THE NETTLE, DANGER
"Bushel o' wheat, bushel o' rye--
All 'at ain't ready, holler 'I'!"
--_Hide and Seek._
Double Mountain lies lost in the desert, dwarfed by the greatness all
about. Its form is that of a crater split from north to south into
irregular halves. Through that narrow cleft ran a straight road, once
the well-traveled thoroughfare from Rainbow to El Paso. For there was
precious water within those upheaved walls; it was but three miles from
portal to portal; the slight climb to the divide had not been grudged.
Time was when campfires were nightly merry to light the narrow cliffs of
Double Mountain; when songs were gay to echo from them; when this had
been the only watering place to break the long span across the desert.
The railroad had changed all this, and the silent leagues of that old
road lay untrodden in the sun.
Not untrodden on this the day after Jeff had established his alibi. A
traveler followed that lonely road to Double Mountain; and behind,
half-way to Rainbow Range, was a streak of dust; which gained on him.
The traveler's sorrel horse was weary, for it was the very horse Jeff
Bransford had borrowed from the hitching-rail of the courthouse square;
the traveler was that able negotiator himself; and the pursuing dust, to
the best of Jeff's knowledge and belief, meant him no good tidings.
"Now, I got safe away from the foothills before day," soliloquized
Jeff. "Some gentleman has overtaken me with a spyglass, I reckon.
Civilization's getting this country plumb ruined! And their horses are
fresh. Peg along, Alibi! Maybe I can pick up a stray horse at Double
Mountain. If I can't there's no sort of use trying to get away on you!
I'll play hide-and-go-seek-'em. That'll let you out, anyway, so cheer
up! You done fine, old man! If I ever get out of this I'll buy you and
make it all right with you. Pension you off if you think you'll like it.
Get along now!"
Twenty miles to Jeff's right the railroad paralleled the wagonroad in an
unbroken tangent of ninety miles' stretch. A southbound passenger train
crawled along the west like a resolute centipede plodding to a date:
behind the fugitive, abreast, now far ahead, creeping along the shining
straightaway. Forty miles the hour was her schedule; yet against this
vast horizon she could hardly be said to change place until, sighting
beyond her puny length, a new angle of the far western wall completed
the trinomial line.
Escondido was hidden in a dip of plain--whence the name, Hidden, when
done into Saxon speech. The train was lost to sight when she stopped
there, but Jeff saw the tiny steam plume of her whistling rise in the
clear and taintless air; long after, the faint sound of it hummed
drowsily by, like passing, far-blown horns of faerie in a dream. And, at
no great interval thereafter, a low-lying dust appeared suddenly on the
hither rim of Escondido's sunken valley.
Jeff knew the land as you know your hallway. That line of dust marked
the trail from Escondido Valley to the farther gate of Double Mountain.
Even if he should be lucky enough to get a change of mounts at the
spring in Double Mountain Basin he would be intercepted. Escape by
flight was impossible. To fight his way out was impossible. He had no
gun; and, even if he had a gun, he could not see his way to fight, under
the circumstances. The men who hunted him down were only doing the right
thing as they saw it. Had Jeff been guilty, it would have been a
different affair. Being innocent, he could make no fight for it. He was
cornered.
"Said the little Eohippus:
'I'm going to be a horse!'"
So chanted Jeff, perceiving the hopelessness of his plight.
The best gift to man--or, if not the best, then at least the rarest--is
the power to meet the emergency: to do your best and a little better
than your best when nothing less will serve: to be a pinch hitter. It is
to be thought that certain stages of affection, and more particularly
the presence of its object, affect unfavorably the workings of pure
intellect. Certain it is that capable Bransford, who had cut so sorry a
figure in Eden garden, now, in these distressing but Eveless
circumstances, rose to the occasion. Collected, resourceful, he grasped
every possible angle of the situation and, with the rope virtually about
his neck, cheerfully planned the impossible--the essence of his elastic
plan being to climb that very rope, hand over hand, to safety.
