CHAPTER XXI
WATCHING
It took nine days to complete the flume a second time, and all handswere dog-tired. All the time the heat had continued and the hot windswere constant. The ranch had suffered badly. Irreparable damage had beendone. The grain was stunted, yellow. There would not be half a crop.
These things bit into the soul of Angus Mackay as he labored fiercely,pitting his strength and endurance against relentless time. He could getno clew, no inkling of the person responsible for the trouble.
On the afternoon of the day when the flume was completed, Rennie wasabsent. After supper he sought Angus.
"I went across the creek this afternoon," he said, "and I clumb up ontothat hill across where we was workin'. There was somebody there acrossthe gulch from me. Course I went down and over, but he'd gone. Foundwhere his horse had been standin' on top of the hill."
"You couldn't tell who it was?"
"No. I don't think he seen me. But whoever it was, was sizin' up theflume. I'm goin' to take my blankets and camp alongside it for somenights."
"So will I," Angus said. "If I can find out who is doing this, Dave, Iwill handle them myself. I will not bother about the law."
A little spark lit in Dave Rennie's mild, blue eyes.
"Sure; best way," he agreed. "Things was a darn sight better and saferand less skunks and sharks when every gent packed his own law below hisbelt. Law don't give you no action when you want it. Well, let's getorganized."
Angus had told Jean nothing of his suspicions as to the destruction ofthe flume. But now it was necessary. She listened, wide-eyed.
"But who would do it, Angus?"
"If I knew," he replied, "I would be hunting him now."
Jean looked at her big, swarthy brother, noting the grim line of hismouth, the smouldering anger in his eyes.
"Don't get into any trouble, Angus."
"It will be somebody else that will get into trouble if I find him."
"But if you can avoid--"
"I will avoid nothing," he told her sharply. "Let others do that. I havenever injured a man in my life, of my own will, and nobody shall injureme and get away with it."
Going into Rennie's room he saw his blankets on the floor ready forrolling. On them reposed a worn gun-belt with two holsters, from each ofwhich protruded an ivory butt. Angus stared at this artillery, which hehad never seen before.
"Sure, take a look at 'em," Dave said, interpreting his gaze. "I ain'twore 'em for so long they feel funny now. Time was, though, when theyfelt natural as front teeth."
Angus drew the guns. They were ivory-handled, forty-one calibre, heavy,long-barreled, single-action weapons of an old frontier model. Thoughthey had evidently seen much service, they were spotless. The pull, whenAngus tried it, was astonishingly quick and smooth, and in his handsthey fitted and balanced perfectly.
"Them guns," said Dave, "pretty near shoot themselves if a fellersavvies a gun at all. A feller give 'em to me a long time ago."
"Some present," Angus commented.
"Well, he hadn't no more use for 'em," Dave explained. "Tell you aboutit some time. What gun you takin'?"
"I don't know."
"Take a shotgun with buck. That's the best thing at night."
Angus stared at him. In all the years he had known Rennie the little manhad been meek and mild, apparently the last being on earth to exhibitbloodthirsty tendencies.
"I don't want to blow anybody to pieces," he said.
"Well, you won't--unless you get to shootin' at mighty close range,"Rennie pointed out; "and then you won't care. Take a double bar'l and abox of goose loads, anyway."
An hour later they picked a level spot near the new flume, wrapped up intheir blankets and lit pipes. But soon Angus dozed.
"Go to sleep," said Rennie. "I'll wake you after a while."
Angus went to sleep instantly and gratefully. He woke some hours laterwith Rennie's hand on his shoulder.
"It'll be light in two hours, and I'm pinchin' myself to keep awake.You're awake for sure, are you? All right."
He settled himself in his blankets, sighed and slept like a tired dog.Angus sat up. The night which had been bright with stars was nowovercast and a wind was blowing. He could hear it straining through thetree tops and booming back in the hills. The creek roared and brawlednoisily. A couple of horned owls hooted at their hunting in the timber.There were noises close at hand; the faint, intermittent gurgle ofwater, little rustlings of grasses and leaves, the occasional scurry oftiny feet, the buzz and click of insects. He had a hard job to fight offsleep. But suddenly a sound which did not blend with the natural voicesof the night drove every bit of drowsiness out of him.
It was faint, like the clink of metal on stone. While Angus listened itwas repeated. He touched Rennie. Instantly the latter's breathingstopped and changed.
"Somethin' doing'?"
"Listen!"
Clink, clink, clang! Down the wind came the sound.
"It's on the next sidehill," said Rennie. "Rippin' the ditch out, ormakin' a hole for a shot. She's a worse hill than this, too." He rose,shook himself, and buckled on his belt. "We'll hold 'em up. Sneak up asclose as we can, and tell 'em to h'ist their paws."
"Suppose they don't," said Angus, slipping a couple of shells into thebreech of his gun.
"When you tell a feller to put 'em up and he don't, there's only onething to do; 'cause there's only one thing he's goin' to do, and you gotto beat him to it."
