CHAPTER VIITHE BATTLE
The red-haired man was fighting.
Just now he was fighting at long range. And all the complex system of the C. G. & X. railroad vibrated under his blows. A dozen rapid-fire orders had sent as many station officials scuttling to posts of duty. Already telegraph wires were sizzling; and employees miles away were hustling in consequence, to fulfil their master’s behests. The fastest engine on the C. G. & X. was getting up steam. A dozen frantic machinists with oil cans, wrenches and hammers were swarming over and under the huge locomotive making her ready for a record trip. In the few minutes that remained, before his Special could start, Caleb Conover, coolest, least hurried man in the whole buzzing station, was talking over the long-distance telephone to Caine.
“Yes,” he was saying, as, cigar in mouth, he lounged above the transmitter on his desk, “I’ll be off in three minutes. So listen hard, for you are liable to have a wakeful day before you. I’ve gave orders to side-track everything on the C. G. & X. between here an’ McIntyre Junction. That’ll give us room for a sixty-five-mile-an-hour trip as far as the Junction. After that I’ll be off the C. G. & X. tracks andI’ll have to take my chances of gettin’ the right of way. But I guess a couple of tel’grams I’ve sent will loosen things up on the other road. Remember, I’m a’ comin’ as fast as steam will carry me. Since you say the Starke bill ain’t come up yet, there’s a show of my gettin’ there on time, after all. I’ve just ’phoned Bourke, the Assemblyman from my Districk, to hold the crowd together as well as he can till I land. What? No, don’t you bother over that. He knows how to keep the bill back for a while, anyhow. Motion to adjourn’s always in order. He’ll hop up an’ move to adjourn ev’ry five minutes and then demand a poll on the vote. Good ol’-fashioned fil’busterin’. That, an’ a few other cunnin’ little stunts that I’ve taught him, is liable to delay business pretty much in the Assembly to-day. My crowd’s got all their orders. But Blacarda was a roarin’ fool not to push the bill through early this mornin’. I s’pose he figgered out he had all day ahead of him. Him an’ me will settle our score later. So long! My engine’s ready.”
Clambering aboard the locomotive cab the moment the last oiler scuttled to safety from underneath the driving-wheels, Conover lighted a fresh cigar, and with a grim smile leaned back to enjoy the whirlwind flight through the rain. He was happier than he had been in weeks. Not only through the quick lifting of the horror that had so engulfed him, but from the joy of a hard fight against heavy odds. In spite of his cheery tone toward Caine, he knew it was problematicalwhether or not his henchman, Bourke, could retard the vote on the Starke Bill until his arrival. But it was a chance well worth the taking. His anxiety for Desirée banished, the Fighter turned with more than wonted zeal to the battle before him.
The engine thundered over the miles of sodden land, the cab windows awash with rain; the great bulk swaying perilously from its own reckless speed; the twisting of sharp curves more than once hurling Caleb headlong from his seat. Past long lines of side-tracked freight and passenger trains they whizzed. Every switch along the line bore its burden of cars hustled off the main line by Caleb’s commands. The entire C. G. & X. system was for the time tied up, that its ruler might travel over its rails as no man had before traversed them.
“At this rate,” mused Caleb, “I’ll make it, with any sort of luck. If I can be sure of speed on the other line—!”
Toward the latest of many brown wooden stations they flashed. The engineer threw over a lever. The wheels shrieked ear-splitting protest as they gripped and shaved the rails in the shock of the brake’s clutch.
“What’s up?” bellowed Conover, wrathfully. “Is—?”
“Station agent’s flagging us, sir, with the danger signal,” replied the engineer, leaning out into the rain to accost a scared, shirtsleeved man who ran toward them, flag in hand, along the track.
Conover pulled the engineer to one side and thrusthis own head from the cab window, just as the panting station agent came up.
“What d’ye mean by stoppin’ us?” demanded the Fighter.
“Trackwalker reports—bridge—mile above—unsafe,—from washout!” puffed the agent.
