headquarters camp. That was because Crawford, the concrete bridge
builder, was at the yard platform to climb to the cab with a bit of
news. Under new orders, inspectors had been placed at the three bridges
in Crawford’s section, and they were in relays so that there was hardly
an hour in the three shifts when one of them was not on duty. Crawford
was looking for Plegg, but when he found that the first assistant was
unattainable, he unburdened himself to the chief, setting forth the
hard conditions.
“Well?” said David, while the engine halted.
“It’s--er--making it sort of difficult for me,” said Crawford,
unwilling to go much deeper into the matter in the face of Plegg’s
inhibition forbidding detail talk with the boss.
“Difficult? How?”
“Why--er--there can’t very well be two bosses on a job, and when I give
an order and Strayer countermands it----”
“Do you mean to say that Strayer is trying to boss your job?”
“It amounts to that.”
David turned to the engine-driver.
“Run us down to bridge Number Two, Pete,” he ordered, and the heavy
construction locomotive lumbered down through the yard and out over the
switches.
The run was a short one, and at the bridge approach David and his
assistant got off to walk over to the new structure. The bridge plant
was well lighted by carbide gas flares, and prominent on the form
stagings was the big figure of Strayer, the railroad inspector. David
Vallory called up to him.
“Come down here a minute, Strayer; I want to talk to you,” he said.
When the railroad engineer joined him he led the way to the cement
platform, where the noise of the mixer was less insistent.
“What’s the idea, Strayer?” he demanded.
The big man did not affect to misunderstand.
“You know perfectly well, Vallory; or if you don’t, you ought to.
Crawford’s scamping these bridges shamelessly. He is scanting the
‘mix’, and also the reinforcing steel. I’ve caught him at it.”
“Why didn’t you complain to me?”
“What the devil good would it do? I’ve yelled at you people for
everything, and you patch one hole only to leave another.”
“I suppose you have your orders to come here and take the direction of
the work out of the hands of my man?”
“I have orders to see that you don’t pull any more bones on us, if I
have to eat and sleep on the job to prevent it. And I’m like little old
Casabianca, Vallory; I obey orders.”
“Who gave you the orders?”
“Lushing: he’s back now.”
“Don’t you know that he’s a damned crook, himself, Strayer?”
The square-jawed, bearded inspector laughed grimly.
“Set a thief to catch a thief, eh?” he grinned. “Between us two,
Vallory, I haven’t much use for Lushing; none at all, personally. But
he’s the boss.”
“Do you know where he is now?”
“Yes; he’s over at Powder Can: makes his headquarters in the Hophra
House.”
“I take it you’re not particularly struck on standing over Crawford
this way, day and night, are you?”
“Well, if you put it that way, I’m not. Crawford’s a good boy, and he
means well. See here, Vallory, if you’ll give me your word that you’ll
make the boy live up to the specifications on these bridges, I’ll do
what I can to keep Lushing off of you. Is it a go?”
David was thoughtful for a moment, and then he said: “I’ll do better
than that, Strayer. I’m needing another engineer to handle the tunnel
approach work on the other side of the mountain. I know what the
railroad company is paying you, and I’ll better the salary. This is
straight goods. What do you say?”
The big man shook his head slowly.
“You oughtn’t to make a break like that at me, Vallory, and you know
it. It’s too bald, and--well, dog-gone it all, I thought better of
you!” The inspector turned and walked away with his head down and his
hands in his pockets. David Vallory waited until he had passed the
corner of the cement house, and then, at a signal from Crawford, he
sprang upon the bridge stagings.
“We’re up against it,” said the bridge builder hastily; “that’s why I
went after Plegg. We’ve reached the point where we’ve got to place the
top span reinforcement, _and I haven’t got the steel_!”
“How is that?”
“It’s this way,” Crawford explained, still more hurriedly. “When we
begun on this job, Plegg and I figured the plans over and he--that is,
we concluded that it was simply wasting steel to put it in as thickly
as the plans called for--why, the factor of safety was the whole
cheese! So we agreed to cut the steel down. If you can’t get Strayer
away from here for an hour or so, I’ll have to stop the run and take
the risk of the concrete’s setting in the forms while we’re getting
some more steel down here.”
A month earlier David Vallory would have known what to say, and would
have said it, without garnishings. But now he merely nodded and walked
down the runway and across to the cement house where Strayer was still
pacing back and forth.
“This situation needs threshing out from the bottom up, Strayer,” he
began crisply. “Suppose you get on the engine and go up to headquarters
with me where we can fight it out to some sort of a conclusion. I’m
tired of this business of scrapping with you fellows all the time.”
“I’m sorry, Vallory, but Lushing is the man you’ll have to talk to.”
“You’re his second, aren’t you?”
“Yes, but you know the rules; I don’t have anything to say when he is
on the job.”
“Well, he isn’t on the job. He had a racket with a man over in Powder
Can a couple of hours ago, and they tell me he’s knocked out for the
present. That puts it up to you, again, doesn’t it?”
“Why, yes; I guess so--if he’s--how badly is he hurt?”
“I don’t know; pulled a gun on a man, and the man jumped him.”
Strayer shook his head.
“That’s bad; neither Mr. Ford nor Mr. Maxwell will stand for anything
like that. Just between us two, Vallory, Lushing has always spent a lot
of time in Powder Can--did it while he was with your people.”
“I know. But now that he’s out of it, temporarily, at least, why can’t
we get together and straighten up some of the kinks? You know how
exasperating it is for these fellows of mine to have somebody standing
over them with a club all the time. Come on up to camp with me and
we’ll hammer it out.”
Crawford had stopped his concrete mixer because he had to; no more
concrete could be poured until the steel bars were placed. The crisis
had come, and while Strayer hesitated, David Vallory, the new David,
took the deep-water plunge into the stagnant pool of open trickery.
Crawford’s men were bringing the scanted supply of steel bars, getting
in each other’s way to kill time. David stepped over to the steel pile
and counted the pieces.
“Say, Crawford!” he called out; “you haven’t got enough steel here!
Heavens and earth, man! don’t you know any better than to run right up
against a shortage like this?”
Crawford gasped twice, and then he understood. “Ding bust it, Mr.
Vallory, I ought to be fired! Mr. Strayer, here, has been keeping me so
busy that I haven’t looked at that steel pile. What are we going to do?”
“Do? You’ll just have to place what you’ve got, and hold your mixer
until we can get some more down to you. I’ll go back to the yard and
see that it’s hustled out. Come on, Strayer; let’s take a ride.”
The crisis was past and the big inspector climbed on the engine with
the Grillage chief.
“I’ll take an hour off with you, Vallory, after I’ve seen that steel
put on the car,” he laughed; and at a sign from David, the throttle was
opened and the locomotive clattered away up the grade.
XXII
At Bridge Three
After the dash in the card-room at Black Jack Dargin’s place, and its
immediate and transforming consequences, Silas Plegg, shrewd observer
and most efficient of assistants, looked confidently for trouble, and
went about prepared to stand by his chief when the trouble should
materialize. It was during Lushing’s administration as the Grillage
chief of construction that the Powder Can kennels had begun to
flourish, and it had been broadly hinted that he had been a sharer in
the profits. Rumor had it that he was still hand-in-glove with the
kennel-keepers; and with such a lawless contingent at his command, the
ex-chief became--at least in Plegg’s estimation--a man whose enmity was
to be feared.
Besides keeping a brotherly watch over his chief, Plegg contrived to
keep in touch with the Powder Can end of things. Lushing, he learned,
had been laid up for a matter of two or three days as the result of the
brief card-room battle, and he was still making his headquarters in
the Powder Can tavern. Thus far he had not been visible on the work,
though from the increased activities of his inspectors it was apparent
that he was directing a searching campaign of investigation.
Vallory’s men were required to dig try-holes beside foundation walls of
abutments and retaining masonry to prove that the foundations went deep
enough. Test-borings were made in the fills to ascertain their density.
The slopes of the hill cuttings were surveyed and re-surveyed to make
sure that the angles agreed with the map notes. In one of the bridges,
Strayer--this time with apologies to David Vallory--had holes drilled
to verify the placing of the reinforcing steel. In uncounted ways the
investigation was pushed; to the discomfort of all concerned--and also
to the sharpening of the wits of those who had something to conceal.
Throughout this interval David Vallory gave an excellent imitation of
a man hard at work, riding the line incessantly, encouraging, driving;
plotting with his subordinates to outwit the inspectors, and keeping
a vengeful eye out for Lushing. In due time it began to be whispered
about that “the little big boss,” as he was affectionately called by
the rank and file, not only “had it in” for Lushing, but that he had
fairly bluffed the chief inspector off the job. It was known that he
went armed; and on at least one occasion when he disappeared for an
hour or so in Little Creek gorge, there was some one to report that he
had spent the time practicing at a target with a “forty-five.”
