CHAPTER XXXV
Miss Lowell,schoolmarm, sat in the parlour of her boarding house and corrected spelling papers. Across the lamplit table from her was Hugh McClintock. He was browsing through a volume of poems written by the man who had been for two decades and still was the world’s most popular philosopher of progress. The book was Vicky’s, and she handed it to him with a word of youth’s extravagant praise.
“I think he’s the greatest poet that ever lived.”
Hugh smiled. “He’ll have to step some.” He mentioned Shakespeare and others.
But Vicky flamed with the enthusiasm of a convert. “It’s not only the music of his words. It’s what he says. He shakes the dead bones so. If you haven’t read ‘In Memoriam’ you must.”
“I’ve read it.”
“Did you ever read anything so—so inspiring?”
“It’s great. Remember that Flower-in-the-crannied-wall piece. I don’t recollect how it goes exactly, but he pulls it out by the roots an’ talks at it. Says if we knew what it was and how it had come we’d know what God and man are. I reckon that’s right. He sure set me thinking.”
“I love him.” The girl’s face was aglow in the lamplight. “He’s just wonderful, that’s all.”
It is difficult now to understand the tremendous influence of Tennyson among all the English-speaking peoples fifty years ago. Before Darwin was accepted and even before he had published, the Victorian poet was pointing the way with prophetic vision. He was the apostle of the new age, of the intellectual freedom that was to transform the world. His voice penetrated to the farthest corners of Australia and America. The eager and noble minds of youth turned everywhere to him for guidance.
To-night, however, Hugh was nibbling at verse less profound. He was reading “The Gardener’s Daughter.” A descriptive phrase flashed at him:
A certain miracle of symmetry,A miniature of loveliness, all graceSummed up and closed in little.
A certain miracle of symmetry,A miniature of loveliness, all graceSummed up and closed in little.
A certain miracle of symmetry,A miniature of loveliness, all graceSummed up and closed in little.
A certain miracle of symmetry,
A miniature of loveliness, all grace
Summed up and closed in little.
Involuntarily his glance swept to the dusky head on the other side of the table. Her shining-eyed ardour seemed to him the flowering of all young delight. Another verse leaped out at him from the page:
. . . those eyesDarker than darkest pansies, and that hairMore black than ashbuds in the front of March.
. . . those eyesDarker than darkest pansies, and that hairMore black than ashbuds in the front of March.
. . . those eyesDarker than darkest pansies, and that hairMore black than ashbuds in the front of March.
. . . those eyes
Darker than darkest pansies, and that hair
More black than ashbuds in the front of March.
He turned the pages abruptly and began “The Charge of the Light Brigade.” It would never do for him to get sentimental.
Mrs. Budd opened the door and pushed her head into the room. “Mr. Ralph Dodson’s here an’ would like to see you—on business,” she announced.
“To see me?” asked Hugh.
“No. Miss Lowell.”
“I wonder what about,” murmured that young woman, putting down the paper she was marking.
“He didn’t say.”
“Well, I don’t care to see him.”
“Hadn’t you better?” suggested Hugh. “If he’s got something up his sleeve we might as well know what it is.”
“All right. He can come in.”
Hugh rose to go, but she made a little gesture that asked him to stay. “If you don’t mind,” she said, smiling at him.
“Not a bit. He probably knows I’m here, anyhow.”
Dodson bowed to Vicky, more stiffly to McClintock. The man from Virginia City just acknowledged his greeting.
“If you’ve come to see me about my claim, Mr. Dodson, you can speak before Mr. McClintock. He’s my business adviser,” Vicky said.
The big mine owner was ever so slightly taken aback. “My business is rather private,” he said.
“Do you mean that it is a secret?”
“Oh, no. I have an offer to make you. But first I ought to preface it with a statement of fact,” he said formally. “Your title to the claim you’ve been working isn’t good, I’m afraid.”
“Why isn’t it?” she asked sharply.
“A prior interest in it was held by Singlefoot Bill, an old prospector who located on Bald Knob and worked all over it.”
“He did no work on my claim to speak of. When I began my assessment work there wasn’t a hole two feet deep on the location.”
