XXIIAt Bridge Three
AFTER the dash in the card-room at Black Jack Dargin’s place, and its immediate and transforming consequences, Silas Plegg, shrewd observer and most efficient of assistants, looked confidently for trouble, and went about prepared to stand by his chief when the trouble should materialize. It was during Lushing’s administration as the Grillage chief of construction that the Powder Can kennels had begun to flourish, and it had been broadly hinted that he had been a sharer in the profits. Rumor had it that he was still hand-in-glove with the kennel-keepers; and with such a lawless contingent at his command, the ex-chief became—at least in Plegg’s estimation—a man whose enmity was to be feared.
Besides keeping a brotherly watch over his chief, Plegg contrived to keep in touch with the Powder Can end of things. Lushing, he learned, had been laid up for a matter of two or three days as the result of the brief card-room battle, and he was still making his headquarters in thePowder Can tavern. Thus far he had not been visible on the work, though from the increased activities of his inspectors it was apparent that he was directing a searching campaign of investigation.
Vallory’s men were required to dig try-holes beside foundation walls of abutments and retaining masonry to prove that the foundations went deep enough. Test-borings were made in the fills to ascertain their density. The slopes of the hill cuttings were surveyed and re-surveyed to make sure that the angles agreed with the map notes. In one of the bridges, Strayer—this time with apologies to David Vallory—had holes drilled to verify the placing of the reinforcing steel. In uncounted ways the investigation was pushed; to the discomfort of all concerned—and also to the sharpening of the wits of those who had something to conceal.
Throughout this interval David Vallory gave an excellent imitation of a man hard at work, riding the line incessantly, encouraging, driving; plotting with his subordinates to outwit the inspectors, and keeping a vengeful eye out for Lushing. In due time it began to be whispered about that “the little big boss,” as he was affectionately called by the rank and file, not only “hadit in” for Lushing, but that he had fairly bluffed the chief inspector off the job. It was known that he went armed; and on at least one occasion when he disappeared for an hour or so in Little Creek gorge, there was some one to report that he had spent the time practicing at a target with a “forty-five.”
Naturally, with so many working crises thickly bestudding the days, David had little time to climb the hill to the Inn; or, if he had the time, he seldom took it. Duty visits he paid, indeed, to his father and sister in the tree-sheltered cottage; but these were brief—crabbedly brief when Oswald chanced to be one of the cottage’s inmates. On all of these excursions he avoided the hotel, with morose offishness in the saddle. None the less, he now and then got a glimpse of Virginia—and chanced to see her always in company with one or both of the men upon whom the desirable moon—unattainable by those who cry for it—seemed now to be shining its brightest.
It was after one of these brief evening visits to the cottage under the pines that David found Plegg waiting for him at the foot of the ridge.
“Just to make sure you shouldn’t be taken off your guard,” said the first assistant; and without further preface: “Lushing is on his way up herewith a bunch of men sworn in as deputies. Crawford has just ’phoned in from bridge Number One.”
“What’s the object?”
“Nobody seems to know, but I have a guess coming. Burford, the new transit-man working with Strayer, gave me a hint. He’s a soak, and yesterday, after he’d been hitting his pocket-bottle pretty freely, he let out a word or two about something sensational which was to follow this epidemic of inspection we’ve been having.”
“Didn’t describe it, did he?”
“No; he was so plainly ‘lit up’ that I didn’t pay much attention to him. But since, I’ve been piecing the odd bits together. This dead set that the railroad force has been making at us can have only one object—to get evidence of some sort against us that will hold in court.”
“Well?”
“I shouldn’t wonder if they have the evidence.”
“The tunnel?”
“No; that is safe, as yet, I believe. It is in the bridges. There is a certain specified penalty for jerry-building bridges that are to be used for human traffic, you know.”
“Bosh!” said David. “These little two-by-four spans we are throwing over the Powder Riverwould carry anything you could pile upon them; you know they would, Plegg. And they’d do it if they didn’t have a single bar of steel in them.”
“Sure!” said Plegg, with a dry smile. “But we’d better be getting over to the car and the ’phone. If those temporary sheriffs are coming up here, we ought to know it.”
“Lushing won’t come,” David averred, as they walked together toward the bunk car office.
“Think not?”
“He’d better not.”
The service telephone was buzzing when they entered the car. Plegg picked up the receiver and held it to his ear. After a time, he said, “It’s Crawford again. He is at Number Three bridge now. The Lushing crowd had a break-down with their gasoline push-car, and Tommy skipped across the hill in the hair-pin curve and got to Number Three ahead of them. He says he talked to one of the men who came back to Number One to borrow a monkey-wrench. The man was foolish enough to let the cat out of the bag and brag about it. The bunch is coming up here to arrest you and Mr. Grillage. Crawford wants to know what he shall do with the few minutes he has at his disposal.”