“He does, hey?” sneered Conover, “An’ why in blazes didn’t you telegraph the next station below?”
“I was just going to, sir,” faltered the agent, “but as there wasn’t any train due for an half an hour—”
“Is the bridge still standin’?” demanded Conover.
“Yes, sir. But the trackwalker thinks—”
“I don’t pay him to think.I’mdoin’ the thinkin’ this trip. Davis,” wheeling on the engineer, “I’m goin’ over this bridge. There’s $500 on the other side of it foryou. Want to come? Speak up quick!”
“If—if it’s not safe—” hesitated the man. “This is the heaviest engine on the road and—”
“Get out of here, then!” yelled Conover, ejecting him bodily from the cab. The engineer missed the step and tumbled prone in a blasphemous heap, to the wet track side. Conover did not waste a second look at him, but slipped into the driver’s place and threw off the brake. He had served his term as engineer during his upward flight through the various grades of railroad achievement; and was as comfortably at home at the throttle as in his private car.
The wheels caught the track and the great mass of metal sprang into motion.
“Is there anything elseIcan do, sir?” piped the obsequious agent.
“No!” snarled Caleb glowering back at him through the open window. “If there was, you wouldn’t be a measly thirty-dollar-a-month station roustabout.”
Settling into his place, Conover knit his red brows and peered forward through the downpour and mist, along the shining track. He could not afford the time he had lost. To make it up, every notch of speed must be crowded on. There was a fierce exhilaration in Caleb’s alert light eyes, as he set himself to his new task. The fireman, who had been crouching on the tender, now worked his way forward into the cab.
“Hello!” grunted Conover, crossly. “I’d forgotyou. I s’pose I got to slow up while you jump.”
“If I was a jumper, sir,” replied the fireman, quietly, “I’d have gotten off at the station.”
With stolid unconcern the fellow set about stoking. Conover grinned.
“If we live past that bridge,” he remarked, “You’ll make your next trip as pass’nger engineer. Steady, now.”
The locomotive was at top speed once more. Around a curve it tore, listing far to one side. Straight ahead, through the gray murk, rose the trestled bridge—a blur of brownish-red, spanning a hundred foot drop; at whose bottom boiled a froth of white fretted water cut here and there by black lump-headboulders. “Slow to 10 miles an Hour!” read the patch of signboard at the bridge’s head. At either side of the railroad embankment stood knots of country folk, idly watching the condemned framework.
At sixty miles an hour the locomotive swept into the straightaway. A scattering chorus of cries rose from a dozen lips as the shadowy giant bulk leaped out of the mist.
Then, in the same instant, the dull rumble of wheels on a ground track was changed to the hollow roaring roll of wheels on a trestle. A jar of impact—a sickening sway of the whole wood-and-steel structure—a snapping, rending sound from somewhere far below—a wind-borne scream from the group of panic-stricken idlers now a furlong behind;—and once more the changed key of the driving-wheels’ song told that the flimsy bridgeway was succeeded by solid roadbed beneath the rails.
“Scared?” asked Conover, over his shoulder, to the fireman.
“I’ve just been too near to death to feel like lying,” returned the man in a sickly attempt at humor, “So I might as well own up that for a second or so I could hear a few harps twanging. My heart’s still somewhere around the place where I swallow.”
“You’ve got grit,” vouchsafed the Fighter, straining his eyes to pierce through the mist in front of them, “Man’s made of dust, the parsons say; but I guess there was plenty of sand sprinkled in yours an’ mine.An’ I like you better for not bein’ ashamed to tell you was afraid. The brave man ain’t the one who don’t get scared; he’s the feller who’s scared stiff and goes ahead just the same. I guess I’ll have to change that new job of yours from pass’nger engineer to somethin’ in my own office. Now, chase back to your work. I’ve got other things to think of besides jawin’ with you.”
