canal cutting passed through the shoulder of a hill they had planted
charges of dynamite deep in the clay of the upper hillside. The
explosions had started a land-slide, and the patient digging work of
weeks had been obliterated in a moment.
Ballard said little. Fitzpatrick was on the ground to do the swearing,
and the money loss was his, if Mr. Pelham's company chose to make him
stand it. What Celtic rage could compass in the matter of cursings was
not lacking; and at the finish of the outburst there was an appeal,
vigorous and forceful.
"You're the boss, Mr. Ballard, and 'tis for you to say whether we throw
up this job and quit, or give these blank, blank imps iv hell what's
comin' to 'em!" was the form the appeal took; and the new chief accepted
the challenge promptly.
"What are your means of communication with the towns in the Gunnison
valley?" he asked abruptly.
Fitzpatrick pulled himself down from the rage heights and made shift to
answer as a man.
"There's a bridle trail down the canyon to Jack's Cabin; and from that
on you hit the railroad."
"And the distance to Jack's Cabin?"
"Twenty-five miles, good and strong, by the canyon crookings; but only
about half of it is bad going."
"Is there anybody in your camp who knows the trail?"
"Yes. Dick Carson, the water-boy."
"Good. We'll go back with you, and you'll let me have the boy and two of
your freshest horses."
"You'll not be riding that trail in the dark, Mr. Ballard! It's a
fright, even in daylight."
"That's my affair," said the engineer, curtly. "If your boy can find the
trail, I'll ride it."
That settled it for the moment, and the scouting party made its way up
to the headquarters to carry the news of the land-slide. Bigelow walked
in silence beside his temporary host, saying nothing until after they
had reached camp, and Fitzpatrick had gone to assemble the horses and
the guide. Then he said, quite as if it were a matter of course:
"I'm going with you, Mr. Ballard, if you don't object."
Ballard did object, pointedly and emphatically, making the most of the
night ride and the hazardous trail. When these failed to discourage the
young man from Washington, the greater objection came out baldly.
"You owe it to your earlier host to ride back to Castle 'Cadia from
here, Mr. Bigelow. I'm going to declare war, and you can't afford to
identify yourself with me," was the way Ballard put it; but Bigelow only
smiled and shook his head.
"I'm not to be shunted quite so easily," he said. "Unless you'll say
outright that I'll be a butt-in, I'm going with you."
"All right; if it's the thing you want to do," Ballard yielded. "Of
course, I shall be delighted to have you along." And when Fitzpatrick
came with two horses he sent him back to the corral for a third.
The preparations for the night ride were soon made, and it was not until
Ballard and Bigelow were making ready to mount at the door of the
commissary that Fitzpatrick reappeared with the guide, a grave-faced lad
who looked as if he might be years older than any guess his diminutive
stature warranted. Ballard's glance was an eye-sweep of shrewd
appraisal.
"You're not much bigger than a pint of cider, Dickie boy," he commented.
"Why don't you take a start and grow some?"
"I'm layin' off to; when I get time. Pap allows I got to'r he won't own
to me," said the boy soberly.
"Who is your father?" The query was a mere fill-in, bridging the
momentary pause while Ballard was inspecting the saddle cinchings of the
horse he was to ride; and evidently the boy so regarded it.
"He's a man," he answered briefly, adding nothing to the supposable
fact.
Bigelow was up, and Ballard was putting a leg over his wiry little mount
when Fitzpatrick emerged from the dimly lighted interior of the
commissary bearing arms--a pair of short-barrelled repeating rifles in
saddle-holsters.
"Better be slinging these under the stirrup-leathers--you and your
friend, Mr. Ballard," he suggested. "All sorts of things are liable to
get up in the tall hills when a man hasn't got a gun."
This was so patently said for the benefit of the little circle of
onlooking workmen that Ballard bent to the saddle-horn while Fitzpatrick
was buckling the rifle-holster in place.
"What is it, Bourke?" he asked quietly.
"More of the same," returned the contractor, matching the low tone of
the inquiry. "Craigmiles has got his spies in every camp, and you're
probably spotted, same as old man Macpherson used to be when he rode the
work. If that cussed Mexican foreman does be getting wind of this, and
shy a guess at why you're heading for Jack's Cabin and the railroad in
the dead o' night----"
Ballard's exclamation was impatient.
"This thing has got on your digestion, Bourke," he said, rallying the
big contractor. "Up at the Elbow Canyon camp it's a hoodoo bogey, and
down here it's the Craigmiles cow-boys. Keep your shirt on, and we'll
stop it--stop it short." Then, lowering his voice again: "Is the boy
trustworthy?"
