The Freebooters of the Wilderness Part 38

The Sheriff smiled a sickly smile and ''lowed it waz.'

Wayland took the record of the mine's output per day. (It averaged a net return of forty per cent. dividend on a capitalization of ninety million.) Then, he took the record of what the Smelter could consume per day. The difference must be used for s.h.i.+pment or storage. Wayland did the counting and measuring. MacDonald jotted down the notes. The downy-lipped youth proceeded along the tunnel with an air of supreme contempt. It was as they were about to enter the second tunnel that his superiority expressed itself. Matthews afterwards said it was because the black water drip or coal sweat was seeping through the overalls.

"I don't see what we're delaying to take all these specific measurements for anyway," he said.

"Don't you?" asked Wayland. "Then I'll tell you! I have the affidavit of the most of the 'dummies' that the homestead entries were fraudulent! You could see that if you knew that men can't farm at an angle of ninety! In case that fails, I want proof that this coal is so valuable it is being s.h.i.+pped out. I want exact proofs of the exact profits being made on the fraudulently acquired mines."

"What's your idea? Shut 'em up from development for ever?" asked Brydges belligerently.

"Brydges," said Wayland, "when you find you can't throw your pursuer off the trail by the skunk's peculiar trick of defence, I'd advise you to try kicking sand in the public's eyes and drawing a rotten herring across the trail! This time, I think you'll find, the public won't go off the trail after the rotten herring. They'll keep on after the thief."

It was at that stage, Bat fell back abreast of the Sheriff, and Matthews behind heard one of the two say, "d.a.m.n him, then, let him go on and examine his bellyfull! It's his funeral; not ours!"

Wayland not only examined the second tunnel above the first, but he insisted on descending a shaft that had been sunk almost vertically from the crest of Coal Hill to get a measurement of the veins, for stoping, or cross cutting, or drifting or some such technical work, I forget what; but the vertical shaft afforded estimates of the depth of the veins. Because it was not a regular avenue of work but only of examination, it had not been equipped with steam hoist and electric light, but was furnished only with such old fas.h.i.+oned hand winch as the stage driver had described to Eleanor. A huge bucket depended by cable from the hand hoist. It was as they were all lighting lanterns and stepping in, that MacDonald took a look at the hoist and noticed that the Sheriff was to give a hand at the winch.

"Not coming Brydges?" asked Matthews, who was already in the bucket.

"Oh, I guess I'm a pretty heavy man to go in that."

"Then, A guess you're afraid of what's goin' t' happen! We're not goin' down, without you, m' boy."

Bat winked at the Sheriff and clambered in. It was then something on the edge of the _Brule_ arrested MacDonald's glance; Calamity coming through the cottonwoods mad and dishevelled, O'Finnigan reeling up from the Smelter City trail mad with whiskey, waving a bottle and shouting--"What's th' use o' anything? Nothing! I'm Uncle Sam!

Hoorah!"

"Go on," ordered MacDonald curtly. "I'll keep the notes safe up here, in my pocket, Wayland! I'll stay and give Sheriff Flood a hand at the hoist!"

The Sheriff looked for directions to Brydges.

"Let her go," ordered Brydges with a glance back over his shoulder towards the trail from Smelter City; and the winch creaked and groaned; and the bucket fell with a b.u.mp; then a steady drop to the first vein.

When Matthews looked up, the slant of the shaft had cut off the sky.

Brydges didn't bother clambering out of the bucket. He was silent and kept hold of the dependent cable. Suddenly, there was a rumble as of the hoist flying backward, then the whip lash of a taut rope snapping, and the cable whirled down in a coil round Brydges' head.

"Gee whiz! This is a pretty mess! The cable's broke; and we can't get up!"

"What's that?" called Mathews. Wayland and the others were examining the black wall of the shaft.

Matthews flashed his hand lantern in Brydges' face. It was ashen doughy, with sagged lips. "Wayland, have y' on y'r mountaineerin'

boots, the boots pegged wi' handspikes?" cried the old frontiersman.

"The cable's broken; and A like t' see y' s.h.i.+n for th' top soon as possible!"

Something in the voice must have caught the ear of the news editor; for he turned back and flooded his lantern, first on Matthews' face, then on Brydges'.

"You'll climb easier if you pull off y'r overalls and fasten y'r lantern in y'r hat, Wayland," he said in the same cutting voice he used in the hurry and rush of the composing room.

