XXXII
Freedom
The Timanyoni, a mountain torrent in its upper and lower reaches,becomes a placid river of the plain at Brewster, dividing its flow amongsandy islets, and broadening in its bed to make the long bridgeconnecting the city with the grass-land mesas a low, trestled causeway.On the northern bank of the river the Brewster street, of which thebridge is a prolongation, becomes a country road, forking a few hundredyards from the bridge approach to send one of its branchings northwardamong the Little Creek ranches and another westward up the right bank ofthe stream.
At this fork of the road, between eleven and twelve o'clock of the nightof alarms, Sheriff Harding's party of special deputies began toassemble; mounted ranchmen for the greater part, summoned by the ruraltelephones and drifting in by twos and threes from the outlyinggrass-lands. Under each man's saddle-flap was slung the regulationweapon of the West--a scabbarded repeating rifle; and the small troopbunching itself in the river road looked serviceably militant andbusinesslike.
While Harding was counting his men and appointing his lieutenants anautomobile rolled silently down the mesa road from the north and came toa stand among the horses. The sheriff drew rein beside the car and spoketo one of the two occupants of the double seat, saying:
"Well, Mr. Smith, we're all here."
"How many?" was the curt question.
"Twenty."
"Good. Here is your authority"--handing the legal papers to the officer."Before we go in you ought to know the facts. A few hours ago a mannamed M'Graw, calling himself a deputy United States marshal andclaiming to be acting under instructions from Judge Lorching's court inRed Butte, took possession of our dam and camp. On the even chance thathe isn't what he claims to be, we are going to arrest him and every manin his crowd. Are you game for it?"
"I'm game to serve any papers that Judge Warner's got the nerve toissue," was the big man's reply.
"That's the talk; that's what I hoped to hear you say. We may have thelaw on our side, and we may not; but we certainly have the equities.Was Stanton arrested?"
"He sure was. Strothers found him in the Hophra House bar, and the lineof talk he turned loose would have set a wet blanket afire. Just thesame, he had to go along with Jimmie and get himself locked up."
"That is the first step; now if you're ready, we'll take the next."
Harding rode forward to marshal his troop, and when the advance beganStarbuck shut off his car lamps and held his place at the rear of thestraggling column, juggling throttle and spark until the car kept evenpace with the horses and the low humming of the motor wasindistinguishable above the muffled drumming of hoof-beats.
For the first mile or so the midnight silence was unbroken save by thesubdued progress noises and the murmurings of the near-by river in itsbed. Once Smith took the wheel while Starbuck rolled and lighted acigarette, and once again, in obedience to a word from the mine owner,he turned the flash-light upon the gasolene pressure-gauge. In thefulness of time it was Starbuck who harked back to the talk which hadbeen so abruptly broken off at the waiting halt in the Little Creekroad.
"Let's not head into this ruction with an unpicked bone betwixt us,John," he began gently. "Maybe I said too much, back yonder at the footof the hill."
"No; you didn't say too much," was the low-toned reply. And then:"Billy, I've had a strange experience this summer; the strangest a manever lived through, I believe. A few months ago I was jerked out of myplace in life and set down in another place where practically everythingI had learned as a boy and man had to be forgotten. It was as if my lifehad been swept clean of everything that I knew how to use--like a housegutted of its well-worn and familiar furniture, and handed back to itstenant to be refitted with whatever could be found and made to serve. Idon't know that I'm making it understandable to you, but----"
"Yes, you are," broke in the man at the wheel. "I've had to turn two orthree little double somersaults myself in the years that are gone."
"They used to call me 'Monty-Boy,' back there in Lawrenceville, and Ifitted the name," Smith went on. "I was neither better nor worse thanthousands of other home-bred young fellows just like me, nor differentfrom them in any essential way. I had my little tin-basin round of workand play, and I lived in it. I've spent half an hour, many a time, in ashop picking out the exactly right shade in a tie to wear with the socksthat I had, perhaps, spent another half-hour in selecting."
"I'm getting you," said Starbuck, not without friendly sympathy. "Goon."
"Then, suddenly, as I have said, the house was looted. And, quite assuddenly, it grew and expanded and took on added rooms and spaces thatI'd never dreamed of. I've had to fill it up as best I could, Billy: Icouldn't put back any of the old things; they were so little and trivialand childish. And some of the things I've been putting in are fearfullyraw and crude. I've just had to do the best I could--with an emptyhouse. I found that I had a body that could stand man-sized hardship,and a kind of savage nerve that could give and take punishment, and asoul that could drive both body and nerve to the limit. Also, I've foundout what it means to love a woman."
Starbuck checked the car's speed a little more to keep it well in therear of the ambling cavalcade.
"That's your one best bet, John," he said soberly.
"It is. I've cleaned out another room since you called me down backyonder in the Little Creek road, Starbuck. I can't trust my own leadingsany more; they are altogether too primitive and brutal; so I'm going totake hers. She'd send me into this fight that is just ahead of us, andall the other fights that are coming, with a heart big enough to take inthe whole world. She said I'd understand, some day; that I'd know thatthe only great man is one who is too big to be little; who can fightwithout hating; who can die to make good, if that is the only way thatoffers."