He smiled. “That will be a matter for the courts to determine, I suppose.”
“The courts. What do you mean?” she snapped. “This old prospector never did any real digging on my claim. He’s dead, anyhow. Who is there to make trouble?”
“Nobody will make you trouble, I’m sure, Miss Lowell,” said Dodson with a suave smile. “My brother and I will be pleased to sign over the claim to you.”
“Sign it over to me? What haveyougot to do with it?”
“We own it. We own practically all the Bald Knob group of mines.”
Hugh spoke for the first time. “News to me, Mr. Dodson. When did you get ’em?”
“Almost two years ago. We bought out Singlefoot Bill.”
“Who didn’t own ’em.”
“We think he did. The courts will probably have to pass on the title.”
“He never patented them. How could he, when he had done no work to speak of on them?”
“We’ll prove he did, Mr. McClintock,” purred Dodson. “He seems to have done all that was required.”
“How can you claim that? He hardly stuck a pick in any of the claims that are being worked by us or our friends.”
“I think we’ll be able to furnish evidence to show that he did,” Dodson answered smoothly.
“I don’t doubt that,” retorted McClintock. “You could get witnesses to swear that you are Napoleon Bonaparte. But it’s too raw. You can’t put it over.”
Dodson smiled a thin-lipped smile. “No need to discuss that now. Fortunately Nevada has courts above reproach.”
“It’s plain robbery,” Victoria said indignantly.
“Attempted robbery,” amended Hugh. “It won’t succeed.”
“I’m not here to bandy names. What I came to say is that my brother and I want to do justice, Miss Lowell. You’ve been spending money on the claim you thought was yours. We intend to relinquish it to you.”
“I won’t take it,” the girl answered hotly, her cheeks stained with high colour. “I’ll stand or fall with my friends. You can’t buy me off.”
“If you look at it that way, of course there’s nothing more to be said,” replied Dodson with dignity. “I’m sorry. I’ll say good-evening, Miss Lowell.”
“Just a moment, sir.” Hugh’s voice was like the sound of steel on steel. “What’s this about a warrant for my arrest?”
Dodson looked at him, eye to eye. “Well, what about it?”
“I killed Sam Dutch in self-defence. The coroner’s jury was satisfied.”
“Then so am I. I’m told this warrant charges conspiracy to kidnap and kidnapping.”
Dodson turned contemptuously to the door. At the same instant it opened and Byers stepped into the room. His glance travelled from Dodson to McClintock.
“They’ve jumped our claims,” he said quietly.
CHAPTER XXXVI
When Byersspoke Dodson looked hurriedly at his watch.
Hugh was the first to speak. “Who told you?”
“Jim Flynn. He hustled right down from Bald Knob.”
“Anybody hurt?”
“No. Our boys threw up their hands. Jumpers had the drop on ’em.”
“Flynn know any of the gunmen?”
“Sloan was one,” answered Byers.
McClintock turned to Dodson. “Do you pay yore gun-fighters by the job or by the day?” he asked contemptuously.
“I don’t answer questions put that way, McClintock,” said Dodson stiffly. “Your manner is an insult, sir.”
“It’s an insult if these roughs are not being paid by you. Can you tell me that they’re not?” demanded Hugh, eyes cold as the steel-gray waters of Lake Tahoe on a wintry morning.
“I’ll tell you nothing under compulsion, sir.”
“Which means that I’m right. You and yore brother are back of this outrage. You think you can get away with our property by wholesale bribery. I should think you’d know the men you’re fightin’ better than that.”
“We ask for nothing that’s not ours. We don’t intend to let ourselves be bulldozed out of anything that is.” The dark colour flashed into the cheeks of Dodson. His anger, envenomed by months of repression, boiled out of him as red-hot lava from a crater. “I’ll show you McClintocks whether you run this state. If it takes every cent I’ve got in the world I’ll ruin you both. To hear and see you a man would think you were in partnership with God Almighty. You’ve got folks buffaloed. But not me—not me!” He slammed his fist down hard on the table so that the lamp jumped.
