Ironheart

The clean bracing air of the Rockies, together with hard work and plenty of it, had poured new life into the blood of Tug Hollister. The ashen, pasty look had been replaced on his face by a coat of healthy brown. The fierce, driving headaches had gone, but there were still hours when the craving for the drug possessed him and sent him tramping through the night to fight the depression that swept in waves through his heart.

Winter settled over the hills. The wind roared along the slope of the divide and drove before it great scudding clouds heavily laden with moisture. Storms fought and screamed around the peaks. Snow fell day after day. It packed in the gulches and drifted into the draws. The landscape became a vast snowfield across which the bitter winds drove and flung themselves at the flapping tents.

There came, too, nights of wonderful stillness broken only by the crackling of branches in the cold, nights when the stars were out in myriads and the white valley was a vast open-air cathedral built and decorated by the Master Hand.

On such a night Hollister turned in and slept till the small hours. He woke, to find himself restless and irritable, the craving for the drug strong on him. His chance of further sleep was gone.

Without lighting a lantern, he pulled on his heavy wool socks, his o.d. breeches, and his fourteen-inch Chippewa pattern boots. His groping fingers found a leather vest with corduroy sleeves. Outside, he fastened on his skis.

During the night the weather had changed. It had come on to snow. The flakes were large and few, but experience told the engineer that soon they would be coming thick enough. He put on a slicker before he started on his tramp.

Uncertain which way to go, he stood for a moment outside the flap of the tent. The rim of the saucer-shaped valley lay straight ahead. Beyond were the great white snow wastes, stretching mile on mile, isolating the little camp more effectually than a quarantine. He decided to climb out of the draw and push across the hilltops.

To his ears came a faint slithering sound. He listened, heard it again. The crunching of a ski on crusted snow! Who could be out at this time of night? Why? For what purpose?

It was probably one of the men, he reflected. But none of them would be on skis to move over the beaten paths around the camp. Some sixth sense warned of danger in the vicinity. He crept around the tent in the direction from which the sound had come. His glance took in the other tents, scarcely visible against the background of white in the dim light of pre-dawn. Everything there was still and silent.

Again there came to him the hiss of a ski. A hundred yards distant was the mouth of the tunnel. A moving figure stood out, black against the pale background. Some one who had obviously just emerged from the tunnel was shuffling away through the snow.

Hollister did not shout an order to halt. Instinctively he knew that something was wrong, and already he was bending to his stride. Before he had taken half a dozen steps the head of the other man swung round hurriedly. Instantly the unknown quickened his pace.

Before they had traveled a hundred yards, Hollister knew he was more expert in the use of the runners than the fugitive. Barring accidents he would catch him.

The pursued man made for the rim of the valley. From time to time he turned without stopping to see whether he was losing ground. The distance between the two was lessening. Hollister knew it. Evidently the other knew it, too, for he tried desperately to increase his pace.

The hundred yards had become seventy-five, fifty, twenty-five. They were out of the valley now, swinging toward the left where a patch of timber lay back of a clump of quaking asps. A pile of boulders were huddled beneath a rock-rim a stone’s throw to the right.

The snow was falling more heavily now. It was plain that the fugitive was hoping to reach the timber and escape in the thickening storm. To prevent this, Hollister worked farther to the left. He came up quickly with the other and passed him fifteen yards or less away.

A gun cracked. Hollister’s long stride did not slacken. He was keeping well away because he had known the other would be armed. The engineer had made a serious mistake in not stopping to get his revolver.

Again the revolver sounded. The bullet flew harmlessly past. Tug had circled ahead of his prey and cut him off from the grove of quaking asps. He was relying on a piece of audacity to protect him from the armed man. The stranger would assume that he, too, was armed.

Evidently this was the man’s reasoning. He swung to the right, making for the refuge of the rocks. Presently he glanced back to see if he was followed and how closely. The end of the ski must have caught under a rock beneath the snow, for the man was flung forward to his face. The binder of a ski had broken. He rose quickly, caught up the long snowshoe, and ran forward at a gait between a hobble and a shuffle.