"That's Corry Baldwin, every day in the week, John. They don't make 'emany finer than she is," was Starbuck's comment. And then: "I'm beginningto kick myself for not letting you go and have one more round-up withher. She's doing you good, right along."
"You didn't stop me," Smith affirmed; "you merely gave me a chance tostop myself. It's all over now, Billy, and my little race is about run.But whatever happens to me, either this night, or beyond it, I shall bea free man. You can't put handcuffs on a soul and send it to prison, youknow. That is what Corona was trying to make me understand; and Icouldn't--or wouldn't."
Harding had stopped to let the auto come up. Over a low hill just aheadthe pole-bracketed lights at the dam were starring themselves againstthe sky, and the group of horsemen was halting at the head of therailroad trestle which marked the location of the north side unloadingstation.
From the halt at the trestle head, Harding sent two of his men forwardto spy out the ground. Returning speedily, these two men reported thatthere were no guards on the north bank of the river, and that thestagings, which still remained in place on the down-stream face of thedam, were also unguarded. Thereupon Harding made his dispositions. Halfof the posse was to go up the northern bank, dismounted, and rush thecamp by way of the stagings. The remaining half, also on foot, was tocross at once on the railroad trestle, and to make its approach by wayof the wagon road skirting the mesa foot. At an agreed-upon signal, thetwo detachments were to close in upon the company buildings in theconstruction camp, trusting to the surprise and the attack from oppositedirections to overcome any disparity in numbers.
At Smith's urgings, Starbuck went with the party which crossed by way ofthe railroad trestle, Smith himself accompanying the sheriff'sdetachment. With the horses left behind under guard at the trestle head,the up-river approach was made by both parties simultaneously, though inthe darkness, and with the breadth of the river intervening, neithercould see the movements of the other. Smith kept his place besideHarding, and to the sheriff's query he answered that he was unarmed.
"You've got a nerve," was all the comment Harding made, and at that theytopped the slight elevation and came among the stone debris in thenorth-side quarries.
; From the quarry cutting the view struck out by the camp mastheads wasunobstructed. The dam and the uncompleted power-house, still figuring tothe eye as skeleton masses of form timbering, lay just below them, andon the hither side the flooding torrent thundered through the spillwaygates, which had been opened to their fullest capacity. Between thequarry and the northern dam-head ran the smooth concreted channel of themain ditch canal, with the water in the reservoir lake still lappingseveral feet below the level of its entrance to give assurance that,until the spillways should be closed, the charter-saving stream wouldnever pour through the canal.
On the opposite side of the river the dam-head and the camp street weredeserted, but there were lights in the commissary, in the office shack,and in Blue Pete Simms's canteen doggery. From the latter quarter soundsof revelry rose above the spillway thunderings, and now and again adrunken figure lurched through the open door to make its way uncertainlytoward the rank of bunk-houses.
Harding was staring into the farther nimbus of the electric rays, tryingto pick up some sign of the other half of his posse, when Smith made asuggestion.
"Both of your parties will have the workmen's bunk-houses in range, Mr.Harding, and we mustn't forget that Colonel Baldwin and Williams areprisoners in the timekeeper's shack. If the guns have to be used----"
"There won't be any wild shooting, of the kind you're thinking of,"returned the sheriff grimly. "There ain't a single man in this possethat can't hit what he aims at, nine times out o' ten. But here's hopin'we can gather 'em in without the guns. If they ain't lookin' for us----"
The interruption was the whining song of a jacketed bullet passingoverhead, followed by the crack of a rifle. "Down, boys!" said thesheriff softly, setting the example by sliding into the ready-madetrench afforded by the dry ditch of the outlet canal; and as he said ita sharp fusillade broke out, with fire spurtings from the commissarybuilding and others from the mesa beyond to show that the surprise wasbalked in both directions.
"They must have had scouts out," was Smith's word to the sheriff, whowas cautiously reconnoitring the newly developed situation from theshelter of the canal trench. "They are evidently ready for us, and thatknocks your plan in the head. Your men can't cross these stagings underfire."
"Your 'wops' are all right, anyway," said Harding. "They're pouring outof the bunk-houses and that saloon over there and taking to the hillslike a flock o' scared chickens." Then to his men: "Scatter out, boys,and get the range on that commissary shed. That's where most of therustlers are _cached_."
Two days earlier, two hours earlier, perhaps, Smith would have begged aweapon and flung himself into the fray with blood lust blinding him toeverything save the battle demands of the moment. But now the finalmile-stone in the long road of his metamorphosis had been passed andthe darksome valley of elemental passions was left behind.
"Hold up a minute, for God's sake!" he pleaded hastily. "We've got togive them a show, Harding! The chances are that every man in thatcommissary believes that M'Graw has the law on his side--and we are notsure that he hasn't. Anyway, they don't know that they are trying tostand off a sheriff's posse!"
Harding's chuckle was sardonic. "You mean that we'd ought to go overyonder and read the riot act to 'em first? That might do back in thecountry where you came from. But the man that can get into that campover there with the serving papers now 'd have to be armor-plated, Ireckon."
