A FELLOW NAMED JONES
“Now then, men――together!” _clang!_
The material train had just pulled up to the present-moment end-of-track
on the Extension with a flat-car load of rails, and the crew, directed
by a big-voiced foreman, was unloading the car.
Standing aside to be out of the way, Larry and Dick were checking the
shipment of steel. The checking being a purely mechanical process,
the two went on with their talk about the thing that had kept every
member of the toiling construction force on edge for weeks; namely, the
exciting question, which was growing more exciting from day to day,
as to whether their railroad or the Overland Central, building at top
speed on the opposite side of the canyon, would win the race to the
Little Ophir gold field, now only twenty miles away.
“You’ll sure have to hand it to those O. C. fellows when it comes to
keeping us guessing,” Dick was saying. “Ten miles back we all thought
they were going into Little Ophir on the high level. But now they are
dropping altitude so fast that they’ll be on an even grade with us in
another five miles or so.”
In the intervals between the rail-clangings Larry had been scanning
the cut-out notch in the opposite canyon slope marking the path of the
Overland Central.
“Dropping is right,” he agreed “Probably Mr. Ackerman’s guess hits
the mark: they’ve made two or three different surveys, and they are
changing from one to another as they go along――anything to make the
work go faster.”
“Yes; and they’re always picking the one that will do the most to hold
us back,” Dick added. “You can trust ’em to do that.”
A few minutes later the unloading was finished and the boys walked on
up the grade to where a big gang of hard-rock men were hewing out a
path for the track-to-be through a jutting shoulder of the right-hand
mountain. Goldrick, who had come to be known on the staff as the
hard-rock specialist, was in charge of the rock blasting, and to him
Dick and Larry reported for further duty.
“I don’t know of anything pressing just now, unless you take a hike up
the line and find Blaisdell, and ask him what he has to report,” the
assistant told them. “Mr. Ackerman is coming up this evening, and he’ll
want to know what the O. C. people are doing up above――or if they’re
doing anything beyond that big rock cutting they’ve been working on for
the past week.”
Blaisdell, as the boys knew, was an instrumentman who, with a helper to
hold staff for him, had been sent ahead two days earlier to reset grade
stakes in the upper reaches of the canyon, and, incidentally, to find
out what advance the Overland Central was making at the back of beyond.
Taking Goldrick’s suggestion as an order, Dick and Larry immediately
outfitted for a tramp which would probably consume the entire day,
getting a haversack lunch put up by the hard-rock camp cook. In light
marching order they took the trail used by Blaisdell and his man two
days before, choosing the steep route over the “Nose,” as the jutting
mountain shoulder was called, both because it would save time, and
because the more roundabout route up the canyon at the river level was
more or less blocked by the cliff through which the rock-men were still
only in the process of drilling and blasting the way.
At their first breathing stop, half-way up the mountain, Larry said: “I
wonder what can be keeping Ned Blaisdell out so long? I saw him when he
started, and they weren’t carrying chuck enough to feed the two of them
for more than a day or so.”
“You can search me,” Dick returned. “Maybe he’s been getting into
trouble with some of the O. C. bullies.”
Larry thought not. “No,” he said; “his work wouldn’t have taken him
very near the O. C. at any point. They’re held up in that big rock
cutting half a mile above us, just the same as we are at the Nose. They
are not over in Yellow Dog Park yet; and that is where Blaisdell was to
do most of his verifying.”
“You can’t tell where those O. C. scrappers are, or what they’re
going to do next,” said Dick soberly. “This fight is getting hotter
every day. Last Wednesday, when I went over to Red Butte after some
blue-prints for the bridge builders, Mr. Briscoe, our right-of-way
agent, was in the Red Butte office. I heard him tell Mr. Ackerman that
the mine owners at Little Ophir had got out a bond issue to help the
railroad that gets there first with its tracks.”
Larry nodded. “I heard about that bond issue. It doesn’t seem just
fair. It was promised to our company early this spring if we’d agree
to build a line in from Red Butte. And now they say they’ll give it to
either company that gets there first.”
