“Sir! Stop it, I tell you,” quivered Duff, again stepping to the front. “These young hounds shan't die until I've made them apologize for every insulting word they've said to me.”
“Fine!” glowed Tom with enthusiasm.
“Great!”
“What ails you now, Reade?” demanded Duff, his face again darkening.
“You've just promised us that we shall live forever,” returned Tom dryly.
Then he added, with a sigh:
“But I suppose that's only another lie—another specimen of a gambler's honor.”
“Stand aside, Bodson! Moore, you get out of the way!” snarled the gambler, his anger again depriving him of all reason. “I'll have my way with these young hounds before we string 'em up.”
“Let me at 'em!” implored Ashby, fingering his shotgun nervously. “Get out of my way. I don't want to pepper anyone else.”
But Bodson and Moore, bad as they were some respects, stood their ground.
“Are you going to let us at them?” insisted Duff, his voice now broken and harsh from anger.
“Not for the purpose of bullying them!” insisted Rafe, without moving. “Jeff, you're with me, aren't you?”
“Right by your side, pardner.”
“Come on, then, boys!” called Duff, the note of rally in his tone. “Help me to drive this pair of traitors out of your company.”
Like a flash Bodson's revolver was in his band. The muzzle covered the gambler.
“Jim Duff, down on your knees before I blow your bead off!”
The gambler started back, his face paling.
In the same instant Jeff Moore had also drawn his revolver, and held it ready for the first hostile sign from anyone in the group.
“What's the matter with you, Rafe?” demanded the gambler, in a half-coaxing tone.
“Nothing,” Bodson assured him calmly, “except that I'm going to blow your head off if you aren't down on your knees before I've counted three! One—two—th—”
Duff dropped to his knees, holding his hands high in air.
“Now apologize for calling us traitors,” admonished Rafe. “Do it handsomely, too, while you're about it.”
“Rafe,” protested Jim Duff, “you, know that I said what I did only because I was angry. I know you're a gentleman, and you know that I know it. If I've hurt your feelings, I'm sorry, a thousand times over.”
“Jim, you're a good deal of a sneak, aren't you?” inquired Rafe, in a voice that sounded pleasant enough, but which carried a warning in its tone.
“Yes,” Duff admitted. “I guess I'm a good deal of a sneak.”
“Get up on your feet, then. We understand one another,” said Bodson. “Go ahead, if you want to, and carry out your plans for a merry evening. But don't make the mistake of calling ugly names again, and don't forget all you've said about the square deal. Hang these tenderfeet, if that's what you want to do, but don't hit men without first giving them a chance to hit back.”
Duff, shaking partly from fear, though more from a sense of his humiliation, rose to his feet. For a moment he stood choking down his varied emotions. Then, with an attempt at his old-time, suave banter, he inquired:
“Are you young gentlemen ready for the collar and neck-tie party that we've planned to give you?”
“As ready as you are,” observed Tom dryly.
“And you?” asked Duff, turning to Hazelton. “Are you ready?”
“I'm not particular about feeling a lariat around my neck,” Harry answered, “but I'll follow my friend Reade anywhere—even where you propose to send us.”
“Ay, but that's courage of the kind you don't expect to find in a blamed tenderfoot!” remarked Jeff Moore, resting a hand first on Tom's shoulder and then on Harry's.
“Why?” asked Tom. “Does it surprise you?”
“It shore does,” replied Jeff.
“Is courage a matter of geography, then?” Tom inquired.
“I—I—pardner, you've got me there,” Jeff admitted, looking puzzled. “Yet, somehow, I never looked for much courage in a fellow who hailed from east of the Mississippi.”
George Ashby had been looking on during the last few moments, his eyes glittering strangely. Yet, as he said nothing, the attention of the others had turned from him.
Jeff Moore happened to turn just in time to see the muzzle of the shotgun turned fully on Tom Reade's waist line, and Ashby's forefinger resting on one of the triggers.
Bang! spoke the gun, a sheet of flame leaped forth.
Tom Reade did not even start. All his nerve had come to the surface in that instant. He was unharmed, for Jeff's sweeping arm had knocked aside the muzzle of the gun and the shot had entered the leg of one of the raiders.
“What'd you do that for, Jeff?” groaned the injured man, sinking to the alkali dust.
But Moore was busy with the mad hotel keeper, having clinched with him, and now being engaged in taking away the shotgun, one barrel of which was still loaded.
“Stand back there, friends,” warned Rafe Bodson, who still held his revolver in his right hand. “We don't want to see any more of the party hurt.”
