AMBUSHED
Colby Macdonald, in miner's boots and corduroy working suit, stood
beside his horse with one arm thrown carelessly across its rump. He was
about to start for Seven-Mile Creek Camp with twenty-seven hundred
dollars in the saddlebags to pay the men there.
Diane was talking with him. "She's young and fine and spirited. Of
course it was a great shock to her. She had been idealizing you. But I
think she is beginning to understand things better. At any rate, she
does not hate you any more. Give the girl time."
"You think she will--be reasonable?"
Mrs. Paget finished the pattern she was punching in the soft ground
beside the board walk with the ferrule of her umbrella. Her eyes met his
frankly.
"I don't know. But I'm sure of one thing. She'll not be reasonable, as
you call it, unless you are reasonable."
"You mean--Elliot?"
"Yes. She likes him very much. Do you know that when the Indian woman
came he urged Sheba not to listen to her story?"
"Sounds likely--after he had spent his good money bringing her here,"
sneered the mine-owner.
"He didn't. Gordon is a splendid fellow. He wouldn't lie," answered
Diane hotly. "And one thing is sure--if you lay a finger on him for
this, it will be fatal with Sheba. She will be through with you."
Macdonald had thought of this before. It had been coming to him from
several different angles that he could not afford to gratify his desire
to wipe this meddlesome young official from his path. He made a slow,
sulky promise.
"All right. I'll let him alone. Peter can tell him."
Swinging to the saddle, he spurred his horse and cantered away. With a
little smile Diane watched his flat, muscular back and the arrogant set
of his strong shoulders. There was not his match in the territory, she
thought, but sometimes a clever woman could manage him.
His mind was full of the problem that had come into his life. He rode
abstractedly, so that he was at the lower ford of the creek almost
before he knew it. A bilberry thicket straggled down to the opposite
bank of the stream on both sides of the road.
The horse splashed through the ford and took the little rise beyond with
a rush. Just before reaching the brow of the hill, the animal stumbled
and fell. As its rider went headlong, he caught a glimpse of a cord
drawn taut across the path.
Macdonald, shaken by the fall, began slowly to rise. From the shadows
of the bilberry bushes two stooping figures rushed at him. He threw up
an arm to ward off the club aimed at his head, but succeeded only in
breaking the force of the blow. As he staggered back, stunned, a bullet
glanced along his forehead and ridged a furrow through the thick hair.
A second stroke of the club jarred him to the heels.
Though his mind was not clear, his body answered automatically the
instinct that told him to close with his assailants. He lurched forward
and gripped one, wrestling with him for the revolver. Vaguely he knew
by the sharp, jagged shoots of pain that the second man was beating his
head with a club. The warm blood dripped through his hair and blinded
his eyes. Dazed and shaken, he yet managed to get the revolver from the
man who had it. But it was his last effort. He was too far gone to use
it. A blow on the forehead brought him unconscious to the ground
bleeding from a dozen wounds.
On his way back from Seven-Mile Creek Camp Gordon Elliot rode down to
the ford. In the dusk he was almost upon them before the robbers heard
him. For a moment the two men stood gazing at him and he at the tragedy
before him. One of the men moved toward his horse.
"Stop there!" ordered Gordon sharply, and he reached for his revolver.
The man--it was the miner Northrup--jumped for Elliot and the field
agent fired. Another moment, and he was being dragged from the saddle.
What happened next was never clear to him. He knew that both of the
bandits closed in on him and that he was fighting desperately against
odds. The revolver had been knocked from his hand and he fought with
bare fists just as they did. Twice he emptied his lungs in a cry for
help.
They quartered over the ground, for Gordon would not let either of them
get behind him. They were larger than he, heavy, muscle-bound giants of
great strength, but he was far more active on his feet. He jabbed and
sidestepped and retreated. More than once their heavy blows crashed home
on his face. His eyes dared not wander from them for an instant, but he
was working toward a definite plan. As he moved, his feet were searching
for the automatic he had dropped.
