The Freebooters of the Wilderness Part 26

The Senator sat in his office with his hat on the back of his head and a U. S. Geological Survey map spread out on the desk in front of him.

Bat stood sleepily at attention on the other side of the desk with his hat in his hand. It was a sweltering July afternoon in Smelter City, the air athrob with the derricks and the trucks and the cranes and the pulleys and the steam hoists and the cable car tramway run up and down the face of Coal Hill by natural gravitation. The light was dusky yellow from the smelter smoke; and loafers round the transcontinental railroad station across the street chose the shady side of the building, where they sat swinging their legs from the platform and aiming tobacco juice with regularity and precision in the exact centre of the gray dusty road.

The Senator wore a pair of pince nez gla.s.ses. He looked up over the top of them through the yellow sun-light of the open street door.

"Declare, Brydges, the d.a.m.ned rascals are too lazy to brush the flies off," he observed of the brigade of loafers across the street.

Bat threw a glance over his shoulder at the coterie of loafers, and brought his drowsy tortoise-sh.e.l.l glance back to the map lying before the Senator.

"I guess the flies won't bother 'em long as they vote right, Mr.

Senator."

Moyese was slowly turning and turning the thick stub of a crayon pencil between his thumb and fore finger. Bat knew that trick of absent-minded motion always presaged senatorial sermonizing, just as the soft laugh down in the crinkles of the white vest forewarned danger. ("When I see the tummy wrinkles coming, I always feel like telling the other fellow to get the b.u.t.ton off his fencing sword--You bet _that_ means business," Bat often confided to the newseditor.)

"Brydges, this country is rapidly lining up two opposing sides: fighting lines, too, by George! Mobocracy _versus_ Plutocracy! I'm only a cog in the wheel, myself, a mere marker for the big counters, my boy; but if I have to put up with the tyranny of one or t'other, I'm d.a.m.ned if I don't prefer the tyranny of the rich to the tyranny of the poor, any day! _Why_, is any man poor in this country, Brydges?

Because he's a d.a.m.ned incompetent unfit swinish hog, too lazy to plant and hoe his own row; so he gets the husks of the corn while the competent man gets the cob--the cob with the corn on, you bet, number one, Silver King, Hard, seventy cents a bushel! If I have to put up with one or t'other, I'm d.a.m.ned if I don't prefer the tyranny of knowledge to the tyranny of ignorance! One b.u.t.ters your bread, anyway, and sometimes puts some jam on with the b.u.t.ter. The other snivels and whines and begs a crust from the other fellow's table, and snaps at the hand that gives him the crust, and spends the time in self-pity that he should spend in work! Look at that row of free-born American citizens, kings in disguise, Brydges! Not a d.a.m.ned man of them ever did a stroke of honest work in his life except on election day, when we line 'em up; and d.a.m.n it, aren't we right, to line 'em up? What kind of rule are you going to get from that kind of rulers.h.i.+p if some one doesn't jump in and group it and direct it; yes, by George, and _compel_ it to keep in line and vote right, just as a general licks his recruits in shape on pain of court martial? Think any battle would ever be won, Brydges, if the commanding officer hadn't the power of a despot? He makes mistakes. Of course, he makes mistakes! So do we! But we're keeping those d.a.m.ned rascals in line for the good of the country; and so, I say, the plutocrats who are being cursed from one end of the country to the other to-day, are playing the same part in modern life as the big war chiefs of the Middle Ages. They are marshalling the forces; leading the advance; conquering the countries with commerce that the old war chiefs used to conquer with arms; building up, constructing, ama.s.sing, concentrating in trust and combine all the scattered abilities of men, who would be powerless individually; and we use our tools, that parcel of beauties out there, same as the old war chiefs used their blackguard mercenaries! It's cheaper for us to buy 'em than be bossed by 'em, a darn sight cheaper, Brydges; for us to swing 'em into a bunch and control 'em than be blackmailed by 'em, Brydges! If every penny grafter didn't hold up the corporation, every d.a.m.ned little squirt of a county supervisor and road contractor and town councilman, if they didn't hold the corporation up for blackmail way the highwaymen of old used to hold up the lone traveller, if they didn't hold us up for blackmail, Brydges, it wouldn't be necessary for us to man that gang across the way on voting day!

"Freedom, pah!" The Senator had stopped swirling the stub pencil. He reached forward to a jar of roses on his desk. "Equality? Pah! Dream of fools, Brydges! Doesn't exist! Never did exist! Never can exist!

