CHAPTER X. HARRY FIGHTS FOR COMMAND
“Come back, Mr. Reade!” implored Foreman Payson.
For Tom, who had made two casts with the lariat and failed, was knee-deep in shifting sand himself.
“Keep cool!” the young chief engineer called over his shoulder. “I'll be back—both of us in a minute or two.”
The hapless laborer was now engulfed to his neck in the quicksand.
“Save me! In Heaven's name get me out of this!” begged the poor fellow, frenzied by dread of his seemingly sure fate.
“I'm doing the best I can, friend!” Tom called, as he made a fresh cast.
This time the noose of the raw-hide lariat dropped over the laborer's head.
“Fight your hands free, man!” Tom called encouragingly. “Fight your hands and chest free, so that you can slip the noose down under your armpits. Keep cool and work fast, and we'll have you out. Don't let yourself get excited.”
In the meantime Tom was wholly unaware that the engulfing quicksand was reaching up gradually toward his hips.
Foreman Payson had ceased to try to attract Tom's attention. Whatever was to be done to save the chief engineer must be done swiftly. There was not another lariat, or any kind of rope at hand.
Behind was a cloud of alkali dust. Harry Hazelton was riding as fast as he could urge a spirited horse.
In another moment Hazelton had reined up at the edge of the group, dismounting and tossing the reins to one of the workmen.
“My man, you get on that horse and fly for a rope!” ordered Harry.
This last Hazelton shot back over his shoulder, for he was pushing his way through the rapidly forming crowd to Payson's side. Another foreman had just come up.
“Mr. Bell,” shouted Harry, “drive the men back who are not needed. We don't want to put a lot of weight on the soil here and cause a further cave-in.”
By this time Harry was at the edge of the platform. In a twinkling he was out on the sand.
Grip! Mr. Payson had a strong hold on the collar of the assistant engineer.
“Let go of me!” commanded Harry.
“You can't go out there, Mr. Hazelton. No more lives are to be wasted.”
“Let go of me, I tell you!”
“No, sir!” insisted Foreman Payson firmly.
“Let go of me, or I'll fight you!”
“You'll have to fight, then,” retorted Payson doggedly, maintaining his grip on the lad's coat collar. “Comeback here!”
Aided by another man, the foreman dragged Hazelton back to the platform.
“Payson, I'll discharge you, if you interfere with me!” stormed Hazelton.
“Don't be a fool, sir. You can't help Mr. Reade. Be cool, sir. Keep your head and direct us like a man of sense.”
“Be a man of sense, and see my chum going under the sands of the Man-killer?” flared Hazelton.
He made a bound, doubling his fists threateningly. Then three or four men, at a sign from Payson, seized the young assistant engineer and threw him to the ground.
“Tom,” called Harry, “order these fools to let me go.”
Reade, however, who had just pulled in all the slack of the rawhide lariat, and had made it fast about his own left arm, seemed wholly unaware of his own great peril.
Tom Reade was now submerged to his waistline in the engulfing sand.
Unless rescued within five minutes the young chief engineer was plainly doomed to be swallowed up in the treacherous sands of the Man-killer. Only a few seconds below the shifting level of the sand would be enough to smother the life out of him. Scores of strong men, powerless to help, watched hopelessly within a few yards of the two whose lives were being slowly but surely snuffed out.
The laborer, whose carelessness or ignorance had caused all the trouble, was now in the sand up to his mouth. The agonized watchers could see him gradually sinking further.
“Keep up your nerve, friend!” called Tom, in cool encouragement. “We'll soon have you out of that.”
Gripping the lariat with both bands, Tom gave a strong, sudden wrench and succeeded in drawing the imperiled man out of the sand a few inches.
Then the poor fellow began to settle again moaning piteously as he saw a hideous death staring him in the face.
Tom Reade's own face was deathly white from a realization of the other's peril. Of his own danger the young chief engineer had not once stopped to think.
Harry Hazelton was again on his feet. That much Foreman Payson had permitted, but strong-armed laborers stood on either side of the boy, and their detaining grips were on his arm.
Out yonder the doomed man saw the engulfing sand creeping up on a level with his eyes. He tried to scream, but the sand shifted into his mouth. In pitiable terror the poor fellow closed his mouth in order to delay death for another moment. Even to call for help would now be swiftly fatal!
Behind came the thunder of hoofs.
“Ropes!” shouted the horseman on Harry's mount.
He rode past the groups of men, close to the platform. Then, leaping from the saddle, the rider tossed a small bundle of ropes at Harry's feet. All were ropes and lines—not a raw-hide among them.
“There he goes! He's gone!” roared a score of frantic voices, as the engulfed laborer sank out of sight in the sand.
