He stopped short, and following his gaze, we saw that he was staring at the second window.
“When did you put that in?”he cried.
“Just after you left. We finished by nine o’clock.”
“How soon did you go to bed?”
“Just after ten.”
“Come with me!”cried Tom, springing from his chair and seizing the lantern. “I know what’s happened now!”
With us two close at his heels, he led the way to the spot where Yetmore’s empty house had stood. Not a vestige of it remained, except the upper part of the chimney, which lay prone in the great hole dug out by the violence of the explosion.
“Boys,”said Tom, in a tone of unusual gravity, “if you live a hundred years you’ll never have a narrower squeak than you’ve had to-night. If Long John did this—and I’m pretty sure he did—he meant to blow up my house, but being misled by those two windows, he has blown up Yetmore’s house instead. You never did, and I doubt if you ever will do, a better stroke of work in your lives than when you put in my second window!”
* * *
CHAPTER XIII
The Ore-theft
At half past five next morning Joe and I slipped out of bed, leaving Tom Connor, who had to go to work again at seven, still fast asleep. While Joe quietly prepared breakfast, I went out to examine by daylight the scene of last night’s explosion.
The first discovery I made was the imprint in the mud of footsteps, half obliterated by the rain. The tracks were very large and very far apart, proving that the owner of the boots that made them was a big man, and that he had gone off at a great pace; a discovery which tended to confirm in my mind Tom’s guess that it was indeed Long John who had done the mischief.
At this moment the tenant of the house next to the east came out—Hughy Hughes was his name; a Welshman—and as he walked towards me I saw him stoop to pick up something.
“That was a rascally piece of work, wasn’t it?”said he, as he joined me. “Scared us ’most to death, it did. See, here’s the fuse he used. I just picked it up; fifteen feet of it. Wonder who the fellow was. Pretty state of things when folks take to blowing up each other’s houses. Like enough Yetmore has his enemies, but it’s a pretty mean enemy as ’d try to get even by any such scalawag trick as this.”
This speech enlightened me as to what would be the general theory regarding the outrage. It would be set down as an act of revenge on the part of some enemy of Yetmore’s; and so Tom and Joe thought, too, when I went back to the house and told them about it.
“That’ll be the theory, all right,”said Tom. “And as far as I see, we may as well let it go at that. We have no evidence to present, and it would look rather like malice on our part if we were to charge Long John with blowing his best friend’s house to pieces just because we happen to suspect him of it. And so, I guess, boys, we may as well lay low for the present: we shan’t do any good by putting forward our own theories.
“I dare say,”he went on, after a moment’s reflection, “I dare say, if we were to go around telling what we thought and why we thought it, we might influence public opinion; but, when you come to think of it, we have no real proof; so we’ll just hold our tongues. Are you in a hurry to get home?”
“No,”I replied. “We shan’t be able to plow for two days at the very least, so there is nothing to hurry home for.”
“Well, then,”said Tom, “I’ll tell you what I wish you’d do. I must go back to work in a few minutes, but I wish you two would go down town and hear what folks have to say about this business, and then come back here and have dinner with me at twelve. Will you?”
“All right,”said I. “We’ll do that.”
We found the town in a great state of excitement. Everybody was talking about the explosion, which, as the newspaper said, “would cast a blight upon the fair fame of Sulphide.”Yetmore’s store was crowded with people, shaking hands with him and expressing their indignation at the outrage; the universal opinion being, as we had anticipated, that some miscreant had done it out of revenge.
Joe and I, squeezing in with the rest, presently found ourselves near the counter, when Yetmore, catching my eye, nodded to me and said:
“How are you, Phil? I didn’t know you were in town.”
“Yes,”said I, “we came in last evening and spent the night in Tom Connor’s house.”
Yetmore started and turned pale.
“In Tom Connor’s house?”he repeated, huskily.
“Yes,”I replied. “We were asleep in his back room when that explosion woke us up.”
