XVII
THE DIPSOMANIAC
There are moments when the primal instincts assert themselves with asort of blind ferocity, and to Judson, jammed under the floor timbers ofFlemister's head-quarters office, came one of these moments when heheard the two men in the room above moving to depart, and found himselfcaught between the timbers so that he could not retreat.
What had happened he was unable, in the first fierce struggle forfreedom, fully to determine. It was as if a living hand had reached downto pin him fast in the tunnel-like space. Then he discovered that a hugesplinter on one of the joists was thrust like a great barb into hiscoat. Ordinarily cool and collected in the face of emergencies, theex-engineer lost his head for a second or so and fought like a trappedanimal. Then the frenzy fit passed and the quick wit reasserted itself.Extending his arms over his head and digging his toes into the dry earthfor a purchase, he backed, crab-wise, out of the entangled coat, freedthe coat, and made for the narrow exit in a sweating panic ofexcitement.
Notwithstanding the excitement, however, the recovered wit was takingnote of the movements of the men who were leaving the room overhead.They were not going out by the direct way--out of the door facing themoonlight and the mining hamlet. They were passing out through thestore-room in the rear. Also, there were other foot-falls--cautioustreadings, these--as of some third person hastening to be first at themore distant door of egress.
Judson was out of his dodge-hole and flitting from pine to pine on theupper hill-side in time to see a man leap from the loading platform atthe warehouse end of the building and run for the sheltering shadows ofthe timbering at the mine entrance. Following closely upon the heels oftheir mysterious file leader came the two whose footsteps Judson hadbeen timing, and these, too, crossed quickly to the tunnel mouth of themine and disappeared within it.
Judson pursued swiftly and without a moment's hesitation. Happily forhim, the tunnel was lighted at intervals by electric incandescents,their tiny filaments glowing mistily against the wet and glisteningtunnel roof. Going softly, he caught a glimpse of the two men as theypassed under one of the lights in the receding tunnel depths, and amoment later he could have sworn that a third, doubtless the man who hadleaped from the loading platform to run and hide in the shadows at themine mouth, passed the same light, going in the same direction.
A hundred yards deeper into the mountain there was a confirmingrepetition of the flash-light picture for the ex-engineer. The two men,walking rapidly now, one a step in advance of the other, passed underanother of the overhead light bulbs, and this time Judson, watching forthe third man, saw him quite plainly. The sight gave him a start. Thethird man was tall, and he wore a soft hat drawn low over his face.
"Well, I'll be jiggered!" muttered the trailer, pulling his cap down tohis ears and quickening his pace. "If I didn't know better, I'd swearthat was Hallock again--or Hallock's shadder follerin' him at a goodlong range!"
The chase was growing decidedly mysterious. The two men in the leadcould be no others than Flemister and the chief clerk, presumably ontheir way to the carrying out of whatever plot they had agreed upon,with Lidgerwood for the potential victim. But since this plot evidentlyturned upon the nearing approach of Lidgerwood's special train, why werethey plunging on blindly into the labyrinthine depths of the Wire-Silvermine? This was an even half of the mystery, and the other half was quiteas puzzling. Who was the third man? Was he a confederate in the plot, orwas he also following to spy upon the conspirators?
Judson was puzzled, but he did not let his bewilderment tangle the feetof his principal purpose, which was to keep Flemister and his reluctantaccomplice in sight. This purpose was presently defeated in a mostsingular manner. At the end of one of the longer tunnel levels, a blackand dripping cavern, lighted only by a single incandescent shining likea star imprisoned in the dismal depths, the ex-engineer saw whatappeared to be a wooden bulkhead built across the passage andeffectively blocking it. When the two men came to this bulkhead theypassed through it and disappeared, and the shock of the confined air inthe tunnel told of a door slammed behind them.
