CHAPTER XXII
NIGHT—AND THE MYSTERIOUS SPEEDERS
Big Jim Torrance sighed happily. He was thinking of the orders he had issued for the commencement of the fill-in. In the definition thus given to the task he found the most effective silencer of every fear.
Supply trains had multiplied of late, but not the heaviest had made so much as a visible tremble in the trestle; and he should know, for he watched with bated breath and expert eye. Even the crews were teasing that they hoped once more to see home and mother. Torrance accepted their banter with a pleased grin, and hurried to tell it word for word to Tressa and Adrian.
Yet as darkness fell flashes of the old restraint held him silent and wondering. The solitude of the northern evening was making him a bit frightened of his success. Removing the old calabash pipe from his lips, he expectorated thoughtfully toward the grade.
Just within the door Tressa sat as silent as her father. In all her silent moments now she was building, building. Conrad—home—a father far from the harsh influences of this rough life where man fought man as well as nature, and quite as brutally. The rapping of her father's pipe against the doorpost interrupted her dreams.
"On Thursday!" he said. "I've spoken to Murphy. There'll be four ballast trains here on Saturday, two working each way. Another ten days will see the thing through. The big cutting at Mile 135 will have a steam scoop to fill a train in a few minutes; it's a solid gravel bank there, they say. We'll lift the heart out of it and put it to beat in that trestle of mine to the end of time."
He laughed proudly, with a touch of sheepishness at the unaccustomed metaphor.
"Then we'll go—home," she murmured.
In his blundering way he understood, and stooped to pat her bent head.
"'Home!'" he whispered. "'Home!' If your mother could be here! . . .
I know what she'd say. 'Jim,' she'd say, 'you've done well.' . . .
I'd like to hear it, little girl. 'Jim.'"
"Is it so much nicer than 'daddy'?" she asked jealously; she had had this big loving man so long to herself.
He dropped to the doorsteps and reached back to throw an arm over her shoulders.
"Some day, little girl, you'll know what the one voice, the one word, means. . . . If I were dying, 'Jim' would call me back—as it seems to call me on—-from somewhere now. . . . 'Jim.'"
Conrad found them thus, the man's great arm laid lightly across the girl's shoulders, her head sunk in his neck; both staring through the dusk to the mazy tangle of timbers that had been their season's care. The foreman silently drew a chair to the other side of the girl and took her hand in his.
Presently Torrance stirred, diving into his pocket in search of a host's tobacco pouch.
"Thursday," he said, handing it to Conrad.
Conrad nodded.
"And in three weeks we'll be going home," murmured Tressa,—"going home—only three weeks!"
A gentle birr, like the distant note of a toneless beetle, insinuated itself into their dreams. They had heard it for seconds without noticing, rising and falling on the night breeze.
Almost together the two men jerked their heads up to listen; Tressa felt their arms tighten about her. Through the darkness they strained down the track to the east, their hearts thudding almost audibly.
The sound swelled—swept toward them out of the night. Swiftly it grew to dominate the darkness, echoing through the forest. It became a roar.
"Chug—chug—chug—chug!" but in such a swiftly throbbing stream as to be almost a steady torrent of sound.
Torrance leaped to the grade and stood, a heroic figure outlined against the dim sky, struggling to pierce the mystery with his eyes.
"Speeders!" he jerked, in a breathless whisper. "Two of them, and going like hell! The rifle—quick!"
Then suddenly, not a mile away, it ceased, dying to silence in a few panting chugs, leaving the void a crash of silence. Not a breath now—it was like a nightmare. Even the camp was listening.
They heard each other's breathing catch, but that was all. Back in the locked stable the two horses snorted with fear; the strain had reached even them.
A short ten minutes of awful waiting. Then "chug—chug—chug!" again.
With fantastic rapidity the warm engines picked up to racing speed.
Torrance swung his head incredulously toward Conrad.
The speeders were going the other way now.
The contractor stumbled to the shack like a blind man and sank in a chair.
"My God!" he breathed.
Three miles down the track, in what remained of a deserted end-of-steel village, Sergeant Mahon sat in his shirt sleeves, smiling across the corner of a table into the eyes of his wife, the only white woman, except Tressa Torrance, within a day's hard ride.
Of the village that ten months before covered a life as fevered as it was unclean, only the Police barracks remained in repair, since life had passed the rest by and forgotten it. The ill-defined streets, incorporated as a part of the plan of the original village only because the helter-skelter builders knew no other plan for a village, were more ill-defined than ever because less used. Where nothing but pedestrians passed, where the "Mayor" was merely proprietor of the leading dance-hall, where there was no to-morrow, there had never been side-walks. Now the space from ruined shack to tumble-down shop was overgrown with weeds. Yet down the length of it, meandering drunkenly to avoid butts of stumps as solid as the day they were axed, and steering clear of creeping decay in the buildings themselves, a narrow path felt its way.
The two Policemen were not the sole occupants of Mile 127, as the village had been known in its day. Murphy's train crew, less particular than the Mounted Police, had satisfied themselves with minor repairs to the most reputable of the shacks. Murphy himself, and his foreman friend 'Uggins, more exclusive even than the Police, had drawn their skirts aside from anything savouring of the swift but gay life of the days of grade construction, and erected for themselves a tent where the only real comfort was the opportunity it gave to sneer at their more lowly companions, and a fond but scarce justified hope that they were immune from the torments of formerly inhabited buildings. Murphy openly scored anything "any damned bohunk ever scratched himself in," and, after days of quarreling with 'Uggins about a site, during which they struggled miserably along beneath separate ground-sheets, a common tent was decided upon far from the former selection of each and close to the new siding where "Mollie," the engine, slept at nights.
Helen Mahon was smiling back into her husband's eyes, shyly but happily, for she was proud of him—proud, too, of the loving little trick she had played on him by riding up to the barracks only a couple of hours ago, when he thought her still in Medicine Hat. Having been married to him only a few months, she was still a little shy with her happiness.
"Helen," he exclaimed for the tenth time, "I don't believe it's true. Williams is going to dig his heel into me and tell me I'm snoring. I always do when I dream."
"And you don't like dreaming?" she asked slyly.