He whirled and strode from the room in a fury.
“War, looks like,” said Hugh, turning with a smile to his friends.
“I never knew him to lose his temper before,” said Vicky. “You spoke pretty straight to him. Do you think that was wise?”
“Why not? He’s been our enemy for a long time. Might as well bring him into the open.”
“He knew the claims were going to be jumped, you think?”
“Yes, but his machine slipped a cog. D’you see him look at his watch when Dan told us? He knew what was on the programme, but it took place earlier in the evenin’ than he had arranged for. That’s how I figure it out, anyhow.”
“What are we going to do about it?” asked Vicky.
She knew that the history of the Nevada and California mining camps was full of tragedies due to disputes over mining locations. Claim jumping was not infrequent, and in a good many cases the jumpers finally won the day. Usually the stronger characters won, regardless of the justice of the case.
“We’re going to get our claims back,” Hugh replied.
Byers nodded. He was as decided on that point as his partner. The only question was in what way.
Sheriff Budd, greatly excited, waddled in; Mrs. Budd was hard on his heels.
“Hell’s hinges, boys!” he broke out. “Have you-all heard what them scalawags have done pulled off?”
“I been expectin’ it,” Mrs. Budd announced calmly. She was a woman impossible to surprise. She made a good wife and mother, but there were moments when Jim wished she wouldn’t say “I told you so” quite as often as she did.
“Then I hope you’re expectin’ us to re-jump ’em, Mrs. Budd,” Hugh said with a grin.
They discussed ways and means. If possible, they meant to get back their property without bloodshed.
“If this was Sloan’s play all we’d have to do would be to throw him out. But there’s brains back of this move. We’re dealin’ with Ralph Dodson. If we gain possession we still have the courts to reckon with. So we’ve got to move carefully and see we don’t blunder into any mistake,” Hugh said.
“You’re shoutin’, Kid,” the sheriff agreed. “It wouldn’t he’p us a whole lot to go up to the Supreme Court with two-three killings on the record against our title.”
They slept on their problem and discussed it again next day. Hugh sent to Virginia City for Scot and a good lawyer. There were more conferences. Out of them came one or two decisions. Scot, Hugh, and their lawyer called at the office of the Katie Brackett and asked to see Ralph Dodson. He was out, but his brother Robert was in. At first he refused to meet them, but his visitors were so insistent that they would not take no for an answer.
Dodson had them admitted to his office. Sloan sat beside him. Another gunman was in the room. From the yellow-gray eyes of the mine owner a furtive look slid round at the McClintocks and their lawyer.
“Now, looky here, Browning,” he said irritably to the lawyer, “there’s no manner o’ use in you pesterin’ me. See Ralph. He’ll talk turkey with you. I got nothin’ to do with this.”
“All we want is to see the paper you and Singlefoot Bill signed up. We’re entitled to see it. You’ve jumped the Ground Hog and other claims owned by my group of clients. We’d like to look over your title. Of course we’re all anxious to avoid trouble. The only way to do that is to let us know where you stand.”
Dodson listened sourly. But he was not a fool. He knew Browning could get a court order to look at the paper. There was no real objection to it, and when one is playing an underhanded game it is better to give an impression of bluff frankness.
“You’ll gimme yore word not to keep the paper nor to injure it—you or yore clients either?”
“Of course. This is business, not highway robbery.”
Dodson shot a slant look of warning at Sloan and went to the safe. He returned with a sheet of foolscap paper upon which had been written an agreement by which William Thornton, known as Singlefoot Bill, relinquished all rights in certain designated patented mining claims on Bald Knob to Robert and Ralph Dodson in consideration of three thousand dollars now paid him in hand.
Browning copied the paper exactly, word for word, and comma for comma. Meanwhile, Sloan, his gun in his hand, watched him and the McClintocks every second of the time. Both brothers looked the contract over.
The lawyer pushed the paper back to Dodson. “Much obliged. Of course it’s not worth the price of the ink on it, but you probably won’t be satisfied of that till the courts have said so.”
“You can bet yore boots we make it good,” retorted Dodson, his dodging eyes jumping to the men he hated so bitterly.