Know how we develop Silver King Corn that gives ninety bushels to the acre instead of old thirty bushel yield?"

Bat had sat down, still sleepily watchful through the tortoise-sh.e.l.l eyes, but a bit wilted in the heat. Some of the men swinging corduroy and blue jean legs from the station platform evidently perpetrated a pleasantry; for there was a loud guffaw, and a shower of tobacco wads into the middle of the road.

"Know how we get high grade corn, high grade rose like this American Beauty: in fact, high grade anything? Well, I'll tell you. It's the same process that brings out high grade men. You go into a field of corn. You pick out best specimens. You keep that for seed, special care, special fine ground, special careful cultivation. You let the others go, feed 'em to the hogs, understand, Bat? It's the same with the roses, and the same with men; and now where's your fine theory of all men equal?"

As Bat did not care to remind the Senator that his own career from the ghetto up contradicted all this fine philosophy, he left the question unanswered.

Moyese pushed the gla.s.ses up on his nose and returned to the map.

"How many homesteaders did you succeed in nabbing out of that last train-load?"

"About a hundred, Senator! I've got the list of 'em here . . . haven't counted, but think it will tally up about a hundred."

"What are they, Germans?"

"No, Swedes."

Moyese laughed. "Thrifty beggars will job round and earn double while they're operating for us! Got good big families, Bat?"

It was the turn of the handy man to laugh. "I filed one fellow and eight kids for one hundred and sixty acres each."

"You didn't contract to pay each of the little olive branches three-hundred?"

"Lord, no! If the dad sits tight till we prove up entry, he's to get three-hundred! No fear of his blabbing. He can't speak a word of English; and when I told the woman, through the interpreter that we pay their fare out and each of the kids would get a five, why, she kissed my hand and s...o...b..red grat.i.tude all over me."

"Wayland won't be quite so grateful for that bunch."

"Oh, I didn't file that batch in the N. F. You bet, that's a little too obvious! I put 'em in the Pa.s.s, lower end of the Pa.s.s, not by a d.a.m.n sight, I didn't put 'em in the N. F.! I thought Smelter people wanted us to secure that Pa.s.s for a dam; and I bunched 'em all in just above the Sheriff's place!"

"That's good! The Sheriff proves up this year; and if you get this bunch in behind, that corks the Pa.s.s up pretty effectually! Where are the bounds of the Forest there?"

Bat drew his fore-finger along the map. "Along the red line, here: just to the trail through the canyon."

"Good: now what about the timber claim along the Gully? That's in the Forests, Brydges. I want to force a contest on that; the Swede fellow has cut the logs under his permit; but I'd like to make that doubly sure before we go to trial. If we can get a double cinch on that, we'll knock the claim of the Forestry Department to keep homesteaders out into a c.o.c.ked hat."

Bat's sleepy eyes emitted sparks and his good natured smile widened to an open grin.

"The Swede happened to use a U. S. Forest hatchet when he cut those logs," he said. "I told him to be sure and stamp the b.u.t.t end of each log U. S., duly inspected," he said.

Moyese dropped the map and the pencil and his heavy hand with a thud on the desk and laughed noiselessly down into the creases of his fat double chin and into the wrinkling rotundity of his white vest.

"And to cinch it," continued Brydges, "as the fellow's permit didn't cover the Gully, I got some blanket railway scrip for an Irishman, O'Finnigan, Shanty Town, and planked it on the Gully. You see, Senator, by law the settlers _can_ go in on the National Forests wherever it has been surveyed and declared agricultural land; but they can't go in and get t.i.tle till it is surveyed and pa.s.sed. But you can plaster the railway scrip _where it is unsurveyed_. That's the little joker somebody tucked in when the scrip railway act was pa.s.sed. I guess by the time they have red-taped and trapesed round and wrangled those two tangles of t.i.tle out, the logs will be safe down the River; and I guess that will about see the finish of Wayland before the coal cases come up--"

"That's it, Brydges." Moyese had lowered his voice. "What about Wayland? Have you found out anything? Where the devil is he? He isn't on his patrol! He hasn't been at the Ridge for three weeks. He hasn't been at the Ridge since I left for Was.h.i.+ngton. If we could prove how he's been using Government time," he paused to reflect.

"_That_ might be shortest way out! Did you find out anything at the MacDonald Ranch?"

