185CHAPTER XVIMETAL AND METTLE
At dawn Blake and Ashton drove up to the waterhole on Dry Fork with their camp equipment. There they left the outfit in the buckboard and proceeded with the line of levels on up the creek bed into the gorge from which it issued.
For more than a mile they carried the levels over the bowlders of the gradually sloping bottom of that stupendous gash in the mountain side. So far the work was fairly easy. At last, however, they came to the place where the bed of the gulch suddenly tilted upward at a sharp angle and climbed the tremendous heights to the top of High Mesa in sheer ascents and cliff-like ledges. Blake established a bench-mark at the foot of the acclivity, and came forward beside Ashton to peer up the Titanic chute between the dizzy precipices. From where they stood to the head of the gulch was fully four thousand feet.
“What do you think of it?” asked the engineer.
“I think this is where your line ends,” answered Ashton, and he rolled a cigarette. He had been anything but agreeable since their start from the ranch.186
“We of course can’t go up with the level and rod,” said Blake, smiling at the absurdity of the suggestion. “Still, we might possibly chain it to the top.”
Ashton shrugged. “I fail to see the need of risking my neck to climb this goat stairway.”
“Very well,” agreed Blake, ignoring his companion’s ill humor. “Kindly take back the level and get out the chain.”
Ashton started off without replying. Blake looked at the young man’s back with a regretful, half-puzzled expression. But he quickly returned to the business in hand. He laid the level rod on a rock and inclined it at the same steep pitch as the uptilt of the gorge bottom. Over the lower end of this he held a plumb bob, and took the angle between the perpendicular line of the bob-string and the inclined line of the rod with a small protractor that he carried in his notebook. The angle measured over fifty degrees from the horizontal.
Having thus determined the angle of inclination, the engineer picked a likely line of ascent and started to climb the gulch chute. He went up in rapid rushes, with the ease and surefootedness of a coolheaded, steel-muscled climber. He stopped frequently, not because of weariness or of lack of breath, but to test the structure and hardness of the rocks with a small magnifying glass and the butt of his pocket knife.
At last, nearly a thousand feet up, his ascent was stopped by a sheer hundred-foot cliff. He had seen187it beetling above him and knew beforehand that he could not hope to scale such a precipice; yet he clambered up to it, still examining the rock with minute care. As he walked across the waterworn shelf at the foot of the sheer cliff, his eye was caught by a wide seam of quartz in the side wall of the gulch.
Going on over to the vein, he looked at it in several places through his magnifying glass. Everywhere little yellow specks showed in the semi-translucent quartz. He drew back across the gorge to examine the trend of the vein. It ran far outward and upward, and in no place was it narrower than where it disappeared under the bed of the gorge.
His lips pursed in a prolonged, soundless whistle. But he did not linger. Immediately after he had estimated the visible length and dip of the seam, he began his descent. Arriving at the foot without accident, he picked up the level rod and swung away down the gulch.
He saw nothing of Ashton until he had come all the distance down across the valley to the dike above the pool. His assistant was in the grove below, assiduously helping Miss Knowles to erect a tent that the girl had improvised from a tarpaulin. Genevieve and Thomas Herbert were interesting themselves in the contents of the kit-box. The two ladies had ridden up to the camp on horseback, Isobel carrying the baby.
When Blake came striding down to them, the girl188left Ashton and ran to meet him, her eyes beaming with affectionate welcome.
“What has kept you so long?” she called. “Lafe says the gulch is absolutely unclimbable. I could have told you so, beforehand.”
“You are right. I tried it, but had to quit,” replied Blake, engulfing her outstretched hand in his big palm.
When he would have released her, she caught his fingers and held fast, so that they came down to his wife hand in hand. Oblivious of Ashton’s frown, the girl dimpled at Mrs. Blake.
“Here he is, Genevieve,” she said. “We have him corralled for the rest of the morning.”
“Sorry,” replied Blake, stooping to pick up his chuckling son. “We can’t knock off now.”
“But if you cannot continue your levels?” asked his wife. “From what Lafayette told us, we thought you would not start in again until after lunch.”
“No more levels until tomorrow,” said Blake. “But I must settle one of my big ‘ifs’ by night. To do it, Ashton and I will have to go up on High Mesa and measure a line. There’s still two hours till noon. We’ll borrow your saddle ponies, Miss Chuckie, and start at once, if Jenny will put us up a bite of lunch.”
