cheerful bridge builder; then, as his chief was turning to climb into
Callahan’s cab: “Oh, say--I meant to ask you: have you seen Lushing
since you--er--since he went into retirement a few days ago? He’s a
plumb sight! You broke his nose; turned it around so it points east
when he’s going north. Gee! but he looks fierce!”
“It ought to have been his neck,” was the brittle rejoinder, and then
the double-ended train pulled out for the return.
There was no demonstration at the point where the abandoned gasoline
car had been demolished, though David had the train stopped and got off
with his pick-handle squad to beat the covers. The straight piece of
track was on the river bank, with a wooded hill on the left from which
a few determined snipers might have wrought havoc with the beaters, but
no man was found and no shot was fired.
Plegg spoke of the probabilities as the train proceeded up the valley.
“We are through with them for to-night,” was his prediction. “It is
eight miles to Powder Can or the Gap, and only four to Agorda. They’ll
go east instead of west.”
“Yes,” David agreed; “now that they know they can’t bluff us. That is
what I meant to do; turn the bluff the other way around. I guess we did
it.”
The first assistant, isolated in his seat on the fireman’s box,
held his peace until the train came to the end of its run in the
headquarters yard. But on the way over to the bunk car with his chief,
he had a word to add, and added it.
“Now that Crawford has dumped the wheel-barrow and spilled all the
garden truck, I can speak of a thing we’ve all known since the story of
your manhandling of Lushing drifted into camp. Lushing is peacock-vain;
no stage-door johnnie was ever more so. Even when he was here on the
work he kept his mustaches curled, his beard trimmed to a hair, and
his clothes looking as if he had just stepped out of a tailor’s shop.
You’ve spoiled his beauty for all time, and he’d draw and quarter you
for it if he could.”
“As a matter of fact, I hit him only once; it was all the chance I had
before his gun went off. But I don’t care what I’ve done to his face,
Plegg. As I remarked to Crawford, I’m only sorry I didn’t break his
neck.”
“Perhaps it would have been safer if you had,” was the quiet
suggestion. “As it is, he’ll never forgive you, and he won’t be
satisfied with any light revenge. Which brings on more talk. I have
a notion that this ‘arrest’ business to-night was pure bunk. I don’t
doubt that Lushing had gone through all the forms and had sworn out
the warrants. Doubtless, he was going to make a bluff at serving them.
But, Vallory, I’ll bet a little round gold dollar with a hole in it
that the real play was to make you put up a fight so that you might
righteously be killed in resisting an officer of the law.”
Again David said, “I don’t care,” and Plegg went on calmly. “If that
is the play, we’ll have to take measures accordingly. You mustn’t run
around on the job unless I’m with you. If you will pardon me for saying
it, you are not quite quick enough on the draw, as yet; and you haven’t
learned to hold the other fellow’s eye while you’re doing it. That is
about all the difference there is between living and dying when it
comes to a show-down, you know.”
They had boarded the bunk car and were preparing to turn in. David
looked up from the boot-unlacing and his eyes were bloodshot.
“Damn your grannying!” he flared out savagely. “When I need a wet nurse
I’ll advertise for one!”
A few seconds later he looked up again, to find Plegg chuckling softly.
“What the devil are you laughing at?” he snapped.
The chuckle expanded into the first assistant’s slow, half-cynical
smile. “And once, not so many months ago, I was idiotic enough to
cherish the notion that you might be too good!” he exclaimed, in mock
self-derision. And with that, he rolled himself in his blankets and
turned his face from the light.
XXIII
The Killer
On the morning following the raid which had failed to connect,
Eben Grillage carried out his promise to side-track business and
go a-fishing. David made the necessary arrangements, stocking the
_Athenia’s_ larder with provisions from the camp commissary, borrowing
a tent and camping outfit from one of the grade subcontractors, and
otherwise bestirring himself to expedite the departure of the anglers.
With the _Athenia_ out of its berth and safely on its way to some
unannounced destination in the upper Timanyoni, a handicap of a sort
was removed; a handicap and a restriction. As David phrased it for
Plegg, he had gotten two non-combatants out of the range of the guns
and the field was now clear for whatever battle of reprisals might be
threatening.
Of the restriction removed he said nothing to Plegg or to any one.
