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The engine stopped before the station and Bob Scott, followed by Dancing, Dave Hawk, and the train crew sprang from the caboose steps and surrounded him. They had brought two horses and Bucks saw that all the men were armed. It took only a minute to tell the story, and the party scattered to view the destruction and look for clues to the perpetrators.
Scott and Dancing were especially keen in their search, but they found nothing to suggest who the vandals were. They listened again to Bucks, as he repeated his story with more detail, and held a hurried conference in which Dave Hawk took charge. Meantime the men were tearing up planks from the platform to make a chute for unloading the horses.
Bucks’s excitement increased as he saw the businesslike preparations for the chase. “Have you any idea you can catch them, Bob?” he asked feverishly.
Bob Scott’s smile was not a complete answer. “How can you catch anybody inthiscountry?” continued Bucks, regarding the scout sceptically.214But Scott looked across the interminable waste of sage-brush and rock as if he felt at home with it.
“If they stick to the wagon,” he explained leisurely, “we will have them in an hour or two, Bucks. A man might as well travel around here with a brass band as to try to get away with a wagon track behind him. If they stick to the wagon, we are bound to have them in two or three hours at most. You are sure they didn’t have a led horse?”
“They had nothing but the team,” said Bucks.
“In that case if they give up the wagon, three of them will have to ride two horses. They can’t go fast in that way. We will get some of them, Bucks, sure––somehow, sometime, somewhere. We have got to get them. How could I hold my job if I didn’t get them?”
That which had seemed impossible to Bucks looked more hopeful after Bob had smiled again. Dancing was busy installing the new telegraph outfit. While this was going on, Scott saddled the horses and, when he and Dave Hawk had mounted, the two rode rapidly down the emigrant trail toward Bitter Creek. The train was held until215Dancing could get the instruments working again; then, at Hawk’s request, it was sent down the Bitter Creek grade after himself and Scott; the trail followed the railroad for miles. Dancing remained with Bucks to guard against further attack.
The two railroad men rode carefully along the heavy ruts of the emigrant trail, from which all recent tracks had been obliterated by the flood, knowing that they would strike no sign of the wagon until it had been started after the storm. They had covered in this manner less than two miles when, rounding a little bend, they saw a covered emigrant wagon standing in the road not half a mile from the railroad track.
Scott led quickly toward concealment and from behind a shoulder of rock to which the two rode they could see that the wagon had been halted and the horses, strangely entangled in the harness, were lying in front of it. Scott and Hawk dismounted and, crawling up the shoulder where they could see without being seen, waited impatiently for some sign of life from the suspicious outfit. The description Bucks had given fitted the wagon very well, and the two lay for a time216waiting for something to happen, and exchanging speculations as to what the situation might mean. They were hoping that the thieves might, if they had gone away, return, and with this thought restrained their impatience.
“It may be a trick to get us up to shooting distance, Bob,” suggested Hawk when Scott proposed they should close in.
“But that wouldn’t explain why the horses are lying there in that way, Dave. Something else has happened. Those horses are dead; they haven’t moved. Suppose I circle the outfit,” suggested Scott benevolently.
“Take care they don’t get a shot at you.”
“If they can get a shot at me before I can at them they are welcome,” returned Scott as he picked up his bridle rein. “From what Bucks told me I don’t think a great deal of their shooting. He is a level-headed boy, that long-legged operator.” And Scott, with some quiet grimaces, recounted Bucks’s story of his descent of Point of Rocks the night before, under the fire of the three desperadoes.
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That he himself was now taking his own life in his hands as he started on a perilous reconnoissance, cost him no thought. Such a situation he was quite used to. But for a green boy from the East to put up so unequal a fight seemed to the experienced scout a most humorous proceeding.
He mounted his horse and directing Hawk what to do if he should be hit, set out to ride completely around the suspected wagon. The canvas cover was the uncertain element in the situation. It might conceal nobody, and yet it might conceal three rifles waiting for an indiscreet pursuer to come within range. Scott, taking advantage of the uneven country, rode circumspectly to the south, keeping the object of his caution well in view, and at times, under cover of friendly rocks, getting up quite close to it.
Before he had completed half his ride he had satisfied himself as to the actual state of affairs. Yet his habitual caution led him to follow out his original purpose quite as carefully as if he had reached no conclusion. When he crossed the trail west of the wagon, he looked closely for fresh218tracks, but there were none. He then circled to the north and was soon able, by dismounting, to crawl under cover within a hundred yards of the heads of the horses. When he got up to where he could see without being seen he perceived clearly that his surmise had been correct.
Both horses lay dead in the harness. From the front seat of the wagon a boot protruded; nothing more could be seen. Scott now, by signals, summoned Dave Hawk from where he lay, and when the swarthy conductor reached the scout, Scott called out loudly at the wagon.