“Immediately, Tom,” assented Mrs. Blake, delighted at the opportunity to serve her big husband.189
“When shall we take Genevieve to see the cañon?” asked the girl. “I am sure she can ride up safely on old Buck.”
“We have only the two saddle horses today,” replied Blake. “If our measurement settles that ‘if’ one way, I shall start a line of levels up the mountain tomorrow morning, if the other way, any irrigation project is out of the question, and we shall go up to the cañon merely as a sightseeing party.”
“Ah!” sighed the girl. “‘If!’ ‘if’––I do so hope it turns out to be the last one!”
Blake looked at her with a quizzical smile. “Perhaps you would not, Miss Chuckie, if you could see all the results of a successful water system.”
“You mean, turning our range into farms for hundreds of irrigationists,” she replied. “I suppose I am selfish, but I am thinking of what it would mean to Daddy. Just consider how it will affect us. For years this land has been our own for miles and miles!”
“Well, we shall see,” said Blake, his eyes twinkling.
“Yes, indeed!” she exclaimed. “Lafe, if you’ll help me saddle up and help Mr. Blake rush up to do that measuring, I’ll––I’ll be ever so grateful!”
Though all the more resentful at Blake over having to leave her company, Ashton eagerly sprang forward to help the girl saddle the ponies. When they were ready, she filled his canteen for him and took a sip190from it “for luck.” Genevieve had packed an ample lunch in a gamebag, along with her husband’s linked steel-wire surveyor’s chain.
Ten minutes after Blake’s arrival, he handed the baby to its mother and swung into the saddle. Ashton had already mounted, fired by a kind glance from the girl’s forget-me-not eyes. In his zeal, he led the way at a gallop around the craggy hill and across the intervening valley to the escarpment of High Mesa. Had not Blake checked him, he would have forced the pace on up the mountain side.
“Hold on,” called the engineer. “We want to make haste slowly. That buckskin you’re on isn’t so young as he has been, and my pony has to lug around two hundred pounds. We’ll get back sooner by being moderate. Besides you don’t wish to knock up old Buck. He is about the only one of these jumpy cow ponies that is safe for Jenny.”
“That’s so,” admitted Ashton. “Suppose you set the pace.”
He stopped to let Blake pass him, and trailed behind up the mountain side. He had headed into a draw. The engineer at once turned and began zigzagging up the steep side of the ridge that thrust out into the valley between the draw and the gulch of Dry Fork. At the stiffest places he jumped off and led his pony. None too willingly, Ashton followed the example set by his companion. There were some places where he could191not have avoided so doing––ledges that the old buckskin, despite his years of mountain service, could hardly scramble up under an empty saddle.
Long before they reached the point of the ridge, Ashton was panting and sweating, and his handsome face was red from exertion and anger. But his indignation at being misguided up so difficult a line of ascent received a damper when he reached the lower end of the ridge crest. Blake, who had waited patiently for him to clamber up the last sharp slope, gave him a cheerful nod and pointed to the long but fairly easy incline of the ridge crest.
“In mountain climbing, always take your stiffest ground first, when you can,” he said. “We can jog along pretty fast now.”
They mounted and rode up the ridge, much of the time at a jog trot. Before long they came to the top of High Mesa, and galloped across to one of the ridges that lay parallel with Deep Cañon. Climbing the ridge, they found themselves looking over into a ravine that ran down to the right to join another ravine from the opposite direction, at the head of Dry Fork Gulch. Blake turned and rode to the left along the ridge, until he found a place where they could cross the ravine. The still air was reverberating with the muffled roar of Deep Cañon.
From the ridge on the other side of the ravine, they could look down between the scattered pines to the192gaping chasm of the stupendous cañon. But Blake rode to the right along the summit of the ridge until they came opposite the head of Dry Fork Gulch. Here he flung the reins over his pony’s head, and dismounted. Ashton was about to do the same when he caught sight of a wolf slinking away like a gray shadow up the farther ravine. He reached for his rifle, and for the first time noticed that he had failed to bring it along. In his haste to start from camp he had left it in the tent.
“Sacre!” he petulantly exclaimed. “There goes twenty-five dollars!”
“How’s that?” asked Blake. He looked and caught a glimpse of the wolf just as it vanished. “Why don’t you shoot?”
“Left my rifle in camp, curse the luck!”
“Keep cool,” advised Blake. “It’s only twenty-five dollars, and you might have missed anyway.”
“Not with my automatic,” snapped Ashton. “You needn’t sneer about the money. You’ve seen times when you’d have been glad of a chance at half the amount.”
