“Say, what’s come over yuh lately, Huck?” Mason demanded. “ ‘Pears to me yuh got that faraway look on yore face ev’ry time I look at yuh.”
“Nothing,” Huck replied quickly. “It’s nothing.”
“Nothin’, huh?” Old Tom said shrewdly. “Nothin’ my foot.” He winked at Mason. “I bet yuh a barrel of coal, outa that mine of our’n, Huck’s moonin’ over some gal.”
Huck laughed, but the sound was a dead giveaway.
“Ha!” Lank Mason shouted. “So it is a gal. Why, yuh onery, double-crossin’, lovesick maverick. Castin’ aside yore pardners for some ol’ gal. Out with it, hombre. Who is this here dream that’s gonna rob us of our side kick?”
With a laugh, Huck confessed there was a girl, but no amount of persuasion could induce him to say any more.
“C’mon, boys,” Huck said after a moment. “We got work ahead of us.”
“I’m still wonderin’,” said Mason as they broke camp and prepared to leave, “where that footprint came from, and who took a shot at Huck?”
Could the partners, making their way back to town, have looked into the back room of a disreputable little saloon in Esmeralda, they would have found the solution of the mystery.
Cale Coleman was there, in his hand the cane he hobbled about on. There also was his shiftyeyed drift-foreman, Jeff Eades.
The third member of an unsavory trio was a swarthy, undersized man, wiry and long of arm. His eyes were dead black, his hair lank and stringy. Yellowish-coppery skin was drawn tightly over high cheekbones and the eyes were set deep in their sockets. His mouth was a thin red line from which frequently protruded the tip of a tongue that flickered like a snake’s as it moistened the too-thin, too-red lips. His voice had the harsh guttural tone and his accents the clipped terseness of the Indian-Latin.
“Well, what the hell’d you find out, Estaban?” Coleman demanded. “What’d the hellions do?”
“Blowed up crick,” grunted the halfbreed.
Coleman let out a roar and his blocky face suffused with red.
“You tryin’ to be funny?” he demanded. “What the blankety-blank-blank you talkin’ ‘bout? ‘Blowed up a crick’!”
“Blowed up crick, make water run down hill, show topside up hole in cliff where waterfall come down, go in hole,” replied the halfbreed.
Coleman showed all the signs of an explosion, but Jeff Eades hastened to interpret.
“You mean they changed the course of the crick and found a cave back of where the falls come down?”
Estaban nodded. “No cave,” he said. “Mine tunnel.”
“Mine tunnel!” barked Coleman. “What the devil—”
“Tunnel there long time,” grunted Estaban. “Damn old. Somebody cover up with water—long time.”
Coleman’s eyes blazed with excitement. “A lost mine, Jess, shore as anything!” he exclaimed. “Them hellions musta knowed somethin’!”
He whirled to the halfbreed. “What’d they find?” he demanded. “What’d they do?”
“Fill um sack with black rocks,” replied Estaban.
His listeners stared at him. “Black rocks,” repeated Coleman. “Gold—silver?”
Estaban shook his head. “Nope, black rocks—heap shine.”
Coleman swore helplessly. “The damn igner’nt Injun!” he spat.
“What’d they do then, Estaban?” Eades prompted.
“Me no know,” said the halfbreed. “They see, chase. Me shoot one. Come ‘way—damn fast!”
“They see who you was, you blankety-blank clumsy blankety-blank?” demanded Coleman, raising the heavy cane threateningly.
The halfbreed did not change countenance under the menace of the bludgeon, but his beady eyes glowed a little and one sinewy hand crept closer to the heavy gun thrust under his belt.
Coleman saw the gesture and although his eyes remained murderous he lowered the cane.
“No see in the dark,” said Estaban. “They think me one of watchers that sit in dark and look without eyes. Me come ‘way fast.”
That was all they could get out of him.
“I jest hope it was that damn black-haided hellion he plugged, anyway,” growled Coleman. “You keep outa sight in case they did get a glim of you,” he told the halfbreed. “Jeff, you keep yore eyes open for them headin’ back inter town. We gotta find out what they was lookin’ for and what they found, if anythin’. Have one of the boys hang ‘round the assay office. That’s where they’ll head for if they’ve hit onto any ore. Then if we find they found anythin’ interestin’, we’ll move fast.”