There was no answer, no movement, no sound. Things began to seem queer; in the bright blaze of sunshine, and with the parched desert glistening after the welcome rain, there in the midst of the vast amphitheatre of mountains lay the dead horses before the mysterious wagon. But nowhere about was any sign of life, and the wagon might hold within its white walls death for whoever should unwarily approach it.
Bob Scott had no idea, however, of sacrificing himself to any scheme that might have occurred219to the enemy to lure him within danger. He called out again at the top of his voice and demanded a surrender. No sound gave any response, and raising his rifle he sent a bullet through the extreme top of the canvas cover midway back from the driver’s seat.
The echoes of the report crashed back to the rocks, but brought nothing from the silence of the emigrant wagon. A second shot followed, tearing through the side board of the wagon-box itself; yet there was no answer. Scott, taking his horse, while Hawk remained in hiding and covered the scene with his own rifle, led the horse so that it served as a shelter and walked directly toward the wagon itself. As he neared it he approached from the front, pausing at times to survey what he saw. Hawk watched him lead his unwilling horse, trembling with fear, up to the dead team as they lay in the bright sunlight, and saw Scott take hold of the protruding boot, peer above it into the wagon itself and, without turning his head, beckon Hawk to come up.
Under the canvas, the driver of the wagon lay220dead with the lines clutched in his stiffened fingers, just as he had fallen when death struck his horses. The two frontiersmen needed no explanation of what they saw in the scarred and blackened face of the outlaw. A bolt of lightning had killed him and stricken both horses in the same instant. Bob crawled into the wagon and with Hawk’s help dragged the dead man forward into the sunlight. Both recognized him. It was Bucks’s assailant and enemy, the Medicine Bend and Spider Water gambler, Perry.
221CHAPTER XVIII
The two men, aided by the crew of the train that now came down the Bitter Creek grade, got the dead body of the outlaw back to Point of Rocks just as a mixed train from the east reached there, with Stanley and a detail of cavalry aboard. Stanley walked straight to Bucks, caught him by the shoulders, and shook him as if to make sure he was all right.
“Gave you a warm reception, did they, Bucks?”
“Moderately warm, colonel.”
Stanley shook his head. “It is all wrong. They never should have sent you out here alone,” he declared brusquely. “These superintendents seem to think they are railroading in Ohio instead of the Rocky Mountains. Dave,” he continued, turning to Hawk as the latter came up, “I hear you have just brought in Perry dead. What have we got here, anyway?”
“Some of the Medicine Bend gang,” returned Hawk tersely.
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“What are they doing?”
“Evening up old scores, I guess.”
Stanley looked at the dead man as they laid him out on the platform: “And hastening their own day of reckoning,” he said. “There shall be no more of this if we have to drive every man of the gang out of the country. Who do you think was with Perry, Bob?” he demanded, questioning Scott.
“There is nothing to show that till we get them––and we ought to be after them now,” returned the scout. “But,” he added softly as he hitched his trousers, “I think one of the two might be young John Rebstock.”
“You need lose no time, Bob. Here are ten men with fresh horses at your orders.” Stanley pointed to the troopers who were unloading their mounts.
“Give Dave and me three of the best of these men,” said Scott. “I will follow the west trail. Put a sergeant with the others on the trail east to make sure they haven’t doubled back on us––but I don’t think they have.”
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“Why?”
“They must have stolen that team and wagon, that is certain. More than likely they murdered the man they took it from. The trail is probably alive with men looking for them. These fellows were trying to get to Casement’s camp for gambling, and probably they are heading that way fast now. We will pick those fellows up, colonel, somewhere between here and Bridger’s Gap.”
The three troopers that Scott selected were told off and, after a few rapid arrangements for sending back information, the five men of the west-trail party, headed by Scott and Dave Hawk, rode down Bitter Creek and, scattering in a wide skirmish line wherever the formation of the country permitted, scanned the ground for signs of the fugitives.
“We shan’t find anything till we get to where they were when the rain stopped,” Scott told the trooper near whom he was riding. It was, in fact, nearly ten miles from Point of Rocks before they picked up the footprints of two men travelling apart from each other, but headed north and west.224These they followed on a long détour away from the regular wagon road until the two trails turned and entered, from the southwest, a camp made the night before by a big trading outfit on the regular overland trail.
Here, of course, all trace of the men disappeared. It was now drawing toward evening. Scott resolved to follow the trading outfit, but the party still rode slowly to make sure the men they wanted did not sneak away from the wagons of their new-found friends. The pursuers rode steadily on, and as the sun went down they perceived in a small canyon ahead of them the wagons of the outfit they were trailing, parked in a camp for the night.