“That’s true,” gravely agreed the engineer. “What’s more, I realize that it is far harder for you than it ever was for me. I want to tell you I admire the way you have stood your loss.”
“You do?” burst out the younger man. “I want to tellyouI don’t admire the way you ruined me––babbling193to my father––when you promised to keep still! You sneak!”
Blake looked into the other’s furious face with no shade of change in his grave gaze. “I have never said a word to your father against you,” he declared.
“Then––then how, after all this time––?” stammered Ashton, even in his anger unable to disbelieve the engineer’s quiet statement. He was disconcerted only for the moment. Again he flared hotly: “But if you didn’t, old Leslie must have! It’s all the same!”
“No, it is not the same,” corrected Blake. “As for my father-in-law, if he said anything about––the past, I feel sure it was not with intention to hurt your interests.”
“Hurt my interests! You know I am utterly ruined!”
“On the contrary, I know you are not ruined. You have lost a large allowance, and a will has been made cutting you off from a great many millions that you expected to inherit. But you have landed square on your feet; you have a pretty good job, and you are stronger and healthier than you were.”
“If you break up Mr. Knowles’ range with your irrigation schemes, I stand to lose my job. You know that.”
“If the project proves to be feasible, I shall offer you a position on the works,” said Blake.194
“You needn’t try to bribe me!” retorted Ashton. “I’m working for Mr. Knowles.”
“Well, he directed you to help me with this survey,” replied the engineer, with imperturbable good nature. “The next move is to chain across to the cañon.”
He pulled his surveyor’s chain from the bag and descended the ridge to an out-jutting rock above the head of the tremendous gorge in the mountain side. Ashton followed him down. Blake handed him the front end of the chain.
“You lead,” he said. “I’ll line you, as I know where to strike the nearest point on the cañon.”
Ashton sullenly started up the ridge, and the measurement began. As Blake required only a rough approximation, they soon crossed the ridge and chained down through the trees to the edge of Deep Cañon. Ashton was astonished at the shortness of the distance. The cañon at this point ran towards the mesa escarpment as if it had originally intended to drive through into Dry Fork Gulch, but twisted sharp about and curved back across the plateau. Even Blake was surprised at the measurement. It was only a little over two thousand feet.
“Noticed this place when out with Mr. Knowles and Gowan,” he remarked, gazing down into the abyss with keen appreciation of its awful grandeur. “They told me it is the nearest that the cañon comes to the edge195of the mesa, until it breaks out, thirty or forty miles down.”
“How––how about that ‘if’ you said this measurement would settle?” asked Ashton.
“What’s the time?”
Ashton looked at his watch, frowning over the evasive reply. “It’s two-ten.”
“I’ll figure on the proposition while we eat lunch,” said Blake. “I can answer you better regarding that ‘if’ when I have done some calculating. Luckily I climbed up to examine the rock in the gulch.” He smiled quizzically at his companion. “You were right as to its being unclimbable; but I found out even more than I expected.”
Ashton silently took the bag from him and arranged the lunch and his canteen on a rock under a pine. The engineer figured and drew little diagrams in his fieldbook while he ate his sandwiches. Ashton had half drained the canteen on the way up the mountain. Before sitting down Blake had rinsed out his mouth and taken a few swallows of water. After eating, he started to take another drink, noticed his companion’s hot dry face, and stopped after a single sip.
“Guess you need it more than I do,” he remarked, as he rose to his feet. “Time to start. I wish to go around and down the mountain on the other side of the gulch.”196
“How about the––the ‘if’?” inquired Ashton.
“Killed,” answered Blake. “There now is only one left. If that comes out the same way, Dry Mesa will have good cause to change its name.”
“You can tunnel through from the gulch to the cañon?” exclaimed Ashton.
“Yes; and I shall do so––if Deep Cañon is not too deep.”
“I hope it is a thousand feet below Dry Mesa!” said Ashton.
“In the circumstances,” Blake replied to the fervent declaration, “I am glad to hear you say it.”
Ashton stared, but could detect no sarcasm in the other’s smile of commendation.
197CHAPTER XVIIA SHOT IN THE DUSK
They returned to their grazing ponies, and at once started the descent of the mountain, after crossing the ravine where they had seen the wolf. Blake chose a route that brought them down into the valley above the waterhole shortly before five o’clock. They cantered the remaining distance along the wide, gravelly wash of the creek bed to the dike.