“That’s what they’re saying now,” Dick asserted. “And there’s another
kick coming to the under dog, besides. Mr. Briscoe said that the
merchants and big ore shippers were offering, as another hurry punch,
to sign contracts agreeing to give the winner all of their business for
the first six months. So the losing company will have a dead railroad
on its hands for a whole half year.”
The square Donovan jaw set itself firmly.
“We’ve got to win, Dick. It isn’t only the money; it’s partly the way
these O. C. folks have acted. It was our right-of-way in the beginning
and this is Short Line territory. Besides, they haven’t fought fair;
they would have stolen the whole canyon if they’d got into it first, as
they were planning to. I say we’ve _got_ to win.”
“Right you are,” said the general manager’s son. And then: “Got your
wind again?――all right; let’s go.”
From the top of the spur, which they reached after another stiff climb,
there was an extended view to the eastward; a view backgrounded by the
mighty bulk of the farther Timanyonis. Somewhere in one of the many
upland gulches of the great range lay the gold camp toward which the
two railroads were racing. At their feet and far below, the foaming
torrent of the Tourmaline gashed its path through the mountains, its
narrow, crooking canyon opening out a few miles away in a sort of
park-like valley.
“Yellow Dog Park,” said Larry, pointing to the valley. “Queer names
they have up in these mountains. I suppose some prospector had a hound
dog, and it died or got lost, or something, down yonder in that valley.”
“Queer” fitted the break in the mountain labyrinth into which they
were looking down, in the sense that it was singularly unlike any of
the canyon widenings in the lower reaches of the river. In shape it
was roughly circular and of considerable extent, with so many gulches
running down into it that it looked from their height like the center
of a many-pointed star. It seemed to be entirely bare of timber, and
its color, in sharp contrast to the dark greens of the wooded mountain
sides, was a sort of dirty yellow, with here and there a patch of green
that was even darker than that of the forests.
From their high lookout they could not trace the course of the river
through the valley, though they finally concluded that the Tourmaline
must flow along its northern edge, which lay at their left as they
faced eastward. In this case it would be hidden beneath its fringing of
trees.
“What do you suppose makes those square green patches?” Dick asked,
lamenting in the same breath his forgetfulness in failing to bring his
field-glass along.
“I’ve been wondering,” said Larry; then: “I’ll bet I know! They’re
fields of alfalfa. There’s a hay ranch in that valley, taking its
irrigation water from the river.”
“A ranch?” Dick queried――“this far up in the mountains?”
“Sure. With a trig mining-camp that can’t be more than fifteen miles
away there’d be a good market for every pound of hay that could be
raised. Dad says it used to be that way in the little valleys around
Leadville, back in the early days, and some of the hay ranchers made
more money than the miners did.”
Dickie Maxwell, still grumbling because he hadn’t brought the
field-glass, was trying to make a binocular of his curved hands.
“I don’t see any ranch house,” he offered, “but there is a path or
road of some sort winding around across the park. Can’t you see it? It
begins down here at the left and goes across sort of cater-cornering to
the southeast.”
Larry looked closely and saw what appeared in the distance to be the
tiniest of footpaths running in the direction Dick had indicated.
“It’s most likely the ranchman’s wagon road,” he hazarded. “He’d have
to have some way of hauling his hay to Little Ophir.”
“Well,” Dick cut in, “this isn’t finding Blaisdell. Shall we climb down
and begin the hunt?”
Now the task which had been set them, of finding two human atoms in the
maze of forest and mountain which lay at their feet, was not quite so
much of a needle-in-a-haystack search as it might appear to be. Since
Blaisdell and his helper had gone ahead to reset grade stakes, all the
searchers had to do was to find the Short Line survey in the maze and
then to follow the staked trail until they came to the resetters.
At first they tried to hold a straight course down the mountain from
their lookout summit. But here great Nature intervened. Precipices
they could not descend got in the way, and when these had been
circumvented, there were steep gulches to be headed and lower spurs to
be climbed――with more gulches on their farther sides.