At this Yetmore stared at me for a moment, and then, as he realized how narrowly he had missed being party to a murder, he turned a dreadful white color, staggered, and I believe might have fallen had he not sat himself down quickly upon a sack of potatoes.
A draft of water soon brought back his color, when, addressing the sympathizing crowd, Yetmore said:
“It made me feel a bit sick to think what chances these boys ran last night. Every one knows how hard it is to tell those houses apart; and that fellow might easily have made a mistake and blown up Tom Connor’s house on one side or Hughy Hughes’ on the other.”
“Yes,”said I; “and all the more so as Joe and I last evening put a second window into Tom’s house, so that any one coming across lots after dark might just as well have taken Tom’s house for old Snyder’s.”
“Phew!”whistled one of the men in the crowd. “Then it’s Hughy Hughes that’s to be congratulated. If that rascal had made such a mistake, and had chosen the second house from Tom’s instead of the second house from Snyder’s we’d have been making arrangements for six funerals about now. Hughy has four children, hasn’t he?”
I could not help feeling sorry for Yetmore. Convinced as I was that he had at least connived in a plot to destroy Tom’s house, I felt sure that he had been far from intending personal injury to any one; and I felt sure, too, that he was thoroughly sincere, when, rising from his seat and addressing the assemblage, he said:
“Men, I’m sorry to lose my house, of course—that goes without saying—but when I think of what might have happened it doesn’t trouble me that much”—snapping his finger and thumb. “I tell you, men, I’m downright thankful it was my house that was blown up and nobody else’s.”
As he said this he looked at Joe and me, and I felt convinced that it was to us and not to the assembled throng that he addressed his remark. The people, however, not knowing what we did, loudly applauded the magnanimity of the sentiment, and many of them pressed forward to shake hands again.
Yetmore had never been so popular as he was at that moment. Everybody sympathized with him over his loss; everybody admired the dignified way in which he accepted it; and everybody would have been delighted to hear that some compensating piece of good fortune had befallen him.
Strange to say, at that very moment that very thing happened.
Suddenly we were all attracted by a distant shouting up the street. Looking through the front window, we saw that all the people outside had turned and were gazing in that direction. By one impulse everybody in the store surged out through the doorways, when we saw, still some distance away, a man running down the middle of the street, waving his cap and shouting some words we could not distinguish. We were all on tiptoe with expectation.
At length the man approached, broke through the group, ran up to Yetmore, who was standing on his door-step, shook hands with him, and then turning round, he shouted out:
“Great strike in the Pelican, boys! In the old workings above the fifth—Yetmore’s lease. One of those pockets of tellurium that’s never been known to run less than twenty thousand to the ton. Hooray for Yetmore!”
The shout that went up was genuinely hearty. Once more the mayor was mobbed by his enthusiastic fellow citizens and once more he shook hands till his arm ached—during which proceeding Joe and I slipped away.
We had not gone far when I heard my name called, and turning round I saw a man
on horseback who handed me a letter.
“I’ve just come up through your place,”said he, “and your father asked me to give you this if I should see you.”
The note was to the effect that the rain had been heavy on the ranch, no plowing was possible, and so we were to stay in town that day and come down on the morrow after the mail from the south came in, as he was expecting an important letter, and it would thus save another trip up and down.
We were glad enough to do this, so, making our way up the street past the knots of people, all talking over and over again the two exciting topics of the day, we retraced our steps to Tom’s house, where we got ready the dinner against Tom’s return. Shortly after twelve he came in, when we related to him what we had learned in town; demanding in our turn particulars of the great strike.
“It’s a rich strike, all right,”said Tom, “but there isn’t much of it—about five hundred pounds—just a pocket, and not a very large one. But it is very rich stuff, carrying over three thousand ounces of silver and a thousand of gold to the ton. The five hundred pounds should be worth ten or twelve dollars a pound. They’ve found the same stuff several times before in the Pelican, always unexpectedly and always in pockets.”
