“Do you mean to say there actually is gold—” began Mr. Bonaparte, but he got no farther. Whether accidentally or otherwise, Mr. Bacon’s foot came sharply into contact with the speaker’s shin, and the question terminated in a pained look of surprise, directed with some intensity and a great deal of fortitude at nothing in particular.
“Well, you are a wonder, Mr. Crow,” said Mr. Bacon hastily. “I am immensely relieved that you do know of its existence. It simplifies matters tremendously. It has been there all the time and you’ve never known just how to go about getting it out of the ground—isn’t that the case, Mr. Crow?”
“Exactly,” said Mr. Crow.
Mr. Bacon shot a significant look at Mr. Bonaparte, and that worthy put his hand suddenly to his mouth.
“Well, that’s what we’re here for, Mr. Crow—to get that gold out of the earth. If our estimates are correct—or, I should say, if our investigations establish the fact that it is a real vein and not merely a little pocket, there ought to be a million dollars in that piece of land of yours. Now, let me see. Just how much land do you own up there, Mr. Crow?”
“I own derned near all of it,” said the marshal promptly. “’Bout seventy-five acres, I should say.”
“Nothing but timberland, I assume—judging from what we have been able to observe.”
“All timber. Never been cleared, ’cept purty well down the slope.”
“And it is about five miles as the crow flies from Tinkletown, eh?”
“I ginerally say as the wild goose flies,” said Mr. Crow, somewhat curtly.
“Well, you have heard the proposition I bring from my employers in New York City. Think it over tonight, Mr. Crow. Then, we will meet tomorrow morning at your office to complete our plans. I shall be prepared to hand you a draft for two hundred dollars to bind the bargain. What time do you reach your office?”
“Ginerally some’eres between six and a quarter-past.”
“My God!” muttered Mr. Bonaparte.
“We will be there at six-fifteen,” said Mr. Bacon firmly. “Good evening, Mr. Crow.”
Far in the night, Mrs. Crow peevishly mumbled to her bedfellow: “What ails you, Anderson Crow? Go to sleep!”
“Never mind, never mind. I can’t tell you, so don’t pester me. All I ast of you is to wake me at five if I happen to oversleep.”
“Well, of all the—do you suppose I’m goin’ to lay awake here all night waitin’ for five o’clock to——”
“How in thunder do you expect me to go to sleep, Eva, if you keep jabberin’ away to me all night long like this? Ding it all to gosh, here it is after one o’clock an’ you still talkin’. Don’t do it, I say. Don’t ast another question till five o’clock, an’ then all you got to do it to ast me if I’m awake.”
“Umph!” said Mrs. Crow.
* * * *
Messrs. Bacon and Bonaparte were an hour and forty minutes late.
It was nearly eight o’clock when the two gentlemen came hurrying around the corner into Sickle street, piloted by Alf Reesling, the town drunkard.
A long, important-looking cigar propitiated Mr. Crow, and after Mr. Reesling and other citizens had been given to understand that the strangers were figuring on buying all the timber on Crow’s Mountain, the three principals set forth in Anderson’s buckboard.
In due time they arrived at the top of the “Mountain.” Now Crow’s Mountain was no mountain at all. It was a thickly wooded hill that had achieved eminence by happening to be a scant fifty feet higher than the knolls surrounding it. From the low-lying pastures and grain-fields to the top of the outstanding pine that reared its blasted storm-stripped tip far above its fellows, the elevation was not more than three hundred feet. Nevertheless, it was the loftiest hill in all that region and capped Anderson Crow’s agricultural possessions.
Just before the Boggs City National Bank at the county seat closed that afternoon Mr. Crow appeared at the receiving-teller’s window. He deposited two hundred dollars in currency. Mr. Bacon had decided that a draft on New York might excite undue curiosity.
“If people were to get wise to what we are really after up here on this mountain, Mr. Crow,” said he, “it would play hob with everything. If it gets out that we are after gold—why, the price of land would be so high we couldn’t—”
“Lot of these hayseeds been wantin’ to sell fer years, the derned rubes,” broke in Anderson, pityingly.
“Well, you get me, don’t you? Keep our eyes open and our mouths closed, and we will be millionaires inside of a year—or two, at the outside.”
“Mum’s the word, as the feller said,” agreed Mr. Crow.
