In another hour the spot where the hotel had stood was marked only by a shapeless mass of smoking embers.
The citizens of the town went back to their beds. Mrs. Gerry and her children had recovered consciousness and had found a friendly lodging for the night.
The rescue performed by Tom and Harry had been a simple enough achievement.
Shut off from every other means of escape, they remembered the dumbwaiter that ran from the kitchen up to the floors above.
The two little children were sent down on the dumb-waiter, Harry riding on the top of the wooden frame. Mrs. Gerry's rescue was delayed until Harry could send the dumb-waiter up to the third floor, where she and Tom awaited its return. Aided by Tom, she descended to the kitchen without accident; then Tom followed, sliding down the rope. It was but the work of a moment to break through the basement window and pass the woman and her children out to safety.
Morning found Proprietor Carter somewhat resigned to his loss. True, the hotel had been destroyed and the embers must be removed, but both building and contents had been fairly well insured.
“I'm a few thousand out,” said the hotel man philosophically, “but I have my ground yet, and, the insurance money will allow me to rebuild., and put up a more modern hotel. Of course I'll be a few thousand dollars in debt, to start with, but after a short while I'll have earned the money that I've lost.”
“Why did you smile when poor Carter was talking about his loss?” demanded Harry, as the chums strolled away in search of breakfast.
“Did I?” asked Tom, looking suddenly very, sober.
“There was a broad grin on your face?”
“Carter didn't see it, did he?”
“I don't know; but why, the grin, Tom?”
“I'll tell you after I see what answer I receive to a telegram that I've sent.”
“Tom Reade, you always were provoking!”
“Now I'm doubly so, eh?”
“Oh, well, I don't care,” muttered Harry. “I can wait; I'm not very nosey.”
By noon General Manager Ellsworth arrived on the scene of the labors of the young engineers, out at the site of the big quicksand.
“You can run the work here this afternoon, Harry,” Tom declared. “I shall want to put in my time with Mr. Ellsworth.”
“Was he the answer to your telegram?”
Tom offered no further information, but hurried away to meet the general manager, who had come out to camp in an automobile hired at Paloma. Manager and chief engineer now toured slowly toward town, Harry watching them as long as they were in sight.
“Tom has something big in the wind,” muttered Hazelton. “It must be something about the hotel fire. What can it be? At any rate, I'll wager it's something that pleases my chum wonderfully.”
Nor did Tom return until late in the afternoon. He came back alone.
“Well?” demanded Harry.
“Yes,” nodded Tom. “It's well.”
“What is?”
“The game.”
“What is the game?”
“When you hear about it—” Reade began.
“Yes, yes—”
“Then you'll know.”
“Tom Reade, do you know, I believe I'm quite ready and willing to thrash you?” cried Harry in exasperation.
“Please don't,” Tom begged.
“Then tell me what you've been so mightily mysterious about.”
“I will,” returned Reade. “I'd have told you hours ago, Harry, only I'm afraid you would have been demoralized with disappointment if the thing had failed to go through. Harry, to-day I've been meddling in other people's business. Congratulate me! I put it through without getting myself thumped or even disliked, by anyone. Both sides to the deal are 'tickled to death,' as the saying runs.”
“You said you were going to tell me,” remarked Hazelton, trying hard to restrain his curiosity for a minute or two longer.
“Sit down and listen,” Tom urged his chum, handing him a chair in their little shack of an office.
Then, indeed, Tom did pour forth the whole story. As Harry listened a broad grin of contentment appeared on his face, for one of Hazelton's lovable weaknesses was his desire to see other people get ahead.
Just as Tom finished, a figure darkened the doorway.
“I'm ready to go, sir,” announced Tim Griggs.
“Go where?” inquired Harry.
“I've fired Griggs,” observed Tom Reade.
“What! After all that he did for you the other night?” demanded Hazelton, aghast. “After the man saved your—”
“Oh, I'm quite satisfied to be fired, Mr. Hazelton,” Tim Griggs broke in. “In fact, I'm very grateful to Mr. Reade. He has certainly given me a big boost forward in the world.”
“What are you going to do now, Griggs?” Harry asked.
“You'd better address him as 'Mr. Griggs,' Harry,” Tom hinted. “He is a foreman now, at six dollars a day, and entitled to his Mister.”
“Foreman?” Harry repeated, while Gregg's grin broadened.