Harry Hazelton feverishly uncoiled one of the ropes, gathering a few folds in his right hand.
“Catch, Tom!” Harry shouted, making a cast.
The line swirled through the air, then settled on the sands.
“O-o-o-oh!” groaned Hazelton, for the rope had fallen four feet to one side of Reade, and the latter, hemmed in as he was, could not reach it.
“Take your time and make a sure throw, Harry!” Tom called cheerily.
Again Hazelton made a throw—and failed.
“Let me, have that! My head's cooler,” called Foreman Payson.
He made two quick, steady throws, but each shot wide of the mark.
“Let me have that!” screamed Harry, snatching the line away.
“There are lines enough. Two men might be making throws,” spoke a quiet voice behind them.
Payson nodded, and bent over for another line.
All trace of the doomed laborer had now disappeared. As for Tom, the sand was reaching up under his arm-pits. The young chief engineer had had the presence of mind to keep his arms free, but soon they too must be swallowed up.
“Good throw—whoever sent it!” cheered Tom Reade, as a final cast—Harry's—sent a line within six inches of his face.
Tom could not see those back at the platform, for his back was turned to the eastward, and he could no longer swing his body about.
“Get it under your arms-quick, Tom, or you're done for, too!” screamed Harry.
“Keep cool, old chap!” came back the unconcerned answer. “It isn't half bad out here. The sand feels really cool about one's body.”
“This is no time for nonsense!” ordered Hazelton hoarsely. “Have you the line fast?”
“Yes!” nodded Reade. “Haul away! Careful, but strong and steady!”
Under Foreman Payson's direction a score of men seized the other end of the line and then began to haul.
Harry danced up and down in a frenzy.
“Tom, you idiot,” he gasped. “You haven't made the line fast about yourself.”
“Not yet,” came the cheery answer. “That wouldn't be fair play. Haul away on our friend out yonder.”
Tom Reade had knotted the line fast to his end of the rawhide lariat that was tied under the shoulders of the engulfed laborer. It was magnificent, though seemingly a useless sacrifice of his own life for one who must already be dead.
From some of the workmen a faint cheer went up as the slowly incoming line hauled the head of the unconscious laborer above the sand. A foot at a time the body came toward them over the sand.
Harry, however, scarcely noted the rescue. He was frantically working with another line, knotting it in a sort of harness under his own shoulders.
“Come here, some of you men!” he called. “Bear a hand here! Lively!”
Foreman Payson was instantly at the side of the young assistant engineer.
“What are you trying to do, Mr. Hazelton?” he demanded.
“I'm going out on the sands,” retorted Harry. “I'm going to reach Tom Reade. If I go under the men can aid me.”
“But that isn't a rawhide line; it's hemp,” objected Foreman Payson.
“It's strong enough,” retorted Hazelton impatiently.
“I don't know about that.”
“It will have to do,” insisted Hazelton. “You men get a good hold. Also, one of you play out this other line that I'm taking with me for Tom Reade.”
“Don't risk anything foolish, Harry!” called the voice of Tom Reade, who now felt the sand under his chin.
“I'm coming to you,” Tom, shouted Harry.
“It's too dangerous. Don't!”
“I've got to come to you!”
“I tell you don't! Maybe I can get myself out.”
“Yes, you can,” jeered Hazelton. “Tom, if you went under, do you think I could ever go back to our native town?”
“Payson!” shouted Tom.
“Yes, sir!”
“Don't let Mr. Hazelton come—yet. Seize him!”
“I've got him, sir!”
Harry felt himself seized by the strong arms of the foreman.
“You don't go, sir,” Payson insisted. “It's a criminal waste of life.”
“Man, unhand me. Let me go, I tell you.”
“I won't, sir. I've Mr. Reade's orders.”
“He's helpless and no longer in command,” Harry retorted.
“He's in command enough for me, sir.”
“Payson!” Harry Hazelton's fierce gaze burned into the eyes of the foreman. “If Tom Reade dies out yonder, and you've hindered me from saving him—I'll have your life for forfeit!”
Before that burning look even Payson shrank back. Harry Hazelton, ordinarily the best natured of boys, was now in terrible earnest.
“That's right,” muttered Hazelton. “Men, I take command here. You needn't heed any words from Reade. Now, you men on the lines watch close and listen keenly for my orders.”
With that Hazelton darted out on the deadly, treacherous sands!
CHAPTER XI. CHEATING THE MAN-KILLER
For the first few yards the assistant engineer ran almost as well as though on a cinder track. Then his feet sank in. Soon he stumbled.
Then there came a time, within ten feet of Tom, when Harry felt his feet settling in the sand despite his efforts to pull himself out.
In the meantime the haulers on the other line had forgotten to pull the laborer nearer to safety.