The three callers left the office. From the time they had entered it till the time they left, the McClintocks had not said a word except in asides to their lawyer.
“I don’t know on how solid a foundation their case rests,” Browning said as they walked along Turkey Creek Avenue. “But it never does to underestimate your opponents. First, we’ll check up and try to learn if the claims ever were patented. Then we’ve got to find out all about that contract, the circumstances under which it was signed, whether there was any record of it made at Austin. We ought to be able to discover if old Singlefoot showed any evidence of having money immediately after it was signed. Think I’ll go to Austin and make some investigations.”
“Yes, let’s get to the bottom of it,” Scot agreed. “It looks fishy to me that they’d pay Singlefoot three thousand for claims not worth a cent then.”
“Especially when he had no valid title and all they had to do was to relocate them,” added Hugh.
“Not like the Dodson way of doing business,” admitted Browning. “I don’t know where the nigger in the woodpile is, but he’s there somewhere.”
“Think you’d better go to Austin with Mr. Browning, Scot,” Hugh said. “You have so many friends there you might be able to find out something important.”
Scot dropped a hand on his brother’s shoulder. “Want to cut me out of the fun here, do you? Couldn’t think of leaving yet. But I’ll tell you what I will do. I’ll join Browning at Austin soon as we’ve taken the next trick.”
“Which is——?”
“To get possession of the Ground Hog and the other claims.”
“You ought not to figure in that, Scot,” the younger brother protested. “You’re a public character now. You’ve got to look at the future. Politically——”
“I’ve got to live with myself a few years, Hugh. How would I feel if I ducked out and left you to handle this job? No, I’ll go through. It’s up to us to use some strategy so as to get our properties back without killing anybody. That’s what our brains are for.”
Hugh did not push his point. He knew when he was beaten.
“I’ve been millin’ over an idea that might work out,” he said.
“What is it?”
“I haven’t got it quite worked out yet. In an hour or two maybe I’ll unload it from my mind.”
As soon as Browning had left them he sketched his plan to Scot.
Colonel McClintock’s eyes began to shine. “Ought to work out fine, if the valley lies as you say. Let’s go right to it to-night.”
“To-night suits me,” said Hugh. “But we’ll have to hustle the arrangements.”
They spent a busy day.
CHAPTER XXXVII
Backof Piodie, on the other side of a high ridge, is a deep valley hemmed in by rock-rimmed walls. Its area is about ten or fifteen acres.
The McClintocks climbed the ridge and looked down into the park. It was filled with dead and down piñon. Two years before a fire had started there, had raged furiously for a day, and had died down before the persistent attack of a heavy snowstorm. Since that time a new growth of underbrush had come up.
Scot and Hugh circled the rim, studying carefully the contour of the slopes. The upper half of these were rock-ribbed. The timber had climbed up to these boulder outcroppings and had there given up the fight to reach the summit, driven back by the lack of soil in which to root. Down in the basin the dead trees had crashed and lay across each other in confusion.
“The fire never could have got out of the valley even if the snow hadn’t stopped it,” Scot said.
“That’s how it looks to me,” Hugh agreed. “The only thing that could make it dangerous would be a high wind.”
“It would have to be a gale to spread the fire outside. The rocks made a break as safe as a fireplace.”
They covered every inch of the rim to make sure of this. They did not want to take any chance of setting fire to the town. Before they left the valley they were satisfied that a fire inside it could not do any damage.
Budd and Byers, who knew the people of the town better than the McClintocks did, set about gathering allies for the night campaign. Piodie was full of lawless adventurers ready to take a hand in any enterprise directed against the Dodsons. The difficulty was not to get enough of them, but to select the ones with cool heads not likely to be carried away by excitement.
As Vicky was walking home from school she met Hugh.
“Tell me everything. What have you done? Did he let you see the contract? Have you plans made yet?” In her eagerness the words of her questions tumbled over each other.
Hugh told her all he thought it was good for her to know. He trusted implicitly her discretion, but it was possible there might be blood shed in the attempt to win back the claims, and he did not want to make her a party to it.