Fitzpatrick's shrug was more French than Irish.
"He can show you the trail; and he hates the Craigmiles outfit as the
devil hates holy water. His father was a 'rustler,' and the colonel got
him sent over the road for cattle-stealing. Dick comes of pretty tough
stock, but I guess he'll do you right."
Ballard nodded, found his seat in the saddle, and gave the word.
"Pitch out, Dick," he commanded; and the small cavalcade of three
skirted the circle of tents and shacks to take the westward trail in
single file, the water-boy riding in advance and the Forestry man
bringing up the rear.
In this order the three passed the scene of the assisted land-slide,
where the acrid fumes of the dynamite were still hanging in the air, and
came upon ground new to Bigelow and practically so to Ballard. For a
mile or more the canal line hugged the shoulders of the foothills,
doubling and reversing until only the steadily rising sky-line of the
Elks gave evidence of its progress westward.
As in its earlier half, the night was still and cloudless, and the stars
burned with the white lustre of the high altitudes, swinging slowly to
the winding course in their huge inverted bowl of velvety blackness.
From camp to camp on the canal grade there was desertion absolute; and
even Bigelow, with ears attuned to the alarm sounds of the wilds, had
heard nothing when the cavalcade came abruptly upon Riley's camp, the
outpost of the ditch-diggers.
At Riley's they found only the horse-watchers awake. From these they
learned that the distant booming of the explosions had aroused only a
few of the lightest sleepers. Ballard made inquiry pointing to the
Craigmiles riders. Had any of them been seen in the vicinity of the
outpost camp?
"Not since sundown," was the horse-watcher's answer. "About an hour
before candle-lightin', two of 'em went ridin' along up-river, drivin' a
little bunch o' cattle."
The engineer gathered rein and was about to pull his horse once more
into the westward trail, when the boy guide put in his word.
"Somebody's taggin' us, all right, if that's what you're aimin' to find
out," he said, quite coolly.
Ballard started. "What's that?" he demanded. "How do you know?"
"Been listenin'--when you-all didn't make so much noise that I
couldn't," was the calm rejoinder. "There's two of 'em, and they struck
in just after we passed the dynamite heave-down."
Ballard bent his head and listened. "I don't hear anything," he
objected.
"Nachelly," said the boy. "They-all ain't sech tenderfoots as to keep on
comin' when we've stopped. Want to dodge 'em?"
"There's no question about that," was the mandatory reply.
The sober-faced lad took a leaf out of the book of the past--his own or
his cattle-stealing father's.
"We got to stampede your stock a few lines, Pete," he said, shortly, to
the horse-watcher who had answered Ballard's inquiry. "Get up and pull
your picket-pins."
"Is that right, Mr. Ballard?" asked the man.
"It is if Dick says so. I'll back his orders."
The boy gave the orders tersely after the horse-guard had risen and
kicked his two companions awake. The night herdsmen were to pick and
saddle their own mounts, and to pull the picket-pins for the grazing
mule drove. While this was doing, the small plotter vouchsafed the
necessary word of explanation to Ballard and Bigelow.
"We ride into the bunch and stampede it, headin' it along the trail the
way we're goin'. After we've done made noise enough and tracks enough,
and gone far enough to make them fellers lose the sound of us that
they've been follerin', we cut out of the crowd and make our little
_pasear_ down canyon, and the herd-riders can chase out and round up
their stock again: see?"
Ballard made the sign of acquiescence; and presently the thing was done
substantially as the boy had planned. The grazing mules, startled by the
sudden dash of the three mounted broncos among them, and helped along by
a few judicious quirt blows, broke and ran in frightened panic, carrying
the three riders in the thick of the rout.
Young Carson, skilful as the son of the convict stock-lifter had been
trained to be, deftly herded the thundering stampede in the desired
direction; and at the end of a galloping mile abruptly gave the shrill
yell of command to the two men whom he was piloting. There was a swerve
aside out of the pounding melee, a dash for an opening between the
swelling foothills, and the ruck of snorting mules swept on in a broad
circle that would later make recapture by the night herders a simple
matter of gathering up the trailing picket-ropes.
The three riders drew rein in the shelter of the arroyo gulch to breathe
their horses, and Ballard gave the boy due credit.
"That was very neatly done, Dick," he said, when the thunder of the
pounding hoofs had died away in the up-river distances. "Is it going to
bump those fellows off of our trail?"