Winding and twisting, climbing and descending, and twice crossing small
streams, they came finally into the valley with the curious name――and
were so completely turned around that they had to look at their watches
and the position of the sun to locate their point of approach, which
was far up the southern side of the valley. In other words, they had
made more than a quarter-circuit of their goal in getting down to it.
“Gee!” Dick exclaimed――he was beginning to lag a bit from sheer
leg-weariness――“the long way around may be the shortest way home, as
the old saying goes, but if it is, we didn’t find it. Whereabouts are
we, anyhow?”
It was rather hard to tell just where they were, in relation to their
surroundings. At the near-hand view the valley didn’t look anything
like the yellowish flat they had seen from the heights. For one thing,
the yellow turned out to be the dirty fawn-color of disintegrated
sandstone; and instead of being flat, as it had looked, the park was
thickly “pimpled,” at least in their part of it, with low hills of the
weathering stone.
“The first thing to do is to find the line of our survey,” said Larry.
“We can’t miss running across some of the stakes if we go straight
ahead the way we’re facing now.”
That seemed reasonable. From many former studyings of the maps and
blue-prints they knew the general route of the Extension, though this
was the first time they had been out this far ahead of the actual
working forces. Not having any maps with them, and neither of them
being able to recall from memory the exact route of the new line
through the valley, there was nothing to do but to hunt for the line
of stakes. So they set out northward among the stony hills, keeping a
sharp lookout as they went for the line of the survey.
They had gone but a short distance when they came suddenly upon
a fellow of about their own age, dressed in patched overalls and
a flannel shirt. He had a sharp nose, a rather foolish chin, and
greenish-gray eyes that had a furtive trick of dodging――wouldn’t
meet squarely the look of other eyes. When they came upon him he was
clearing out the sand from a small irrigation ditch. As they approached
he leaned upon his long-handled shovel and hailed them.
“Hello, Corduroys! You travelin’, ’r just a-goin’ somewheres?”
“Both,” Dick returned, matching the ditch-cleaner’s grin. “We belong
to the Short Line outfit, and we’re hunting for our location stakes
through this valley. Do you know where the lines run?”
At the mention of the Short Line, Larry, who was standing a
little behind Dick, thought he saw a sudden change flick into the
ditch-cleaner’s eyes――the eyes that wouldn’t stay still. Then he took
himself to task for being over-suspicious and concluded he was mistaken.
“Do I know where them lines are at? You’re mighty whistlin’ right I do.
Didn’t me an’ Paw cut the stakes f’r ’em when they was first laid out?”
“Then you’re the fellow we’re looking for,” Dick chirped. “I’m
Dick Maxwell, and Larry Donovan, here, is my bunkie. We’re on the
engineering staff under Mr. Ackerman.”
“My name’s Jones――Billy, for short,” was the counter introduction.
“Paw, he owns the hay ranch over on t’other side o’ the park. Want me
to show you them stakes?”
“If you can spare the time,” said Dick; “and we’d sure be much obliged.
But first maybe you can tell us something about a man we’re looking
for; Mr. Blaisdell, one of our instrumentmen, who has been up around
here for the last two days.”
For just a fraction of a second the boy with the shifty eyes seemed to
hesitate. Then, looking steadily down at his own feet as he spoke:
“Why-e-e, yes; mebbe I could. Er――there was a man got hurt yisterday;
fell down an’ twisted his ankle, ’r somethin’. Mebbe that’s the one.
I didn’t hear him speak his name. Had a Swede felluh with him that he
sent to carry the word somewhere――back down canyon to you folks, mebbe.”
Dick and Larry exchanged swift glances. The man who was hurt must be
Blaisdell. They remembered now that it was Olsen, the young Swedish
axman, who had been sent out with him as his helper and target-holder.
“That’s our man,” said Dick. “Where is he now?”
Again the news-giver seemed to be looking for something on the
ground at his feet. After a little pause he said, “He’s――er――he’s up
at the head-gate shack, where we get our irrigatin’ water from. It
was――um――right around there somewheres that he got hurt.” He stumbled
so haltingly over this simple statement that again Larry gathered the
impression that Billy Jones was either awkwardly slow of speech; or
else something was distracting him most curiously. And somehow, Larry
fancied that the distraction came from the effort of listening for
some unwelcome sound; some sound that was both expected and dreaded.