There be certain secret curtains of the heart which are not to be
drawn aside for alien eyes to view what may lie behind them; and
as yet, not even to himself would David admit that he was no longer
able to see eye to eye with his father. None the less, it was with a
distinct sense of relief that he waved good-by to the pair standing on
the rear platform of the private Pullman as Callahan’s “mogul” snaked
it out through the yard to make a flying-switch coupling with the
outgoing stub train.
It was on this same morning that Plegg reported for the third time his
inability to find the man Backus, and the report was made while he and
Vallory were climbing the mountain on their way to make an inspecting
tour of the western slope activities, including the tunnel drift which
was slowly gnawing its way to meet Regnier’s bore from the eastward.
“I’ve had a dozen ‘trusties’ looking for him and they have combed
Powder Can and every other mining-camp in a ten-mile radius,” was
Plegg’s summing-up of the search. “He has disappeared as completely as
if the earth had swallowed him.”
“If we could only be sure that the earth _has_ swallowed him,” growled
the one for whom the restrictions had been removed. “But there is
another fork to that road, Plegg. Maybe Lushing has him hidden out
somewhere. Had you thought of that?”
“Yes; that seemed to be the most reasonable explanation of his
disappearance. But in a very short time I discovered that Lushing was
also looking for him.”
“You are sure of that?”
“Quite sure. I have it from a number of different sources. He has even
gone so far as to offer a reward--not publicly, of course, but the word
has been passed among our workmen.”
“Which means that Lushing knows Backus has something to sell. We
mustn’t let Lushing beat us to it, Plegg. You haven’t stopped your
investigating machine, have you?”
“Not at all. I have even gone Lushing one better and raised his bet on
the reward--though you didn’t authorize me to spend any real money.”
“You did right; and I’ll see to it that the money is forthcoming when
it is needed.”
Here the matter rested for the time, and the two men spent the entire
day on the western slope, tramping over the work on the desert cut-off,
visiting the sub-headquarters in Lost Creek basin, and taking the lost
motion out of the job wherever it was found. Cartwright, the sub-chief
in general charge of the over-mountain work, was making good progress,
though he, too, complained bitterly of the obstructing activities of
the railroad inspection staff. Lushing, as it appeared, had not yet
been over the range since his return from the East, and Cartwright,
a nervous little man with a harsh voice and a choleric eye, was
explosively profane when he was told the story of the raid that failed.
“Some of us will have to ‘get’ that beggar yet, Vallory!” he rasped.
“It’s gone a long way past any business vigilance on his part; he is
simply a vindictive scoundrel, and he is making a personal fight upon
the entire Grillage outfit. If he shows up on this side of the range,
he’d better bring a bodyguard with him; that’s all I’ve got to say!”
On the return from the desert inspection, David and his first assistant
had supper at Cartwright’s headquarters on Lost Creek, and afterward
crossed the mountain by starlight. Plegg dropped out of the procession
of two on the descent to the eastern tunnel entrance, ostensibly to see
how Regnier was getting along, but really because the dangerous roof
drew him with a mysterious fascination that was always making him go
out of his way to take another look at it.
David Vallory kept on down the mountain alone, and in due time, with a
number of brief pauses at the various working points, tramped into the
Powder Gap yard at an hour not far from midnight. Learning from the
yard boss that there had been no new developments during the day, he
went across to the bunk car and let himself in. There was a fragrance
of good tobacco smoke in the darkened interior, and as he struck a
light he was wondering what member of the staff had been making free
with Plegg’s carefully hoarded store of “perfectos.”
It was not until after he had snapped the lamp chimney into place,
and was turning the wick to its proper height, that he had a shock
that sent his hand quickly to the grip of the weapon slung by its
shoulder-strap under his coat. Sitting quietly on Plegg’s bunk, and
still smoking the cigar which had perfumed the stuffy interior of the
little car, was the swarthy, cold-eyed master gambler of Powder Can.
Dargin was the first to break the surcharged silence.
“Been waiting for you,” he said shortly; and then: “You needn’t be
feelin’ for that gun. If I’d wanted to croak you, you’d ’ve been dead a
whole half-minute ago.”
David Vallory sat down on his own bed, the shock spasm subsiding a
little.
“I hope I haven’t kept you waiting very long,” he ventured, not too
inhospitably.
“About a half-hour. But I had some smokes in my poke, and the waiting
didn’t cut any ice.”