“Yes,” Tom continued. “Mr. Griggs is to be foreman on the new job that I've just been telling you about in town. After this, if Mr. Griggs is careful to behave himself, he's likely always to be a foreman on some job or other for the A., G. & N. M.”
Harry sprang forward, seizing the hand of Tim Griggs and shaking it with enthusiasm.
“Bully old Griggs! Lucky old Griggs!” Hazelton bubbled forth. “Mr. Griggs, you'll believe from now on what I've always believed—that it's a great piece of luck in itself to be one of Tom Reade's friends.”
“It surely has been great luck for me, sir,” Griggs answered. “The best part of all,” he added, with a husky note in his voice, “is what it means to that little girl of mine. When I get into town to-night I in going to sit down and write that little daughter a long letter all about the grand news. She'll be proud of her dad's good luck! She's only eight years old, but she's a great little reader, and she writes me letters longer than my own.”
“If you'll wait a minute, Mr. Griggs,” proposed Tom, “we'll be able to give you a ride into town. The general manager gave me authority to rent and use an automobile after this. It's out there waiting now.”
The new foreman gratefully accepted the invitation. Within five minutes the chauffeur had stopped the car in Paloma and Tim Griggs got out to go to his new boarding place in the town.
“God bless you, Mr. Reade!” he said huskily, holding out his band. “You've done a lot for me—and my little girl!”
“No more than you've done for me,” smiled Tom. “Anyway, you haven't received more than you deserve, and you never will in this little old world of ours.”
“I don't know about that,” replied the new foreman, a sudden flush rising to his weather-beaten face. “It all seems too good to be true.”
“You'll find it to be true enough when you draw your next pay, Griggs,” laughed Tom. “Then you'll realize that you aren't dreaming. In the meantime your dinner is getting cold at your boarding place. Don't let your new job spoil your appetite.”
When Tom and Harry rode into town at noon the following day they beheld a scene of great activity at the site of the destroyed Cactus House. All the blackened debris had been carted away during the morning by a large force of men. Now, derricks lay in place, to be erected in the afternoon. A steam shovel had been all but installed and a large stationary engine rested on nearly completed foundations.
George Ashby, proprietor of the Mansion House, who had dared, during the last two days, to show himself a little more openly on the streets of Paloma, halted just as Tom and Harry stepped out of the automobile to look over the scene of Foreman Griggs's morning labors.
“Looks as if the Cactus House might be rebuilt,” remarked Ashby, burning with curiosity.
“No,” said Tom briefly.
“Carter is going to change the name?” inquired Ashby.
“No. Carter doesn't own this land any more.”
“He doesn't own the land?” Ashby asked. “What's going to be put up here, then? A business block?”
For a moment Ashby thrilled with joy. Of late the Cactus House had seriously cut in on the profits of the Mansion House. Ashby had, in fact, been running behind. Now, if the Mansion House were to be henceforth the only hotel in town, Ashby saw a chance to prosper on a more than comfortable scale.
“Ashby,” Tom went on, rather frigidly, “I won't waste many words, for I'm afraid I don't like you well enough to talk very much to you. The A., G. & N. M. has bought this land from Mr. Carter. The railroad is going to erect here one of the finest hotels in this part of Arizona. It will have every modern convenience, and will make your hotel look like a mill boarding house by contrast. When the new hotel is completed it will be leased to Mr. Carter. With his insurance money, and the price of the land in bank, Carter will have capital for embarking in the hotel business on a scale that will make this end of Arizona sit up and do some hard looking.”
As he listened Proprietor Ashby's jaw dropped. His color came and went. He swallowed hard, while his hands worked convulsively. With the fine new hotel that was coming to Paloma the owner of the Mansion House saw himself driven hopelessly into the background. “Reade, this new hotel game is some of your doings,” growled the hotel man.
“I'm proud to say that it is partly my doing,” Tom admitted, with a smile. “Harry, let's go along to the restaurant. I'm hungry.”
As the two young engineers stepped into the car and were driven away, Ashby dug his fingernails into the palms of his hands.
“So I'm to be beaten out of the hotel game here, am I!” the hotel man asked himself, gritting his teeth. “I'm to be driven out by Reade, the fellow whom I once kicked out of my hotel! Oh—well, all right!”
“Pass the signal!” directed Tom.
A railroad man with a flag made several swift moves. Down the track an engineman, in his cab, answered with a short blast of, the whistle. Then he threw over the lever, and a train of ten flat cars started along in the engine's wake.
It was the first test—the “small test,” Tom called it—of the track that now extended across the surface of the Man-killer.