"Going round the mountain is no good on a give-out horse. They'll follow
my tracks," said Jeff to Jeff. Men who are much alone so shape their
thoughts by voicing them, just as you practice conversation rather to
make your own thought clear to yourself than to enlighten your
victim--beg pardon--your neighbor. Just a slip of the tongue. _Vecino_
is the Spanish for neighbor, you know. Not so much to enlighten your
neighbor as to find out for yourself precisely what it is you think.
"Hiding in the Basin is no good. Can't get out. Would I were a bird!
Only one way. Got to go straight up--disappear--vanish in the air. 'Up
a chimney, up----' Naw, that's backward! 'Up a chimney, down, or down a
chimney, down; but not up a chimney, up, nor down a chimney, up!' So
that's settled! Now let me see, says the little man. Mighty few
Arcadians know me well enough not to be fooled--mebbe so. Lake? Lake
won't come. He'll be busy. There's Jimmy; but Jimmy's got a shocking bad
memory for faces sometimes, just now, my face. I think, maybe, I could
manage Jimmy. The sheriff? That would be real awkward, I reckon. I'll
just play the sheriff isn't in the bunch and build my little bluff
according to that pleasing fancy; for if he comes along it is all off
with little Jeff!
"Now lemme see! If Gwin's working that little old mine of his--why,
he'll lie himself black in the face just for the principle of it. Mighty
interestin' talker, Gwin is. And if no one's there, I'll be there. Not
Jeff Bransford; he got away. I'll be Long--Tobe Long--working for Gwin.
Tobe Long. I apprenticed my son to a miner, and the first thing he took
was a new name!"
Far away on the side of Double Mountain he could even now see the white
triangle of the tent at Gwin's mine--the Ophir--and the gray dump
spilling down the hillside. There was no smoke to be seen. Jeff made up
his mind there was no one at the mine--which was what he devoutly
hoped--and further developed his gleeful hypothesis.
"Let's see now, Tobe. Got to study this all out. They most always leave
all their kegs full of water when they go away, so they won't have to
pack 'em up the first thing when they come back. If they did, I'm all
right. If they didn't, I'm in a hell of a fix! They'll leave 'em full,
though. Of course they did--else the kegs would all dry up and fall
down." He glanced over his shoulder. "Them fellows are ten or twelve
miles back, I reckon. They'll slow up so soon as they see I'm headed
off. I'll have time to fix things up--if only there's water in the kegs
at the mine!" He patted Alibi's head: "Now, old man, do your damnedest!
It's pretty tough on you, but your part will soon be over."
Alibi had made a poor night of it, what with doubling and twisting in
the foothills, the bitter water of a gyp spring, and the scanty grass of
a cedar thicket; but he did his plucky best. On the legal other hand, as
Jeff had prophesied, the dustmakers behind had slackened their gait when
they perceived, by the dust of Escondido trail, that their allies must
cut the quarry off. So Alibi held his own with the pursuit.
He came to the rising ground leading to the sheer base of Double
Mountain; then to the narrow Gap where the mountain had fallen asunder
in some age-old cataclysm. To the left, the dump of Ophir Mine hung on
the hillside above the pass; and on the broad trail zigzagging up to it
were burro-tracks, but no fresh tracks of men. The flaps of the white
tent on the dump were tightly closed. There was no one at the mine. Jeff
passed within the walls, through frowning gates of porphyry and gneiss,
and urged Alibi up the canyon. It was half a mile to the spring. On the
way he found three shaggy burros grazing beside the road. He drove them
into the small pen by the spring and tossed his rope on the largest one.
Then he unsaddled Alibi, tied him to the fence by the bridle rein, and
searched his pockets for an old letter. This found, he penciled a note
and tied it to the saddle. It was brief:
EN ROUTE, FOUR P.M.
Please water my horse when he cools off.
Your little friend,
JEFF BRANSFORD.
P. S. Excuse haste.
He made a plain trail of high-heeled boot-tracks to the spring, where he
drank deep; thence beyond, through the sandy soil, to the nearest rocky
ridge. Then, careful that every step fell on a bare rock, he came
circuitously back to the corral, climbed the fence, made his way to the
tied burro, improvised a bridle of cunning half-hitches, slipped from
the fence to the burro's back--a burro, by the way, is a donkey--named
the burro anew as Balaam, and went back down the canyon at the best pace
of which the belabored and astonished Balaam was capable. As Jeff had
hoped, the two other burros--or the other two burros, to be
precise--followed sociably, braying remonstrance.
