The two men, aided by the crew of the train that now came down the
Bitter Creek grade, got the dead body of the outlaw back to Point of
Rocks just as a mixed train from the east reached there, with Stanley
and a detail of cavalry aboard. Stanley walked straight to Bucks,
caught him by the shoulders, and shook him as if to make sure he was
all right.
"Gave you a warm reception, did they, Bucks?"
"Moderately warm, colonel."
Stanley shook his head. "It is all wrong. They never should have sent
you out here alone," he declared brusquely. "These superintendents
seem to think they are railroading in Ohio instead of the Rocky
Mountains. Dave," he continued, turning to Hawk as the latter came up,
"I hear you have just brought in Perry dead. What have we got here,
anyway?"
"Some of the Medicine Bend gang," returned Hawk tersely.
"What are they doing?"
"Evening up old scores, I guess."
Stanley looked at the dead man as they laid him out on the platform:
"And hastening their own day of reckoning," he said. "There shall be
no more of this if we have to drive every man of the gang out of the
country. Who do you think was with Perry, Bob?" he demanded,
questioning Scott.
"There is nothing to show that till we get them--and we ought to be
after them now," returned the scout. "But," he added softly as he
hitched his trousers, "I think one of the two might be young John
Rebstock."
"You need lose no time, Bob. Here are ten men with fresh horses at
your orders." Stanley pointed to the troopers who were unloading their
mounts.
"Give Dave and me three of the best of these men," said Scott. "I will
follow the west trail. Put a sergeant with the others on the trail
east to make sure they haven't doubled back on us--but I don't think
they have."
"Why?"
"They must have stolen that team and wagon, that is certain. More than
likely they murdered the man they took it from. The trail is probably
alive with men looking for them. These fellows were trying to get to
Casement's camp for gambling, and probably they are heading that way
fast now. We will pick those fellows up, colonel, somewhere between
here and Bridger's Gap."
The three troopers that Scott selected were told off and, after a few
rapid arrangements for sending back information, the five men of the
west-trail party, headed by Scott and Dave Hawk, rode down Bitter
Creek and, scattering in a wide skirmish line wherever the formation
of the country permitted, scanned the ground for signs of the
fugitives.
"We shan't find anything till we get to where they were when the rain
stopped," Scott told the trooper near whom he was riding. It was, in
fact, nearly ten miles from Point of Rocks before they picked up the
footprints of two men travelling apart from each other, but headed
north and west. These they followed on a long detour away from the
regular wagon road until the two trails turned and entered, from the
southwest, a camp made the night before by a big trading outfit on the
regular overland trail.
Here, of course, all trace of the men disappeared. It was now drawing
toward evening. Scott resolved to follow the trading outfit, but the
party still rode slowly to make sure the men they wanted did not sneak
away from the wagons of their new-found friends. The pursuers rode
steadily on, and as the sun went down they perceived in a small canyon
ahead of them the wagons of the outfit they were trailing, parked in a
camp for the night.
Scott gave the troopers directions as to where to post themselves, at
some distance east and west of the canyon, to provide against a sortie
of the fugitives and, riding with Hawk directly into the camp, asked
for the boss. He appeared after some delay and proved to be a French
trader with supplies for Salt Lake.
Hawk, whose long visage and keen eyes gave him a particularly
stern air--and David Hawk was never very communicative or very
warm-mannered--asked the questions. The Frenchman was civil, but
denied having any men with him except those he had brought from
the Missouri River. However, he offered to line up his men for the
railroad party to look over. To this Hawk agreed, and, when the
word had been passed, the entire force of the trader were assembled
in front of the head wagon.
Scott rode slowly up the line scrutinizing each face, and, turning
again, rode down the line. Once he stopped and questioned a
suspicious-looking teamster wearing a hat that answered Bucks's
description, but the man's answers were satisfactory.
When Scott had finished his inspection the men started to disband.
Hawk stopped them. "Stay where you are," he called out curtly. Turning
to the Frenchman, he added: "We will have to search your wagons."
Again the trader made no objection, though some of his men did.
The three troopers were signalled in, and posted so there could be no
dodging from one wagon to another, and Hawk gave them orders, loud
enough for all to hear, to shoot on sight any one leaving the wagons.
