by Unknown
"What's wrong with him now, Dug?"
"Well, he's been wrong ever since I had to bump off Tim Harrigan. Talks about a fair break. As if I had a chance to let the old man get to a gun. No, I'm not so awful sure of Shorty."
"Better watch him. If you see him make any false moves--"
Doble watched him with a taunting, scornful eye.
"What'll I do?"
The other man's gaze fell. "Why, you got to protect yoreself, Dug, ain't you?"
"How?"
The narrow shoulders lifted. For a moment the small black eyes met those of the big man.
"Whatever way seems best to you, Dug," murmured Steelman evasively.
Doble slapped his dusty hat against his thigh. He laughed, without mirth or geniality. "If you don't beat Old Nick, Brad. I wonder was you ever out an' out straightforward in yore life. Just once?"
"I don't reckon you sure enough feel that way, Dug," whined the older man ingratiatingly. "Far as that goes, I'm not making any claims that I love my enemies. But you can't say I throw off on my friends. You always know where I'm at."
"Sure I know," retorted Doble bluntly. "You're on the inside of a heap of rotten deals. So am I. But I admit it and you won't."
"Well, I don't look at it that way, but there's no use arguin'. What about that fire? Sure it got a good start?"
"I looked back from across the valley. It was travelin' good."
"If the wind don't change, it will sure do a lot of damage to the Jackpot. Liable to spoil some of Crawford's range too."
"I'll take that thousand in cash, Brad," the big man said, letting himself down into the easiest chair he could find and rolling a cigarette.
"Soon as I know it did the work, Dug."
"I'm here tellin' you it will make a clean-up."
"We'll know by mornin'. I haven't got the money with me anyhow. It's in the bank."
"Get it soon as you can. I expect to light out again pronto. This town's onhealthy for me."
"Where will you stay?" asked Brad.
"With my friend Steelman," jeered Doble. "His invitation is so hearty I just can't refuse him."
"You'd be safer somewhere else," said the owner of the house after a pause.
"We'll risk that, me 'n' you both, for if I'm taken it's liable to be bad luck for you too.... Gimme something to eat and drink."
Steelman found a bottle of whiskey and a glass, then foraged for food in the kitchen. He returned with the shank of a ham and a loaf of bread. His fear was ill-disguised. The presence of the outlaw, if discovered, would bring him trouble; and Doble was so unruly he might out of sheer ennui or bravado let it be known he was there.
"I'll get you the money first thing in the mornin'," promised Steelman.
Doble poured himself a large drink and took it at a swallow. "I would, Brad."
"No use you puttin' yoreself in unnecessary danger."
"Or you. Don't hand me my hat, Brad. I'll go when I'm ready."
Doble drank steadily throughout the night. He was the kind of drinker that can take an incredible amount of liquor without becoming helpless. He remained steady on his feet, growing uglier and more reckless every hour.
Tied to Doble because he dared not break away from him, Steelman's busy brain began to plot a way to take advantage of this man's weakness for liquor. He sat across the table from him and adroitly stirred up his hatred of Crawford and Sanders. He raked up every grudge his guest had against the two men, calling to his mind how they had beaten him at every turn.
"O' course I know, Dug, you're a better man than Sanders or Crawford either, but Malapi don't know it--yet. Down at the Gusher I hear they laugh about that trick he played on you blowin' up the dam. Luck, I call it, but--"
"Laugh, do they?" growled the big man savagely. "I'd like to hear some o' that laughin'."
"Say this Sanders is a wonder; that nobody's got a chance against him. That's the talk goin' round. I said any day in the week you had him beat a mile, and they gave me the laugh."
"I'll show 'em!" cried the enraged bully with a furious oath.
"I'll bet you do. No man livin' can make a fool outa Dug Doble, rustle the evidence to send him to the pen, snap his fingers at him, and on top o' that steal his girl. That's what I told--"
Doble leaned across the table and caught in his great fist the wrist of Steelman. His bloodshot eyes glared into those of the man opposite. "What girl?" he demanded hoarsely.
Steelman looked blandly innocent. "Didn't you know, Dug? Maybe I ought n't to 'a' mentioned it."
Fingers like ropes of steel tightened on the wrist, Brad screamed.
"Don't do that, Dug! You're killin' me! Ouch! Em Crawford's girl."
"What about her and Sanders?"
"Why, he's courtin' her--treatin' her to ice-cream, goin' walkin' with her. Didn't you know?"
"When did he begin?" Doble slammed a hamlike fist on the table. "Spit it out, or I'll tear yore arm off."
Steelman told all he knew and a good deal more. He invented details calculated to infuriate his confederate, to inflame his jealousy. The big man sat with jaw clamped, the muscles knotted like ropes on his leathery face. He was a volcano of outraged vanity and furious hate, seething with fires ready to erupt.
"Some folks say it's Hart she's engaged to," purred the hatchet-faced tempter. "Maybeso. Looks to me like she's throwin' down Hart for this convict. Expect she sees he's gonna be a big man some day."