“Mr. Blaisdell is up there alone?” Dick inquired.
“Why-e-e, yes; we couldn’t tote him over to the ranch house, nohow――the
Swede an’ me――an’ he couldn’t walk. So we fixed him up in the――in the
bunk, and the Swede hiked back to wherever it was the hurt felluh was
sendin’ him. There was――er――we allus keep some grub in the shack――me
an’ Paw. Sometimes we have to stay up there over night, when the
water’s high.”
Again the two scouts exchanged glances, and Dick said:
“We must go to Blaisdell, right away, Larry. He may be having a mighty
bad time of it up there all alone.” Then to Jones: “Can you direct us
so that we can find the place?”
The news-breaker threw down his shovel, as one only too willing to
accommodate.
“I’ll do a heap better’n that; I’ll go along an’ show you,” he offered.
“You felluhs pretty good on the hike? All right; le’s get a move on,”
and he immediately set a long-legged pace among the hills that seemed
little less than a dog-trot to the two who had already tramped five or
six miles over prodigiously rough ground.
Before they had gone very far several things began to impress them,
as one might say, with interrogation-points attached. Since a cloud
had slipped down from the high peaks to obscure the sun, they couldn’t
determine the direction in which they were going, but it seemed to both
of them that their guide was taking them back nearly over the route
they had so lately traversed in coming into the valley.
That was one thing; and another was that they saw no grade stakes
anywhere along the way. Again, Dick, who had a quick ear for unusual
sounds, thought he could hear, far away to their left, a tiny,
insect-like clicking that would have been set down at once, in other
circumstances, as a distance-diminished chatter of air-drills burrowing
in solid rock. Dick told himself scoffingly that of course it couldn’t
possibly be air-drills, and he was wondering, as they hurried along,
what high-altitude insect it could be that kept up such an incessant
_chink-a-chink-a-chink_.
It was not until after they had measured an exceedingly crooked course
of perhaps half a mile among the sandstone buttes that they came to a
stream which they took to be Yellow Dog Creek, inasmuch as it wasn’t
nearly big enough to be the Tourmaline. Up the stream the ditch-cleaner
led the way at his space-devouring stride, and in a short time the
boys saw that they were approaching the head of the valley, if a
many-pointed star could be said to have a head.
This conclusion apparently verified itself when they presently plunged
into a canyon, the gash in the mountain through which the creek entered
the valley. Up this canyon their guide hurried them, slackening his
pace only after two or three twists in the gorge had shut off any view
of the rear.
It was along about this time that Dick began to grow curious.
“Say, Jonesy; what canyon is this?” he asked.
“Echo Canyon,” the guide flung back over his shoulder. Then he halted
abruptly. “Listen,” he commanded.
Distinctly――so clearly that they could have sworn that the source of
it couldn’t possibly be more than a mile away at the farthest, came the
_chooka-chooka-chooka_ of a locomotive laboring with a heavy train.
Their guide’s grin showed a bad set of teeth.
“That’s why it’s called ‘Echo’,” he explained. “You wouldn’t reckon
you could hear them O. C. trains ’way down yonder in the lower canyon,
would you now? It’s six mile in a bee line, if it’s a foot.”
It appeared grossly unbelievable, to be sure, but seemingly the fact
remained. They could hear the laboring engine; and, in the nature of
things, it couldn’t be any nearer than William Jones had declared it to
be.
“What is this creek?――the Yellow Dog?” Dick wanted to know.
The guide nodded.
“I don’t see what our instrumentman was doing up here,” Larry put in
with a puzzled frown. “Our survey goes on up the Tourmaline.”
“Sure it does,” said William Jones. “But this is――er――a sort o’ short
cut to the――to where I’m a-takin’ you. We hike up over the spur a
little furder along.”