Naturally, with so many working crises thickly bestudding the days,
David had little time to climb the hill to the Inn; or, if he had the
time, he seldom took it. Duty visits he paid, indeed, to his father and
sister in the tree-sheltered cottage; but these were brief--crabbedly
brief when Oswald chanced to be one of the cottage’s inmates. On all of
these excursions he avoided the hotel, with morose offishness in the
saddle. None the less, he now and then got a glimpse of Virginia--and
chanced to see her always in company with one or both of the men upon
whom the desirable moon--unattainable by those who cry for it--seemed
now to be shining its brightest.
It was after one of these brief evening visits to the cottage under the
pines that David found Plegg waiting for him at the foot of the ridge.
“Just to make sure you shouldn’t be taken off your guard,” said the
first assistant; and without further preface: “Lushing is on his way
up here with a bunch of men sworn in as deputies. Crawford has just
’phoned in from bridge Number One.”
“What’s the object?”
“Nobody seems to know, but I have a guess coming. Burford, the new
transit-man working with Strayer, gave me a hint. He’s a soak, and
yesterday, after he’d been hitting his pocket-bottle pretty freely, he
let out a word or two about something sensational which was to follow
this epidemic of inspection we’ve been having.”
“Didn’t describe it, did he?”
“No; he was so plainly ‘lit up’ that I didn’t pay much attention to
him. But since, I’ve been piecing the odd bits together. This dead
set that the railroad force has been making at us can have only one
object--to get evidence of some sort against us that will hold in
court.”
“Well?”
“I shouldn’t wonder if they have the evidence.”
“The tunnel?”
“No; that is safe, as yet, I believe. It is in the bridges. There is
a certain specified penalty for jerry-building bridges that are to be
used for human traffic, you know.”
“Bosh!” said David. “These little two-by-four spans we are throwing
over the Powder River would carry anything you could pile upon them;
you know they would, Plegg. And they’d do it if they didn’t have a
single bar of steel in them.”
“Sure!” said Plegg, with a dry smile. “But we’d better be getting over
to the car and the ’phone. If those temporary sheriffs are coming up
here, we ought to know it.”
“Lushing won’t come,” David averred, as they walked together toward the
bunk car office.
“Think not?”
“He’d better not.”
The service telephone was buzzing when they entered the car. Plegg
picked up the receiver and held it to his ear. After a time, he said,
“It’s Crawford again. He is at Number Three bridge now. The Lushing
crowd had a break-down with their gasoline push-car, and Tommy skipped
across the hill in the hair-pin curve and got to Number Three ahead of
them. He says he talked to one of the men who came back to Number One
to borrow a monkey-wrench. The man was foolish enough to let the cat
out of the bag and brag about it. The bunch is coming up here to arrest
you and Mr. Grillage. Crawford wants to know what he shall do with the
few minutes he has at his disposal.”
David Vallory took three seconds for reflection.
“Tell him he has a brain of his own, and now is a good time to use it,”
he said shortly. “And you may add that we’d like to buy a little delay
if there is any in the market.”
Plegg repeated the message, rounding it out with a demand for a quick
report as to results. The waiting interval was remarkably short. When
the ’phone buzzed again, Plegg answered with a single word. “Shoot!” he
said, and David, sitting in the opposite bunk, could hear the minified
repetition of the reporting voice without being able to distinguish the
words. Crawford was brief, as befitted a man of action; and when Plegg
returned the receiver to its hook he was smiling grimly.
“You’ll have to hand it to Tommy for being able to make a hurry use of
what little brain he may have,” he commented. “He slipped a stick of
dynamite into the stone bin at Number Three, and now he says there are
about forty tons of crushed rock spilled on the track for the gasoline
car to climb over. And the car is not yet in sight.”
“That is better,” said David coolly. “They’ll get around the
obstruction, no doubt, but it will hold them for a little while. Now
for our part of it. You once remarked that the law doesn’t reach this
far from the nearest court-house. We don’t know, officially, that these
men are coming as officers, and we’ll act upon that ignorance. You go
over to the bunk shacks and turn out a handful of Brady’s day-shift
men. Tell them to bring pick-handles. Then go to the light plant and
tell the night engineer to listen for a pistol shot. If he hears one,
he is to pull the switch on the yard circuit and leave us in the dark.”