The Junction was reached and passed. No longer on his own road, Conover was less certain that the way would be left clear for him. Yet his telegrams had had effect. The line was open, and he sent his locomotive along with no let-up in its terrific speed.
“I’ll make it,” he said once, under his breath. “If Bourke can only hold ’em—if he can only hold ’em!”
Over went the lever, and with another shrill shriek the engine slackened speed. They had rounded a bend. Directly in front was a station. Beside it stood a long train, blocking the single track. In a bound, Conover was out of the cab. Shouting to the fireman to follow, he set off at a run through the mud puddles that lined the right of way.
“Whatcher stoppin’ for?” he demanded of the conductor who stood by one of the rear cars.
“Waiting for the Directors of the road,” answered the conductor. “They’re lunching up at the President’s house. They were due here three minutes ago. This train’s a local, so we’re holding it till—”
Conover heard no more but broke again into a run; heading for the engine.
“Do you mind gettin’ into trouble?” he panted to the fireman at his side, “I’ll stand by you.”
“You’re the boss,” replied the man, laconically, putting on a fresh burst of speed to keep up with his employer.
“Good! I’m goin’ to steal that engine. You uncouple her an’ scramble aboard. I’ll ’tend to the crew.”
They had reached the locomotive as he spoke. The engineer had left his cab and was stretching his cramped legs on the platform. His fireman lolled from the window, smoking a pipe. Conover, never breaking his stride, swung aboard the cab and threw open the throttle; the same moment his follower yanked loose the old-fashioned coupling pin, disengaged the air brake and gained the tender with a flying leap.
The whole transaction was completed before either the engine’s crew knew what was going on. The rightful fireman found himself toppled from the cab straight into the arms of the engineer, who with a yell had sprung aboard. The two, clasped lovingly in each other’s arms, rolled swearing into a roadside mud-puddle;—and the locomotive was off.
Conover, at the throttle, laughed aloud in keen delight as he glanced back at the engineless train, the two bedraggled figures and the crowd that came running excitedly along the platform.
“This old rattler ain’t a patch on the one we left behind,” he chuckled, “but she seems able to makesome speed for all that. Gee, but I’ll have my hands full squarin’ myself with the Pres’dent of this road! I’m li’ble to hear some fine language an’ maybe have a nice little suit to compromise, too. But we’ll get there. It’d a’ held us up half an hour or more, to wait for that measly local to hit a switch. Ever steal an engine before, son?”
“No,” said the fireman, “and I’m just wondering how I’ll look in striped clothes.”
“You’llbe all right. Take that from me. It means promotion. That’s all. If our trip lasts long enough, you’re li’ble to be Pres’dent of the C. G. & X. at this rate. Say, I wonder when this engine took on water last. Look an’ see.”
“All right for the rest of the run,” reported the fireman, on his return. “But suppose they telegraph ahead and have us run into an open switch?”
“I thought of that. But they won’t. In the first place, they won’t risk smashin’ a good engine. In the second,—Hell! Ain’t I Caleb Conover?”
A hatless man,—dripping wet, mud-smeared, grimy as a coal heaver,—took the State House steps three at a stride. In less than two minutes it was known throughout the Assembly that Caleb Conover had come. A word here, a hint there, a pulling of mysterious wires:—and the wavering backbones of his more doubtful satellites in the Legislature were miraculously stiffened. The Starke Bill had not yet come to a vote; thanks to Bourke and his colleagueswho had wearied the Assembly to desperation and maddened Blacarda to frenzy by a continuous series of the most glaring filibuster tactics. But even the Conover faction’s tactics had, at the last, wellnigh exhausted themselves.
“In another five minutes,” Caine was explaining, “you’d have been too late. Nothing could have stopped the bill from—”
“Another five minutes!” mocked Conover, turning from his work. “Son, this ain’t the first, nor yet the millionth time that a diff’rence of five minutes has knocked hist’ry into a cocked hat. Now, send McGuckin to me. He needs a little more beguilin’. An’ I’m here to give it to him. Chase, now! He’s the last I’ll have time to see, before the vote.”