Without the mouth of the canyon Jeff rode up the steep trail to the mine,
also to the great disgust of his mount; but he must not walk--it would
leave boot-tracks. For the same reason, after freeing Balaam, his first
action was to pull off the telltale boots and replace them with the
smallest pair of hobnailed miner's shoes in the tent. With these he
carefully obliterated the few boot-tracks at the tent door.
The water-kegs were full; Jeff swore his joyful gratitude and turned his
eye to the plain. The pursuing dust was still far away--seven miles, he
estimated, or possibly eight. The three burros nibbled on the bushes
below the dump; plainly intending to stay round camp with an eye for
possible tips. Jeff gave his whole-hearted attention to the
_mise-en-scene_.
Never did stage manager toil so hard, so faithfully, so effectively as
this one--or with so great a need. He took stock of the available stage
properties, beginning with a careful inventory of the grub-chest. To
betray ignorance of its possibilities or deficiencies would be fatal.
Following a narrow trail round a little shoulder of hill, he found the
powder magazine. Taking three sticks of dynamite, with fuse and caps, he
searched the tent for the candle-box, lit a candle and went into the
tunnel with a brisk trot. "If this was a case of fight, now, I'd have
some pretty fair weapons here for close quarters," said Jeff; "but the
way I'm fixed I can't. No fighting goes--unless Lake comes."
In the tunnel his luck held good. He found a number of good-sized chunks
of rock stacked along the wall near the breast--evidently reserved for
the ore pile at a more convenient season. Beneath three of the largest
of these rocks he carefully adjusted the three sticks of giant powder,
properly capped and fused, lit the fuses and retreated to the safety of
the dump. Three muffled detonations followed at short intervals. Having
thus announced the presence of mining operations, he built a fire on the
kitchen side of the dump to further advertise a mind conscious of its
own rectitude. The pleasant shadow of the hills was cool about him; the
flame rose clear and bright in the windless air, to be seen from far
away.
He looked at the location papers in the monument by the ore stack;
simultaneously, by way of economizing time, emptying a can of salmon.
This was partly for the added verisimilitude of the empty tin, partly
because he was ravenously hungry. You may guess how he emptied the tin.
The mine had changed owners since Jeff's knowledge of it. It was no
longer Gwin's sole property. The notice bore the signatures of J. Gwin,
C. W. Sanders and Walter Fleck. Jeff grinned and his eye brightened. He
knew Fleck only slightly; but Fleck's reputation among the cowmen was
good--that is to say, as you would see it, very bad.
Pappy Sanders, postmaster and storekeeper of Escondido, was an old and
sorely tried friend of Jeff's. If Pappy had grub-staked the outfit----A
far-away plan began to shape vaguely in his fertile brain. He took the
little turquoise horse from his pocket and laid it in the till of the
violated trunk. Were you told about the violated trunk? Never mind--he
had done any amount of other things of which you have not been told; for
it was his task, in the brief time allotted to him, to master all the
innumerable details needful for an intelligent reading of his part. He
must make no blunders.
He toiled like two men, each swifter and more savagely efficient than
himself; he upset the prim, old he-maidenish order of that carefully
packed, spick-and-span camp; he rumpled the beds; strewed old clothes,
books, candles, specimens, pipes and cigarette papers with lavish hand;
made untidy, sprawling heaps of tin plates; knives, forks and spoons;
spilled candle-grease and tobacco on the scoured table; and generally
gave things a cozy and habitable appearance.
He gave a hundred deft touches here and there. He spread an open book
face downward on the table. (It was "Alice in Wonderland," and he opened
it at the Mock-Turtle.) Meanwhile an unoccupied eye snatched titles from
a shelf of books against possible question; he penned a short note to
himself--Mr. Tobe Long--in Gwin's handwriting, folded the note to
creases, twisted it to a spill, lit it, burned a corner of it, pinched
it out and threw it under the table; and, while doing these and other
things, he somehow managed to shed every article of Jeff Bransford's
clothing and to put on the work-stained garments of a miner.