“And of course you see the advisability of having our articles of incorporation filed secretly in New Jersey. This contract we have signed will be ratified by our employers in New York, and the regular articles drawn up at once. Wait till you see the names of the men who are behind this enterprise. The first meeting of the board of directors will bring together a dozen of the greatest—”
“Where will the meetin’ be held?” broke in Anderson, somewhat anxiously.
“New York City, of course. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least to see you elected President of the Corporation, Mr. Crow.”
“Oh, gosh-a-mighty! I—I can’t accept the honour, Mr. Bacon. It’s too much of a responsibility. Besides, I don’t see how I’m goin’ to be able to get away from Tinkletown this fall to attend the meetin’. The County Fair opens next week at Boggs City, an’ the second week in October there’s to be a Baptist revival—”
“You can send in your proxy, Mr. Crow,” explained Mr. Bacon. “It will be all the same to us, you know.”
“Well, I guess I better,” said Anderson thoughtfully.
A fortnight went by. Crow’s Mountain had become the scene of sharp but stealthy activity. Anderson went about the streets of Tinkletown as if in a daze. Acting upon the stern, almost offensive, advice of his new partners, he did not go near the “Mountain” after the first couple of days. They made it very plain to him that everything depended on his shrewdness in staying away from the “Mountain” altogether.
The Tinkletown Banner, in reporting the vast transaction, incorporated an interview with Mr. G. W. Bacon, who announced that the syndicate he represented had in mind a project to erect a huge summer hotel on top of the “most beautiful mountain east of the Rockies,” in the event that satisfactory terms could be arranged with Mr. Crow. As a matter of fact, explained Mr. Bacon, he had been instructed to make certain preliminary investigations in regard to construction, and so forth—such as ascertaining how far down they would have to go to bed-rock, and all that sort of thing.
Practically all of the syndicate’s preparatory work on Crow’s Mountain was done under cover of night. Motor-trucks that were said to have been driven all the way from Pittsburgh—on account of the dreadful congestion on the railroads—delivered machinery, tools, drills, rods, bolts, rivets and thin jangling strips of structural steel.
Marshal Crow, assuming an importance he did not feel, strutted about Tinkletown.
* * * *
His abstraction had a good deal to do with the accident to old Mrs. Twiggers. He was dreamily cogitating at the time she was run down by Schultz’s butcher-wagon, and as the catastrophe took place almost under his nose, more than one citizen called him names he wouldn’t forget. The old lady had her spectacles smashed and lost a dozen eggs in the confusion. Moreover, Ed Higgins’s hen-roost was robbed; and three tramps spent as much as half a day on Main Street before Anderson took any notice of them. Ordinarily, he was death on tramps. Crime, as Mr. Harry Squires put it in a caustic editorial in the Banner, was rampant in Tinkletown. It was getting so rampant, he complained, that it wasn’t safe to cross the street—especially while eggs were retailing at forty-two cents a dozen.
It remained for Alf Reesling, the town drunkard, to bring order out of chaos. Not that he seized the opportunity to go on a spree while Anderson was moon-gazing,—not at all. Alf loathed intoxicating liq
uors. He did not drink himself, and he had a horror of any one who did. He had been drunk just three times in his life, but as he had managed to crowd the three exhibitions into the space of one week—some twenty years before—Tinkletown elected him forthwith for life to the office of town sot.
Now, Alf had a grievance. He finally got the ear of Marshal Crow and let loose in a way that startled the old man out of his daze.
“Here you been watchin’ me, an’ trailin’ me, an’ lecturin’ me for twenty years, dern ye,—an’ pleadin’ with me to keep sober fer the sake of Tinkletown’s fair name, an’ you let this feller Bonyparte git full an’ keep people awake half the night. He’s been drunk more times in the last three weeks than I ever was in all my life. He—”
“What’s that? Did you say drunk?” demanded Anderson, blinking. “Who told you he was drunk?”
“He did,” said Alf. “He don’t make any bones about it. He tells everybody when he is drunk. He’s proud of it.”
“An’ I suppose everybody believes him,” said Anderson scathingly. “The people of this here town will believe any thing if—”
“Las’ night that pardner of his’n an’ two other fellers from up the hill had to take him up to his room an’ lock him in. He was tryin’ to sing the Star Spangled Banner in Dutch. Gosh, it was awful! He orter be arrested, same as anybody else, Anderson Crow. You got me under suspicion every minute o’ the time—night and day—”
“That’ll do, that’ll do, now Alf. No more back talk out o’ you,” exclaimed Anderson menacingly. “You might as well be drunk as to act drunk. Don’t you know any better’n—”
“Are you goin’ to arrest this Bonyparte feller?”