Looking down from the dike, they saw that Knowles and Gowan had come up the creek and were waiting for them in company with the ladies. Ashton set spurs to his horse and dashed across above the pool, to descend the slope to the party. Blake descended on the other side, to water his horse and slake his own thirst.
To Ashton’s chagrin, Isobel joined Genevieve in hastening to meet the engineer. He rode down beside the two men and jumped off to follow the ladies. But Gowan sprang before him.
“Hold on,” he said. “Mr. Knowles wants your report.”
“If you’ll oblige us, Lafe,” added the cowman. “I’m pretty much worked up.”198
“You have cause to be!” replied Ashton. “He says the only question left is whether the water in the cañon is not at too low a level. We measured across from the creek gulch to the cañon. A tunnel is practicable, he says.”
“Through all that mountain?” scoffed Gowan. “It’s solid rock, clean through. It would take him a hundred years to burrow a hole like that.”
“You know nothing of engineering and its tools. We now have electric drills that will eat into granite like cheese,” condescendingly explained Ashton.
“Think I don’t know that? But just you try to figure out how he’s going to get his electricity for his drills,” retorted Gowan.
Without stopping for his disconcerted rival to reply, he turned his back on him and started towards Isobel. The girl was running up from the pool, her face almost pitiful with disappointment.
“Oh, Daddy!” she called, “Mr. Blake says that if the water in the cañon––”
“Needn’t tell me, honey. I know already,” broke in her father, hastening to meet her.
She flung her arms about his neck, and sobbed brokenly: “I’m––I’m so sorry for you, D-Daddy!”
“There, there now!” he soothed, awkwardly patting her back. “’Tisn’t like you to cry before you’re hurt.”199
“No, no––you! not me. It doesn’t matter about me!”
“Doesn’t it, though! But I’m not hurt either, as yet. It’s a long ways from being a sure thing.”
“All the way down to the bottom of Deep Cañon!” put in Ashton.
“And then some!” added Gowan. “I’ve hit on another ‘if,’ Miss Chuckie.”
“You have? Oh, Kid, tell us!”
“It’s this: How’s he going to get electricity to dig his tunnel?”
Blake was coming up from the pool, with his baby in one arm and his wife clinging fondly to the other. He met the coldly exultant glance of Gowan, and smiled.
“The only question regarding the power is one of cost, Mr. Gowan,” he said. “There is no coal near enough to be hauled. But gasolene is not bulky. If there was water power to generate electricity, a tunnel could be bored at half the cost I have figured. The point is that there is no water power available, nor will there be until the tunnel is finished.”
“What! You talk about finishing the tunnel? Didn’t you say it is still uncertain about the water?” demanded Knowles.
“I was merely explaining to Mr. Gowan,” replied Blake. “The question he raised is one of the factors in our problem as to whether an irrigation project is200practicable. We now know that we have the land for it, the tunnel site, the reservoir site––” he pointed to the valley above the dike––“and I have figured that the cost of construction would not be excessive. All that remains is to determine if we have the water. I have already explained that this will require a descent into the cañon.”
“You say that that will decide it, one way or the other?” queried Knowles, his forehead creased with deep lines of foreboding.
“Yes,” replied Blake. “I regret that you feel as you do about it. Consider what it would mean to hundreds, yes, thousands of people, if this mesa were watered. I assure you that you, too, would benefit by the project.”
“I don’t care for any such benefit, Mr. Blake. I’ve been a cowman for twenty-five years. I want to keep my range until the time comes for me to take the long trail.”
“It would be hard to change,” agreed the engineer. “However, the point now is to find what Deep Cañon has to tell us.”
“You still think you can go down it?”
“Yes, if I have ropes, a two-pound hammer, and some iron pins; railroad spikes and picket-pins would do.”
“Going to rope the rocks and pull them up for steps?” asked Gowan.201
“I shall need two or three hundred feet of half-inch manila,” said Blake, ignoring the sarcasm.
“They may have it at Stockchute,” said Knowles. “Kid, you can drive over with the wagon and fetch Mr. Blake all the rope and other things he wants. I can’t stand this waiting much longer.”
“There will be no time lost,” said Blake. “It will take Ashton and me all of tomorrow to carry a line of levels up the mountain.”
“Why need you do that, Tom?” asked his wife.
“Yes, why, if all that’s left is to go down into the cañon?” added Isobel, dabbing the tears from her wet eyes.