“You men get your eyes on the job!” sternly commanded Payson, who seemed capable of having eyes everywhere.
Harry got out, somehow. He made a bound, landing within arm's length of Tom Reade.
“I'm here, old chum!” gasped Hazelton.
“I knew you'd be,” returned Tom calmly, “if there were any way of doing it.”
Harry pulled himself together and floundered still closer.
Nor was there a moment to be lost. Tom was already reduced to the choice between silence and having his mouth filled with sand.
Harry's hands worked with lightning speed. Feverishly he dug out the sand, until he had scooped away enough to bare Tom's shoulders and a few inches beneath.
Swoop! Down went the extra noose over Tom's lifted arms, and then down to a snug noose under his armpits.
From the platform a cheer went up, for the unconscious laborer had just been hauled to safety.
It was with a thrill of horror that Hazelton found his own legs firmly embedded in the sand well up to his thighs.
“Get Reade started first!” shouted the young assistant engineer. “Don't bother with me until I give the word.”
How the line fastened to Tom tightened and strained! At times it seemed as though it must give way.
Presently Tom's shoulder and a part of his torso were free.
In the meantime Harry Hazelton had sunk in up to the waist line.
“We'll haul on you, too, now, Mr. Hazelton!” sounded the voice of Foreman Payson.
“Don't you dare do it until I give the word,” thundered back the voice of the assistant engineer.
With a line securely about him, Harry felt that he could afford to take the slight chance of waiting his turn.
He saw Tom's knees coming up out of the sand before he called:
“Now, Payson, you can give me a little boost if you like. Don't pull me in ahead of Tom Reade, however.”
Presently deafening cheers went up. Both young engineers were being slowly, surely hauled to safe ground.
Then Tom and Harry reached a spot where they could rise to their own feet and floundered. Tom started, then swayed dizzily.
“Steady, there, old Gridley boy!” mumbled Hazelton, slipping an arm around his recovered chum.
Then the two young engineers reached the platform and a fresh tumult of joyful cheering burst forth.
“Payson,” exclaimed Harry, going up to the foreman, and holding out his hand, “will you accept my apologies for all I said to you? I had to use strong language, or you'd have held me back from Reade.”
“I didn't believe he could be saved,” returned the foreman, with a sickly smile, as he grasped Hazelton's outstretched hand.
Tom, too weak at first to stand, had dropped to his knees at the side of the unconscious laborer, over whom some of the bystanders were working in stupid fashion.
“This man must have medical attention at once!” Tom declared. “Some of you men lift him to your shoulders. Be careful not to jolt him, but travel at a jog all the way to the office building. Harry, can you sit on your horse?”
“Surely,” said the young assistant.
“Lucky boy, then,” smiled Reade. “I won't be able to sit in saddle for some minutes. Ride into camp and tell the operator to wire swiftly for a physician to come out and attend to that man.”
“But you—”
“I'm here, am I not!” smiled Reade.
“I should say you are, Mr. Reade!” came a hoarse, friendly roar from one of the laborers.
Hazelton did not delay. He was soon speeding back over the desert.
As for Tom, there were many offers of assistance, but he explained that all he needed was to keep quiet and have a chance to get his breath back.
Payson, in the meantime, had started the work going again, though most of his men toiled with far less spirit than before the accident.
Ten minutes later Tom mounted his horse and rode slowly back toward camp. By the time he reached there he made out the automobile of a Paloma physician coming in haste.
Tom was still weak enough to tremble as Harry stepped outside and helped him to the ground.
“Harry,” Reade remarked dryly, “I'm not going to bother to thank you for such a simple little thing as saving my life out yonder. I am well aware that you had the time of your life in doing it.”
“I might have had the time of my life,” returned Harry, with an imitation of his chum's calmness, “if there had been more excitement about it. It was all rather dull, wasn't it, old chap?”
Smiling, both stepped inside. Then Tom's face became grave when he saw that the rescued laborer had not yet recovered consciousness.
“Somewhere in the world,” murmured Reade, as he dropped to one knee and rested a finger-tip on the laborer's pulse, “there's someone—a woman, or a child, or a white-haired old man—who wouldn't wish us to let this man die. What have you men been doing for him?”
Before the answer could be given a honk sounded at the door. Then a young doctor clad in white duck and carrying a three-fold medicine case, stepped inside.
“Sucked down by the sand and hauled out again, Doc,” Tom explained.
The physician looked closely at his patient and Harry drove out the men who had no especial business there.
“A little pin-head of glonoin on his tongue for a beginning,” decided the physician, opening his case. From one of the vials he took a small pellet, forcing it between the lips of the unconscious man. Then, with his stethoscope, he listened for the heart beats.