"As a dream," he corrected, "it's a ripper. At the same time I'd like to have some help to realise it. How did you manage it? Of course every one knows you have Inspector Barker in the hollow of your hand, but there were others to win over."
She gurgled joyously and seized his hand to press it against her cheek and nibble lovingly at the finger tips.
"Inspector Barker did it all. He's got a way with him, and I just made him pull the wires right up to the Commissioner, I guess. Anyway, here I am, and there's nobody defied by it. I suppose they reckoned that any wife who thinks enough of her husband to travel two days by train, then two more on horseback, is worth encouraging for the salvation of his soul. To sum up: I'm here for a month, if you'll let me stay."
The laugh with which he greeted it was not so free and spontaneous as she hoped to hear. "In less than that," he said fervently, "I hope we'll be back in Medicine Hat. Torrance is giving orders to start the fill-in, and there won't be more than two or three weeks after that. Truth to tell, there are lots of other reasons than home that make me want to get out of it in a hurry. It isn't that we have much to do—too little, indeed; I'd grow rusty and evil-tempered with another season of this—but I confess to a great mental blank in considering the bohunk . . . and I've no ambition to understand him better. The more I know him, the more I think Providence was experimenting without encouragement when he created a few of those Continental countries that send their scum over here to build railways. Really there hasn't been a thing happen since I came worth writing about. Of course there are strange little incidents—"
He broke off abruptly and his head went up. From the east drifted a purring sound that swelled with startling speed. Faster than their thoughts, it grew to a roar. Helen was alarmed.
"Only gasoline speeders," he explained. "You must ride on one. Torrance has a rather grubby specimen. They're the wildest form of slimpsy-skimpsy flight you ever saw. About forty miles an hour, with just a board and a tremendous sputter between you and the flying rails. It makes your hair curl, yet you look forward to the next time."
Lightly as he spoke, he had risen to his feet and gone to the doorway.
"Some of the big moguls of construction, I suppose," he shouted back above the echoing din. "Perhaps to pass on Torrance's trestle before the fill-in commences. Holy mackinaw! they're scorching. I ought to arrest them for exceeding the speed limit. . . . They're without lights, too!" he exclaimed suddenly.
Two dim objects flew past in the darkness like shadows, not forty yards away, a space of less than fifty yards between them.
"They must be drunk!" he muttered. "They're taking awful chances to run as close as that at such a speed. Look as if they're loaded. Rush stuff, I suppose, for the line further west. . . . I hope they don't try to take Torrance's trestle at that gait; it would be an awful plunge." He returned thoughtfully to the table. "First time I've seen a speeder along here, except Torrance's and the contractor's at Mile 190. . . . I don't understand it."
Helen closed the door firmly. The roar dimmed into the trees.
"This is my night," she declared. "What you don't understand about railway construction doesn't need to be worried about. Anyway they're gone. It isn't often a man's wife drops in on him from four days of wandering, when he thinks her two hundred miles away as the crow flies."
He looked about the room with an apologetic smile. "It isn't the place I'd choose to bring you to, Helen, though Williams has done a lot in the couple of hours since you arrived. It doesn't seem the same old room. If you'd believe me, he wants four days off to scare up some luxuries worthy of the event down at Saskatoon . . . and I can't convince myself it's part of our duties. He got quite huffy when I refused. That's the worst of marrying a woman every man falls in love with. The only redeeming feature is that we've lots of room; there's bedroom space enough for half Medicine Hat—though I wouldn't recommend it to my friends. . . . I believe bohunks do bathe—they must have a human trait or two—but I've never happened to see it. The nearest approach was two semi-civilised fellows down at the river one evening sheepishly dipping their hands in the water and wiping them on a discarded shirt. And shirts aren't discarded here until they're past wearing. It wasn't promising for results, but it showed good will."
He pushed across a plate of abnormal raspberries. "Try another sample. Our mutual friend, 'Uggins, hand-selected them from a thousand miles of laden bushes. I believe he and Murphy almost came to blows over them because, after finding fault with the china in which they were to be presented, Murphy contended that he knew a spot where larger ones grew. 'Uggins was undecided whether to look for the spot and give Murphy a chance to forestall him, or to insult you by offering you something not reputed to be the best."
She nibbled at the berries that, ever since the seed had been borne hither on the winds, had been reserved for birds and bears. But her husband was not at ease. Twice in the next ten minutes he went to the door and listened up the track.
"They must be stopping at Torrance's," he said, throwing wide the door and leaning against the side as he talked. "It'll make some excitement, at any rate, for a nice little girl who's going a bit to seed. No . . . they're coming back!" He paused to listen, his brow wrinkling. "That's quick work, whatever they did."
The roaring putter was rushing back toward them at a speed that sounded foolishly desperate.
"There's no sense in going like that," he said irritably. "I wonder what they were doing. I'll find out."
He ran into the darkness and stood on the track between the rails, flashing an electric torch toward the approaching speeders. But they came on without a sign that they saw. He shouted. Fifty yards away the noise of the engines burst into a louder torrent of sound, and he had but time to leap out of their way as they whizzed past, the second speeder so close to the first that he could do nothing to stop it.
Before Mahon, thoroughly angry, could think of anything worth doing,
Helen stood beside him, thrusting into his hand his Police revolver.
Almost with the touch he fired above the retreating speeders.
Two spurts of flame jabbed at him through the darkness in reply, and
Mahon jerked his wife to the ground.
"I think, dear," he said, as he gravely lifted her to her feet, "that you shouldn't have come."
CHAPTER XXIII
RIFLES!
Mira and Blue Pete rested on the ground in the shadows of the clump of spruce that concealed the entrance to their cave, watching the flicker of the setting sun on the smooth surface of the sluggish river. Except for moccasins and blankets they always wore now the Indian disguise in which Torrance and his friends knew them. In the semi-darkness of the trees the old corncob pipe sparked rapidly, sweeter to the halfbreed than nectar, for Mira had held the match that lit it.
Night after night he was content to sit like that, her small hand cuddled in his; but in the evening hours there were so many things to do toward the fulfilment of their dream.
"Jest a coupla weeks more, Mira," he murmured. "Mebbe a few days longer."
"And the last two horses?"