"Big man! Who says so?" exploded Doble.
"That's the word, Dug. I reckon you've heard how the Governor of Colorado pardoned him. This town's crazy about Sanders. Claims he was framed for the penitentiary. Right now he could be elected to any office he went after." Steelman's restless black eyes watched furtively the effect of his taunting on this man, a victim of wild and uncurbed passions. He was egging him on to a rage that would throw away all caution and all scruples.
"He'll never live to run for office!" the cattleman cried hoarsely.
"They talk him for sheriff. Say Applegate's no good--too easy-going. Say Sanders'll round up you an' Shorty pronto when he's given authority."
Doble ripped out a wild and explosive oath. He knew this man was playing on his vanity, jealousy, and hatred for some purpose not yet apparent, but he found it impossible to close his mind to the whisperings of the plotter. He welcomed the spur of Steelman's two-edged tongue because he wanted to have his purpose of vengeance fed.
"Sanders never saw the day he could take me, dead or alive. I'll meet him any time, any way, an' when I turn my back on him he'll be ready for the coroner."
"I believe you, Dug. No need to tell me you're not afraid of him, for--"
"Afraid of him!" bellowed Doble, eyes like live coals. "Say that again an' I'll twist yore head off."
Steelman did not say it again. He pushed the bottle toward his guest and said other things.
CHAPTER XXXV
FIRE IN THE CHAPARRAL
A carpenter working on the roof of a derrick for Jackpot Number Six called down to his mates:
"Fire in the hills, looks like. I see smoke."
The contractor was an old-timer. He knew the danger of fire in the chaparral at this season of the year.
"Run over to Number Four and tell Crawford," he said to his small son.
Crawford and Hart had just driven out from town.
"I'll shag up the tower and have a look," the younger man said.
He had with him no field-glasses, but his eyes were trained to long-distance work. Years in the saddle on the range had made him an expert at reading such news as the landscape had written on it.
"Fire in Bear Cañon!" he shouted down. "Quite a bit of smoke risin'."
"I'll ride right up and look it over," the cattleman called back. "Better get a gang together to fight it, Bob. Hike up soon as you're ready."
Crawford borrowed without permission of the owner the nearest saddle horse and put it to a lope. Five minutes might make all the difference between a winning and a losing f
ight.
From the tower Hart descended swiftly. He gathered together all the carpenters, drillers, enginemen, and tool dressers in the vicinity and equipped them with shovels, picks, brush-hooks, saws, and axes. To each one he gave also a gunnysack.
The foot party followed Crawford into the chaparral, making for the hills that led to Bear Cañon. A wind was stirring, and as they topped a rise it struck hot on their cheeks. A flake of ash fell on Bob's hand.
Crawford met them at the mouth of the cañon.
"She's rip-r'arin', Bob! Got too big a start to beat out. We'll clear a fire-break where the gulch narrows just above here and do our fightin' there."
The sparks of a thousand rockets, flung high by the wind, were swept down the gulch toward them. Behind these came a curtain of black smoke.
The cattleman set his crew to work clearing a wide trail across the gorge from wall to wall. The undergrowth was heavy, and the men attacked with brush-hooks, shovels, and axes. One man, with a wet gunnysack, was detailed to see that no flying sparks started a new blaze below the safety zone. The shovelers and grubbers cleared the grass and roots off to the dirt for a belt of twenty feet. They banked the loose dirt at the lower edge to catch flying firebrands. Meanwhile the breath of the furnace grew to a steady heat on their faces. Flame spurts had leaped forward to a grove of small alders and almost in a minute the branches were crackling like fireworks.
"I'll scout round over the hill and have a look above," Bob said. "We've got to keep it from spreading out of the gulch."
"Take the horse," Crawford called to him.
One good thing was that the fire was coming down the cañon. A downhill blaze moves less rapidly than one running up.
Runners of flame, crawling like snakes among the brush, struck out at the fighters venomously and tried to leap the trench. The defenders flailed at these with the wet gunnysacks.
The wind was stiffer now and the fury of the fire closer. The flames roared down the cañon like a blast furnace. Driven back by the intense heat, the men retreated across the break and clung to their line. Already their lungs were sore from inhaling smoke and their throats were inflamed. A pine, its pitchy trunk ablaze, crashed down across the fire-trail and caught in the fork of a tree beyond. Instantly the foliage leaped to red flame.
Crawford, axe in hand, began to chop the trunk and a big Swede swung an axe powerfully on the opposite side. The rest of the crew continued to beat down the fires that started below the break. The chips flew at each rhythmic stroke of the keen blades. Presently the tree crashed down into the trail that had been hewn. It served as a conductor, and along it tongues of fire leaped into the brush beyond. Glowing branches, flung by the wind and hurled from falling timber, buried themselves in the dry undergrowth. Before one blaze was crushed half a dozen others started in its place. Flails and gunnysacks beat these down and smothered them.
