TOM'S FIGHTING BLOOD SURGES
"Take another hitch of rope around that young steer," Dolph ordered,
after he had flung Harry violently to the ground.
"He wont get away as he is," replied one of the other two men.
"Maybe not, but take an extra roping, as I told you," was Gage's
tart retort.
So another length of line was passed around Hazelton, until he
felt as though he had been done up in network.
"Now; we'll give your partner a chance to show up," muttered Gage,
throwing himself on the ground. "You young fellers will have
to learn the lesson that you're thirty miles from anywhere, and
that we rule matters around here. We're going to keep on ruling,
too, in this strip of Nevada."
"Are you?" grimaced Hazelton. "Then, my friend, allow me to tell
you that you are making the mistake of trying to reckon without
Tom Reade!"
"Is that your partner's name?" jeered Dolph Gage. "A likely enough
boy, from what I've heard of him. But he isn't old enough to
understand Nevada ways."
"No, perhaps not," Harry admitted ironically. "So far Tom has
gotten his training only in Colorado and in Arizona. I begin
to realize that he isn't bright enough to have his own way among
the bright men of Nevada. But Reade learns rapidly---don't forget
that!"
"Huh!" growled Gage. "The young cub seems to think that he has
come out here to take charge of the Range. According to his idea
he has only to pick out what he wanted here; and take it. He
never seems to understand that gold belongs to the first man who
finds it. I was on this Range long before Reade was out of school."
"And he doesn't object to your staying here," remarked Hazelton
calmly.
"That's good of him, I'm sure," snapped Gage. "I've no objection
to his staying here, either. Fact is, I'm going to encourage both
of you to stay here."
"Encourage us?" grinned Harry.
"Well, then, I'm going to make you stay here, if you like that word
any better."
"That will be more difficult," suggested Hazelton.
"First of all, we're going to tote your assay outfit over to our
camp. You won't be able to do much without that. Look around
a bit, Eb," added Dolph, turning to one of his companions. "Perhaps
you'd better get the furnace out first. Two of you can carry
it. I wish we had our other man back from Dugout. We need hands
here."
"Can't you use some of my muscle in helping you to loot our camp?"
suggested Hazelton, ironically. "I'm fairly strong, you know."
"Yes; I know you are. That's why we've tied you up," growled
Gage.
The man addressed as Eb had taken the other fellow aside, and
they were now lifting the assay furnace in order to decide how
heavy it was.
"It doesn't weigh much over a hundred and fifty pounds," called
out Dolph Gage. "Two men like you can get it over to camp. And
bring over our guns, too. It was a mistake to leave 'em over
in camp."
Gage watched until the pair were out of sight among the trees.
"Hurry, you men!" Gage roared after them.
Then he started in to nose around the camp.
As he passed a clump of bushes there was a slight stir among them.
Then Tom Reade leaped forth.
In a twinkling Dolph Gage had been caught up. He was in the grip
of a strong, trained football player.
"Drop me!" ordered Gage, with a slight quiver in his voice.
"I'm going to," agreed Tom, hurling the fellow fully a dozen feet.
With an oath Gage leaped to his feet. Before he was fairly Tom
Reade's fist caught him in the left eye, sending him to earth
once more.
"Is that the way you fight, you young cub?" roared Gage hoarsely.
"I can fight harder if you want me to," Tom retorted, as the other
again got to his feet. "Now, put your hands up, and I'll show you."
Tom went at it hammer and tongs. He was a splendidly built young
athlete, and boxing was one of his strong points, though he rarely
allowed himself to get into a fight. Indeed, his usually abounding
good nature made all fighting disagreeable to him. Now, however,
he drove in as though Dolph Gage were a punching-bag.
"Stand up, man, and fight as though you had some sand in you!" Tom
ordered. "Get up steam, and defend yourself."
"I have had enough," Gage gasped. Indeed, his face looked as
though he had.
"Are you a baby?" Reade demanded contemptuously. "Can't you fight
with anything but your tongue!"
"You wait and I'll show you," snarled the badly battered man.
"What's the need of waiting?" Tom jeered, and swung in another blow
that sent Gage to the ground.
"Eh! Josh!" bellowed Gage, with all the breath he had left.
"Hustle o-o-o-over here!"
"Let 'em come!" vaunted Reade. "You'll be done for long before
they can get here."
"I'll have you killed when they get here with the guns!" cried
Gage hoarsely.
Tom continued to punish his opponent. Then Dolph, on regaining
his feet, sought to run. Tom let him go a few steps, then bounded
after him with the speed of the sprinter. Gage was caught by
the shoulders, swung squarely around, and soundly pummelled.