Conover did not so much as trouble to go to the Assembly gallery with Caine when the Starke bill came up for balloting; but sat smoking and glancing over papers in the Committee room that he had commandeered as his personal office. Hither, soon afterward, Caine repaired; his handsome, tired face alight.
“We win!” he announced triumphantly. “The bill’s defeated,—by two votes. Congratulations!”
“Son,” observed Conover, glancing up from his desk, “what’s all the excitement? I told you last Friday that we’d win by two votes. Now, maybe, you’ll believe, another time, that I know what I’m talkin’ about. Where’s Blacarda?”
“I passed him in the corridor on his way back tothe hotel. Why do you ask? You’re done with him now.”
“Donewith him?” echoed Conover. “Why, man, I ain’tbegunwith him yet. I was just waitin’ to find where he’d gone. So long. See you at thehotel before train time.”
Conover walked out of the office, leaving Caine staring after him in perplexity. Straight to the hotel the Fighter drove. Arriving there he went, unannounced, to Blacarda’s room; entered without knocking, and closed the door behind him.
Blacarda looked up from the task of packing his suit case. Bareheaded, still grimy and disheveled, Conover stood facing him. Blacarda rose from his knees beside the open suit case and started forward.
“I guess you know why I’m here?” hazarded Caleb, looking across at the well-groomed figure, without the faintest trace of emotion.
“To crow over your dirty, underhand victory of to-day?” blazed the other. “If so you can save yourself the trouble. Leave my room at once. I don’t wish it polluted or—”
“It’ll have to stand a little more polootion before I’m ready to go,” answered Conover, unmoved. “No, I haven’t come to crow. Crowin’ ain’t in my line. A little while ago I set a man to tracin’ a tel’gram I got this mornin’. It seemsyouwrote it an’ paid thehotel tel’graph clerk $10 to slip it to me at the right time. Don’t lie. I’ve got proof.”
“I’m not given to lying,” retorted Blacarda. “And if I were, I shouldn’t take the trouble to lie to a blackleg like you. Yes, I wrote the telegram. What of it?”
“You’re a sweet-scented sort of a cuss to preach about ‘dirty, underhand vict’ries,’ ain’t you?” said Caleb, thoughtfully. “After tryin’ to get me out of the way like that.”
“Any weapon is justifiable against a scoundrel,” sneered Blacarda. “One must fight fire with fire.”
“Quite so,” assented Caleb. “Though not as original as I’d ’a expected from a clever chap like you. Fightin’ fire with fire is good finance. So when you tipped an engineer $600 to get me delayed in comin’ here, I made no kick. That was fair game. I’d a’ done the same thing myself. Only I wouldn’t a’ bungled it likeyoudid. When you’re goin’ to do a crooked thing do it well. Don’t foozle it an’ lose your fight....”
“I haven’t your experience in hold-up tactics,” answered Blacarda, “so perhaps I—”
Caleb waved aside the interpolation and went on in the same heavy, emotionless voice.
“That was all fair, like I said. But it failed. Then, what’d you do? Dragged a woman’s name into the row. Faked a dispatch tellin’ meshewas dyin’ an’ callin’ for me. That’s a trickIwouldn’t play if my life was hangin’ on a deal. You used that little girl’s name to get me away. You put up that filthy job,—an’ took another man into your conf’dence.Told a measly, tattlin’ tel’graph clerk abouther. I ain’t any good at expressin’ myself. But say! I wish I could get it through that shiny head of yours what a rotten, low down, crawly cur you are! No, don’t put on no heroics!I’mdoin’ the talkin’ now. In the fake tel’gram, you used the nickname you’ve heard her called. You used the knowledge that I’d hustle from here to hell if I could be of use to her. You used all that as means to get me away from your p’litical dogfight to-day. An’ how did you get your knowledge of her nickname an’ ’bout my carin’ for her as if she was my own kid? Hey? You got it while you was callin’ on her. While you was takin’ her hosp’tality. You used that kind of trick inpolitics! God! I didn’t think there was a breathin’ man could do such a thing. No ward-heeler could do it—it had to be done by a ‘gentleman.’ One of the Arareek Governors.”