The perspiration on his face was no stage make-up, but good, honest
sweat. He rubbed stone-dust and sand on his sweaty arms and into his
sweaty hair; he rubbed most of it from his hair and into the two-days'
stubble on his face, simultaneously fishing razor and mug from the
trunk, leaving them in evidence on the table. He worked stone-dust into
his ears, behind his ears; he grimed it on forehead and neck; he even
dropped a little into his shoes, which all this while had been
performing independent miracles to make the camp look comfortable. He
threw on a dingy cap, thrust in the cap a miner's candlestick, with a
lighted candle, that it might properly drip upon him while he arranged
further details--and so faced the world as Tobe Long, a stooped and
overworked man!
Mr. Tobe Long, working with feverish haste, dug a small cave half-way
down the steep side of the dump farthest from the road and buried
therein a tightly rolled bundle containing every article appertaining to
the defunct Bransford, with the single exception of the little eohippus;
a pocketknife, which a miner must have to cut powder and fuse, having
been found in the trunk--what time also the little turquoise horse was
transferred to Mr. Long's pocket to bring him luck in his new career--a
poor thing compared with the cowman's keen blade, but better for
Mr. Long's purposes, as smelling strongly of dynamite. Then Mr.
Long--Tobe--hid the grave by sliding and shoveling broken rock down the
dump upon it.
Next he threw into a wheelbarrow drills, spoon, tamping stick, gads,
drill-hammer, rock-hammer, canteen, shovel and pick--taking care, even
in his haste, to select a properly matched set of drills--and trundled
the barrow up the drift at a pace which would give a Miners' Union the
rabies. At the breast, he unshipped his cargo in right miner's fashion,
the drills in a graduated stepladder row along the wall; loaded the
barrow with broken ore, a bit of charred fuse showing at the top, and
wheeled it out at the same unprofessional gait, leaving it on the dump
just above the spot where his late sepulchral rites had freshened the
appearance of the sunbeaten dump.
He next performed his ablutions in an amateurish and perfunctory
fashion, scrupulously observing a well-defined waterline.
"There!" said Mr. Long. "I near made a break that time!" He went back to
the barrow and trundled it assiduously to the tunnel's mouth and back
several times, carefully never in quite the same place--finally leaving
it not above the sepulchered spoil, but near the ore stack, as befitted
its valuable contents. "I got to think of everything. One wrong break'll
fix me good!" said Mr. Long. He felt his neck delicately, as if he
detected some foreign presence there. "In the tunnel, now, there's only
the one place where the wheel can go; so it don't matter so much in
there."
The fire having now burned down to proper coals, Mr. Long set about
supper; with the corner of his eye on the lookout for the pursuers of
the late Bransford. He set the coffee-pot by the fire--they were now in
the edge of the tar-brush; there were only two of them. He put on a pot
of potatoes in their jackets--he could see them plainly, diminutive
black horsemen twinkling through the brush; he sliced bacon into a
frying-pan and put it aside to await his cue; he disposed other cooking
ware in lifelike attitudes near the fire--they were in the long shadow
of Double Mountain; their horses were jaded; they rode slowly. He
dropped the sour-dough jar and placed the broken pieces where they would
be inconspicuously visible. Having thus a perfectly obvious excuse for
not having sour-dough bread, which requires thirty-six hours of running
start for preliminary rising, Jeff--Mr. Tobe Long--mixed up a
just-as-good baking-powder substitute--they rode like young men; they
rode like young men not to the saddle born, and Tobe permitted himself a
chuckle: "By hooky, I've got an even chance for my little bluff!"
He shook his head reprovingly at himself for this last admission. With
every minute he looked more like Tobe Long than ever--if only there had
been any Tobe Long to look like. His mind ran upon nuggets, pockets,
placers, faults, true fissure veins, the cyanide process, concentrates,
chlorides, sulphides, assays, leases and bonds; his face took on the
strained wistfulness which marks the confirmed prospector: he _was_ Tobe
Long!
The bell rang.