"Let up! Let up!" begged Gage. "I'm beaten. I admit it."
"Beaten, perhaps, but not punished enough," retorted Tom. As
Dolph would no longer stand up, Reade threw himself upon the fellow
and pummelled him fearfully.
"This is no fair fight," protested Gage, now fairly sobbing in his
pain and terror, for good-humored Reade seemed to him now to be the
impersonation of destroying, fury.
"Fair fight?" echoed Reade. "Of course it isn't. This is a
chastisement. You villain, you've done nothing but annoy us and
shoot at us ever since we've met you. You've got to stop it after
this; do you understand?"
"I'll stop it---I'll stop it. Please stop yourself," begged Gage,
now thoroughly cowed.
"I'll wager you'll stop," gritted Tom. "I've never hammered a man
before as I've hammered you, and I'm not half through with you. By
the time I am through with you you'll slink into a corner every time
you see me coming near. You scoundrel, you bully!"
Tom's fists continued to descend. Dolph's tone changed from one
of entreaty to one of dire threats. He would spend the rest of
his life, he declared, in dogging Reade's tracks until he succeeded
in killing the boy.
"That doesn't worry me any. You'll experience a change of
heart---see if you don't," Tom rejoined grimly, as he added to the
pounding that the other was receiving.
Harry Hazelton had struggled to his feet, though he had been unable
to free his hands from the cords that held them behind his back.
"You're not talking quite the way you did a few minutes ago, Gage,"
Harry put in dryly.
"You'll see---both of you young pups!" moaned the battered wretch.
"Ask any one, and they'll tell you that Dolph Gage never overlooks
a pounding such as I've had."
"And you got it from the boy that you were going to teach something,"
jeered Hazelton, "Gage, you know a little more about Tom Reade, now,
don't your?"
Then Harry straightened up, as he caught sight of moving objects
in the distance.
"Get through with him, Tom" advised the other young engineer.
"I see Eb and Josh coming on the run. They'll have the guns.
We've got to look out for ourselves."
Tom flung the badly beaten man from him where he lay on the ground
moaning over his hurts and vowing vengeance on Tom.
"Stand still, Harry, and I'll have you free in a jiffy," Tom
proposed, hauling out his pocket knife.
"It won't do for us to stand still too long," urged Hazelton,
as his chum began to slash at the cords. "The other scoundrels
will kill us when they see what's been going on here."
"No, they won't," Tom promised calmly. "We'll take care of 'em
both. You wait and see which one I take. Then you take the other.
We'll handle 'em to the finish."
This seemed like foolhardy talk when it was considered that the
other two men would return armed. But Harry had unlimited confidence
in his friend, and so followed Tom, crouching, until they had
hidden behind bushes along the trail.
"Where be you, Dolph?" called the voice of Eb, as the pair drew
near.
"He's over there," spoke Reade, springing out of the bushes.
"You'll join him after a bit."
Neither Eb nor Josh was armed. Tom sailed into Eb, while Harry
sprang at Josh. For a few minutes the trail was a scene of swift
action, indeed. Shortly Eb and Josh tried to run away, as Gage
had done, but each time the young engineers caught them and compelled
them to renew the fight.
"My man's going to sleep, now, Harry!" Tom called, and drove in
a knockout blow with his left.
Josh swiftly followed Eb to the ground.
"They'll keep quiet for a little while," declared Tom, after a look
at each.
Dolph Gage had by this time painfully risen to his feet and came
limping slowly down the trail.
"You might look after your friends, Gage," Tom called, pointing.
"They need attention."
"How did they come to be here?" gasped Dolph.
"They'll give you full particulars when they have time," Tom laughed.
"You boys won't feel quite so smart when our turn comes," snarled
Gage.
"Not a bit," Reade answered. "If you fellows have any sense you'll
conclude that you've had about all the settlement that you can stand."
Gage didn't make any answer. Doubtless he concluded that it wouldn't
be wise to talk back So he began working over Eb and Josh, until
they showed signs of reviving.
"Did ye---did ye kill 'em for us, Dolph?" gasped Josh, as he opened
his eyes and beheld the face of his comrade.
"No," said Gage curtly.
"Why not?"
"Shut up!"
Not many minutes more had passed when Eb became conscious.
"You fellows can go over to your camp, any time you want," suggested
Tom.
Slowly, painfully, the trio started.
"I feel almost ashamed of myself," Harry muttered.