“Another glonoin, and then we'll start in to wake up our friend,” said the young doctor in white duck, after a pause.
Two or three minutes later the laborer opened his eyes.
“You've been trying not to hear the whistle,” laughed the doctor gently. “A big fellow like you must be up and doing.”
Ten minutes later the doctor found Tom outside.
“The man will be all right now, with a little stuff that I'll leave for him,” smiled the visitor. “Of course there's some man in camp who can look after a comrade to-night?”
“Doc, couldn't you do a better job if you had the man in Paloma under your own eyes tonight?” Tom questioned.
“Yes; undoubtedly.”
“Can you take him?”
“Yes.”
“Then do so. Give him all the attention he needs. Make out your bill to the A. G. & N. M. Hand it to me, and I'll O.K. it and send it in to headquarters for payment. If you think an automobile ride after dark will do the poor chap good, give him one and put that in your bill, too.”
“Reade, I want to shake hands with you,” said the physician earnestly. “I've looked after railroad hands before, but this is the first time I was ever asked to be humane to one. Have no fear but I'll send this man back to you strong and grateful. What's his name?”
“I don't know,” returned Reade. “I don't even know to whose gang he belongs, though I think he's one of Payson's men.”
Late the following afternoon the laborer was brought back to camp. The following morning he returned to his work as usual.
During the next two weeks Tom and Harry directed all their energies, as well as the labor of all of their men, to bridging over that bad spot in the Man-killer that had so nearly claimed two lives. One after another six different layers of log network were put down. The open box cars brought up thousands of tons of good soil, which was dumped down into the layers of interlaced logs.
“The old Man-killer must feel tremendously flattered at finding himself so persistently manicured,” laughed Tom as he sat in saddle watching the men putting down the sixth layer.
Steel piles, hollow and filled with cement, were being driven here, the cement not going in until the top of the pile was but four feet above the level of the desert.
“Look out yonder,” nodded Harry, handing his field glass to his chum. “You can just make out a glint on the sand. That's one of our steel piles being sucked under.”
“The explorer of a few centuries hence may find a lot of these piles,” laughed Tom. “If he does, he'll most likely attribute them to the Pueblo Indians or the Aztecs, and he'll write a learned volume about the high state of civilization that existed among the savages here before the white man came.”
“I'm mighty glad, Tom, that General Manager Ellsworth isn't out here to see how many dozens of steel piles we're feeding hopelessly to the Man-killer.”
“Not one of those piles is going down hopelessly,” Tom retorted. “Some of the piles may disappear, and never be seen again, but each one will help hold the drift at some point, near the surface, or perhaps a thousand feet below the surface.”
“Only a thousand feet below the surface!” Harry grunted. “Tom, I often feel certain that the Man-killer extends away down to the center of the earth and up again on the other side. Before I'm a very old man I expect to hear that several of our steel piles have shot up above the surface in China or India.”
Hearing the noise of horse's hoofs behind him, Tom turned. He beheld Fred Ransom riding out to the spot on a mottled “calico” horse.
“Look who's here,” Reade murmured to his chum.
“What are you going to do with him?” asked Hazelton, after a quick look. “Run him off the line?”
“I don't know,” Tom answered slowly. “Ransom is trying hard to earn a living, you know.”
Harry snorted. That sort of estimation of Ransom, even as a joke, was a little too much for him.
“Mighty hot day, Reade,” called Ransom, as he reined in near the young engineers.
“Yes,” said Tom slowly. “If I were enjoying myself beside a bottle of cold soda on the Mansion House porch I don't believe I'd have the energy to call for a horse and ride all the way out here in the heat.”
“Am I intruding?” demanded Ransom, with a swift, keen glance at the young chief engineer.
“Oh, no, indeed!” came Tom's response. “You're as welcome as the flowers in spring.”
“Thank you. It's a fine job you're doing out here.”
“Now it's my turn to extend my thanks to you,” Tom drawled. “Your praise is all the more appreciated as coming from a competitor.”
“A competitor!” asked Ransom quickly, and with a half scowl. “I'm not an engineer.”
“Your people are ranked as pretty fair engineers,” Reade rejoined.
“My people? What do you mean, Reade? There isn't an engineer in our family.”
“No; but the Colthwaite Company employs a good many engineers,” Tom suggested.
“Colthwaite?” repeated Ransom, now on his guard. “I have nothing to do with that concern.”
“No?” asked Tom, as though greatly astonished. “Why, that's strange.”
“Why is it strange?”
“Why,” Tom Reade rejoined amiably, “everyone connected with the A. G. & N. M. who knows anything at all about you credits you with being a member of the Colthwaite Company's gloom department.”
“Gloom department?” gasped Ransom, with a wholly innocent-looking face. “Oh, all right. I'll bite. What is a gloom department, anyway?”