Jeff had the gun in a moment, despite the insane fury with which Ashby fought.
“Take care of this, Rafe,” requested Jeff, turning over the gun, which Bodson received with his left hand.
Ashby, momentarily free, sprang at the new bolder of the weapon, but Moore tripped him and fell upon him.
The other men stood by as though fascinated, not interfering. Perhaps they felt that their safety depended upon Ashby's being disarmed.
There was a short, sharp scuffle on the ground after which Moore rose, leaving the hotel man with his hands tied behind his back.
“And I request,” remarked Moore, “that no gentleman present cut the knots that I have tied. It'll be a favor to me to have Ashby left alone for the present.”
“Now, then, Rafe or Jeff,” spoke the gambler, mustering up what remained of his courage, “since you two have taken charge of affairs, won't you be good enough to inform us what your pleasure is?”
“We're not in charge,” retorted Bodson sullenly. “All we've undertaken to do is to look out for the square deal that you promised, Duff, and which you didn't exhibit in a way that we liked. As for the rest, go ahead when you like—but don't do any more hitting with your fists.”
“We'll go ahead with the lariat, then?” hinted Duff eagerly.
“If that's the pleasure of the gentlemen,” Bodson agreed, bowing slightly.
To the gambler it seemed the opportune moment to rush matters.
“Bring up lariats, two of you,” Duff ordered, turning around to the others. “And don't waste time over it.”
The rawhide ropes were brought. The gambler himself tied the nooses, testing them to see that they ran freely.
“Bring Reade and Hazelton under the trees,” was Duff's next order, which was obeyed. Bodson and Moore, their weapons still in their hands, followed, keeping keen watch over the way the affair was conducted.
“Any choice of trees Reade?” inquired Jin Duff.
“None,” answered Tom shortly. His face was pallid and set, though he did not show any other sign of fear.
“Hazelton?”
“One tree is as good as another,” Harry answered in a strangely quiet voice.
In the midst of an impressive silence, and with motions that seemed oddly unreal to the tended victims, Duff placed the two young engineers. A lariat was thrown over a low limb of each of the trees. Then, with slightly trembling hands the gambler adjusted a over the neck of each bound boy.
“How d'ye like that, Rafe?” queried Jeff Moore, as Jim Duff stepped back and viewed the young engineers with a diabolical smile before giving the fatal signal.
“I don't like it,” muttered Bodson.
“No more do I.”
“Shall we stop it?”
“Yes. I'm sick of Jim Duff. This night has turned me against the smooth-tongued coward.”
“Get busy, then, Rafe!”
“Shall we stand the crowd off and set the boys free?”
“Pump both of your shooting-irons loose into the air—I'll do the rest,” replied Moore.
Cr-r-r-rack! Pointing his weapons skyward, Bodson had quickly obeyed Moore's command.
“Now, what—” began one of the raiders, wheeling instantly.
“Rafe's going to give 'em a proper send off,” grinned one of Duff's men.
“No!” shouted the other. “That's a bluff. He and Jeff are trying to queer the whole game.”
With cries of anger, several of the men sprang toward Jeff, who had bared his sheath knife and was about to free Tom and Harry.
“Here—stop that, you traitors!” roared Duff, leaping forward.
“I've four shots left, Jim,” remarked Rafe Bodson calmly, as he ceased firing. “Call me names, if you think it wise.”
Like a flash Duff drew one of his own revolvers. Before he had time to fire, however, three men threw themselves between Bodson and the gambler.
“Stop talking gun play, Rafe,” warned one of the three. “Act like a gentleman.”
“I've forgotten how to do that,” Rafe remarked. “I've traveled with this outfit too long.”
“Put up your guns. Then we'll attend to this pair of youngsters.”
“My guns remain in my hands,” Bodson declared coolly. “I expect to die with my boots on to-night. I reckon Jeff has figured it out the same way.”
“I have,” Moore answered coolly, as he stepped over beside Bodson. Then deliberately, yet with an indescribably swift motion, he drew two revolvers.
“Stand out, Jim Duff! Be a man, for once in your miserable career,” ordered Rafe Bodson. “Don't try to protect yourself by hiding behind the bodies of men who don't know any better than to follow your lead.”
Jim Duff didn't accept the challenge. Instead, he crouched behind two of his followers, taking deliberate aim with his revolver at Bodson.
But he never fired that cowardly shot. Like a flash from the sky came an interruption that created panic among the assembled scoundrels.
“Here we have 'em, gentlemen,” announced the steady voice of Superintendent Hawkins from the western end of the gully. “Get 'em all rounded up. If they've done Mr. Reade and Mr. Hazelton any injury then don't let one of them get away alive.”
