XIVThe Mucker
FOR some little time after his chief had gone to sleep, Silas Plegg bent thoughtfully over his task at the trestle-table. It was said of him that he could live and work with less sleep than any other man on the staff, and his nightly vigils proved it. Now and again the midnight workers on some remote section of the job would look up to find the first assistant staring down at them from some coign of vantage, and the shirkers never knew at what moment the cool, crisp voice of the under-boss would come crackling out of the shadows with a snap like that of a whip lash.
With the slipping of the rubber band over the last of the field-books, Plegg rose noiselessly and left the car as if to begin another of his nocturnal rounds. In the shadow of the cement sheds he overtook the yard watchman.
“Anything stirring, Mac?” he asked.
“Nothin’ but that tunnel mucker they call ‘Simmy’. Early in the evenin’ I caught him prowlin’ ’round the big boss’s private car. I asked himwhat he was doin’ and he said he couldn’t sleep. I wouldn’t ’a’ thought nothin’ of it if you hadn’t told me to keep an eye out for him.”
“Anything else?”
“Nothin’ much, ’cept that the next time I come around I catch him snoopin’ under the windows of yours and Mr. Vallory’s sleep-wagon. This time I takes him by the ear and runs him over to his bunk shack and tells him to stay there till his shift’s called.”
“How long ago was that?” Plegg inquired.
“’Bout a half-hour, I reckon. He—Well, I’ll be dog-goned! Look yonder!”
Plegg had already seen. The sputtering light of a distant masthead showed a lop-shouldered figure making off across the yard, dodging as it went to keep within the shadows cast by the scattered material cars.
“I’ll go after him,” said the watchman; but Plegg stopped him.
“No, Mac; stay on your job. I think this may be what I’ve been waiting for.” And as craftily as if he had been trained in Indian warfare, the first assistant set out to trail the dodging figure.
After the first few hundred yards down the tracks it was not difficult to guess the tunnel mucker’s destination. He was heading across thebasin to the mining-camp at the foot of Gold Hill. Plegg did not try to keep him in sight after his direction was assured, contenting himself with closing the gap when the man ahead was entering the single street of the town. Even then the pursuer made no haste and paid no special attention to the lop-shouldered one. It was as if he had known in advance where his quarry would alight, and when the dodging figure was lost finally among the late roisterers still obstructing the planked sidewalks, Plegg pushed on steadily until he reached the corner occupied by Black Jack Dargin’s gambling resort.
At the corner, the first assistant changed his tactics suddenly. Flattening himself against the side of the building he edged his way cautiously down the short side street. Being the headquarters of a leading industry, Dargin’s “place” enjoyed the distinction of standing as the only two-storied building in the camp. With its ground floor devoted strictly to the business of relieving restless or thirsty souls of the hard-earned dollars, the second floor was the living apartment of the master gambler. It was approached by an outside stair, and up this stair Plegg crept on his toes and finger-ends.
The door at the stair-head was closed, but thefirst assistant seemed to know his ground. Noiselessly a skeleton key was slipped into the lock, there was a faint click, and the door swung inward, opening into a dark hall running crosswise of the building. Again Plegg showed his familiarity with his surroundings. Closing the door, and thus shutting himself into the Egyptian darkness of the narrow upper hall, he felt his way carefully to the opposite end of the passage, found and unlocked another door, and stepped out upon a railed gallery running the full length of the building at the second-story level. A few steps to the right two windows and a door gave upon the gallery, and the windows were lighted.
Once more resorting to the Indian tactics, Plegg crouched in the shadow and worked his way silently on hands and knees to the nearest window. The shade was partly drawn down, but since the night was unusually warm for the season and the altitude the window was open a few inches at the bottom.
The view from the gallery was unobstructed. Plegg saw an interior gaudily furnished, a costly carpet, ill-kept and soiled by muddied boots, yellowed lace hangings at the windows, heavy mahogany chairs, scarred and with their leather upholstering chafed and abused, a marble-toppedtable littered with cigar stubs, an ash tray, a scattered deck of cards and an open box of cigars; the whole lighted by a hanging lamp with a cheap tin reflector.