If Mr. Bat Brydges had been after a feature story, he had it then and there; the tenebrous thick coal darkness; the drip-drip-drip of the water-soak through the rock walls; Matthews' eyes blazing like coals of fire in the dark, his lantern s.h.i.+ning full on Brydges; the news editor hatchet-faced, white of skin, with pistol point eyes, his lantern full on Brydges; the downy-lipped youth white, terrified, chattering of jaws, unable to speak a word, clutching to the edge of the bucket to hide his trembling, his hat had fallen off, his lantern had fallen out of his hand, and a great blob of black coal drip trickled from his yellow hair down his cheek in front of his ear; and the handy man still standing in the barrel, his face chalky and soggy like dough, with a show of bluff, but unable to look a man in the face, gazing at his feet in the bottom of the barrel:

"Gawd, Wayland! Don't risk it! Don't climb! Wait a little! They'll wind her up and drop another rope down to us and--"

The Ranger had begun climbing. They could see the s.h.i.+ne of the lantern in his hat against the black moist rock wall; up and up, slow, sure and light of foot, swinging from side to side for hand grip; hands first finding foot hold; then a leg up; and another foot hold.

"Look out fellows," he warned once. "I might knock some of these small rocks loose!"

Then, the light of the lantern disappeared at a bend in the shaft.

"It's a darned dangerous thing to do," p.r.o.nounced the handy man thickly.

Not one of the men answered a word, and the silence grew impressive by what it didn't say.

Once Wayland had turned the bend of the shaft, the rest of the way up was easy. Daylight was above, and the climb was a gradual slant over uneven ridged rock; and with the grip of the pegs in his mountaineering boots, he ascended almost at a run on all fours.

"Hullo up-there," he called, "what's wrong?"

There was no answer. He ascended the rest of the way winged and came out hoisting himself from his elbows to his knees with a deep breath of pure air above the surface. At first, daylight blinded him. He threw the lantern from his hat and blinked the darkness out of his eyes.

"It's all right fellows," he roared down the shaft, funnelling his hands.

Then he looked.

Sheriff Flood was not to be seen. Neither was MacDonald. There seemed to be no one. The day s.h.i.+ft were going back in the tunnels below. The windla.s.s handle hung p.r.o.ne as a disused well. It had not flown back broken. The cable had been cut. Then, he heard a groan. It was Calamity lying on her face at the foot of the windla.s.s, weeping and reaving her hair. Stretched on the gra.s.s a few paces back from the windla.s.s with two b.l.o.o.d.y bullet holes full in the soft of the temple, lay MacDonald, the sheep rancher, beyond recall.

Wayland stooped and felt for the heart.

It was motionless. The body was chilling and stiffening. He looked back at the face. There was almost a smile on the lips; and one hand hung as if fallen from the windla.s.s handle. A suspicion flashed through Wayland's mind. He could hardly give it credence. It was preposterous, unbelievable, like a page from the lawlessness of the frontier a hundred years ago! Yet hadn't this thing happened in California, and happened in Alaska? They would never dare to murder a man conducting an investigation ordered by the great Government of the greatest Nation on earth! Yet had they not tried to a.s.sa.s.sinate representatives of the great Federal Government down in San Francisco, and shot to death in Colorado a federal officer sent straight from Was.h.i.+ngton? And these murders had not been committed by the rabble, by the demagogues, by the anarchists. They had been pre-planned and carried out by the vested-righter, in defiance of law, in defiance of the strongest Government on earth and up to the present, in defiance of retribution.

Wayland tore open the coat and felt for the notes. They were gone. He looked at Calamity. A darker suspicion came. Then, he caught the Cree woman by the shoulder and threw her to her feet.

"Calamity who did this?"

"Th' trunk man, O'Finnigan! Flood, he lead heem up; an' t' trunk man shoot, shoot quick close--lak dat," she said snapping her fingers round behind Wayland's ear against the soft of his temple.

Wayland's suspicions became a certainty.

"They will blame you," he said, "do you understand me? They will prove _you did_ it; and hang you! Ride for your life! Ride for Canada; and hide!"

Was he thinking of Calamity or Eleanor? But where was Flood; and where was the drunken man?

He fastened a stone to the end of the cut cable, and with a shout began dropping it down and down from the windla.s.s.

CHAPTER XXVI

THE AWAKENING

By all the tricks of stage-craft and book-craft, of the copybook headlines and plat.i.tudinous lies which we have had rammed down our throats since childhood, virtue should have triumphed in the person of the Ranger, because he fought regardless of consequences for right.