deep stone and concrete dam across a narrow cañon through which there percolated, in summer, a small stream. Its cubic capacity was such, however, that when this reservoir was filled by spring freshets it contained water enough to run the full season round if sparingly used; and it was on this alone that the mill depended for its power, and the mine for its lights and train service, from hoist to breakers.
Where had stood the dam, gray with age and moss-covered, holding in check its tiny lake, was now nothing but ruins. The shots had been placed in the lower point, which was fifty feet down and conical as it struck and rested on the mother rock. Whoever had placed the charges knew well the explosive directions of his powder, and his work had been disastrously effective.
The whole lower part of the dam was out, and through it, in the night, had rushed the deluge of water so vital to the Croix d’Or. Small trees that had grown up since the dam had been built were uprooted in the bed of the cañon, and great bowlders pulled from their sockets and sent resistlessly downward. Where, the day before, had been grassy beds and heavy growths of ferns, was now but a naked bed, stripped to the rock, down which flowed a small stream oozing from what had been the reservoir.
The partners stood, as if paralyzed, on the edge of the gulch, and looked down. The catastrophe, coming on top of all that had gone before, was a death blow, stupefying, stupendous, and hopelessly irremediable.
“Well, you were right,” Dick said despairingly. “They’ve got us at last!”
Bill nodded, without shifting his eyes from the ruin below. They stood for another minute before scrambling down the cañon’s steep side to inspect more closely the way the vandalism had been effected. Slipping down the muddy bank, heedless of their clothing or bruised hands, they clambered over the broken pieces of wall, and looked upward through the great hole and into the daylight beyond. The blow was too great to permit of mere anger. It was disaster supreme, and they could find no words in that time of despondency.
“I’ll give a hundred dollars toward a reward for the man who did that,” shouted a voice, hoarse with indignation, above them; and they looked up to see the smith on the bank, shaking his smudged and clenched fist in the air.
“And I’ll take a hundred more,” growled one of the drill runners in the augmenting group behind him.
And then, as if the blow had fallen equally on all, the men of the Cross stormed and raved, and clambered over the ruins and anathematized their unknown enemy; all but one known as Jack Rogers, the boss millman, who silently, as if his business had rendered him mute as well as deaf, stood looking up and down the gulch. While the others continued their inspection of the damage, he drifted farther and farther away, intent on the ground about him, and the edge of the stream. Suddenly he stooped over and picked up something water-stained and white. He came back toward them.
“Whoever did the one job,” he said tersely, “did both. Probably one man. Set the fuses at the power-house, then came on here and set these. Then he must have got away by going to the eastward.”
“For heaven’s sake, how do you figure that out?” Dick asked eagerly, while the others gathered closer around, with grim, inquiring faces, and leaned corded necks forward to catch the millman’s words.
“I found a piece of fuse down at the power plant,” he said. “See, here it is. It’s a good long one. The fellow that did the job knew just how long it would take him to walk here; and he knew fuse, and he knew dynamite. The proof that he did it that way is shown by this short piece of fuse I found down there at the edge of the wash. He cut the fuse short when he shot the dam. He wanted the whole thing, both places, to go up at once. Now it’s plain as a Digger Indian’s trail that he didn’t intend to go back the way he came, so he must have gone eastward. And if he went that way, it shows he didn’t intend to hit it back toward Goldpan, but to keep on goin’ over the ridge cut-off till he hit the railroad.”
Dick was astonished at the persistent reasoning of the man whom hitherto he had regarded as a singularly taciturn old worker, wise in milling and nothing more.
“Now, if there’s any of you boys here that know trails,” he said, “come along with me, and we’ll section the hillside up there and pick it up. If you don’t, stay here, because I can get it in time, and don’t want no one tramplin’ over the ground. I was–a scout for five years, and–well, I worked in the Geronimo raid.”
Dick and Bill looked at him with a new admiration, marveling that the man had never before betrayed that much of his variegated and hard career.
“You’re right! I believe you’re right,” the superintendent exclaimed. “I can help you. So can Dick. We’ve lived where it came in handy sometimes.”
But two other men joined them, one a white-headed old miner called Chloride and the other a stoker named Sinclair who had been at the Cross for but a few weeks, and admitted that he had been a packer in Arizona.
