The Spoilers of the Valley Part 38

"Stay where you are and tell me all about it," he insisted.

"Stay! Hang it, man,--I canna stay. Come on! I'll show ye. It will be better than sitting here and talking. But bide a bit! We'll get them yet or my name's no' Jim Langford.

"Smiler," he cried, "come here laddie!"

The boy came forward.

"Go up to Mrs. Clunie's. Shut the barn door up there after ye. Don't make a noise. Saddle our two horses and bring them doon to the corner.

Our rifles as well;-they're in the locker behind the stable door!

Quick! Awa' wi' ye!"

Smiler nodded his head rapidly and was up the ladder and off like a shot.

"Come along here!" Jim continued to Phil.

Phil sucked his breath at what he saw, or rather did not see.

It was not a cellar after all,--but a tunnel.

"Weel ye may gasp!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Jim, holding up the lantern and peering ahead. "Come on!

"Have you your revolver?"

"Yes!"

"Keep a grip of it then. I hardly think there'll be a body here now.

But it's as well to keep your wits about ye."

Jim went on first and Phil followed.

Phil's foot struck metal. He looked down.

Two rails ran along the bottom of the tunnel.

"Nothing obsolete about this bunch!" whispered Jim jocularly.

They followed along in caution till they came to a truck on the rails capable of holding twenty sacks of flour or feed at a time.

On either side of them were walls of sacked flour and other grain.

"The Lord only knows how far this underground warehouse extends,"

remarked Jim, "and how many thousands of dollars worth of stuff is cached away in it, ready to haul away as the chance comes along."

They pa.s.sed on until they must have been under Brenchfield's warehouse, when the tunnel dead-ended, branching off to the right and to the left.

Jim stopped.

"That's about all," he said. "Brenchfield's warehouse is above us. The Pioneer Traders' is at the end that way. The O.K. Supply Company's is at the other end.

"See! There is a trap door in each, like this up here, that drops inward and acts as a chute for sliding down the stuff right onto the track. Simplest thing on earth, and it has been going on for years with devil a body the wiser."

"Well!--of all the elaborate thieving schemes!" exclaimed Phil, dumbfounded.

"Elaborate nothing! Why, man, thousands and thousands of dollars worth of feed and flour have been stolen from these three places in the last five years--as much as ten thousand dollars at a crack.

"I'm thinking they've got off with that much right this very night. It is just a great big organised, dirty steal,--that's all. Little wonder some folks get rich quick in this Valley, without any apparent outward reason for their luck either in themselves or in what they seem to be engaged in."

"How did you find all this out?" inquired Phil, his face white with excitement.

"Oh,--easy enough in a way! I was in Brenchfield's warehouse, hiding.

I told you I had the key to it. By good or bad luck--I don't know which--I was hiding on top of the darned trap door without being aware of it. I heard a noise, and thought it was in the warehouse where I was. Suddenly the flour sacks on every side of me began to slide. I had just to slide with them; there was nothing else for it; and before I could wink I was down here and in among the gang,--Rob Roy McGregor, Summers, Skook.u.m, and half a dozen others; the whole of that Redmans gang; half-breeds and dirty whites.

"I shot a hole in one of them, then my gun got struck out of my hand.

I knocked down two with my fists and made a dash for it. I got to the ladder at the old barn there and ran up, but I forgot about a man who happened to be at the top. He dropped the trap-door crash on my head, and that's the last I can mind."

"Good Lord!" cried Phil.

"And the murdering hounds, not content with that, trussed you up and left you here like a rat in a sewer."

"Ay!--to come back later, maybe, when they had more time, finish me off and bury me in the bowels o' the earth."

Jim pulled himself together.

"Phil," he cried, "come on! We're wasting time here. I'm going to get that bunch before I sleep."

Once outside, they reclosed the barn-door, leaving everything exactly as they had found it. Up the road a little, the faithful Smiler was standing with the two rifles, two cartridge belts, and the two horses from Mrs. Clunie's saddled and bridled to perfection.

"Smiler!--go home to bed," said Jim.

Smiler nodded, grinned and ran off.

"Phil, do you know where Jack McLean, the manager of The Pioneer Traders, lives?"

"Yes!"

"Then tear up there and put him wise. Get hold of Blair, their grocery man, as well. He's a grand sc.r.a.pper. Get them to bring their rifles.

"Don't tell a soul but these two what the game is."

"What else?"

"I'm going to rustle up Morrison of the O.K. Supply, then down to the Town Hall for two or three who are game for a free-for-all. Make h.e.l.l-bent-for-leather down to Allison's Wharf at Okanagan Landing. We can leave our horses there, cross the lake to the other side below Redmans, and be on the main road there that leads from Vernock to Redmans a full hour ahead of them; and collar the bunch--men, wagons, feed and every d.a.m.ned thing, as they come sliddering along thinking they're safe."

"Jee-rusalem!" cried Phil, as the plan dawned on him.

"But are you sure they are taking the road that way and that Redmans will be where they are making for?"

"You bet I'm sure! And the long way round the hills and the head of the lake is the only way they can make Redmans with heavy wagons. Any bairn knows that they'll reckon to get there just before dawn. The whole bunch are breeds and klootchmen from there, and they're not likely to cache their steal any place but where they can get at it handy. Now, off you go!"