“I wish I could help,” she sighed. “It’s horrid sometimes to be a girl. If it wasn’t for my school I could go to Austin, though, and look up the contract.”
“Yes, you could do that fine. But the fact is I want to get Scot away from here. Robert Dodson hates him. I don’t think he’s safe on the streets. You know how it is with gunmen. Their trigger fingers itch to kill men with reputations for gameness. Ever since that affair at the Ormsby House, Scot has been a shining mark. If Dodson should egg them on——”
The girl looked at him with an odd smile. “I supposeyou’resafe enough here.”
“Oh, yes. They won’t bother me.”
“No, I suppose not,” she answered with a touch of sarcasm. “You’re only the man that killed Sam Dutch, the one that dragged him away from his friends to jail. Nobody would want to interfere with anybody as inoffensive as you.”
“I didn’t drag him away, Vicky. You did that when you stopped the rescue at the mine and planned a way to get him out of town.”
“Both you and Scot are too foolhardy,” she scolded. “You go along with your heads up and a scornful ‘Well-here-I-am, shoot-me-down-from-behind-if-you-want-to’ air that there’s no sense in. A man owes something to his friends and his relatives, doesn’t he? No need of always wearing a chip on your shoulder, is there?”
“Does Scot carry a chip on his shoulder?” Hugh asked, smiling.
“Oh, well, you know what I mean. He could try to dodge trouble a little—and so could you. But you’re both so stiff-necked.”
“I reckon Scot figures that the safest way to duck danger is to walk right through it,” he said gently. “There are times when you can’t run away from it. I always run when I can. Different with Scot.Youblow him up good. He needs to take better care of himself, what with Mollie an’ the baby dependent on him.”
“Yes, you run,” she scoffed. “Were you running from it when you plastered this town with handbills about Sam Dutch’s knife? I’ve heard all about it.”
“A man’s got to throw a bluff sometimes, or get off the earth and eat dirt.”
“And the time you ran him out of Aurora.”
“Hmp! If I’d weakened then he’d ’a’ followed me an’ made me Number Twelve or Thirteen in his private graveyard.”
“You make excuses, but there’s something in what Ralph Dodson says—that you act as though you had some kind of partnership with Providence that protected you.”
“If you can point out a single time when either Scot or I went out lookin’ for trouble, Vicky, I’ll plead guilty to being too high-heeled. All we ask is to be let alone. When it’s put up to him and forced on him, a man can’t crawl out of danger. He’s got to go through.”
She smiled. “You put me in the wrong, of course. I know you don’t either of you want trouble. You’ve used the right word yourself. You McClintocks are high-heeled. You walk as though you were king of Prussia.”
“I’ve got him backed off the map. I’m an American citizen,” he answered, meeting her smile.
But though Vicky scolded him, she knew that she would not want Hugh to carry himself a whit less debonairly. Her spirit went out in kinship to meet his courage. She gloried in it that he would not let himself be daunted by the enmity of men less scrupulous and clean of action, that he went to meet unsmilingly whatever fate might have in store for him. Surely it was only in her beloved West that men like the McClintocks were bred.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
Afternight had fallen men drifted inconspicuously to the Pony Express Corral. They were armed, all of them with revolvers, two or three with rifles. If any one had studied the faces of the group that gathered round the lantern held by Byers, he would have voted these men hard citizens. Their eyes were steady. They wasted no words and no gestures. Byers had picked them because, as he had put it, “they would stand the gaff.”
Without any discussion of the subject Scot naturally took command of the expedition. He had learned the habit of it during the war.
“You know what we’re going to do,” he said quietly. “The Dodsons have jumped our claims and put up dummies to hold them. We’ll not stand for it. We plan to get the claims back by strategy. Later I’ll tell you how. I suppose Dan has explained to you where you come in. We’ll give leases on Bald Knob to those who go through with us. Understand one thing. We’re not looking for trouble. I don’t want a single shot fired if we can help it. We’re not going to kill anybody. It won’t be necessary. But you boys know Sloan’s gang. They’ll fight if they get a chance. It’s up to us to see that they don’t get that chance.”