"Just the same, we've got to give them their chance!" Smith insisteddoggedly. "We can't stand for any unnecessary bloodshed--_I_ won't standfor it!"
Harding shrugged his heavy shoulders. "One round into that sheet-ironcommissary shack'll bring 'em to time--and nothing else will. I hain'tgot any men to throw away on the dew-dabs and furbelows."
Smith sprang up and held out his hand.
"You have at least one man that you can spare, Mr. Harding," hesnapped. "Give me those papers. I'll go over and serve them."
At this the big sheriff promptly lost his temper.
"You blamed fool!" he burst out. "You'd be dog-meat before you could getten feet away from this ditch!"
"Never mind: give me those papers. I'm not going to stand by quietly andsee a lot of men shot down on the chance of a misunderstanding!"
"Take 'em, then!" rasped Harding, meaning nothing more than the callingof a foolish theorist's bluff.
Smith caught at the warrants, and before anybody could stop him he wasdown upon the stagings, swinging himself from bent to bent through astorm of bullets coming, not from the commissary, but from the saloonshack on the opposite bank--a whistling shower of lead that made everyman in the sheriff's party duck to cover.
How the volunteer process-server ever lived to get across the bridge ofdeath no man might know. Thrice in the half-minute dash he was hit; yetthere was life enough left to carry him stumbling across the last of thestaging bents; to send him reeling up the runway at the end and acrossthe working yard to the door of the commissary, waving the foldedpapers like an inadequate flag of truce as he fell on the door-step.
After that, all things were curiously hazy and undefined for him; blindclamor coming and going as the noise of a train to a dozing travellerwhen the car doors are opened and closed. There was the tumult of afierce battle being waged over him; a deafening rifle fire and the_spat-spat_ of bullets puncturing the sheet-iron walls of thecommissary. In the midst of it he lost his hold upon the realities, andwhen he got it again the warlike clamor was stilled and Starbuck waskneeling beside him, trying, apparently, to deprive him of his clotheswith the reckless slashings of a knife.
Protesting feebly and trying to rise, he saw the working yard filledwith armed men and the returning throng of laborers; saw Colonel Baldwinand Williams talking excitedly to the sheriff; then he caught the eye ofthe engineer and beckoned eagerly with his one available hand.
"Hold still, until I can find out how dead you are!" gritted therough-and-ready surgeon who was plying the clothes-ripping knife. Butwhen Williams came and bent down to listen, Smith found a voice, shrilland strident and so little like his own that he scarcely recognized it.
"Call 'em out--call the men out and start the gate machinery!" he pantedin the queer, whistling voice which was, and was not, his own."Possess--possession is nine points of the law--that's what Judge Warnersaid: the spillways, Bartley--shut 'em quick!"
"The men are on the job and the machinery is starting right now," saidWilliams gently. "Don't you hear it?" And then to Starbuck: "ForHeaven's sake, do something for him, Billy--anything to keep him with usuntil a doctor can get here!"
Smith felt himself smiling foolishly.
"I don't need any doctor, Bartley; what I need is a new ego: then I'dstand some sha--some chance of finding--" he looked up appealingly atStarbuck--"what is it that I'd stand some chance of finding, Billy? I--Ican't seem to remember."
Williams turned his face away and Starbuck tightened his benumbing gripupon the severed artery in the bared arm from which he had cut thesleeve. Smith seemed to be going off again, but he suddenly opened hiseyes and pointed frantically with a finger of the one serviceable hand."Catch him! catch him!" he shrilled. "It's Boogerfield, and he's goingto dy-dynamite the dam!"
Clinging to consciousness with a grip that not even the blood loss couldbreak, Smith saw Williams spring to his feet and give the alarm; sawthree or four of the sheriff's men drop their weapons and hurlthemselves upon another man who was trying to make his way unnoticed tothe stagings with a box of dynamite on his shoulder. Then he felt thefoolish smile coming again when he looked up at Starbuck.
"Don't let them hurt him, Billy; him nor Simms nor Lanterby, nor thatother one--the short-hand man--I--I can't remember his name. They'rejust poor tools; and we've got to--to fight without hating, and--and--"foolish witlessness was enveloping him again like a clinging garment andhe made a masterful effort to throw it off. "Tell the little girl--tellher--you know what to tell her, Billy; about what I tried to do. Hardingsaid I'd get killed, but I remembered what she said, and I didn't care.Tel
l her I said that that one minute was worth living for--worth all itcost."
The raucous blast of a freak auto horn ripped into the growling murmurof the gate machinery, and a dust-covered car pulled up in front of thecommissary. Out of it sprang first the doctor with his instrument bag,and, closely following him, two plain-clothes men and a Brewsterpolice captain in uniform. Smith looked up and understood.
"Catch him! catch him!" he shrilled. "It's Boogerfield,and he's going to dy-dynamite the dam!"]
"They're just--a little--too late, Billy, don't you think?" he quaveredweakly. "I guess--I guess I've fooled them, after all." And therewith heclosed his eyes wearily upon all his troubles and triumphings.
The Real Man Page 32