Scott gave the troopers directions as to where to post themselves, at some distance east and west of the canyon, to provide against a sortie of the fugitives and, riding with Hawk directly into the camp, asked for the boss. He appeared after some delay and proved to be a French trader with supplies for Salt Lake.
Hawk, whose long visage and keen eyes gave225him a particularly stern air––and David Hawk was never very communicative or very warm-mannered––asked the questions. The Frenchman was civil, but denied having any men with him except those he had brought from the Missouri River. However, he offered to line up his men for the railroad party to look over. To this Hawk agreed, and, when the word had been passed, the entire force of the trader were assembled in front of the head wagon.
Scott rode slowly up the line scrutinizing each face, and, turning again, rode down the line. Once he stopped and questioned a suspicious-looking teamster wearing a hat that answered Bucks’s description, but the man’s answers were satisfactory.
When Scott had finished his inspection the men started to disband. Hawk stopped them. “Stay where you are,” he called out curtly. Turning to the Frenchman, he added: “We will have to search your wagons.”
Again the trader made no objection, though some of his men did.
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The three troopers were signalled in, and posted so there could be no dodging from one wagon to another, and Hawk gave them orders, loud enough for all to hear, to shoot on sight any one leaving the wagons. And while he himself kept command of the whole situation, Scott dismounted and accompanied by the trader began the search. The hunt was tedious and the teamsters murmured at the delay to their camp work. But the search went forward unrelentingly. Not a corner capable of concealing a dog was overlooked by the painstaking Indian and not until he had reached the last wagon was his hope exhausted.
This wagon stood at the extreme end of a wash-out in the side of the canyon itself. It was filled with bales of coarse red blankets, but no man was to be found among them.
Scott did find something, however, in a sort of a nest fashioned among the bales near the middle of the wagon. What would have escaped an eye less trained to look for trifles attracted his at once. It was a dingy metal tag. Scott picked it up. It bore the name of a Medicine Bend saloon and the heads of three horses, from the227design of which the saloon itself took a widely known and ill name. He laid his hand on the blanket from which he had picked the tag. The wool was still warm.
Scott only smiled to himself. Both ends of the little canyon were guarded. From where he was searching the scout peered carefully out at the canyon walls. There were hiding-places, but they were hardly large enough to conceal a man. It was somewhere in the rocks close at hand that the fugitives had found a temporary refuge; but they could not now escape––nor could they be far from the wagon.
Without losing sight of the surroundings, Scott, disclosing nothing of his discovery to the trader, announced that he was satisfied and that the men he wanted did not appear to be there. He added, however, that if the Frenchman had no objection his party would pitch camp close by and ride with him in the morning. The Frenchman maintained his courtesy by inviting the party to take supper with him, and Scott, agreeing to return, rode away with Hawk and the three troopers.
They had not ridden far, when Bob dismounted228the party and leaving the horses with one trooper set two as pickets and posted himself in hiding on one side the canyon, with Hawk on the other, to watch the camp. What he saw or whether his patience was in any degree rewarded no one could have told from his inscrutable face as he walked into the camp at dusk and sat down with the trader to supper. The moon was just rising and down at the creek, a little way from where Scott sat, some belated teamsters were washing their hands and faces and preparing their own supper. Scott ate slowly and with his back to the fire kept his eye on the group of men down at the creek. When he had finished, he walked down to the stream himself. A large man in the group fitted, in his hat and dress, Bucks’s exact description. Scott had already spotted him an hour before, and stepped up to him now to arrest young John Rebstock.
He laid his hand on the man’s shoulder and the man turned. But to Scott’s surprise he was not the man wanted at all. He wore Rebstock’s clothes and fitted Rebstock’s description, but he229was not Rebstock. The scout understood instantly how he had been tricked, but gave no sign.
Within the preceding thirty minutes the real Rebstock, whom Scott had already marked from his hiding-place in the canyon, had traded clothes with this man and, no doubt, made good his escape.
If Bob was chagrined, he made no sign.
“You must have made a good trade,” he said, smiling at the teamster. “These clothes are a little big, but you will grow to them. How much boot did you get?”
Scott looked so slight and inoffensive that the teamster attempted insolence, and not only refused to answer questions, but threatened violence if the scout persisted in asking them. His companions crowding up encouraged him.
But numbers were not allowed for an instant to dominate the situation. Scott whipped a revolver from his belt, cocked it, and pressed it against the teamster’s side. Dave Hawk loomed up in the moonlight and, catching by the collar one230after another of the men crowding around Scott, Hawk, with his right hand or his left, whirled them spinning out of his way. If a man resisted the rough treatment, Hawk unceremoniously knocked him down and, drawing his own revolver, took his stand beside his threatened companion.