Bat threw a precautionary glance over his shoulder towards the door opening on the street. Then he rose, walked across the office, shut the door, came back and drawing his chair close to the desk opposite the Senator, sat down astride with his feet tucked back one round each hind leg.

"Yes, I did; and no again, I didn't! It's just as it may strike you!

As a news man, I know _how_ this kind of yarn would be taken by the public."

"Oh, come on with it, Brydges!" Moyese had pushed back and was holding the edge of the desk with his hands. Mr. Bat Brydges recognized that while the creases of good-nature crinkled at the chin, the jaws and the hands had locked.

"Your newsman got this despatch from Mine City: you see it's pretty vague: 'bodies of two men found forty miles from branch of P. & O.

Line, thought to be drovers overcome by heat and thirst.' I wired for more particulars; but the railway hands had shovelled the bodies under."

"Brydges," interrupted Moyese sharply, "I'm going to tell you something; and you put it in your pipe and smoke it; and don't waste time running off on false clues. You leave that to women and sissies--to the she-male man! Now listen, _a man can't lose himself in the Desert: He can't lose himself in the Wilderness_. If he's a damphool, he can get lost, but he can't lose himself, he can't hide in the wilderness, not ever! He can lose himself in a city in one week.

He could drop out of sight right here in Smelter City; but he can't go into the wilds and not come out again and people not know it. Somebody sees him go in, and somebody doesn't see him come out; and there you are! It's the same in the wilds as at the North Pole: you can't cook up a fake. Man who goes into the wilds is a marked man till he comes out. Every man, who meets him, takes a turn round to look at him; and he's going to keep looking till the fellow comes out. Now, you take this case. Wayland had on his Service Badge. If he had been one of those two, the fact would have been flashed right down to Was.h.i.+ngton.

Now tell me facts, not rumors; exactly what did you find out?"

When his chief began in that dictatorial fas.h.i.+on, Bat let his facts go in a running fire:

"Well, Flood saw him with his own eyes going up the Pa.s.s with that old Canadian duffer the morning, the morning," Bat paused, manifestly unable to specify which morning.

"Yes, the morning _after_," added the soft, even voice of Moyese. "And the snow slide filled the Pa.s.s up to the neck, forty-eight hours later.

Yes, I know; but Wayland was too good a mountain man to be caught by a slide."

"I told Flood to get out and examine that slide, anyway! He said 'twasn't any use, this hot weather would clean it up in a couple of weeks. He was going up the Pa.s.s when I left for the Valley yesterday."

"What did you find out at the Ridge?"

"That's where the milk is in this cocoanut," answered Bat. "He hasn't pa.s.sed one night _at_ the Ridge since the night we were all up! You remember _who_ was at the Cabin, night we went up? Well, keep that in mind; when I went across to MacDonald's Ranch to express your regret over this accident, found old man wasn't home. He's expected back from the Upper Pa.s.s by train this week: seems he has been arranging new grazing ground for another herd up there. You know how MacDonald house is laid out? Big room as you enter; then a sort of back sitting room for," Bat smiled queerly, a smile that said nothing, yet subterraneously conveyed out to daylight one of those under currents of thought that flows only in the dark, "for the lady. Well, sir, chill blasts of North Pole were tropical zephyrs compared to what I got from that MacDonald gurl."

"I thought her name was Miss MacDonald," suggested the Senator, softly.

He had lowered his chin and was looking over his eye gla.s.ses at Brydges.

"Hold on, Mr. Senator! I am coming to that! Her father has been away a month. I found out from Calamity and the road gang that Wayland hasn't been at the Cabin since that night I was there; and Gee Whittiker," Brydges laughed sleepily, the same smile that said nothing but came up from the subterranean under current, "he _was_ a bear with a sore head that night; spent most of the night prancing the Ridge.

Well, a fellow can't exactly stand on one leg and then on t'other all through a call. She didn't ask me to sit down. Said her father was coming home by Smelter City and you could have the pleasure of conveying your sympathy personally: kept standing herself all the time; kept looking from me to the door. Well, sir, while she was looking _through_ the door behind me, I was looking _through_ the door behind her." And as Bat said it, he looked away. "Wayland's Range coat was hanging in that inner room."

Bat smiled slowly and sleepily; then openly grinned as who should say "now the cat _is_ out"; but when he turned to Moyese, his chief had whirled in the swing chair and was sitting with hands clasped under his hat, and the back of his head towards Brydges.