Tesno made his report to Ben, listened in amazement to the contractor's account of Willie's closing of the Pink Lady, and they rode to the town and the townhouse.
Stella answered his knock. Instead of her usual dignified reception, she greeted him with emotion.
"Mr. Tesno! Did you meet Villie? He has gone to Ellensburg."
"Jack!" Persia darted into the hall and threw herself into his arms. She led him into the parlor, asking Stella to leave them alone.
Stella went into the dining room—Tesno had a feeling that she did not go on to the kitchen. Persia pulled him down beside her on the sofa, and he found himself holding her hand.
"So much has happened!" she said. "Did you hear about Willie? They say he has lost his mind. After all I did for him, Jack, he—"
"Persia, I'm looking for a man named Palma. Is he here?"
"That must be the man Willie arrested," she said quickly. "He came barging in here with a stranger and did some wild talking. I was meeting with ... some people. Willie said something about taking this man to Ellensburg with Mr. Bronklin."
"And they have already left?"
"I'm sure I don't know."
"They have left," Stella said, appearing in the dining room doorway. She drew herself up very straight. "I varned him, Mrs. Parker. I told him that Mr. Yay planned to have him killed. He said he vould be all right, but I am afraid. Vill he be all right, Mr. Tesno?"
"Stella, you have apparently been eavesdropping!" Persia said with an icy anger in her voice. "That is bad enough. But you've twisted everything you heard into a perfectly outlandish story. Stella, have you a crush on Willie? Is that why—"
"I have twisted nothing," Stella asserted. "It vas a plan they vere making, Mr. Tesno, Mr. Yay and the marshal. Mrs. Parker said no, she didn't vant it. I give her credit for that. After vile, she said she didn't vant to hear about it. She don't really care what they do, Mr. Tesno."
"Stella, youliar!" Persia was on her feet. Her eyes were blazing. There were shocking angry lines in her face. "You get out of this house! Immediately!"
"Yes, ma'am," Stella said.
"Wait," Tesno said.
Rising, he touched Persia's elbow, and she flounced violently away from him. For just a second or two, she pressed both palms to her face. Then she made a desperate effort at control, composing her voice but not getting the searing anger out of her eyes.
"I didn't mean that, Stella," she said. "Youmisunderstoodwhat you heard, and you've let your imagination run away with you."
"No, ma'am, I heard it straight. It vas a plan."
Persia turned away in exasperation. "What a day!" she said.
Tesno took her firmly by the shoulders and met her eyes. She lowered them and would have come against him, but he held her off. "Persia, I want the truth. From you. Is there a plan to kill Willie?"
"How do I know? They're hard men. There's a great deal at stake and—I told them I would have nothing to do with it!"
"Yes," Stella said. "She told them that. She said she didn't even vant to know about it."
Persia whirled and walked to the stairway. She halted there, face in hands; but he did not follow.
"I am afraid for Villie, Mr. Tesno," Stella said.
"How long ago did he leave?"
"Yust before you came. Ten, fifteen minutes."
Tesno regarded her gloomily. "I'll go after him," he said. He strode swiftly to the front door, and it closed heavily behind him.
Willie's prisoners rode half a length ahead of him up the steep road out of the gulch. He had searched them both and found no hidden weapon. Both were handcuffed. He had assured them that if either made a false move, he was going to shoot. He meant it and they knew he meant it.
Still, the fact that he had got out of town with no challenge from Madrid seemed to confirm Stella's warning that there would be an escape try on the road. The marshal and Mr. Jay weren't going to let him get this pair of dandies to Ellensburg if they could stop it.
They crossed the first ridge and began a long, angling descent. Willie's eyes scoured the timber ahead for any sign of life. Now and then he raised himself in the saddle and glanced back. As they neared a bend in the road after a long straight stretch, he saw that a rider was following them.
He was a good quarter-mile away, and he was keeping his horse at a fast trot. He didn't look like Madrid, but Willie was afraid to take his eyes off his prisoners long enough to study him carefully. As they rounded the bend, Willie concocted a plan.
The road bore sharply to the right here. Half a mile below, it crossed a creek and then slanted back up the side of a massive range of hills and through a little saddle between peaks. Out of sight of the man behind them now, Willie ordered Palma and Bronklin to pull into the trees to the left.
It seemed to him that they could cut cross-country and reach the road again as it climbed the hills ahead. The riding would be rough, steep, and slow; they would gain no time by the shortcut. But the chances were that the man behind them wouldn't see their tracks leaving the road here—only Indians were apt to notice such things along a well traveled road. He probably wouldn't miss them till he had reached the bottom of the valley and crossed the creek. There was a straight piece of road there and he would suddenly find that they were no longer ahead of him. He would turn back to discover where he had lost them. At least, Willie hoped he would. He would eventually find their sign and follow it. But by that time Willie and the prisoners would be back on the road a mile and a half ahead. There was a ragcamp a bit farther along which they could reach without fear of being overtaken. Willie planned no further ahead than that.
Weaving through the big evergreens made keeping an eye on both prisoners difficult. When they were well off the road, Willie called a halt. While Palma and Pinky jeered and grumbled, he quickly cut a length of picket rope and tied the bridle of one of their horses to the tail of the other. Thus they were forced to travel pack-train fashion and keep together.
