The Plunderer

by Roy Norton

  CHAPTER XII

  A DISASTROUS BLOW

  In after years it all came back to Dick as a horrible nightmare ofunreality, that tragic night's events and those which followed. Thegrim setting of the coroner's jury, where men with bestial, bruised,and discolored faces sat awkwardly or anxiously, with their hats ontheir knees, in a hard stillness; the grave questions of the coroner,coupled with the harsh, decisive interrogations of the prosecutingattorney, who had been hastily summoned from the county seat acrossthe hills; and there in the other room, quiet, and at rest, thefaithful old man who had given his life in defense of his friends.

  Dick gave his testimony in a dulled voice that sounded strange andunfamiliar, telling all that the engineer had said of the assault. Hehad one rage of vindictiveness, when the three men from Denver wereidentified as the ones who had attacked the engineer, and regrettedthat they were alive to meet the charge against them. He but vaguelyunderstood the technical phraseology of Doctor Mills when he statedthat Bells Park died from the shock of the blows and kicks rained onhim in that last valorous chapter of his life. He heard the decisionplacing the responsibility on the men from Denver, saw the sheriff andhis deputies step forward and lay firm hands on their arms and leadthem away; and then was aroused by the heavy entrance of the campundertaker to make ready, for the quiet sleep, the body of Bells Park,the engineer.

  "He belongs to us," said Dick numbly; "to Bill and me. He died for theCroix d'Or. The Croix d'Or will keep him forever, as it would if hehad lived and we had made good."

  He saw, as they trudged past the High Light, that its door was shut,and remembered, afterward, a tiny white notice pasted on the glass.The trail across the divide was of interminable length, as was thatother climb up to the foot of the yellow cross on the peak, and to thegrave he had caused to be dug beside that other one which Bells hadguarded with jealous care, planted with flowers, weeded, and where afaded, rough little cross bore the rudely carved inscription:

  A DISASTEROUS BLOW MEHITABLE PARK. THE BEST WOMAN THAT EVER LIVED.

  Those who had come to pay the last honor to the little engineer filedback down the hill, and the Croix d'Or was left alone, silent andidle. The smoke of the banked fires still wove little heat spiralsabove the stacks as if waiting for the man of the engines. The menwere shamefacedly standing around the works and arguing, and one ortwo had rolled their blankets and dumped them on the bench beside themess-house.

  Two or three of them halted Dick and his partner as they started upthe little path to the office building where they made their home.

  "Well?" Bill asked, facing them with his penetrating eyes.

  "We don't want you boys to think we had any hand in any of this," theold drill runner said, taking the lead. "They jobbed us. There werebut three or four of the Cross men there when they voted a strike, andbefore that there wasn't a man that hadn't taken the floor and foughtfor your scale. The meeting dragged for some reason, because old Bellskept bringing up arguments--long-winded ones--as if holding it off."

  He appeared to choke up a little, and gave a swift glance over hisshoulder at the yellow landmark above.

  "If any of us had been there, they'd never have gotten him. We allliked Bells. But they tell me that meeting was packed by that"--and hesuddenly flamed wrathful and used a foul epithet--"from Denver, andthe three thugs he brought with him. Mr. Townsend, there ain't a manon the Cross that don't belong to the union. You know what that means.You know how hard it is for us to scab ourselves. But there ain't aman on the Cross that hasn't decided to stick by the mine if you wantus. We're making a protest to the head officers, and if that don'tgo--well, we stick!"

  Dick impulsively put out his hand. He could not speak. He waschoking.

  "Want you, boys? Want you?" Bill rumbled. "We want all of you. Everyman jack on the works. You know how she's goin' as well as we do; butI'm here to tell you that if the Cross makes good, there'll be one setof men that'll always have the inside edge."

  The men with the blankets grinned, and furtively flung them through anopen bunk-house window. They all turned away, tongue-tied in emotion,as are nearly all men of the high hills, and tried to appearunconcerned; while Dick, still choking, led the way up the trail. Theunwritten law of the mines had decreed there should be no work thatday; and he saw the men of the Cross pass down the road, arguing withstolid emphasis against the injustice of the ordered strike. He knewthey would return to the camp and continue that argument, with more orless heat, and wondered what the outcome would be.

  He tried to forget his sorrow and bodily pains by checking over hisold assay slips, while Bill wandered, like a bruised and melancholysurvivor of a battle, from the mill to the hoist, from cabin to cabin,and mess-house to bunk-house, stopping now and then to stare upward atthe peak, as if still thinking of that fresh and fragrant earth piledin a mound above Bells Park.

