Ballard began at once to pry irritably into causes; irritably since
wrecks meant delays, and President Pelham's letters were already
cracking the whip for greater expedition.
It was a singular derailment, and at first none of the trainmen seemed
to be able to account for it. The point of disaster was on a sharp curve
where the narrow-gauge track bent like a strained bow around one of the
rocky hills. As the debris lay, the train seemed to have broken in two
on the knuckle of the curve, and here the singularity was emphasised.
The overturned cars were not merely derailed; they were locked and
crushed together, and heaped up and strewn abroad, in a fashion to
indicate a collision rather than a simple jumping of the track.
Ballard used Galliford, the train conductor, for the first heel of his
pry.
"I guess you and Hoskins both need about thirty days," was the way he
opened upon Galliford. "How long had your train been broken in two
before the two sections came in collision?"
"If we was broke in two, nobody knew it. I was in the caboose 'lookout'
myself, and I saw the Two's gauge-light track around the curve. Next I
knew, I was smashin' the glass in the 'lookout' with my head, and the
train was chasin' out on the prairie. I'll take the thirty days, all
right, and I won't sue the company for the cuts on my head. But I'll be
danged if I'll take the blame, Mr. Ballard." The conductor spoke as a
man.
"Somebody's got to take it," snapped the chief. "If you didn't break in
two, what did happen?"
"Now you've got me guessing, and I hain't got any more guesses left. At
first I thought Hoskins had hit something 'round on the far side o' the
curve. That's what it felt like. Then, for a second or two, I could have
sworn he had the Two in the reverse, backing his end of the train up
against my end and out into the sage-brush."
"What does Hoskins say? Where is he?" demanded Ballard; and together
they picked their way around to the other end of the wreck, looking for
the engineman.
Hoskins, however, was not to be found. Fitzpatrick had seen him groping
about in the cab of his overturned engine; and Bromley, when the inquiry
reached him, explained that he had sent Hoskins up to camp on a hand-car
which was going back for tools.
"He was pretty badly shaken up, and I told him he'd better hunt the bunk
shanty and rest his nerves awhile. We didn't need him," said the
assistant, accounting for the engine-man's disappearance.
Ballard let the investigation rest for the moment, but later, when
Bromley was working the contractor's gang on the track obstructions
farther along, he lighted a flare torch at the fire some of the men had
made out of the wreck kindling wood, and began a critical examination of
the derailed and debris-covered locomotive.
It was a Baldwin ten-wheel type, with the boiler extending rather more
than half-way through the cab, and since it had rolled over on the
right-hand side, the controlling levers were under the crushed wreckage
of the cab. None the less, Ballard saw what he was looking for;
afterward making assurance doubly sure by prying at the engine's
brake-shoes and thrusting the pinch-bar of inquiry into various
mechanisms under the trucks and driving-wheels.
It was an hour past midnight when Bromley reported the track clear, and
asked if the volunteer wrecking crew should go on and try to pick up the
cripples.
"Not to-night," was Ballard's decision. "We'll get Williams and his
track-layers in from the front to-morrow and let them tackle it.
Williams used to be Upham's wrecking boss over on the D. & U. P. main
line, and he'll make short work of this little pile-up, engine and all."
Accordingly, the whistle of the relief train's engine was blown to
recall Fitzpatrick's men, and a little later the string of flats,
men-laden, trailed away among the up-river hills, leaving the scene of
the disaster with only the dull red glow of the workmen's night fire to
illuminate it.
When the rumble of the receding relief train was no longer audible, the
figure of a man, dimly outlined in the dusky glow of the fire,
materialised out of the shadows of the nearest arroyo. First making sure
that no watchman had been left to guard the point of hazard, the man
groped purposefully under the fallen locomotive and drew forth a stout
steel bar which had evidently been hidden for this later finding. With
this bar for a lever, the lone wrecker fell fiercely at work under the
broken cab, prying and heaving until the sweat started in great drops
under the visor of his workman's cap and ran down to make rivulets of
gray in the grime on his face.