Eades stared at him. “You ain’t figgerin’ on any claim jumpin’, are you? There’s things even you can’t get by with, Cale, and claim jumpin’ in a minin’ country’s one of ‘em. A killin’ and robbin’ now and then, yeah, and even some hoss stealin’, mebbe, but bust minin’ laws and you’ll have a vig’lance committee waitin’ on you.”
Coleman turned his gaze on his foreman and his eyes were cold and calculating.
“You don’t hafta jump a claim filed by dead men,” he said softly.
XIV
From Texas
On reaching town, Huck learned that General-Manager Dunn had arrived at Esmeralda the day before. He wasted no time in going to Dunn’s office. He sent in his name and was admitted without delay.
The empire-builder greeted him cordially, a pleased gleam beading his frosty eyes.
“Well, son—decided to go into railroading?” he asked. “Looking for a job?”
Huck smiled down at him from his great height. “No, sir,” he disclaimed. “I’m here to sell you something.”
“Something to sell?” Dunn said, his eyes on the sack Huck carried.
Dunn’s desk was extremely wide, with a massive flat glass top. There was very little on the top aside from papers neatly stacked near his right hand.
On the shimmering surface beside the documents, Huck put down several of his irregular black lumps. Jaggers Dunn stared at them in astonishment.
“You been robbing cars out in the yards?” he demanded at last.
Huck Brannon grinned. “I’ve a notion,” he replied, “that you haven’t anything just like it in any of your coal cars. Take a good look at it.”
Jaggers Dunn did, puckering his shaggy white brows, peering narrowly with his frosty blue eyes. He rubbed one of the lumps on a clean sheet of white paper and examined the faint smudge left by the contact.
“Semi-bituminous,” Huck heard him mutter incredulously. “Almost cannel coal. Mighty near as dustless as anthracite!”
He fixed the cowboy with a piercing gaze. “This what you got to sell?” he demanded.
Huck nodded.
“Shoot!” said the empire-builder.
Huck told him about it tersely.
“I’ve a notion,” he added, “that the day’ll come when this Colorado country will be a lot better known for coal than it ever was for gold or silver. Such seams as crop out in those tunnels aren’t just freak veins. I’m willing to bet my last peso that a big field underlies this whole section.
“I noticed outcroppings of limestone and sandstone between here and the canyon, and in the canyon itself, which is more evidence of the presence of coal hereabouts.”
Dunn listened with absorbed interest, turning over a lump of the coal in his big fingers. When the cowboy had finished, he asked several precise and to-the-point questions, nodding his white head to each reply.
“Looks good,” he admitted at length. “You’re sure the veins are thick enough to permit of profitable working?”
“My recollection is that six feet is considered an excellent working thickness in the Pennsylvania mines,” Huck replied. “We’ve got close to ten feet. Looks like rumpled seams and may need a shaft for the best results before we get going good, but the tunnels already driven for us will do in the beginning. We’ll use the panel system in getting the coal out, I figger.”
“You’re properly located and filed?”
“Here are the papers,
sir. I figure you’ll find them correct.”
“All right. I’ll send an engineering party to look over the ground. If their report is favorable, you can start operations at once. The road will run a spur to the mine, and we’ll buy every lump you produce, at current market prices.”
His stern face lighted as he shook hands with the cowboy, and his smile was wonderfully youthful.
“I want to see you succeed, son,” he said. “What this country needs is men who believe in it, who can dream, and make their dreams come true.”
With the promise of the general-manager still ringing in his ears, Huck left the office, his head busy and spinning, his heart pounding. He strode down the main street and his lips formed a thin, straight line of determination.
Here was his chance to get all the things he’d ever wanted. The things worth fighting for. The range he wanted; the cattle he wanted, the girl he’d dreamed of. Especially the girl. He had been fighting to shut her completely from his mind. Now there was no longer any need.