Hastily David passed in review the various reasons why Dargin should
come thus to lie in wait for him. There were two and possibly three;
all of them warlike if Dargin chose to hold them so: the attempt to
abate the man-traps, the attempt to persuade Judith Fallon to leave
Powder Can, and for the third, the assumption that Dargin was in a
partnership of some sort with Lushing. In the new recklessness which
had come to him with the other transformations, he attacked the reasons
boldly in their order.
“You’ve got a kick coming, Dargin, if you want to make it,” he began
brusquely. “I’m out to wipe your Powder Can speak-easys off the map if
I can swing the big stick hard enough.”
“I was onto that a month ago,” was the growling answer. Then, after
a deep pull at the fragrant cigar: “I reckon they ought to be wiped
out--though that ain’t sayin’ that I wouldn’t take a crack at the man
that did it when it came to a show-down.”
“If you think the place ought to be cleaned up, why don’t you do it
yourself?” David shot back.
“Huh! Maybe I will, some day--if you don’t beat me to it.”
“But if I should beat you to it, I suppose you’ll come after me with a
gun. Is that the way of it?”
The shadow that flitted across the swarthy face of the man on the
opposite bunk was scarcely a smile, though possibly it was intended for
one.
“I might; but it’d be a heap like takin’ candy from a baby. You ain’t
been carryin’ a gun long enough to get the hang of it. You’re a whole
lot too slow to make it interestin’.”
“All right,” said David; “we’ll pass that up. The next thing may get
a bit nearer to you. Judith Fallon has doubtless told you that she
knew me back East, and that we went to school together and were good
friends?”
“Uh-huh.”
“But perhaps she hasn’t told you that I have tried to persuade her to
break off with you and leave Powder Can?”
“No; she ain’t told me anything like that.”
“Well, it’s so; I did it.”
“What for?”
“For common decency’s sake. If you admit that the mining-camp dives
ought to be wiped out, you’ll also have to admit the facts concerning
that girl. I know you’ve been befriending her honestly--the only
mistake you made was in not putting a bullet through Tom Judson before
you turned him loose--but you must know that a man of your stripe can’t
befriend any woman without making her pay the penalty.”
“A man of my stripe, eh?--well, I reckon that’s so, too.”
“Then you are not here to pick a quarrel with me over Judith?”
“Hell, no; not in a thousand years!”
“Then what did you come for? Did Lushing send you?”
“Jim Lushing? He can’t send me nowhere. He ain’t got the insides.”
David Vallory had reached the end of his resources. There was
apparently nothing for it but to wait patiently until Dargin was ready
to disclose the object of the midnight visit; and he seemed to be in no
manner of haste.
David unbuckled his uncomfortable weapon and tossed it aside. “I can’t
think of any other grouch that you might have,” he said, with the
nearest approach to his former good-natured smile that he had been able
to achieve since the moon of Virginia Grillage’s favor had gone into
eclipse for him. Then he dug into Plegg’s locker and brought out the
first assistant’s cherished box of “perfectos.” “Your smoke is about
used up; have another,” he offered.
Dargin helped himself, and took the lighted match that David held out
to him. Then the flitting shadow that passed for a smile began at the
corners of the hard-bitted mouth and crept slowly up to the murderous
eyes.
“I’m stuck on your nerve, Dave Vallory--damned if I ain’t!” he grated.
“If you could only draw a fraction quicker and shoot as plumb straight
as you can talk, you’d be some man. Now I’ll spill what I mogged over
here to spill: ever hear of a duck named Backus?--Simmy Backus?”
“Yes,” said David.
“Well, he used to pipe off the easy marks for me--same time he was
working for you-all.”
“I know.”
“You lose him, and you’ve been lookin’ for him, ain’t you?”
“Right, again.”
“Uh-huh; I thought so. Know why you couldn’t find him?”
“No.”
“Well, I can tell you, I reckon. I had him hid out.”
“Hid out? locked up, you mean? Why did you do that?”
“Because he’s a worm. He was aimin’ to give you the double-cross: tried
to sell me a chance on it. I didn’t hate you-all bad enough to let him
run loose; see?”
“Is that straight, Dargin?”
“Straight as a string.”
“But they tell me that you and Lushing have a stand-in together; and
Lushing hates us heartily enough.”
“Maybe so; and maybe we have got a stand-in. But that ain’t no skin
off’m this other thing. Backus is a worm.”
“I’m glad you don’t like worms. I have a feeling that way, myself.”