“It's a comparatively recent piece of business apparatus,” smiled Tom. “It is employed by big corporations as a club with which to hit smaller crowds that want some of the business of life. The gloom department might be called the bureau of knocking, or the hit-in-the-neck shift.”
“Is that what you accuse me of doing for the Colthwaite Company?” asked Fred Ransom, his scowl deepening.
“Oh, the accusation isn't all mine,” Tom assured him unconcernedly. “Some of it belongs elsewhere.”
“Your suspicions are utterly unwarranted,” retorted Ransom, choking slightly.
“It's a lot of comfort to hear you say so,” Tom rejoined, as smilingly as ever.
“You're on the wrong track this time, anyway,” Ransom asserted boldly. “Still, I don't suppose you want me out here.”
“On the contrary, I greatly enjoy seeing you here,” Tom declared. “I'm very grateful for the praise you offered me a moment ago.”
“You're welcome,” returned the Colthwaite agent, trying hard to smile. “However, I won't take up your time. Good afternoon.”
“Good afternoon, then,” nodded Tom. “Drop in again, won't you? Any time within working hours.”
“Confound that fellow Reade!” muttered Ransom angrily as he rode back to Paloma. “He knows altogether too much—or suspects it. I shall have to call Jim Duff's attention to him!”
“Why did you string the fellow so?” asked Harry when the chums were alone once more.
“I didn't,” Reade retorted. “I came very close to giving him straight information.”
“Now he'll be more on his guard.”
“That won't do him any good,” Tom yawned. “He has been on his guard all along, yet we found him out. For that matter, any man who lives regularly at the Mansion House these days is open to our suspicion.”
For the Mansion House, ever since Tom's having been ordered away, had been a losing proposition. Now and then a traveling salesman stopped there, though not many.
“By the way, Harry,” predicted Tom, as the chums were riding back to Paloma at the close of the afternoon, “look out, in about three of four days, for a new and permanent guest at the Cactus House.”
“Who's coming?” inquired Hazelton.
“Whatever man the Colthwaite Company decides to send to the Cactus House as soon as headquarters in Chicago receives Ransom's report. I think we'll know that new chap, too, when he shows up. Also, you'll find that the new man is either an avowed enemy of Ransom, after a little, or else he won't choose to know Ransom at all.”
“That's pretty wild guessing,” scoffed Harry Hazelton.
“Wait three or four days, and see whether it's guessing or one of the fine fruits of logic,” proposed Reade. “Incidentally, the Colthwaite people will wonder why it didn't occur to them before to send one of their gloom men to live at the Cactus. Fact is, I've been looking for the chap for more than a fort-night.”
CHAPTER XII. HOW THE TRAP WAS BAITED
It was the evening of the day after Harry, who had insisted on trudging up and down the line all day, instead of using his horse, had a touch of heat headache.
He was not in a serious condition, but he needed rest. He dropped into one of the chairs on the Cactus House porch and prepared to doze.
“Is there anything I can get for you, or do for you, old chap?” inquired Tom, coming out on the porch after supper and looking remarkably comfortable and contented.
“No; just let me doze,” begged Harry. “I feel a trifle drowsy.”
“Then, if you're going to give a concert through your nose,” smiled Tom, “I may as well protect myself by going some distance away.”
“Go along.”
“I believe I'll take a walk. Probably, too, the ice cream man will be richer when I get back.”
Tom went down into the street and sauntered along. He had walked but a few blocks when he met another young man in white ducks.
“Doc, I'm looking for the place where the ice cream flows,” Reade hinted. “Can I tempt you?”
“Without half trying,” laughed Dr. Furniss the young physician who had gone out to camp to attend the Man-killer victim.
As they were seated together over their ice cream, Dr. Furniss inquired:
“By the way, do you ever see my one-time patient nowadays?”
“The fellow we exhumed from the Man-killer?”
“The same.”
“I see him every morning,” laughed Tom. “Really, I can't help seeing him, for the man puts himself in my way daily to say good morning. And as yet I haven't learned his name.”
“His name is Tim Griggs,” replied Dr. Furniss. “He's a fine fellow, too, in his rough, manly way. He's wonderfully grateful to you, Reade. Do you know why?”
“Haven't an idea.”
“Well, Tim's sheet anchor in life is a little girl.”
“Sweetheart?”
“After a fashion,” laughed the young doctor. “The girl is his daughter, eight years old. She's everything to Tim, for his wife is dead. The child lives with somewhat distant relatives, in a New England town. Tim sends all his spare money to her, and so the child is probably well looked after. Tim told me, with a big choke in his voice, that, if the Man-killer had swallowed him up, it would have been all up with the little girl, too. When money stopped coming the relatives would probably have set the child to being household drudge for the family. Tim has a round dozen of different photos of the child taken at various times.”