Ashton thrust in an answer before Blake could speak. “We must see how high the upper mesa is above this one, Miss Chuckie, and then compare the difference of altitude with the depth of the cañon, to see whether its bottom is above or below the bottom of the gulch.”
“Oh––measure up and then down, to see which way is longest,” said Genevieve.
“Sorry, ma’am,” broke in Knowles. “We’ll have to be starting now to get home by dark. If you think you can trust me with that young man, I’d like the honor of packing him all the way in. I’ve toted calves for miles, so I guess I can hold onto a baby if I use both hands.”
“You shall have him!” replied Genevieve, smiling202like a daughter as she met the look in his grave eyes. “Tom, give Thomas to Mr. Knowles––when he is safe in the saddle.”
Even Gowan cracked a smile at this cautious qualification. He hastened to bring Isobel’s horse and hold him for her––which gave Ashton the opportunity to help her mount. Both services were needless, but she rewarded each eager servitor with a dimpled smile. When Blake handed the baby up to Knowles, his wife, untroubled by mock modesty, gave him a loving kiss. He lifted her bodily into the saddle, and she rode off with her three companions.
Isobel, however, wheeled within the first few yards, and came back for a parting word: “You can expect us quite early tomorrow. We will overtake you on your way up the mountain. I wish Genevieve to see the cañon. Good night––Pleasant dreams!”
She had addressed Ashton, but her last smile was for Blake, and it was undisguisedly affectionate. As she loped away after the others, Ashton frowned, and, picking up his rifle, started off up the valley. Blake was staring after the girl with a wondering look. He turned to cast a quizzical glance at the back of the resentful lover.
When the latter had disappeared around the hill, the engineer took the frying pan and walked up into the creek bed above the dike. After going some distance over the gravel bars, he came to a place where the203swirl of the last freshet had gouged a hole almost to bedrock. Scooping a panful of sand and gravel from the bottom of the hole, he went back and squatted down beside the pool within easy reach of the water.
He picked the larger pebbles from the pan, added water, and began to swirl the contents around with a circular motion. Each turn flirted some of the sand and water over the pan’s beveled edge. Every little while he renewed the water. At last the pan’s contents were reduced to a half dozen, irregular, dirty, little lumps and a handful of “black sand” in which gleamed numbers of yellow particles.
Blake put the nuggets into his pocket and threw the rest out into the pool. He returned to the tent and sat down to re-check his level-book and his calculations on the approximate cost of the tunnel. Sundown found him still figuring; but when twilight faded into dusk, he put away his fieldbook and started a fire for supper.
He was in the act of setting on a pan of bacon when, without the slightest warning, a bullet cut the knot of the loose neckerchief under his downbent chin. In the same instant that he heard the ping of the shot he pitched sideways and flattened himself on the ground with the chuck-box between him and the fire. A roll and a quick crawl took him into the underbrush beyond the circle of firelight. No second bullet followed him in his amazingly swift movements. He lay204motionless, listening intently, but no sound broke the stillness of the evening except the distant wail of a coyote and the hoot of an owl.
Half an hour passed, and still the engineer waited. The dusk deepened into darkness. At last a heavy footfall sounded up on the dike. Blake rose, and slipping silently to the tent, groped about until he found a heavy iron picket-pin.
Someone came down the slope and kicked his way petulantly through the bushes to the dying fire. He threw on an armful of brush. The light of the up-blazing flame showed Ashton standing beside the chuck-box, rifle in hand. But he dropped the weapon to pick up the overturned frying pan, which lay at his feet.
“Hello, Blake!” he sang out irritably. “I supposed you’d have supper waiting. Haven’t turned in this early, have you?”
“No,” replied Blake, and he came forward, carelessly swinging the picket-pin. “Thought I saw a coyote sneaking about, and tried to trick him into coming close enough for me to nail him with this pin.”
“With that!” scoffed Ashton. “But it would do as well as my rifle. I took a shot at a wolf, and then the mechanism jammed. I can’t get it to work.”
“You fired a shot?” asked Blake.
“Yes. Was it too far off for you to hear? I circled all around these hills.”205
“No, I heard it,” replied Blake, looking close into the other’s sullen face. “You may not have been as far away as you thought.”
“I was far enough,” grumbled Ashton. “I’ve walked till I’m hungry as a shark.”
“Do you realize that you want to be careful how you shoot with these high-power rifles?” asked Blake. “They carry a mile or more.”
“I’ve carried mine more than that, anditwon’t carry an inch,” complained Ashton. “Wish you would see if you can fix it, while I get on some bacon.”
