VII
A Notice to Quit
Once started and given its push, the gray roadster drifted backward fromthe railroad crossing and kept on until it came to rest in the sag atthe turn in the road. Running to overtake it, Smith found that the youngwoman was still trying, ineffectually, to free herself. In releasing theclutch her dress had been caught and Smith was glad enough to let theextricating of the caught skirt and the cranking of the engine serve fora breath-catching recovery.
When he stepped back to "tune" the spark the young woman had subsidedinto the mechanician's seat and was retying her veil with fingers thatwere not any too steady. She was small but well-knit; her hair was agolden brown and there was a good deal of it; her eyes were set wellapart, and in the bright morning sunlight they were a slaty gray--of theexact shade of the motor veil she was rearranging. Smith had a suddenconviction that he had seen the wide-set eyes before; also the straightlittle nose and the half boyish mouth and chin, though where he had seenthem the conviction could give no present hint.
"I sup-pup-pose I ought to say something appropriate," she wasbeginning, half breathlessly, while Smith stood at the fender andgrinned in character-not with the ex-leader of the Lawrenceville youngerset, but with the newer and more elemental man of all work on a desertdam-building job. "Wha-what _is_ the proper thing to say when you havejust been sus-snatched out of the way of a railroad train?"
As J. Montague, the rescuer would have had a neatly turned rejoinder athis tongue's end; but the well-mannered phrases were altogether tooconventional to suggest themselves to a strapping young barbarian inill-fitting khaki and leggings and a slouch felt. Being unable to recallthem, he laughed and pushed the J. Montague past still farther into thebackground.
"You don't have to say anything. It's been a long time since I've had achance to make such a bully grand-stand play as this." And then: "You'reColonel Baldwin's daughter, aren't you?"
She nodded, saying:
"How did you know?"
"I know the car. And you have your father's eyes."
She did not seem to take it amiss that he was making her eyes a basisfor comparisons. One William Starbuck, a former cattleman and herfather's time-tried friend, paid Miss Corona the compliment of sayingthat she never allowed herself to get "bogged down in thehaughtinesses." She was her father's only son, as well as his onlydaughter, and she divided her time pretty evenly in trying to live up toboth sets of requirements.
"You have introduced me; wo-won't you introduce yourself?" she said,when a second crash of the shifting freight-train spent itself and gaveher an opening.
"I'm Smith," he told her; adding: "It's my real name."
Her laugh was an instant easing of tensions.
"Oh, yes; you're Mr. Williams's assistant. I've heard Colonel-da--myfather, speak of you."
"No," he denied in blunt honesty, "I'm not Williams's assistant; atleast, the pay-roll doesn't say so. Up at the camp they call me 'TheHobo,' and that's what I was a week or so ago when your father picked meup and gave me a lift to the dam in this car."
The young woman had apparently regained whatever small fraction ofself-possession the narrow escape had shocked aside.
"Are they never going to take that miserable train out of the way?" sheexclaimed. "I've got to see Mr. Williams, and there isn't a minute tospare. That is why I was breaking all the speed limits."
"They are about ready to pull out now," he returned, with a glance overhis shoulder at the train. "I'm a sort of general utility man up at thecamp: can you use me in any way?"
"I'm afraid you won't do," she replied, with a little laughing grimacethat made him wonder where and when in the past he had seen some youngwoman do the same thing under exactly similar conditions. "It's a matterof business--awfully urgent business. Colonel-da--I mean my father, hasgone up to Red Butte, and a little while ago they telephoned over to theranch from the Brewster office to say that there was going to be somemore trouble at the dam."
"They?" he queried.
"Mr. Martin, the head bookkeeper. He said he'd been trying to get Mr.Williams, but the wires to the camp were out of order."
"They're not," said Smith shortly, remembering that Perkins had beentalking from the camp to the Brewster railroad agent within thehalf-hour. "But never mind that: go on."
Again she let him see the piquant little grimace.
"You say that just as if you _were_ Mr. Williams's assistant," she threwback at him. "But I haven't time to quarrel with you this morning, Mr.Real-name Smith. If you'll take your foot off the fender I'll go on upto the dam and find Mr. Williams."