Other men came running up, the trader among them. A few words explained everything and the recalcitrant teamster concluded to speak. Scott, indeed, had but little to ask: he already knew the whole story. And when the teamster, threatened with search, pulled from his pocket a roll of bank-notes which he acknowledged had been given him for concealing the two fugitives and providing them with clothes, Scott released him––only notifying the trader incidentally that the man was robbing him and had loot, taken from the ammunition wagon, concealed under his blanket bales just searched. This information led to new excitement in the camp, and the Frenchman danced up and down in his wrath as he ordered the blanket wagon searched again. But his excitement did not greatly interest Scott and his231party. They went their way and camped at some distance down the creek from their stirred-up neighbors.
Hawk and Bob Scott sat in the moonlight after the troopers had gone to sleep.
“They can’t fool us very much longer,” muttered Scott, satisfied with the day’s work and taking the final disappointment philosophically, “until they can get horses they are chained to the ground in this country. There is only one place I know of where there are any horses hereabouts and that is Jack Casement’s camp.”
Hawk stretched himself out on the ground to sleep. “I’ll tell you, Dave,” continued Scott, “it is only about twenty miles from here to Casement’s, anyway. Suppose I ride over there to-night and wire Stanley we’ve got track of the fellows. By the time you pick up the trail in the morning I will be back––or I may pick it up myself between here and the railroad. You keep on as far as Brushwood Creek and I’ll join you there to-morrow by sundown.”
It was so arranged. The night was clear and232with a good moon the ride was not difficult, though to a man less acquainted with the mountains it would have been a hardship. Mile after mile Scott’s hardy pony covered with no apparent effort. Bob did not urge him, and before midnight the white tents of the construction camp were visible in the moonlight. Scott went directly to the telegraph office, and after sending his message hunted up food and quarters for his beast and a sleeping-bunk for himself.
At daylight he was astir and sought breakfast before making inquiries and riding back to his party. On the edge of the camp stood a sort of restaurant, made up of a kitchen tent with a dismantled box-car body as an annex.
In this annex the food was served. It was entered from one side door, while the food was brought from the kitchen through the other side doorway of the car.
Into this crowded den Bob elbowed an unobtrusive way and seated himself in a retired corner. He faced the blind end of the car, and before him on the wall was tacked a fragment of a mirror in233which he could see what was going on behind him. And without paying any apparent attention to anything that went on, nothing escaped him.
Next to where he sat, a breakfast of coffee and ham and eggs had been already served for somebody, apparently on an order previously given. At the opposite end of the car a small space was curtained off as a wash-room. Scott ordered his own breakfast and was slowly eating it when he noticed through the little mirror, and above and beyond the heads of the busy breakfasters along the serving-counter, a large man in the wash-room scrubbing his face vigorously with a towel.
Each time Scott looked up from his breakfast into the mirror the man redoubled his efforts to do a good job with the towel, hiding his face meantime well within its folds. The scout’s curiosity was mildly enough aroused to impel him to watch the diligent rubbing with some interest. He saw, too, presently that the man was stealing glances out of his towel at him and yet between times intently rubbing his face.
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This seemed odd, and Scott, now eying the man more carefully, noted his nervousness and wondered at it. However, he continued to enjoy his own meal. The waiter who had served him, hurried and impatient, also noticed the waiting breakfast untouched and called sharply to the man in the wash-room that his ham was served and, with scant regard for fine words, bade him come eat it.
This urgent invitation only added to the ill-concealed embarrassment of the stalling guest; but it interested the scout even more in the developing situation. Scott finished his breakfast and gave himself entirely over to watching in a lazy way the man who was making so elaborate a toilet.
There was no escape from either end of the car. That could be managed only through the side doors, which were too close to Scott to be available, and the scout, now fairly well enlightened and prepared, merely awaited developments. He wanted to see the man come to his breakfast, and the man in the wash-room, combing his hair with vigor and peering anxiously through his own235scrap of a mirror at Bob Scott, wanted to see the scout finish his coffee and leave the car. Scott, however, pounding ostentatiously on the table, called for a second cup of coffee and sipped it with apparent satisfaction. It was a game of cat and mouse––with the mouse, in this instance, bigger than the cat, but as shy and reluctant to move as any mouse could be in a cat’s presence. Scott waited until he thought the embarrassed man would have brushed the hair all out of his head, and at last, in spite of himself, laughed. As he did so, he turned half-way around on his stool and lifted his finger.
“Come, Rebstock,” he smiled, calling to the fugitive. “Your breakfast is getting cold.”
The man, turning as red as a beet, looked over the heads of those that sat between him and his tantalizing captor. But putting the best face he could on the dilemma and eying Scott nervously he walked over and, with evident reluctance, made ready to sit down beside him.
“Take your time,” suggested Scott pleasantly. Then, as Rebstock, quite crestfallen, seated himself,236he added: “Hadn’t I better order a hot cup of coffee for you?” He took hold of the cup as he spoke, and looked hard at the gambler while making the suggestion.