They wound sharply down-grade, dodging branches, holding the horses to a walk on Willie's order. The creek was deep and its banks were thick with brush and jutting dead-falls, but they finally found a ford and crossed. Then they worked up through forest again and came suddenly upon the road. They rounded the first bend and ran smack into Madrid, who was sitting his horses and waiting.
He was a scant ten yards away. He had been watching, had seen them first, and had his revolver in hand. If they had hit the road a hundred yards beyond this bend, they would have avoided him, Willie thought. As it was, he was beaten, and he knew it. He thought of wheeling his horse around and making a run for it. But he knew he would never make it. That revolver in Madrid's hand would drop him at twice the distance.
Pinky and Palma, still riding in file with Pinky ahead, had reined up. Willie kicked his horse forward and jumped it into Palma's. This sent the horses of both prisoners into a dance, and Madrid had to rein out of the way. Willie made a grab for his gun but barely got it clear of his belt. Swinging his horse aside with one hand, Madrid pointed his gun at the sky with the other, leveled it with a gentle chopping motion and fired. Willie coughed and teetered out of the saddle to the road. His startled horse trotted ahead of the others, and Madrid casually leaned over and caught the reins.
Pinky and Palma calmed their horses and regarded the motionless figure below them. Palma was the first to speak.
"And that'll be that," he said. He got down from the saddle with his manacles hands held awkwardly in front of him and unfastened the rope that held his horse to Pinky's. "I'll get the key off him," he said then and walked toward Willie's body. Madrid made the chopping motion with the gun again and shot him squarely between the shoulder blades.
Pinky stared in open-mouthed astonishment. He grinned shakily and said, "What's my move, Pete? Go back with you or skidoo?"
"Neither," Madrid said, speaking for the first time. He raised the gun again, and Pinky understood.
"Pete ... wait...."
"So long, cowboy," Madrid said as he pulled the trigger.
He drew the extra gun from his coat pocket, fired it in the air, and tossed it to the ground near Pinky. Dismounting he recovered Willie's gun, fired it twice, and dropped it near Willie. In the saddle again, he led the horses up and down the road past the bodies several times to assure a hopeless confusion of tracks. He then rounded the bend, left the road and headed through the forest toward Tunneltown. It wouldn't do to be seen on the road.
As soon as he was out of sight, Muckamuck Charlie emerged from the trees, leading his horse. He walked round the bend and, having heard the shots, was not surprised by what he found there. Mumbling to himself, he bent over each man and assured himself they were all dead.
Lifting Willie's body under the arms, he dragged it to the side of the road and straightened it out so it looked comfortable.
"You were atyeeamong them," he said in Yakima.
He climbed on his horse thinking that it was a bad business for an Indian to get mixed up in white men's quarrels. He knew of only one white man who would believe him when he told what he had seen. Tesno, as far as he knew, was still with the boiler—or maybe on his way to Tunneltown in response to Vickers' message. Charlie headed his horse eastward—toward Ellensburg—and rode away.
Prodding a tired horse, Tesno heard the shots distantly. He kicked the animal into a lope, couldn't hold him there, settled for a wobbly trot. A few minutes later, he met a riderless horse jogging along toward Tunneltown, head held high to keep dragging reins from underfoot. He waved an arm, turning the horse, and hazed it ahead of him. Almost at once, two more horses appeared with empty saddles. With a sense of disaster gnawing at him, he turned these, too.
He had an instant of hope when he first saw Willie stretched out beside the road; but even before he dismounted and knelt beside the boy, this faded. Willie was dead. Mr. Jay and Madrid had planned it. Persia might have stopped it and didn't....
He had seen his share of death; mostly, he had turned away from it with a shrug and maybe a muttered prayer, as a man must. Now he remembered the first he had seen, that of a childhood playmate, how he couldn't believe it, and this was like that. He brushed mud from Willie's face with his fingers; he looked around at the road and the forest and the sky. Willie was gone; but the world that he was a part of went on, and he was not gone. It seemed as if the cloak of Time were lifted momentarily and the illusion of past, present, and future dispelled.
Nobody ever dies, he thought.Everything we are, everything we do, everything we've ever done, good and bad, goes on forever.
This struck him sharply, fleetingly. The cloak fell again, and he was angry.
He searched the ground, examined the guns. It looked as if one of the prisoners had had a hidden gun. He had pulled it and shot Willie, who had lived long enough to kill them both. That was how it looked, Tesno thought, but that wasn't how it was. There were three empty shells in the two guns. He had heard six shots.
He spent another half hour at the scene, studying it, learning little from the hodgepodge of tracks but fixing every detail in his mind. A train of freight wagons came lumbering along the road then, bound for Tunneltown. The crew found tarpaulins in which to wrap the bodies and stowed them on top of their loads.
When Tesno asked if they had met anyone within the last few miles, several of the drivers shook their heads. Then one remembered.
"Just an Injun," he said. "Old Muckamuck Charlie who works at the Cle Elum mill."
Tesno herded the riderless horses through town to the livery barn. He briefly questioned the attendant, then rode back down the street. He intended to go at once to Vickers' camp; but in front of the marshal's office, a thing happened that changed his mind.
The freighters were unloading the canvas-shrouded bodies here, carrying them into the office. A little crowd was gathering on the walk, and Madrid stood at the front of it. Tesno maneuvered his horse between wagons and stopped directly before the marshal. Silence washed over the crowd. For a moment neither man spoke. Then Tesno said, "I found the bodies."
"Why tell me?" Madrid said. "It didn't happen in my jurisdiction."
"Not interested?"
Madrid shrugged. "It's all plain enough. One of the prisoners had a gun. They shot it out. They—"
Mr. Jay stepped out of the crowd. He touched Madrid's elbow without looking at him, and the marshal fell silent.
"Is that what it looked like to you, Mr. Tesno?" Mr. Jay asked.
"No."
"Mr. Tesno I have been asked to run for mayor of this town." Mr. Jay raised his voice for the crowd. "Before I accept, I shall visit Ellensburg and assure myself of the support and the co-operation of the authorities there. I should like to be able to give them the facts about this tragedy. Will you step into the marshal's office and tell me everything you know?"
"It was an ambush. That's all I'll say now."
"Can you prove that, Mr. Tesno?"
"When the time comes, Mr. Jay."
"I was under the impression that you wanted to give the marshal details."
"I wanted to see if he was interested," Tesno said. "He wasn't."
Mr. Jay threw back his head so that his trim little beard seemed to be pointed up at Tesno. There were hollow circles about his eyes, and Tesno thought that the brilliance in them was not entirely the result of emotion. He realized suddenly that the man was under a strain that amounted to illness. Yet his brazen assurance was a formidable thing.
"I don't understand your hostility, sir," Mr. Jay said.
"Willie Silverknife is dead, Mr. Jay. The men who killed him will answer to me."
Mr. Jay glared. "Didyoukill him, Mr. Tesno?"
You had to give the man credit. All he had left was a desperate bluff—and a steely confidence in himself.
"You know better," Tesno said.
"My information is that this man Palma tried to wreck Vickers' boiler a few days ago," Mr. Jay said loudly. "You killed his partner. You were trailing him. You and Pinky Bronklin were old enemies. Willie Silverknife wanted these men alive. Did you want them dead, Mr. Tesno?"
"I'll have my proof when I need it," Tesno muttered.
"I have no authority yet," Mr. Jay went on. "But let me warn you. Keep out of the town and its affairs. If I hear of any more of your blustering and bullying here, I'll insist that the marshal stop it."
Tesno grinned and gave a little toss of his head. He understood that Mr. Jay was offering a challenge rather than a warning.
"I'm going to close your town down tight, Mr. Jay," he said.
He backed his horse from between the wagons and jogged down the street to the Silver Slipper. He tied the horse and went in, knowing that Madrid and Jay were watching.
The proprietor, who was a member of the town council, was sitting in a poker game. Tesno stood behind him till a hand was finished.
"You want something?" the saloonkeeper asked testily. He was a bald man with a vacant, puppy-dog face.
"I'm closing the Silver Slipper," Tesno said mildly. "You have until tomorrow noon to move out."
"You'rewhat?"
"I'm not going to argue about it. Get your stock out by then or it will be smashed."
The man spread his hands and looked appealing at the others at the table. He turned his eyes up to Tesno again and said, "Look, I've got a territorial license. You can't—"
"Tomorrow noon."
Tesno pivoted and walked out. He rode up the street toward the Big Barrel, passing the marshal's office again. The freight wagons had moved on, but a little crowd was still there. Mr. Jay stood in the doorway of the office.
Tesno delivered similar ultimatums to the proprietors of the Big Barrel and the Western Star. Then he rode to the townhouse.
He dismounted at the back of the building and entered the kitchen. Stella was sitting at the table, staring vacantly at the raw materials for dinner. The news of Willie's death had already reached her.
"I was too late," Tesno said.
"He vas a decent man," Stella said, speaking very slowly. "Maybe a little crazy, like they say, but decent."
"Stella, I want you to come with me."
"Mrs. Parker says I am not to leave the house. I am scared by the vay she said it."
"You're leaving right now," he said. "We'll send somebody for your things later."
She took his hand dazedly, and he led her outside. He mounted his horse, swung her up behind the saddle, and took her straight to Vickers' camp.
Keef O'Hara was with Ben Vickers in his cabin. They had just heard of Willie's murder and were full of angry questions. They nodded politely to Stella, not guessing the purpose of her presence and plainly considering it an intrusion. Tesno held a chair for her and explained.
"Ben, I want you to put her up here at the camp. She isn't safe in town."
"Here?" Ben said doubtfully. "There isn't a woman in camp. We have no suitable place."
"Then make one, Ben. She heard Jay and Madrid planning to kill Willie."
Ben whirled to confront her. "Youheardthem?"
Frightened and ill-at-ease, Stella haltingly told what she had heard. When she had finished, Ben Vickers was grimly silent. He turned to his work table and stood toying with some papers there, his back to the others.
"Good lass!" Keef O'Hara said. "Say that in court and we'll see Jay and Madrid hang as high as Mount Tacoma."
"It won't be that easy," Tesno said. "There were other witnesses to that conversation. They would probably swear to a different version, make it seem that Stella misunderstood."