One of his feet, dragging over the ground, came into contact with the
steel. With a swift side kick Gordon flung the weapon a dozen feet to
the left. Presently, watching his chance, he made a dive for it.
Trelawney, followed by Northrup, turned and ran. One of them caught
Macdonald's horse by the bridle. He swung to the saddle and the other
man clambered on behind. There was a clatter of hoofs and they were
gone.
Elliot stooped over the battered body that lay huddled at the edge
of the water. The man was either dead or unconscious, he was not sure
which. So badly had the face been beaten and hammered that it was not
until he had washed the blood from the wounds that Gordon recognized
Macdonald.
Opening the coat of the insensible man, Gordon put his hand against the
heart. He could not be sure whether he felt it beating or whether the
throbbing came from the pulses in his finger tips. As well as he could
he bound up the wounds with handkerchiefs and stanched the bleeding.
With ice-cold water from the stream he drenched the bruised face. A
faint sigh quivered through the slack, inert body.
Gordon hoisted Macdonald across the saddle and led the horse through
the ford. He walked beside the animal to town, and never had two miles
seemed to him so far. With one hand he steadied the helpless body that
lay like a sack of flour balanced in the trough of the saddle.
Kusiak at last lay below him, and when he descended the hill to the
suburbs almost the first house was the one where the Pagets lived.
Elliot threw the body across his shoulder and walked up the walk to the
porch. He kicked upon the door with his foot. Sheba answered the knock,
and at sight of what he carried the color faded from her face.
"Macdonald has been hurt--badly," he explained quickly.
"This way," the girl cried, and led him to her own room, hurrying in
advance to throw back the bedclothes.
"Get Diane--and a doctor," ordered Gordon after he had laid the
unconscious man on the white sheet.
While he and Diane undressed the mine-owner Sheba got a doctor on the
telephone. The wounded man opened his eyes after a long time, but there
was in them the glaze of delirium. He recognized none of them. He did
not know that he was in the house of Peter Paget, that Diane and Sheba
and his rival were fighting with the help of the doctor to push back
the death that was crowding close upon him. All night he raved, and
his delirious talk went back to the wild scenes of his earlier life.
Sometimes he swore savagely; again he made quiet deadly threats; but
always his talk was crisp and clean and vigorous. Nothing foul or slimy
came to the surface in those hours of unconscious babbling.
The doctor had shaken his head when he first saw the wounds. He would
make no promises.
"He's a mighty sick man. The cuts are deep, and the hammering must have
jarred his brain terribly. If it was anybody but Macdonald, I wouldn't
give him a chance," he told Diane when he left in the morning to get
breakfast. "But Macdonald has tremendous vitality. Of course if he lives
it will be because Mr. Elliot brought him in so soon."
Gordon walked with the doctor as far as the hotel. A brown, thin,
leathery man undraped himself from a chair in the lobby when Elliot
opened the door. He was officially known as the chief of police of
Kusiak. Incidentally he constituted the whole police force. Generally he
was referred to as Gopher Jones on account of his habit of spasmodic
prospecting.
"I got to put you under arrest, Mr. Elliot," he explained.
The loafers in the hotel drew closer.
"What for?" demanded Gordon, surprised.
"Doc thinks it will run to murder, I reckon."
The field agent was startled. "You mean--Macdonald?"
The brown man chewed his quid steadily. "You done guessed it."
"That's absurd, you know. What evidence have you got?"
"First off, you'd had trouble with him. It was common talk that when you
and Mac met, guns were going to pop. You bought an automatic revolver at
the Seattle & Kusiak Emporium two days ago. You was seen practising with
it."
"He had threatened me."
"You want to be careful what you say, Mr. Elliot. It will be used
against you." Gopher shot a squirt of tobacco unerringly at the open
door of the stove. "You was seen talking with Trelawney and Northrup.
Money passed from you to them."
"I gave them a loan of ten dollars each because they were broke. Is that
criminal?" demanded Gordon angrily.
"That's your story. You'll git a chance to tell it to the jury, I
shouldn't wonder. Mebbe they'll believe it. You never can tell."