Blake took his scrutinizing gaze from his companion’s face, and picked up the rifle. Ashton showed plainly that he was tired and hungry and very irritable, but there was no trace of guilt in his look or manner. While he hurriedly prepared supper, Blake took apart the mechanism of the rifle. He discovered the trouble at once.
“This is easy,” he said. “Nothing broken––just a screw loose. Have you been monkeying with the parts, to see how they work?”
“No; I don’t care a hang how they work. What gets me is that they didn’t work!”
“Queer, then, how this screw got loose,” said Blake as he tightened it with the blade of his pocket knife. “It sets tight enough. Of course it might have come from the factory a bit loose, and jarred out with the firing; but neither seems probable.”206
“Is it all right now?” queried Ashton.
“Yes.––Seems to me someonemusthave loosened this screw.”
“What’s the difference how it happened, if it will not happen again?” irritably replied Ashton. “Guess this bacon is fried enough. Let’s eat.”
Blake recoupled the rifle, emptied the magazine, tested the mechanism, refilled the magazine, and joined his ravenous companion in his ill-cooked meal.
Immediately after eating, Ashton flung himself down in the tent. A few minutes later Blake crept in beside him and struck a match. The young man had already fallen into the deep slumber of utter physical and mental relaxation. Blake went outside and listened to the wailing of the coyotes. Difficult as it was to determine the direction of their mournful cries, he at last satisfied himself that they were circling entirely around the camp.
A watchdog could not have indicated with greater certainty that there was no other wild beast or any human being lurking near the waterhole. Blake crept back into the tent and was soon fast asleep beside his companion.
207CHAPTER XVIIION THE BRINK
Early to bed, early to rise. The two men were up at dawn. During the night the coyotes had sneaked into the camp. But Blake had fastened the food in the chuck-box and slung everything gnawable up in the branches out of reach of the sly thieves.
At sunrise the two started out on their day’s work, Ashton carrying his rifle and canteen and the level rod, Blake with the level and a bag containing their lunch and a two-quart sirup-can of water.
“We’ll run a new line from the dike bench, around the hill and across the valley the way we rode out yesterday,” said the engineer, as they climbed the slope above the waterhole. “That will give us a check by cross-tying to the line of the creek levels where it runs into the gulch.”
“Can’t you trust to the accuracy of your own work?” asked Ashton with evident intent to mortify.
Blake smiled in his good-natured way. “You forget the first rule of engineering. Always check when you can, then re-check and check again.––Now, if you’ll kindly give me a reading off that bench.”208
Ashton complied, though with evident ill will. He had wakened in good spirits, but was fast returning to his sullenness of the previous day. He took his time in going from the bench-mark to the first turning point. Blake moved up past him with inspiring briskness, but the younger man kept to his leisurely saunter. In rounding the corner of the hill twice as much time was consumed as was necessary.
When they came to the last turn at the foot of the rocky slope, where the line struck out across the valley towards the foot of the mountain side, Ashton paused to roll a cigarette before holding his rod for the reading. Small as was the incident, it was particularly aggravating to an engineer. The reading would have taken only a moment, and he could then have rolled his cigarette and smoked it while Blake was moving past him for the next “set up.” Instead, he deliberately kept Blake waiting until the cigarette had been rolled and lighted.
Blake “pulled up” his level and started forward, his face impassive. Ashton leaned jauntily on the rod, sucked in a mouthful of smoke, and raising his cigarette, flicked the ash from the tip with his little finger. At the same instant a bullet from the crags above him pierced the crown of his hat. He pitched forward on his face, rolled half over, and lay quiet.
Most men would have been dumfounded by the frightful suddenness of the occurrence––the shot and209the instant fall of Ashton. It was like a stroke of lightning out of a clear sky. Blake did not stand gaping even for a moment. As Ashton’s senseless body struck the ground, he sprang sideways and bent to lay down his instrument, with the instinctive carefulness of an old railroad surveyor. A swift rush towards Ashton barely saved him from the second bullet that came pinging down from the hill crest. It burned across the back of his shoulder.
Heedless of the blood spurting from the wound in the side of Ashton’s head, Blake snatched up the automatic rifle and fired at a point between two knobs of rock on the hill crest. Promptly a hat appeared, then an arm and a rifle. It might have been expected that a bullet would have instantly followed; yet the assassin was strangely deliberate about getting his aim. Blake did not wait for him. He began to fire as fast as the automatic ejector and reloader set the rifle trigger. Three bullets sped up at the assassin before he had time to drop back out of sight.