  Once, in the night, they were awakened by the sounds of the menreturning, as they discussed their situation and interjected copiouscurses for the instruments of the tragedy. Once again, later, Dick wasawakened by a series of blasts, and turned restlessly in his bed,struck a match, and looked at his watch, wondering if it had all beena dream, and the morning shots of the Rattler had aroused him. It wasbut three o'clock, and he returned to his troubled sleep thinking thathe must have been mistaken. Barely half-awake, he heard Bill climb outof his bed and don his clothing, the whistle pulled by the new hands,and the clang of hammer on steel in the blacksmith's shop. Then with astart, he was aroused from the dreamless slumber of the utterlyexhausted by a heavy hand laid on his shoulder and a heavy voice:"Wake up, Dick! Wake up, boy! They've got us."

  He sat up, rubbing his eyes and fumbling with the cordings of hispajamas. Bill was sitting on the edge of his bed, scowling and angry.

  "Got us? Got us?" Dick repeated vaguely.

  "Yes. Dynamited the Peltons, and I'm afraid that ain't all. We'll haveto go up the pipe line to find out."

  Dick rolled out and jumped for his clothing. He did not take time tofollow his partner's kindly suggestion that he had better go to themess-house and get the "cookie" to give him a cup of hot coffee. Hewas too much upset by the disaster, and walked rapidly over the trail.Not a man was in sight around the works; and as he passed the smith'sdoor, he saw that Smuts, too, had gone, without taking time to don hiscap or doff his apron. The whole force appeared to have collectedaround the power-house at the foot of the hill, which was around abend and shut off from view of the Cross. A jagged rent, scatteredstone and mortar, and a tangle of twisted steel told the story; butthat was not the most alarming damage he had to fear, for the heavysteel pipe, where it entered the plant, was twisted loose, gaping anddry.

  He scrambled up the hill, seizing the manzanita brush here and thereto drag himself up faster, and gained the brow where the pipe made itslast abrupt descent. Far ahead, and walking sturdily, he recognizedthe stalwart figure of his partner, and knew that Bill was sufferingthe same anxiety. He ran when the ascent was less steep, and shoutedto the grizzled miner ahead, who turned and waited for him.

  "I'm afraid of it," Bill called as he approached; and Dick,breathless, made no reply, but hurried ahead with him to thereservoir. In all the journey, which seemed unduly long and hot thatmorning, they said nothing. Once, as they passed the familiar scene ofhis tryst with Miss Presby, now ages past, Dick bit his lips, andsuppressed a moan like that of a hurt animal. Bitterly he thought thatnow she was more unattainable, and his dreams more idle than everthey had been. And the first sight of the reservoir confirmed it.

  To a large extent, the reservoir of the Cross was artificial. It hadbeen constructed by throwing a deep stone and concrete dam across anarrow canyon through which there percolated, in summer, a smallstream. Its cubic capacity was such, however, that when this reservoirwas filled by spring freshets it contained water enough to run thefull season round if sparingly used; and it was on this alone that themill depended for its powe
r, and the mine for its lights and trainservice, from hoist to breakers.

  Where had stood the dam, gray with age and moss-covered, holding incheck its tiny lake, was now nothing but ruins. The shots had beenplaced in the lower point, which was fifty feet down and conical as itstruck and rested on the mother rock. Whoever had placed the chargesknew well the explosive directions of his powder, and his work hadbeen disastrously effective.

  The whole lower part of the dam was out, and through it, in the night,had rushed the deluge of water so vital to the Croix d'Or. Small treesthat had grown up since the dam had been built were uprooted in thebed of the canyon, and great bowlders pulled from their sockets andsent resistlessly downward. Where, the day before, had been grassybeds and heavy growths of ferns, was now but a naked bed, stripped tothe rock, down which flowed a small stream oozing from what had beenthe reservoir.

  The partners stood, as if paralyzed, on the edge of the gulch, andlooked down. The catastrophe, coming on top of all that had gonebefore, was a death blow, stupefying, stupendous, and hopelesslyirremediable.

  "Well, you were right," Dick said despairingly. "They've got us atlast!"

  Bill nodded, without shifting his eyes from the ruin below. They stoodfor another minute before scrambling down the canyon's steep side toinspect more closely the way the vandalism had been effected. Slippingdown the muddy bank, heedless of their clothing or bruised hands, theyclambered over the broken pieces of wall, and looked upward throughthe great hole and into the daylight beyond. The blow was too great topermit of mere anger. It was disaster supreme, and they could find nowords in that time of despondency.

