The Man from the Bitter Roots Part 39

"What--you tryin'--to do?" he panted.

Bruce panted back:

"I'm going to kill you! Do you hear?" His eyes were bloodshot, more than ever he looked like some battle-crazed grizzly seeing his victim through a blur or rage and pain. "If I can--throw you--across those commutators--before the fireworks stop--I'm goin' to give you fifteen hundred volts!"

A wild fright came in Smaltz's eyes.

"Let me up!" he begged.

For answer Bruce shoved him closer to the dynamo. He fought with fresh desperation.

"Don't do that, Burt! My G.o.d--Don't do that!"

"Then talk--talk! She's going fast. You've got to tell the truth before she stops! _Why_ did you burn out this plant?"

Smaltz would not answer. Bruce lifted him bodily from the floor. In the struggle he threw out a hand to save himself and his finger touched the spring that held the carbons. He screamed with the shock, but the blue flashes were close to his face blinding him before he suddenly relaxed:

"I'm all in. I'll tell."

Bruce let him drop back hard upon the floor and thrust a knee into his chest.

"Goon, then--talk!"

The words came with an effort; he seemed afraid of their effect upon Bruce, then, uncertainly:

"I--was paid."

For the fraction of a second Bruce stared into Smaltz's scared face.

"You were paid," he repeated slowly. "Who--" and then the word came rapier-like as had the thought--"Sprudell!"

"He told me to see that you didn't start. He left the rest to me." With sullen satisfaction: "And it's cost him plenty--you bet--"

Inexplicable things suddenly grew clear to Bruce.

"You turned the boat loose in Meadows--"

"Yes."

"You wrecked it on that rock--"

"Yes."

"You fouled the mercury in the boxes?"

"Yes."

"And Toy!" The look of murder came back into Bruce's face, his hand crept toward Smaltz's throat. "Don't lie! What did you do to Toy?"

Smaltz whispered--he could barely speak--"I'm tellin' the truth--it was an accident. He jumped me--I threw him off and he fell in the sluice-box--backward--I tried to save him--I did--that's straight."

Smaltz kept rolling his head back and forth in an oil-soaked spot where a grease cup leaked. Bruce's knee was grinding into his ribs and chest and his fingers were tightening on his throat.

Bruce raised himself a little and looked down at Smaltz. As he stared at the smudged, bleeding face and into the yellow-brown eyes with their dilated pupils, the rage in his own gave place to a kind of intense curiosity, the scrutiny one gives to a repulsive and venomous insect or reptile he has captured. He was trying to impress upon his own mind the incredible fact that this human being, lying helpless beneath him, watching him with questioning fear, had ruined him without the least personal malice--had robbed him of all he had strained, and worked, and fought for, for pay! It seemed like a preposterous, illogical dream; yet there he lay, alive, real, his face less than two feet from his own.

Finally, Bruce took his knee from his chest and got up. Smaltz pulled himself to his feet and stood uncertainly.

"Well--I suppose it's jail." There was sullen resignation in his voice.

Bruce stopped the machinery without answering. Then he folded his arms and leaned his broad shoulders against the rough boards of the power-house while, eying Smaltz, he considered. A year ago he would have killed him--he would have killed him begging on his knees, but taking a human life either makes a man callous or sobers him and the remorse which had followed the tragedy in the cabin was a sensation Bruce never wanted to experience again.

Penitentiaries were made for men like Smaltz--but in a country of long and difficult distances, with the lax courts and laws indifferently enforced, to put Smaltz where he belonged was not so simple as it might sound. It required time and money; Bruce had neither to spare.

It was so still in the power-house that the ticking of the dollar watch hanging on a nail sounded like a clock. Smaltz s.h.i.+fted feet nervously.

At last Bruce walked to the work-bench and took a carpenter's pencil from a box and sharpened it. He smoothed out some wrapping paper then motioned Smaltz to sit down.

"I want you to write what you told me--exactly--word for word. Write it in duplicate and sign your name."

Consternation overspread Smaltz's face. A verbal confession to save himself from being electrocuted was one thing, to put it in black and white was quite another. He hesitated. Bruce saw the mutiny in his face; also the quick, involuntary glance he gave toward a monkey-wrench which lay on the end of the work-bench within his reach.

Rage burned up in Bruce again.

"Don't you know when you've got enough?" He stepped forward and removed the heavy wrench from Smaltz's reach. "I'll give you just one minute by the watch there to make up your mind. You'd better write, for you won't be able when I'm through!"

They measured each other, eye to eye again. Each could hear the breathing of the other in the silence while the watch ticked off the seconds. An over-sanguine pack-rat tried to scramble up the tar-paper covering on the outside and squeaked as he fell back with a thud, but the face of neither man relaxed. Smaltz took the full limit of the time.

He saw Bruce's fingers work, then clinch. Suddenly he grinned--a sheepish, unresentful grin.

"I guess you're the best man," He slouched to the bench and sat down.

He was still writing when Banule came, breathing hard and still dripping from his frigid swim. He stopped short and his jaw dropped at seeing Smaltz. He was obviously disappointed at finding him alive.

Smaltz handed Bruce the paper when he had finished and signed his name.

Neither the writing or composition was that of an illiterate man. Bruce read it carefully and handed it to Banule:

"Read this and witness it."

Banule did as he was told, for once, apparently, too dumfounded for comment.

"Now copy it," said Bruce, and Smaltz obeyed.

When this was done, signed and witnessed Smaltz looked up inquiringly--his expression said--"What next?"

Bruce stepped to the double doors and slid the bolt.

"There's your trail--now _hit_ it!" He motioned into the wilderness as he threw the doors wide.

Incredulity, amazement, appeared on Smaltz's face.

In the instant that he stood staring a vein swelled on Bruce's temple and in a spasm of fury he cried:

"_Go_, I tell you! Go while I can keep my hands off you--you--" he finished with an oath.