“Then,”remarked Joe, “Yetmore will have made, perhaps, six thousand dollars this morning.”
“No, no,”said Tom; “he won’t have done anything of the sort; though I don’t wonder you should think so after the way the people have been carrying on down town. They’ve just been led away by their enthusiasm. Most of ’em know the terms of Yetmore’s lease well enough, but they have forgotten them for the moment. Yetmore pays the company a certain percentage of all the ore he gets out, and it is specially provided in the lease that should he come upon any of the well-known tellurium ore, the company is to have three-fifths of the proceeds and Yetmore only two-fifths. He’ll make a good thing out of it though, anyway.”
“You say there’s about five hundred pounds of the ore: have they taken it all out already?”asked Joe.
“Yes, taken it out, sorted it, sacked it in little fifty-pound sacks, sewed up the sacks and piled them in one of the drifts, all ready to ship down to San Remo to-morrow by express.”
“Why do they leave it in the mine?”I asked. “Is it safer than taking it down to the express office?”
“Yes: it would be pretty difficult to steal it out of the mine, with all the lights going and all the miners about, whereas, if it was just stacked in the express office, somebody might——”
“Somebody might cut a hole in the floor and drop it through,”remarked Joe, laughing.
“That’s so,”said Tom, adding, “I tell you what it is, boys: I begin to think I wasn’t quite so smart as I thought I was when I got back that coal oil for the widow. I wouldn’t wonder a particle if it wasn’t just that that decided Yetmore to come and blow my house to smithereens.”
“I shouldn’t either,”said Joe.
Tom having departed to his work again, Joe and I once more went into town, where we spent the time going about, listening to the talk of the people, who were still standing in groups on the street corners, discussing the great events of the day.
But if the people were excited, as they certainly were, their excitement was a mere flutter in comparison with the storm which swept over the community next morning.
The ten sacks of high-grade ore had been stolen during the night!
The news came down about eight o’clock in the morning, when, at once, and with one accord, all the men in the place who could get away swarmed up to the Pelican—we among them.
The thief, whoever he was, was evidently familiar with the workings of the mine, for, going round into Stony Gulch, he had forced the door at the exit of the old tunnel, cutting out the staple with auger and saw, and then, clambering through the disused, waste-encumbered drifts, he had carried out the little sacks one by one and made away with them somehow.
Wrapping his feet in old rags in order to disguise his foot-prints, he had taken the sacks of ore across the gulch to the stony ground beyond, where his boots would leave no impression, and there all trace of him was lost. Whether he had buried the sacks somewhere near by, or, if not, how he had managed to spirit them away, were matters of general speculation; though to most minds the question was settled when one of Yetmore’s clerks came hastily up to the mine and called out that the roan pony and the two-wheeled delivery cart, used to carry packages up to the mines, were missing. The thief, seemingly, had not only stolen Yetmore’s ore, but had borrowed Yetmore’s horse and cart to convey it away.
If this were true, it proved that the thief must have an intimate knowledge of the country, for, in spite of the heavy rain of the night before, not a sign of a wheel-mark was there to be found: the cart had been conducted over the rocks with such skill as to leave no trace whatever. Cart, pony, ore and thief had vanished as completely as though the earth had opened and swallowed them.
At first everybody sympathized with Yetmore over his loss, but presently an ugly rumor began to get about when people bethought them of the terms of the lease. Those who did not like the storekeeper, and they were not a few, began to pull long faces, nudge each other with their elbows, and whisper together that perhaps Yetmore knew more of this matter than he pretended.
Joe and I were at a loss to understand what they were driving at, until one man, more malicious or less discreet than the others, spoke up.
“How are we to know,”said he, “that Yetmore didn’t steal this ore himself? Three-fifths of it belongs to the company—he’d make a mighty good thing by it. I’m not saying he did do it, but——”
He ended with a closing of one eye and a sideways jerk of his head more expressive than words.
