ON THE BRINK
Early to bed, early to rise. The two men were up at dawn. During the
night the coyotes had sneaked into the camp. But Blake had fastened
the food in the chuck-box and slung everything gnawable up in the
branches out of reach of the sly thieves.
At sunrise the two started out on their day's work, Ashton carrying
his rifle and canteen and the level rod, Blake with the level and a
bag containing their lunch and a two-quart sirup-can of water.
"We'll run a new line from the dike bench, around the hill and across
the valley the way we rode out yesterday," said the engineer, as they
climbed the slope above the waterhole. "That will give us a check by
cross-tying to the line of the creek levels where it runs into the
gulch."
"Can't you trust to the accuracy of your own work?" asked Ashton with
evident intent to mortify.
Blake smiled in his good-natured way. "You forget the first rule of
engineering. Always check when you can, then re-check and check
again.--Now, if you'll kindly give me a reading off that bench."
Ashton complied, though with evident ill will. He had wakened in good
spirits, but was fast returning to his sullenness of the previous day.
He took his time in going from the bench-mark to the first turning
point. Blake moved up past him with inspiring briskness, but the
younger man kept to his leisurely saunter. In rounding the corner of
the hill twice as much time was consumed as was necessary.
When they came to the last turn at the foot of the rocky slope, where
the line struck out across the valley towards the foot of the mountain
side, Ashton paused to roll a cigarette before holding his rod for the
reading. Small as was the incident, it was particularly aggravating to
an engineer. The reading would have taken only a moment, and he could
then have rolled his cigarette and smoked it while Blake was moving
past him for the next "set up." Instead, he deliberately kept Blake
waiting until the cigarette had been rolled and lighted.
Blake "pulled up" his level and started forward, his face impassive.
Ashton leaned jauntily on the rod, sucked in a mouthful of smoke, and
raising his cigarette, flicked the ash from the tip with his little
finger. At the same instant a bullet from the crags above him pierced
the crown of his hat. He pitched forward on his face, rolled half
over, and lay quiet.
Most men would have been dumfounded by the frightful suddenness of the
occurrence--the shot and the instant fall of Ashton. It was like a
stroke of lightning out of a clear sky. Blake did not stand gaping
even for a moment. As Ashton's senseless body struck the ground, he
sprang sideways and bent to lay down his instrument, with the
instinctive carefulness of an old railroad surveyor. A swift rush
towards Ashton barely saved him from the second bullet that came
pinging down from the hill crest. It burned across the back of his
shoulder.
Heedless of the blood spurting from the wound in the side of Ashton's
head, Blake snatched up the automatic rifle and fired at a point
between two knobs of rock on the hill crest. Promptly a hat appeared,
then an arm and a rifle. It might have been expected that a bullet
would have instantly followed; yet the assassin was strangely
deliberate about getting his aim. Blake did not wait for him. He began
to fire as fast as the automatic ejector and reloader set the rifle
trigger. Three bullets sped up at the assassin before he had time to
drop back out of sight.
Blake started up the hillside, his pale eyes like white-hot steel. He
was in a fury, but it was the cold fury of a man too courageous for
reckless bravado. He went up the hill as an Apache would have charged,
dodging from cover to cover and, wherever possible, keeping in line
with a rock or tree in his successive rushes. At every brief stop he
scanned the ridge crest for a sign of his enemy. But the assassin did
not show himself. For all that Blake could tell, he might be waiting
for a sure shot, or he might be lying with a bullet through his
brain.
To avoid suicidal exposure, the engineer was compelled to veer off to
the right in his ascent. He reached the ridge crest without a shot
having been fired at him. Leaping suddenly to his feet, he scrambled
up to the flat top of a high crag, from which he could peer down upon
the others. The natural embrazure from which the assassin had fired
was exposed to his view; but the place was empty. He looked cautiously
about at the many huge bowlders behind which a hundred men might have
been crouching unseen by him, advantageous as was his position. To
flush the assassin would require a bold rush over and around the
rocks.