He paused for breath. Blacarda, reddening under the tirade’s lash, nevertheless sought to laugh.
“Well,” he queried with really excellent coolness, “what are you going to do about it? Of course you can bring suit,—and probably recover. But Miss Shevlin’s name will certainly figure rather unpleasantly in the newspaper reports of the case. I’m sorry I was forced to use such means,—I still believe them justifiable in dealing with a man like you,—but I fail to see what redress you have.”
“You’ll see presently,” replied Caleb, with no trace of threat in his dull voice. “That’s why I’m here.I’m not totin’ this into court. What good would your measly damage money do me? An’ I’m not goin’ to tell your friends of it with the hope they’d turn you out of s’ciety. I’m goin’ to punish you the only way a rotten trick like thatcanbe punished. The only way a skunk like you could be made to smart.”
“What do you mean?” asked Blacarda, a shadow of uneasiness showing through his rage.
“I mean I’ve come here to give you the biggest thrashin’ you ever got. An’ now’s the time I begin.”
Blacarda, at the slow forward motion of Caleb’s body, sprang furiously at the Fighter. He was a strong man; large and well built. But he might as well have tried to stop the rush of a charging bull-elephant as to block Caleb’s attack. Not even taking the pains to guard the heavy left-hander that Blacarda drove full into his face, Conover was upon his foe.
Backward across the room Caleb drove the other with a lightning succession of short arm blows that battered down Blacarda’s guard and smashed with fearful force upon his head and body. To escape the merciless hail of fists, Blacarda ducked and clinched.
Conover shook him off as though his antagonist had been a cripple, and ran in again to the assault. One right-hand blow crashed into Blacarda’s face and hurled him backward against the wall. As he rebounded forward from sheer shock of the doubleimpact, Conover’s left fist caught him flush on the jaw and he collapsed senseless to the floor.
Conover was at the unconscious body before it had fairly touched ground. He beat with insane rage upon the upturned, defenseless face, hammering it to a pulp; growling and whining all the time between his hard-set teeth; like some rabid jungle beast worrying its meat.
Caine flung open the door and ran into the room;—thereby in all probability saving Blacarda’s life. Taking in the scene at a glance, he launched himself upon the growling, mauling victor. With all his wiry strength, he sought to drag Conover away from the senseless man. But his utmost muscular power was as nothing to that of the giant who was still wreaking brute vengeance on the inert mass beneath him.
At length, employing a wrestling device, Caine managed to drag the unprepared Fighter backward, from behind; and by a sudden wrench to throw him to one side. Still keeping behind Conover, out of reach of the hammer-fists, the slighter man succeeded in pinioning Caleb’s arms by slipping his own hands and wrists between the other’s elbows and his body. Trussed up, helpless as he was, Caleb writhed and snarled like a leashed bulldog. In another moment he would have wrenched himself free by dint of main force, had not Caine’s voice at last penetrated the red wrath-mists of his brain.
“Conover!” his friend was shouting, for the tenthtime, “if you kill him, Miss Shevlin’s name will be brought into the affair! Can’t you see that? If—”
Conover’s iron-tense muscles relaxed. The orgasm of Berserk rage had passed, leaving him spent and apathetic. Caine knew that sanity had returned to the Fighter, and he released his grip on the mighty arms.
“Well!” he observed, facing the dazed, panting man, and setting to rights his own tumbled clothing, “You are a nice specimen of humanity to have at large in a civilized country! You might have killed him. Youwouldhave killed him, I believe, if I hadn’t come when I did. I got to thinking over what you said at the State House and I was afraid something like this would happen. So I came on. Just in time, I think.”