An old-timer who had come round the Horn spoke up: “Sounds good, Colonel. How do you aim to get these bully puss men of Dodson’s to give up without snappin’ a cap at us? You sure got me guessin’.”
“That part of the programme comes a little later, Buck,” Scot said, smiling at him. “I think we can pull it off, but I’m not sure. There’s a risk for us. I don’t deny that. They might get one of us. We’ve got to take a chance on that.”
“Let’s get this right, Colonel. Do you mean if they shoot at us we’re not to give ’em what for back?”
“I mean that if there’s only a wild shot or two we’re not to fire back. This isn’t a feud. We want possession of our property. The whole thing will have to be fought out in the courts later, so we don’t want to go to law with a black record of any killings against us. Besides, we’re peaceable citizens who want our rights. We’re not gun-fighters.”
“All right,” grinned Buck. “You’re runnin’ this shebang. I never was in a drift just like this before, but I reckon it’s all right. If I’m the one they get, Colonel, you’ll have to be chief mourner at the plantin’.”
“Don’t worry, Buck. Our diamond drill’s going to strike pay ore sure. It’s the Dodson crowd that’s likely to be in borrasca. Now if you’re all ready we’ll be travelling.”
Byers led the way up the gulch back of the corral. Before the party had gone far a young moon came out and lit the path. They picked their trail through the sage and greasewood to the head of the ravine and followed a draw which took into the cow-backed hills. The pony express rider wound round to the rear of Bald Knob and climbed a spur upon which grew a fairly thick grove of pine nut. Here he stopped.
“Better camp here, I reckon.”
The men unrolled their blankets and prepared a fireless camp. Soon most of them were sound asleep. Scot and Byers moved up the shoulder of the hill to reconnoitre. They knew that guards would be watching to prevent a surprise, so they took precautions against being seen. By following a swale through the brush they were able to come close enough to see dimly the shaft house of the Ground Hog and the slaty dump which straggled below like a thin beard.
“Looks quiet enough,” Scot whispered.
Byers nodded.
“Hugh won’t begin to paint the sky till after midnight,” the Colonel went on. “About that time we’ll bring the men up here into the draw and have them ready. You’re sure that little fellow Madden is all right? He won’t betray us?”
“You can tie to him,” Byers said.
“I don’t doubt his good will. What about his judgment? He looks simple. That’s all right, too, if he’s not shrewd enough not to make a mistake.”
“He won’t.”
“If they suspect a thing it’s all up with the plan.”
“Gotta take a chance.”
“Yes.”
They lay in the sage for hours, the multitudinous voices of the night all about them in whispers of the wind, rustlings of furtive desert dwellers, the stirring of foliage under the caress of the breeze.
McClintock read midnight on the face of his watch and murmured to his companion, “Time to get the men up.”
Byers rose without a word and disappeared in the darkness.
Far away toward the north a faint pink began to paint the sky. The colour deepened till the whole sky above Piodie took on a rose-coloured tint.
The men from the camp below joined Scot. One whispered to another, “Look at the sky, Ben.”
“Fire, looks like. Bet it’s Piodie,” the other said, startled.
“No, it’s not Piodie. It’s the valley back of the big hill north of town,” McClintock told them.
“How do you know, Colonel?” asked the first speaker.
“Because that painted sky is a part of our fireworks,” he answered. “I’ll explain the programme, boys. Madden is to run across the shoulder of the hill toward the Ground Hog. When the guard stops him he’ll shout, ‘Fire in Piodie; whole town burning up.’ He’ll explain that Dodson wants them all to come back to fight fire. My guess is that they’ll take one look at the sky and start northmuy pronto. For most of the men guarding the mine own houses in Piodie. The news will spread down the hill, and all we’ll have to do is to walk in and take possession. That is, if we’re lucky.”
“Wow! Some strategy, Colonel. Did they learn you that in the war?” asked the old-timer who had come round the Horn.
“Afraid I can’t take credit for it. Another man made the plan of campaign. It’s up to us to execute it. Ready, Madden?”
“Y’betcha, Colonel.”