And while he himself kept command of the whole situation, Scott
dismounted and accompanied by the trader began the search. The hunt
was tedious and the teamsters murmured at the delay to their camp
work. But the search went forward unrelentingly. Not a corner capable
of concealing a dog was overlooked by the painstaking Indian and not
until he had reached the last wagon was his hope exhausted.
This wagon stood at the extreme end of a wash-out in the side of the
canyon itself. It was filled with bales of coarse red blankets, but no
man was to be found among them.
Scott did find something, however, in a sort of a nest fashioned among
the bales near the middle of the wagon. What would have escaped an eye
less trained to look for trifles attracted his at once. It was a dingy
metal tag. Scott picked it up. It bore the name of a Medicine Bend
saloon and the heads of three horses, from the design of which the
saloon itself took a widely known and ill name. He laid his hand on
the blanket from which he had picked the tag. The wool was still
warm.
Scott only smiled to himself. Both ends of the little canyon were
guarded. From where he was searching the scout peered carefully out at
the canyon walls. There were hiding-places, but they were hardly large
enough to conceal a man. It was somewhere in the rocks close at hand
that the fugitives had found a temporary refuge; but they could not
now escape--nor could they be far from the wagon.
Without losing sight of the surroundings, Scott, disclosing nothing of
his discovery to the trader, announced that he was satisfied and that
the men he wanted did not appear to be there. He added, however, that
if the Frenchman had no objection his party would pitch camp close by
and ride with him in the morning. The Frenchman maintained his
courtesy by inviting the party to take supper with him, and Scott,
agreeing to return, rode away with Hawk and the three troopers.
They had not ridden far, when Bob dismounted the party and leaving
the horses with one trooper set two as pickets and posted himself in
hiding on one side the canyon, with Hawk on the other, to watch the
camp. What he saw or whether his patience was in any degree rewarded
no one could have told from his inscrutable face as he walked into the
camp at dusk and sat down with the trader to supper. The moon was just
rising and down at the creek, a little way from where Scott sat, some
belated teamsters were washing their hands and faces and preparing
their own supper. Scott ate slowly and with his back to the fire kept
his eye on the group of men down at the creek. When he had finished,
he walked down to the stream himself. A large man in the group fitted,
in his hat and dress, Bucks's exact description. Scott had already
spotted him an hour before, and stepped up to him now to arrest young
John Rebstock.
He laid his hand on the man's shoulder and the man turned. But to
Scott's surprise he was not the man wanted at all. He wore Rebstock's
clothes and fitted Rebstock's description, but he was not Rebstock.
The scout understood instantly how he had been tricked, but gave no
sign.
Within the preceding thirty minutes the real Rebstock, whom Scott had
already marked from his hiding-place in the canyon, had traded clothes
with this man and, no doubt, made good his escape.
If Bob was chagrined, he made no sign.
"You must have made a good trade," he said, smiling at the teamster.
"These clothes are a little big, but you will grow to them. How much
boot did you get?"
Scott looked so slight and inoffensive that the teamster attempted
insolence, and not only refused to answer questions, but threatened
violence if the scout persisted in asking them. His companions
crowding up encouraged him.
But numbers were not allowed for an instant to dominate the situation.
Scott whipped a revolver from his belt, cocked it, and pressed it
against the teamster's side. Dave Hawk loomed up in the moonlight and,
catching by the collar one after another of the men crowding around
Scott, Hawk, with his right hand or his left, whirled them spinning
out of his way. If a man resisted the rough treatment, Hawk
unceremoniously knocked him down and, drawing his own revolver, took
his stand beside his threatened companion.
Other men came running up, the trader among them. A few words
explained everything and the recalcitrant teamster concluded to speak.
Scott, indeed, had but little to ask: he already knew the whole story.
And when the teamster, threatened with search, pulled from his pocket
a roll of bank-notes which he acknowledged had been given him for
concealing the two fugitives and providing them with clothes, Scott
released him--only notifying the trader incidentally that the man was
robbing him and had loot, taken from the ammunition wagon, concealed
under his blanket bales just searched. This information led to new
excitement in the camp, and the Frenchman danced up and down in his
wrath as he ordered the blanket wagon searched again. But his
excitement did not greatly interest Scott and his party. They went
their way and camped at some distance down the creek from their
stirred-up neighbors.