“No, no,” responded Rebstock, equally polite and equally insistent, as he held his hand over the cup and begged Scott not to mind. “This is all right.”
“How was the walking last night?” asked Scott, passing the fugitive a big plate of bread. Rebstock lifted his eyes from his plate for the briefest kind of a moment.
“The––eh––walking? I don’t know what you mean, captain. I slept here last night.”
Scott looked under the table at his victim’s boots. “John,” he asked without a smile, “do you ever walk in your sleep?”
Rebstock threw down his knife and fork. “Look here, stranger,” he demanded with indignation. “What do you want? Can’t a man eat his breakfast in this place? I ask you,” he demanded, raising his right hand with his knife in it as he appealed to the waiter, “can’t a man237eat his breakfast in this place without interruption?”
The waiter, standing with folded arms, regarded the two men without changing his stolid expression. “A man can eat his breakfast in this place without anything on earth except money. If you let your ham get cold because you were going to beat me out of the price, and you try to do it, I’ll drag you out of here by the heels.”
These unsympathetic words attracted the attention of every one and the breakfasters now looked on curiously but no one offered to interfere. Quarrels and disputes were too frequent in that country to make it prudent or desirable ever to intervene in one. A man considered himself lucky not to be embroiled in unpleasantness in spite of his best efforts to keep out. Rebstock turned again on his pursuer. “What do you want, anyhow, stranger?” he demanded fiercely. “A fight, I reckon.”
“Not a bit of it. I want you, Rebstock,” explained Scott without in the least raising his voice.
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Rebstock’s throaty tones seemed to contract into a wheeze. “What do you want me for?” he asked, looking nervously toward the other end of the car. As he did so, a man wearing a shirt and new overalls rose and started for the door. The instinct of Scott’s suspicion fastened itself on the man trying to leave the place as being Rebstock’s wanted companion.
Rising like a flash, he covered the second man with his pistol. “Hold on!” he exclaimed, pointing at him with his left hand. “Come over here!”
The man in overalls turned a calm face that showed nothing more than conscious innocence. But Scott was looking at his feet. His worn shoes were crusted heavily with alkali mud. “What do you want with me?” snarled the man halted at the door.
“I want you,” said Scott, “for burning Point of Rocks station night before last. Here, partner,” he continued, speaking to the waiter. “I’ll pay for these two breakfasts; search that man for me,” he continued, pointing to the man in the overalls.
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“Search him yourself,” returned the waiter stolidly. Scott turned like a wolf.
“What’s that?” Another expression stole over his good-natured face. Holding his revolver to cover any one that resisted, he turned his accusing finger upon the insolent waiter. “You will talk to me, will you?” he demanded sharply. “Do as I tell you instantly, or I’ll drive you out of camp and burn your shack to the ground. When I talk to you, General Jack Casement talks, and this railroad company talks. Search that man!”
Before the last word had passed his lips the waiter jumped over the counter and began turning the pockets of the man in the new overalls inside out. The fellow kept a good face even after a bunch of stolen railroad tickets were discovered in one pocket. “A man gave them to me last night to keep for him,” he answered evenly.
“Never mind,” returned Scott with indifference, “I will take care of them for him.”
The news of the capture spread over the camp,240and when Scott with his two prisoners walked across to General Casement’s tent a crowd followed. Stanley had just arrived from Point of Rocks by train and was conferring with Casement when Scott came to the tent door. He greeted Bob and surveyed the captured fugitives.
“How did you get them?” he demanded.
Scott smiled and hung his head as he shook it, to anticipate compliments. “They just walked into my arms. Dave Hawk and the troopers are looking for these fellows now away down on Bitter Creek. They wandered into camp here last night to save us the trouble of bringing them. Isn’t that it, Rebstock?”
Rebstock disavowed, but not pleasantly. He was not in amiable mood.
“What show has a fat man got to get away from anybody?” he growled.
241CHAPTER XIX
When Hawk saw Bob Scott, two hours later, riding into his camp on the Brushwood with the two prisoners, he was taciturn but very much surprised.
Scott was disposed to make light of the lucky chance, as he termed it, that had thrown the two men into his way. Hawk, on the other hand, declared in his arbitrary manner that it was not wholly a lucky chance. He understood the Indian’s dogged tenacity too well to think for a moment that the fugitives could have escaped him, even had he not ridden into Casement’s camp as he so fortuitously had done.
The scout, Hawk knew, had the characteristic intuition of the frontiersman; the mental attributes that combine with keen observation and unusually good judgment as aids to success when circumstances are seemingly hopeless. Such men may be at fault in details, and frequently are, but242they are not often wholly wrong in conclusions. And in their pursuit of a criminal they are like trained hounds, which may frequently lose their trail for a moment, but, before they have gone very far astray, come unerringly back to it.