McClintock drew him to one side and gave careful instructions. “They’re likely to ask you a lot of questions. Take your time to answer them. You’ll be breathless and panting, because you’ve run all the way from town to bring the news and to get their help. If you can’t think of a good answer tell them you don’t know. You can say the fire was coming down Turkey Creek Avenue when you left and that it was spreading to the residence streets. But don’t know too much. That’s the safest way. You met Bob Dodson and he asked you to come out for help.”
“I’ll say I met him just as I come out from my room fastenin’ my suspenders,” contributed Madden, entering into the spirit of it. “I’ll say I lit a shuck for Bald Knob an’ only hit the high spots on the way.”
“Good. Well, good luck to you.” Scot gave him one more suggestion. “They may leave a man or two at the Ground Hog. If they do, try to lead them round to the north side of the shaft house. We’ll creep up as close as we can and try to surprise them.”
The reaction of Dodson’s mine guards to the news that Piodie was on fire was exactly what the McClintocks had anticipated.
Madden, halted by the sentry, gasped out his message. In an incredibly short time the men were out of their bunks listening to it. Not the faintest gleam of suspicion touched the minds of one of them. Wasn’t the proof of Madden’s story written red in the sky for any of them to read? They plunged back into the bunk house and got into more clothes. As fast as they were ready the men went straggling downhill toward town. Much against his will they had elected a young teamster to stay on guard at the Ground Hog. Madden volunteered to stay with him on duty.
It was easy to lead the teamster round to the north side of the shaft house, from which point they could better view the angry sky and speculate on the progress of the flames.
“Doggone it, tha’s just my luck to be stuck up here whilst the rest of the boys go to town an’ see the fun,” the faithful guard lamented. “I wisht I’d joined the hook an’ ladder comp’ny when I was asked, then I’d sure enough have to go.”
Madden sympathized. It was tough luck. If he wasn’t all tired out running from town he certainly would like to see the fire himself. Sure enough it was an A-1 fire.
They sat down on a pile of timbers that had been hauled up to the Ground Hog for sets to be used in underground work.
A man came round the corner of the shaft house and moved toward them. The guard caught sight of him and remembered what he was there for. He jumped up and pulled out a revolver.
“Keep back there!” he ordered excitedly.
The man moved evenly toward him, hands buried in his trousers pockets.
The guard backed away. “Who are you? Git back there. Hear me? Git back.”
In a duel of wits the man who is certain of himself has the advantage of the one who is not sure. Scot McClintock did not lose a stride. His unhurried indolence radiated confidence.
“Want a little talk with you,” he said quietly. “Thought probably——”
“Git back or I’ll plug you. Sure will.”
“Oh, no. No sense in that. Bob Dodson now——”
The teamster had backed to the wall. He did not know what to do. He could not shoot a man lounging toward him with his hands in his pockets. Perhaps Dodson had sent him, anyhow.
“Did Dodson——?”
The question died in his throat with a gasp of consternation. He recognized now this easy-mannered intruder as the redoubtable Colonel McClintock, and he was not sufficiently alert-minded to meet the situation. If the man had come at him six-shooter in hand, he would have known quickly enough what to do. But in the fraction of time given him he hesitated. McClintock was a big man in the state. The teamster was not sure how far Dodson would back him. He had been hired by Sloan to take orders and not to show initiative. Before he could make up his mind the chance was lost. A dozen men poured round the corner of the house.
Irritably he barked out a question: “What in Mexico you-all doin’ here?”
Colonel McClintock held out his hand smilingly. “Your six-gun please.” Voice and eyes both carried an imperative.
The teamster clung to his long navy revolver. “Looky here. I’m in charge here. Dodson won’t like you fellows hellin’ around the Ground Hog.” His wandering eye took in the flushed sky, and found there a momentary inspiration. “Mebbe you don’t know Piodie is burnin’ up right now. You-all better light out for town.”
McClintock did not answer in words. His steady eyes still held the man with the weapon. His hand was still extended. Reluctantly, against his own volition it seemed, the teamster’s arm moved forward. He was still telling himself he did not intend to give up the six-shooter when Scot’s fingers closed on the barrel.