On each flat car were piled ten tons of steel rails, to be used further along in the construction work. With engine, cars and all, the load amounted to one hundred and fifty tons, the pressure of which would be exerted over a comparatively short strip of the new track that now glistened over the Man-killer.
Mounted on his pony, Harry Hazelton had galloped a considerable distance down the track. Now, halted, he had turned his pony's head about, watching eagerly the on-coming train.
For two weeks the laborers had been working on the roadbed now running over the Man-killer. Ties had been laid and rails fastened down. Apparently the Man-killer had done its worst and had been balked, a seemingly secure roadbed now resting on the once treacherous quicksand.
Construction trains, short and lightly laden, had been moving out over the newly filled in soil for many days, but the train now starting at the edge of the terrible Man-killer was heavier than any equipment that had before been run over the ground.
The president of the A., G. & N. M. R. R. was there, flanked by half a dozen of the leading directors of the road. There were other officials there, including General Manager Ellsworth.
“I see Hazelton out yonder,” murmured the president of the road. “But where's that young man Reade, now at the moment when the success of his work is being tested?”
“Goodness knows,” rejoined Mr. Ellsworth. “As likely as not he's back in the office, taking a nap after having given the engineman his signal.”
“Asleep!” repeated the president. “Can he be so indolent or so indifferent as that?”
“You may always depend upon Tom Reade to do something that wouldn't be expected of him,” laughed Mr. Ellsworth. “It isn't that he slights big duties, or even pretends to do. If he has vanished, and has gone to sleep, then it is because he feels so sure of his work that he takes no further interest in the test that is being made.”
“But if an accident should happen?” asked the president of the A. G. & N. M. R. R.
“Then I can promise you that you'd see Reade, on his pony, shooting ahead as fast as he could go to the scene of the trouble.”
These more important railroad officials had come out to camp in automobiles. Now they followed on foot as the train rolled on to the land reclaimed from the Man-killer.
Superintendent Hawkins and his foremen also went along on foot to observe whether the track sank ever so little at any point.
It was none of Harry Hazelton's particular business to watch whether the tracks sank slightly. That duty could be better performed by the foremen who had had charge of the track laying. Yet Hazelton, as he watched, found himself growing impatient.
“Here!” Harry called to a near-by laborer. “Take my horse, please.”
In another instant the young assistant engineer was on foot, following the slowly moving train as it rolled along over the ground where, months before, not even a man could have strolled with safety.
“Do you see any sagging of the track, Mr. Rivers?” Harry called.
“No, sir. Not as much as a sixteenth of an inch at any point,” responded the foreman. “The job has been a big success.”
“We can tell that better after the track has held loads of from five to eight hundred tons,” Harry rejoined. “I believe, however, that we have the tricks of the savage old Man-killer nailed.”
Exultation throbbed in Harry's heart. Outwardly, he did not trust himself to reveal his great delight. He still followed, watching anxiously, until the train had passed safely over the Man-killer.
Then a great cheer went up from more than a thousand throats, for many people had come out from Paloma to watch the test.
The train had gone a quarter of a mile past the western edge of the huge and once treacherous quicksand. Now the engine was on a temporary turn-table, waiting to be turned and switched back to bring the train back over the Man-killer at a swift gait.
“Where's Mr. Reade?” called the president of the road, gazing backward. “Someone go for him. I wish him to be here to see the test made with the train under fast speed.”
“I'll get Reade, sir,” answered Harry, motioning to have his pony brought to him.
Hazelton vanished in a cloud of desert dust.
When he next appeared there was another pony, and Reade astride it.
“You sent for me, sir,” said Tom, riding close to the president, then dismounting.
“Yes,” Mr. Reade. “I believed that you should be here to see the test train return.”
“Very good, sir,” was Tom's quiet reply. He signaled for a workman to come and take charge of his pony.
In a few minutes the short but heavy train started, gaining headway rapidly. By the time it struck the edge of the possibly conquered quicksand it was moving at the rate of forty miles an hour.
Across the Man-killer the train continued for a mile in the direction of Paloma.
“Now, let us all inspect the track,” suggested the president of the railroad company. “Call up the autos.”
“Will you let me make a suggestion, sir!” queried Tom.
“Go ahead, Mr. Reade.”
“Then, sir, let Mr. Hazelton and myself ride out along the track first, that we may see if the whole course is safe.”
“That heavy train just went over at fast speed and nothing disastrous happened,” protested the president.
“Probably the entire course is still safe, sir?” Tom assented. “Yet, on the other hand, it is possible that the fast moving train may have started the quicksand at some point. The next object that passes over, even if no heavier than an automobile, may meet with disaster. Mr. Hazelton and I can soon satisfy ourselves as to whether the roadbed has sagged at any point along the way. We shall ride nothing heavier than mustangs.”
“There is something in what you say, Mr. Reade. Go ahead. We will wait until we have your report.”
Tom and Harry accordingly mounted, riding off at a trot. Yet at some sections of the line they rode so slowly, studying the ground attentively, that it was fully half an hour before they had crossed the further edge of the Man-killer.
“The engineers are signaling us, Mr. President,” reported General Manager Ellsworth. “They are motioning us to go forward.”
Accordingly the party of railway officials entered their automobiles and started slowly off over the Man-killer.
“Ride back and meet them, Harry,” Tom suggested. “Show them that one point that we noticed.”
Hazelton accordingly dug his heels into the flank of his pony, starting off at a gallop.
Two or three minutes passed. Then Mr. Ellsworth leaped from his seat in the foremost automobile, standing erect in the car and pointing excitedly.
“Look there!” he shouted lustily. “What's happening?”
Away off, at the further side of the Man-killer, a horseman had suddenly ridden into sight from behind a sand pile. His swiftly moving pony had gotten within three hundred yards of the chief engineer before Tom looked up to behold the newcomer.
From where the railroad officials watched they could hear nothing, though they saw a succession of indistinct spittings from something in the right hand of the horseman.
“It's a revolver the fellow's shooting at Mr. Reade!” gasped Superintendent Hawkins, leaping into the car beside the general manager. “Turn your speed on, man—make a lightning lash across the Man-killer!”
Away shot the automobile, not wholly to the liking of two eastern men who sat in the directors' car.
Tom Reade had realized his danger. Having nothing with which to fight, Reade had sprung his horse eastward and was racing for life.
The unknown had emptied his weapon, but that did not deter him, for, continuing his wild pursuit, the stranger could be seen to draw another automatic revolver.
The bullets striking all about Tom's pony ploughed up the sand.
Within a minute the men in the speeding automobile were close enough to hear the sputtering crackle of the pistol shots.
“There goes Hazelton right into the face of death!” gasped Mr. Ellsworth, who remained in a standing position. “Foolish of the boy, but magnificent!”
Harry had turned some time before, but now those in the automobile saw that Hazelton was riding squarely to Tom's side, despite the constant fusillade of bullets.
Both pistols were now emptied, but the pursuer, letting his reins fall on the neck of his madly galloping pony, was inserting fresh cartridges in the magazine chambers of his pistols.
At a considerable distance behind the automobile came another rescue party. This was made up of about two score of Arizona horsemen. Many of these men were armed. At the saddle bows of some of the hung raw-hide lariats that the owners unwound as they sped forward.
Tom Reade, with the pursuer slowly, but steadily gaining upon him, had discovered the identity of the man who seemed bent on his destruction.
As Hazelton drew nearer Tom waved his left hand frantically at his chum.
“Turn about, Harry! Ride back like the wind!” shouted Tom. “It's Ashby, and he's shooting to kill. About face—you young idiot!”
Harry took no notice of the warning, reining in only slightly, then wheeling and riding in a line with Reade, though about forty feet to one side of him.
Ashby, a wild light in his eyes, heavily armed, and riding madly, kept up a continuous fire in his effort to destroy the young chief engineer.
Honk! Honk! honk! came the warning from the automobile horn. The car dashed at full speed toward the vengeful rider, as though about to run him down.
George Ashby, however, was not easily intimidated. One swift glance had assured him that the automobile bore no armed men. He therefore merely swung his horse out of the path of the on-coming car and continued to aim at Reade, though he now took more time between shots. On Hazelton he did not waste a shot.
Helplessly and vainly the automobile whizzed by pursuer and pursued.
“Ashby, stop this madness!” cried Mr. Ellsworth hoarsely.
The pursuing rider never faltered. Now the party of Arizona horsemen were riding nearer. Two or three of the leaders drew revolvers, opening fire on the mad hotel man, though the range was as yet too great for effective work.
In another thirty seconds George Ashby would doubtless have dropped to the dust of the dessert, riddled with lead. Suddenly, however, he gave his horse's head a sharp turn to the right. In an instant he was riding back, shooting no more, and Tom Reade had passed safely out of range.