"So do I," Tom agreed. "Yet what else was there for us to do!
We've stood all the nonsense we can from that crowd. They'd have
killed us if we hadn't done something to bring them to their senses.
Now, I believe they'll let us alone."
"They'll ambush us," predicted Hazelton
"Well, they won't have any guns to do it with," Tom grinned.
"Why, what became of their guns"
"I'm the only fellow on earth who knows," Tom laughed.
"Then you were at their camp?"
"Of course. My telling you to stone any prowler who visited this
place was only a trap. I thought that he'd run off and get the
rest of the crew. Knowing you to be alone and unarmed, and believing
me to be far away prospecting, they didn't imagine that they'd need
their rifles. As soon as they left their camp I dropped in and
borrowed the rifles and all their ammunition."
"Where is the stuff now?"
"Come on and I'll show you."
"Hold on a minute," begged Harry, as Tom leaped up. "Do you miss
anything?"
"What?"
"Our assay furnace. Eb and Josh carted it away."
"Then we'll go after that, first," Tom smiled. "Our friends are
so sore that it would be hardly fair to ask them to return the
furnace."
That missing article was found about halfway between the two camps.
Tom and Harry picked it up, carrying it back to where it had
been taken from. "Going after the guns, now?" Hazelton inquired.
"First of all," Tom suggested, "I think we had better start a
roaring good campfire."
"What do we want such a thing as that for?" Harry protested.
"The day is warm enough."
"The fire will be just the thing," laughed Tom quietly. "Come
on and gather the wood with me. Alf! Oh, you Alf Drew!"
But the cigarette fiend was not in evidence If he heard, he did
not answer.
"We might as well pay that imitation boy for his time and let
him go," muttered Harry.
"Oh, I hardly think so," dissented Reade. "It's worth some time
and expense to see if we can't make something more nearly resembling
a man out of him."
The fire was soon crackling merrily. Tom led the way to a thicket
an eighth of a mile from camp. Here he produced from hiding three
repeating rifles and several boxes of ammunition.
"We'll hold on to these," Hazelton said.
"For what reason?"
"They'll come in handy to steer off that other crowd."
"I wouldn't be bothered with keeping the rifles about camp," Tom
retorted, as they started backward.
"But say! Gage's man that went to Dugout will soon be back.
Do you forget that he carries a rifle?"
"Jim Ferrers will be back at about the same time," Tom rejoined.
"They'll have rifles until the camp will look like an outdoor
arsenal. We don't want these added rifles around camp. Besides,
if we kept 'em we'd soon begin to feel like thieves with other
folks' property."
"What are you going to do with these guns, then?"
"By tomorrow," Reade proposed, "I rather expect to put these guns
out where Gage's crew can find them again."
"Well, you're full of faith in human nature, then!" gasped Harry.
"Wait and see what happens," begged Tom.
When they stepped back into camp Tom threw the magazine of one
of the rifles open, extracting the cartridges. Then he stepped
over and carefully deposited the rifle across the middle of the
fire.
"I might have known!" cried Hazelton.
The other two rifles were soon disposed of in the same manner.
"Let the rifles cook in the fire for an hour," smiled Reade,"
and the barrels will be too crooked for a bullet ever to get through
one again."
"What are you going to do with the cartridges, though?"
"Fire a midnight salute with them," Tom answered briefly. "Wait
and you'll hear some noise."
Alf Drew cautiously approached camp when he felt the pangs of
hunger. The cigarette fiend must have been satisfied, for Tom
and Harry had already gotten the meal. But Reade, without a word
of rebuke to their supposed helper, allowed young Drew to help
himself to all he wanted in the way of hot food and coffee.
Bringing midnight two hours nearer---that is to say, at ten o'clock,
Tom and Harry, aided this time by Alf, built a large fire-pile
in a gully at a safe distance from camp. The wood was saturated
with oil, a powder flash laid, then Tom laid a fuse-train. Lighting
the fuse, the three speedily decamped.
Presently they saw the flames of the newly kindled fire shooting
up through the trees. Then the volleying began, for Tom had carefully
deposited through the fire-pile all the captured cartridges.
For fully five minutes the cartridges continued to explode, in
ragged volleys.
"It's a regular Fourth of July," Harry laughed, back in camp. "Tom,
who's going to take the first trick of watch tonight?"
"Neither one of us," Reade replied. "We'll both get a sound sleep."
But the enemy?"
"It would take four mules apiece to drag them over here tonight,"
laughed Reade, as he rolled himself up in his blanket. "Good
night!"