The two stood a moment, eye to eye. The mine guard’s hand dropped slowly from the butt of the weapon.
“You carry good life insurance, Colonel?” asked drily the old forty-niner.
McClintock divided his command. One third of the men he left with Byers in charge of the Ground Hog. The rest he took with him to the other claims that had been jumped. One of these was deserted. At another they found the guard asleep. The jumpers on Scot’s claim surrendered at discretion to superior numbers. Those who had been left at Vicky’s fired a few wild shots, but as soon as they learned that the Ground Hog had been captured they gave up with the honours of war.
The battle of Bald Knob had been won by the attackers with no casualties.
CHAPTER XXXIX
Scotwas called back to Carson on official business, so that it was Hugh who entrained for Austin to join Browning on his search for evidence. In the old days of the pony express the boy rider had seen Austin a score of times. It was in the heart of a desert that stretched six hundred miles from east to west, a desert walled in by the Rockies on one side and the Sierras on the other. The town lay huddled between the sides of a cañon which ran sharply up from the Reese River valley. Houses were built everywhere and anywhere, on ground so steep that one side of a house often had a story more than the other. It was a place of dirty sprawling shacks surrounded by dry dusty plains upon which no birds or wild beasts could be seen. The note of the place was its raw crudeness. For here, half a thousand miles from San Francisco, the first wave of Pacific Coast migration had spent itself.
Yet even Austin had its social amenities—its churches, its schools, its first-class French restaurant, its theatre, and its daily paper. When Samuel Bowles of Springfield, Massachusetts, passed through the town in the middle ’sixties he found its barber shops as well equipped as those of New York and its baths as luxurious as continental ones.
Over a Chateaubriand with mushrooms, following a soup that could have been inspired only by a Gallic brain, Browning and McClintock sat at a small table in the famous French restaurant and discussed the problem before them. The lawyer had made small headway. He knew the date of William Thornton’s death. The man had fallen down a shaft while drunk two weeks after the date of the contract which the Dodsons held. He had found no evidence of any irregularity. Nobody he had met recalled a visit made by the Dodsons to town, but in the ebb and flow of the camp’s busy life they might have been here. For in the boom days hundreds of men drifted in and out each week.
Browning had worked at the court house. Hugh mixed with people at the post office and in saloons. A dozen times that day he turned the conversation upon Singlefoot Bill. He picked up a good deal of information about the habits of that eccentric character, but none of it seemed very much to the point. The first lead he struck was at the Mammoth Lager Beer Saloon, a big resort on the corner of Main and Virginia.
An old-timer had been telling a story about Thornton. After he had finished he pulled himself up and ruminated. “Doggone it, that wasn’t Singlefoot, either. It was his brother Chug.”
This was news to Hugh. “Had he a brother?”
“Sure had.” The old-timer chuckled. “Lived in cabins side by side an’ didn’t speak to each other for years. I reckon the good Lord never made two more contrary humans than Chug an’ Singlefoot.”
“Where’s Chug now?”
“He’s been daid two years.” He referred the matter to another tobacco-stained relic. “When was it Chug died, Bill?”
Bill made a stab at the date. His friend promptly and indignantly disagreed with him. They argued the matter with acrimony, but Hugh learned nothing definite from the quarrel.
He remembered that newspaper editors are encyclopædias of information and departed from the saloon, even though he had read in an advertisement that “Votaries of Bacchus, Gambrinus, Venus, or Cupid can spend an evening agreeably at the Mammoth.”
The editor made Hugh free of his files. He was not sure about the dates of the two old fellows’ deaths. One had died about three months before the other, but he could not even tell which one had passed away first.
“They were alike as two peas from the same pod,” he explained. “Both cranky, gnarled, and tough old birds. Even their names were almost identical. One was Willis Thornton and the other William Thornton.”
Hugh’s eye quickened. He had an intuition that he was on the edge of an important discovery, though he could not guess what it was. He looked through the back files till he came to the issue of August 14th of two years earlier. A short story on the back page was the one he wanted. The last sentence of it sent a pulse of excitement beating through his blood. The story read: