WATCHING
It took nine days to complete the flume a second time, and all hands
were dog-tired. All the time the heat had continued and the hot winds
were constant. The ranch had suffered badly. Irreparable damage had been
done. The grain was stunted, yellow. There would not be half a crop.
These things bit into the soul of Angus Mackay as he labored fiercely,
pitting his strength and endurance against relentless time. He could get
no clew, no inkling of the person responsible for the trouble.
On the afternoon of the day when the flume was completed, Rennie was
absent. After supper he sought Angus.
"I went across the creek this afternoon," he said, "and I clumb up onto
that hill across where we was workin'. There was somebody there across
the gulch from me. Course I went down and over, but he'd gone. Found
where his horse had been standin' on top of the hill."
"You couldn't tell who it was?"
"No. I don't think he seen me. But whoever it was, was sizin' up the
flume. I'm goin' to take my blankets and camp alongside it for some
nights."
"So will I," Angus said. "If I can find out who is doing this, Dave, I
will handle them myself. I will not bother about the law."
A little spark lit in Dave Rennie's mild, blue eyes.
"Sure; best way," he agreed. "Things was a darn sight better and safer
and less skunks and sharks when every gent packed his own law below his
belt. Law don't give you no action when you want it. Well, let's get
organized."
Angus had told Jean nothing of his suspicions as to the destruction of
the flume. But now it was necessary. She listened, wide-eyed.
"But who would do it, Angus?"
"If I knew," he replied, "I would be hunting him now."
Jean looked at her big, swarthy brother, noting the grim line of his
mouth, the smouldering anger in his eyes.
"Don't get into any trouble, Angus."
"It will be somebody else that will get into trouble if I find him."
"But if you can avoid--"
"I will avoid nothing," he told her sharply. "Let others do that. I have
never injured a man in my life, of my own will, and nobody shall injure
me and get away with it."
Going into Rennie's room he saw his blankets on the floor ready for
rolling. On them reposed a worn gun-belt with two holsters, from each of
which protruded an ivory butt. Angus stared at this artillery, which he
had never seen before.
"Sure, take a look at 'em," Dave said, interpreting his gaze. "I ain't
wore 'em for so long they feel funny now. Time was, though, when they
felt natural as front teeth."
Angus drew the guns. They were ivory-handled, forty-one calibre, heavy,
long-barreled, single-action weapons of an old frontier model. Though
they had evidently seen much service, they were spotless. The pull, when
Angus tried it, was astonishingly quick and smooth, and in his hands
they fitted and balanced perfectly.
"Them guns," said Dave, "pretty near shoot themselves if a feller
savvies a gun at all. A feller give 'em to me a long time ago."
"Some present," Angus commented.
"Well, he hadn't no more use for 'em," Dave explained. "Tell you about
it some time. What gun you takin'?"
"I don't know."
"Take a shotgun with buck. That's the best thing at night."
Angus stared at him. In all the years he had known Rennie the little man
had been meek and mild, apparently the last being on earth to exhibit
bloodthirsty tendencies.
"I don't want to blow anybody to pieces," he said.
"Well, you won't--unless you get to shootin' at mighty close range,"
Rennie pointed out; "and then you won't care. Take a double bar'l and a
box of goose loads, anyway."
An hour later they picked a level spot near the new flume, wrapped up in
their blankets and lit pipes. But soon Angus dozed.
"Go to sleep," said Rennie. "I'll wake you after a while."
Angus went to sleep instantly and gratefully. He woke some hours later
with Rennie's hand on his shoulder.
"It'll be light in two hours, and I'm pinchin' myself to keep awake.
You're awake for sure, are you? All right."
He settled himself in his blankets, sighed and slept like a tired dog.
Angus sat up. The night which had been bright with stars was now
overcast and a wind was blowing. He could hear it straining through the
tree tops and booming back in the hills. The creek roared and brawled
noisily. A couple of horned owls hooted at their hunting in the timber.
There were noises close at hand; the faint, intermittent gurgle of
water, little rustlings of grasses and leaves, the occasional scurry of
tiny feet, the buzz and click of insects. He had a hard job to fight off
sleep. But suddenly a sound which did not blend with the natural voices
of the night drove every bit of drowsiness out of him.
It was faint, like the clink of metal on stone. While Angus listened it
was repeated. He touched Rennie. Instantly the latter's breathing
stopped and changed.
"Somethin' doing'?"
"Listen!"
Clink, clink, clang! Down the wind came the sound.
"It's on the next sidehill," said Rennie. "Rippin' the ditch out, or
makin' a hole for a shot. She's a worse hill than this, too." He rose,
shook himself, and buckled on his belt. "We'll hold 'em up. Sneak up as
close as we can, and tell 'em to h'ist their paws."
"Suppose they don't," said Angus, slipping a couple of shells into the
breech of his gun.
"When you tell a feller to put 'em up and he don't, there's only one
thing to do; 'cause there's only one thing he's goin' to do, and you got
to beat him to it."