"Jay didn't have to kill," Ben Vickers said darkly. "He was a good engineer. This is a rough business. We've all been ruthless at times, I guess. But outright murder...."
O'Hara nodded sharply. "Sure, it makes a man wonder."
"Jay got his start in Dakota," Ben said. "Worked for a man whose team ran away and took him over a cliff. Jay took over the contract. In Idaho he had a partner who was killed in a fall from a trestle. Nobody ever figured out what he was doing up there in the middle of a snow storm."
Ben turned away from the table, and the three men exchanged startled glances. It seemed to Tesno that they were all thinking about the same thing.
"About the only way you can get a man like Jay is in court," Ben said. "And then you're likelynotto get him. I hate to think of what a smart lawyer might do to Stella on the stand."
"I vould tell only the truth," Stella said.
"Another thing," Ben said. "You never saw this boiler-wrecker up close, Jack. How could you swear it was Palma?" He shook his head dismally. "Fact is, we have precious little on Jerome J. Jay."
"Come, lass." O'Hara held out a hand to Stella. "I'll see you to my cabin, which is yours for the night. I'll move into the bunkhouse."
"I'll go along," Tesno said. "There's more that I want Stella to tell me. A whole lot more."
He ate a late supper at the cookhouse and got back to town well after dark. He went to the hotel, bolted the door of his room, and went to bed.
Toward midnight, he was awakened by a persistent rapping. It turned out to be Parris, the hotel owner and town councilman. He helped himself to a chair and seemed to settle himself for a long talk.
"Just came from a council meeting."
"I figured there'd be one," Tesno said.
"I don't like what's happening," Parris said. He had a loud, harsh voice. "I don't like wide-open saloons. I don't like gambling. But most of all, I don't like your barging in like God Almighty and pushing people around. The town ought to handle its own problems."
Tesno, tousled, sleep-eyed, in his underwear, was in no mood to listen to complaints. "Willie Silverknife is dead," he growled.
"Yes, and you're likely to be if you try to enforce that noon deadline you laid down. That's a friendly warning, Tesno, not a threat. They'll be ready for you tomorrow. Madrid has organized every barkeep and every gambler in town into what he calls a vigilance committee, and the council is backing him up. Every man will be armed and waiting for you. The first violent move you make, they'll drop you. Try Willie's trick with the dynamite, and they'll kill you before you can light the fuse. I don't like it and I spoke against it. I don't want any more killing."
"Was Persia at the meeting?" Tesno asked.
"She was not, but I assume she knows what's going on."
"Was Mr. Jay there?"
"Jay? Hell, no. I understand he will run for mayor, which will be a fine thing. But he has nothing to do with the council now."
"Parris, Jay has been in control of Tunneltown since the beginning. He's been running it wide open in an effort to put Vickers behind schedule."
Parris wouldn't believe it, and Tesno was in no mood to argue. Finally, he opened the door and said, "Stop talking for a while and think. Think about what I've said. Good night and thanks for the warning."
Parris snorted and walked out. Tesno had no more than blown the lamp and got into bed when he knocked on the door again.
"I got some siwash here who's been pestering the night clerk," he called. "Claims he's got business with you. Won't go away."
Tesno got the lamp going and opened the door.
"Hello, Charlie," he said. "You come in, too, Parris."
Charlie came in and looked around the room slowly and unblinking. Parris followed and closed the door. Charlie decided he would be comfortable on the bed, smoothed back the covers, and sat down.
"Nika cooley hyas tsik-tsik," he said.
"He says he went to the big wagon," Tesno said. "To the boiler."
"I savvy Chinook," Parris said.
"Mika ko," Charlie said to Tesno. "You here all a time." He seemed to consider this a joke.
"You found those dead men," Tesno said.
Charlie grunted. "Kely tum-tum.I cry in my heart. Silverknife my cousin."
"Willie was your cousin?"
Charlie grunted affirmatively. He explained that he had seen Willie leave town with the prisoners and that he had followed. Willie had seen him in the distance, hadn't recognized him, and had tried to lose him by leaving the road. Charlie had seen the tracks leading into the woods, however, and had followed. Willie had rejoined the road and Charlie had just reached it when he heard the shots. Not having a gun, he had hidden in the trees and waited.
"Son of a gun chase horses up and down. Go into trees."
"Who, Charlie?" Tesno demanded.
"Hyas tyee," Charlie said. He tapped his chest. "Chikaminstar. Big boss of town. Bright shirt."
"Madrid!" Parris said. "Madrid murdered the three of them!"
"Madrid," Tesno said.
Late in morning the town began to fill up. By eleven-thirty the saloons were doing a jumping, three-deep-at-the-bar business. Extra bartenders, armed and on hand as guards, were pressed into service. Gambling tables that usually didn't open till evening were solidly ringed with players and kibitzers. Other men stood in little groups out of the flow of traffic, talking softly or just waiting.
Sid Saul, owner and operator of the Silver Slipper, remarked cynically that he wished some bull-ragging troublebuster would threaten a shut-down every day. But even as he said it, he dabbed at his bald head with a handkerchief and kept his big, vacant, puppy-dog eyes on the door.