With wild whoops the Paloma horsemen dashed on. Their mounts were not spent as was that of the hotel man.
“Don't shoot the fellow, if you can help it!” Tom Reade had called, as the horsemen swept by him. “Rope Ashby if you can.”
Suddenly the hotel man's mount was seen to stagger slightly. It was sufficient to pitch Ashby, who was not on his guard.
With wilder whoops the Arizona men spurred their ponies on. There was a whirring of lariats and no less than three nooses had fallen over the hotel man's head.
There came a brief interval in which the men, swooping down on the captive, concealed him from the view of others.
Out of this crush soon came order. Then it was seen that Ashby had been roped securely and was being led back to the railroad camp.
“We've got the scoundrel, with four ropes hitched to him,” called one of the captors.
“One rope will be enough as soon as we can find a tree.”
The party was riding into the railroad camp now, and a dense crowd pressed forward to see the face of the keeper of the Mansion House.
Ashby was chuckling gleefully. If any fear of the consequences of his lawless behavior oppressed him, he was far from betraying the fact.
“Be gentle with him, friends,” Tom urged, riding forward.
“Yes; we ought to be gentle with every rattlesnake,” came an answer from the crowd.
Ashby laughed harshly.
“You can't hurt me, neighbors,” declared the hotel man. “I'm bullet proof. Any man who fires at me will find that the bullet will rebound and bit him. Tie me up to a tree, if you like. You'll find that I won't choke. I'll just slide back to earth as often as you tie me up.”
“Just what I thought,” murmured Tom.
“What do you think?” demanded Mr. Ellsworth from the car.
“The man's as mad as a March hare,” replied Reade.
“Humph! He's merely shamming,” retorted the general manager.
“Stow the funny business, Ashby!” came the advice from the crowd. “You can't fool us into believing that you're crazy.”
“Crazy?” repeated the hotel man, a look of amazement creeping into his face. “Of course I'm not crazy. I'm the only sane man in this crowd.”
Men began to look wonderingly at the hotel man, though many still believed that Ashby was cleverly shamming insanity in order to save his neck from being stretched.
“Doe Furniss! Come over here!” called Reade. “Gentlemen, this is a question for Doe Furniss. Don't think of doing anything to the fellow until you've heard from Doc. Make way for the doctor, gentlemen.”
At a sign from Dr. Furniss the captors led Ashby's horse onward until the office shack was reached. Here two men freed the captive from his horse and led him inside. Dr. Furniss followed them and the door was closed.
“Let's get away from here,” urged Tom Reade. “A big crowd hanging about is sure to excite the poor fellow.”
“Reade, you're too soft and easy,” grunted a Paloma man in the crowd. “The only thing that makes Ashby crazy is that he didn't get you.”
“He did 'get' me, however,” laughed Tom, displaying four bullet holes through his shirtsleeves, and two more that pierced his hat. “Ashby got as much of me as I'd want any marksman to get.”
Having withdrawn to a distance, the crowd waited.
It was nearly half an hour before Dr. Furniss stepped outside. Now he walked swiftly over to the edge of the crowd.
“Gentlemen,” remarked the physician, “you are justified in feeling very well pleased that you didn't lynch Ashby. The poor fellow is as insane as a man could well be. He imagines Mr. Reade has hurt his business and is determined to kill him. I'll send for a straightjacket and then we'll hustle him away to the asylum.”
At this moment a wild yell sounded from the shack, to be echoed from the crowd. George Ashby, seemingly possessed of the strength of half a dozen men, had wrenched himself free of his captors, felling both like a flash. Then the hotel man leaped to his horse, freeing it and starting off at a mad gallop.
Instantly a score of men set off after the fugitive, swinging their lariats as they rode.
Crack! Crack! Bang!
Snatching still another automatic revolver from one of his saddle bags, Ashby was now firing at those riding behind him.
The line of horsemen wavered somewhat. They might have fired in return, and have brought down their quarry, but no brave man likes to think of shooting a lunatic.
So, still firing as he went, Ashby once more reached the edge of the quicksand.
Now, riding as fast as he could urge his pony, the hotel man dashed out on the Man-killer.
Nor was he riding over the part that had been rendered safe by the young engineers.
Instead, he was riding to the southward of the railroad property—straight out where he was likely to find a speedy death in the engulfing sands.
“Stop, Ashby! Come back!” shouted a dozen voices. “You'll be swallowed up in the quick-sands.”