The ditch, leaving the sidehill with the new flume, crossed the end of a
flat and struck another sidehill. This was brushy halfway to the top,
marking the track of an old slide of many years before. But above it,
where the ancient slide had started, the bank rose sheer, overhanging.
As they struck the flat they heard more plainly the clink of tools.
"Right under where that old slip hangs," Rennie deducted. "That's the
place 'd make most trouble to fix. It's a darn sight worse than what we
did fix. Now--"
His words were interrupted by the shrill blast of a whistle from
somewhere above. It was repeated, and from where the sounds of work had
been came the crash of brush. Rennie swore, and a gun seemed to leap
into his hand.
"Their lookout seen us on this blasted flat!" he cried. "They're
climbin' the hill. If we had any sense--Come on! Maybe we can head 'em
off!"
They rushed at the steep, brush-covered hill. To their right, but
invisible, others seemed to be climbing also. Suddenly from above a gun
barked, and a bullet drilled above Angus' head and spatted on a rock
below. Again a spurt of fire lanced the night, and another bullet
buzzed, this time to the left.
Angus had never been shot at before. He had supposed that he would be
nervous if ever called on to stand fire. But actually his main feeling
was indignation that any one could shoot at him. And just as
automatically and unthinkingly as he was accustomed to swing on a bird,
he sent a charge of shot at the second flash of the gun. But a third
shot answered and he fired again, and broke the twelve gauge and shoved
in fresh shells, and started forward, only to be pulled back by Rennie.
"There ain't no cover ahead. You'll get plugged."
"But they'll get away!"
"Well, so'll you," Dave told him; "but if you go crowdin' up without
cover somebody'll have to pack you home. Have sense! And lay down.
You're so darn big you'll stop something if you keep standin' up!"
Angus dropped beside him in a little hollow, and a bullet droned through
the space his body had just occupied.
"Told you so," Rennie grunted. "There's one man up there savvies
downhill shootin'. If I could--" The gun in his hand leaped twice so
quickly that the reports almost blended. "Don't believe I touched him.
Outa practice with a belt gun. Dark besides. Scatter some shot around
near the top."
Angus used half a dozen shells, guessing as best he could. A shot or two
came back. Rennie suddenly turned loose both his guns in a fusillade,
and for an instant Angus saw or thought he saw moving figures
silhouetted against the sky on the hill's rim. At these, he let go both
barrels. Dave, swinging out the empty cylinders of his guns, swore.
"Darn 'f I b'lieve we've touched hide nor hair. They got horses up
there. What darn fools we was to camp down in this bottom. There they go
now."
Angus could hear the faint drumming of hoofs over the hill. There was
nothing to be done about it. Disgusted they went back to their blankets,
but not to sleep, and with dawn they returned to investigate.
An endeavor had been made to tear out the wall of the ditch, and above
it a hole had been started, apparently with intent to use powder. A shot
there would have split off a section of the precipitous bank, and
brought it down, trees and all, into the ditch. Angus, surveying these
things with lowering brow, saw Rennie stoop and pick up something.
"What have you got there?" the latter asked.
Without a word Rennie handed him an old, stag-handled jack-knife. Angus
knew it very well. He himself had given it to his brother, Turkey.
Angus stared at the knife, at first blankly and then with swiftly
blackening brow. He heard Dave's voice as from a distance.
"Now don't go off at half-cock, Angus. Maybe--"
"You know the knife," he said, his own voice sounding strange in his
ears.
"Well, that don't say Turkey was in this. Maybe he lost it, and
somebody--"
"Quit lying to yourself!"
"By gosh, Angus, I'll bet Turkey don't know a darn thing--"
But Angus was not listening. Out of the glory of the sun rising over the
ranges, one of the black moods of the Black Mackays descended on him.
All his life he had struggled against the hardness and bitterness of
heart inherited from his ancestors, men dour and vengeful, whose creed
had been eye for eye and tooth for tooth through the clan feuds of the
dim centuries. Hard and bitter men, these bygone Mackays whose blood ran
in his veins, carrying the black hate in the heart, even brother against
brother. There was even that Mackay of a dark memory--and his name, too,
was Torquil--who after a quarrel with his brothers had slain them, all
four. Old tales, these, handed down through the years, losing or gaining
in the telling, perhaps, but all stormy and full of violence and hate
and revenge. And in all of them there was never one of a Mackay who
forgave an injury. One and all they brooded over wrong and struck in
their own time. With them it was not the quick word and blow--though if
other tales were true they were quick enough with both--but the deep,
sullen, undying resentment under injury.
As he thought of these things with the black mood upon him, Angus' heart
hardened against his brother. He did not doubt that this was Turkey's
revenge. There was his knife, and he should account for it. Since he had
not been alone he should tell the names of his confederates. And then,
like the bitter, dour Mackay he was, Angus put the knife in his pocket
and turned a grim but composed face to Rennie.
"Maybe you are right," he admitted, though he had not heard a word the
other had been saying. "Let's go home and get breakfast. And say nothing
at all to Jean."