Blake set his powerful jaw and gathered himself together for the leap
down from his crag. At that moment his alert eye caught a glimpse of a
swiftly moving object on the mesa at the foot of the far side of the
hill. It was a horse and rider racing out of sight around the bend of
a ridge point.
Blake whipped the rifle to his shoulder. But the cowardly fugitive had
disappeared. He lowered the rifle and started back down the hill
faster than he had come up. Leaping like a goat, sliding, rushing--he
raced to the bottom in a direct line for Ashton.
The victim lay as he had fallen, his head ghastly red with blood,
which was still oozing from his wound. Blake dropped down beside the
flaccid body and tore open the front of the silk shirt. He thrust in
his hand. For some moments he was baffled by the violent throbbing of
his own pulse. Then, at last, he detected a heartbeat, very feeble and
slow yet unmistakable.
He turned Ashton on his side, and washing away the blood with water
from the canteen, examined the wound with utmost carefulness. The
bullet had pierced the scalp and plowed a furrow down along the side
of the skull, grazing but not penetrating the bone.
"Only stunned.... Mighty close, though," muttered Blake. He looked at
the ashen face of the wounded man and added apprehensively, "Too
close!... Concussion--"
Hastily he knotted a compress bandage made of handkerchiefs and
neckerchiefs around the bleeding head, and stretching Ashton flat
on his back, began to pump his arms up and down as is done in
resuscitating a drowned person. After a time Ashton's face began
to lose its deathly pallor. His heart beat less feebly; he drew in a
deep sighing breath, and stared up dazedly at Blake, with slowly
returning consciousness.
"I'll smoke all I please and when I please," he murmured in a
supercilious drawl.
Blake dashed his face with the cupful of water still left in the
canteen. The wounded man flushed with quick anger and attempted to
rise.
"What--what you--How dare you?" he spluttered, only to sink back with
a groan, "My head! O-o-oh! You've smashed my head!"
"You're in luck that your head _wasn't_ smashed," replied Blake. "It
was a bullet knocked you over."
"Bullet?" echoed Ashton.
"Yes. Scoundrel up on the hill tried to get us both."
"Up on the hill?" Ashton twisted his head about, in alarm, to look at
the hill crest. "But if he--He may shoot again."
"Not this time. I went up for him. He went down faster, other side the
hill. Saw him on the run. The sneaking--" Blake closed his lips on the
word. After a moment his grimness relaxed. "Came back to start your
funeral. Found you'd cheated the undertaker. How do you feel now?"
"I believe I--" began Ashton, again trying to raise himself, only to
sink back as before. "My head!--What makes me so weak?"
"Don't worry," reassured Blake. "It's only a scalp wound. You are weak
from the shock and a little loss of blood. I'll get you a drink from
my can, and then tote you into camp. You'll be all right in a day or
two."
He fetched the can of water from his bag, which he had dropped beside
the level. Ashton drank with the thirstiness of one who has lost
blood. When at last his thirst was quenched, he glanced up at Blake
with a look of half reluctant apology.
"I said something about your striking me," he murmured. "I did not
understand--did not realize I had been shot. You see, just before--"
"That's all right," broke in Blake. "I owe you a bigger apology. Last
evening, while you were out hunting, someone took a shot at me. It
must have been this same sneaking skunk. I thought it was you."
"You thought I could try to--to shoot you?" muttered Ashton.
"Yes. There's the old matter of the bridge, and you seem to think I am
responsible for what your father has done. But after you came in, I
soon concluded that you had fired towards the camp unintentionally."
"If you had asked," explained Ashton, "I was around at the far end of
these hills, nearly two miles from the camp, when I shot at the wolf
and the rifle went wrong."
"That was a fortunate occurrence--your going out and seeing the wolf;"
said Blake. "If you hadn't taken that shot, we would not have known
your rifle was out of gear. My first bullet merely made the sneak rise
up to pot me. If the rapidity of the next three shots hadn't rattled
him, I believe he would have potted me, instead of running."