There were two men in the room and they sat on opposite sides of the table. One was the master gambler; he had selected the one wooden chair in the room, and he sat back with his hands in his pockets, rocking the chair gently on two legs. He was in his shirt-sleeves, and the black, Indian-like hair fell forward in a lock that shaded the coldly staring eyes.
The other man was the “mucker” of the yard watchman’s report, the man Plegg had been following. On the Grillage pay-roll he appeared as Simeon Backus, serving on the day shift as a muck shoveler in the eastern heading of the great tunnel. He sat in one of the upholstered chairs with a deep seat, and his deformities—the lopped shoulder and arms much too long for his body—were accentuated. His face, with its lines half obliterated by a ragged beard, lacked none of the villainous characteristics of the ingrained criminal; beady eyes that would look at nothing steadily, a retreating chin, a thin-lipped, acrid mouth.
When Silas Plegg reached his spying place on the gallery, Dargin was speaking.
“Cut it out, Simmy; cut it all out and get down to brass tacks!” he was growling. “Your hard job in the tunnel isn’t any skin off of me; and you get paid twice for it, at that.”
“What little rake-off you give me for steerin’ the money-burners down here don’t cut no ice with me!” snapped the smaller man. “I’ve got bigger game to-night.”
“Shoot,” said Dargin.
“I’ve got a line on the new boss. Did you know he was down here lookin’ you over the other night?”
“I saw him,” was the brief reply.
“Well, he’s goin’ to run you out—clean up the shop—wipe off the slate.”
“Who says he is?”
“He says so, by cripes! I’ve got it straight. This here hell-hole’s got to be took off the map. It’s bu’stin’ up his gangs and robbin’ his men, and he ain’t goin’ to stand for no such. And say, Jack—he’s got the old geezer behind him!”
“Grillage? Not in a thousand years, Simmy.”
“I’m tellin’ you I got it straight. There’s a skirt in it this time.”
“Cough it up.”
“It’s this-away; that young cock-o’-the-walk’s goin’ to marry Grillage’s daughter—see?”
“How do you know he is?”
“There ain’t much that a bunch as big as ours don’t know about its bosses—or that it can’t find out if it tries. Vallory hadn’t hardly lit down on the job before ever’body knew that he got his boost from the inside—that it was all in the family. Why, hell; he’s nothin’ but an overgrowed kid!”
“You talk too many, Simmy,” was the gruff interruption. “Get down to the face-cards and aces.”
“All right, I will. Did you know Grillage is here?”
“I knew he was coming.”
“Well, he’s come—and he’s fetched the girl with him. You know what she tried to get him to do last fall, after Lushing was fool enough to bring that look-see crowd down here from the hotel?”
“I know,” said Dargin. “She tried to get the old man to put the kibosh on us. He wouldn’t do it then; and he isn’t going to back Vallory now.”
“Don’t you believe it! The girl will make him back Vallory, if she feels like it. I’m tellin’ you again—I got it straight. The minute Vallory hears she’s here, he makes a straight shootfor the hotel, and sits most o’ the evenin’ on the porch with her. I kep’ cases on ’em.”
“That doesn’t prove anything.”
“It proves what I’m sayin’. You’re goin’ to get the hook, Dargin, and I’m the one man that can keep it out o’ your liver.”
Silas Plegg, from his cramped spying place on the gallery, saw a bleak smile flicker for a moment in the cold eyes of the master gambler.
“You get your pay, don’t you, Simmy?”
“For leggin’ for your skin game down-stairs, yes. But this time I’ve got somethin’ to sell—somethin’ that Grillage’ll pay for, if you don’t want it.”
“Suppose you tell me what it is, Simmy.”
“I’ll tell you this much: s’pose you could go to Grillage and say, ‘Look-ee here, old sport; I’m wise to somethin’ that’ll knock all the money out o’ this railroad job o’ yours, and then some; you keep this here Vallory hook out o’ me, and I’ll keep mine out o’ you.’ How does that hit you?”
Again Plegg saw the vanishing smile.
“Where did you get all this flim-flam dope, Simmy?”
“Some of it I’ve had a good little spell. The rest of it I got to-night listenin’ under the windows of Vallory’s bunk car.”
“Who was doing the talking?”
“Three of ’em, first and last: young Altman and Vallory, and then Vallory and that gun-totin’ under-boss o’ his’n, Plegg.”