Whatever he was trying to do seemed difficult of accomplishment, if not
impossible. Again and again he strove at his task, pausing now and then
to take breath or to rub his moist hands in the dry sand for the better
gripping of the smooth steel. Finally--it was when the embers of the
fire on the hill slope were flickering to their extinction--the bar
slipped and let him down heavily. The fall must have partly stunned him,
since it was some little time before he staggered to his feet, flung the
bar into the wreck with a morose oath, and limped away up the track
toward the headquarters camp, turning once and again to shake his fist
at the capsized locomotive in the ditch at the curve.
It was in the afternoon of the day following the wreck that Ballard made
the laboratory test for blame; the office room in the adobe shack
serving as the "sweat-box."
First came the flagmen, one at a time, their stories agreeing well
enough, and both corroborating Galliford's account. Next came Hoskins's
fireman, a green boy from the Alta Vista mines, who had been making his
first trip over the road. He knew nothing save that he had looked up
between shovelfuls to see Hoskins fighting with his levers, and had
judged the time to be ripe for the life-saving jump.
Last of all came Hoskins, hanging his head and looking as if he had been
caught stealing sheep.
"Tell it straight," was Ballard's curt caution; and the engineman
stumbled through a recital in which haziness and inconsistency struggled
for first place. He had seen something on the track or he thought he
had, and had tried to stop. Before he could bring the train under
control he had heard the crashing of the wreck in the rear. He admitted
that he had jumped while the engine was still in motion.
"Which way was she running when you jumped, John?--forward or backward?"
asked Ballard, quietly.
Bromley, who was making pencil notes of the evidence, looked up quickly
and saw the big engine-man's jaw drop.
"How could she be runnin' any way but forrards?" he returned, sullenly.
Ballard was smoking, and he shifted his cigar to say: "I didn't know."
Then, with sudden heat:
"But I mean to know, Hoskins; I mean to go quite to the bottom of this,
here and now! You've been garbling the facts; purposely, or because you
are still too badly rattled to know what you are talking about. I can
tell you what you did: for some reason you made an emergency stop; you
_did_ make it, either with the brakes or without them. Then you put your
engine in the reverse motion and _backed_; you were backing when you
jumped, and the engine was still backing when it left the rails."
Hoskins put his shoulders against the wall and passed from sullenness to
deep dejection. "I've got a wife and two kids back in Alta Vista, and
I'm all in," he said. "What is there about it that you don't know, Mr.
Ballard?"
"There are two or three other things that I do know, and one that I
don't. You didn't come up to the camp on the hand-car last night; and
after we left the wreck, somebody dug around in the Two's cab trying to
fix things so that they would look a little better for John Hoskins. So
much I found out this morning. But I don't care particularly about that:
what I want to know is the first cause. What made you lose your head?"
"I told you; there was something on the track."
"What was it?"
"It was--well, it was what once was a man."
Ballard bit hard on his cigar, and all the phrases presenting themselves
were profane. But a glance from Bromley enabled him to say, with decent
self-control: "Go on; tell us about it."
"There ain't much to tell, and I reckon you won't believe a thing 'at I
say," Hoskins began monotonously. "Did you or Mr. Bromley notice what
bend o' the river that curve is at?"
Ballard said "No," and Bromley shook his head. The engineman went on.
"It's where _he_ fell in and got drownded--Mr. Braithwaite, I mean. I
reckon it sounds mighty foolish to you-all, sittin' here in the good old
daylight, with nothin' happening: but I _saw_ him. When the Two's
headlight jerked around the curve and picked him up, he was standing
between the rails, sideways, and lookin' off toward the river. He had
the same little old two-peaked cap on that he always wore, and he had
his fishin'-rod over his shoulder. I didn't have three car lengths to
the good when I saw him; and--and--well, I reckon I went plumb crazy."
Hoskins was a large man and muscular rather than fat; but he was
sweating again, and could not hold his hands still.
Ballard got up and walked to the window which looked out upon the stone
yard. When he turned again it was to ask Hoskins, quite mildly, if he
believed in ghosts.
"I never allowed to, before this, Mr. Ballard."
"Yet you have often thought of Braithwaite's drowning, when you have
been rounding that particular curve? I remember you pointed out the
place to me."
Hoskins nodded. "I reckon I never have run by there since without
thinking of it."
Ballard sat down again and tilted his chair to the reflective angle.
"One more question, John, and then you may go. You had a two-hour
lay-over in Alta Vista yesterday while the D. & U. P. people were
transferring your freight. How many drinks did you take in those two
hours?"