The ditch, leaving the sidehill with the new flume, crossed the end of aflat and struck another sidehill. This was brushy halfway to the top,marking the track of an old slide of many years before. But above it,where the ancient slide had started, the bank rose sheer, overhanging.As they struck the flat they heard more plainly the clink of tools.
"Right under where that old slip hangs," Rennie deducted. "That's theplace 'd make most trouble to fix. It's a darn sight worse than what wedid fix. Now--"
His words were interrupted by the shrill blast of a whistle fromsomewhere above. It was repeated, and from where the sounds of work hadbeen came the crash of brush. Rennie swore, and a gun seemed to leapinto his hand.
"Their lookout seen us on this blasted flat!" he cried. "They'reclimbin' the hill. If we had any sense--Come on! Maybe we can head 'emoff!"
They rushed at the steep, brush-covered hill. To their right, butinvisible, others seemed to be climbing also. Suddenly from above a gunbarked, and a bullet drilled above Angus' head and spatted on a rockbelow. Again a spurt of fire lanced the night, and another bulletbuzzed, this time to the left.
Angus had never been shot at before. He had supposed that he would benervous if ever called on to stand fire. But actually his main feelingwas indignation that any one could shoot at him. And just asautomatically and unthinkingly as he was accustomed to swing on a bird,he sent a charge of shot at the second flash of the gun. But a thirdshot answered and he fired again, and broke the twelve gauge and shovedin fresh shells, and started forward, only to be pulled back by Rennie.
"There ain't no cover ahead. You'll get plugged."
"But they'll get away!"
"Well, so'll you," Dave told him; "but if you go crowdin' up withoutcover somebody'll have to pack you home. Have sense! And lay down.You're so darn big you'll stop something if you keep standin' up!"
Angus dropped beside him in a little hollow, and a bullet droned throughthe space his body had just occupied.
"Told you so," Rennie grunted. "There's one man up there savviesdownhill shootin'. If I could--" The gun in his hand leaped twice soquickly that the reports almost blended. "Don't believe I touched him.Outa practice with a belt gun. Dark besides. Scatter some shot aroundnear the top."
Angus used half a dozen shells, guessing as best he could. A shot or twocame back. Rennie suddenly turned loose both his guns in a fusillade,and for an instant Angus saw or thought he saw moving figuressilhouetted against the sky on the hill's rim. At these, he let go bothbarrels. Dave, swinging out th
e empty cylinders of his guns, swore.
"Darn 'f I b'lieve we've touched hide nor hair. They got horses upthere. What darn fools we was to camp down in this bottom. There they gonow."
Angus could hear the faint drumming of hoofs over the hill. There wasnothing to be done about it. Disgusted they went back to their blankets,but not to sleep, and with dawn they returned to investigate.
An endeavor had been made to tear out the wall of the ditch, and aboveit a hole had been started, apparently with intent to use powder. A shotthere would have split off a section of the precipitous bank, andbrought it down, trees and all, into the ditch. Angus, surveying thesethings with lowering brow, saw Rennie stoop and pick up something.
"What have you got there?" the latter asked.
Without a word Rennie handed him an old, stag-handled jack-knife. Angusknew it very well. He himself had given it to his brother, Turkey.
Angus stared at the knife, at first blankly and then with swiftlyblackening brow. He heard Dave's voice as from a distance.
"Now don't go off at half-cock, Angus. Maybe--"
"You know the knife," he said, his own voice sounding strange in hisears.
"Well, that don't say Turkey was in this. Maybe he lost it, andsomebody--"
"Quit lying to yourself!"
"By gosh, Angus, I'll bet Turkey don't know a darn thing--"
But Angus was not listening. Out of the glory of the sun rising over theranges, one of the black moods of the Black Mackays descended on him.All his life he had struggled against the hardness and bitterness ofheart inherited from his ancestors, men dour and vengeful, whose creedhad been eye for eye and tooth for tooth through the clan feuds of thedim centuries. Hard and bitter men, these bygone Mackays whose blood ranin his veins, carrying the black hate in the heart, even brother againstbrother. There was even that Mackay of a dark memory--and his name, too,was Torquil--who after a quarrel with his brothers had slain them, allfour. Old tales, these, handed down through the years, losing or gainingin the telling, perhaps, but all stormy and full of violence and hateand revenge. And in all of them there was never one of a Mackay whoforgave an injury. One and all they brooded over wrong and struck intheir own time. With them it was not the quick word and blow--though ifother tales were true they were quick enough with both--but the deep,sullen, undying resentment under injury.
As he thought of these things with the black mood upon him, Angus' hearthardened against his brother. He did not doubt that this was Turkey'srevenge. There was his knife, and he should account for it. Since he hadnot been alone he should tell the names of his confederates. And then,like the bitter, dour Mackay he was, Angus put the knife in his pocketand turned a grim but composed face to Rennie.
"Maybe you are right," he admitted, though he had not heard a word theother had been saying. "Let's go home and get breakfast. And say nothingat all to Jean."
The Land of Strong Men Page 21