"I'll git 'em somehow. It gits harder every time the bohunks do things, 'cause somebody's allus watchin'. But I never was fooled yet, an' no tenderfoot's goin' to start. . . . Only I don't want no shootin'."
"Perhaps he'll sell now when the time's so near."
Blue Pete laughed mirthlessly. "Yuh don't know Torrance. He said he wudn't, an' that's better'n a million dollars to him."
"But you think he's going to give them to us when he's through?"
She leaned forward anxiously to catch a glimpse of his swarthy face in the dim light, and he did not reply until he had considered it.
"If I was sartin! But if, when I'd lef' 'em to the las' minute, if he took it in his head to pull out with 'em! I dassent take no chances. I gotta have them horses."
He knew by her silence that she was contemplating the possibility of failure.
"If yuh say so, Mira, mebbe I cud git myself to take 'em now an' pull out."
She was fighting the stern battle which in his innocence he had roused in her hungry mind, and for a moment he trembled for the result. Vaguely he felt that he had done something unfair in shifting the responsibility to her shoulders, but whatever her answer he knew what his duty was; and only her wishes could drown that duty.
"Bert is waiting for us down in the Hills," she sighed, not to unsettle his convictions but merely as a fact to be considered.
"Mebbe yuh'd bes' run down an' tell him we'll be a while yet," he replied, understanding her perfectly. "I don't see no way out neither. I'll come 'long soon's I can. Whiskers an' me can git the horses down."
She gurgled softly into the darkness, and clasped his arm with both her hands. Nothing more was necessary. A thrill ran through his big frame, and almost reverently he pressed his dark cheek against her hair.
Thus they sat, until the gleam faded from the water and only a dim glow remained; and the pale sky peeped down through the trees with the chill of a clear moon. High up in the unseen trails of the air a flight of wild geese honked its weary way southward, and the halfbreed read the warning of approaching winter. Some creature splashed into the water straight before them with a noise that awakened the forest echoes and deepened the enveloping silence afterwards. Juno lifted her head and sniffed, and nosed into her mistress. She longed to get into the open and howl, and this was how she fought the instinct. Deepest peace closed down on them with the night.
It was Juno heard the speeders first. With a faint whimper she lifted her ears and sniffed to the east. It was sufficient for Blue Pete. In an instant he had picked out the purring sound and went back into the cave for blanket and moccasins and rifle. When he returned, the throbbing was booming through the woods, though the grade was a mile and a half away, and the speeders miles more.
At first he did not hurry. His move to closer quarters with the oncoming speeders was little more than instinct. He had no reason to be suspicious, but he always wanted to unravel the unknown that was tangible and audible and visible. If the speeders were going through there was no chance of his reaching the grade in time to satisfy his curiosity; if they were stopping at the trestle there was no hurry. With unerring sense he made straight for the trestle.
As he walked along he was conscious of rising concern, of more than ordinary personal connection with the visitors, and in a minute or two he was running in the long easy lope which carries the Indian over incredible distances in a space of time that challenges the ordinary horse.
So that when the rattle of the engines ceased with suspicious suddenness midway between the end-of-steel village and the trestle he was not far from the grade. He deflected his course and presently, with scarcely deepened breath to show the speed at which he had come, he was watching from the shadows a strange scene.
In a long line, soundless but for the hurried tramp of their heavy boots, dim figures emerged from the bush, lifted something from a speeder, and disappeared the way they had come. The first speeder, already unloaded, stood awaiting its companion. Blue Pete saw at first without grasping the meaning. Then a jangle of metal enlightened him.
Rifles—that was what these men were carrying away!
For an agonised moment he felt unequal to the occasion. He knew in a flash what arms portended among these foreign devils. But it was too late to do much to forestall it. One speeder load was gone, and the second was emptying fast. He might frighten the silent porters away and perhaps capture the remainder of their burdens, but that would, at best, rob them of a few dozen rifles, while scores—perhaps hundreds—were by this time secure. And the bohunks would be warned.
A plan developed.
If only he had brought Mira! She could trail almost as well as he, and her wits were quick. Danger or no danger, if only Mira were there to help! On the trail of the last figure he crept, and the chug of the flying speeders roared back to him in diminuendo.
The task he had set himself was an easy one. The man he followed, clumsy and stupid, was anxious only to make speed. In among the trees he led, though not far from the grade, and when at last he stopped and began to rustle among the leaves and dead boughs, Blue Pete knew he had reached the end of the trail. Yet even as the man worked feverishly the halfbreed visualised the spot; and he knew no great cache could be there. It puzzled him, alarmed him.
When the man was gone, and Blue Pete feverishly tore away the brush and leaves, he realised with a pang of shame and alarm how he had been outwitted. The rifles had been removed armful by armful. And armful by armful they had been hidden, each in its own hiding place. There was no common cache to rob, no possibility now of laying hands on the lot.
In deep dejection the halfbreed returned to the cave with his burden. Mira met him at the door without even a murmur of surprise. And as he dumped the load noisily on the stone floor, she pointed to another little pile in a distant niche.
"They've beat us, Pete. It was Werner I trailed. I just banged him over the head with a stick and he dropped everything and bolted."
And Blue Pete chuckled. He could see only one picture: Werner, running and tumbling through the forest, squealing with more fright than pain, preparing as he ran a tall story for his leader.
CHAPTER XXIV
THE SCHEMES OF A LEADER
Ignace Koppowski, lazily rolling a cigarette, stood before his shack on the hill, apparently absorbed in the camp scene at his feet. In reality he was watching Torrance and Conrad watching him from the shack beside the trestle. After a time he returned inside, picked up his hat from the bunk and, rolling another cigarette, strolled out, pulling the door behind him.
From the shaded side of the hut he put his fingers to his nose and waggled them in the direction of the grade, then he climbed back through the window. Inside, every vestige of impudence deserted him. A grave frown puckered his forehead as he seated himself thoughtfully on the solitary chair to sit like a statue staring at the floor. Certain sudden twistings of his clumsy frame revealed the vagrant meanderings of his mind, now satisfied and determined, now uncertain and reflective. Plainly it was a mind that refused to settle.
Thus he missed the first three low taps on the wall of his hut. When it was repeated he jerked his head nervously, stared for an appreciable moment at an upper corner of the room, gripped his fists and teeth, and whispered a soft response.