"You couldn't quarrel with me if you should try," was the good-naturedrejoinder, and Smith tried in vain to imagine himself taking his presentattitude with any of the young women he had known in his cotillondays--with Verda Richlander, for example. Then he added: "You won't findWilliams at the camp. He started out early this morning to ride thelower ditch lines beyond Little Creek, and he said he wouldn't be backuntil some time to-morrow. Now will you tell me what you're needing--andgive me a possible chance to get my pay raised?"
"_Oh!_" she exclaimed, with a little gasp of disappointment, presumablyfor the Williams absence. "I've simply _got_ to find Mr. Williams--orsomebody! Do you happen to know anything about the lawsuit troubles?"
"I know all about them; Williams has told me."
"Then I'll tell you what Mr. Martin telephoned. He said that threemen were going to pretend to relocate a mining claim in the hillsback of the dam, somewhere near the upper end of the reservoirlake-that-is-to-be. They're doing it so that they can get out aninjunction, or whatever you call it, and then we'll have to buy themoff, as the others have been bought off."
Smith was by this time entirely familiar with the maps and profiles andother records of the ditch company's lands and holdings.
"All the land within the limits of the flood level has been bought andpaid for--some of it more than once, hasn't it?" he asked.
"Oh, yes; but that doesn't make any difference. These men will claimthat their location was made long ago, and that they are just nowgetting ready to work it. It's often done in the case of mining claims."
"When is all this going to happen?" he inquired.
"It is already happening," she broke out impatiently. "Mr. Martin saidthe three men left town a little after daybreak and crossed on theBrewster bridge to go up on the other side of the Timanyoni. They had atwo-horse team and a camping outfit. They are probably at work longbefore this time."
The young woman had taken her place again behind the big tiller-wheel,and Smith calmly motioned her out of it.
"Take the other seat and let me get in here," he said; and when she hadchanged over, he swung in behind the wheel and put a foot on the clutchpedal.
"What are you going to do?" she asked.
"I'm going to take you on up to the camp, and then, if you'll lend methis car, I'll go and do what you hoped to persuade Williams to do--runthese mining-claim jokers into the tall timber."
"But you can't!" she protested; "you can't do it alone! And, besides,they are on the other side of the river, and you can't get anywhere withthe car. You'll have to go all the way back to Brewster to get acrossthe river!"
It was just here that he stole another glance at the very-much-alivelittle face behind the motor veil; at the firm, round chin and theresolute, slaty-gray eyes.
"I suppose I ought to take you to the camp," he said. "But you may goalong with me, if you want to--and are not afraid."
She laughed in his face.
"I was born here in the Timanyoni, and you haven't been here threeweeks: do you think I'd be afraid to go anywhere that you'll go?"
"We'll see about that," he chuckled, matching the laugh; and with thathe let the clutch take hold and sent the car rolling gently up to thelevel of the railroad embankment and across the rails of the main track.
On the right of way of the paralleling side-track he steered off thecrossing and pulled the roadster around until it wa
s headed fairly forthe upper switch. Then he climbed down and recovered his coat which hadbeen flung aside in the race with the train. Resuming his place behindthe tiller-wheel, he put the motor in the reverse and began to back thecar on the siding, steering so that the wheels on one side hugged theinside of one rail.
"What in the world are you trying to do?" questioned the young woman whohad said she was not afraid.
"Wait," he temporized; "just wait a minute and get ready to hang on likegrim death. We're going across on that trestle."
He fully expected her to shriek and grab for the steering-wheel. That,he told himself, was what the normal young woman would do. But MissCorona disappointed him.
"You'll put us both into the river, and smash Colonel-daddy's car, but Iguess the Baldwin family can stand it if you can," she remarked quitecalmly.
Smith kept on backing until the car had passed the switch from which thespur branched off to cross to the material yard on the opposite side ofthe river. A skilful bit of juggling put the roadster over on the tiesof the spur-track. Then he turned to his fellow risk.
"Sit low, and hang on with both hands," he directed. "_Now!_" and heopened the throttle.
The trestle was not much above two hundred feet long, and, happily, thecross-ties were closely spaced. Steered to a hair, the big car wentbumping across, and in his innermost recesses Smith was saying to hisimmediate ancestor, the well-behaved bank clerk: "You swab! _you_ neversaw the day when you could do a thing like this ... you thought you hadme tied up in a bunch of ribbon, didn't you?"