Judson broke into a stumbling run, and then stopped short in increasingbewilderment. At the slamming of the door the third man had dartedforward out of the shadows to fling himself upon the wooden barrier,beating upon it with his fists and cursing like a madman. Judson saw,understood, and acted, all with the instinctive instantaneousness bornof his trade of engine-driving. The two men in advance were merelytaking the short cut through the mountain to the old workings on theeastern slope, and the door in the bulkhead, which was doubtless one ofthe airlocks in the ventilating system of the mine, had fastened itselfautomatically after Flemister had released it.
Judson was a hundred yards down the tunnel, racing like a trainedsprinter for the western exit, before he thought to ask himself why thethird man was playing the madman before the locked door. But that was amatter negligible to him; his affair was to get out of the mine with theloss of the fewest possible seconds of time--to win out, to climb theridge, and to descend the eastern slope to the old workings before thetwo plotters should disappear beyond the hope of rediscovery.
He did his best, flying down the long tunnel reaches with little regardfor the precarious footing, tripping over the cross-ties of theminiature tramway and colliding with the walls, now and then, betweenthe widely separated electric bulbs. Far below, in the deeper levels, hecould hear the drumming chatter of the power-drills and the purring ofthe compressed air, but the upper gangway was deserted, and it was notuntil he was stumbling through the timbered portal that a watchman roseup out of the shadows to confront and halt him. There was no time tospare for soft words or skilful evasions. With a savage upper-cut thatcaught the watchman on the point of the jaw and sent him crashing amongthe picks and shovels of the mine-mouth tool-room, Judson darted outinto the moonlight. But as yet the fierce race was only fairly begun.Without stopping to look for a path, the ex-engineer flung himself atthe steep hill-side, running, falling, clambering on hands and knees,bursting by main strength through the tangled thickets of young pines,and hurling himself blindly over loose-lying bowlders and the trunks offallen trees. When, after what seemed like an eternity of lung-burstingstruggles, he came out upon the bare summit of the ridge, his tongue waslike a dry stick in his mouth, refusing to shape the curses that hissoul was heaping upon the alcohol which had made him a wind-broken,gasping weakling in the prime of his manhood.
For, after all the agonizing strivings, he was too late. It was a roughquarter-mile down to the shadowy group of buildings whence the hummingof the dynamo and the quick exhausts of the high-speeded steam-enginerose on the still night air. Judson knew that the last lap was not inhis trembling muscles or in the thumping heart and the wind-brokenlungs. Moreover, the path, if any there were, was either to the right orthe left of the point to which he had attained; fronting him there was asteep cliff, trifling enough as to real heights and depths, but anall-sufficient barrier for a spent runner.
The ex-engineer crawled cautiously to the edge of the barrier cliff,rubbed the sweat out of his smarting eyes, and peered down into thehalf-lighted shadows of the stockaded enclosure. It was not very longbefore he made them out--two indistinct figures moving about among thedisused and dilapidated ore sheds clustering at the track end of the oldspur. Now and again a light glowed for an instant and died out, like themomentary brilliance of a gigantic fire-fly, by which the watcher on thecliff's summit knew that the two were guiding their movements by thehelp of an electric flash-lamp.
What they were doing did not long remain a mystery. Judson heard adistance-diminished sound, like the grinding of rusty wheels upon ironrails, and presently a shadowy thing glided out of one of the ore shedsand took its place upon the track of the old spur. Followed a series ofclankings still more familiar to the watcher--the _ting_ of metal uponmetal, as of crow-bars and other tools cast carelessly, one upon theother, in the loading of the shadowy vehicle. Making a telescope of hishands to shut out the
glare from the lighted windows of the power-house,Judson could dimly discern the two figures mounting to their places onthe deck of the thing which he now knew to be a hand-car. A momentlater, to the musical _click-click_ of wheels passing over rail-joints,the little car shot through the gate-way in the stockade and sped awaydown the spur, the two indistinct figures bowing alternately to eachother like a pair of grotesque automatons.