Werner's head appeared in the window space, smiled, pushed through, followed by a scrambling body. After him came Morani, Heppel, and eighteen villainous-looking companions. Werner, first to enter, as usual, selected the bunk, throwing himself on it with a cunning smile. He always thought too quickly for the others. His companions littered the floor, Koppy retaining the seat of state. Twenty-two vile-featured conspirators gathered in solemn conclave.
A twenty-third, not so vile-featured but swarthier of skin, sank softly against the logs at the rear of the shack, one ear pressed to a chink.
"You've gone the rounds?" demanded Koppy, probing each face in turn.
One of the men spoke hesitatingly: "Simoff's rifles gone. We find place—all gone."
Koppy turned on him. "Sure?" He knew the craven hearts and beclouding imaginations of these companions of his.
"We saw marks. It was the place."
The frown on their leader's forehead deepened, and for a long time he was wrapped in thought. "Yours, too, Werner!" he muttered, shaking his head.
Werner read censure into the three words. "That dirty redskin caught me a clump on the coco from behind, and then a whole lot of Indians jumped on me. See, there's the lump." He felt tenderly of the crown of his head, but made no advance to enable his friends to verify his claim; it was too sore for that. "I just dropped. When I came round, the rifles were gone."
"You saw the Indian?"
"Sure I saw him." In time he recalled the darkness and added hastily, "with my nose. You can't fool this guy when an Indian's within a mile. I know when they're inside the township. I guess I ought to: I used to steal with 'em, out further west, trapping we was—or stealing from the other fellow's traps. Smell 'em? Well, I guess."
"Do you smell one now?" asked Koppy suddenly.
Twenty-one pair of eyes went swiftly to the window. Blue Pete, at his chink behind the shack, held his ground, but his muscles were tense.
Werner grinned at the little joke.
"There ain't much chance to smell anything else with this bunk of yours under my nose. When they burn this shack down—and they got to if they're going to live in the country—somebody's going to be asphyxiated. I hope I'm five hundred miles away about then."
Koppy, struggling with anger and scorn, frowned on the would-be humourist, who hastily grinned.
"Course you know it's only a joke of mine, Koppy."
"Better so," returned the leader coldly. "Many Indians about?" He was searching Werner's eyes. "You saw—or smelt them."
Werner wilted under that stare. Volubly he struggled to support his story with convincing details, but his face was flushed and his eyes were anywhere but on his leader's. And Koppy smiled inscrutably.
"Anyway, we still got ninety-two rifles," stammered Werner. "That surely ought—"
Koppy struck him to sudden silence by a peremptory hand. "You talk too much," he said acidly.
"Just let me fire the first shot, that's all I want," babbled Werner, reading the disfavour under which he rested. "I'll blow the whole bunch to hell."
Morani's long knife passed slickly back and forth on the side of his boot; and they watched with staring eyes. A dirty, moistened finger tested the keen edge, the dark, cruel face lit up with satisfaction, and the weapon slid unobtrusively out of sight somewhere in the Italian's clothing.
Werner shuddered. "It's a wonder your vittles don't sour on your stomach, Chico. Every time I dream I can feel that stiletto spiding down my spine."
And then, by a stealthy, apparently innocent movement, the knife was out again, sliding along the leather of the boot.
"If you don't put that sticker where it belongs," protested Werner,
"I'm going to carry a gun. I suppose you got to be carving something.
Well, go out and tackle a log. You was brought up on a knife instead
of a spoon."
"Saturday night!" Koppy announced suddenly.
"Er—what's that?" Werner had straightened on the bunk and was regarding his leader with fearful eyes. "Ah—yes—Saturday night. But don't you think a week from now, say next Tuesday—"
"Saturday night," repeated Koppy.
"If you wouldn't be so swift, Koppy, I was going to point out that the moon will be darker a few days later. I'm a regular nightingale when it comes to the dark."
"Some bird!" sneered Koppy. "Maybe you flew from the Indians."
"Look here, old chap," Werner bridled, "you don't think I ran about looking for that Indian and threw the damn things at him?"
"You run-a spry away from him," jeered Morani.
Werner made a furious movement, but noticed the Italian's knife-hand in time.
"I wish to blazes I'd run spryer before he hit me. Anybody's welcome to this knob on my nut. Trouble was I was too heavily armed to fight. Ask me my private opinion and I'd say Mavy's brought his tribe down to bother us. I'm game to butt up against anything that wears boots. But them Indians don't even wear pants—not what you'd notice."
"Indians got-a you—they wear pants, no?" leered Morani.
Koppy interrupted what promised to develop into a row.
"At one o'clock Saturday night," he announced in a loud voice. "Till then no touch rifles. Say nothing till the day. That's all."
He dismissed them with a wave of his hand. The half breed lifted himself from the ground behind the shack and slunk away.
Half the conspirators were already through the window when Koppy made a movement of his hand toward the camp. Creatures of his will, they obeyed without a word and wound away, later to drop down to the camp. Koppy followed. Straight through the unkempt cluster of buildings they went until they were out in the open river bottom far from the nearest group of gamblers, who turned dull eyes on them between plays.
Koppy seated himself and waved to his followers to do the same. Up at the end of the trestle the light from the boss's shack twinkled through the gloom. Close beside them the gurgle of the waters was soft and soothing, and the colour-touched clouds above the setting sun cast an unreal glow over the edges of the river bank. Koppy moved his eyes about uncomfortably on the day's good-night. The mumblings of Werner brought him to the task in hand.
"We attack to-morrow night at midnight!" he announced.
A gasp went up from the lips about him. Fanatic and bloodthirsty as they were, the imminence of the ordeal that was to requite their wrongs startled them. Their preference was to curse their bosses and spur others to dangerous revenge. In moments of carefully developed hysteria they were reckless enough—when the hour came they would probably go forward blindly, with the foolhardiness of the ignorant—but Koppy's methods to-night were singularly unenflaming.
Werner expressed himself first:
"Like hell we do!"
Koppy ignored their agitation; for some reason he did not choose to exercise then the petty arts of the leader.
"Perhaps some one hear up there," he explained, jerking an impatient thumb toward the shack they had left. "I fool him."