David Vallory took three seconds for reflection.
“Tell him he has a brain of his own, and now is a good time to use it,” he said shortly. “And you may add that we’d like to buy a little delay if there is any in the market.”
Plegg repeated the message, rounding it out with a demand for a quick report as to results. The waiting interval was remarkably short. When the ’phone buzzed again, Plegg answered with a single word. “Shoot!” he said, and David, sitting in the opposite bunk, could hear the minified repetition of the reporting voice without being able to distinguish the words. Crawford was brief, as befitted a man of action; and when Plegg returned the receiver to its hook he was smiling grimly.
“You’ll have to hand it to Tommy for being able to make a hurry use of what little brain he may have,” he commented. “He slipped a stick of dynamite into the stone bin at Number Three, and now he says there are about forty tons of crushed rock spilled on the track for the gasoline car to climb over. And the car is not yet in sight.”
“That is better,” said David coolly. “They’ll get around the obstruction, no doubt, but it will hold them for a little while. Now for our part of it. You once remarked that the law doesn’treach this far from the nearest court-house. We don’t know, officially, that these men are coming as officers, and we’ll act upon that ignorance. You go over to the bunk shacks and turn out a handful of Brady’s day-shift men. Tell them to bring pick-handles. Then go to the light plant and tell the night engineer to listen for a pistol shot. If he hears one, he is to pull the switch on the yard circuit and leave us in the dark.”
“So that the Lushing crowd won’t be able to identify any of us?”
“So that we shan’t be able to identify them—as officers.”
“Once more I’m apologizing to you,” said Plegg, in mild irony. “Anything else?”
“Nothing, except that you are to pick your men, and let it be understood that the raiders are after Mr. Grillage and me. If you pick the right men, they’ll fight for that. I’ll run over to theAtheniaand get Mr. Grillage out of the way. I don’t want to have him mixed up in this, even by implication.”
As Plegg went one way, David went the other, hurrying across to the private Pullman, which he knew was occupied because it was lighted. When he pushed through the vestibule swing-door he found the contractor-king poring over an estimatesheet. Taken for an instant off his guard, the big man looked haggard and care-worn. It was this that made David begin with a sober protest.
“You put in too many hours down here, Mr. Grillage,” he said, much as he might have said it to his own father. “How about that fishing trip you were going to take with Dad?”
“We’re going, pretty soon, now,” was the gruff reply. And then: “David, you’re right; I’ve got too darned many irons in the fire, and some of ’em get too hot, and some of ’em freeze. Hurry up and get through with this Short Line crucifixion, so you can take hold and blow some of the other bellowses for me.”
“‘Crucifixion’ is right!” said David, with a workmanlike scowl. “I haven’t worried you much about the job lately, but the railroad people—with Lushing egging them on, of course—have been mighty active for the past few days—perniciously active, I’d say. I didn’t know what was up until just now; though I’ve been ready for anything. It seems they’ve been trying to find a peg upon which to hang a legal fight, and they think they’ve found it—just what sort of a peg, I don’t know.”
“Legal, you say; do you mean criminal?”
“Plegg thinks it may be; based on allegedjerry-work on the bridges, or something of that sort. Anyhow, Lushing is on his way up here with a gang of subsidized deputies, and Crawford telephones that the object of the raid is to arrest you and me.”
“Huh!” grunted the giant, straightening himself in his chair. “Going to try that, is he?”
“So Crawford says. I came to ask you to go up to the hotel and let me handle it.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Some few days ago I met Lushing and we had a—er—well, a little disagreement, you might call it. He——”
“I heard about it,” interrupted the boss of bosses, with a satisfied grin. “You beat him up and warned him to stay off the job if he wanted to keep his hide whole. I owe you something for that, David; it did me a whole lot of good. But go on.”
“Plegg’s getting a few of Brady’s Irishmen together, and we’ll take care of these raiders. We don’t know, in any legal way, that they are deputies, and we shall act accordingly. What I need is to get you out of it; so far out that you won’t know anything about it, if any one should ask you after the fact.”
Eben Grillage gripped the edge of his deskwith both hands and pulled himself out of his chair. David marked the forced muscle-strain that went into the effort, and immediately saw a curious change come over the massive face with its staring eyes and hanging, dewlap jaws.