“Then I'm extra glad we got him out of the Man-killer,” said Tom rather huskily.
“I knew you'd be glad, Reade. You're that kind of fellow.”
“Tim Griggs, then, is probably one of our steady men,” Tom remarked, after a while.
“Steady! Why the man generally sends all of his month's pay, except about eight dollars, to his daughter. From what he tells me she is a sharp, thrifty little thing. She pays her own board bill with her relatives, chooses and pays for her own clothes, and puts the balance of the money in bank for herself and her father.”
“Does Tim ever go to see her?”
“Once in two years, regularly. He'd go east oftener, but it costs too much money. He'd live near her, but he says he can earn more money down here on the desert. Tim even talks about a college education for that idolized girl. She looks out just as sharply for her daddy. Whenever Tim is ready to make a trip east, she sends him the money for his fare. The two have a great old time together.”
“Tim may marry again one of these days, and then the young lady may not have as happy a time,” remarked Tom thoughtfully.
“I hinted as much to Griggs,” replied Dr. Furniss, “but he told me, pretty strongly, that there'll be no new wife for him until he has helped the daughter to find her own place in life.”
“Say!” muttered Tom, with a queer little choke in his voice. “The heroes in life generally aren't found on the high spots, are they?”
“They're not,” retorted the doctor solemnly.
Half an hour later, after having eaten their fill of ice cream, Dr. Furniss and Engineer Reade parted, Tom strolling on alone in the darkness.
“I can It get that fellow Griggs out of my mind,” muttered Tom. “To think that a splendid fellow like him is working as a laborer! I wonder if he isn't fitted for something better—something that pays better? Look out, Tom Reade, you old softy, or you'll be doing something foolish, all on account of a primary school girl in New England whom you've never seen, and never will! I wonder—hello!”
As Tom had walked along his head had sunk lower and lower in thought. His sudden exclamation had been brought forth by the fact that he had bumped violently into another human being.
“Cantch er look out where you're going?” demanded an ugly voice.
“I should have been looking out, my friend,” Tom replied amiably. “It was very careless of me. I trust, that I haven't done you serious harm.”
“Quit yer sass!” ordered the other, who was a tall, broad-shouldered and very surly looking fellow of thirty.
“I don't much blame you for being peevish,” Reade went on. “Still, I think there has been no serious harm done. Good night, friend.”
“No, ye don't!” snarled the other. “Nothing of the slip-away-easy style, like that!”
“Why, what do you want?” I asked Tom, opening his eyes in genuine surprise.
“Ye thick-headed idiot!” rasped the surly stranger. “Ye—”
From that the stranger launched into a strain of abuse that staggered the young engineer.
“Say no more,” begged Reade generously. “I accept your apology, just as you've phrased it.”
“Apology, ye fool!” growled the stranger.
“That won't do. Put up your hands!”
“Why?”
“So ye can fight, ye—”
“Fight?” echoed Tom, with a shake of his bead. “On a hot night like this? No, sir! I refuse.”
Tom would have passed peaceably on his way, but the stranger suddenly let go a terrific right-hander. Had Tom Reade received the blow he would have gone to the ground. But the young engineer's athletic training stood by him. He slid out, easily and gracefully, but was compelled to wheel and face his assailant.
“Don't,” urged Tom. “It's too hot.”
“I'm hot myself,” leered the stranger, dancing nearer.
“You look it,” Tom admitted. “If you don't stop dancing, you'll soon be hotter. It makes me warm to look at you.”
“Stop this one, ye tin-horn!” snarled the stranger.
“Certainly,” agreed Tom, blocking the blow. “However, I wish you wouldn't be so strenuous. One of us may get hurt.”
This last escaped Reade as he blocked the blow, and again displayed a neat little bit of footwork.
“Let's see you stop this one!” taunted the bully.
“Certainly,” agreed Tom, and did so.
“And this one. And this! Here's another!”
By this time the blows were raining in fast and thick. Tom's agile footwork kept him out of reach of the hard, hammer-like fists of the stranger.
Tom had been bred in athletics. He was comparative master of boxing, but before this interchange of blows had gone far the young engineer realized that he had met a doughty opponent.
What Tom didn't know was that his present foe was an ex-prizefighter, who had sunk low in the scale of life.
What the lad didn't even suspect was that the man had been hired to pick a fight with him, and that the fight was for desperate stakes.
“Have you pounded me all you think necessary?” asked Tom coolly, after more than a minute's hard interchange of blows in which neither man had gained any notable advantage.
“No, ye slant-eared boob!” roared the assailant. “Ye—”
Here he launched into another stream of abuse.