It might have been a short cut, but it seemed plentifully long to the
two muscle-weary man-hunters when, after what they were estimating as
fully three additional miles of mountain-scalings and gulch-headings,
their guide halted them on the brink of a broad canyon through which
a stream bigger than any they had yet seen was foaming among its
boulders. At a point directly below the halting place they saw a rude
dam and the beginnings of an irrigation canal; and, half hidden under
the trees at the dam site, there was a roughly built log shelter
looking from above as if it might sometime have been a hunter’s camp.
“Right there you are,” said William Jones, pointing down at the log
hut. “I reckon you can find your way from here, an’ I’ll have to be
gettin’ back, ’r Paw’ll be huntin’ me with a trace-chain.”
They thanked him warmly; they could do no less for a fellow who had
voluntarily come miles out of his way to do them a neighborly kindness;
and afterward they saw him lose himself in the mountain-top forest
through which they had just made their way. Then they descended to the
canyon of the tumbling stream.
Dick was the first to reach the weather-beaten log shelter beside the
rude dam. It was not even a hut; it was merely a shack, with one side
open to the weather, and――it held neither a bunk nor any other sign of
recent occupancy!
“Come here, Larry!” Dick called; and when Larry stood staring blankly
over his shoulder: “If I didn’t hate slang so bad, I’d say that we’re
stung, good and proper! Do you get me?”
“I guess I do,” said Larry. “That long-legged grasshopper in overalls
wasn’t telling a word of truth――about Blaisdell or anything else. What
made him lie to us that way, and then take so much pains to make the
lie stick?”
“You can search me,” Dick said, falling back upon his favorite phrase.
“He must be clear off his bean. I thought he looked pretty much like a
half-wit, anyhow.”
Larry sat down upon a fallen tree and propped his chin in his hands.
After a time he looked up to say:
“Dick, if I wasn’t so dad-beaned tired, I’d trail Mr. Billy Jones and
give him what’s coming to him, if it was the last thing I ever did. But
we don’t get out of this with whole skins, either――you and I, I mean.
We bit just like a couple of raw suckers; swallowed bait, hook and
sinker!”
“Spread it out,” said Dick gloomily.
“It’s as plain as the nose on your face, now,” Larry went on hotly.
“Don’t you remember how anxious he was to get us out of the valley,
quick, before we could see or hear anything he didn’t want us to see or
hear? And that piece of bull about the echoing canyon!――that was an O.
C. material train we heard, all right, but it wasn’t any six miles away
or anything like it. I’ll bet it was right in that valley and less than
half a mile from us when we heard it!”
“But good goodness!” Dick gasped. “That would mean that they are six
miles ahead of us! That can’t be; they’re stopped in that rock cutting
just this side of the Nose. Haven’t we heard them blasting there every
day?”
“It makes no difference. They’ve got around that cutting in some way
and have gone on blasting to fool us and make us think they’re stuck
there. They’re in the Yellow Dog with their track; and that isn’t all:
I’ll bet they’ve arrested Blaisdell and Olsen and are holding them on
some trumped-up charge to keep them from carrying the news!”
“But why should this Jones fellow chip in to help them?”
“That’s easy. I expect they have paid spies out all over the valley,
and he’s one of them. He saw an easy way to bamfoozle us, and he took
it; that’s all.”
It was past the middle of the afternoon, and Dick reached for the
haversack, took out the neglected luncheon and divided it.
“It’s up to us, Larry; harder than it’s ever been before, because we
were foolish enough to let that unwashed sand-shoveler put it all over
us that way. We’ve got to find out what’s going on and carry the news
back to our folks. Nice prospect for this late in the day! I’ve just
about tramped the tramp all out of me, as it stands. We must have
covered something like five or six miles getting here from the valley.”
“Every foot of five, anyway,” Larry agreed, talking around a hungry
mouthful of bacon sandwich. “But here’s hoping that we can find a
shorter way back, and it’s dollars to doughnuts that we shall. We know
now that Jonesy was trying to lose us, which was why he ran us all over
the lot getting here. This must be the upper canyon of the Tourmaline
itself, and I expect, if we hunt around a bit, we’ll find our grade
stakes――and most likely the O. C.’s as well. If we follow the river
down――――”
The interruption was a series of thunderous explosions that shook the
air in the canyon and were bandied back and forth between the cliff
walls in echoing rumblings lasting for a full half-minute.