“Run away from a fight, David? I guess—it would be the—first——”
David leaped, and was in time to ease the big body back into the swing-chair before it could crumple and fall. For a few seconds Eben Grillage sat motionless, purple-faced and gasping. Then he reached into a desk drawer, found some tablets in a druggist’s box, and swallowed one. The effect was almost instantaneous.
“It’s all right, now, David,” he mumbled, a bit thickly; “just a little spell. But it’s telling me that my fighting days are over, I guess. Lucky I’ve got you, my boy. Stick me up on the hill path, and I’ll keep out of your way and give you a free hand.”
David did more than was required. Precious as time might be, he went all the way to the Inn with his charge, and at the leave-taking laid filial commands upon the man whose right to command him he had never questioned.
“This settles it, Mr. Grillage,” he protested warmly. “To-morrow you’ll take Dad and yourfishing tackle and get out of here—go away and stay away until we get this railroad snarl straightened out. Go on in, now, and go to bed. Plegg and I will do the needful.”
With this parting injunction he fled down the ridge path and took command of the little group of huskies that Plegg had assembled beside the bunk car.
“Any more news?” he demanded; and Plegg answered.
“Another ’phone from Crawford. He is blockaded in the Number Three bridge office shack, but he got a bit of talk through before they cut his ’phone wire. Lushing has taken our night shift off the bridge and set it at work shoveling the crushed stone off the track. Tommy says they will be able to get through with their gas-car within the next few minutes.”
“Good. We won’t wait for them,” said David quickly. “Get that engine up there at the coal chute, and couple an empty flat-car ahead of it, and another behind it. Hurry!”
The order was carried out briskly, and when the oddly made up train slowed to a stand beside the bunk car, the pick-handle squad climbed upon the rearward car, and the chief and his first assistant sprang into the engine cab. “Down the line!”was David’s order to the engine-driver, and the train moved off, gathering such momentum as the roughly surfaced construction track permitted.
In the make-up of the train the engine was backing, with an empty flat-car for its pilot. Being a construction machine, the locomotive had a headlight at either end. With the yard switches left behind, David reached up, uncoiled the short signal-bell cord, and shouted into the ear of the big Irishman at the throttle. “Listen, Callahan: I’m going up on the coal to keep a lookout and flag for you. If I give you one bell, clamp your brakes and make an emergency stop; if I give you two bells, let her have all she will take. Understand?”
The Irishman nodded; and David, with Plegg at his heels, climbed over the coal to a lookout position on the rear end of the tender. By this time the scenery, or so much of it as the starlight revealed, was unreeling itself rapidly on either hand, and in the beam of the tender-carried headlight the straight-away stretches of the track rushed up in quick succession to be shot to the rear under the roaring wheels. “Lord!” yelped Plegg; “if we should meet ’em on a curve!——” but David Vallory made no reply. He was gripping the bell-cord and staring steadily down thetrack ahead, following the double line of rails to the farthest reach of the spreading cone of light.
As it chanced, the meeting point with the gasoline-driven push-car was not on a curve. On the mile-long tangent which marked the approach to bridge Number Three the converging lines of the rails in the distance met in a dark blot; a moving blot that shot quickly into the glare of the headlight. Plegg saw a series of black dots tumbling grotesquely from the blot to right and left, heard a sharp double clang of the signal in the cab behind him, and felt the sudden lurch of the tender as the engine’s throttle was opened. “Duck!” was the command shouted in his ear, and the next instant there was a crash and the air was filled with flying wreckage.
Luckily, no wheel of the attacking train was derailed, and a minute or so later, Callahan, in obedience to a signal from his chief, was braking the heavy “mogul” to a stop beside Crawford’s dynamited rock pile. The place was light with flares, the concrete-pouring on the bridge had been resumed, and Crawford came down the staging runway with a broad grin on his boyish face.
“I saw a little of it from the far end of the staging,” he chuckled. “How many of ’em did you get?”
“Not any of them, I hope,” said David Vallory soberly, as he swung down from the engine step. “It was meant for an object-lesson—not a murder. Now talk fast, Crawford: how many of them are there, and who are they?—besides Lushing?”
“Seven in all, besides the boss-devil; and they looked to me like Brewster toughs, or hold-up men, or something of that sort.”
“Armed?”
“Sure!—one of ’em ran me off the staging with a gun.”
“Brewster toughs, you say?—are you sure they are not Powder Can toughs? Lushing would have to take them to Brewster to have them sworn in as deputies—which would account for their coming from down the line.”