Anderson eyed him sternly for a moment. “I got half a notion to run you in, Alf Reesling, fer interferin’ with an officer.”
“How’m I interferin’?”
“You’re preventin’ me from arrestin’ a violater of the law, dern you. Can’t you see I’m on my way over to Justice Robb’s to swear out a warrant against Abraham Lincoln Bonaparte for bein’ intoxicated? What do you mean by stoppin’ me an’—”
“I’ll go along, Andy,” broke in Alf, suddenly affable. “I’ll swear to it if you—”
“’Tain’t necessary,” announced Anderson loftily. “I c’n attend to my own business, if you can’t. Nobody c’n sing the Star Spangled Banner in Dutch without havin’ a charge of intoxication filed ag’in him, lemme tell you that. Git out o’ my way, Alf.”
Mr. Crow’s pride had been touched. The shaft of criticism had gone home. He would arrest Mr. Abraham Lincoln Bonaparte, no matter what came of it. He did not like Mr. Bonaparte anyway. It was Mr. Bonaparte who had ordered him off Crow’s Mountain—his own mountain, mind you—and told him not to come puttering around there any more.
On second thoughts, he accepted the nominal town sot’s offer to make affidavit against a real offender, but declined his company and assistance in effecting the arrest. Down in the old Marshal’s heart lurked the fear that his new partners would put up such strenuous objections to the arrest that he would have to give way to them. It was this misgiving that caused him to make the trip to Crow’s Mountain instead of confronting his man that evening at the hotel or in the street, in the presence of an audience.
Arriving at the cross-roads half a mile from the foot of Crow’s Mountain, he encountered two men tinkering with the engine of a big automobile. They stopped him and inquired if there was a garage nearby. While he was directing them to Pete Olsen’s in town, he espied two more men reposing in the shade of a tree farther up the lane.
As he drove on, leaving them behind, he found himself possessed of the notion that the two men were strangely nervous and impatient. He decided, after he had gone a half mile farther that they had, as a matter-of-fact, acted in a very suspicious manner,—just as automobile thieves might be expected to act in the presence of an officer of the law. He made up his mind that if they were still there when he returned with his prisoner, he would yank ’em up for investigation.
He went through the motions of hitching old Hip and Jim to a sapling near the top of the “Mountain.” They went to sleep almost instantly.
In the little clearing off to the left, a couple of hundred yards away, Marshal Crow observed several men at work constructing a “shanty.” Closer at hand, almost lost to view among the pines, rose the thin, open-work steel tower from which the “drill” was to be operated. Standing out among the tree-tops were the long cross-bars of steel, and from them ran the “guy” wires to the ground below. Mr. Crow had never seen a “drill” before, but he had been told by Mr. Bacon that this was the newest thing on the market.
The Marshal started off in the direction of the “shanty” and suddenly a most astonishing thing happened. Mr. Crow disappeared from view as if by magic!
In order to give the drill as wide a berth as possible, he had deployed widely to the left of the path, making his way somewhat tortuously through a rough lot of underbrush. Without the slightest warning, the earth gave way beneath him and down he shot, clawing frantically at the edges of a well-camouflaged hole in the ground, taking with him a vast amount of twigs, branches and a net-work of sapling poles.
Not only did he drop a good twelve feet, but he landed squarely upon the stooping person of Mr. Bacon, who emitted a startling sound that began as a yell and ended as a grunt. He then crumpled up and spread himself out flat, with Mr. Crow draped awkwardly across his prostrate form. For the time being, Mr. Bacon was as still as the grave. He was out.
Anderson scrambled to his feet, pawing the air with his hands, his eyes tightly shut. He was yelling for help.
Now, it was this yelling for help that deceived the astonished Mr. Bonaparte. He jumped at once to the conclusion that the Marshal was calling for assistance from the outside.
So he threw up his hands!
“I—surrender! I give in!” he yelled. “Keep them off! Don’t let them get at me!”
Anderson opened his eyes and stared.