“You said all that before,” remarked Tom, with a new flash in his eyes. Then fully aroused, he went to work in earnest, intending to drive his opponent back and down him.
The fighting became terrific. There was little effort now to parry, for each fighter had become intent on bringing the other to earth.
Tom was soon panting as he fought, for his opponent was heavier, taller and altogether out of the youth's fistic class.
“If I can only reach his wind once, and topple him over!” thought Reade.
A blow aimed at his jaw he failed to block. The impact sent the young engineer half staggering. Another blow, and Tom dropped, knocked out.
At that very instant a street door near by opened noiselessly.
“I've got him,” leered the bully, bending over the senseless form of Tom Reade.
“Bring him in!” ordered a voice behind the open doorway.
CHAPTER XIII. TOM HEARS THE PROGRAM
Throwing his arms around Tom, the bully lifted him and bore him inside, dropping him on the floor in the dark.
“He's some tough fighter,” muttered Tom's assailant. “I didn't know but he'd get me.”
“No; he couldn't,” replied the other voice. “I was just opening the door so I could slip out and give him a clip in the dark.”
“He's coming to,” muttered the bully. “Ye'll have to tell me what you want done with him.”
The speaker had knelt by Tom, with a hand roughly laid against the young engineer's pulse. Neither plotter could see the boy, for no light had been struck in the room.
“Pick him up,” ordered the one who appeared to be directing affairs. “If he comes to while you're carrying him you can handle him easily enough, can't you?”
“Of course. Even after he knows pie from dirt he'll be dazed for a few minutes.”
“Come along with him.”
“Strike a light.”
For answer the director of this brutal affair flashed a little glow from a pocket electric lamp.
The way led down a hallway, through to the back of the house, and thence down a steep flight of stairs into a cellar.
The man who appeared to be in charge of this undertaking had brought a lantern, holding it ahead of the man who carried Tom's unconscious form.
“Dump him there,” ordered the man with the lantern.
“He's stirring,” reported the fighter, after having dropped young Reade to the hard earthen floor.
“Take this then,” replied the other, who, having hung the lantern on a hook overhead, had stepped off beyond the fringe of darkness. He now returned with a shotgun, which he handed to the fighter who had attacked the young chief engineer in the street.
“Do you want me to shoot him?” whispered the other huskily.
“If you have to, but I don't believe it will be necessary. The cub will soon understand that his safety depends entirely on doing as he is told.”
“Say,” muttered Tom thickly. He stirred, opened his eyes, then sat up, looking dazed.
“Don't move or talk too much,” advised the man with the shotgun. As he spoke, he moved the muzzle close to Reade's face.
“Hello!” muttered Tom, blinking rather hard.
“Hello yourself. That's talking enough for you to do,” snapped the bully.
“Was that the thing you hit me over the head with at the finish?” inquired the young engineer curiously.
“Careful! You're expected to think—not talk,” leered his captor. “If ye want something to think about ye can remember that I have fingers on both triggers of this gun.”
“I can see that much,” Tom assented. “Why do you think that it's necessary to keep that thing pointed at me? Have you got me in a place where you feel that facilities for escaping are too great?”
The word “facilities” appeared too big for the mind of the bully to grasp.
“I don't know what ye're talkin' about,” he grumbled.
“Neither do I,” Tom admitted cheerily. “My friend, I'm not going to irritate you by pretending that I know more than you do. In fact, I know less, for I have no idea what is about to happen to me here, and that's something that you do know.”
“No; I don't,” glared his captor, “and I don't care what is going to happen to you.”
Back of the fringe between light and darkness steps were heard on the cellar stairs. Then someone moved steadily forward until he came into the light.
“Hello, Jim!” Tom called good-humoredly.
“Don't try to be too familiar with your betters, young man!” came the stern reply.
“Oh, a thousand pardons, Mr. Duff,” Tom amended hastily. “I didn't intend to insult your dignity. Indeed, I am only too glad to find you resolved to be dignified.”
“If you try to get fresh with me,” growled the gambler, “I'll knock your head off.”
“Call it a slap on the wrist, and let it go at that,” urged Tom. “I'm very nervous to-night, and a blow on the head might make me worse.”
“Nothing could make you worse,” growled, Duff, turning on his heel, “and only death could improve you.”
“Then I'm distinctly opposed to the up-lift,” grinned Tom, but Duff had disappeared into a darker part of the cellar and the young engineer could not tell whether or not his shaft had reached its mark.
“Ye wouldn't be so fresh if ye had a good idea of what ye're up against to-night,” warned the bully with the gun.
“I fancy a good many of us would tone down if we could look ahead for three whole days,” Tom suggested.
Other steps were now heard on the stairs. The newcomers remained outside the illuminated part of the cellar until still others arrived.