Hawk and Bob Scott sat in the moonlight after the troopers had gone to
sleep.
"They can't fool us very much longer," muttered Scott, satisfied with
the day's work and taking the final disappointment philosophically,
"until they can get horses they are chained to the ground in this
country. There is only one place I know of where there are any horses
hereabouts and that is Jack Casement's camp."
Hawk stretched himself out on the ground to sleep. "I'll tell you,
Dave," continued Scott, "it is only about twenty miles from here to
Casement's, anyway. Suppose I ride over there to-night and wire
Stanley we've got track of the fellows. By the time you pick up the
trail in the morning I will be back--or I may pick it up myself
between here and the railroad. You keep on as far as Brushwood Creek
and I'll join you there to-morrow by sundown."
It was so arranged. The night was clear and with a good moon the ride
was not difficult, though to a man less acquainted with the mountains
it would have been a hardship. Mile after mile Scott's hardy pony
covered with no apparent effort. Bob did not urge him, and before
midnight the white tents of the construction camp were visible in the
moonlight. Scott went directly to the telegraph office, and after
sending his message hunted up food and quarters for his beast and a
sleeping-bunk for himself.
At daylight he was astir and sought breakfast before making inquiries
and riding back to his party. On the edge of the camp stood a sort of
restaurant, made up of a kitchen tent with a dismantled box-car body
as an annex.
In this annex the food was served. It was entered from one side door,
while the food was brought from the kitchen through the other side
doorway of the car.
Into this crowded den Bob elbowed an unobtrusive way and seated
himself in a retired corner. He faced the blind end of the car, and
before him on the wall was tacked a fragment of a mirror in which he
could see what was going on behind him. And without paying any
apparent attention to anything that went on, nothing escaped him.
Next to where he sat, a breakfast of coffee and ham and eggs had been
already served for somebody, apparently on an order previously given.
At the opposite end of the car a small space was curtained off as a
wash-room. Scott ordered his own breakfast and was slowly eating it
when he noticed through the little mirror, and above and beyond the
heads of the busy breakfasters along the serving-counter, a large man
in the wash-room scrubbing his face vigorously with a towel.
Each time Scott looked up from his breakfast into the mirror the man
redoubled his efforts to do a good job with the towel, hiding his face
meantime well within its folds. The scout's curiosity was mildly
enough aroused to impel him to watch the diligent rubbing with some
interest. He saw, too, presently that the man was stealing glances out
of his towel at him and yet between times intently rubbing his face.
This seemed odd, and Scott, now eying the man more carefully, noted
his nervousness and wondered at it. However, he continued to enjoy his
own meal. The waiter who had served him, hurried and impatient, also
noticed the waiting breakfast untouched and called sharply to the man
in the wash-room that his ham was served and, with scant regard for
fine words, bade him come eat it.
This urgent invitation only added to the ill-concealed embarrassment
of the stalling guest; but it interested the scout even more in the
developing situation. Scott finished his breakfast and gave himself
entirely over to watching in a lazy way the man who was making so
elaborate a toilet.
There was no escape from either end of the car. That could be managed
only through the side doors, which were too close to Scott to be
available, and the scout, now fairly well enlightened and prepared,
merely awaited developments. He wanted to see the man come to his
breakfast, and the man in the wash-room, combing his hair with vigor
and peering anxiously through his own scrap of a mirror at Bob Scott,
wanted to see the scout finish his coffee and leave the car. Scott,
however, pounding ostentatiously on the table, called for a second cup
of coffee and sipped it with apparent satisfaction. It was a game of
cat and mouse--with the mouse, in this instance, bigger than the cat,
but as shy and reluctant to move as any mouse could be in a cat's
presence. Scott waited until he thought the embarrassed man would have
brushed the hair all out of his head, and at last, in spite of
himself, laughed. As he did so, he turned half-way around on his stool
and lifted his finger.
"Come, Rebstock," he smiled, calling to the fugitive. "Your breakfast
is getting cold."
The man, turning as red as a beet, looked over the heads of those that
sat between him and his tantalizing captor. But putting the best face
he could on the dilemma and eying Scott nervously he walked over and,
with evident reluctance, made ready to sit down beside him.