Brave as they were, the pursuers now rein up sharply. It seemed to them sheer madness to ride out thus to their certain deaths.
“Ashby is crazy, all right,” remarked bronzed man. “None but an insane man would ride out there.”
Somewhat tardily automobile parties started in pursuit. These vehicles were halted at the edge of the quicksand. Tom and Harry had also come this far.
In the background the halted crowd watched in suspense as George Ashby galloped over the treacherous sand.
Several times the pony's hoofs were seen to sink, yet each time the animal seemed able to draw his feet out of the sand and go on again.
“It's a crazy man's luck,” cried an Arizona man thickly. “Of course, here and there on the Man-killer there are safe, sound spots, and Ashby is having the luck of his life in hitting all the sound spots in getting across. But I wouldn't follow him for a thousand dollars a minute!”
The mad hotel man was soon lost to view on the other side of one of the little hills of sand.
There would have been little sense in trying to follow him or to head him off, even by more roundabout courses. Ashby was now far enough away to elude any pursuit that might start.
“I wonder if Reade has any idea of what he's up against now?” murmured the mayor of Paloma. “That crazy man is loose, and sooner or later he'll be heard from again.”
Altogether the day had been a hugely satisfactory one to the young chief engineer.
The first test had been made, and, all had passed off well, for, in Tom Reade's easy-going, fearless mind the peculiar doings of George Ashby did not figure at all as a part of the day's work.
“Harry, we've every reason to feel proud of ourselves” mused Tom aloud, as he undressed in the shack that night.
“You feel pretty certain that we've conquered the Man-killer, do you?” Hazelton asked, as he laid down the book he had been reading.
Of late, since the burning of the Cactus House, the chums had slept in the shack, though still getting many of their meals in town.
“Oh, of course you know that we haven't won, the whole fight yet,” Reade went on. “We've plenty of work to do here still before we pronounce the job finished. But to-day's shows that our plan for filling in this particular, kind of quicksand was a sound one. You know the president of the road said that words failed to express his complete approbation of our work.”
“We certainly have been remarkably fortunate—so far,” Harry admitted. “Yet I must confess, Tom, that I'm still nervous.”
“Then it must be over Ashby,” Tom laughed.
“Ashby be hanged!” Hazelton retorted. “I haven't given him a thought this evening. No, I'm still nervous about our job here. The first test was all right—that is, it was all right to-day. But these quicksands are treacherous. Our roadbed may be all right for a fortnight, and may seem as safe as we could wish it to be. Then, all of a sudden, within sixty seconds, it may sink before our very eyes. Suppose it were to sink while a trainload of human beings was passing over it!”
“You might as well dismiss all such thoughts,” Reade counseled. “I tell you, Harry, we've proved that our principle is sound. Now, we will go ahead and finish the job. When we go away from here I, for one, shall feel certain that the Man-killer must behave for all time to come. Harry, there's a limit to the shifting tendency of a quicksand, and to-day's test proves to me that we've found it. We've won. I wish I were as sure of a dozen other things as I am that we've won out here to-day.”
“All right, then,” smiled Hazelton. “You're a smarter engineer than I am, Tom, old fellow. If you're satisfied, then I'm bound to be, for I'll back your judgment in engineering against my own.”
“That's rather more praise, Harry, than I expect or wish,” Reade rejoined soberly. “But I don't see how the Man-killer can ever again assert himself against the A. G. & N. M.'s roadbed.”
“Oh, I'm only an old croaker, I know,” Harry confessed. “I've got a blue streak on to-night. Or else it's a fit of apprehension about something or other. I feel as if—”
Crack! crack!
Outside two shots rang suddenly out, to be followed by a dozen swift, scattering reports.
“Mr. Reade! They—” began a voice outside, then stopped abruptly.
Tom hustled on his clothing again with a speed that seemed to partake of magic. Then, with Harry close upon his heels, he rushed to the door, jerking it open.
“Just the pair we want!” snarled a voice that proceeded from behind a mask.
A dozen masked men pressed into the room. Tom and Harry put their fists into instant action, but it availed them nothing.
In a twinkling they were borne to the floor. At lightning speed both were rolled over and bound.
From the tents of the laborers, beyond hoarse voices sounded as the men were awakened by the shots.
“Get back there, you idiots!” commanded a voice outside. “If you don't, you'll think that a Gatling gun factory has blown up about your ears.”
Reports rang out sharply as a dozen revolver shots were fired into the air.
Now, dazed with the suddenness of the attack, Reade and Hazelton were dragged into the open.