Slowly the men formed into a long line, and began working toward one another, examining the ground in a belt twenty feet wide and covering the upper eastward edge of the cañon. Each had his own method of trailing. The white-headed man stooped over and passed slowly from side to side. Bill walked with slow deliberation, stopping every three or four feet and scanning the ground around him with his brilliant, keen eyes. The stoker worked like a pointer dog, methodically, and examining each bush clump for broken twigs.
But it was Rogers the millman, whose method was more like Bill’s, who gave the gathering call. On a patch of earth, close by the side of the rampart and where the moisture had percolated sufficiently to soften the ground, was the plain imprint of a man’s foot, shod in miner’s brogans, and half-soled. Nor was that all. The half-soling had evidently been home work, and the supply of pegs had been exhausted. In lieu of them, three square-headed hobnails had been driven into the center of the seam holding the patch of leather to the under part of the instep, or palm of the foot. They were off like a pack of bloodhounds, with the old millman in the lead.
Dick started to follow, and then paused. He saw that Bill was standing aside, as if hesitating what to do.
“Bill, old partner,” he said wearily, “if anything can be found they can find it. I think you and I had better go back and try to think some way out of this–try to see some opening. It looks pretty black.”
The big fellow took four or five of his long, swinging steps, and threw an arm over the younger man’s shoulder.
“Boy,” he said, “they’re a-givin’ us a right fast run for our money; but we ain’t whipped yet–not by a long way! And if they do, well, it’s a mighty big world, with mighty big mountains, and we’ll strike it yet; but they haven’t cleaned us out of the Cross, and can’t as long as you and me are both kickin.’ They’ve got poor old Bells. They’ve tried to hand us a strike. They’ve blown our reservoir so’s we can’t work the mill until another spring passes over; and yet we’re still here, and the Croix d’Or is still there, off under the peak that’s holdin’ it down.”
He waved his arm above in a broad gesture, and Dick took heart as they turned back toward the mine, calculating whether they could find a means of opening it underground to pay; whether they would need as many men as they had, and other troublesome details.
CHAPTER XIII
THE DYNAMITER
The men of the Croix d’Or slowly made their way upward toward the higher crest of the range, spread out in an impatient fan whose narrow point was made up of the three experienced men. At times the trail was almost lost in the carpet of pine needles and heavy growths of mountain grass, and again it would show plainly over long stretches where the earth was exposed. It dipped down over a crest and sought a hollow in which ran a mountain stream, spread out over a rocky bed and running swiftly. At its bank they paused. It was plain that their man had taken to the water to retard pursuit, if such came. The millman threw up his hand and called the others around him.
“Before we go any farther,” he said, “let’s find out how many shooting irons are in this crowd. We may need ’em.”
The men looked blankly at one another, expressing by their actions the fact that in all the party there was not one who possessed a weapon.
“Then it seems to me the best thing to do is for one man to go back to the mine and get some,” said Rogers, assuming leadership. “Who ever goes will find my gun hanging up at the head of my bunk in a holster. Bring that and the belt. There’s cartridges in it.”
One after another told where a weapon might be found, and two men volunteered to return for them. It was agreed that the others were to keep on and that after leaving the stream men were to be posted at intervals to guide the messengers as they came up. Rogers proved something of a general in the disposition of his little army, and then, with Sinclair on one bank of the stream and Chloride on the other, he plunged into the water and began an up-stream course.
“It stands to reason,” he argued, “that our man didn’t go down stream unless it was for a blind. He wouldn’t double back because it would bring him out almost where he started. He will keep on up this way until she gets too small to travel in and then will hit off somewhere else. You other fellers keep behind.”
They began a slow, painstaking course up the stream and began to fear they had been mistaken in their surmise, when Sinclair gave a shout. He had found the trail again, a telltale footprint with the patched sole. It broke upward on the other side of the cañon, and now men were posted within shouting distance of one another and left behind to notify the two men bringing weapons which way to go. Across spots where the trail was difficult or entirely lost, and still higher until the timber line was passed and bare gray rocks were everywhere, the man-hunters made their way, and another watchman was left on the highest point. Down the other side and into the timber line again, directed only by a broken twig, a freshly turned bowlder, or now and then a faint suggestion of a footprint, they plunged as rapidly as they could and then through tangled brush until suddenly they came out to an old disused path. Unerringly they picked up the footprints again, and now these indicated that the quarry had felt himself secure against pursuit and made no further attempt at concealment.