The master gambler got up and pushed his soft hat back to allow the
forelock of Indian-black hair to fall over his brow. As he was moving
to the door, he said, “Reckon that’s about all I had to spill--all but
one little thing: that damn’ worm’s done dug him a hole and crawled
out. Thought maybe you’d like to know. So long,” and he was gone.
For a long time after he was left alone, David Vallory sat on the
edge of his bed, buried in thought. With the spy, Backus, at large, it
was only a question of time when Lushing would have another weapon in
his hands. In odd moments David had made an estimate on the cost of
shooting down the menace in the eastern tunnel drifting and concreting
the gash which would be left by the blasting out of the fissure
material. The figures were appalling. Not only would the profits on the
entire contract be likely to disappear in the chasm; there was a chance
that there would be a huge loss, as well, since nobody could tell how
much of the fissure contents would come down in the blasting. As Eben
Grillage had frankly confessed, the line-shortening job had been taken
on a narrow margin, and there had been no provision made for untoward
happenings.
There was but one conclusion to be reached, and by this time David
Vallory had passed all the mile-stones of hesitancy. Backus, the worm,
must be found and silenced, and there must be no fumbling delay in
either half of the undertaking.
XXIV
No Thoroughfare
At the departure of the two fishermen, Virginia Grillage had taken
Lucille Vallory under her wing, closing the cottage under the pines
and taking the blind girl to the hotel. This left Oswald more or less
unattached. Since there was no welcome for him at the foot of the
ridge, and David had not even taken the trouble to introduce him to
the members of the engineering staff, he spent the greater part of his
time at the Inn, devoting himself, so far as Miss Grillage would permit
it, to the care and comfort of the helpless one, and taking his meals
in due submission at a table with Miss Virginia and her charge, the
Englishman, and the heir of profitable breakfast-foods.
Beneath these routine time-killings, days in which nothing transpired
to break the monotonous round of eating and sleeping and lounging
upon the shaded porches of the Inn, Oswald fancied he could feel the
tension of an approaching crisis. To a keen-eyed young lawyer whose
profession led logically to a study of the human problem in all its
phases, the premonitory signs emphasized themselves. Miss Virginia,
apparently engrossed in her favorite pastime of playing off one man
against another, struck a false note now and then; young Wishart was
occasionally jogged out of his customary rut of good-natured indolence;
and even the imperturbable Englishman was losing the fine edge of a
carefully cultivated Old-World indifference to his surroundings.
Notwithstanding these indications, it was Lucille Vallory who first put
the impending threat into words, confiding in Oswald one evening when
Virginia Grillage had gone for a stroll along the ridge accompanied by
her two shadows.
“What is it, Herbert?” the blind girl asked; “what is happening to us
all?”
“What should be happening?” he evaded. “Aren’t you enjoying yourself?”
“You know what I mean,” she insisted. “Nothing is the same any more;
I can feel it. You are troubled about something, and so is Virginia.
No, it isn’t anything that either of you say; it’s just how you feel
inside. And Davie; he is different, too--so cruelly different. Is it
because he is worried about his work?”
Oswald said what there was to be said, doing violence to his own
convictions in an effort to shield the loved one. There was nothing
for anybody to be troubled about, he told her; and David--she must
remember that David was now at the head of an immense undertaking and
was carrying a heavy load of responsibility. She was silenced, but he
could see that his well-meant effort had been thrown away.
This happened on an evening when the two fishermen had been three days
in the wilds of the upper Timanyoni. On the next morning the monotonies
were broken. Little gossip of the big job penetrated to the Alta Vista,
the summerers, as a rule, being content to hold the great engineering
feat as a part of the scenic stage-effect for which they paid in their
hotel bills. But on the morning in question, when Cumberleigh had
joined a sunrise peak-climbing party, and Wishart was not yet out of
bed, there was news of a small catastrophe. Oswald had the story from
one of the Alta Vista clerks as he was getting his morning mail. Some
time during the night an accident had happened in the big tunnel. In
one of the blasts a man had been blown up and desperately hurt. A
Brewster doctor had been telegraphed for and was coming up on a special
train.
Oswald was interested only casually, and he saw no special significance
in the added word particularizing the injured man as one of the
railroad company’s inspectors. As he was crossing the lobby he met Miss
Virginia. Though she was apparently just down from her rooms and on her
way to breakfast, her first word was of the tragedy, or near-tragedy,
in the tunnel.
“You have heard of the accident to Mr. Strayer?” she asked hurriedly.