Tug did not pursue directly. He had no desire to stop any of the bullets left in the chambers of the revolver. Instead of taking the trail made for him, he broke a new one that led to the summit of the rock-rim above the boulder bed. There was a chance that in doing this he might lose his man, but it was a chance that had to be taken. His guess was that the refugee would find a hiding-place in the rocks and would stay there long enough, at any rate, to mend the broken strings of the ski.

From the rock-rim Hollister looked down upon the boulder bed through the thick snow. He made out a crouched figure below. Satisfied that his victim was not still traveling, he examined the terrain to work out a plan of campaign. A heavy snow comb yawned above the rock-rim. This might very well serve his purpose. Using one of his skis as a lever, he loosened the heavy pack of snow. It moved at first very slowly, but went at last with a rush. There was a roar as it plunged over the bluff and tore a way down to the rocks below. The slide gathered momentum as it went.

Hollister peered down. The crouched figure was gone, had been buried in the giant billow of white.

The engineer refastened his ski, took a few swinging strokes forward, and came to a smooth incline. Down this he coasted rapidly.

The buried man was just struggling out of the white mass when a hand closed on his coat collar. It dragged him from the pack and held him firmly down. Not till Tug made sure that the revolver was missing did he let the man rise.

“Wot’ell’s eatin’ youse?” the rescued man growled, snarling at him.

Tug Hollister stood face to face with the tramp he knew by the name of Cig. Recognition was simultaneous.

“What were you doing at my camp?”

“Aw, go chase yoreself. I ain’t been near your camp.”

“All right, if that’s your story. We’ll go back there now. The sheriff wants you.”

The evil face of the crook worked. Out of the corner of his twisted mouth he spoke venomously. “Say, if I had my gun I’d croak youse.”

“But you haven’t it. Get busy. Dig out your skis.”

“Nothin’ doing. Dig ’em yoreself if youse want ’em.”

Hollister knew of only one argument that would be effective with this product of New York’s underworld. He used it, filled with disgust because circumstances forced his hand. When Cig could endure no longer, he gave way sullenly.

“’Nuff. But some day I’ll get you right for this. I aimed to bump you off, anyhow. Now I soitainly will. I ain’t forgot you rapped on me to that guy Reed.”

“I’ve told you once I didn’t, and you wouldn’t believe me. We’ll let it go at that. Now get those skis.”

The snowshoes were rescued and the broken one mended. Hollister watched his prisoner every minute of the time. He did not intend to run the risk of being hit in the head by a bit of broken rock.

The two moved down into the valley, Cig breaking trail. He made excuses that he was dead tired and couldn’t go another step. They did not serve him well. His captor would not let the crook get in his rear for a single second. He knew that, if the fellow got a chance, he would murder him without the least hesitation.

In a blinding snowstorm the two men reached camp. Twice Cig had tried to bolt and twice had been caught and punished. This was a degrading business, but the engineer had no choice. It was necessary to bring the man in because he had been up to some deviltry, and Hollister could not let him go without first finding out what it was.

He took him into his own tent and put him through a searching quiz. The result of it was precisely nothing. Cig jeered at him defiantly. If he could prove anything against him, let him go to it. That was the substance of the New Yorker’s answers.

“All right. I’ll turn you over to Clint Reed. He’s got something to say to you for stealing his little girl. From the way he talked, I judge you’re in for a bad time of it.”

Cig protested. He hadn’t stolen the girl. How did they know he had? Who said so? What would he do a crazy thing like that for? To all of which Hollister said calmly that he would have to explain that to Reed. If he could satisfy the cattleman, it would be all right with him. Reed could pass him on to Sheriff Daniels without further delay.

“You’re a heluva pardner, ain’t youse?” sneered the crook with an ugly lift of his upper lip. “T’row me down foist chance youse get.”

“I’m not your partner. We hit different trails the day we left the Diamond Bar K ranch. You needn’t play baby on me. That won’t buy you anything.”

“Gonna turn me over to Reed, then, are youse?”

“I’ve no time to bother with you. He’ll know how to handle the case. Better that way, I reckon.”

Cig said nothing. For half an hour there was silence in the tent. Hollister knew that his threat was sinking in, that the kidnapper was uneasily examining the situation to find the best way out.

Daylight came, and with it signs of activity around the camp. Smoke poured out of the stovepipe projecting from the chuck tent. Men’s voices sounded. At last the beating of an iron on the triangle summoned them to breakfast.