"So that was it?" exclaimed Ashton. "Do you know, I believe it must be
the same scoundrel who attacked me the first day I rode down Dry
Fork. No doubt he remembered how I ripped loose at him with the
automatic-catch set."
"Your thieving guide?" said Blake. "But why should he try to kill
me?"
"I'm sure I don't know," murmured Ashton. "Another drink, please."
"I shall tote you back to camp, and--No, I'll lay you over there in
the shade and go up to see if he is in sight."
Picking up the wounded man as easily as if he had been a child, the
engineer carried him over under a tree, fetched him the can of water,
and for the second time climbed the rocky hillside. Scaling his
lookout crag, he surveyed the country below him. A mile down the creek
two riders were coming up towards the waterhole at an easy canter. He
surmised that they were his wife and Miss Knowles.
Their approach brought a shade of anxiety into his strong face. He
swept the landscape with his glance. A little cloud of dust far out on
the mesa towards Split Peak caught his eye. He looked at it
steadfastly under his hand, and drew a deep breath of relief as he
made out a fleeing horse and rider.
He descended to Ashton, and taking him up pick-a-back, swung away for
the camp with long, swift strides. Before he had gone half the
distance, he felt Ashton's arms loosening their clasp of his neck. He
caught him as he sank in a swoon. Without a moment's hesitation, he
slung his senseless burden up on his shoulder like a sack of meal, and
hastened on faster than before.
Swiftly as he walked, the ladies reached the camp before him. When he
came to the top of the dike slope, his wife had dismounted and Isobel
was handing down the baby to her. As the girl slipped out of the
saddle she looked up the slope. With a startled cry, she darted to
meet Blake.
Quick to forestall her alarm, he called in a gasping shout: "Not
serious--not serious!"
"Oh, Tom--Mr. Blake!" she cried. "What has happened?"
"Scalp wound--faint--blood loss," Blake panted in terse answer.
"He is wounded? O-o-oh!" She ran up and looked fearfully at the
bloodsoaked bandages across Ashton's hanging head.
Blake staggered on down the slope without pausing. Genevieve had
started to meet him. But at her husband's panting explanation, she
laid the baby on the nearest soft spot of earth and darted to the
kit-chest. She was opening a "first aid" box when Blake crashed
through the bushes and sank down with his burden under the first
tree.
Genevieve hastened towards the men, calling to her companion: "Water,
Chuckie--that pail by the fireplace."
The girl flew to fetch a bucket of water from the pool.
Blake was peering anxiously down into Ashton's white face.
"Didn't--know--but--that--" he panted.
"No," reassured his wife. "He will soon be all right."
She drew the unconscious man flat on his back and held a bottle of
ammonia to his nostrils. The powerful stimulant revived him just as
the girl came running back with the water. He opened his eyes, and the
first object they rested upon was her anxious pitiful face. He smiled
and whispered gallantly: "Don't be afraid. I'm all right--now!"
"Then I'll drink first," said Blake.
He took a deep draught from the pail, doused a hatful of water over
his hot head and face, and stretched out to cool off. Genevieve,
assisted by the deeply concerned girl, took the handkerchief bandage
from Ashton's head and washed the wound with an antiseptic solution.
She then clipped away the hair from the edges and drew the scalp
together with a number of stitches.
In this last the hardy cowgirl was unable to help. She clasped
Ashton's hand convulsively and sat shuddering. Ashton smiled up into
her tender pitying eyes. Genevieve had numbed his wound with cocaine.
He was quite satisfied with the situation.
Another antiseptic washing and a compress of sterilized cotton bound
on with surgical bandages completed the operation. Then, when it was
all over with, the young mother, who had gone through everything with
the aplomb and deftness of a surgeon, quietly sank back in a faint. On
the instant Blake was reaching for the ammonia bottle.
A whiff restored his wife to consciousness. She opened her eyes, and
smiling at her weakness, sought to rise. He held her down with gentle
force and ordered her to lie quiet.
"I shall fetch Tommy," he added. "We'll all take a _siesta_ until
noon."