"Before God, Mr. Ballard, I never touched a drop! I don't say I'm too
good to do it: I ain't. But any man that'd go crookin' his elbow when he
had that mountain run ahead of him would be _all_ fool!"
"That's so," said Ballard. And then: "That will do. Go and turn in again
and sleep the clock around. I'll tell you what is going to happen to you
when you're better fit to hear it."
"Well?" queried Bromley, when Hoskins was gone.
"Say your say, and then I'll say mine," was Ballard's rejoinder.
"I should call it a pretty harsh joke on Hoskins, played by somebody
with more spite than common sense. There has been some little ill blood
between Fitzpatrick's men and the railroad gangs; more particularly
between the stone-cutters here at the dam and the train crews. It grew
out of Fitzpatrick's order putting his men on the water-wagon. When the
camp canteen was closed, the stone 'buckies' tried to open up a jug-line
from Alta Vista. The trainmen wouldn't stand for it against Macpherson's
promise to fire the first 'boot-legger' he caught."
"And you think one of the stone-cutters went down from the camp to give
Hoskins a jolt?"
"That is my guess."
Ballard laughed.
"Mine isn't quite as practical, I'll admit; but I believe it is the
right one. I've been probing Hoskins's record quietly, and his long suit
is superstition. Half the 'hoodoo' talk of the camp can be traced back
to him if you'll take the trouble. He confessed just now that he never
passed that point in the road without thinking of Braithwaite and his
taking-off. From that to seeing things isn't a very long step."
Bromley made the sign of acquiescence.
"I'd rather accept your hypothesis than mine, Breckenridge. I'd hate to
believe that we have the other kind of a fool on the job; a man who
would deliberately make scare medicine to add to that which is already
made. What will you do with Hoskins?"
"Let him work in the repair shop for a while, till he gets the fever out
of his blood. I don't want to discharge him."
"Good. Now that is settled, will you take a little walk with me? I want
to show you something."
Ballard found his pipe and filled it, and they went out together. It was
a perfect summer afternoon, still and cloudless, and with the peculiar
high-mountain resonance in the air that made the clink of the stone
hammers ring like a musical chorus beaten out upon steel anvils.
Peaceful, orderly industry struck the key-note, and for the moment there
were no discords. Out on the great ramparts of the dam the masons were
swinging block after block of the face wall into place, and the _burr-r_
and cog-chatter of the huge derrick hoisting gear were incessant. Back
of the masonry the concrete mixers poured their viscous charges into the
forms, and the puddlers walked back and forth on their stagings, tamping
the plastic material into the network of metal bars binding the mass
with the added strength of steel.
Bromley led the way through the stone-yard activities and around the
quarry hill to the path notched in the steep slope of the canyon side.
The second turn brought them to the gap made by the land-slide. It was a
curious breach, abrupt and clean-cut; its shape and depth suggesting the
effect of a mighty hammer blow scoring its groove from the path level to
the river's edge. The material was a compact yellow shale, showing no
signs of disintegration elsewhere.
"What's your notion, Loudon?" said Ballard, when they were standing on
the edge of the newly made gash.
Bromley wagged his head doubtfully.
"I'm not so sure of it now as I thought I was when I came up here this
morning. Do you see that black streak out there on the shale, just about
at the path level? A few hours ago I could have sworn it was a powder
burn; the streak left by a burning fuse. It doesn't look so much like it
now, I'll confess."
"You've 'got 'em' about as bad as Hoskins has," laughed Ballard. "A
dynamite charge that would account for this would advertise itself
pretty loudly in a live camp five hundred yards away. Besides, it would
have had to be drilled before it could be shot, and the drill-holes
would show up--as they don't."
"Yes," was the reply; "I grant you the drill-holes. I guess I have 'got
'em,' as you say. But the bang wouldn't count. Quinlan let off half a
dozen blasts in the quarry at quitting time yesterday, and one jar more
or less just at that time wouldn't have been noticed."
Ballard put his arm across the theorist's shoulders and faced him about
to front the down-canyon industries.
"You mustn't let this mystery-smoke get into your nostrils, Loudon,
boy," he said. "Whatever happens, there must always be two cool heads
and two sets of steady nerves on this job--yours and mine. Now let's go
down the railroad on the push-car and see how Williams is getting along
with his pick-up stunt. He ought to have the Two standing on her feet by
this time."