“We’ll eat before we start,” Hollister said.

“Don’ want nothin’ to eat,” growled the prisoner.

“Different here. I do. You’ll come along, anyhow.”

The men at breakfast looked with surprise at the guest of the boss when he appeared. Hollister explained what he was doing there.

“I want to go into the tunnel and have a look around before any of you do any work,” he added. “This fellow was up to some mischief, and I want to find out what it was.”

Cig’s palate went dry. He knew better than they did in what a predicament he had put himself. If he let the thing go through as originally intended, these men would never let him reach a sheriff. If he confessed—what would they do to him?

He ate mechanically and yet voraciously, for the exercise of the night had left him hungry. But every moment his mind was sifting the facts of the case for an out.

Hollister rose to leave. “Take care of this fellow till I get back, Tom. I don’t know what he was up to, but if anything happens to me, rush him right down to Daniels.”

“We will—in a pig’s eye,” the foreman answered bluntly. “If anything happens to you, we’ll give this bird his, muy pronto.”

The engineer was lifting the flap of the tent when Cig spoke huskily from a parched throat. “I’ll go along wid youse.”

“All right.” Not the least change of expression in his face showed that Hollister knew he had won, knew he had broken down the fellow’s stiff and sullen resistance.

Cig shuffled beside Tug to the tunnel. The months had made a difference in the bearing of the ex-service man. When the New Yorker had met him first, Hollister’s mental attitude found expression in the way he walked. He was a tramp, in clothes, in spirit, in habit of life, and in the way he carried his body. The shoulders drooped, the feet dragged, the expression of the face was cynical. Since then there had been relit in him the spark of self-respect. He was a new man.

He stepped aside, to let Cig pass first into the tunnel. At the entrance he lit two candles and handed one to his prisoner.

“What did you want to come for?” he asked. “Have you something to show me? Or something to tell me?”

Cig moved forward. He spoke over his shoulder, protecting the candle with one hand. “Just a bit of a lark. Thought I’d throw a scare into yore men.”

“How?”

The former convict continued through the tunnel to the face of the rock wall. He set his candle down on a niche of jutting sandstone. With his fingers he scraped away some sand from the ragged wall.

“What’s that?” Hollister’s voice was sharp. He held out his hand. “Let’s have it.”

From beneath the sand Cig had taken a stick of dynamite. He dug up five others.

The object of putting them there was plain enough. If a workman had struck any one of them with a pick, there would have been an explosion, and the sand beds round the rocks were precisely the places into which the pick points would have gone. The thing had been a deliberate attempt at cold-blooded wholesale murder.

“Sure you have them all?” Hollister asked.

“Yep. Had only six.” He added, with a whine: “Didn’t aim to hurt any o’ the boys, but only to scare ’em some.”

The engineer made no comment. He drove his prisoner before him back into the light. Tom met him at the entrance to the tunnel. The foreman examined the sticks of dynamite, listened to what Hollister had to say, and jerked his head toward Cig.

“The boys’ll fix him right so’s he’ll never pull another trick like this,” he told his chief.

“No,” opposed Hollister. “Nothing of that sort, Tom. I’m going to take him down to the sheriff. We’ll send him over the road.”

“Like blazes we will!” the foreman burst out. “If you hadn’t happened to see him this morning, three or four of us might be dead by now. Hanging’s too good for this guy.”

“Yes,” agreed Tug. “But we’re not going to put ourselves in the wrong because he is. The law will deal with him.”

“The boys ain’t liable to feel that way,” Tom said significantly.

“They won’t know anything about it till we’ve gone. You’ll tell them then.” His hand fell on the foreman’s shoulder with a grip that was almost affectionate. “We can’t have a lynching here, Tom. We’d be the ones in bad then.”

Tom had to feel his way through a few moments of sulkiness to acceptance of this point of view. “All right. You’re the doctor. Hustle this fellow outa camp an’ I’ll wait till you’re gone. Sure he’s picked up every stick of this stuff?”

Cig was quite sure about that. He spoke humbly and with all the braggadocio gone from his manner. He had been thoroughly frightened and did not yet feel wholly out of the woods. Not till he was behind the bars would he feel quite safe again.