Perhaps in a short time he would be able to take a train to Stevens Gulch and pay her a visit. He smiled dreamily at the thought. In his complete absorption, he became completely oblivious to the rest of the street. His first inkling that he was not utterly alone came when:
“Why don’tcha look where yuh’re goin’?” a voice cried in his face.
Huck brought up short in the arms of the man he had nearly bowled over. He looked like a miner. He shot Huck a murderous glance.
“Sorry,” Huck muttered, and strode on.
Ahead of him lay his destination—the telegraph office. He entered and asked the clerk for a form. He walked to the writing table, sat down, picked up the pencil and began to compose his telegram.
“Mr. Wyatt Doyle, the Bar X Ranch,” he wrote, “Stevens Gulch, Texas.” The pencil faltered.
How could he ask Doyle for a loan when he was in love with Sue? It didn’t seem right. Yet he had every reason to expect that Doyle would grant the loan. Huck’s father had been Doyle’s close friend. And Doyle had always treated Huck pretty much like his own son. Moreover, Huck was offering what he knew to be good security—his share of the coal mine.
Of course it would mean an alteration in his relationship to Sue. The loan would have to be paid off first, before he would permit himself to think of her at all. He didn’t want to court Sue while he was under any kind of obligation to her father. His heart rebelled, but his mind told him that he was acting as he must. After all, he had an obligation to his partners, too.
The pencil moved again. Huck wrote rapidly, and was soon finished. Before signing his name, he added another phrase, but not without hesitation. Then he crossed it out. Once more he wrote it in. Again he crossed it out.
He left it that way, and gave the message to the operator.
“I reckon,” he said to himself as he stepped out of the door, “that I’ll have to hold on to my regards to Sue for a while yet.”
He picked up Mason and Old Tom where he had left them—at the saloon. Then he and his partners got busy.
They rented a little shack to use as an office and Huck put in orders for the necessary mining machinery, making a down payment from the three thousand dollars provided by Mason and Gaylord, the balance to be paid on delivery. The question of labor came up.
“I know a few rock-busters I can get,” said Lank Mason. “Fellers I worked with on Coleman’s diggin’s. They ain’t over hankerin’ to stay on with that galoot if they can get somethin’ else to do in the district. They’ll be glad to throw in with us. There’s five good men I know of who can handle foreman’s work if nec’sary.”
“Offer them a stake in the mine, too,” suggested Huck. “That’ll hold them on the job. A man gets interested in a job when he sees something more coming to him than just wages.”
The others nodded.
“When it comes to pick and shovel men, feller, you got me stumped,” said Lank. “‘Pears we’re gonna hafta send outa the district, and that’s ‘spensive. ‘Sides, the sorta gandy-dancers you get that-away is allus on the move. Work till they get a stake and then shove on.”
Huck suggested: “There’s lots of strong, willing men over in the Mexican settlement west of town. They don’t get so much chance in the mines around here—the hardest work and the poorest pay, and they’re always the first to get laid off. I suggest we get together an outfit of hands from among the Mexes.”
Lank was dubious. “I ain’t never took much stock in greasers,” he said.
“In the first place,” Huck replied, “don’t call them greasers. They don’t like the name, and I don’t blame ‘em. So if they work for us, that name is out.
“In the second place, I do take stock in Mexicans. I’ve worked with them on ranches below the Line and in Texas and Arizona, and I always found them to come as good on the average as any other hands. If you treat ‘em square and they like you, they’ll go through hell and high water for you, and they never forget a favor.”
“Reckon that’s right,” Tom Gaylord said. “Rec’lect it was that old Mexican feller I helped what give me the map. Him and his pals couldn’t seem to do enough for me. They didn’t have much, but I was plumb welcome to ev’thin’ they did have. Tell you what, Huck, I sling their lingo purty nigh as well as you do, and I could allus get ‘long with ‘em. I’ll jest mosey over to the settlement and see if I can’t get together a crew.”
In a few days the C. & P. engineers brought back a favorable report. Huck, who had gone ahead in full confidence in his own judgment, was gratified to have it substantiated by experts. Lank at once set out for the mine, taking his crew of rock-busters and pickmen with him. Huck smiled happily as he watched the long, straggling train of men and mules vanish into the hills.