“Supposing I say that I’m not in the market; then what?”
The lop-shouldered man struggled up in his chair and spat his reply out viciously. “Then, by cripes, I’ll go to Grillage himself!He’llbuy!”
“I see,” said Dargin softly. “You’ll sell this thing to me or to Grillage, whichever one of us bids the highest. Is that it?”
“You’re shoutin’ now. I’m tired o’ hidin’ out and dodgin’ Hank Bullock in these dam’ mountains. Some o’ these days he’s goin’ to hike up this-away and get the drop on me; and then”—the misshapen man made a gesture pantomiming the clicking of handcuffs upon wrists. “I want to skip down yonder to Honduras, ’r some o’ them places where they never heard o’ me ’r the croakin’ business in Gunnison. And you lissen to me, Jack; I’m goin’ to have a wad big enough to stake me when I get there, and don’t you forget it!”
The swarthy giant on the opposite side of the table was still tilting his chair and still had his hands deeply buried in his pockets.
“Let’s see if I’m getting it straight, Simmy,” hesaid gently. “You’ve thought it all out, and you’re going to sell this thing you’ve got hold of—and which you haven’t named for me yet—either to me or to the big boss. If I get it, I can make the hook miss; and if Grillage beats me to it—what happens then?”
“Why, then Grillage plays safe on his profit by gettin’ me out o’ the country; see? And then, if Vallory wants to stick his fork into you——”
The man in the deep chair stopped short. The other made no move. His dark face with its leaden eyes and the heavy drooping mustaches was as impassive as the face of the Buddha. The lop-shouldered “mucker” seemed to be trying to read the Buddha face, and when he failed he gave a gulping swallow.
“I—I reckon I’m talkin’ through my hat, Jack,” he wavered. “Grillage ain’t in the deal; I’m goin’ to sell my stock to you.”
Plegg, looking on at a distance of not more than half the width of the room would have sworn that no man of Dargin’s build could have moved so swiftly. At one instant he was swaying gently in the tilted chair. At the next he was leaning across the table and thrusting the muzzle of a pistol against the shrinking body of the talebearer. When he spoke his voice was like the whistling ofthe north wind. “No, Simmy, you’re not going to sell it to me; you’re going togiveit to me,now!”
For possibly five minutes, as if the pressing pistol muzzle were a magnet to electrify and hold him rigid, Simeon Backus, ex-cattle rustler, ex-yeggman, and now a manslayer hiding from justice, sat erect and motionless, pouring forth a stammering story. There was little in the story that was new to the listening ear at the window. Chiefly it was made up of the facts concerning the weak roof in the tunnel—facts still unknown to the railroad people; wherein lay their value to one who could trade upon them. Plegg heard Altman’s talk with Vallory repeated; then, almost word for word, his own talk with Vallory, with the emphasis laid upon the consequences which he, himself, had predicted would follow any leakage of the facts in Lushing’s direction.
Plegg waited until he was measurably certain that he had heard all that Backus had to spill, and when there were signs that the talebearer was about to be released, he hastened to make his retreat, retracing his steps through the dark cross hall and locking the doors behind him with his skeleton key. Safely down the outside stair and afoot in the street he hesitated. The facts aboutthe dangerous tunnel roof were no longer a secret to be carefully guarded by the Grillage staff. They were weapons in the hands of a man who would use them instantly in his own behalf. There were two ways in which they might be used. Dargin might go to Grillage and buy the immunity which the contractor-king would doubtless assure by laying positive orders upon Vallory to let the Powder Can man-traps alone. Or, if by some unheard-of chance, Virginia Grillage could succeed in swinging her father over to her side and Vallory’s, Dargin could use his information to make capital with Lushing, and at one stroke entrench himself with the railroad management and—through the loss which would be saddled upon the Grillage company—square his account with Vallory.
All this the first assistant saw, and saw clearly, in the momentary halt made upon the street corner. Holding his watch in the light streaming from the windows of the Dargin bar-room he found that it stiff lacked a few minutes of eleven. There was a chance and he took it, walking rapidly up the street toward the place where, a few nights before, he had drawn aside to become charitably blind and deaf while David Vallory was talking to Judith Fallon.