Over the next half hour it came to Sid gradually that something more than curiosity was responsible for this crowd. First, he overheard some of the talk and gathered that Ben Vickers had given the whole crew several hours off and had meted out fifty cents apiece drinking money to boot. Second, he realized with a shock that this was not a drunken crowd; the hum of steady talk was not punctuated by song, raucus laughter, or quarreling. Third, by the time Sid's big gold watch told him it was four minutes till noon, the jam had swollen beyond reason. Men stood almost solid from wall to wall, and Sid could scarcely see the door. He tossed his sweat-soaked handkerchief into a cuspidor and took a place behind the bar.
"Where's Madrid?" he demanded. "He ought to be down here. Eddie, go find Madrid."
Sid served no drinks. He just stood with one hand on the bar and the other within reaching distance of a sawed-off shotgun stashed under it. Except for a quick glance at his watch every minute or so, he kept his eyes on the door.
"Where's Madrid?" he demanded again at one minute to twelve. "Where's Eddie?"
The batwings eased open, but it was only another knot of workmen crowding in. They shoved up to the bar directly in front of Sid. They were all big men, and he couldn't see the door at all now without moving out of reach of the gun.
It was noon by his watch, a minute after. His fingers touched the stock of the shotgun. He craned his neck and found himself looking into the grinning Irish face of Keef O'Hara.
"Take care with that trigger finger, lad," O'Hara said. "Blast one of these terriers, accidental or not, and the rest will decorate a rope with you."
The truth of this struck Sid like a blow, and he took his hand off the gun. He knew now that he wasn't going to use it. You couldn't shoot anybody in this mob, terrier or troublebuster, and hope to live. The crowd was pressing around the ends of the bar. He whirled, making a pushing gesture with his hands; then he whirled the other way, astonished to find himself alone; the bartenders had been swallowed by the crush and passed from hand to hand.
Then someone was reaching past him, taking the sawed-off shotgun from under the bar. It was Tesno. He said, "Get out of town, Sid."
Sid went weak and sick and then into a blind rage. He knocked the gun aside and drove a fist into Tesno's stomach. Tesno took the punch, stepping back with it; his bootheel caught and he went down, turning sideways and landing on one knee. Sid strode forward, starting a kick, but Tesno rolled into his legs, grasped one of them, drove a shoulder into Sid's groin. Sid lit flat on his back, got an elbow in the stomach that took the wind and the fight out of him.
He was hoisted to his feet, spun around the bar and through the crowd to a group in the center of the saloon. These were the bartenders and the gamblers, ringed by a little cordon of guards.
"They kept pressing in till they swallowed us up," one of the dealers moaned. "I reached for the revolver I had in my pocket and there was already a hand on it...."
The crowd was briefly unruly now, scrambling for the contents of the cash boxes and the liquor on the back bar. A half dozen men with axes on their shoulders filed through to the back rooms. There was a prolonged crash of glass from the storeroom.
Dave Coons wove through the crowd then, saying, "Drift down to the Big Barrel, boys.... The Big Barrel next...."
Mr. Jay and Pete Madrid stood at a window of Mr. Jay's hotel suite and looked down at the street, which was nearly empty. They had watched the mob pour up the street from the Silver Slipper to the Big Barrel to the Western Star, which had completely swallowed it now. The window was open. Madrid held a rifle in his hands.
"It'll be over in a moment," Mr. Jay said tiredly.
Almost at once, the splash of shattered glass came to their ears. Mr. Jay closed the window.
"He's got to show himself sometime," Madrid protested.
"He's keeping to the alleys," Mr. Jay said, "taking no chances. Anyhow, the confusion is over and the chance is gone. The mob will mill around town for a while, then go back to camp."
Madrid put the rifle into a corner and loosened his revolver in its holster. "Then I'll go down and find him. Face to face, I can out-gun him, Mr. Jay."
"Pete, that mob would pick you to pieces."
Madrid stared absently at the street. Men were beginning to trickle out of the Western Star.
"Then the town is his—and Ben Vickers'. I'm getting out, Mr. Jay. If I were you...."
"Just listen," Mr. Jay said. "He's going to be looking for you. I want you to run. He'll follow. Draw him out of town away from the mob. Then turn on him."
Madrid squinted thoughtfully. "But in town I have authority, therightto kill him."
"Do it my way once more, Pete. And when you've killed him, keep going. Go over Runaway Mountain and down the Green River to Tacoma. Sell your horse and take a ship to San Francisco." Mr. Jay extracted a sheaf of bills from a wallet and passed them to Madrid. "This is expense money. Go to the Palace Hotel. Register under a false name—Williams, George Williams. Stay sober and do nothing to attract attention. In a few weeks, I'll contact you. There'll be a payoff."
"I want five thousand, Mr. Jay."
"You shall have it, provided you kill Tesno. Now get some gear together and ride out of here. See that somebody gets word to Tesno just as you're leaving."
"You'll be—all right?" Madrid said. He stuffed the bills into a pocket.
"Of course I'll be all right! They have nothing on me but accusations they can't make stick—not with Tesno out of the way."
They left the hotel together. Madrid hurried off to throw a blanket roll together and get a horse. Mr. Jay made his way to the townhouse.
