by Unknown
"Well, I won't." She added, in a hesitant murmur, "You won't--misunderstand?"
His look turned aside the long-lashed eyes and brought a faint flush of pink to her cheeks.
"No, I'll not do that," he said.
CHAPTER XXXII
DAVE BECOMES AN OFFICE MAN
From Graham came a wire a week after the return of the oil expert to Denver. It read:
Report satisfactory. Can you come at once and arrange with me plan of organization?
Sanders was on the next train. He was still much needed at Malapi to look after getting supplies and machinery and to arrange for a wagon train of oil teams, but he dropped or delegated this work for the more important call that had just come.
His contact with Graham uncovered a new side of the state builder, one that was to impress him in all the big business men he met. They might be pleasant socially and bear him a friendly good-will, but when they met to arrange details of a financial plan they always wanted their pound of flesh. Graham drove a hard bargain with him. He tied the company fast by legal control of its affairs until his debt was satisfied. He exacted a bonus in the form of stock that fairly took the breath of the young man with whom he was negotiating. Dave fought him round by round and found the great man smooth and impervious as polished agate.
Yet Dave liked him. When they met at lunch, as they did more than once, the grizzled Westerner who had driven a line of steel across almost impassable mountain passes was simple and frank in talk. He had taken a fancy to this young fellow, and he let him know it. Perhaps he found something of his own engaging, dogged youth in the strong-jawed range-rider.
"Does a financier always hogtie a proposition before he backs it?" Dave asked him once with a sardonic gleam in his eye.
"Always."
"No matter how much he trusts the people he's doing business with?"
"He binds them hard and fast just the same. It's the only way to do. Give away as much money as you want to, but when you loan money look after your security like a hawk."
"Even when you're dealing with friends?"
"Especially when you're dealing with friends," corrected the older man. "Otherwise you're likely not to have your friends long."
"Don't believe I want to be a financier," decided Sanders.
"It takes the hot blood out of you," admitted Graham. "I'm not sure, if I had my life to live over again, knowing what I know now, that I wouldn't choose the outdoors like West and Crawford."
Sanders was very sure which choice he would like to make. He was at present embarked on the business of making money through oil, but some day he meant to go back to the serenity of a ranch. There were times when he left the conferences with Graham or his lieutenants sick at heart because of the uphill battle he must fight to protect his associates.
From Denver he went East to negotiate for some oil tanks and material with which to construct reservoirs. His trip was a flying one. He entrained for Malapi once more to look after the loose ends that had been accumulating locally in his absence. A road had to be built across the desert. Contracts must be let for hauling away the crude oil. A hundred details waited his attention.
He worked day and night. Often he slept only a few hours. He grew lean in body and curt of speech. Lines came into his face that had not been there before. But at his work apparently he was tireless as steel springs.
Meanwhile Brad Steelman moled to undermine the company. Dave's men finished building a bridge across a gulch late one day. It was blown up into kindling wood by dynamite that night. Wagons broke down unexpectedly. Shipments of supplies failed to arrive. Engines were mysteriously smashed.
The sabotage was skillful. Steelman's agents left no evidence that could be used against them. More than one of them, Hart and Sanders agreed, were spies who had found employment with the Jackpot. One or two men were discharged on suspicion, even though complete evidence against them was lacking.
The responsibility that had been thrust on Dave brought out in him unsuspected business capacity. During his prison days there had developed in him a quality of leadership. He had been more than once in charge of a road-building gang of convicts and had found that men naturally turned to him for guidance. But not until Crawford shifted to his shoulders the burdens of the Jackpot did he know that he had it in him to grapple with organization on a fairly large scale.
He worked without nerves, day in, day out, concentrating in a way that brought results. He never let himself get impatient with details. Thoroughness had long since become the habit of his life. To this he added a sane common sense.
Jackpot Number Four came in a good well, though not a phenomenal one like its predecessor. Number Five was already halfway down to the sands. Meanwhile the railroad crept nearer. Malapi was already talking of its big celebration when the first engine should come to town. Its council had voted to change the name of the place to Bonanza.
The tide was turning against Steelman. He was still a very rich man, but he seemed no longer to be a lucky one. He brought in a dry well. On another location the cable had pulled out of the socket and a forty-foot auger stem and bit lay at the bottom of a hole fifteen hundred feet deep. His best producer was beginning to cough a weak and intermittent flow even under steady pumping. And, to add to his troubles, a quiet little man had dropped into town to investigate one of his companies. He was a Government agent, and the rumor was that he was gathering evidence.
Sanders met Thomas on the street. He had not seen him since the prospector had made his wild ride for safety with the two outlaws hard on his heels.
"Glad you made it, Mr. Thomas," said Dave. "Good bit of strategy. When they reached the notch, Shorty and Doble never once looked to see if we were around. They lit out after you on the jump. Did they come close to getting you?"