“That was something that Jonesy didn’t count on――planting us so near
that we could hear the blasting――didn’t think of it, I suppose,” Larry
went on. “That touch-off wasn’t more than a mile away at the farthest,
if I’m any judge.”
Hurriedly despatching the belated midday meal, they took the trail
again, this time following the river. Almost immediately they came
upon a series of grade stakes; two sets of them, in fact, overlapping
each other. Within twenty minutes the familiar clinking of the
air-drills could be heard, and now Dick knew what the mysterious
high-altitude insect was whose chip-chipping he had heard at the
beginning of the long roundabout over which the fellow named Jones had
led them.
Presently the work noises came to them so plainly that they no longer
dared to follow the canyon trail at the river level. If their surmise
that Blaisdell and his man were held as prisoners was correct, they
would doubtless suffer the same fate if they should fall into the hands
of the O. C. force.
Realizing this, they climbed laboriously out of the canyon, and from
the top of the cliffs a little farther on they were able to look down
upon an exceedingly busy scene; a huge rock cutting just fairly begun,
with its battery of chattering air-drills, hustling gangs of laborers,
puffing spoil train, and big steam shovel.
Sorely as time pressed, Larry nevertheless snatched a few minutes in
which to make a rough sketch of the incomplete cutting, knowing that
the information would be valuable in estimating how long the rival
railroad was likely to be delayed at this particular point.
“Hurry!” Dick urged, glancing at his wrist watch. “We don’t want to be
caught by the dark in getting back to camp. We’ll never find our way
out of this mountain tangle if we have to tackle the job in the night.”
By keeping well up on the heights they were able to trace the grade
of the Overland Central back to the point where it entered the upper
canyon, and beyond that, along the southern edge of the valley of the
Yellow Dog to the “enemy’s” newest material and supply camp.
Under cover of the forest on the steep slope just above the camp they
were able to note the great piles of material that had been brought up,
and even while they looked, another laden train was nosing its way into
one of the several side-tracks. Also, from their elevated lookout they
could see the completed track winding among the sandstone buttes all
across the circular valley, disappearing finally under the northward
cliffs.
Dick grunted.
“I ought to have a leather medal,” he said; “for forgetting to bring
my field-glass along this morning. If we’d had it back yonder on top
of the Nose we wouldn’t have mistaken that piece of track for a wagon
road.” Then as a new complication suddenly struck him: “Heavens to
Betsy, Larry! Do you see what we’re in for now? To get to the upper
canyon we’ll have to cross their track――_at grade_! And that means a
crossing fight that may easily hold us back for days and days!”
Once more Larry had been sketching; this time making a rough bird’s-eye
map of the valley, with the O. C. line running across it, and the
location of the big material camp carefully marked.
“That’s all,” he said at last, buttoning the note-book into his pocket.
“Now comes the real tug of war. It’s five o’clock and worse, and we’ve
got at least six or seven miles of mighty hard tramping ahead of us
before we can break in with our news. How are you fixed for it?”
Dick stretched his legs with a groan.
“I don’t believe I’ve got more than half as many joints as I started
out with this morning,” he said with a grin. “But I’m game; the gamest
thing you know.”
To prove it he laid hold of the big round boulder beside which he
had been crouching and drew himself up. To his shocked astonishment
the big rock tilted slowly under his pull, and he had barely time to
spring quickly aside before the boulder turned completely over and went
bounding and crashing down the slope like a small avalanche, gathering
a following of smaller stones as it went, and heading directly for the
busy camp at the slope foot.
“Great Peter!――you’ve done it now!” Larry exploded; then: “Up with you
and run for it――if you don’t want to be nabbed and chucked into some
hole with Blaisdell and Olsen!”