XI
GUN PLAY
Three days after the wreck in the Lava Hills, Ballard was again making
the round of the outpost camps in the western end of the valley,
verifying grade lines, re-establishing data stakes lost, or destroyed by
the Craigmiles range riders, hustling the ditch diggers, and,
incidentally, playing host to young Lucius Bigelow, the Forestry Service
member of Miss Elsa's house-party.
Bigelow's inclusion as a guest on the inspection gallop had been
planned, not by his temporary host, but by Miss Elsa herself. Mr.
Bigelow's time was his own, she had explained in her note to Ballard,
but he was sufficiently an enthusiast in his chosen profession to wish
to combine a field study of the Arcadian watersheds with the pleasures
of a summer outing. If Mr. Ballard would be so kind ... and all the
other fitting phrases in which my lady begs the boon she may strictly
require at the hands of the man who has said the talismanic words, "I
love you."
As he was constrained to be, Ballard was punctiliously hospitable to the
quiet, self-contained young man who rode an entire day at his
pace-setter's side without uttering a dozen words on his own initiative.
The hospitality was purely dutiful at first; but later Bigelow earned it
fairly. Making no advances on his own part, the guest responded
generously when Ballard drew him out; and behind the mask of thoughtful
reticence the Kentuckian discovered a man of stature, gentle of speech,
simple of heart, and a past-master of the wood- and plains-craft that a
constructing engineer, however broad-minded, can acquire only as his
work demands it.
"You gentlemen of the tree bureau can certainly give us points on
ordinary common sense, Mr. Bigelow," Ballard admitted on this, the third
day out, when the student of natural conditions had called attention to
the recklessness of the contractors in cutting down an entire forest of
slope-protecting young pines to make trestle-bents for a gulch flume. "I
am afraid I should have done precisely what Richards has done here:
taken the first and most convenient timber I could lay hands on."
"That is the point of view the Forestry Service is trying to modify,"
rejoined Bigelow, mildly. "To the average American, educated or
ignorant, wood seems the cheapest material in a world of plenty. Yet I
venture to say that in this present instance your company could better
have afforded almost any other material for those trestle-bents. That
slope will make you pay high for its stripping before you can grow
another forest to check the flood wash."
"Of course it will; that says itself, now that you have pointed it out,"
Ballard agreed. "Luckily, the present plans of the company don't call
for much flume timber; I say 'luckily,' because I don't like to do
violence to my convictions, when I'm happy enough to have any."
Bigelow's grave smile came and went like the momentary glow from some
inner light of prescience.
"Unless I am greatly mistaken, you are a man of very strong convictions,
Mr. Ballard," he ventured to say.
"Think so? I don't know. A fair knowledge of my trade, a few opinions,
and a certain pig-headed stubbornness that doesn't know when it is
beaten: shake these up together and you have the compound which has
misled you. I'm afraid I don't often wait for convincement--of the
purely philosophical brand."
They were riding together down the line of the northern lateral canal,
with Bourke Fitzpatrick's new headquarters in the field for the
prospective night's bivouac. The contractor's camp, a disorderly blot of
shanties and well-weathered tents on the fair grass-land landscape, came
in sight just as the sun was sinking below the Elks, and Ballard
quickened the pace.
"You'll be ready to quit for the day when we get in, won't you?" he said
to Bigelow, when the broncos came neck and neck in the scurry for the
hay racks.
"Oh, I'm fit enough, by now," was the ready rejoinder. "It was only the
first day that got on my nerves."
There was a rough-and-ready welcome awaiting the chief engineer and his
guest when they drew rein before Fitzpatrick's commissary; and a supper
of the void-filling sort was quickly set before them in the back room of
the contractor's quarters. But there was trouble in the air. Ballard saw
that Fitzpatrick was cruelly hampered by the presence of Bigelow; and
when the meal was finished he gave the contractor his chance in the
privacy of the little cramped pay-office.
"What is it, Bourke?" he asked, when the closed door cut them off from
the Forest Service man.
Fitzpatrick was shaking his head. "It's a blood feud now, Mr. Ballard.