  "I'll give a hundred dollars toward a reward for the man who didthat," shouted a voice, hoarse with indignation, above them; and theylooked up to see the smith on the bank, shaking his smudged andclenched fist in the air.

  "And I'll take a hundred more," growled one of the drill runners inthe augmenting group behind him.

  And then, as if the blow had fallen equally on all, the men ofthe Cross stormed and raved, and clambered over the ruins andanathematized their unknown enemy; all but one known as JackRogers, the boss millman, who silently, as if his business hadrendered him mute as well as deaf, stood looking up and down thegulch. While the others continued their inspection of the damage,he drifted farther and farther away, intent on the ground about him,and the edge of the stream. Suddenly he stooped over and picked upsomething water-stained and white. He came back toward them.

  "Whoever did the one job," he said tersely, "did both. Probably oneman. Set the fuses at the power-house, then came on here and setthese. Then he must have got away by going to the eastward."

  "For heaven's sake, how do you figure that out?" Dick asked eagerly,while the others gathered closer around, with grim, inquiring faces,and leaned corded necks forward to catch the millman's words.

  "I found a piece of fuse down at the power plant," he said. "See, hereit is. It's a good long one. The fellow that did the job knew just howlong it would take him to walk here; and he knew fuse, and he knewdynamite. The proof that he did it that way is shown by this shortpiece of fuse I found down there at the edge of the wash. He cut thefuse short when he shot the dam. He wanted the whole thing, bothplaces, to go up at once. Now it's plain as a Digger Indian's trailthat he didn't intend to go back the way he came, so he must have goneeastward. And if he went that way, it shows he didn't intend to hit itback toward Goldpan, but to keep on goin' over the ridge cut-off tillhe hit the railroad."

  Dick was astonished at the persistent reasoning of the man whomhitherto he had regarded as a singularly taciturn old worker, wise inmilling and nothing more.

  "Now, if there's any of you boys here that know trails," he said,"come along with me, and we'll section the hillside up there and pickit up. If you don't, stay here, because I can get it in time, anddon't want no one tramplin' over the ground. I was--a scout for fiveyears, and--well, I worked in the Geronimo raid."

  Dick and Bill looked at him with a new admiration, marveling that theman had never before betrayed that much of his variegated and hardcareer.

  "You're right! I believe you're right," the superintendent exclaimed."I can help you. So can Dick. We've lived where it came in handysometimes."

  But two other men joined them, one a white-headed old miner calledChloride and the other a stoker named Sinclair who had been at theCross for but a few weeks, and admitted that he had been a packer inArizona.

  Slowly the men formed into a long line, and began working toward oneanother, examining the ground in a belt twenty feet wide and coveringthe upper eastward edge of the canyon. Each had his own method oftrailing. The white-headed man stooped over and passed slowly fromside to side. Bill walked with slow deliberation, stopping every threeor four feet and scanning the ground around him with his brilliant,keen eyes. The stoker worked like a pointer dog, methodically, andexamining each bush clump for broken twigs.

  But it was Rogers the millman, whose method was more like Bill's, whogave the gathering call. On a patch of earth, close by the side of therampart and where the moisture had percolated sufficiently to softenthe ground, was the plain imprint of a man's foot, shod in miner'sbrogans, and half-soled. Nor was that all. The half-soling hadevidently been home work, and the supply of pegs had been exhausted.In lieu of them, three square-headed hobnails had been driven into thecenter of the seam holding the patch of leather to the under part ofthe instep, or palm of the foot. They were off like a pack ofbloodhounds, with the old millman in the lead.

  Dick started to follow, and then paused. He saw that Bill was standingaside, as if hesitating what to do.

  "Bill, old partner," he said wearily, "if anything can be found theycan find it. I think you and I had better go back and try to thinksome way out of this--try to see some opening. It looks prettyblack."

  The big fellow took four or five of his long, swinging steps, andthrew an arm over the younger man's shoulder.

  "Boy," he said, "they're a-givin' us a right fast run for our money;but we ain't whipped yet--not by a long way! And if they do, well,it's a mighty big world, with mighty big mountains, and we'll strikeit yet; but they haven't cleaned us out of the Cross, and can't aslong as you and me are both kickin.' They've got poor old Bells.They've tried to hand us a strike. They've blown our reservoir so's wecan't work the mill until another spring passes over; and yet we'restill here, and the Croix d'Or is still there, off under the peakthat's holdin' it down."

  He waved his arm above in a broad gesture, and Dick took heart as theyturned back toward the mine, calculating whether they could find ameans of opening it underground to pay; whether they would need asmany men as they had, and other troublesome details.