Whatever had been done with Blaisdell and his target-holder, it is
certain that no alarm was ever answered more promptly than that given
by the descending boulder. Instantly the big camp began to buzz like a
nest of disturbed hornets. With a final leap the bounding stone crashed
into a cement shed, sending a gray cloud of the “Portland” skyward much
as if a charge of dynamite had been exploded under it. And now men came
running from all directions, some of them with guns.
Luckily for the two scouts, the foresting on this part of the mountain
side was fairly dense. At the crack of a rifle and the whine of a
bullet from below, they forgot their weariness and ducked and ran
diagonally up the slope. At the first chance they had to look back,
they saw some half-dozen of the armed men coming on in hot pursuit. And
a scant five hundred yards or so was all the start they had.
“Hold your wind, and for pity’s sake don’t stumble!” Larry gasped.
“Here’s where we’ve got to dig for it! Those fellows never will believe
that we didn’t roll that stone on purpose!”
For the first few breath-cutting minutes their capture seemed fairly
inevitable. Their pursuers were fresh, while they, themselves,
were almost in the last ditch of fatigue, so far as a foot-race
was concerned. Once, indeed, they raced upon the raw edge of the
catastrophe. A thinly wooded bit of ground that they were forced to
cross gave one of the pursuers a chance to come within gunshot range
and they both heard his shouted, “Stop, or I’ll fire!” a command which
was quickly followed by the report of a gun. But the man’s aim――if
he had really taken any――was bad, and a last-gasp spurt carried the
fugitives once more into the welcome shelter of the denser wooding.
From that on, with aching muscles protesting agonizingly at every step,
they slowly distanced their pursuers, leading the chase up and on,
higher and farther into the heavy timber on the approach to the bald
heights where no timber grew. Not until the dusk was rising from the
gulches could they be certain that they had shaken off the pursuit; and
it was then that Dickie Maxwell threw himself on his back under the
trees, white, spent and gasping.
“I’m all in, Larry!” he panted. “I couldn’t make another mile if my
life depended on it! Go on, if you can find the way in the dark, and
leave me. The news doesn’t need two mouths to tell it.”
But Larry wasn’t built that way. Stiff and sore as he was himself, he
knelt over the spent one, massaging and kneading the stiffened muscles
and giving Dick a trainer’s manhandling that made him cry out under the
very roughness of it.
“Oh, gee!――let up!” pleaded the squirming sufferer. “I’ll try it
another whirl if you’ll quit. I’d rather ache and go on than to be
beaten to death and take it lying down!”
With the shades of night creeping ghost-like through the solemn forest
they hit the invisible trail again; heading westward and ever westward,
rolling down steep hillsides into deep gulches, and crawling painfully
up the corresponding steep on the other side, stumbling blindly over
fallen trees and rocks; going on and on after their feet and legs were
so numb and stiff that they could hardly be sure they had any, and with
their eyes, for which they had small use in the darkness, leaden heavy
with sleep.
The end came suddenly when it did come. At a moment when even Larry’s
fine endurance was at its last gasp they saw a camp-fire twinkling far
below them. They didn’t run down to it; they merely let go all holds
and tumbled. The camp was that of their own hard-rock men at the foot
of the Nose, and they nearly rolled into the embers of the fire before
they could stop themselves.
It was Mr. Ackerman, their chief, who picked them up and listened to
their stammered-out report of the day’s adventures. This time there
was no word of commendation for what they had done; but that was only
because the time they had fought so hard to save had suddenly become
vitally precious.
Almost as in a dream they heard the chief snapping out his orders;
heard the bustle and clamor of a camp turning out to go into swift
action; heard the camp cook hammering upon his dish-pan to awaken the
laggards.
Dickie Maxwell, smiling beatifically, turned sleepily to his exhausted
running mate.
“Glory be, Larry!” he muttered weakly; “we’re going to make a fight
for it; a crossing fight, at that. Here’s――hoping――we’ll be there――to
see!” And then, still more sleepily: “Huh! if anybody should rise up
to inquire――I’ll say we put one over on a fellow named Jones, after
all――what?”