THE THUNDERBOLT
The greater part of the number of bandits had stopped in a group a few
yards from the base of the white dam core, though a few stragglers
were some way behind. Among these Steele Weir made out the figure of
one whom he recognized as a white man; he whom the guard from the
spring had mentioned as directing the company; and when at a number of
exclamations from Mexicans who perceived the engineer the man lifted
his face, Weir saw he was Burkhardt.
No more than this was needed to show whose the hand behind this
treacherous conspiracy. Clear, too, it was that Burkhardt, determined
that no mistake or abandonment of the operation should occur, had come
to see it through in person. Weir could ask nothing better; he had one
of the plotters caught in the act.
Apparently orders had been to carry through the first part of the
diabolical plan of destruction in silence, that of gaining control of
the dam, for when two or three Mexicans flung up rifles to shoot at
Weir a sharp word from another Mexican, seemingly their leader, had
checked the volley and shouted to Burkhardt.
The latter had stopped; he stared for a few seconds at the man on the
white wall above and finally signaled with a wave of his arm.
"Come down here," he ordered.
But Weir made no move to obey. He continued to stand motionless,
coolly regarding the party beneath. His eyes particularly considered
two men who carried wooden boxes, square and stout, on their
shoulders. At last he spoke.
"What do you want here?"
"Come down, then you'll learn," Burkhardt shouted up, making no effort
to hide the enmity in his voice.
Weir puffed at his cigar, removed it from his lips to glance at its
glowing end, while the Mexicans stared up at him in silence, puzzled
by this lone guard who carried no rifle, who did not flee away to
spread an alarm and seek aid, and who so unexpectedly had appeared as
if anticipating their visit.
Murmurs broke out. Why were they not allowed to shoot him at once in
the approved Mexican bandit fashion and proceed to their work? If
he were not shot at once, he yet could escape for aid. The party
had to ascend the hillside in order to mount to the top of the
concrete work. Time would be required to place and fire their charges
of dynamite--and they were eager to get at the loot in the buildings
above.
"Kill him," Burkhardt roared suddenly, jerking forth his revolver and
blazing at the engineer.
The bullet sang past Weir's head. He did not duck; indeed, kept his
place calmly while the Mexicans were raising their guns, as if to show
his supreme contempt for their power. But at the instant Burkhardt
fired again and a dozen rifles blazed he sprang back and dropped flat,
leaving the deadly missiles to speed harmlessly above the dam.
Raising himself cautiously he seized the end of a fuse projecting from
one of the canisters and held the crimson end of his cigar against it
until a sputter of sparks showed that it had caught. From this fuse he
turned to the one in the second can and repeated the operation.
This was the essence of his plan of defense. With guns the defenders
on the hillside would be outnumbered and probably killed in an attack.
The information that the assailants were to steal up the canyon,
however, was the key that would unlock a desperate situation, and his
mind had grasped the mode and means of defeating the enemy.
With the first shots quiet had returned. The night seemed for Weir as
peaceful as ever, the earth bathed in moonlight, the camp at rest.
Only before him there was the sputter of the two fuses, one at the
right, one at the left, as the trains of fire burned towards the holes
in the canisters. He watched these calculatingly. His cigar no longer
of service had been cast aside.
All at once he rose erect again. A few men were starting along the
wall to climb the hillside, but the greater number were gathered about
Burkhardt and the Mexican leader. Now Weir glanced at them and now at
the fuses.
"I warn you to leave this dam and camp, Burkhardt," he shouted, when a
few seconds had passed. "Don't say I didn't give you warning."
Every head jerked upward at this surprising reappearance and voice.
They had supposed him fled, the men down there, and were having a last
hasty conference, doubtless as to the wisdom of now first attacking
the camp. A grim smile came on the engineer's face. Their astonishment
was comic--or would have been at a moment less perilous and fraught
with less grave consequences.
An oath ripped from Burkhardt's lips. An angry curse it might have
been at Madden that he had failed to arrest and hold the engineer
according to plan. He gestured right and left, yelling something to
the men around him. He himself began to run towards one end of the
dam.
Weir stooped, picked up one of the canisters, blew on the fuse now
burned so near the hole. Some men perhaps at this instant would have
quailed for their own safety and at the prospect of hurling death
among others. For death this tin cylinder meant for those below. But
there was no tremor in Steele Weir's arm or heart.
He was the man of metal who had won the name "Cold Steel"--calm,
implacable, of steel-like purpose. With such enemies he could hold no
other communion than that which gave death. For such there was no
mercy. By the same sort of law that they would execute let them
suffer--the law of lawlessness and force. Destruction they would give,
destruction let them gain.
He straightened. He took a last look at the snapping, sparkling,
smoldering fuse, then flung his burden full down upon the spot where
the Mexicans were again pointing their guns at him. Swiftly picking up
the second canister, while bullets whined by, he cast it down after
the first. A glimpse of startled faces he had, of men attempting to
scatter from before the huge missiles, then he flung himself full
length upon the dam.
Interminably time seemed to stretch itself out as lying there he
listened, waited, sought to brace himself for the impending shock. A
quick doubt assailed his mind. Had the charges failed.
All at once the earth seemed rent by a roar that shook the very dam.
Followed instantly a second volume of sound more terrific, more
blasting in its quality, more dreadful in its power, deafening,
stunning, as if the world had erupted.
"Their dynamite!" Weir breathed to himself.
His ear-drums appeared to be broken. His hat was gone. His body ached
from the tremendous dispersion of air. But that he could still hear he
discovered when through his shocked auditory nerves he distinguished,
as if far off, faint booming echoes from the hills.
He got to his knees, finally to his feet. Pressing his hands to his
head he gazed slowly about. Stones and a rain of earth were still
falling, as if from a meteoric bombardment. About him he perceived
sections of woodwork shaken to pieces, collapsed.
Stepping to the edge of the dam he peered downward. A vast hole showed
in the earth before the wall though the wall itself was uninjured and
only smeared with a layer of soil. Huge rocks lay where there had been
none before, uprooted and flung aside by the explosion, dispersed by
the gigantic blast. On the hillside half a dozen men were picking
themselves up and struggling wildly to flee. Nearer, a few other forms
lay in the moonlight mangled and still, or mangled, and writhing in
pain. Of all the rest--nothing.
Almost completely Burkhardt's predatory band had been blotted out.
Weir's thunderbolt had struck down into its very heart, and it had
vanished.
As he turned and walked towards the end of the dam, he staggered a
little. The sight had shaken even his iron nerve.