“If they ever give you a chance, Bob, you will make a great thief-catcher,” exclaimed Hawk with his naturally prodigal generosity of appreciation.
“I certainly never expected to catch Rebstock and this fellow Seagrue as easily as that,” smiled Scott, as the troopers took charge of his men.
“If you hadn’t caught them there you would have trailed them there. It would only have meant a longer chase.”
“A whole lot longer.”
“When you come to think of it, Bob, the railroad was their only hope, anyway. They did right in striking for it. Without horses, the big camp and the trains for Medicine Bend every day were their one chance to get away.”
Scott assented. “The trouble with us,” he smiled, “was that we didn’t think until after it was all over. Sometime a man will come to243these mountains who thinks things out before they happen instead of after. Then we will have a man fit to run the secret service on this railroad. But we are losing time,” he added, tightening up his saddle girths.
“What are you going to do now? And why,” demanded Hawk without waiting for an answer, “did you drag these men away down here instead of leaving them for Casement to lock up until we were ready to take them to Medicine Bend?”
“I am going to drag them farther yet,” announced Scott. “I am going to ride after the French trader and fit these two fellows out in their own clothes again to make it easier for Bucks to indentify them.”
“Don’t say ‘indentify,’ Bob, say ‘identify,’” returned Hawk testily.
Bob Scott usually turned away a sharp word with silence, and although he felt confident Hawk was wrong, he argued no further with him, but stuck just the same to his own construction of the troublesome word.
“You’ve got the right idea, Bob, if you have244got the wrong word,” muttered Hawk. “Why didn’t you think of that sooner?”
They broke camp and started promptly. About noon they overtook the trading outfit and after some threatening forced the tricky teamster to rig the two gamblers out in their own apparel. Having done this, they started on a long ride for Casement’s camp, reaching it again with their prisoners, and all very dusty and fatigued, long after dark.
The hard work voluntarily undertaken by the scout to aid the boy, as he termed Bucks, in identifying his graceless assailants was vindicated when, the next morning, the party with their prisoners arrived on a special train at Point of Rocks, and Bucks immediately pointed to Seagrue as the man who had first fired at him.
There were a few pretty hot moments on the platform when Bucks, among a group of five camp malefactors on their way to Medicine Bend, confronted the two men who had tried to kill him, and unhesitatingly pointed them out. Seagrue, tall and surly, denied vehemently ever having been245at Point of Rocks and ever having seen Bucks. He declared the whole affair was “framed up” to send him to the penitentiary. He threatened if he were “sent up” to come back and kill Bucks if it was twenty years later––and did, in that respect, try to keep his word.
But his threats availed him nothing, and John Rebstock who, though still young, was a sly fox in crooked ways, contented himself with a philosophical denial of everything alleged against him, adding only in an injured tone that nobody would believe a fat man anyway.
It was he, however, rather than the less clever Seagrue, who had begun to excite sympathy for what he called his luckless plight and that of his companion, before they had left the railroad camp. Among the five evil-doers who had been rounded-up and deported for the jail at Medicine Bend, and now accompanied the two gamblers, Rebstock spread every story he could think of to arouse his friends at Medicine Bend to a demonstration in his behalf.
The very first efforts at putting civil law and246order into effect were just then being tried in the new and lawless frontier railroad town and the contest between the two elements of decency and of license had reached an acute pass when Rebstock and Seagrue were thrown into jail at Medicine Bend. A case of sympathy for them was not hard to work up among men of their own kind and threats were heard up and down Front Street that if the railroading of two innocent men to the penitentiary were attempted something would happen.
Railroad men themselves, hearing the mutterings, brought word of them to head-quarters, but Stanley was in no wise disturbed. He had wanted to make an example for the benefit of the criminals who swarmed to the town, and now welcomed the chance to put the law’s rigor on the men that had tried to assassinate his favorite operator. Bucks, lest he might be made the victim of a more successful attack, was brought down from Point of Rocks the first moment he could be relieved. A plot to put him out of the way, as the sole witness against the accused gamblers,247was uncovered by Scott almost as soon as Bucks had returned to the big town and, warned by his careful friend, he rarely went up street except with a companion––most frequently with Scott himself.
As the day set for Rebstock’s trial drew near, rumors were heard of a jail delivery. The jail itself was a flimsy wooden affair, and so crude in its appointments that any civilized man would have been justified in breaking out of it.
Nor was Brush, the sheriff, much more formidable than the jail itself. This official sought to curry favor with the townspeople––and that meant, pretty nearly, with the desperadoes––as well as to stand well with the railroad men; and in his effort to do both he succeeded in doing neither.