Their two night watchmen, who had gone down bravely, now lay wounded on the ground, their weapons snatched from them.
“Hoist 'em along, boys,” ordered a gruff voice.
Tom and Harry were carried on the shoulders of men, and moved along at a swift pace. Only half a dozen of the raiders needed to remain somewhat in the rear, firing an occasional shot to prevent the unarmed laborers from swarming to the attack.
“Hoist 'em up! Tie 'em on! Get under way quick! There'll be a big noise raised after us soon,” declared the same directing voice.
Tom and Harry were fairly thrown upon the backs of horses, and there lashed fast.
“Mount and get away,” ordered the commander of this strangest of night raids.
Two men, each leading a pony to which a captive was lashed, rode off in one direction. Groups of two or three rode away in other directions, the blackness of the night swallowing them up.
It was going to be a difficult task for pursuers to know which direction to take in order to come up with Reade and Hazelton in time to save them from the fate that lay just ahead of them!
For audacity and dash the raid could not have been better planned.
From camp not a shot was fired, for the watchmen had had the only weapons and these had been seized by the invaders.
“Our foremen might telegraph to camp,” thought Tom swiftly, as he felt himself being carried away. “But I'll wager that these smart scoundrels didn't forget to cut the wire before springing the raid.”
For the first two or three minutes Harry's, slower moving mind hardly grasped more than the fact that their enemies appeared to have won a complete triumph.
“There isn't much doubt as to what they'll do with us,” thought Hazelton, with a slight shudder. “These rascals will move too fast for pursuit to overtake them early. What they in intend to do with us can be done in a very few minutes.”
Neither young engineer really expected to live to see daylight. From the first, after having incurred the anger of a certain lawless element in Paloma, the young engineers had understood fully that threats of lynching them had not been idly made.
“There'll be a stir, though,” Tom Reade muttered to himself. “The A. G. & N. M. officials won't let this crime go by without a determined effort to bring the offenders to justice. Detectives will search this community in squads, and everyone of these masked gentlemen is likely to get his deserts.”
Within the next half hour the galloping horses had covered fully five miles. Now the leader of the crowd led the way down into a deep gully in the sand.
“Hold up, men,” ordered the leader, and the cavalcade came to a stop, horses panting.
“Tumble the cattle off into the dirt,” was the next order, and it was obeyed, Tom and Harry rolling in the bitter alkali dust.
“Now, gentlemen, I believe I will take command,” spoke one of the party of horsemen, in his most suave voice, as he removed his mask. The speaker, as Reade knew at once, was Jim Duff, the gambler.
“That's all right, Jim,” nodded the former leader.
“Jake, ride back a few hundred yards and keep a sharp lookout,” suggested Duff blandly. “The pursuers may come in automobiles. We'll cut the ceremonies here short and leave nothing but lifeless bodies for the rescue parties to find.”
Stakes were driven and the horses picketed.
“Bring along our guests,” suggested Jim Duff, with a touch of humor that the occasion rendered grisly.
Thereupon Tom and Harry were once more jerked to their feet.
“Ye can walk, I reckon, and don't have be toted,” observed one of the scoundrels.
“We're wholly at your service, sir,” rejoined Tom mockingly.
“And equally at your pleasure,” Harry suggested dryly.
Two hundred yards further on the halted close to a pair of stunted trees of about the same size.
“Gentlemen, you may as well remove your masks on this hot evening,” suggested Jim Duff. The face coverings came off. Reade and Hazelton surveyed their captors as the chance offered, being careful not to betray too great curiosity.
“I see one gentleman here whom I had expected to find,” remarked Tom quietly.
“Me?” hinted Duff.
“Well, yes; you, for one, but I refer to that excellent host, Mr. Ashby, of the Mansion House.”
With a start George Ashby turned on Reade, coming closer and grinning ferociously into the face of the young chief engineer. Tom, however, managed to muster a smile as he went on:
“How do you do, Mr. Ashby? Your performance of this afternoon mystified me a good deal. I had never expected to find myself on a shooting acquaintance with you.”
Three or four of the rascals chuckled at this way of putting it, but Proprietor Ashby snarled like a wild animal.
“As for you, Mr. Duff,” Reade resumed, “I confess that I have never been able to understand you.”
“You will to-night,” smiled Duff, with bland ferocity. “I can promise you, as a gambler, that I am going to give you a square deal.”
“Fine!” glowed Tom. “I am delighted to hear that you have reformed, then.”