"Take your time," suggested Scott pleasantly. Then, as Rebstock, quite
crestfallen, seated himself, he added: "Hadn't I better order a hot
cup of coffee for you?" He took hold of the cup as he spoke, and
looked hard at the gambler while making the suggestion.
"No, no," responded Rebstock, equally polite and equally insistent, as
he held his hand over the cup and begged Scott not to mind. "This is
all right."
"How was the walking last night?" asked Scott, passing the fugitive a
big plate of bread. Rebstock lifted his eyes from his plate for the
briefest kind of a moment.
"The--eh--walking? I don't know what you mean, captain. I slept here
last night."
Scott looked under the table at his victim's boots. "John," he asked
without a smile, "do you ever walk in your sleep?"
Rebstock threw down his knife and fork. "Look here, stranger," he
demanded with indignation. "What do you want? Can't a man eat his
breakfast in this place? I ask you," he demanded, raising his right
hand with his knife in it as he appealed to the waiter, "can't a man
eat his breakfast in this place without interruption?"
The waiter, standing with folded arms, regarded the two men without
changing his stolid expression. "A man can eat his breakfast in this
place without anything on earth except money. If you let your ham get
cold because you were going to beat me out of the price, and you try
to do it, I'll drag you out of here by the heels."
These unsympathetic words attracted the attention of every one and the
breakfasters now looked on curiously but no one offered to interfere.
Quarrels and disputes were too frequent in that country to make it
prudent or desirable ever to intervene in one. A man considered
himself lucky not to be embroiled in unpleasantness in spite of his
best efforts to keep out. Rebstock turned again on his pursuer. "What
do you want, anyhow, stranger?" he demanded fiercely. "A fight, I
reckon."
"Not a bit of it. I want you, Rebstock," explained Scott without in
the least raising his voice.
Rebstock's throaty tones seemed to contract into a wheeze. "What do
you want me for?" he asked, looking nervously toward the other end of
the car. As he did so, a man wearing a shirt and new overalls rose and
started for the door. The instinct of Scott's suspicion fastened
itself on the man trying to leave the place as being Rebstock's wanted
companion.
Rising like a flash, he covered the second man with his pistol. "Hold
on!" he exclaimed, pointing at him with his left hand. "Come over
here!"
The man in overalls turned a calm face that showed nothing more than
conscious innocence. But Scott was looking at his feet. His worn shoes
were crusted heavily with alkali mud. "What do you want with me?"
snarled the man halted at the door.
"I want you," said Scott, "for burning Point of Rocks station night
before last. Here, partner," he continued, speaking to the waiter.
"I'll pay for these two breakfasts; search that man for me," he
continued, pointing to the man in the overalls.
"Search him yourself," returned the waiter stolidly. Scott turned like
a wolf.
"What's that?" Another expression stole over his good-natured face.
Holding his revolver to cover any one that resisted, he turned his
accusing finger upon the insolent waiter. "You will talk to me, will
you?" he demanded sharply. "Do as I tell you instantly, or I'll drive
you out of camp and burn your shack to the ground. When I talk to you,
General Jack Casement talks, and this railroad company talks. Search
that man!"
Before the last word had passed his lips the waiter jumped over the
counter and began turning the pockets of the man in the new overalls
inside out. The fellow kept a good face even after a bunch of stolen
railroad tickets were discovered in one pocket. "A man gave them to me
last night to keep for him," he answered evenly.
"Never mind," returned Scott with indifference, "I will take care of
them for him."
The news of the capture spread over the camp, and when Scott with his
two prisoners walked across to General Casement's tent a crowd
followed. Stanley had just arrived from Point of Rocks by train and
was conferring with Casement when Scott came to the tent door. He
greeted Bob and surveyed the captured fugitives.
"How did you get them?" he demanded.
Scott smiled and hung his head as he shook it, to anticipate
compliments. "They just walked into my arms. Dave Hawk and the
troopers are looking for these fellows now away down on Bitter Creek.
They wandered into camp here last night to save us the trouble of
bringing them. Isn't that it, Rebstock?"
Rebstock disavowed, but not pleasantly. He was not in amiable mood.
"What show has a fat man got to get away from anybody?" he growled.