“He is heading out to the east, just as you said he would,” the smith declared, as he sat down with the others to await the coming of the messengers. They were certain now that henceforth they would travel rapidly. They talked in low, angry voices among themselves, while Rogers, silent and grim, sat quietly on a bowlder and smoked. A shout from the hilltop attracted their attention and they looked up to see a group beginning to descend. The men with guns had returned and the outposts doubled back on themselves as they came, adding a man at intervals, until they joined those waiting for them. Without delay the men strung out in single file along the path, with the old millman in the lead. For the most part they went as quietly as would Indians on the war-path, loping along now and then down declivities, or panting upward when the trail climbed to higher altitudes. There was no doubt at all that the man who had dynamited the dam was certain of his having evaded all followers, and indeed he would have done so with men less trained and astute.
“Does any one know this country here?” demanded Rogers, suddenly halting his little band.
“I do,” declared one of the drill runners. “I worked over here on this side one time about two years ago. Why?”
“Well, where does this trail go?”
“To an old logging camp, first, then from there there is a road leading over to Malapi.”
Rogers lowered his hand from his ear and looked thoughtful for a moment.
“Many men at the camp?”
“No, I think it’s been abandoned for two or three years,” replied the drill runner. Rogers slapped his hand on his leg, and seemed confident again.
“Then that’s where we’ll find him. In that old, abandoned camp,” he exclaimed. “It’s a ten-to-one bet that he got some supplies up there some time within the last few days, when he made up his mind to do this job, and that he plans to lay quiet there until it is safe for him to get out of the country.”
The others nodded their heads sagely.
“If you’re sure of that,” the drill runner said, “the best thing to do is for us to leave the trail over here a ways and come up to the old camp from behind it. He might be on the watch for this trail.”
“Good again!” asserted the millman. “Here, you take the lead now and we’ll follow.”
For another hour they plugged along the trail with an increasing alertness, and wondering how soon the drill runner would turn off. At last he looked back and gestured to them. They understood. He slipped off the trail into the brush and began going slowly. Once he stopped to whisper to them to be cautious, inasmuch as within a few hundred yards they would reach their goal. Now they began to exercise the utmost caution of movement, spreading out according to individual judgment to avoid windfalls and thickets. Again the lead man stopped and signaled them. He beckoned with his arm, and they closed up and peered where he indicated.
Out in the center of a clearing stood a big, rambling structure that had done service and been abandoned. A slow wisp of smoke, gray and thin, floated upward from the rough chimney, a part of whose top rocks had been dislodged by winter storms. They dropped to the ground and held a whispered consultation. They argued heatedly over the best course to pursue. The millman favored surrounding the cabin, and then permitting him with two others to advance boldly to the door and endeavor to capture their man.
The packer, Sinclair, suggested another course, which was nothing less valorous than a straight rush for the doors and windows; but Chloride fought that plan.
“It ain’t that I’m afraid to take my chances,” he declared; “but if we do that, some of us, with such a crowd, is sure to get shot. We don’t want to lose no lives on a skunk of a dynamiter like this feller must be. I’m for surroundin’ the house, then callin’ him out. If he’s an honest man, he’ll come. If he ain’t, he’ll fight. Then we’ll get him in the long run if we have to fire the cabin to-night.”
“And maybe burn a couple of million dollars worth of timber with it at the same time,” growled the drill runner. “That’s a fine idea! I’m for Jack’s plan. First, line out around the cabin, out of sight of course, then two men walk up and get him. I’m one of ’em.”
“And I the other,” declared Rogers. “Let’s lose no time.”
Silently, as before, the party spread out until it had completed the ring around the cabin and then, when all was in readiness, the millman and the runner, with pistols loosened, stepped out into the open and walked around to the door. There was a moment’s tensity as they made that march, neither they nor the watchers knowing when a shot might sound and bring one of them to the ground. The runner rapped on the door, insistently. It creaked and gave back a sodden, hollow sound, but at first there was no response. He rapped again, and at the same time tried to open it; but it was barred. A voice from inside called, “Hello! What do you want out there?”
“Want to see you,” the runner answered. “Open the door, can’t you?”
There was an instant’s hesitation and then again the voice, “Well, what do you want? Who are you?”
“Two men that ain’t familiar with these parts,” was the wary reply of the runner. “Want to talk it over with you.”