Old Tom, who was to have charge of the Esmeralda office and the numerous details demanding attention there, chuckled in his beard. Huck was staying on in Esmeralda until he received word from Texas and until the arrival of the machinery shipments.
There were neither smiles nor chuckles, however, in the back room of the saloon on the outskirts of town. Cale Coleman, his face black with rage, watched the mule train out of sight. Then he clumped to the table and sat down with a bitter curse.
The halfbreed Estaban had trailed the engineering party to their destination, but had known better than to attempt an attack on or approach too close to the strong and experienced railroad outfit. From a safe distance he watched them look over the mine and then he’d hastened back to report to Coleman.
Coleman, in the meanwhile, after a fruitless picketing of the assay office, had belatedly thought to ascertain if Huck and his partners had filed location papers. When he found out what was in the wind, it was too late to do anything about it.
Not that Coleman admitted defeat. He was too shrewd, too reckless of consequences, too utterly unscrupulous to give up so easily. He was the richest man in Esmeralda, owner of the most productive gold mines and president of the Esmeralda bank. And he hadn’t achieved any of it by caution or hesitant half-measures.
“Let the blankety-blanks go ahaid and start op’rations,” he told Jeff Eades. “Let ‘em get things workin’ good and then we’ll move in on ‘em. There’s more ways of ketchin’ a skunk than pourin’ molasses on its tail. Right now I want you to do a little nosin’ ‘round in the Apishapa River Valley ‘tween here and Dominguez Crick. Take Connolly and Bates with you—they’re both from the Pennsylvania fields—and see what you can find out.”
Eades hesitated a moment, then gave his boss some good advice:
“I figger that’s the most sensible thing to do in the fust place. Ferget them three hellions and do some smart perspectin’ on our own hook. That’s the idea.”
Coleman growled a curse, and tenderly shifted his bandaged leg. “I ain’t fergettin’ anythin’,” he told the drift-foreman venomously. “When I start out to even up things with a hellion, I finish what I start.”
“That big jigger’s a cold prop’sition,
boss,” objected Eades dubiously.
“He’ll be colder still when I get through with him,” Coleman replied with significant emphasis.
Eades turned to leave when the hard voice of his boss stopped him.
“Eades,” Coleman growled, “send Estaban back in here. I got a special job for the half-breed—yeah, a very special job.”
“Okay, Coleman,” said Eades.
Cale Coleman stared at the door which his foreman, Jeff Eades, had just closed behind him. His black eyes glittered in an otherwise cold and controlled face—a face that gave an unmistakable impression of cruelty and passionless calculation.
The thin straight line of his lips began to curl, his jet black eyebrows arched slightly and the pupils of his eyes dilated, almost imperceptibly.
“I’ll fix that hombre,” he muttered to himself. He almost snarled as the image of Huck Brannon appeared before him.
Ever since Huck Brannon had subjected him, Cale Coleman, the biggest and richest man in Esmeralda, to a public beating, which had put him in the hospital with a broken leg, he had been determined on paying Brannon back.
No man had ever stood up against him and come out on top. But more to the point was that no one had ever subjected him to such public ridicule and gnawing humiliation. His vanity had been mortally wounded, his pride stung.
And now, adding to the flames, was the fact that this young hellion had apparently struck it rich in a territory which he, Cale Coleman, had always considered his own exclusive property.
His long, thin fingers beat a rapid tattoo on the table as he waited fretfully for Estaban. His mind had hatched a plan—a cunning plan which would effectively rid him of the annoying presence of Huck Brannon.
Estaban would do the job, all right. And if the halfbreed raised any objections, he had a means of reminding him that the job ought to be carried out. No, he didn’t anticipate any trouble with Estaban. But where the devil was he?
Estaban was somber and inscrutable when he entered a few moments later. His eyes were as black and glittering as the man’s he faced, and even more impenetrable.
“Coleman send?” His voice was as blank as his face.
The Cowpuncher Page 9