The Plunderer Part 18

"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!"

d.i.c.k 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 d.i.c.k, 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 pa.s.s 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 a.s.say 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, d.i.c.k 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, d.i.c.k! 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?" d.i.c.k 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."

d.i.c.k 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 pa.s.sed the smith's door, he saw that s.m.u.ts, too, had gone, without taking time to don his cap or doff his ap.r.o.n. 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 st.u.r.dily, 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 d.i.c.k, 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 pa.s.sed the familiar scene of his tryst with Miss Presby, now ages past, d.i.c.k 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 canon 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 canon, and great bowlders pulled from their sockets and sent resistlessly downward. Where, the day before, had been gra.s.sy 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," d.i.c.k said despairingly. "They've got us at last!"

Bill nodded, without s.h.i.+fting his eyes from the ruin below. They stood for another minute before scrambling down the canon'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, hoa.r.s.e 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?" d.i.c.k 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."

d.i.c.k 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."

d.i.c.k 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 d.i.c.k. 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 canon. Each had his own method of trailing. The white-headed man stooped over and pa.s.sed 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.

d.i.c.k 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 pa.s.ses 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 d.i.c.k 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 gra.s.s, 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 r.e.t.a.r.d 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, a.s.suming leaders.h.i.+p. "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 canon, 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 pa.s.sed 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.