Bucks was given a night trick on his old wire in the local station, and in spite of the round of excitement about him settled down to the routine of regular work. The constant westbound movement of construction material made his duties heavier than before, but he seemed able to do whatever work he was assigned to and gained248the reputation of being dependable, wherever put.
He had risen one night from his key, after despatching a batch of messages, to stir the fire––the night was frosty––when he heard an altercation outside on the platform. In another moment the waiting-room door was thrown open and Bucks turned from the stove, poker in hand, to see a man in the extremity of fear rush into his lonely office.
The man, hatless and coatless and evidently trying to escape from some one, was so panic-stricken that his eyes bulged from their sockets, and his beard was so awry that it was a moment before Bucks recognized his old acquaintance Dan Baggs.
“They are after me, Bucks,” cried Baggs, closing the door in desperation. “They will kill me––hide me or they’ll kill me.”
Before the operator could ask a question in explanation, almost before the words were out of the frightened engineman’s mouth, and with Bucks pointing with his poker to the door, trying to tell249Baggs to lock it, the door again flew open and Bucks saw the face of a Front Street confidence man bursting through it.
Bucks sprang forward to secure the door behind the intruder, but he was too late even for that. Half a dozen more men crowded into the room. To ask questions was useless; every one began talking at once. Baggs, paralyzed with fear, cowered behind the stove and the confidence man, catching sight of him, tried to crowd through the wicket gate. As he sprang toward it, Bucks confronted him with his poker.
“Let that gate alone or I’ll brain you,” he cried, hardly realizing what he was saying, but well resolved what to do.
The gambler, infuriated, pointed to Baggs. “Throw that cur out here,” he yelled.
Baggs, now less exposed to his enemies, summoned the small remnant of his own courage and began to abuse his pursuer.
“LET THAT GATE ALONE OR I’LL BRAIN YOU,” HE CRIED.
“LET THAT GATE ALONE OR I’LL BRAIN YOU,” HE CRIED.
Bucks, between the two men with his poker, tried to stop the din long enough to get information. He drew the enraged gambler into a controversy of words and used the interval to step to his key. As he did so, Baggs, catching up a monkey-wrench that Bucks ordinarily used on his letter-press, again defied his enemy.
It was only a momentary burst of courage, but it saved the situation. Taking advantage of the instant, Bucks slipped the fingers of his left hand over the telegraph key and wired the despatchers upstairs for help. It was none too soon. The men, leaning against the railing, pushed it harder all along the line. It swayed with an ominous crack and the fastening gave way. Baggs cowered. His pursuers yelled, and with one more push the railing crashed forward and the confidence man sprang for the engineer. Baggs ran back to where Bucks stood before his table, and the latter, clutching his revolver, warned Baggs’s pursuers not to lay a hand on him.
Defying the single-handed defender, the gambler whipped out his own pistol to put an end to the fight. It was the signal for his followers, and in another minute half a dozen guns covered Bucks and his companion.
250
Seconds meant minutes then. Bucks understood that only one shot was needed as the signal for his own destruction. What he did not quite realize was that the gambler confronting him and his victim read something in Bucks’s eye that caused him to hesitate. He felt that if a shot were fired, whatever else happened, it would mean his own death at Bucks’s hand. It was this that restrained him, and the instant saved the operator’s life.
He heard the clattering of feet down the outside stairway, and the next moment through the open door on the run dashed Bill Dancing, swinging a piece of iron pipe as big as a crowbar. The yardmaster, Callahan, was at his heels, and the two, tearing their way through the room, struck without mercy.
The thugs crowded to the door. The narrow opening choked with men trying to dodge the blows rained upon them by Dancing and Callahan. Before Baggs could rub his eyes the room was cleared, and half a dozen trainmen hastily summoned and led by a despatcher were engaged251out upon the platform in a free fight with the Front Street ruffians.
Within the office, the despatcher found Bucks talking to Callahan, while Baggs was trying to explain to Bill Dancing how the confidence men had tried to inveigle him into a “shell” game and, when they found they could not rob him of his month’s pay in any other way, had knocked him down to pick his pockets.
Callahan, who knew the trouble-making element better than any of the railroad men, went up town to estimate the feeling after the fight, which was now being discussed by crowds everywhere along Front Street. For every bruised and sore head marked by the punishment given by Dancing in the defence of Baggs a new enemy and an active one had been made.
Stanley came in late from the west and heard the story of the fight. His comment was brief but significant. “It will soon be getting so they won’t wait for the railroad men to draw their pay. They will come down here,” said he ironically, “to draw it for them.”
252CHAPTER XX
A second and more serious disturbance followed close on the fight at the railroad station. A passenger alighting in the evening from a westbound train was set upon, robbed, and beaten into insensibility within ten feet of the train platform. A dozen other passengers hastened to his assistance. They joined in repulsing his assailants and were beating them off when other thugs, reinforcing their fellows, attacked the passengers and those railroad men that had hurried up to drive off the miscreants.