Blake started up the hillside, his pale eyes like white-hot steel. He was in a fury, but it was the cold fury of a man too courageous for reckless bravado. He went up the hill as an Apache would have charged, dodging from cover to cover and, wherever possible, keeping in line with a rock or tree in his successive rushes. At every brief stop he scanned the ridge crest for a sign of his enemy. But the assassin did not210show himself. For all that Blake could tell, he might be waiting for a sure shot, or he might be lying with a bullet through his brain.
To avoid suicidal exposure, the engineer was compelled to veer off to the right in his ascent. He reached the ridge crest without a shot having been fired at him. Leaping suddenly to his feet, he scrambled up to the flat top of a high crag, from which he could peer down upon the others. The natural embrazure from which the assassin had fired was exposed to his view; but the place was empty. He looked cautiously about at the many huge bowlders behind which a hundred men might have been crouching unseen by him, advantageous as was his position. To flush the assassin would require a bold rush over and around the rocks.
Blake set his powerful jaw and gathered himself together for the leap down from his crag. At that moment his alert eye caught a glimpse of a swiftly moving object on the mesa at the foot of the far side of the hill. It was a horse and rider racing out of sight around the bend of a ridge point.
Blake whipped the rifle to his shoulder. But the cowardly fugitive had disappeared. He lowered the rifle and started back down the hill faster than he had come up. Leaping like a goat, sliding, rushing––he raced to the bottom in a direct line for Ashton.
The victim lay as he had fallen, his head ghastly211red with blood, which was still oozing from his wound. Blake dropped down beside the flaccid body and tore open the front of the silk shirt. He thrust in his hand. For some moments he was baffled by the violent throbbing of his own pulse. Then, at last, he detected a heartbeat, very feeble and slow yet unmistakable.
He turned Ashton on his side, and washing away the blood with water from the canteen, examined the wound with utmost carefulness. The bullet had pierced the scalp and plowed a furrow down along the side of the skull, grazing but not penetrating the bone.
“Only stunned.... Mighty close, though,” muttered Blake. He looked at the ashen face of the wounded man and added apprehensively, “Too close!... Concussion––”
Hastily he knotted a compress bandage made of handkerchiefs and neckerchiefs around the bleeding head, and stretching Ashton flat on his back, began to pump his arms up and down as is done in resuscitating a drowned person. After a time Ashton’s face began to lose its deathly pallor. His heart beat less feebly; he drew in a deep sighing breath, and stared up dazedly at Blake, with slowly returning consciousness.
“I’ll smoke all I please and when I please,” he murmured in a supercilious drawl.
Blake dashed his face with the cupful of water still left in the canteen. The wounded man flushed with quick anger and attempted to rise.212
“What––what you––How dare you?” he spluttered, only to sink back with a groan, “My head! O-o-oh! You’ve smashed my head!”
“You’re in luck that your headwasn’tsmashed,” replied Blake. “It was a bullet knocked you over.”
“Bullet?” echoed Ashton.
“Yes. Scoundrel up on the hill tried to get us both.”
“Up on the hill?” Ashton twisted his head about, in alarm, to look at the hill crest. “But if he––He may shoot again.”
“Not this time. I went up for him. He went down faster, other side the hill. Saw him on the run. The sneaking––” Blake closed his lips on the word. After a moment his grimness relaxed. “Came back to start your funeral. Found you’d cheated the undertaker. How do you feel now?”
“I believe I––” began Ashton, again trying to raise himself, only to sink back as before. “My head!––What makes me so weak?”
“Don’t worry,” reassured Blake. “It’s only a scalp wound. You are weak from the shock and a little loss of blood. I’ll get you a drink from my can, and then tote you into camp. You’ll be all right in a day or two.”
He fetched the can of water from his bag, which he had dropped beside the level. Ashton drank with the thirstiness of one who has lost blood. When at last213his thirst was quenched, he glanced up at Blake with a look of half reluctant apology.
“I said something about your striking me,” he murmured. “I did not understand––did not realize I had been shot. You see, just before––”
“That’s all right,” broke in Blake. “I owe you a bigger apology. Last evening, while you were out hunting, someone took a shot at me. It must have been this same sneaking skunk. I thought it was you.”
“You thought I could try to––to shoot you?” muttered Ashton.
“Yes. There’s the old matter of the bridge, and you seem to think I am responsible for what your father has done. But after you came in, I soon concluded that you had fired towards the camp unintentionally.”