“Oh, that’s ridiculous!”Joe blurted out. “Yetmore isn’t over-scrupulous, I dare say, but he’s a long way from being a fool, and he’d never make such a blunder as to steal the ore and then use his own horse and cart to carry it off.”
“Well, I don’t know,”said the man. “It might be just a trick of his to put folks off the scent.”
And though Joe and I, for our part, felt sure that Yetmore had had nothing to do with it, we found that many people shared this man’s suspicions; the consequence being that the mayor’s popularity of the day before waned again as suddenly as it had arisen.
In the midst of this excitement the mail-coach from the south came in, when Joe and I, carrying with us the expected letter for my father, set off home again; little suspecting—as how should we suspect—that the ore-thief, whoever he might be, was about to render us a service of greater value by far than the ore and the cart and the pony combined.
We were jogging along on the homeward road, and were just rounding the spur of Elkhorn Mountain which divided our valley from Sulphide, when Joe suddenly laid his hand on my arm and cried: “Pull up, Phil. Stop a minute.”
“What’s the matter?”I asked.
“Get down and come back a few steps,”Joe answered; and on my joining him, he pointed out to me in a sandy patch at the mouth of a steep draw coming in from the left, some deeply-indented wheel-marks.
“Well, what of that, Joe?”said I, laughing. “Are you thinking you’ve found the trail of the ore-thief?”
“No,”Joe replied, “I’m not jumping at any such conclusion; but, at the same time, it’s possible. If the ore-thief started northward from the Pelican, and the chances are he did, for we know he carried the sacks across to the north side of Stony Gulch, this would be the natural place for him to come down into the road; for it is plain to any one that he could never get a loaded cart—or an empty one either, for that matter—over the rocky ridge which crowns this spur. If he was making his way north, he had to get into the road sooner or later, and this gully was his last chance to come down.”
“That’s true,”I assented; “and this cart—it’s a two-wheeler, you see—was heavily loaded. Look how it cuts into the sand.”
“Yes,”said Joe; “and it was drawn by
one smallish horse, led by a man; a big man, too: look at his tracks.”
“But the ore-thief, Joe, had his feet wrapped up in rags, and these are the marks of a number twelve boot.”
“Well, you don’t suppose the thief would walk over this rough mountain with his feet wrapped up in rags, do you? In the dark, too. They’d be catching against everything. No; he would take off the rags as soon as he reached hard ground and throw them into the cart; for it is not to be expected either that he would leave them lying on his trail to show people which way he had gone.”
“No, of course not. But which way did he go, Joe; across the road or down it?”
“Down it. See. The wheel-tracks bear to the left. And if you want evidence that he came down in the dark, here you are. Look how one wheel skidded over this half-buried, water-worn boulder and slid off and scraped the spokes against this projecting rock. Look at the blue paint it left on the rock.”
“Blue paint!”I cried. “Joe, Yetmore’s cart was painted blue! I remember it very well. A very strongly-built cart, as it had to be to scramble up those rough roads that lead to the mines, painted blue with black trimmings. Joe, I begin to believe this is the ore-thief, after all.”
“It does look like it. But where was he going? Not down to the smelter at San Remo, surely.”
“Not he,”I replied. “He would know better than that. The smelter has undoubtedly been notified of the robbery by this time, and the character of the Pelican tellurium is so well known that any one offering any of it for sale would have to give a very clear story as to how he came by it. No; this fellow will have to hide or bury the ore and leave it lying till he thinks the robbery is forgotten; and even then he will probably have to dispose of it at a distance in small lots or broken up very fine and mixed with other ore.”
“In that case,”said Joe, “we shall find his trail leaving the road again on one side or the other.”
“I expect so. We’ll keep a lookout. But come on, now, Joe: we mustn’t delay any longer.”
The Boys of Crawford's Basin Page 14