“So that the Lushing crowd won’t be able to identify any of us?”
“So that we shan’t be able to identify them--as officers.”
“Once more I’m apologizing to you,” said Plegg, in mild irony.
“Anything else?”
“Nothing, except that you are to pick your men, and let it be
understood that the raiders are after Mr. Grillage and me. If you pick
the right men, they’ll fight for that. I’ll run over to the _Athenia_
and get Mr. Grillage out of the way. I don’t want to have him mixed up
in this, even by implication.”
As Plegg went one way, David went the other, hurrying across to
the private Pullman, which he knew was occupied because it was
lighted. When he pushed through the vestibule swing-door he found the
contractor-king poring over an estimate sheet. Taken for an instant
off his guard, the big man looked haggard and care-worn. It was this
that made David begin with a sober protest.
“You put in too many hours down here, Mr. Grillage,” he said, much as
he might have said it to his own father. “How about that fishing trip
you were going to take with Dad?”
“We’re going, pretty soon, now,” was the gruff reply. And then: “David,
you’re right; I’ve got too darned many irons in the fire, and some of
’em get too hot, and some of ’em freeze. Hurry up and get through with
this Short Line crucifixion, so you can take hold and blow some of the
other bellowses for me.”
“‘Crucifixion’ is right!” said David, with a workmanlike scowl. “I
haven’t worried you much about the job lately, but the railroad
people--with Lushing egging them on, of course--have been mighty active
for the past few days--perniciously active, I’d say. I didn’t know what
was up until just now; though I’ve been ready for anything. It seems
they’ve been trying to find a peg upon which to hang a legal fight, and
they think they’ve found it--just what sort of a peg, I don’t know.”
“Legal, you say; do you mean criminal?”
“Plegg thinks it may be; based on alleged jerry-work on the bridges,
or something of that sort. Anyhow, Lushing is on his way up here with a
gang of subsidized deputies, and Crawford telephones that the object of
the raid is to arrest you and me.”
“Huh!” grunted the giant, straightening himself in his chair. “Going to
try that, is he?”
“So Crawford says. I came to ask you to go up to the hotel and let me
handle it.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Some few days ago I met Lushing and we had a--er--well, a little
disagreement, you might call it. He----”
“I heard about it,” interrupted the boss of bosses, with a satisfied
grin. “You beat him up and warned him to stay off the job if he wanted
to keep his hide whole. I owe you something for that, David; it did me
a whole lot of good. But go on.”
“Plegg’s getting a few of Brady’s Irishmen together, and we’ll take
care of these raiders. We don’t know, in any legal way, that they are
deputies, and we shall act accordingly. What I need is to get you out
of it; so far out that you won’t know anything about it, if any one
should ask you after the fact.”
Eben Grillage gripped the edge of his desk with both hands and pulled
himself out of his chair. David marked the forced muscle-strain that
went into the effort, and immediately saw a curious change come over
the massive face with its staring eyes and hanging, dewlap jaws.
“Run away from a fight, David? I guess--it would be the--first----”
David leaped, and was in time to ease the big body back into the
swing-chair before it could crumple and fall. For a few seconds Eben
Grillage sat motionless, purple-faced and gasping. Then he reached into
a desk drawer, found some tablets in a druggist’s box, and swallowed
one. The effect was almost instantaneous.
“It’s all right, now, David,” he mumbled, a bit thickly; “just a little
spell. But it’s telling me that my fighting days are over, I guess.
Lucky I’ve got you, my boy. Stick me up on the hill path, and I’ll keep
out of your way and give you a free hand.”
David did more than was required. Precious as time might be, he went
all the way to the Inn with his charge, and at the leave-taking laid
filial commands upon the man whose right to command him he had never
questioned.
“This settles it, Mr. Grillage,” he protested warmly. “To-morrow you’ll
take Dad and your fishing tackle and get out of here--go away and stay
away until we get this railroad snarl straightened out. Go on in, now,
and go to bed. Plegg and I will do the needful.”
With this parting injunction he fled down the ridge path and took
command of the little group of huskies that Plegg had assembled beside
the bunk car.
“Any more news?” he demanded; and Plegg answered.
“Another ’phone from Crawford. He is blockaded in the Number Three
bridge office shack, but he got a bit of talk through before they cut
his ’phone wire. Lushing has taken our night shift off the bridge and
set it at work shoveling the crushed stone off the track. Tommy says
they will be able to get through with their gas-car within the next few
minutes.”