“If you had asked,” explained Ashton, “I was around at the far end of these hills, nearly two miles from the camp, when I shot at the wolf and the rifle went wrong.”
“That was a fortunate occurrence––your going out and seeing the wolf;” said Blake. “If you hadn’t taken that shot, we would not have known your rifle was out of gear. My first bullet merely made the sneak rise up to pot me. If the rapidity of the next three shots hadn’t rattled him, I believe he would have potted me, instead of running.”214
“So that was it?” exclaimed Ashton. “Do you know, I believe it must be the same scoundrel who attacked me the first day I rode down Dry Fork. No doubt he remembered how I ripped loose at him with the automatic-catch set.”
“Your thieving guide?” said Blake. “But why should he try to kill me?”
“I’m sure I don’t know,” murmured Ashton. “Another drink, please.”
“I shall tote you back to camp, and––No, I’ll lay you over there in the shade and go up to see if he is in sight.”
Picking up the wounded man as easily as if he had been a child, the engineer carried him over under a tree, fetched him the can of water, and for the second time climbed the rocky hillside. Scaling his lookout crag, he surveyed the country below him. A mile down the creek two riders were coming up towards the waterhole at an easy canter. He surmised that they were his wife and Miss Knowles.
Their approach brought a shade of anxiety into his strong face. He swept the landscape with his glance. A little cloud of dust far out on the mesa towards Split Peak caught his eye. He looked at it steadfastly under his hand, and drew a deep breath of relief as he made out a fleeing horse and rider.
He descended to Ashton, and taking him up pick-a-back, swung away for the camp with long, swift215strides. Before he had gone half the distance, he felt Ashton’s arms loosening their clasp of his neck. He caught him as he sank in a swoon. Without a moment’s hesitation, he slung his senseless burden up on his shoulder like a sack of meal, and hastened on faster than before.
Swiftly as he walked, the ladies reached the camp before him. When he came to the top of the dike slope, his wife had dismounted and Isobel was handing down the baby to her. As the girl slipped out of the saddle she looked up the slope. With a startled cry, she darted to meet Blake.
Quick to forestall her alarm, he called in a gasping shout: “Not serious––not serious!”
“Oh, Tom––Mr. Blake!” she cried. “What has happened?”
“Scalp wound––faint––blood loss,” Blake panted in terse answer.
“He is wounded? O-o-oh!” She ran up and looked fearfully at the bloodsoaked bandages across Ashton’s hanging head.
Blake staggered on down the slope without pausing. Genevieve had started to meet him. But at her husband’s panting explanation, she laid the baby on the nearest soft spot of earth and darted to the kit-chest. She was opening a “first aid” box when Blake crashed through the bushes and sank down with his burden under the first tree.216
Genevieve hastened towards the men, calling to her companion: “Water, Chuckie––that pail by the fireplace.”
The girl flew to fetch a bucket of water from the pool.
Blake was peering anxiously down into Ashton’s white face. “Didn’t––know––but––that––” he panted.
“No,” reassured his wife. “He will soon be all right.”
She drew the unconscious man flat on his back and held a bottle of ammonia to his nostrils. The powerful stimulant revived him just as the girl came running back with the water. He opened his eyes, and the first object they rested upon was her anxious pitiful face. He smiled and whispered gallantly: “Don’t be afraid. I’m all right––now!”
“Then I’ll drink first,” said Blake.
He took a deep draught from the pail, doused a hatful of water over his hot head and face, and stretched out to cool off. Genevieve, assisted by the deeply concerned girl, took the handkerchief bandage from Ashton’s head and washed the wound with an antiseptic solution. She then clipped away the hair from the edges and drew the scalp together with a number of stitches.
In this last the hardy cowgirl was unable to help. She clasped Ashton’s hand convulsively and sat shuddering.217Ashton smiled up into her tender pitying eyes. Genevieve had numbed his wound with cocaine. He was quite satisfied with the situation.
Another antiseptic washing and a compress of sterilized cotton bound on with surgical bandages completed the operation. Then, when it was all over with, the young mother, who had gone through everything with the aplomb and deftness of a surgeon, quietly sank back in a faint. On the instant Blake was reaching for the ammonia bottle.
A whiff restored his wife to consciousness. She opened her eyes, and smiling at her weakness, sought to rise. He held her down with gentle force and ordered her to lie quiet.
“I shall fetch Tommy,” he added. “We’ll all take asiestauntil noon.”