“Now, gentlemen,” proposed the voice of Jim Duff, “suppose we have a look at the troublemaker.”
“They can't mean me,” Tom hinted to his immediate captor.
“Shut up!” came the surly answer.
Fully a dozen men now moved forward. With the single exception of Duff, each had a cloth, with eye-holes, tied in place over his face.
“My, but this looks delightfully mysterious!” chuckled Tom.
“You be still, boy, except when you answer something that calls for a reply,” ordered Jim Duff, who had dropped all of the surface polish of manner that he usually employed. “This meeting need not last long, and I'll do most of the talking.”
“Won't these other gentlemen present be allowed to do some of the talking?” the young engineer inquired.
“They don't want to,” Duff explained gruffly. “That might lead to their being recognized.”
“Oh, that's the game?” mused Tom Reade aloud. “Why, I thought they had the handkerchiefs over their faces because—”
“Shut up and listen!” warned Jim Duff.
“...because,” finished Tom, “they wanted me to feel that everything was being done regularly and in good dime-novel form. My, but they do look like some of the fellows that Hen Dutcher used to tell us about. Hen used to waste more time on dime novels than—”
“Shut up!” again commanded Duff. “These gentlemen feel that there is no need of their being recognized.”
“Then why didn't Fred Ransom, of the Colthwaite Company, cover up the scar on his chin?” retorted Reade. “Why didn't Ashby, of the Mansion House, invent a new style of walking for the occasion?”
Both men named drew hastily back into the shadow. Tom chuckled quietly.
“I could name a few others,” Tom continued carelessly. “In fact—I think I know you all. Gentlemen, you might as well remove your masks.”
“Club him with the butt of the gun, if he talks too much,” Duff directed the bully, who had stepped back a few paces as the men formed a circle around the young engineer.
“Did you ever try to stop water from running down hill, Duff,” Tom inquired good-humoredly.
“What has that to do with—” began the gambler angrily.
“Nothing very much,” Tom admitted. “Only it's a waste of time to try to bind my tongue. The only thing you can do is to gag me; but, from some things you've let drop, I judge that you want me to do some of the talking presently.”
“We do,” nodded Duff, seeking to regain his temper. “However, it won't do you any good to attempt to do your talking before you've heard me.”
“If I've been interfering with your rights, then I certainly owe you an apology,” Tom answered, with mock gravity. “May I beg you to begin your speech?”
“I will if you'll keep quiet long enough, boy,” Jim Duff retorted.
“I'll try,” sighed Reade. “Let's hear you.”
“This committee of gentlemen—” began the gambler.
“All gentlemen?” Tom inquired gravely.
“This committee,” Duff started again, “have concerned themselves with the fact that you have done much to make business bad here in Paloma. You have prevented hundreds of workmen from coming into Paloma to spend their wages as they otherwise would have done.”
“Some mistake there,” Reade urged. “I can't control the actions of my men after working hours.”
“You've persuaded them against coming into town,” retorted Duff sternly. “None of the A. G. & N. M. workmen come into Paloma with their wages.”
“I'm glad to hear that,” Tom nodded. “It's the effect of taking good advice, not the result of orders.”
Some of the masked listeners stirred impatiently.
“It's all the same,” Jim growled. “Your men don't come into town, and Paloma suffers from the loss of that much business.”
“I'm sorry to hear it.”
“So this committee,” the gambler went on, “has instructed me to inform you that your immediate departure from Paloma will be necessary if you care to go on living.”
“I can't go just yet,” Tom declared, with a shake of his bead. “My work here at Paloma isn't finished.”
“Your work will be finished before the night is over, if you don't accept our orders to leave town,” growled Duff.
“Dear me! Is it as bad as that?” queried Reade.
“Worse, as you'll find! What's your answer, Reade?”
“All I can say then,” Tom replied innocently, “is that it is too bad.”
Clip! Jim Duff bent forward, administering a smart cuff against the right side of the sitting engineer's face.
“Don't do that!” warned Tom, leaping lithely to his feet. He faced the gambler coolly, but the lad's muscles were working under the sleeves of his shirt.
Duff drew back three steps, after which he faced the boy, eyeing him steadily.
“Reade, you've heard what we have to say to you. That you can't go on living in Paloma. Are you ready to give us your word to leave Paloma before daylight, and never come back?”
“No,” Tom replied flatly.
“Then,” sneered the gambler, fixing the gaze of his snake-like eyes on the young chief engineer, “I'll tell you what we have provided for you. We shall take you to the edge of the town, at once, and there hang you by the neck to a tree. After you've ceased squirming we'll fasten this card to you.”
From another man present Jim snatched a printed card, bearing this legend:
“Gone, for the good of the community!”