"It looked like bullets would be flyin'. I won't say who would 'a' got who if they had," he said modestly. "But I wasn't lookin' for no trouble. I don't aim to be one of these here fire-eaters, but I'll fight like a wildcat when I got to." The prospector looked defiantly at Sanders, bristling like a bantam which has been challenged.
"We certainly owe you something for the way you drew the outlaws off our trail," Dave said gravely.
"Say, have you heard how the Government is gettin' after Steelman? He's a wily bird, old Brad is, but he slipped up when he sent out his advertisin' for the Great Mogul. A photographer faked a gusher for him and they sent it out on the circulars."
Sanders nodded, without comment.
"Steelman can make 'em flow, on paper anyhow," Thomas chortled. "But he's sure in a kettle of hot water this time."
"Mr. Steelman is enterprising," Dave admitted dryly.
"Say, Mr. Sanders, have you heard what's become of Shorty and Doble?" the prospector asked, lapsing to ill-concealed anxiety. "I see the sheriff has got a handbill out offerin' a reward for their arrest and conviction. You don't reckon those fellows would bear me any grudge, do you?"
"No. But I wouldn't travel in the hills alone if I were you. If you happened to meet them they might make things unpleasant."
"They're both killers. I'm a peaceable citizen, as the fellow says. O' course if they crowd me to the wall--"
"They won't," Dave assured him.
He knew that the outlaws, if the chance ever came for them, would strike at higher game than Thomas. They would try to get either Crawford or Sanders himself. The treasurer of the Jackpot did not fool himself with any false promises of safety. The two men in the hills were desperate characters, game as any in the country, gun-fighters, and they owed both him and Crawford a debt they would spare no pains to settle in full. Some day there would come an hour of accounting.
CHAPTER XXXIII
ON THE DODGE
Up in the hills back of Bear Cañon two men were camping. They breakfasted on slow elk, coffee, and flour-and-water biscuits. When they had finished, they washed their tin dishes with sand in the running brook.
"Might's well be hittin' the trail," one gro
wled.
The other nodded without speaking, rose lazily, and began to pack the camp outfit. Presently, when he had arranged the load to his satisfaction, he threw the diamond hitch and stood back to take a chew of tobacco while he surveyed his work. He was a squat, heavy-set man with a Chihuahua hat. Also he was a two-gun man. After a moment he circled an arrowweed thicket and moved into the chaparral where his horse was hobbled.
The man who had spoken rose with one lithe twist of his big body. His eyes, hard and narrow, watched the shorter man disappear in the brush. Then he turned swiftly and strode toward the shoulder of the ridge.
In the heavy undergrowth of dry weeds and grass he stopped and tested the wind with a bandanna handkerchief. The breeze was steady and fairly strong. It blew down the cañon toward the foothills beyond.
The man stripped from a scrub oak a handful of leaves. They were very brittle and crumbled in his hand. A match flared out. His palm cupped it for a moment to steady the blaze before he touched it to the crisp foliage. Into a nest of twigs he thrust the small flame. The twigs, dry as powder from a four-months' drought, crackled like miniature fireworks. The grass caught, and a small line of fire ran quickly out.
The man rose. On his brown face was an evil smile, in his hard eyes something malevolent and sinister. The wind would do the rest.
He walked back toward the camp. At the shoulder crest he turned to look back. From out of the chaparral a thin column of pale gray smoke was rising.
His companion stamped out the remains of the breakfast fire and threw dirt on the ashes to make sure no live ember could escape in the wind. Then he swung to the saddle.
"Ready, Dug?" he asked.
The big man growled an assent and followed him over the summit into the valley beyond.
"Country needs a rain bad," the man in the Chihuahua hat commented. "Don't know as I recollect a dryer season."
The big hawk-nosed man by his side cackled in his throat with short, splenetic mirth. "It'll be some dryer before the rains," he prophesied.
They climbed out of the valley to the rim. The short man was bringing up the rear along the narrow trail-ribbon. He turned in the saddle to look back, a hand on his horse's rump. Perhaps he did this because of the power of suggestion. Several times Doble had already swung his head to scan with a searching gaze the other side of the valley.
Mackerel clouds were floating near the horizon in a sky of blue. Was that or was it not smoke just over the brow of the hill?
"Cayn't be our camp-fire," the squat man said aloud. "I smothered that proper."
"Them's clouds," pronounced Doble quickly. "Clouds an' some mist risin' from the gulch."
"I reckon," agreed the other, with no sure conviction. Doble must be right, of course. No fire had been in evidence when they left the camping-ground, and he was sure he had stamped out the one that had cooked the biscuits. Yet that stringy gray film certainly looked like smoke. He hung in the wind, half of a mind to go back and make sure. Fire in the chaparral now might do untold damage.
Shorty looked at Doble. "If tha's fire, Dug--"
"It ain't. No chance," snapped the ex-foreman. "We'll travel if you don't feel called on to go back an' stomp out the mist, Shorty," he added with sarcasm.