"You fool us, too," grumbled Werner.
"To-morrow night at midnight we strike. Boss asleep, everybody asleep.
Police asleep, too. Sure thing!"
"I be blowed!" Werner snarled to himself. "Here I been counting on a week or so to live—or make a getaway. Now I'm to be shot at midnight! A dog would get a fairer chance."
"At supper to-morrow tell the men," ordered Koppy. "Morani get dynamite. Werner take ten men and watch Mr. Conrad—perhaps a knife. Heppel tear up track and stop Police. Lomask take ten rifles back of boss's shack. Hoffman smash boss's speeder. One-Eye Sam take rock-hogs to trestle. Dimhoff cut wires."
Silence was over the group. Even in their trepidation the completeness of their leader's programme over-awed them. Werner alone, driven by his fears, forgot to await the formal dismissal that was the main feature of the ritual, and started away. Koppy waved him back angrily.
"One thing—remember!" He glared about on them.
"There's a hundred and one I'm trying to remember before I kick the bucket," murmured Werner. "But all I seem to get is a picture of a thousand bullets meanderin' about loose to-morrow night in the dark at midnight, and the worst of them's not going to be going away from us."
The leader closed the mouth of the fearful one with a look.
"Remember"—the grimness of Koppy's tone was a threat—"the girl's mine."
"First catch your fish," muttered Werner.
"All the others, kill. But the girl—must not—be hurt! Understand?"
"Not till you get your ugly paws on her!" said Werner with a significant leer.
CHAPTER XXV
BLUE PETE AND WHISKERS TO THE RESCUE
All the way back to the cave Blue Pete pondered over the situation. The attack was four days off. There was little time if the I.W.W. plans were to be defeated with certainty and completeness. Reinforcements must be brought from other Police posts—therein alone lay certain safety.
The halfbreed hesitated before the idea of more Mounted Police about until he had completed his work; and they might be summoned any time by wire from the gravel pit at Mile 135, where a ticker had just been installed for the work of filling in the trestle. Also he paused before the indignity of calling in reinforcements to defeat a lot of blundering fools and cowards. Deep within him was the conviction that nothing more was required than his own unerring rifle. Only the matter of those ninety-two rifles and the presence of Tressa Torrance forced him to consider the situation worthy of prolonged thought. He decided to take the night to think it over. To-morrow after dark would be ample time to carry out any plan that seemed wise.
The result of a wakeful night was the decision to carry the story to Torrance and leave the rest in his hands. That plan, too, fitted in with certain undefined ambitions of his own. He did not want the Police to know far enough ahead to nip the whole affair in the bud. Blue Pete loved a scrap; he had also certain definite debts to pay to Koppy, and the thought of a lot of bohunks within range of a licensed rifle made him smile happily. An inborn decency craved to teach these brutes decency in the only way he knew.
All day long he fought a crowding impatience. He had early come to the decision to keep Mira in the dark. She would take the threatened attack more seriously than it deserved, and perhaps forestall his plans—probably run to the Police right away. Besides, he did not want her to be involved in the battle that promised.
Certain fantastic schemes popped in and out of his head during the day, and one of them he discussed with Mira, without letting her know its immediate origin. If he shot the leaders of the bohunks himself—picked them off from hiding, as he easily could—trouble would cease. The work would run through to completion with greater certainty and speed, and he and Mira would be starting back for freedom in a fortnight. But Mira killed the plan in a few words; Blue Pete was ever apt to ignore the law in his dislike of certain forms of lawlessness.
At one stage he thought it would be sufficient to appear at Torrance's shack just before the attack and add his rifle to the defence.
On the other hand, were the story taken to the Police they would ignore everything in the pursuit of the leaders of the promised battle; and that might well mean the postponement of the completion of the trestle to the following summer. And Blue Pete could not face that. Besides, those rifles must be captured.
The halfbreed accordingly determined to make his report to Torrance, and if the contractor treated it too lightly, he could then inform the Police.
With that in view he set out late in the evening for the trestle. He had delayed until the shadows were deep enough to protect him from prying eyes. Mahon's evident suspicions demanded extra precautions in approaching the shack. For no reason of which he was conscious he chose to follow the edge of the river bank.
By the time he reached the height overhanging the camp the lighted canvas and open doorways were brilliant spots in the darkness. Yet instantly he experienced a feeling of discomfort. And feelings like that were always his guiding motives. He could not explain the cause of his worry, for the sounds of camp life seemed little less than usual, but he paused a long time above the dotted scene, eyes and ears alert. Feverishly he sought Koppy's shack. When he found it empty, the light burning and the door open, he dropped back into the shrubbery and began to climb swiftly downward toward the camp. He knew now that more lights than usual burnt there, that the few discordant instruments strumming and blowing were overexerting themselves. Certainly the bohunks were not in bed.
Crawling rapidly about, avoiding patches of light, a thrill like fear flooded him. With a stifled exclamation he leaped up and retraced his steps to the higher level, climbing with the assurance and agility of a mountain goat.
No longer did he think of silence. The lifelong instinct fell from him like a cloak. Speed—speed—that was everything. When the trees closed him in he realised that he was not alone. Other moving forms everywhere enabled him to run openly.
A group came toward him, and Blue Pete threw himself flat. And as they passed he caught their outline against the lighter western sky, where still remnants of day lingered.
Every one carried a rifle!
He waited for nothing more. As he had never run before he sped through the bush, bearing due south-east toward the deserted end-of-steel village, avoiding trees and fallen logs with uncanny ease. Some heard him and paused in their course, but they were keyed up to serious work, and there were so many of their friends abroad. Probably a messenger of their leader's on pressing duty.
Half a mile to the east Blue Pete pulled up. Two piercing whistles he sent in rapid succession into the night, and in a moment repeated them. Then he resumed his running, shifting direction toward the grade, where the course would be clearer. At intervals he whistled the shrill double blast.
Many a bohunk heard the whistle and shivered without knowing why. Conrad, returning from the trestle down the long slope to his shack, stopped and wondered, though it was dim and far away by then. Koppy and his immediate friends lifted guilty heads and questioned each other. Werner, nerves jangling, thoughtlessly pleaded the superior advantages of next Tuesday; and then bethought himself and advised more precipitous action. Nothing within a day's hard ride could stop Koppy now—one hundred rifles against four or five.