The water-boy was humped over the horn of his saddle as if he had found
a stomach-ache in the breathless gallop. But he was merely listening.
"I ain't reskin' any money on it," he qualified. "If them cow-punch's
've caught on to where you're goin', and what you're goin' _fer_----"
Out of the stillness filling the hill-gorge like a black sea of silence
came a measured thudding of hoofs and an unmistakable squeaking of
saddle leather. Like a flash the boy was afoot and reaching under his
bronco's belly for a tripping hold on the horse's forefoot. "Down! and
pitch the cayuses!" he quavered stridently; and as the three horses
rolled in the dry sand of the arroyo bed with their late riders
flattened upon their heads, the inner darkness of the gorge spat fire
and there was a fine singing whine of bullets overhead.
XII
THE RUSTLERS
In defiance of all the laws of precedence, it was the guest who first
rose to the demands of the spiteful occasion. While Ballard was still
struggling with the holster strappings of his rifle, Bigelow had
disengaged his weapon and was industriously pumping a rapid-fire volley
into the flame-spitting darkness of the gorge.
The effect of the prompt reply in kind was quickly made manifest. The
firing ceased as abruptly as it had begun, a riderless horse dashed
snorting down the bed of the dry arroyo, narrowly missing a stumbling
collision with the living obstructions lying in his way, and other
gallopings were heard withdrawing into the hill-shadowed obscurities.
It was Ballard who took the water-boy to task when they had waited long
enough to be measurably certain that the attackers had left the field.
"You were mistaken, Dick," he said, breaking the strained silence.
"There were more than two of them."
Young Carson was getting his horse up, and he appeared to be curiously
at fault.
"You're plumb right, Cap'n Ballard," he admitted. "But that ain't what's
pinchin' me: there's always enough of 'em night-herdin' this end of the
range so 'at they could have picked up another hand 'r two. What I
cayn't tumble to is how they-all out-rid us."
"To get ahead of us, you mean?"
"That's it. We're in the neck of a little hogback draw that goes on down
to the big canyon. The only other trail into the draw is along by the
river and up this-a-way--'bout a mile and a half furder 'n the road we
come, I reckon."
It was the persistent element of mystery once more thrusting itself into
the prosaic field of the industries; but before Ballard could grapple
with it, the fighting guest cut in quietly.
"One of their bullets seems to have nipped me in the arm," he said,
admitting the fact half reluctantly and as if it were something to be
ashamed of. "Will you help me tie it up?"
Ballard came out of the speculative fog with a bound.
"Good heavens, Bigelow! are you hit? Why didn't you say something?" he
exclaimed, diving into the pockets of his duck coat for matches and a
candle-end.
"It wasn't worth while; it's only a scratch, I guess."
But the lighted candle-end proved it to be something more; a ragged
furrow plowed diagonally across the forearm. Ballard dressed it as well
as he could, the water-boy holding the candle, and when the rough job of
surgery was done, was for sending the Forestry man back to the valley
head and Castle 'Cadia with the wound for a sufficient reason. But
Bigelow developed a sudden vein of stubbornness. He would neither go
back alone, nor would he consent to be escorted.
"A little thing like this is all in the day's work," he protested.
"We'll go on, when you're ready; or, rather, we'll go and hunt for the
owner of that horse whose saddle I suppose I must have emptied. I'm just
vindictive enough to hope that its rider was the fellow who pinked me."
As it happened, the hope was to be neither confirmed nor positively
denied. A little farther up the dry arroyo the candle-end, sputtering to
its extinction, showed them a confusion of hoof tramplings in the
yielding sand, but nothing more. Dead or wounded, the horse-losing rider
had evidently been carried off by his companions.
"Which proves pretty conclusively that there must have been more than
two," was Ballard's deduction, when they were again pushing cautiously
down the inner valley toward its junction with the great canyon. "But
why should two, or a dozen of them, fire on us in the dark? How could
they know whether we were friends or enemies?"
Bigelow's quiet laugh had a touch of grimness in it.
"Your Elbow Canyon mysteries have broken bounds," he suggested. "Your
staff should include an expert psychologist, Mr. Ballard."
Ballard's reply was belligerent. "If we had one, I'd swap him for a
section of mounted police," he declared; and beyond that the narrow
trail in the cliff-walled gorge of the Boiling Water forbade
conversation.