This was going to be an expensive business, this saloon-wrecking. But perhaps it was for the best. He would be elected mayor and would build a tight town organization that could stand up to Vickers, the Ellensburg politicians—anybody. Tesno would be dead. When he, Mr. Jay, had things solidly under control again, the saloons would open. He would go ahead with the plan to issue scrip....
A dozen men idled in front of Persia's end of the townhouse. Two saddlehorses and a mule browsed nearby. Mr. Jay thumped the knocker once and walked in. He came to a stop as he entered the parlor, startled to see that Tesno was here, standing at the center of a group scattered around the room. The others were Dave Coons, Judge Badger, Keef O'Hara, and Mr. Parris. Persia sat beside Sam Lester on the sofa.
Judge Badger stepped forward to greet Mr. Jay. "I'm glad you're here, sir. Perhaps you'll reply to some of the charges—very extravagant charges—that Mr. Tesno has made against you."
Mr. Jay threw back his head and pointed his beard at one and another of the gathering.
"Charges? Be damned to Mr. Tesno and his charges! He has no authority to make charges!"
"I'm accusing you of conspiring to murder Willie Silverknife and his prisoners," Tesno said in a snow-soft voice. "Tomorrow I'm taking you and Madrid and my witnesses to Ellensburg."
Mr. Jay drew himself up even straighter. "Slanderous nonsense! I assure you that you are taking me nowhere."
"He claims he has found an Indian who saw Madrid at the scene of the murder," Judge Badger said, "and a maid-servant who overheard you planning the crime."
Sam Lester got to his feet. "That will be Stella, Mr. Jay," he said. "She overheard you say that Willie was taking a dangerous chance—something like that. She misinterpreted it to mean that you wanted him killed. But there's nothing to worry about. Persia and I were present at that conversation. We know that there was no such implication."
"I should hope you do," Mr. Jay said.
"We will both testify to that—if necessary," Sam said.
Tesno's eyes swung to Persia. She met them defiantly and said, "We certainly will."
"And you'll be perjuring yourself to protect a murderer you ought to be doing everything possible to expose," Tesno said.
"Really, Jack, you're being unbearably sanctimonious," she said. "You killed a man less than a week ago. And you have the gall—"
"You don't understand," he said. "Mr. Jay, shall I tell her how you got your first contract—how you took over when the contractor went over a cliff? How many other associates of yours died suddenly and without witnesses, Mr. Jay? How about that partner of yours who fell off a trestle in Idaho?... Persia's husband was your partner, too, wasn't he, Mr. Jay?"
Silence smothered the room. Mr. Jay seemed too outraged to speak at once. He glanced toward the door as if he would like to leave. Keef O'Hara and Dave Coons moved squarely into his way. Tesno watched Persia. She had paled. There was a noticeable pulsing in her throat. Mr. Jay's nostrils flared as he drew in a deep breath.
"Judge Badger," he said, "I appeal to you as a man dedicated to justice. This man is making crude, slanderous insinuations. Will you warn him of the consequences?"
"You're a killer, Mr. Jay," Tesno said. "Persia knows that. Sam Lester knows it. But why did you kill Duke Parker? You had already secretly taken control of Tunneltown away from him."
"Jack," Persia said in a strange voice, "what are you trying to do to me?"
"I'm making you see the truth," he said. He confronted Mr. Jay again and went on without pause. "Duke Parker was trying to blackjack himself back into control, wasn't he, Mr. Jay? Unless you wrote off the debt he owed you, he was going to expose your plan to operate Tunneltown in a wide-open way that would slow down Vickers' work. That would have ruined you in railroad circles. So you killed him—or had someone do it for you."
"No!" Persia made as if to rise. "I'm not going to listen to any more of this."
"Tell her, Sam," Tesno said. "You must know the truth."
"Sam...." Persia said.
Sam Lester sat down beside her, took her hand. He said nothing at all.
Tesno hammered on mercilessly. "Was Duke Parker killed by a bullet, Sam? Was a log skidded over him to conceal the wound?"
"Tesno, for god's sake, have a little consideration for her!" pleaded Sam.
"By letting her testify in behalf of her husband's murderer?" Tesno said, looming over him. "Supposeyouhave a little consideration for her! Duke Parker's body can be exhumed. Persia is going to want that now, unless you tell her the truth. Spare her that, Sam."
Persia sat with her head bowed, her eyes fixed on Sam's stubby hand that covered her own. "Tell me, Sam," she said faintly. "Was he murdered? Just say yes or no."
"Shut up, Sam!" Mr. Jay snapped. "Don't you see what he's trying to do?"
"I've tried to get you away from here," Sam said to Persia, "get you out of this—"
"Say it!" Persia demanded.
Sam turned his froglike face up toward Mr. Jay. "It's all going to come out, anyhow," he said. "Yes, Persia. Duke was murdered. Madrid shot him. I swear I didn't know about it till it was over. Mr. Jay sent me up into the woods where Duke's body was. He said to help Madrid run a log over it, make sure it was ... torn up."
Mr. Jay seemed almost unable to speak. "This is a conspiracy!" he said in a choked voice. "Everyone here is determined to ... to discredit me."
Persia had buried her face in her hands. Now she looked up at him in horror. "I shall tell the truth in court," she said, controlling herself with a great effort. "You planned to have Willie killed on the road, and I shall say so."