Gallagher's gang--all Irishmen--went up against four of the colonel's
men early this morning. The b'ys took shelter in the ditch, and the
cow-punchers tried to run 'em out. Some of our teamsters were armed, and
one of the Craigmiles men was killed or wounded--we don't know which:
the others picked him up and carried him off."
Ballard's eyes narrowed under his thoughtful frown.
"I've been afraid it would come to that, sooner or later," he said
slowly. Then he added: "We ought to be able to stop it. The colonel
seems to deprecate the scrapping part of it as much as we do."
Fitzpatrick's exclamation was of impatient disbelief. "Any time he'll
hold up his little finger, Mr. Ballard, this monkey-business will go out
like a squib fuse in a wet hole! He isn't wanting to stop it."
Ballard became reflective again, and hazarded another guess.
"Perhaps the object-lesson of this morning will have a good effect. A
chance shot has figured as a peacemaker before this."
"Don't you believe it's going to work that way this time!" was the
earnest protest. "If the Craigmiles outfit doesn't whirl in and shoot up
this camp before to-morrow morning, I'm missing my guess."
Ballard rapped the ashes from his briar, and refilled and lighted it.
When the tobacco was glowing in the bowl, he said, quite decisively: "In
that case, we'll try to give them what they are needing. Are you
picketed?"
"No."
"See to it at once. Make a corral of the wagons and scrapers and get the
stock inside of it. Then put out a line of sentries, with relays to
relieve the men every two hours. We needn't be taken by surprise,
whatever happens."
Fitzpatrick jerked a thumb toward the outer room where Bigelow was
smoking his after-supper pipe.
"How about your friend?" he asked.
At the query Ballard realised that the presence of the Forest Service
man was rather unfortunate. Constructively his own guest, Bigelow was
really the guest of Colonel Craigmiles; and the position of a neutral in
any war is always a difficult one.
"Mr. Bigelow is a member of the house-party at Castle 'Cadia," he said,
in reply to the contractor's doubtful question. "But I can answer for
his discretion. I'll tell him what he ought to know, and he may do as he
pleases."
Following out the pointing of his own suggestion, Ballard gave Bigelow a
brief outline of the Arcadian conflict while Fitzpatrick was posting the
sentries. The Government man made no comment, save to say that it was a
most unhappy situation; but when Ballard offered to show him to his
quarters for the night, he protested at once.
"No, indeed, Mr. Ballard," he said, quite heartily, for him; "you
mustn't leave me out that way. At the worst, you may be sure that I
stand for law and order. I have heard something of this fight between
your company and the colonel, and while I can't pretend to pass upon the
merits of it, I don't propose to go to bed and let you stand guard over
me."
"All right, and thank you," laughed Ballard; and together they went out
to help Fitzpatrick with his preliminaries for the camp defence.
This was between eight and nine o'clock; and by ten the stock was
corralled within the line of shacks and tents, a cordon of watchers had
been stretched around the camp, and the greater number of Fitzpatrick's
men were asleep in the bunk tents and shanties.
The first change of sentries was made at midnight, and Ballard and
Bigelow both walked the rounds with Fitzpatrick. Peace and quietness
reigned supreme. The stillness of the beautiful summer night was
undisturbed, and the roundsmen found a good half of the sentinels asleep
at their posts. Ballard was disposed to make light of Fitzpatrick's
fears, and the contractor took it rather hard.
"I know 'tis all hearsay with you, yet, Mr. Ballard; you haven't been up
against it," he protested, when the three of them were back at the
camp-fire which was burning in front of the commissary. "But if you had
been scrapping with these devils for the better part of two years, as we
have----"
The interruption was a sudden quaking tremor of earth and atmosphere
followed by a succession of shocks like the quick firing of a battleship
squadron. A sucking draught of wind swept through the camp, and the fire
leaped up as from the blast of an underground bellows. Instantly the
open spaces of the headquarters were alive with men tumbling from their
bunks; and into the thick of the confusion rushed the lately posted
sentries.
For a few minutes the turmoil threatened to become a panic, but
Fitzpatrick and a handful of the cooler-headed gang bosses got it under,
the more easily since there was no attack to follow the explosions. Then
came a cautious reconnaissance in force down the line of the canal in
the direction of the earthquake, and a short quarter of a mile below the
camp the scouting detachment reached the scene of destruction.