Three hours farther down the river trail, when the summer dawn was
paling the stars in the narrow strip of sky overhead, the perpendicular
walls of the great canyon gave back a little, and looking past the
water-boy guide, Ballard saw an opening marking the entrance of a small
tributary stream from the north; a little green oasis in the vast desert
of frowning cliffs and tumbled boulders, with a log cabin and a tiny
corral nestling under the portal rock of the smaller stream.
"Hello!" said Bigelow, breaking the silence in which they had been
riding for the greater part of the three hours, "what's this we are
coming to?"
Ballard was about to pass the query on to the boy when an armed man in
the flapped hat and overalls of a range rider stepped from behind a
boulder and barred the way. There was a halt, an exchange of words
between young Carson and the flap-hatted trail-watcher in tones so low
as to be inaudible to the others, and the armed one faced about, rather
reluctantly, it seemed, to lead the way to the cabin under the cliff.
At the dismounting before the cabin door, the boy cleared away a little
of the mystery.
"This yere is whar I live when I'm at home," he drawled, lapsing by the
influence of the propinquity into the Tennessee idiom which was his
birthright. "Pap'll get ye your breakfas' while I'm feedin' the
bronc's."
Ballard glanced quickly at his guest and met the return glance of
complete intelligence in the steady gray eyes of the Forestry man. The
cabin and the corral in the secluded canyon were sufficiently accounted
for. But one use could be made of a stock enclosure in such an
inaccessible mountain fastness. The trail station in the heart of the
Boiling Water wilderness was doubtless the headquarters of the
"rustlers" who lived by preying upon the King of Arcadia's flocks and
herds.
"Your allies in the little war against Colonel Craigmiles," said
Bigelow, and there was something like a touch of mild reproach in his
low tone when he added: "Misery isn't the only thing that 'acquaints a
man with strange bedfellows.'"
"Apparently not," said Ballard; and they went together into the kitchen
half of the cabin which was built, in true Tennessee fashion, as "two
pens and a passage."
The welcome accorded them by the sullen-faced man who was already frying
rashers of bacon over the open fire on the hearth was not especially
cordial. "Mek' ye an arm and re'ch for yerselves," was his sole phrase
of hospitality, when the bacon and pan-bread were smoking on the huge
hewn slab which served for a table; and he neither ate with his guests
nor waited upon them, save to refill the tin coffee cups as they were
emptied.
Neither of the two young men stayed longer than they were obliged to in
the dirty, leather-smelling kitchen. There was freedom outside, with the
morning world of fresh, zestful immensities for a smoking-room; and when
they had eaten, they went to sit on a flat rock by the side of the
little stream to fill and light their pipes, Ballard crumbling the
cut-plug and stoppering the pipe for his crippled companion.
"How is the bullet-gouge by this time?" he questioned, when the tobacco
was alight.
"It's pretty sore, and no mistake," Bigelow acknowledged frankly.
Whereupon Ballard insisted upon taking the bandages off and re-dressing
the wound, with the crystal-clear, icy water of the mountain stream for
its cleansing.
"It was a sheer piece of idiocy on my part--letting you come on with me
after you got this," was his verdict, when he had a daylight sight of
the bullet score. "But I don't mean to be idiotic twice in the same
day," he went on. "You're going to stay right here and keep quiet until
we come along back and pick you up, late this afternoon."
Bigelow made a wry face.
"Nice, cheerful prospect," he commented. "The elder cattle thief isn't
precisely one's ideal of the jovial host. By the way, what was the
matter with him while we were eating breakfast? He looked and acted as
if there were a sick child in some one of the dark corners which he was
afraid we might disturb."
Ballard nodded. "I was wondering if you remarked it. Did you hear the
sick baby?"
"I heard noises--besides those that Carson was so carefully making with
the skillet and the tin plates. The room across the passage from us
wasn't empty."
"That was my guess," rejoined Ballard, pulling thoughtfully at his short
pipe. "I heard voices and tramplings, and, once in a while, something
that sounded remarkably like a groan--or an oath."
Bigelow nodded in his turn. "More of the mysteries, you'd say; but this
time they don't especially concern us. Have you fully made up your mind
to leave me here while you go on down to the railroad? Because if you
have, you and the boy will have to compel my welcome from the old
robber: I'd never have the face to ask him for a whole day's
hospitality."
"I'll fix that," said Ballard, and when the boy came from the corral
with the saddled horses, he went to do it, leaving Bigelow to finish his
pipe on the flat rock of conference.