He found himself in a small, squat room lighted by a lantern which stood upon a crudely made table in the corner beyond Bonaparte. There was a board floor well littered with soil and shavings. In another corner stood a singular looking contraption, not unlike a dynamo.
Marshal Crow bethought himself of his mission. Although the breath had been jarred out of his body, he managed to say,—explosively:
“I—I got a warrant for your arrest. Come along now! Don’t resist. Don’t make a fuss. Come along peaceably. I—”
“I’ll come, Mr. Crow. I was dragged into this thing against my will. Gott in Himmel! Gott!—”
“Never mind what you got,” exclaimed Anderson sharply. “You come along with me or you’ll get something worse’n that.”
“Is—is he dead!” groaned Bonaparte, his eyes almost starting from his head.
Anderson backed away from the sprawling, motionless figure on the floor.
“I—I—gosh, I hope not. I—I was as much surprised as anybody. Say, you see if he’s breathin’. We got to git him out o’ this place right away an’ send for a doctor. The good Lord knows I didn’t intend to light on him like that. It was an accident, I swear it was. You know just how it happened, an’—you’ll stand by me, won’t you, if—”
Just then a loud voice came from above.
“Hey, down there!” A second’s pause. Then: “We’ve got you dead to rights, so no monkey business. Come up out o’ that, or we’ll pump enough lead down there to—”
“Don’t shoot,—don’t shoot!” yelled Mr. Bonaparte shrilly. “Tell your men not to fire, Mr. Crow!”
“Tell—tell who?” cried Anderson blankly. Suddenly he sprang to his companion’s side; seizing him by the arm, he whispered hoarsely: “By gosh, I thought there was somethin’ queer about that gang. Have you got any of the gold here? I recollect that feller’s voice, plain as day. They’re after the gold. They’ve heard about—”
“Are you coming up?” roared the voice f
rom the outer world.
“Who are you?” called back Anderson stoutly.
“Oh, I guess you’ll recognize United States marshals when you see ’em. Come on, now.”
Abraham Lincoln Bonaparte faced Marshal Crow, the truth dawning upon him like a flash.
“You damned old rube!” he snarled, and forthwith planted his fist under Anderson’s chin-whiskers, with such surprising force that the old man once more landed heavily on the prostrate form of the unfortunate Bacon.
“O-oh, gosh!” groaned Anderson, and as his eyes rolled upward he saw a million stars chasing each other around the ceiling.
“I’ll get that much satisfaction out of it anyhow,” he heard some one say, from a very great distance.
Sometime afterward he was dimly aware of a jumble of excited voices about him. Some one was shouting in his ear. He opened his eyes and everything looked green before them. In time he recognized pine trees, very lofty pine trees that slowly but surely shrank in size as he gazed wonderingly at them.
There were a lot of strange men surrounding him. Out of the mass, he finally selected a face that grew upon him. It was the face of Alf Reesling.
“By jinks, Anderson, you done it this time,” Alf cried excitedly. “I told ’em you was on your way up here to arrest these fellers, an’ by jinks, I knowed you’d get ’em.”
“Le—lemme set down, please,” mumbled Anderson, and the two men who supported him lowered him gently to the ground, with his back against a tree trunk. “Come here, Alf,” he called out feebly.
Alf shuffled forward.
“Who are these men?” whispered Anderson.
“Detectives—reg’lar detectives,” replied Alf. “United States detectives—what do you call ’em?”
“Scotland Yard men,” replied Anderson, who had done a good deal of reading in his time.
“I started out after you on my wheel, Andy, thinkin’ maybe you’d have trouble. Down the road I met up with these fellers in a big automobile. They stopped me an’ said I couldn’t go up the hill. Just then up comes another car full of men. They all seemed to be acquainted. I told ’em I was a deputy marshal an’ was goin’ up the hill to help you arrest a feller named Bonyparte. Well, by jinks, you oughter heard ’em! They cussed, and said the derned ole fool would spile everything. Then, ‘fore you could say Joe, they piled into one o’ the cars an’ sailed up the hill. I didn’t get up here till after they’d hauled you an’ your prisoners out o’ that hole, but I give ’em the laugh just the same. You captured the two ringleaders. By gosh, I’m glad you’re alive, Andy. I bet the Kaiser’ll hate you fer this.”
The George Barr McCutcheon Megapack: 25 Classic Novels and Stories Page 267