In the mêlée, a brakeman was shot through the head and a second passenger wounded. But the railroad men rallied and, returning the pistol fire, drove off the outlaws.
The train was hurried out of town and measures were taken at once to defend the railroad property for the night. Guards were set in the yards, and a patrol established about the roundhouse,253the railroad hotel and the eating-house and freight-houses.
Stanley, with his car attached to the night passenger train, was on his way to Casement’s camp when the fight occurred, and had taken Bucks with him. The despatch detailing the disturbance reached him at a small station east of Point of Rocks, where he was awakened and the message was read to him advising the manager of the murder of the brakeman.
A freight-train, eastbound, stood on the passing track. Stanley roused Bucks and, notifying the despatchers, ordered the engine cut off from the freight-train, swung up into the cab, and started for Medicine Bend. As they pulled out, light, Stanley asked for every notch of speed the lumbering engine could stand, and Oliver Sollers, the engineman, urged the big machine to its limit.
The new track, laid hastily and only freshly ballasted, was as rough as corduroy, and the lurching of the big diamond stack made the cab topple at every rail joint. But Sollers was not the runner to lose nerve under difficulties and did not lessen254the pressure on the pistons. If Stanley, determined and silent, his lips set and hanging on for dear life as the cab jumped and swung under him, felt any qualms at the dangerous pace he had asked for, he betrayed none. With Bucks, open-eyed with surprise, hanging on in front of him, Stanley gave no heed to the bouncing, and the freight-engine pounded through the mountains like a steam-roller with a touch of crushed-stone delirium. Hour after hour the wild pace was kept up through the Sleepy Cat Mountains and across the Sweet Grass Plains. There was no easing up until the frantic machine struck the gorge of the Medicine River and whistled for the long yards above the roundhouse.
Things had so quieted down by the time Stanley, springing up the stairs two steps at a time, reached the despatchers’ office, that they were sorry they had sent in such haste for him. Stanley himself had no regrets. He knew better than those about him the temper of the crowd he had to deal with and felt that he needed every minute to prepare for what he had to do. Bucks was255sent to bring in Dancing, Bob Scott, and the more resolute among the railroad men. A brief consultation was held, and the attitude of the gamblers carefully discussed.
Scott, who had been up town since the murder, had collected sufficient proof that the chief outlaw, Levake, had done the shooting, and Stanley now sent Scott to Brush, the sheriff, with a verbal message demanding Levake’s arrest.
Every man that heard the order given knew what it meant. Every one that listened realized it was the beginning of a fight in which there could be no retreat for Stanley; that it would be a fight to a finish, and that no man could say where it would end.
Bob Scott hitched his trousers at the word from his sandy-haired chief. For Bob, orders meant orders and the terror of Levake’s name in Medicine Bend had no effect on him.
“You might as well ask a jack-rabbit to tackle a mountain lion as to try to get Brush to arrest Levake,” declared Dave Hawk cynically.
But Stanley’s hand struck the table like a hammer:256“We are going to have a show-down here. We will go through the forms; this is the beginning––and I am going to follow it to the end. Either Levake has got to quit the town or I have.”
Dave Hawk looked around with a new idea. He bent his eyes on Bob: “Better get Brush to deputizeyouto make the arrest.”
“That is it!” exclaimed Stanley. “Get him to deputize you, Bob, and we will clean up this town as it hasn’t been cleaned since the flood.”
Scott shook his head: “I don’t believe Brush has the sand for that. We will see.”
Up Front Street, through the various groups of men still discussing the events of the evening, Scott, followed only by Bill Dancing, made his way, nodding and patiently or pleasantly grinning as the greetings or ridicule of the crowd were thrown at him. He went to the rooms of the sheriff only to find them locked, and made his way down town again looking through the resorts in a search for Brush.
After much trouble, he found him at a gaming-table, inclined to appear sceptical as to the257story that Levake had killed an unoffending brakeman. When Scott repeated Stanley’s demand that Levake be arrested, the sheriff slammed down his cards and declared he would not be made a cat’s-paw for any man; that the brakeman, according to accounts reaching him, had been killed in a fair fight and he would hear no more of it. Then, as if his game had been unreasonably interfered with and his peace of mind injured, he rose from the table to relieve his annoyance.
Meantime Bill Dancing slipped into his vacated seat, picked up the discarded hand of cards and announced it was too good to throw away. “Will anybody,” Bill asked dryly, “play the hand with me while Brush is arresting Levake?” The laugh of Brush’s own companions at this proposal stung him as an imputation of his cowardice, and he made an additional display of rage to counteract the unconcealed contempt in which his cronies held him.
He turned on Scott angrily. “Go arrest the man yourself, if you want him,” he thundered.