There was the creaking of a bar, and the door was opened cautiously. One eye applied to a crack scanned the runner, who stood there alert. Rogers was out of sight. Apparently the man in the cabin did not recognize the runner, for now he flung the door wide and stepped out. As he did so he saw the millman, whom he recognized, and swiftly pulled a gun and shot at him. Even as he did so the younger man leaped upon him, caught his wrist and wrenched the weapon from his hand. He did the unexpected thing. Instead of fighting, or attempting to regain the cabin, he deftly threw out a foot, tripped the runner against Rogers, leaped over both as they fell, and dashed headlong for the forest. Suddenly, as he gained the edge, several shots cracked viciously, but none of them seemed to have taken effect. He snarled loudly with excitement and plunged into the edge of the timber. Quite as quickly as he gained it a man arose straight in his path, leaped forward, caught him around the waist, and brought him to the ground. Men came rushing forward, almost falling over one another, but arrived too late to assist in the capture. Lying under and pinned to the earth by the huge blacksmith, struggling for release, and cursing between shut teeth, was the man who had been the watchman at the Croix d’Or when its new proprietor arrived, the man Wolff, whose past had been exposed by The Lily in the presence of some of those who were now his captors.
“Might have guessed it,” growled the smith. “It’s like him, anyhow.”
Two others reached over and assisted him. They caught Wolff by his arms and lifted him to his feet, where they held him. Another man ran his hand over his clothes and took out a big hunting knife, sheathed. A further search revealed nothing save a small sum of money and a few dynamite caps. The prisoner attempted to brazen it out.
“What do you mean by this, anyhow?” he demanded. “Bein’ held up, am I?”
No one replied to him directly, but it was Rogers who said, “Lift his feet up there until we get a look at the shoes.” Unceremoniously they hoisted him clear of the ground, although in a sudden panic he kicked and struggled. There was no doubt of it. The shoes were identical with those worn by the man who had dynamited the reservoir dam. The hobnails had betrayed him. For the first time he seemed to lose courage and whined a protest.
“Where were you last night?” demanded the smith, frowning in his face.
“Right here in this cabin. Been here two days now.”
They walked him between them back to the door and Chloride and Sinclair went in. They inspected it closely. They dropped to their knees and examined the deposit of dust. They walked over to the fireplace and inspected the ash surrounding the little blaze, which had been started less than an hour before, as far as they could decide. Below was a heap of mouldy ash that had been beaten down by winter snows and summer rains falling through the broken chimney. The others watched the two inquisitors curiously through the open door.
“If he has been here two days he has moved around the room scarcely at all,” Sinclair declared, “because the dust isn’t disturbed by more than one or two trails. And, what’s more, that fire is the first one that has been built here in many a long month, and it wasn’t started very long ago. It’s too thin. He just got here! He’s the man!”
The prisoner was ringed round by accusing, scowling eyes. He shoved a dry tongue out and wet his lips as if the nervous strain were beginning to tell. He started to speak, but apparently decided to say nothing and stood looking at the ground.
“Well,” demanded Rogers, “what have you to say for yourself? You’ve plainly lied about being here in the cabin. What did you do that for?”
“I didn’t say that I was in the cabin. I slept outside,” Wolff growled.
“Then take us to the place where you camped,” suggested one of the drill runners. A chorus of approving shouts seconded his request; but Wolff began to appear more confused than ever and did not answer. He took refuge in a fierce burst of anger.
“What do you fellows mean, anyhow?” he demanded. “I ain’t done nothin’. What right have you to come up here and grab a man that way? Who are you lookin’ for, anyhow?”
“Wolff,” said the old millman, steadily, “we are looking for the man that blew up the Croix d’Or power-house and dam last night. And what’s more, we think we’ve got him. You’re the man, all right!”
His attempts to pretend ignorance and innocence were pitiful. This impromptu court was trying him there in the open beside the cabin, and he knew that its verdict would be a speedy one. He started to run the gamut of appeal, denial, and anger; but his hearers were inflexible. They silenced him at last.
“We need just one thing more, boys,” said Rogers, “and that is to be sure that these are the same boots that made the tracks there by the dam. All we have to do to prove that is to take this fellow back with us. The tracks will still be there. If they are the same we can be sure.”
“That’s right,” added the blacksmith. “That’d be proof enough. Let’s move out.”