Blue Pete was running steadily now. Rifle hanging loose, he swung in and out among the trees as if every obstacle were limned in daylight. Early in the race he had discarded his blanket. His feet shrank from the rough way in their unaccustomed moccasins. Only once did he falter: a vagrant thought pulled him up, to feel anxiously at his cartridge belt. Smoothly, without panting, stooping in the loose lope of the Indian, he swung along.
He was whistling less frequently, conserving his breath for a possible three-mile race; but his head kept turning to listen.
Presently a great sigh of relief, like a sob, fluttered between his lips. Almost at the edge of the clearing along the grade he slowed down.
And then, running so quietly, the ugly little pinto, Whiskers—the marks of the pinto long since gone before the half breed's doctoring hand—was cantering at his side. Without a break in his stride Blue Pete leaped to the bare back, one hand dropping to pat the arched neck.
"Bully ole gal, Whiskers! I knowed yuh'd hear. Yer ears is allus skinned fer the whistle, ain't they—an' eyes like a cat's, same as yer boss, eh? Yuh got to git some now, ole gal. Yuh ain't had a real run fer so long mebbe yuh're gittin' a bit seedy, like me. Well, yuh got a coupla miles right on yer tip-toes. Git goin', ole gal."
Close along the grade the little pinto lay low to its stride, and the halfbreed's feet seemed to be brushing the ground as he leaned forward to whisper encouragement in the flicking ears.
CHAPTER XXVI
SERGEANT MAHON'S VISION
For the fifth time Sergeant Mahon and Helen had firmly expressed their intention of retiring; the hour, they agreed, was unseemly, when now weeks of almost unbroken association stretched ahead of them. Yet for the fifth time they had failed to act on their convictions.
For one thing they were impressed with the selfishness of retiring while still Constable Williams sat with never a flicker of sleep in his eyes. They owed him a lot for his attentions of the past few days, and there were few opportunities of squaring the account. In the rude chair he had salved from the village wreckage the big fellow was content to sit to any hour of the night, merely smoking and listening, face beaming, pleased as a child when he found something to say. For two years he had been locked there in the wilds, with never a woman but Tressa Torrance to whom he could speak without a blush. And, looking into the clear eyes of Mrs. Mahon, he blushed a little now at memories of her predecessors in that infamous end-of-steel village—blond-haired, flashing eyed, bejewelled, strident voiced hussies who had worn out their welcome in society less base.
For the sixth time Mahon consulted his watch and shook his head self-reprovingly.
"Half-past eleven! Dissipation. And to-morrow we must dive deeper into the records of those two speeders. I don't know that I'm quite fair, Williams, but I imagine Torrance hasn't been taking us completely into his confidence, though he seems thoroughly stirred over this. They have me guessing—the most unlikely things, even to some silly club wager. But there isn't a club within three hundred miles. I'm off to-morrow to Mile 135. Torrance says the ticker is set up there. I want to talk to Saskatoon."
Constable Williams shrugged his shoulders. "Those speeders were up to something they're not telling Saskatoon or any one else that we're apt to get any information from."
"That's what I'm going to find out. They couldn't go far without being seen, and they'd have to stick to the railway. There's still a gang clearing up at Mile 63, I think."
"That was where I spent the night, wasn't it?" asked his wife. "There's an engineer there with his whole family and two women besides. It's a long way to be from neighbours."
"One never speaks of neighbours out here, Mrs. Mahon," smiled Constable Williams. "It makes one homesick. It's so long since we had neighbours that we've gone a bit rusty on the amenities of society. There's so little we can do for the first woman—"
"Williams, you're fishing." Mahon shook his head affectionately at his subordinate. "If you'd heard my wife this morning—"
"If you don't mind, dear," interrupted Helen, "I prefer to give my own thanks."
"But you just said this morning you couldn't—"
"Don't try, please," said Williams, with a grin. He drew a sigh. "I suppose now I ought to forego a selfish pleasure and let you go to bed. If I could only look sleepy! But I feel as if bed were an interruption, a nasty, bad-dispositioned, irritating kill-joy. And you'll be heavy with the chloroform of this rare air. Ah, me! Just when life begins—"
"It won't go down, Williams," teased Mahon. "The air up here has nothing on Medicine Hat. Not even its wildest booster would claim for the Hat the poison of a manufacturing town. Meteorologically it must be as far from civilisation as Mile 127. The worst up here is trying to compete with the sun in the matter of sleep. In the summer one would get about three hours; in the winter there wouldn't be time to prepare meals. Winter must be eerie. Even now I scent it—"
He shifted suddenly in his chair. Then with a dash he and Williams were crowding through the open door with drawn revolvers.
Through the night came the thunder of racing hoofs.
Mahon knew that speed. Many a time he had ridden thus, the wind whistling past his ears and the horse's mane flicking his stinging face. He knew, too, that a master-hand directed the horse he heard.
Without a word the two Policemen separated and dropped into the shadows on either side of the shaft of light from the doorway.
"Go into the other room, Helen." Mahon's order was sharp and low.
On came the racing horse, the pound of its hoofs echoing through the trees like the charge of a troop, filling the vast silence with piercing fancies. Echo and hoof-beats grew louder and louder; there was no other sound. At the edge of the village the horse turned from the clearing along the grade into the main street, and the echo, sharpened now by crowding walls, sent the blood tingling through the Sergeant's veins.
Over the pounding hoofs broke a muttering voice.
In another five seconds the horse would cross the shaft of light. Mahon and Williams raised their guns. The former edged out toward the narrow path. He had no thought of warning the man—he wished to see him dash into that shaft of light, that eyes might come to the aid of ears. Another moment. . . .
With a slithering of hoofs the horse pulled up in mid-flight at the very edge of the beams. A voice, husky with anxiety, shouted:
"Sergeant, Sergeant Mahon! Quick! For God's sake!"
At the first sound Mahon felt the blood rush to his head. His knees shook. His left hand groped to his forehead. Then he wrenched himself back to his duty.
"What is it?" His voice was quiet, but he avoided the light.