Mr. Jay merely glared in reply. He was tired and sick and weak with anger. He made a feeble effort to shake off Keef O'Hara and Mr. Parris, each of whom had taken him by an arm.
"Take him to his rooms," Tesno said. "See that there's a guard outside his door."
Persia had buried her head against Sam Lester. Tesno wanted to say something soft and sympathetic now, but he knew it would sound ridiculous. Sam Lester looked up at him expressionlessly.
"I'm going to take her away from here," Sam said.
Tesno nodded. "Don't either of you leave the county," he said tersely and turned on his heel.
Judge Badger caught his elbow. "This man wants to speak to you."
Tesno hadn't noticed the little rat-faced man, who must have just arrived. He stepped forward importantly.
"Madrid just bought a horse at the livery.Boughtit, Mr. Tesno. He just rode out of town. Took the road to the camp. He's riding with saddlebags and a blanket roll."
Tesno hurried toward the door. As he reached it, Persia was suddenly behind him, calling to him, dabbing frantically at her face with a handkerchief.
"Jack wait. I was so wrong!"
"Whenyouget hurt, you're wrong," he said, turning angrily.
"You're cruel," she said. "I'm glad you're cruel. You've made me see—"
"I'm in a hurry, Persia."
"Jack, don't let it end for us. I need you. I think you need me."
"What we need, we can't have," he said with soft and incisive bitterness. "We need Willie Silverknife alive."
He jerked open the door and strode into the sunlight.
Tesno seized one of the saddle horses in front of the building and swung across town at a canter. He got no glimpse of Madrid till he was through the woods and at the edge of Vickers' camp; then he saw him far ahead on the wide, slow-climbing road that led to Runaway Mountain and the tunnel. Madrid looked back, urged his horse ahead a bit faster, and jogged out of sight around a bend.
Tesno reined into the empty camp and rode through it at a gallop. By taking the steep mule trail up the side of the gulch, he would avoid the possibility of being ambushed at that bend. If Madrid waited there, Tesno could cut him off. If not, he would at least close up some of the distance and have a chance of overtaking him before he reached the timber on the mountain top.
He found the horse willing and sure-footed on the narrow, twisting trail, and he gave the animal its head. The climb took longer than he had expected. But when at last the horse strained up the final steep ascent onto graded roadbed, Madrid was a scant hundred yards ahead. Tesno yelled at him to halt, drew his revolver, fired a wild shot.
Madrid continued at a trot. He rode straight to the gaping black arch of the tunnel, then veered to the left into the road that began its climb to the summit here. Tesno prodded his horse forward at an easy lope. He reached the road with Madrid directly above him, hardly within effective revolver range. Madrid wheeled his horse around, whipping a Winchester from its boot. He quickly aimed and fired.
Tesno's horse dropped in its tracks, making a sort of uncompleted somersault, pitching him forward out of the saddle. He landed painfully on a shoulder, rolled to his feet. His revolver was gone; he combed the ground with his eyes, didn't see it. A bullet drove past his head close enough so he could hear its angry buzz. Madrid was plunging down the road toward him, firing the rifle as he came. There was nothing to do but run, no place to run but into the tunnel. Another bullet tore splinters from a shoring timber at the portal as Tesno darted inside.
The tunnel was deserted, the crew in town. The arc lights that usually lighted the shaft had been turned off. A lantern glowed just within the portal; Tesno stooped and turned it out. He ran on into the darkness. He looked back to see Madrid framed in the arch of the portal, getting down from his horse, stooping to pick up something.My gun, Tesno thought.
Madrid raised his rifle then and fired blindly, whimsically, into the tunnel. Tesno leaped to the left wall and threw himself headlong. Madrid rapidly emptied the Winchester and threw it aside. Tesno hurried on. The dead end of the tunnel in the middle of a mountain was a hell of a place to die, he thought. He was aware now of a light somewhere ahead, too dim and distant to silhouette him. It must be back a way on the bench, he thought. If he could get up there, find a weapon, that would be the place to make a stand.
He looked back again. Madrid had found a lantern and lighted it. He held it above his head as he walked forward. His revolver gleamed in his other hand.
A minute later, Tesno reached the bench. This rose fourteen feet above the floor of the tunnel. Above it, the eight-foot shaft of the heading extended another forty or fifty feet into the mountain. The timbers resting on the bench had to be replaced as it was removed; so it was cut away in slices and presented a vertical face. A ladder stood against this. Tesno scaled it and drew it up after him.
His first impulse was to put out the lantern that burned up here, but he decided against this. He turned it up brighter and moved it to the very edge of the bench against one wall. Using his hat and a tool box, he quickly rigged a shield so that light was thrown below the bench while the top of it was relatively dark. There were tools up here—picks, pry bars, drills, sledges—that could be used as weapons. He looked around for dynamite but saw none. Then he found a sixteen-foot pole, probably used in maneuvering timbers into place, and suddenly he had a plan.
He shoved the ladder forward so that two rungs projected over the edge of the bench. He then lowered the pole, leaning it against the face of the bench with its end in view beside the ladder.
Madrid had been approaching slowly, holding the lantern high, stopping every few yards to shine it from side to side. He saw Tesno now—or more likely the shadows he threw on the tunnel walls as he moved. Anyhow, he came forward swiftly now, the revolver raised for a shot whenever he saw a solid target.