The "fixing" was not accomplished without some difficulty, as it
appeared to the young man sitting on the flat stone at the stream side.
Dick brought his father to the door, and Ballard did the
talking--considerably more of it than might have been deemed necessary
for the simple request to be proffered. At the end of the talk, Ballard
came back to the flat stone.
"You stay," he said briefly to Bigelow. "Carson will give you your
dinner. But he says he has a sick man on his hands in the cabin, and
you'll have to excuse him."
"He was willing?" queried Bigelow.
"No; he wasn't at all willing. He acted as if he were a loaded camel,
and your staying was going to be the final back-breaking straw. But he's
a Tennessean, and we've been kind to his boy. The ranch is yours for the
day, only if I were you, I shouldn't make too free use of it."
Bigelow smiled.
"I'll be 'meachum' and keep fair in the middle of the road. I don't know
anything that a prosecuting attorney could make use of against the man
who has given me my breakfast, and who promises to give me my dinner,
and I don't want to know anything. Please don't waste any more daylight
on me: Dick has the horses ready, and he is evidently growing anxious."
Ballard left the Forestry man smoking and sunning himself on the flat
boulder when he took the down-canyon trail with the sober-faced boy for
his file leader, and more than once during the rather strenuous day to
which the pocket-gulch incident was the introduction, his thoughts went
back to Bigelow, marooned in the depths of the great canyon with the
saturnine cattle thief, the sick man, and doubtless other members of the
band of "rustlers."
It was therefore, with no uncertain feeling of relief that he returned
in the late afternoon at the head of a file of as hard-looking
miscreants as ever were gathered in a sheriff's posse, and found Bigelow
sitting on the step of the Carson cabin, still nursing the bandaged arm,
and still smoking the pipe of patience.
"I'm left to do the honours, gentlemen," said the Forestry man, rising
and smiling quaintly. "The owner of the ranch regrets to say that he has
been unavoidably called away; but the feed in the corral and the
provisions in the kitchen are yours for the taking and the cooking."
The sheriff, a burly giant whose face, figure, garmenting and graceful
saddle-seat proclaimed the ex-cattleman, laughed appreciatively.
"Bat Carson knows a healthy climate as far as he can see the sun
a-shinin'," he chuckled; and then to his deputies: "Light down, boys,
and we'll see what sort o' chuck he's left for us."
In the dismounting Ballard drew Bigelow aside. "What has happened?" he
asked.
"You can prove nothing by me," returned Bigelow, half quizzically. "I've
been asleep most of the day. When I woke up, an hour or so ago, the
doors were open and the cabin was empty. Also, there was a misspelled
note charcoaled on a box-cover in the kitchen, making us free of the
horse-bait and the provisions. Also, again, a small bunch of cattle that
I had seen grazing in a little park up the creek had disappeared."
"Um," said Ballard, discontentedly. "All of which makes us accessories
after the fact in another raid on Colonel Craigmiles's range herd. I
don't like that."
"Nor do I," Bigelow agreed. "But you can't eat a man's bread, and then
stay awake to see which way he escapes. I'm rather glad I was sleepy
enough not to be tempted. Which reminds me: you must be about all in on
that score yourself, Mr. Ballard."
"I? Oh, no; I got in five or six hours on the railroad train, going and
coming between Jack's Cabin and the county seat."
The posse members were tramping into the kitchen to ransack it for food
and drink, and Bigelow stood still farther aside.
"You managed to gather up a beautiful lot of cutthroats in the short
time at your disposal," he remarked.
"Didn't I? And now you come against one of my weaknesses, Bigelow: I
can't stay mad. Last night I thought I'd be glad to see a bunch of the
colonel's cow-boys well hanged. To-day I'm sick and ashamed to be seen
tagging this crew of hired sure-shots into the colonel's domain."
"Just keep on calling it the Arcadia Company's domain, and perhaps the
feeling will wear off," suggested the Forestry man.
"It's no joke," said Ballard, crustily; and then he went in to take his
chance of supper with the sheriff and his "sure-shots."
There was still sufficient daylight for the upper canyon passage when
the rough-riders had eaten Carson out of house and home, and were
mounted again for the ascent to the Kingdom of Arcadia. In the up-canyon
climb, the sheriff kept the boy, Dick, within easy bridle clutch,
remembering a certain other canyon faring in which the cattle thief's
son had narrowly missed putting his father's captors, men and horses,
into the torrent of the Boiling Water. Ballard and Bigelow rode ahead;
and when the thunderous diapason of the river permitted, they talked.