Caine, as he spoke, had knelt beside the battered, bleeding Thing on the floor. Now he crossed to the washstand and came back with a soaked towel. Talking as he worked over the unconscious figure, he added:
“You were right to thrash him. He richly deserved it. But, why the deuce did you keep on pummeling him while he was down? Does that strike you as sportsmanlike?”
“Sportsmanlike?” panted Conover, his big voice still shaking with ground-swells of the storm that had mastered him, “Sportsmanlike, hey? D’ye s’pose I came here for a measly athletic contest? I camehere to lick that curly, perfumed whelp. An’ I did it.”
“You hit him when he was down,” answered Caine, crossing again from the washstand and dashing cold water in Blacarda’s shapeless face. “And—”
“Of course I hit him when he was down!” snorted Caleb. “What d’ye s’pose I was goin’ to do? Help him up an’ brush off his clo’es? Gee, it makes me sick to hear that old fossil rot about ‘not hittin’ a man when he’s down!’ What in thunder’s the use of gettin’ him down if you ain’t goin’ to hit him? I didn’t come here for a friendly boxin’ bout. I came to pay Blacarda off. An’ he wasn’t to be paid off by one little tap that’d knock him over. That was just the start. I guess he’ll know enough by now to let Dey Shevlin’s name alone.”
Caine made no answer. He was deftly applying the simple prize-ring expedients for restoring beaten pugilists to their senses. Conover looked down at him in profound contempt.
“Yes,” went on the Fighter, “I s’pose inyourgold-shirt world, folks would say I was all kinds of a cad to keep on punishin’ that swine after I’d bowled him off his legs. But them same folks will jump with both feet on a business man when there’s a rumor that he’s broke. They’ll join in a run on a bank that’s in trouble. Their saintly women’ll take pious joy in chasin’ to hell some poor girl who’s made a fool of herself. But they’d roll up their eyes at the sight of me lickin’ Blacarda after he’s keeled over. What’nblazes is the use of gettin’ a man down if you ain’t goin’ to hit him? It’s the A. B. C. of business. Why, Caine, you make me tired!”
His eyes fell on his own torn, bleeding knuckles. He gazed at them in slow surprise; then sauntered over to bathe them. The glass above the washstand revealed to him a face pasty white, smeared with coal-dust smears and blood, and swollen from a blow on the mouth.
“I’m an engagin’ lookin’ spectacle, all right,” he soliloquized as he bent to wash. “Lucky I left my suit case at thehotel this morning. I’ll need a lot of dressin’ and massagin’ before I can go to see Dey.”
Blacarda groaned feebly, and moved his head.
“He’s coming around,” reported Caine. “Now I’m goin’ to telephone down for the hotel doctor. While he’s on his way here you can think of some story to tell him that will account for Blacarda’s condition.”
“I’ll tell him the truth,” said Caleb, simply. “All except the part about Dey. An’ I guess Blacarda ain’t likely to tellthat, either. But what’s the use of a doctor? The cur’s gettin’ his senses back.”
“I think you fractured at least one of his ribs, when your knee was jammed down on his chest,” answered Caine. “It feels so to me. Besides, unless his face is to be distorted and hideous for life it must have medical care at once.”
Blacarda lifted his unrecognizable visage and opened the one eye which was not wholly hidden fromview by his swollen flesh. Caine raised the injured man to a sitting posture and held a whiskey flask to the torn, discolored lips. Through the hedge of smashed teeth and down the swelled throat the stinging liquor glided. Blacarda gulped it down, sat motionless for a moment, then groaned again and looked about him.
“Well,” growled Caleb, “do you want any more?”
One long second Blacarda squinted vacantly at his conqueror. Then, with a shuddering scream of terror, he buried his mangled face in Caine’s shoulder and lay there, quivering and sobbing.
“What a beast you are, Conover!” exclaimed Caine, in revolt.
“That’s right,” assented Caleb, cheerfully. “But I’ve just broke a worse one. Broke him body an’ spirit. Not such a bad day’s work!”