A CHANGE OF BASE
The roan horse which Sim Gage rode was in no downcast frame of mind,
but he himself, engrossed with his errand, did not at first notice that
it was the same half wild animal with which he had had combat at an
earlier time. He fought it for half an hour or more down a half dozen
miles of the road, but at length the brute made matters worse by
picking up a stone, and going dead lame, so that any great speed was
out of the question.
Night was falling now across the winding trail which passed along the
valley lands and over the shoulders of the mountains. It was wild
country even yet, but beautiful as it lay in the light of the fading
day. Sim Gage had no time to note the play of light or shadow on the
hills. He rode. It was past midnight when he swung off his now meek
and wet-sided horse, cast down the bridle rein, and went in search of
Doctor Barnes.
The latter met his caller with the point of an electric torch at the
door.
"Oh, it's you, Gage?" said he. "Come in."
Sim Gage entered and seated himself, his hurt leg stiffly before him on
the floor. Briefly as he could, he told the reason of his errand and
the reason for his delay.
"Leave your horse here," said Doctor Barnes, already preparing for his
journey. "We'll take my car."
A half hour later the two were again en route. The head light of the
car, swinging from side to side around the steep and unprotected curves
of the mountain slopes, showed the rude passageway, in places risky
enough at that hour and that speed. At that latitude the summer nights
are short, and their journey was unfinished when the gray dawn began to
turn to pink upon the mountain tops. In the clearer light Doctor
Barnes saw something which caused him to pull up.
"There's the wire break," he exclaimed. "Look here."
They both left the car and approached the nearest pole. It bore the
fresh marks of a linesman's climbing irons. "Professional work. And
that's a cut with nippers--not a break. Keep away from the free end,
Gage's, it's probably a live wire. You're right. That gang is back in
here again. But tell me, what's that?--Do you smell anything?"
Sim Gage nodded. "Smoke," said he.
As the light grew stronger so that the far slopes of the mountain were
visible they saw the proof. Smoke, a heavy, rolling blanket of smoke,
lay high over the farther summits.
"Damn their souls!" said Doctor Barnes fervently and tersely. "They've
set the forest afire again."
A half hour later they swung into the ranch yard. The call of "Halt!"
came, backed by a tousled head nestled against the stock of a
Springfield which protruded from a window.
"Advance, friend!" exclaimed the corporal when he got his countersign,
and a moment later met his Major in the dooryard. They were joined by
Wid Gardner, who rose from the place where he had sat, rifle across his
knees, most of the night crouched against the end of the cabin.
"We've got him in here," said the Sergeant, leading the way to the
barracks door.
"Got what?"
"The one we shot. He's deader'n hell, but I thought you might like to
look through his pockets."
Wid Gardner unemotionally accompanied them into the room of the
barracks where, on a couple of boards, between two carpenter's
trestles, lay a long figure covered with a blanket.
"Scout Gardner got him last night about nine o'clock, sir," said the
Sergeant; "out in the lane behind the gate. Called to him to halt, and
he didn't stop."
"He didn't have no chanct to halt," said Wid Gardner calmly. "I
hollered that to him after I had dropped him. He wasn't the one I was
after, neither."
"The rest of them got away," went on the Sergeant. "We heard the shot
when we was just coming down the road. We come on to the head of the
lane and heard brush breaking. They was trying to get to their car,
down a little further. They whirled and came back through us in the
car, and we shot into them, but I don't know if we got any of 'em, the
horses was pitching so. They went back up the trail, or maybe up on
the Reserve road--I dunno. We come on down here to get orders."
Doctor Barnes slipped back the blanket. There was revealed the thin,
aquiline face of a man dressed in rather dandified clothing. There
were rings on both hands, a rather showy but valuable stickpin in the
scarf. The hands were not those of a laboring man. At the bridge of
the nose a faint depression showed that he wore eyeglasses. His
complexion was blond, and his eyes, open now only to a slit, might also
have been light in color. There was on his features, indefinably
foreign, the stamp not to say of birth so much as of education. The
man apparently once was used to easy if not gentle ways of life.
"Tell me how it happened," said Doctor Barnes to Gardner, who stood by.
"She can tell you more'n I can," said Wid--"Miss Squires. This ain't
the feller. The real one that I want she used to work with--he was
foreman back East in the shops where she worked. His name was
Dorenwald. She promised to meet him out there at sun-up this morning.
I went out last night to see what I could see. I found this feller.
He was coming down the trail. I waited till he got clost enough--about
forty yard. Onct was enough."
"How many cars did you see?" Doctor Barnes demanded of the sergeant.
"One."
"Gage says he saw two."
"The other may be back in the hills yet."
"Well, here's work! Tell me, Gardner, is there any way those people
can get out on the other side of the Reserve, down the West Fork? You
know the backwater above the little dam, two miles below the big dam?
Most of the timber we intended to float out that way, to the mill at
the little dam. They may have gone on across in there.
"Now, Corporal, leave McQueston and two men here. I want the rest of
you with me--we'll go up in the hills with my car. McQueston, take one
man and go and fix the break in the line three miles down the road.
We'll either come back in my car or send it back to you somehow. The
fire may block us. Get your men ready. March!"
It was anxious enough waiting at the ranch, but the wait might have
been longer. It was not yet eleven o'clock when the two women heard
the hum of the heavily loaded car and saw the men climb out again. It
was Doctor Barnes who came to the cabin.
"It's no use," said he. "The fire has cut off the Tepee Creek trail.
The best fir is gone, and there's no hope of stopping the fire now. If
they took their car up, they must have left it in there--some of them
went back up the trail. They may be over on the West Fork; and if
they've got there, they've got a shorter route down to the dams than
around by the Valley road."
He turned now to Mary Gage more specifically. "We've got a company of
troops down there to guard the big dam. It's safer there than it is
here. What do you think of going back now, to stop until this row is
over? We can take better care of you there than we can here."
She sat for a moment, her face turned away.
"Will you come?" he repeated.
"One guess!" said Annie Squires for her. "In a minute!" And by that
time she was throwing things into the valises.