Winded and leg-weary as he was, Judson's first impulse prompted him toseek for the path to the end that he might dash down the hill and givechase. But if he would have yielded, another pursuer was before him toshow him the futility of that expedient. While the clicking of thehand-car wheels was still faintly audible, a man--the door-hammeringmadman, Judson thought it must be--materialized suddenly from somewherein the under-shadows to run down the track after the disappearingconspirators. The engineer saw the racing foot-pursuer left behind soquickly that his own hope of overtaking the car died almost before ithad taken shape.
"That puts it up to me again," he groaned, rising stiffly. Then he facedonce more toward the western valley and the point of the great triangle,where the lights of Little Butte station and bridge twinkled uncertainlyin the distance. "If I can get down yonder to Goodloe's wire in time tocatch the super's special before it passes Timanyoni"--he went on, onlyto drop his jaw and gasp when he held the face of his watch up to themoonlight. Then, brokenly, "My God! I couldn't begin to do it unless Ihad wings: he said eleven o'clock, and it's ten-ten right now!"
There was the beginning of a frenzied outburst of despairing cursesupbubbling to Judson's lips when he realized his utter helplessness andthe consequences menacing the superintendent's special. True, he did notknow what the consequences were to be, but he had overheard enough to besure that Lidgerwood's life was threatened. Then, at the climax ofdespairing helplessness he remembered that there was a telephone in themine-owner's office--a telephone that connected with Goodloe's stationat Little Butte. Here was a last slender chance of getting a warning toGoodloe, and through him, by means of the railroad wire, to thesuperintendent's special. Instantly Judson forgot his weariness, andraced away down the western slope of the mountain, prepared to fight hisway to the telephone if the entire night shift of the Wire-Silver shouldtry to stop him.
It cost ten of the precious fifty minutes to retrace his steps down themountain-side, and five more, were lost in dodging the mine watchman,who, having recovered from the effects of Judson's savage blow, wasprowling about the mine buildings, revolver in hand, in search of hismysterious assailant. After the watchman was out of the way, five otherminutes went to the cautious prying open of the window least likely toattract attention--the window upon whose drawn shade the convincingprofile had been projected. Judson's lips were dry and his hands wereshaking again when he crept through the opening, and dropped into theunfamiliar interior, where the darkness was but thinly diluted by themoonlight filtering through the small, dingy squares of the oppositewindow. To have the courage of a house-breaker, one must be a burglar infact; and the ex-engineer knew how swiftly and certainly he would paythe penalty if any one had seen him climbing in at the forced window,or should chance to discover him now that he was in.
But there was a stronger motive than fear, fear for himself, to set himgroping for the telephone. The precious minutes were flying, and he knewthat by this time the two men on the hand-car must have reached the mainline at Silver Switch. Whatever helpful chain of events might be set inmotion by communicating with Goodloe, must be linked up quickly.
He found the telephone without difficulty. It was an old-fashioned set,with a crank and bell for ringing up the call at the other end of theline. A single turn of the crank told him that it was cut off somewhere,doubtless by a switch in the office wiring. In a fresh fever ofexcitement he began a search for the switch, tracing with his fingersthe wires which led from the instrument and following where they ranaround the end of the room on the wainscoting. In the corner farthestfrom his window of ingress he found the switch and felt it out. It was asimple cut-out, designed to connect either the office instrument or themine telephones with the main wire, as might be desired. Under theswitch stood a corner cupboard, and in feeling for the wire connectionson top of the cupboard, Judson found his fingers running lightly overthe bounding surfaces of an object with which he was, unhappily, onlytoo familiar--a long-necked bottle with the seal blown in the glass. Thecorner cupboard was evidently Flemister's sideboard.
Almost before he knew what he was doing, Judson had grasped the bottleand had removed the cork. Here was renewed strength and courage, and aswift clearing of the brain, to be had for the taking. At the drawing ofthe cork the fine bouquet of the liquor seemed instantly to fill theroom with its subtle and intoxicating essence. With the smell of thewhiskey in his nostrils he had the bottle half-way to his lips before herealized that the demon of appetite had sprung upon him out of thedarkness, taking him naked and unawares. Twice he put the bottle down,only to take it up again. His lips were parched; his tongue rattled inhis mouth, and within there were cravings like the fires of hell,threatening torments unutterable if they should not be assuaged.