"Believe it! Why, you muttonhead, I found him where he was bleeding to
death and brought him in."
"That's what I heard say. Kinder queer, ain't it, you happened to be the
man that found him?"
"Nothing queer about it. I was riding in from Seven-Mile Creek Camp."
Gordon was exasperated, but not at all alarmed.
"So you was. While you was out at the camp, you asked one of the boys
how big the pay-roll would be."
"Does that prove I was planning a hold-up? Isn't that the last thing I
would have asked if I had intended robbery?"
"Don't ask me. I ain't no psychologist. All I know is you took an
interest in the bank-roll on the way."
"I'm here for the Government investigating Macdonald. I was getting
information--earning my pay. Can you understand that?"
Gopher chewed his cud impassively. "Sure I can, and I been earning mine.
By the way, howcome you to be beat up so bad, Mr. Elliot?"
"I had a fight with the robbers."
"Sure it wasn't with the robbed. That split lip of yours looks to me
plumb like Mac's John Hancock."
Elliot flushed angrily. "Of course if you intend to believe me
guilty--"
"Now, there ain't no manner o' use in gettin' het up, young fellow.
Mebbe you did it; mebbe you didn't. Anyhow, you'll gimme that gat you
been toting these last few days."
Gordon's hand moved toward his hip. Then he remembered.
"I haven't it. I left it--"
"You left it at the ford--with one shell empty. That's where you left
it," interrupted the officer.
"Yes. I fired at Northrup as he rushed me."
"Um-hu," assented Jones, impudent unbelief in his eye. "At Northrup or
at Macdonald."
"What do you think I did with the money, then? Did I eat it?"
"Not so you could notice it. Since you put it to me flat-foot, you gave
it to your pardners. You didn't want it. They did. They have got the
horse too--and they're hitting the high spots to make their get-away."
Elliot was locked up in the flimsy jail without breakfast. He was
furious, but as he paced up and down the narrow beat beside the bed his
anger gave way to anxiety. Surely the Pagets could not believe he had
done such a thing. And Sheba--would she accept as true this weight of
circumstantial evidence that was piling up against him?
It could all be explained so easily. And yet--the facts fitted like
links of a chain to condemn him. He went over them one by one. The
babbling tongue of Selfridge that had made common gossip of the
impending tragedy in which he and Macdonald were the principals--his
purchase of the automatic--his public meeting with two known enemies of
the Scotchman, during which he had been seen to give them money--his
target practice with the new revolver--the unhappy chance that had taken
him out to Seven-Mile Creek Camp the very day of the robbery--his casual
questions of the miners--even the finding of the body by him. All of
these dovetailed with the hypothesis that his partners in crime were to
escape and bear the blame, while he was to bring the body back to town
and assume innocence.
Paget was admitted to his cell later in the morning by Gopher Jones. He
shook hands with the prisoner. Jones retired.
"Tough luck, Gordon," the engineer said.
"What does Sheba think?" asked the young man quickly.
"We haven't told her you have been arrested. I heard it only a little
while ago."
"And Diane?"
"Yes, she knows."
"Well?" demanded Gordon brusquely.
Peter looked at him in questioning surprise. "Well, what?" He caught the
meaning of his friend. "Try not to be an ass, Gordon. Of course she
knows the charge is ridiculous."
The chip dropped from the young man's shoulder. "Good old Diane. I might
have known," he said with a new cheerfulness.
"I think you might have," agreed Peter dryly. "By the way, have you had
any breakfast?"
"No. I'm hungry, come to think of it."
"I'll have something sent in from the hotel."
"How's Macdonald?"
"He's alive--and while there's life there is hope."
"Any news of the murderers?" asked Gordon.
"Posses are combing the hills for them. They stole a packhorse from a
truck gardener up the valley. It seems they bought an outfit for a month
yesterday--said they were going prospecting."
They talked for a few minutes longer, mainly on the question of a lawyer
and the chances of getting out on bond. Peter left the prisoner in very
much better spirits than he had found him.