Bob galloped into the cañon and flung himself from the horse as he pulled it up in its stride.
"She's jumpin' outa the gulch above. Too late to head her off. We better get scrapers up and run a trail along the top o' the ridge, don't you reckon?" he said.
"Yes, son," agreed Crawford. "We can just about hold her here. It'll be hours before I can spare a man for the ridge. We got to get help in a hurry. You ride to town and rustle men. Bring out plenty of dynamite and gunnysacks. Lucky we got the tools out here we brought to build the sump holes."
"Betcha! We'll need a lot o' grub, too."
The cattleman nodded agreement. "And coffee. Cayn't have too much coffee. It's food and drink and helps keep the men awake."
"I'll remember."
"And for the love o' Heaven, don't forget canteens! Get every canteen in town. Cayn't have my men runnin' around with their tongues hangin' out. Better bring out a bunch of broncs to pack supplies around. It's goin' to be one man-sized contract runnin' the commissary."
The cañon above them was by this time a sea of fire, the most terrifying sight Bob had ever looked upon. Monster flames leaped at the walls of the gulch, swept in an eyebeat over draws, attacked with a savage roar the dry vegetation. The noise was like the crash of mountains meeting. Thunder could scarce have made itself heard.
Rocks, loosened by the heat, tore down the steep incline of the walls, sometimes singly, sometimes in slides. These hit the bed of the ravine with the force of a cannon-ball. The workers had to keep a sharp lookout for these.
A man near Bob was standing with his weight on the shovel he had been using. Hart gave a shout of warning. At the same moment a large rock struck the handle and snapped it off as though it had been kindling wood. The man wrung his hands and almost wept with the pain.
A cottontail ran squealing past them, driven from its home by this new and deadly enemy. Not far away a rattlesnake slid across the hot rocks. Their common fear of man was lost in a greater and more immediate one.
Hart did not like to leave the battle-field. "Lemme stay here. You can handle that end of the job better'n me, Mr. Crawford."
The old cattleman, his face streaked with black, looked at him from bloodshot eyes. "Where do you get that notion I'll quit a job I've started, son? You hit the trail. The sooner the quicker."
The young man wasted no more words. He swung to the saddle and rode for town faster than he had ever traveled in all his hard-riding days.
CHAPTER XXXVI
FIGHTING FIRE
Sanders was in the office of the Jackpot Company looking over some blue-prints when Joyce Crawford came in and inquired where her father was.
"He went out with Bob Hart to the oil field this morning. Some trouble with the casing."
"Thought Dad wasn't giving any of his time to oil these days," she said. "He told me you and Bob were running the company."
"Every once in a while he takes an interest. I prod him up to go out and look things over occasionally. He's president of the company, and I tell him he ought to know what's going on. So to-day he's out there."
"Oh!" Miss Joyce, having learned what she had come in to find out, might reasonably have departed. She declined a chair, said she must be going, yet did not go. Her eyes appeared to study without seeing a field map on the desk. "Dad told me something last night, Mr. Sanders. He said I might pass it on to you and Bob, though it isn't to go farther. It's about that ten thousand dollars he paid the bank when it called his loan. He got the money from Buck Byington."
"Buck!" exclaimed the young man. He was thinking that the Buck he used to know never had ten dollars saved, let alone ten thousand.
"I know," she explained. "That's it. The money wasn't his. He's executor or something for the children of his dead brother. This money had come in from the sale of a farm back in Iowa and he was waiting for an order of the court for permission to invest it in a mortgage. When he heard Dad was so desperately hard up for cash he let him have the money. He knew Dad would pay it back, but it seems what he did was against the law, even though Dad gave him his note and a chattel mortgage on some cattle which Buck wasn't to record. Now it has been straightened out. That's why Dad couldn't tell where he got the money. Buck would have been in trouble."
"I see."
"But now it's all right." Joyce changed the subject. There were teasing pinpoints of mischief in her eyes. "My school physiology used to say that sleep was restful. It builds up worn-out tissue and all. One of these nights, when you can find time, give it a trial and see whether that's true."
Dave laughed. The mother in this young woman would persistently out. "I get plenty of sleep, Miss Joyce. Most people sleep too much."
"How much do you sleep?"
"Sometimes more, sometimes less. I average six or seven hours, maybe."
"Maybe," she scoffed.
"Hard work doesn't hurt men. Not when they're young and strong."
"I hear you're trying to work yourself to death, sir," the girl charged, smiling.
"Not so bad as that." He answered her smile with another for no reason except that the world was a sunshi
ny one when he looked at this trim and dainty young woman. "The work gets fascinating. A fellow likes to get things done. There's a satisfaction in turning out a full day and in feeling you get results."
She nodded sagely, in a brisk, business-like way. "I know. Felt it myself often, but we have to remember that there are other days and other people to lend a hand. None of us can do it all. Dad thinks you overdo. So he told me to ask you to supper for to-morrow night. Bob will be there too."
"I say thanks, Miss Joyce, to your father and his daughter."