If Miss Baldwin were frightened, she did not show it; and when thecrossing was safely made, Smith caught a little side glance that toldhim he was making good. He jerked the roadster out of the entanglementof the railroad track and said: "You may sit up now and tell me whichway to go. I don't know anything about the roads over here."
She pointed out the way across the hills, and a four-mile dash followedthat set the blood dancing in Smith's veins. He had never before drivena car as fast as he wanted to; partly because he had never owned onepowerful enough, and partly because the home-land speed laws--and hisown past _metier_--would not sanction it. Up hill and down the bigroadster raced, devouring the interspaces, and at the topping of thelast of the ridges the young woman opened the small tool-box in thedividing arm between the seats and showed her reckless driver a largeand serviceable army automatic snugly holstered under the lid.
"Daddy always keeps it there for his night drives on the horse ranges,"she explained. But Smith was shaking his head.
"We're not going to need anything of that sort," he assured her, and theracing search for three men and a two-horse team was continued.
Beyond the final hill, in a small, low-lying swale which was well hiddenfrom any point of view in the vicinity of the distant dam, they cameupon the interlopers. There were three men and two horses and a coveredwagon, as Martin's telephone message had catalogued them. The horseswere still in the traces, and just beyond the wagon a long, narrowparallelogram, of the length and breadth of a legal mining claim, hadbeen marked out by freshly driven stakes. In one end of theparallelogram two of the men were digging perfunctorily, while the thirdwas tacking the legal notice on a bit of board nailed to one of thestakes.
Smith sent the gray car rocketing down into the swale, brought it to astand with a thrust of the brakes, and jumped out. Once more theprimitive Stone Age man in him, which had slept so long and so quietlyunder the Lawrenceville conventionalities, was joyously pitching thebarriers aside.
"It's moving day for you fellows," he announced cheerfully, picking thebiggest of the three as the proper subject for the order giving. "You'reon the Timanyoni Ditch Company's land, and you know it. Pile into thatwagon and fade away!"
The big man's answer was a laugh, pointed, doubtless, by the fact thatthe order giver was palpably unarmed. But on second thought he began tosupplement the laugh with an oath. Smith's right arm shot out, and whenthe blow landed there were only two left to close in on him. In suchsudden hostilities the advantages are all with the beginner. Havingsuperior reach and a good bit more skill than either of the twotacklers, Smith held his own until he could get in a few more of thesmashing right-handers, but in planting them he took punishment enoughto make him Berserk-mad and so practically invincible. There was afierce mingling of arms, legs, and bodies, sufficiently terrifying, onewould suppose, to a young woman sitting calmly in an automobile ahundred yards away; but she neither cried out nor attempted to go to therescue with the weapon which it seemed as if Smith might be needing.
The struggle was short in just proportion to its vigor, and at the endof it two of the trespassers were knocked out, and Smith was draggingthe third over to the wagon, into which he presently heaved the man asif he had been a sack of meal. Miss Baldwin, sitting in the car, saw herally dive into the covered wagon and come out with a pair ofWinchesters. Pausing only long enough to smash the guns, one after theother, over the wagon-wheel, he started back after the two other men.They were not waiting to be carried to the wagon; they were up andrunning in a wide semicircle to reach their hope of retreat unslain, ifthat might be. It was all very brutal and barbarous, no doubt, but thecolonel's daughter was Western born and bred, and she clapped her handsand laughed in sheer enthusiasm when she saw Smith make a show ofchasing the circling runners.
He did not return to her until after he had pulled up the freshly drivenstakes and thrown them away, and by that time the wagon, with the horseslashed to a keen gallop, was disappearing over the crest of the northernridge.
"That's one way to get rid of them, isn't it?" said the emancipated bankman, jocosely, upon taking his place in the car to cramp it for theturn. "Was that something like the notion you had in mind?"
"Mercy, no!" she rejoined. And then: "Are you sure you are not hurt?"
"Not worth mentioning," he evaded. "Those duffers couldn't hurt anybody,so long as they couldn't get to their guns."
"But you have saved the company at your own expense. They will be sureto have you arrested."
"We won't cross that bridge until we come to it," he returned. "And,besides, there were no witnesses. _You_ didn't see anything."
"Of course, I didn't; not the least little thing in the world!" sheagreed, laughing with him.