Tesno retreated from the edge, bending low. He selected a percussion drill as a weapon—an eight-foot steel shaft with a sharp chisel point. Dragging this beside him, he crawled to a position near the ladder and lay parallel to it. He watched the light from Madrid's lantern move along the timbers at the top of the tunnel, saw it come to a halt a few yards in front of the bench.
Madrid wasn't likely to come barging up on the bench. A surer way would be to climb to the level of the bench a few yards in front of it. This would bring the whole upper surface into view—and easy revolver range. But in any case, he would have to have the ladder.
Tesno lay motionless, gripping the long, heavy drill, watching the three inches of pole that stuck above the edge of the bench. Moving shadows on the tunnel wall told him that Madrid had set down his lantern and was coming quietly forward.
The pole-end moved, disappeared, reappeared between the rungs of the ladder. Tesno rose to a crouch. This was the trap. Madrid was taking the bait. For this moment, Tesno knew exactly where the man was. Reaching with a sixteen foot pole is a two-handed job; Madrid's gun would be in its holster. Grasping the drill like a spear, Tesno leaped over the edge.
Madrid swung the pole awkwardly and too late. The sharp steel point of the drill was already at his chest with Tesno's weight and the force of a fourteen-foot drop behind it. He uttered a strange muffled cry as Tesno pitched past him.
Tesno sprawled flat on the uneven floor, rolled to one side, and got painfully to his feet. Madrid lay on his back with the drill pinning him to the tunnel floor. He was dead when Tesno reached him.
A great crowd filled the street in front of the hotel. Tesno tied Madrid's horse and elbowed his way to the entrance. Ben Vickers touched his elbow.
"Jay shot himself," Ben said. "Seems they didn't think to search his room. He had a gun in there. You overtake Madrid?"
"In the tunnel, Ben. Not a pretty sight."
Sam Lester came out of the lobby. He turned his thick lenses up at Tesno and said, "No reason for Persia and me to stay in the county now. I'm taking her away." He moved on.
"Seems like those two will get off easy," Ben said. "Then again maybe they won't. They have each other."
The big boiler finally reached the east portal. A compressor was set up. An air line was run over the mountain so that automatic drills could be used in the west bore, too. Ben Vickers paid a bonus to everybody who worked for him when progress exceeded the necessary daily footage. The work spurted ahead.
There were unforseeable problems and delays, of course. Snow fell to a depth of twenty feet. Snow sheds had to be hurriedly built over the dump trucks. A landslide carried away part of the approach to the east portal. Supply wagons bogged down on the way up from Ellensburg, first in snow, then in mud. Much of the road had to be paved with logs and planks. When enough track was laid so that supplies could be brought in by train, a bridge washed out and freight wagons had to be pressed into service again.
There were more accidents in the tunnel, mostly caused by premature or delayed blasts. A dozen more men lost their lives. Rock was loosened above the line of the cut, and days were lost. Fumes from blasting became unbearable, and there was more delay while the ventilating system was altered. Cloudbursts flooded first the east portal, then the west. A dump train engine jumped the tracks, and its boiler burst. The strata of the basaltic trap rock was unpredictable; in spite of every precaution, there were frequent cave-ins.
But morale was high. The weak and the discontented and the lazy were weeded out; the tough and the determined stayed on. A spirited competition developed between the crews working from opposite sides of the mountain. Slowly, hour by hour, foot by foot, the lost days were made up.
On a May morning eleven days before the deadline, Ben Vickers stood in the hazy saffron glow of the arc lights and watched the drilling crew come toward him from the bench, two hundred yards away. Ben studied his watch. For weeks, both crews had been jarred by blasts in the other bore; so it was necessary to schedule every shot now and alert the drillers on the other side.
The crew reached Ben and lined itself beside him along the timbered wall. The fuse man came jogging along a minute or two later. The charge roared and grumbled. The earth trembled. A cloud of dust and rubble tumbled out of the heading. Much of this was caught by the fans and pulled into vent pipes; but the acrid outer edges of it rolled down the bore to where the men stood. And then, while the area of the explosion was still obscured, the dust cloud began to spew human figures, running, coughing, cheering.
Ben Vickers gaped and blinked and tried to bring up a yell of triumph that came out a kind of tired sob. These were workmen from the west bore. The wall between had crumbled away with the blast. Runaway Mountain had its tunnel.
A few days later, Ben and Tesno stood together in a crowd gathered near the portal to watch the first train pull through. The train crew waved. The workmen and townfolk waved back and cheered. Then, sadly, they watched the cars gather speed on the down-grade toward Ellensburg.
"How do you feel, Ben?" Tesno asked.
"Old," Ben grumbled. "Too old even to go on a drunk. What will it be now for you, Jack? You finally going to get to that ranch?"
Tesno grinned his twisted, one-dimple grin. He pulled an envelope from a pocket. "Got this the other day. An offer from James J. Hill."
Ben was impressed. "The old Empire Builder himself?"
"He doesn't give details, but it seems he's going to be laying track up one side of a river while a rival road lays it up the other. Seems like it will be a race."
Ben twitched his head doubtfully. "Bound to be trouble."
"Bound to be," Tesno said.