"God have mercy!" he mumbled, and then, in a voice which the risingfires had scorched to a hoarse whisper: "If I drink, I'm damned to alleternity; and if I don't take just one swallow, I'll never be able totalk so as to make Goodloe understand me!"
It was the supreme test of the man. Somewhere, deep down in thesoul-abyss of the tempted one, a thing stirred, took shape, and arose tohelp him to fight the devil of appetite. Slowly the fierce thirst burneditself out. The invisible hand at his throat relaxed its cruel grip, anda fine dew of perspiration broke out thickly on his forehead. At thesweating instant the newly arisen soul-captain within him whispered,"Now, John Judson--once for all!" and staggering to the open window heflung the tempting bottle afar among the scattered bowlders, waitinguntil he had heard the tinkling crash of broken glass before he turnedback to his appointed task.
His hands were no longer trembling when he once more wound the crank ofthe telephone and held the receiver to his ear. There was an answeringskirl of the bell, and then a voice said: "Hello! This is Goodloe:what's wanted?"
Judson wasted no time in explanations. "This is Judson--John Judson. GetTimanyoni on your wire, quick, and catch Mr. Lidgerwood's special. TellBradford and Williams to run slow, looking for trouble. Do you getthat?"
A confused medley of rumblings and clankings crashed in over the wire,and in the midst of the interruption Judson heard Goodloe put down thereceiver. In a flash he knew what was happening at Little Buttestation. The delayed passenger-train from the west had arrived, and theagent was obliged to break off and attend to his duties.
Anxiously Judson twirled the crank, again and yet again. Since Goodloehad not cut off the connection, the mingled clamor of the station cameto the listening ear; the incessant clicking of the telegraphinstruments on Goodloe's table, the trundling roar of a baggage-truck onthe station platform, the cacophonous screech of the passenger-engine'spop-valve. With the _phut_ of the closing safety-valve came theconductor's cry of "All aboard!" and then the long-drawn sobs of the bigengine as Cranford started the train. Judson knew that in all humanprobability the superintendent's special had already passed Timanyoni,the last chance for a telegraphic warning; and here was the passengerslipping away, also without warning.
Goodloe came back to the telephone when the train clatter had died away,and took up the broken conversation.
"Are you there yet, John?" he called. And when Judson's yelp answeredhim: "All right; now, what was it you were trying to tell me about thespecial?"
Judson did not swear; the seconds were too vitally precious. He merelyrepeated his warning, with a hoarse prayer for haste.
There was another pause, a break in the clicking of Goodloe's telegraphinstruments, and then the agent's voice came back over the wire: "Can'treach the special. It passed Timanyoni ten minutes ago."
Judson's heart was in his mouth, and he had t
o swallow twice before hecould go on.
"Where does it meet the passenger?" he demanded.
"You can search me," replied the Little Butte agent, who was not ofthose who go out of their way to borrow trouble. Then, suddenly: "Holdthe 'phone a minute; the despatcher's calling me, right now."
There was a third trying interval of waiting for the man in the darkenedroom at the Wire-Silver head-quarters; an interval shot through withpricklings of feverish impatience, mingled with a lively sense of therisk he was running; and then Goodloe called again.
"Trouble," he said shortly. "Angels didn't know that Cranford had madeup so much time. Now he tries to give me an order to hold thepassenger--after it's gone by. So long. I'm going to take a lantern andmog along up the track to see where they come together."
Judson hung up the receiver, reset the wire switch to leave it as he hadfound it, climbed out through the open window and replaced the sash; allthis methodically, as one who sets the death chamber in order after thesheet has been drawn over the face of the corpse. Then he stumbled downthe hill to the gulch bottom and started out to walk along the new spurtoward Little Butte station, limping painfully and feeling mechanicallyin his pocket for his pipe, which had apparently been lost in some oneof the many swift and strenuous scene-shiftings.
The Taming of Red Butte Western Page 17