The cowpuncher took the trail again. Like many men, he was not proof against a sneer. Dug was probably right, Shorty decided, and he did not want to make a fool of himself. Doble would ride him with heavy jeers all day.
An hour later they rested their horses on the divide. To the west lay Malapi and the plains. Eastward were the heaven-pricking peaks. A long, bright line zig-zagged across the desert and reflected the sun rays. It was the bed of the new road already spiked with shining rails.
"I'm goin' to town," announced Doble.
Shorty looked at him in surprise. "Wanta see yore picture, I reckon. It's on a heap of telegraph poles, I been told," he said, grinning.
"To-day," went on the ex-foreman stubbornly.
"Big, raw-boned guy, hook nose, leather face, never took no prize as a lady's man, a wildcat in a rough-house, an' sudden death on the draw," extemporized the rustler, presumably from his conception of the reward poster.
"I'll lie in the chaparral till night an' ride in after dark."
With the impulsiveness of his kind, Shorty fell in with the idea. He was hungry for the fleshpots of Malapi. If they dropped in late at night, stayed a few hours, and kept under cover, they could probably slip out of town undetected. The recklessness of his nature found an appeal in the danger.
"Damfidon't trail along, Dug."
"Yore say-so about that."
"Like to see my own picture on the poles. Sawed-off li'l runt. Straight black hair. Some bowlegged. Wears two guns real low. Doncha monkey with him onless you're hell-a-mile with a six-shooter. One thousand dollars reward for arrest and conviction. Same for the big guy."
"Fellow that gets one o' them rewards will earn it," said Doble grimly.
"Goes double," agreed Shorty. "He'll earn it even if he don't live to spend it. Which he's liable not to."
They headed their horses to the west. As they drew down from the mountains they left the trail and took to the brush. They wound in and out among the mesquite and the cactus, bearing gradually to the north and into the foothills above the town. When they reached Frio Cañon they swung off into a timbered pocket debouching from it. Here they unsaddled and lay down to wait for night.
CHAPTER XXXIV
A PLEASANT EVENING
Brad Steelman sat hunched before a fire of piñon knots, head drooped low between his high, narrow shoulders. The restless black eyes in the dark hatchet face were sunk deeper now than in the old days. In them was beginning to come the hunted look of the gray wolf he resembled. His nerves were not what they had been, and even in his youth they were not of the best. He had a way of looking back furtively over his shoulder, as though some sinister shadow were creeping toward him out of the darkness.
Three taps on the window brought his head up with a jerk. His lax fingers crept to the butt of a Colt's revolver. He waited, listening.
The taps were repeated.
Steelman sidled to the door and opened it cautiously. A man pushed in and closed the door. He looked at the sheepman and he laughed shortly in an ugly, jeering way.
"Scared, Brad?"
The host moistened his lips. "What of, Dug?"
"Don't ask me," said the big man scornfully. "You always had about as much sand in yore craw as a rabbit."
"Did you come here to make trouble, Dug?"
"No, I came to collect a bill."
"So? Didn't know I owed you any money right now. How much is it?"
Steelman, as the leader of his gang, was used to levies upon his purse when his followers had gone broke. He judged that he would have to let Doble have about twenty-five dollars now.
"A thousand dollars."
Brad shot a quick, sidelong look at him. "Wha's wrong now, Dug?"
The ex-foreman of the D Bar Lazy R took his time to answer. He enjoyed the suspense under which his ally was held. "Why, I reckon nothin' a-tall. Only that this mo'nin' I put a match to about a coupla hundred thousand dollars belongin' to Crawford, Sanders, and Hart."
Eagerly Steelman clutched his arm. "You did it, then?"
"Didn't I say I'd do it?" snapped Doble irritably. "D'ya ever know me rue back on a bargain?"
"Never."
"Wha's more, you never will. I fired the chaparral above Bear Cañon. The wind was right. Inside of twenty-four hours the Jackpot locations will go up in smoke. Derricks, pumps, shacks, an' oil; the whole caboodle's doomed sure as I'm a foot high."
The face of the older man looked more wolfish than ever. He rubbed his hands together, washing one over the other so that each in turn was massaged. "Hell's bells! I'm sure glad to hear it. Fire got a good start, you say?"
"I tell you the whole country'll go up like powder."
If Steelman had not just reached Malapi from a visit to one of his s
heep camps he would have known, what everybody else in town knew by this time, that the range for fifty miles was in danger and that hundreds of volunteers were out fighting the menace.
His eyes glistened. "I'll not wear mournin' none if it does just that."
"I'm tellin' you what it'll do," Doble insisted dogmatically.
"Shorty with you?"
"He was, an' he wasn't. I did it while he wasn't lookin'. He was saddlin' his horse in the brush. Don't make any breaks to him. Shorty's got a soft spot in him. Game enough, but with queer notions. Some time I'm liable to have to--" Doble left his sentence suspended in air, but Steelman, looking into his bleak eyes, knew what the man meant.