And then: “Have you seen David this morning?”
Oswald answered both queries in a single sentence.
“Yes, I’ve heard of the accident--the clerk was just this minute
telling me about it: and I haven’t seen David.”
Miss Virginia was plainly anxious and disturbed She hesitated for a
moment, a little frown coming and going between the straight-browed
eyes, and Oswald noted that she was nervously twisting a bit of paper
between her fingers. “I must see David--at once,” she said, half as if
she were thinking aloud. “May I ask you to go and tell him so, Herbert?”
Since Virginia had shown herself more than friendly in his own trying
involvement, Oswald consented willingly.
“I’ll find him for you,” he promised; and a minute later he was on his
way down to the construction yard.
It so happened that he had to go no farther than to the office bunk
car. The door was open and he went in. David Vallory was sitting behind
the small mapping-table, checking dimensions on a set of blue-prints.
At the sound of Oswald’s footsteps he looked up with a scowl of
impatience, and his greeting was a challenge.
“Oh, it’s you, is it? I’ve been thinking it was about time you were
showing up. When do you start back to Middleboro?”
Oswald ignored the ungracious demand and said what he had been sent to
say.
“Miss Virginia is at the hotel, and she wishes to see you.”
“What for?”
“I didn’t inquire. She asked me to find you and deliver her message. I
have done both.”
“I can’t go just now; I’m, busy.”
“Then I’ll wait for you,” said Oswald coolly, and he sat down on
Plegg’s bunk, found a cigarette in his pocket case and lighted it.
In sheer perversity, as it seemed to the young lawyer, David went on
shuffling the blue-prints and making figures on a pad under his hand.
Oswald waited in silence and in due time had his reward.
“Be half-way decent about it, Bert, and tell me what I’m wanted for,”
said the figure-maker, looking up suddenly from his work. “She has
Cumberleigh and Wishart; aren’t they enough?”
Oswald’s smile was a palpable easing of strains. If David’s malady were
nothing worse than a fit of jealousy, it was not necessarily incurable.
“I was wondering, before I came out here, what Vinnie might be doing to
you,” he said. “You wrote us that she and her father were here, if you
remember.”
“What she did to me was done more than a year ago, if you care to know.
But you haven’t answered my question. What does she want of me this
morning?”
“Honestly, I don’t know, David.”
“Where did you see her?”
“In the hotel lobby; she was on her way to the breakfast-room, I think.”
“And the other two?”
“Cumberleigh has gone to climb Qojogo with a sunrise party, and Wishart
hasn’t turned out yet. Half of the time he is never visible before
noon.”
“What did she say?”
“She asked first if I had heard of the accident in the tunnel last
night.”
Once more David Vallory bent over the table and busied himself with the
figure-making.
“You’ve heard of it, I suppose?” he offered, without looking up.
“Only in passing. The hotel clerk told me that a man was hurt; in one
of the blasts, I think he said.”
David pushed his work aside as one who faces the guns only because
he must. “Let’s go,” he consented shortly; and together they walked
through the yard and climbed the ridge.
Miss Virginia was waiting on one of the porches when the pair crossed
the painfully cared-for bit of greensward in front of the Inn. Oswald,
telling himself that he had done his part, went on through to the
breakfast-room, leaving David to fight his battle--if there were to be
a battle--alone. The young woman’s first question was as direct as it
was unexpected.
“Why have you been avoiding me so persistently?” she asked, making room
for the summoned one to sit beside her on the settee.
“Perhaps it was because I had just sense enough to see that I had
served my turn and wasn’t needed any more,” he answered in a tone that
might have been copied faithfully from the king of the contractors in
his most brittle mood.
“Silly!” she chided, with a strained little laugh. “I could forgive
you for saying such a thing as that if you were only sincere. It isn’t
Cumberleigh and Freddy Wishart, David; it’s yourself.”
“You wrote and told them where you were,” he accused.
“As it happens, I did not. But you needn’t try to hide behind a
shadow--or two shadows. You have had other reasons for avoiding me. For
one thing, you have met Mr. Lushing, and you have quarreled with him.”
“Everybody seems to know that,” he complained. “Go on.”
“For another thing, you have determined, in spite of all that we have
talked about, to fight Mr. Lushing with his own weapons.”
This seemed to be too accurate to be classed with the shrewd guesses,
and he accused her again.
“You’ve been prying into Plegg.”