“Good. We won’t wait for them,” said David quickly. “Get that engine up
there at the coal chute, and couple an empty flat-car ahead of it, and
another behind it. Hurry!”
The order was carried out briskly, and when the oddly made up train
slowed to a stand beside the bunk car, the pick-handle squad climbed
upon the rearward car, and the chief and his first assistant sprang
into the engine cab. “Down the line!” was David’s order to the
engine-driver, and the train moved off, gathering such momentum as the
roughly surfaced construction track permitted.
In the make-up of the train the engine was backing, with an empty
flat-car for its pilot. Being a construction machine, the locomotive
had a headlight at either end. With the yard switches left behind,
David reached up, uncoiled the short signal-bell cord, and shouted into
the ear of the big Irishman at the throttle. “Listen, Callahan: I’m
going up on the coal to keep a lookout and flag for you. If I give you
one bell, clamp your brakes and make an emergency stop; if I give you
two bells, let her have all she will take. Understand?”
The Irishman nodded; and David, with Plegg at his heels, climbed over
the coal to a lookout position on the rear end of the tender. By
this time the scenery, or so much of it as the starlight revealed,
was unreeling itself rapidly on either hand, and in the beam of the
tender-carried headlight the straight-away stretches of the track
rushed up in quick succession to be shot to the rear under the roaring
wheels. “Lord!” yelped Plegg; “if we should meet ’em on a curve!----”
but David Vallory made no reply. He was gripping the bell-cord and
staring steadily down the track ahead, following the double line of
rails to the farthest reach of the spreading cone of light.
As it chanced, the meeting point with the gasoline-driven push-car was
not on a curve. On the mile-long tangent which marked the approach to
bridge Number Three the converging lines of the rails in the distance
met in a dark blot; a moving blot that shot quickly into the glare of
the headlight. Plegg saw a series of black dots tumbling grotesquely
from the blot to right and left, heard a sharp double clang of the
signal in the cab behind him, and felt the sudden lurch of the tender
as the engine’s throttle was opened. “_Duck!_” was the command shouted
in his ear, and the next instant there was a crash and the air was
filled with flying wreckage.
Luckily, no wheel of the attacking train was derailed, and a minute
or so later, Callahan, in obedience to a signal from his chief, was
braking the heavy “mogul” to a stop beside Crawford’s dynamited rock
pile. The place was light with flares, the concrete-pouring on the
bridge had been resumed, and Crawford came down the staging runway with
a broad grin on his boyish face.
“I saw a little of it from the far end of the staging,” he chuckled.
“How many of ’em did you get?”
“Not any of them, I hope,” said David Vallory soberly, as he swung
down from the engine step. “It was meant for an object-lesson--not a
murder. Now talk fast, Crawford: how many of them are there, and who
are they?--besides Lushing?”
“Seven in all, besides the boss-devil; and they looked to me like
Brewster toughs, or hold-up men, or something of that sort.”
“Armed?”
“Sure!--one of ’em ran me off the staging with a gun.”
“Brewster toughs, you say?--are you sure they are not Powder Can
toughs? Lushing would have to take them to Brewster to have them sworn
in as deputies--which would account for their coming from down the
line.”
“By George--that’s so! I did see a bunch of plug-uglies going down on
the stub train yesterday, come to think of it.”
David Vallory turned upon Plegg. “There you are,” he said. And then to
Crawford: “We are going back to headquarters now, and maybe they’ll
give us a scrap as we go by, and maybe they won’t. If they don’t show
up for us, they may come down here and make trouble for you. How about
that?”
“I’ll take my chances,” returned the bridge expert cheerfully. “I have
my old pump-gun now; it was in the office shack, and I didn’t have
sense enough to go and get it before they came up and fell on me. I’ll
stand ’em off, all right, if they try to stop the job again.”
“You said one of them came to you at Number One to borrow a
monkey-wrench: what did he say?”
“He was just joshing me a few lines while I was looking for the wrench;
said I wouldn’t have any bosses to-morrow, because they’d both be in
jail. I asked him who he meant by ‘both’, and he said, ‘the big one and
the little one.’ I took that to mean you and Mr. Grillage.”
“You probably guessed right; but the man was a liar. We are not going
to jail--any of us. And before I forget it: you’ve done a good job
to-night, Crawford, and I shall see to it that you get credit where it
will do you the most good.”