“By George—that’s so! I did see a bunch of plug-uglies going down on the stub train yesterday, come to think of it.”
David Vallory turned upon Plegg. “There you are,” he said. And then to Crawford: “We are going back to headquarters now, and maybe they’ll give us a scrap as we go by, and maybe they won’t. If they don’t show up for us, they may come down here and make trouble for you. How about that?”
“I’ll take my chances,” returned the bridge expert cheerfully. “I have my old pump-gun now; it was in the office shack, and I didn’t have sense enough to go and get it before they came up and fell on me. I’ll stand ’em off, all right, if they try to stop the job again.”
“You said one of them came to you at Number One to borrow a monkey-wrench: what did he say?”
“He was just joshing me a few lines while I was looking for the wrench; said I wouldn’t have any bosses to-morrow, because they’d both be in jail. I asked him who he meant by ‘both’, and he said, ‘the big one and the little one.’ I took that to mean you and Mr. Grillage.”
“You probably guessed right; but the man was a liar. We are not going to jail—any of us. And before I forget it: you’ve done a good job to-night, Crawford, and I shall see to it that you get credit where it will do you the most good.”
“I don’t need any credit; it’s all in the day’s work,” laughed the cheerful bridge builder; then, as his chief was turning to climb into Callahan’s cab: “Oh, say—I meant to ask you: have you seen Lushing since you—er—since he went into retirement a few days ago? He’s a plumb sight! You broke his nose; turned it around so it pointseast when he’s going north. Gee! but he looks fierce!”
“It ought to have been his neck,” was the brittle rejoinder, and then the double-ended train pulled out for the return.
There was no demonstration at the point where the abandoned gasoline car had been demolished, though David had the train stopped and got off with his pick-handle squad to beat the covers. The straight piece of track was on the river bank, with a wooded hill on the left from which a few determined snipers might have wrought havoc with the beaters, but no man was found and no shot was fired.
Plegg spoke of the probabilities as the train proceeded up the valley.
“We are through with them for to-night,” was his prediction. “It is eight miles to Powder Can or the Gap, and only four to Agorda. They’ll go east instead of west.”
“Yes,” David agreed; “now that they know they can’t bluff us. That is what I meant to do; turn the bluff the other way around. I guess we did it.”
The first assistant, isolated in his seat on the fireman’s box, held his peace until the train came to the end of its run in the headquarters yard.But on the way over to the bunk car with his chief, he had a word to add, and added it.
“Now that Crawford has dumped the wheel-barrow and spilled all the garden truck, I can speak of a thing we’ve all known since the story of your manhandling of Lushing drifted into camp. Lushing is peacock-vain; no stage-door johnnie was ever more so. Even when he was here on the work he kept his mustaches curled, his beard trimmed to a hair, and his clothes looking as if he had just stepped out of a tailor’s shop. You’ve spoiled his beauty for all time, and he’d draw and quarter you for it if he could.”
“As a matter of fact, I hit him only once; it was all the chance I had before his gun went off. But I don’t care what I’ve done to his face, Plegg. As I remarked to Crawford, I’m only sorry I didn’t break his neck.”
“Perhaps it would have been safer if you had,” was the quiet suggestion. “As it is, he’ll never forgive you, and he won’t be satisfied with any light revenge. Which brings on more talk. I have a notion that this ‘arrest’ business to-night was pure bunk. I don’t doubt that Lushing had gone through all the forms and had sworn out the warrants. Doubtless, he was going to make a bluff at serving them. But, Vallory, I’ll bet alittle round gold dollar with a hole in it that the real play was to make you put up a fight so that you might righteously be killed in resisting an officer of the law.”
Again David said, “I don’t care,” and Plegg went on calmly. “If that is the play, we’ll have to take measures accordingly. You mustn’t run around on the job unless I’m with you. If you will pardon me for saying it, you are not quite quick enough on the draw, as yet; and you haven’t learned to hold the other fellow’s eye while you’re doing it. That is about all the difference there is between living and dying when it comes to a show-down, you know.”
They had boarded the bunk car and were preparing to turn in. David looked up from the boot-unlacing and his eyes were bloodshot.
“Damn your grannying!” he flared out savagely. “When I need a wet nurse I’ll advertise for one!”
A few seconds later he looked up again, to find Plegg chuckling softly.
“What the devil are you laughing at?” he snapped.
The chuckle expanded into the first assistant’s slow, half-cynical smile. “And once, not so many months ago, I was idiotic enough to cherish thenotion that you might be too good!” he exclaimed, in mock self-derision. And with that, he rolled himself in his blankets and turned his face from the light.