Slowly and soundlessly he was moving down the other edge of the light, revolver poised, eyes straining into the darkness beyond. In the dim fringe he made out the figure of a tall man leaning toward him, a pair of Indian braids falling over his shoulders. Mahon's eyes moved on to the horse. He started, and his teeth clicked. Surely there was something familiar. . . . But his brain was tumbling madly—he would not trust it.
The Indian, blinded by the light, spoke rapidly:
"They're attackin'—right away—a hundred rifles—blow up the trestle—kill the girl an' th' others!"
Neither the ride nor the run was making him pant like that.
The Sergeant leaped across the light and struck. With digging heels the Indian swung the pinto on its hind legs, at the same time striking at the outstretched hand. But he was too late. Mahon's open palm fell on Whiskers' rump, and in the very midst of rearing about she leaped forward into the light.
Mahon rubbed his eyes. A wild laugh came to his lips. This was no pinto. No ugly blotches there—only a dead brown. Whiskers? As ridiculous as his other fancies of late. But it must be Whiskers' twin sister.
The Indian and his horse were gone, racing back at full speed. Mahon ran to the barracks. Once more he was the Mounted Policeman. In the doorway stood Helen.
"Whiskers!" she breathed in an awed voice.
"Blue—"
"Don't be foolish," he scoffed. "You saw the broncho. Not a blotch on it. For God's sake, don't start my dreams again, Helen."
Williams was already cramming his bandolier with cartridges and buckling it over his shoulder. Helen seized a flashlight and hurried through the back door to the stable. In thirty seconds they followed. They saw her reappear—they heard her startled call:
"Gone!"
Mahon stared past her into the empty stalls.
CHAPTER XXVII
AN IRISHMAN AND AN ENGLISHMAN
Constable Williams cursed fervently, forgetting Helen. It was his way of rendering first aid. Mahon's mind was too busy for his lips. Therein lay the foundation of their respective ranks. In ten seconds he was running for the street.
Throwing the flash ahead of him as he ran, he wriggled at top speed down the winding path that led through the village; and Constable Williams stumbled behind. As the last of the deserted shacks fell behind, a luminous spot ahead led them straight to Murphy's tent. From forty yards Mahon shouted:
"How long to get steam up, Murphy? It's life and death, and we need the engine."
A bewhiskered face thrust itself through the opening, carefully pulling the flap below to cut off a fleeting glimpse of bare legs and loose shirt.
"What ye take us for? Night nurses? Think we're taking shifts keeping
Mollie snuggled up warm o' nights? Go away and change yeer dhrinks.
What's the hullabaloo anyway? Short o' tobacco? Or has the newest
tenderfoot discovered the one lone flea in all this lousy village?"
"The bohunks are attacking the trestle! They've stolen our horses."
Murphy asked no more foolish questions; he was busy with his overalls.
"Dunno about getting you there right away," he grunted, tugging at a suspender, "but sure the next instant. Glory be! ain't we afther getting in late to-noight—and me blasting the hide o' me crew and old man Torrance? And 'Uggins didn't draw the fires, he was that lazy and cantankerous himself—"
"Call the crew!" ordered Mahon. "We'll need them."
"'Ere's 'Uggins," said a small voice from the edge of the cot.
The fireman was pulling on his second sock. He waited for nothing more. Shirt flapping about his short legs, he ran into the night, shouting at the top of his voice.
"Have you arms?" Mahon enquired of Murphy.
"Wish I had about three more o' thim for this collar-button," grumbled the engineer before the mirror.
"Have you a gun, I asked?"
"Well," said Murphy carefully, "if ye're enquir-ring to enfor-rce the law agin carrying arms, nary a jack-knife even. If it's help ye nade, I guess we might be able to scrape up a shooter apiece. We lug 'em along for ballast, ye understand, in the absence o' fire-water. If it's a foighter ye're talking like, ivery devil of a mother's son of us can make a bang like a gun, with a bullet t'rowed in—though for meself I prefer a shillalah. I'm going to be in this foight if I have to use a lead pencil. Ain't I Oirish?"
"For heaven's sake, let the collar and tie go!" groaned Mahon.
Murphy turned a disgusted face on the Policeman. "Niver go into a foight excited-like. It's dangerous. I wouldn't enjoy meself if it's too scrambly a show. 'Tain't ivery day a fellow has a chance out here to get into one. Anyway, 'Uggins has to get steam up. . . . Now I'm ready for anything from dam-sels to any other damn thing."
As they ran from the tent, the shacks the crews had taken to themselves were bustling with activity. Four half-clothed figures, pulling on jackets as they ran, fell in behind them and made for the siding where great gusts of flame revealed Huggins' frantic struggle with the engine.
The half-naked fireman was firing recklessly, madly. Limitless dry wood was at his hand, and from the live coals that remained from the day's work a mass of flame was already throwing heavy sparks against the smokestack guard. But Huggins was a fuming thing of cursing impatience. Mouthing unlisted oaths, his wet shirt lashing against his bare legs, he was repeatedly filling a small pail from a nearby barrel and, standing on the cab steps, was tossing its contents into the blazing fireplace. Great gushes of fire roared out in response, revealing him, face streaming perspiration, lips moving ceaselessly, one sock hanging in tatters, already swinging about for the next pail.
Murphy looked on in anxious admiration.
"Holy smoke! Here I been wor-rking five years to get a hustle on that Englishman, and him arguing coal oil was made for wiping engines and lighting lamps and smelling up a grocery store. . . . That's what I call a medal job. Anyway," he added, as a greater gush than usual burst out and seemed to lick about the frantic fireman, "there ain't much o' him to catch fire, if he don't tumble down them steps in time. . . . Poof! That must have been half the barrel. For the love of Mike!" he bawled, wiping the soot from his eyes, "Here, you crazy bat, go aisy. The cab'll be catching fire."
"Garn!" yelled Huggins, reaching for a fresh supply. "Look arfter yer own blinkin' cab, yu blighter!"
"Blighter, is it?" Murphy was dancing excitedly about—until he got in the fireman's way, to receive such a furious push that he went sprawling on his back. He lifted himself to his feet as if something new had entered his experience, and stood agitatedly chewing his beard.