"I thought not. There were too many of us for any single eye-witness toget more than the general effect." Then, in easy assertion of his victorrights: "If we were back in the country from which I have lately escapedit would be proper for me to ask your permission to drive you safelyhome. Since we are not, I shall assume the permission and do it anyway."
"Oh, is that necessary?" she asked, meaning, as he took it, nothing morethan comradely deprecation at putting him to the trouble of it.
"Not absolutely necessary, perhaps, but decently prudent. You might dropme opposite the dam, but you'd have to pass those fellows somewhere onthe way and they might try to make it unpleasant for you."
She made no further comment, and he sent the car spinning along over thehills to the westward. A mile short of the trestle river crossing theyovertook and passed the wagon. Because he had the colonel's daughterwith him, Smith put on a burst of speed and so gave the claim-jumpers nochance to provoke another battle. With the possible unpleasantnessesthus left in the rear, Smith knew well enough that there was really noreason for his going any farther than the spur-track trestle. None theless, he held to his announced determination, driving briskly down thenorth-side river road and on toward the grass-land ranches.
In the maze of cross-roads opposite the little city on the south bank ofthe river, Smith was out of his reckoning, and was obliged to ask hiscompanion to direct him.
"I thought you weren't ever going to say anything any more," she sighed,in mock despair. "Take this road to the right."
"I can't talk and drive a speed-wagon at the same time," he told her,twisting the gray car into the road she had indicated, and he made theassertion good by covering the four remaining miles in the samepreoccupied
fashion.
There was a reason, of a sort, for his silence; two of them, to beexact. For one, he was troubled by that haunting sense of familiaritywhich was still trying to tell him that this was not his first meetingwith Colonel Baldwin's daughter; and the other was much bigger, and moredepressing. Though he was continually assuring himself that he hadburied the former bank clerk and all of his belongings in a deep grave,some of the bank-clerk convictions still refused to remain decently inthe coffin. One of these--and it had been daggering him sharply for thepast half-hour--was the realization that in breaking with his past, hehad broken also with the world of women--good women--at least to theextent of ever asking one of them to marry him.
Truly, though shadows are insubstantial things for the greater part,there is one exception. The shadow of a crime may involve both theinnocent and the guilty quite as effectually as the thing itself, andSmith saw himself shut out automatically from the married beatitudes....He pushed the thought aside, coming back to the other one--the puzzle offamiliarity--when Miss Baldwin pointed to a transplanted Missouri farmmansion, with a columned portico, standing in a grove of cottonwoods onthe left-hand side of the road, telling him it was Hillcrest.
There was a massive stone portal fronting the road, and when he got downto open the gates the young woman took the wheel and drove through;whereupon, he decided that it was time for him to break away, and saidso.
"But how will you get back to the camp?" she asked.
"I have my two legs yet, and the walking isn't bad."
"No; but you might meet those men again."
"That is the least of my troubles."
Miss Corona Baldwin, like the Missouri colonel, her father, came uponmoments now and then when she had the ultimate courage of her impulses.
"I should have said you hadn't a trouble in the world," she asserted,meeting his gaze level-eyed.
The polite paraphrases of the coffined period were slipping to the endof his tongue, but he set his teeth upon them and said, instead: "That'sall you know about it. What if I should tell you that you've beendriving this morning with an escaped convict?"
"I shouldn't believe it," she said calmly.
"Well, you haven't--not quite," he returned, adding the qualifyingphrase in sheer honesty.
She had untied her veil and was asking him hospitably if he wouldn'tcome in and meet her mother. Something in the way she said it, somelittle twist of the lips or look of the eyes, touched the spring ofcomplete recognition and the familiarity puzzle vanished instantly.
"You forget that I am a workingman," he smiled. "My gang in the quarrywill think I've found a bottle somewhere." And then: "Did you ever losea glove, Miss Baldwin--a white kid with a little hole in one finger?"
"Dozens of them," she admitted; "and most of them had holes, I'm afraid.But what has that got to do with your coming in and meeting mamma andletting her thank you for saving my life?"
"Nothing at all, of course," he hastened to say; and with that he badeher good-by rather abruptly and turned his back upon the transplantedMissouri mansion, muttering to himself as he closed the portal gatesbehind him: "'Baldwin,' of course! What an ass I was not to remember thename! And now I've got the other half of it, too; it's 'Corona.'"
The Real Man Page 7