This' time there was a general laugh. Jim Duff flushed angrily.
“Reade, what you never understood about me is that I belong to the ranks of the square gamblers.”
“I didn't believe there were any such gamblers,” Tom replied in a voice of surprise. “It is still hard for me to believe. How can any man be square and honorable when he won't work, but fattens on the earnings of others? Has that idea any connection with honor?”
“Stop that line of talk, you young hound!” ordered Duff, striding up to this bold young enemy. All the slight veneer of polish that Duff usually affected had vanished now. His eyes blazed with rage as he doubled his fist and struck Reade full in the face, knocking him down. One of the bystanders jerked Tom to his feet.
“Speaking of the square deal,” Tom observed, “I now insist upon it. Duff, you knocked me down when my hands were tied. If you're not a coward I request that you order my hands freed—and then repeat your blow if you dare.”
“You'll stay tied,” retorted Duff grimly.
“I knew it,” sighed Reade. “What's the use of talking about honor and square dealing where a gambler is concerned? Loaded dice, marked cards or tying a man before you dare to hit him—it's all the same to your kind.”
“Shut up that talk, you hound, or I'll pound you stiff before we go on with what's been arranged for you!” raged the gambler, shaking his clenched fist in the face of the young engineer.
“Go slowly, Jim,” advised one of the men present. “Of course we know what we're to do to this young pup, and we all know what he thinks of you. But some of the rest of us have different ideas as to how a helpless enemy ought to be treated.”
“You, Rafe Bodson!” snarled Duff, turning on the last speaker. “Are you one of us? Do you belong to our side, or are you a spy for the other crowd?”
“Got your gun with you, Duff?” inquired Bodson calmly.
“Yes,” snapped the gambler.
“Get it out in your hand, then, before, you talk to me any more in that fashion.”
“He won't,” mocked Tom. “He doesn't dare, Bodson. Your hands are not tied.”
“Cut it out, Rafe! Quit it!” ordered one of the other men in the crowd. “We won't let this tenderfoot split our ranks. You're one of us, and you'll stand by us.”
“Not if there's going to be any more hitting of tied men,” retorted Bodson sulkily. “There's a limit to what a man can stand.”
“Thank you, my friend,” broke in Tom Reade mildly. “But don't go to any trouble on our account. There are few if any others in this crowd who can understand the meaning of fair play—the gambler least of all.”
“I'll take that out of you, Reade!” blazed Jim Duff. “I'll—”
“You'll do nothing while the kid's hands are tied,” objected Bodson, stepping between the pair. “Act fair and square, Jim, as a man should act.”
“That's the argument, Rafe,” remarked another man, also stepping forward.
“Bully for you, Jeff Moore,” replied Rafe. “Now, remember, friends, we're not calling for anything except that Jim Duff live up to the program he just published for himself—the square deal.”
Several murmurs of protest came from the other raiders.
“I reckon, Rafe, you and Jeff had better step back and let the rest of us handle this thing,” advised one of the party. “The pair of you are too chicken-livered for us.”
“It's a lie, as anyone in Paloma knows,” Rafe retorted coolly. “No—put up your shooters,” as the hands of five or six men slid to their belts. “There's no need of bad blood between us. All I ask is for Jim Duff to step back out of this.”
“Am I the leader here or am I not?” demanded Duff boldly. “Wasn't it my interests that were first assailed by these fresh tenderfeet! Didn't you gentlemen come out to-night, to help me attend to my affair? Didn't you turn also to avenge the blow that has been dealt these cubs to poor George Ashby's prosperity?”
At hearing himself so sympathetically referred to, Ashby threw himself forward, a short, double-barreled shotgun in his hands.
“Yes, you, get back, you white-livered cowards!” commanded Ashby hoarsely. “You let Duff and myself and the rest of us here handle these young hounds as they deserve to be treated. You, Rafe and Jeff, get out of this. You've no business here. You belong to the enemies of business interests in Paloma. The rest of us will settle with these business destroyers.”
Ashby's eyes glowed with the unbridled fury of the lunatic. Yet Rafe Bodson did not waver.
“Gentlemen,” he demanded coldly, “for what purpose did you bring these young fellows out here?”
“To lynch 'em!” came the hoarse murmur.
“Then go ahead and do it, like men,” ordered Bodson. “There are the trees. You have your ropes, and your men are ready. Remember, no cowardly treatment of young fellows whose hands are tied. Go on with the lynching and get it over with!”