The Plunderer Part 17

They saw that the lights in the miners' hall were out, and began a steady tour of the saloons in the vicinity. One of their own men was in one of them--s.m.u.ts, the blacksmith, cursing loudly and volubly as they entered.

"Them boys has always treated us white clean through," he bawled, banging his fist on the bar, "and a lot of you pikers that don't know nothin' about the case sit around like a lot of yaps and let this Denver bunch pack the meetin' and declare a strike. Then you let the same Denver bunch jump on poor old Bells, and hammer him to a pulp after they've hustled him out of the door, instead of follerin' out to see that he don't get the worst of it. Bah! I'm dead sick of you."

The partners had paused while listening to him, and he now saw them.

"Come out here, s.m.u.ts," d.i.c.k said, turning toward the door, and the smith followed them.

"So they've ordered a strike on us, have they?" d.i.c.k asked.

"Yes," was the blacksmith's heated response; "but it don't go for me!

I stick."

"Then if you're with us, where is that Denver bunch?" Bill asked; and d.i.c.k knew that any effort to deter his partner from his purpose would prove useless.

"They all went down to the High Light," the smith answered. "Have you seen Bells?"

"Yes, and taken care of him. Now I'm goin' to take care of the man that done it."

The blacksmith banged a heavy hand on the superintendent's shoulder.

"Bully for you! I'm with you. We'll go together!" he exclaimed, and at once led the way toward the flaming lights of the High Light but a few doors below.

d.i.c.k nerved himself for the inevitable, and grimly walked with them as they entered the doors. As they stood there, with the big miner in front, a sudden hush invaded the babel of noise, and men began to look in their direction. The grim, determined man in the lead, glaring here and there with cold, terrible eyes, was too noticeable a figure to escape observation. The set face of his partner, scarcely less determined, and the smith, with brawny, clenched hands, and bushy, black brows drawn into a fierce scowl, completed the picture of a desperate trio come to avenge.

"You're the man I'm after," suddenly declared Bill, pointing a finger at Thompson, of Denver, who had been the center of an admiring group.

"You're the one that's responsible for old Bells. Let's see if you or any of your bunch are as brave with a younger man. Come outside, won't you?"

When first he began to speak, in that silky, soft rumble, Thompson, who was nearly as large as Mathews, a.s.sumed an air of amused disdain; but before the speech was ended his face went a little white.

"Oh, go on away, you drunken loafers!" he said, half-turning, as if to resume his conversation.

Instantly Bill sprang at him; and it seemed that he launched his sinewy bulk with a tiger's directness and deadliness straight through the ten feet intervening. He drove his fist into the face of the Denver man, and the latter swept back against those behind him. Again he lifted the merciless fist, and now began striking with both with incredible rapidity. The battered Thompson was driven back, to fall against a faro layout. The miner bent him backward over the table until he was resting on the wildly scattered gold and silver coins, and struck again, and this time the blood spurted in a stream, to run across the green cloth, the staring card symbols, and the case rack.

"Don't kill him, Bill, don't kill him!" d.i.c.k's shout arose above the shouts of men and the screams of dance-hall women. He had barely time to observe, in a flash, that Bill had picked the limp form of Thompson up, and heavy as it was, lifted it high above his head and thrown it violently into a vacant corner back of the table in a crumpled heap, when he was almost felled to the floor by a blow from behind, and turned to fight his own battle with one of the Denver bullies.

His old gymnasium training stood him in good stead; for, half-dazed by the blow, he could only reel back and block the heavy fists that were smas.h.i.+ng toward him, when there came a sudden pause, and he saw that the smith had forced his way forward and lunged, with his heavy, slow arm, a deadly punch that landed under his a.s.sailant's ear, and sent him limp and dazed to the floor. The smith jumped forward and lifted his heavy boot to kick the weaving face; but d.i.c.k caught him by the arm, and whirled him back in time to prevent needless brutality.

"There's another of 'em that hit Bells," the smith yelled, pointing to a man who began desperately edging toward the door.

All the rage of the primitive was aroused in d.i.c.k by this time, the battle l.u.s.t that dwells, placidly through life, perhaps, in every man, but which breaks loose in a torrent when once unleashed. He leaped after the retreating man, seized him by the collar, and gave a wrench that tore coat, collar, and tie from the man's throat. He drove a blow into the frightened face, and yelled: "That for old Bells Park! And that!"

The room had become a pandemonium. Men seemed striking everywhere.

Fists were flying, the bartenders and gamblers shouting for order; and d.i.c.k looked back to where s.m.u.ts and Bill were clearing a wide circle as they went after individual members of Thompson's supporters who were edging in. Suddenly he saw a man leap on the bar, and recognized in him the man who had been watchman at the Croix d'Or. Even in that tempestuous instant d.i.c.k wondered at his temerity in entering the place.

Something glistened in the light, and he saw that the watchman held a drawn revolver, and was leveling it at Bill. The motion of the fight was all that prevented the shot, as Mathews leaped to and fro. A dozen men were between d.i.c.k and the watchman; but almost under his hand, at the edge of the bar, stood a whisky bottle. He dove for it, brought it up, and threw. The watchman, struck fairly on the side of the head, dropped off backward, and fell to the floor behind the bar, and his pistol exploded harmlessly upward.

Instantly there came a change. From terrific uproar the room became as still as a solitude. Brutal and deadly as had been that fierce minute or two of battle in which all men fought, or strove to protect themselves from the maddened ones nearest, the sound of the shot brought them to their senses. A fight was one thing, a shooting another. Gunmen as many of them were, they dreaded the results if firearms were resorted to in that dense ma.s.s of excited men, and each one stood still, panting, listening, calmed.

"I think Bells Park has played even," came a calm, steady voice at the door.

They turned in surprise. Standing in the doorway, motionless, scornful, and immaculate, with her white hat still on her head, as if she had just entered from the street, stood The Lily.

"Poor old Bells! Poor old man!" she said, in that panting silence, and then for what seemed a long time looked at the floor. "Bells Park,"

she said at last, lifting her eyes, "is dead!"

Suddenly, and before any one could speak, she clenched her hands at her sides, her eyes blazed, her face twisted, and went white.

"Oh," she said bitterly, in a voice low-pitched and tortured with pa.s.sion, "I hate you! I hate you! You brutes of Goldpan. You gambling dogs! You purchasers of women. From this time, forever, I am done with you!"

She lifted her arms, opened her hands, and made one wide, sweeping, inclusive gesture, and turned and walked out into the night.

"Dead! Dead! Bells is dead!"

d.i.c.k heard an unutterably sorrowful voice exclaim; and Bill, half-denuded, his blue s.h.i.+rt in shreds, his face puffed from blows, and his cut knuckles dripping a slow, trickling red, plunged toward him, followed by the smith. No one blocked their way as they went, the three together, as they had come. Behind them, the room broke into hushed, awed exclamations, and began to writhe and twist, as men lifted and revived the fallen, and took stock of their injuries.

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 b.r.e.a.s.t.s. 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.

d.i.c.k and the smith hastened onward toward her rooms; but Bill abruptly turned, after they had pa.s.sed 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 d.i.c.k 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 b.e.s.t.i.a.l, 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.

d.i.c.k gave his testimony in a dulled voice that sounded strange and unfamiliar, telling all that the engineer had said of the a.s.sault. 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 d.i.c.k 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 gla.s.s.

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 d.i.c.k 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.