"When this foight's over," he announced solemnly, "there's going to be another that'll make the one at the threstle look like a Sunday School picnic; and Oireland's going to put England over her knee and spank the place yeer shirt don't cover dacent. . . . Stop it, ye loon! Make a pair o' pants o' the rest o' the ile and look respectable. Ye don't seem to remember Mollie's sex. I'm ashamed o' ye. . . . Climb aboard, ye fools—and ithers. She'll do five miles on what she has, and in three miles she'll be cutting' out twenty. . . . For the sake o' me dead and buried mother, somebody sit on that barrel or we'll be one short in the foight! I got to work in this cab! He's gone daffy! He'll miss the fireplace some time and set the bush on fire!"
Huggins' blind haste was deaf to everything but the clang of the starting lever and the grind of the big wheels. Grabbing the rail, he swung aboard, a half-filled pail clutched tight. And Murphy had only time to knock it from his hand to save the seven of them from one last gush of flame. Huggins swore deeply, swept a black arm across his dripping eyes, and leaned out to estimate their speed.
Engine and tender chugged out from the siding. And Murphy leaned through the window and broke all traffic rules.
"Jump on, ye loon!" he yelled to the brakesman standing by the open switch. "Think I'm going to waste steam stopping for you?" The brakesman swung aboard. "All the specials are cancelled to-noight for the foight. We got three miles o' clear track. Go on, Mollie!"
But he was wrong. Lack of steam pressure alone saved them. Murphy, staring ahead into the beam of the headlight, suddenly grabbed a lever in either hand, yelling a warning:
"Hang on, b'ys!"
The wheels scraped the rails. Mahon unsupported, fell against the fireplace but rolled clear without injury. There was a sickening thump, and the engine sagged forward and stopped abruptly.
"Missed it, be the powers!" snarled Murphy. "Another foot and we'd have kept the rails. They've put one over on us. Bally fools we were not to look for it. How far's the foight away, it's hoofing it we are now."
A sputter of rifle fire burst from the woods and bullets rattled on the metal of engine and tender. No one was hurt, and the two Policemen silenced the fire immediately by returning it with surprising precision. A yell from the darkness told of a nip at least.
"Out behind the grade!" ordered Mahon. "I'll keep them down till you're covered."
A blaze from the trees, and he fired twice at it in rapid succession.
"And lave Mollie?" protested Murphy. "Not by a jugful!"
"To blazes with Mollie!" Mahon exploded, and threw the engineer through the cab door.
Murphy slowly picked himself up. "I see two foights on afther this one," he declared joyously. "And I'll lick the bohunk that stops a one o' thim, I will."
"Somebody st'ys with the engine, any'ow," muttered 'Uggins stubbornly.
"'Ere, Murphy, we'll toss."
"What good's that?" asked Mahon. "It's human lives we're saving to-night, not engines."
"Gor lumme! Wots the use o' losin' the engine, too, I says. Any'ow, them rifles in there is more use to us 'ere than there at the trestle. An' I can't be savin' 'uman lives, women ones, in these togs."
Murphy climbed back into the cab. His purpose was the innocent one of letting off the rapidly accumulating steam; but Huggins was suspicious and followed closely.
"It's a toss, I tell yu," he insisted. "'Ere, len' me a tanner; I forgot my wallet."
Murphy extracted a coin from his pocket, and Huggins opened the fireplace door for light. There were to be no tricks in this toss. Three bullets thudded into the metal about them, but Murphy and his fireman were intent on a falling copper.
Huggins pulled his shirt back from the sucking draft of the flames.
"'Eads!" he called.
The coin rattled to the floor and both men dropped to their knees.
Another rifle tried for them.
"An' 'eads it is. I st'ys. Any'ow, it's warmer 'ere. Blimey, if them pants o' mine wasn't somethink to blow about after all. Sometimes it's the wind, then it's the bloomin' fire. I'll keep a bit o' steam up; looks as if I'll maybe need a bath when I get 'ome. S'long, ole sport! Tell Miss Tressa—" He broke into a convulsive chuckle, which another burst of rifle fire tried to interrupt. "Cripes! Wouldn't I 'a' been a d'isy for rescuin' lidies? Not 'arf!"
The farewell of the two men who ceaselessly fought and loved each other was nothing more than a pat on the back, Murphy's the more exuberant because it smacked louder on the thin shirt of the fireman. Then the latter was alone. "Mollie sends 'er love," he called into the darkness after the engineer.
For several minutes Huggins searched the tender for a comfortable spot for his unprotected body, but scratchy, knobby pieces of wood, with a foundation of sharp chunks of coal, was not conducive to rest. A bullet rattling against the engine added to his irritation, and he looked over the edge and fired his revolver petulantly.
"That'll larn 'em I'm no blinkin' Irishman with a stick."
He crawled painfully to the very back of the tender and fired again.
"In case they thort the first was a misfire," he growled, "or fright." After a minute or two he began to grin. "Unless them bohunks is bigger fools than they need be, I guess yer friend 'Uggins is due for a rosy wreath from his friend Murphy when the sky clears."
He busied himself with a sputtering return fire to show he was still alive and prepared to exchange compliments. Between intervals of a vain search for something smooth and soft he expressed his feelings by a blind banging into the trees. At last he carefully wiped over the floor, settled himself against the entrance to the tender, and began to doze. A bullet struck close to his ear.
"Always the w'y," he groaned, moving back to safer quarters. "There's a fly in every hointment. An' we're as apt to 'it each other as a woman at a cokernut shy."
A distant burst of firing came down the breeze from toward the trestle. Huggins leaped to his feet and climbed to the pile of wood, and recklessly on to the top of the water tank.
"'Urray!" he yelled, dancing in the cold night air and blazing three shots into the woods. "The charge o' the light brigade! Waterloo! Lidysmith! The Camperdown an' orl the rest! Yu got no traditions, yu sneakin' pups! If I 'it one o' yu yu'd think of nothink but the quickest w'y 'ome."
A bullet whistled past either ear, and he tumbled back into the tender, barking several fresh places on his sore body.
"Wots the use?" he growled. "They don't understand. . . . Lidysmith don't 'elp none if they 'it me, though she's orl right for—for tradition. I better lie low an' stop gassin' 'istory. . . . Any'ow, 'Uggins wouldn't sound right in 'istory."