The low sand piles near by seemed swarming with men. The steel barrels of firearms glistened even in the darkness.
The scout had been sent out to the eastward. None had thought of watching the western approach to the gully.
“Shoot, boys!” screamed Jim Duff, wheeling in a sudden frenzy of desperation. He fired straight in the direction of Hawkins's voice.
In another instant the air was rent with the sound of shots. Flashes from many revolvers lit up the darkness almost as well as torches could have done.
Jim Duff, having started his followers to firing, stole off in the darkness, leaving them to bear the brunt of the return fire of Hawkins and his men.
George Ashby lay on the ground bound as he had been left, his sawed-off shotgun not far away and his belt full of shells.
“Rouse yourself, Ash!” muttered the gambler, as he slashed the hotel man's bonds with his knife. “Get your gun, but don't use it now. Move quickly, and we'll get away from here and take Reade and Hazelton with us. Put your mind on your work, Ash, and follow my orders. Don't try to think too much for yourself. Here, this way!”
The scene of the fighting had already shifted from the immediate neighborhood of the twin trees. Duff guided his mad companion along in the darkness until they halted close to where the two engineers stood bound, powerless to join in the fray.
“Shall we shoot them here and now?” whispered Ashby, a wild light glittering in his eyes.
“No,” returned Duff. “We'll sneak up behind them, club them with revolvers and carry, them off. Then we can do as we please with them. You quiet Hazelton and I'll attend to Reade.”
The two scoundrels crept up behind their victims.
A moment later Duff quickly cut the lariat about the neck of Tom Reade, who had been rendered unconscious from the terrific blow dealt him by the gambler. Ashby had been equally successful in “quieting” Hazelton.
“Now hustle,” ordered Duff. “You pick up Hazelton. I'll take Reade. Carry 'em over your shoulder—that's the way to do. Now, follow me and don't make a sound. We'll please ourselves this night with what we'll do to the meddling pair!”
With Tom Reade over his shoulder, senseless and inert, Duff started off in the darkness, while the rattle of firearms continued.
George Ashby, muttering to himself, followed with Harry Hazelton.
The gambler staggered slightly under the weight of his human burden. Yet he moved rapidly, a strange eagerness lighting up his eyes.
Jim Duff knew that he would never again dare to enter the town of Paloma, yet the gambler thirsted, before fleeing to new scenes, to be revenged on Tom Reade. With that object in view, Duff was willing to take great risks.
As for Ashby, who, still clutching his shotgun in his left hand, staggered along under the burden of Hazelton's weight, the hotel man was no longer responsible for his actions. Rage and wickedness had made him a maniac, who might be restrained but could not be punished by law.
Within two minutes the firing behind them died out. Soon there were distant sounds of searching. Plainly Hawkins and the other friends of the young engineers were hunting diligently for Tom and Harry.
“Dump your man, Ashby,” commanded Jim Duff, halting at last. “It will be a mistake to go too far. Their friends won't expect to find 'em so close, and they'll soon be searching farther away.”
So Ashby dropped Harry on to the sand beside Tom. Then the wickedest possible gleam came into the hotel man's eyes as he loaded his shotgun.
“We'll fill 'em full of lead right here and now,” whispered the hotel keeper. “Then we'll be sure that they can't get away from us again.”
“Not so fast!” retorted Duff warningly. “We can't shoot now. If we do, there'll be no way to get out of this alive. Look yonder!”
Duff swung his mad friend around, pointing to a gleam of light that shone out over the desert.
“An automobile,” muttered the gambler. “And there's another—and another! There must be six or eight of them out to-night, and all of 'em crammed with fighting men. A shot would bring two or three carloads of ugly fellows down upon us.”
“What are we going to do, then?” demanded the hotel keeper, in a menacing tone.
“Wait awhile,” urged the gambler. “You're seeing what the plan of the enemy is. They're circling about, but they're further out from the gully than we are. The cars will go on cutting larger and larger circle, and all the time getting farther away from us. In half an hour the cars and the men will be so far away that we need give no thought to them. Then we can attend to Reade and Hazelton.”
“What are you going to do with them?” demanded Ashby in a whisper, his cunning eyes lighting with a fire of added eagerness.
“We'll get 'em awake, first of all,” nodded Jim Duff. “Then we'll attend to them.”
“Remember, they ruined my business!” whispered the hotel man.
“Well, didn't they ruin my business, too?” snarled Duff. “Didn't they cant like a pair of hypocrites, and turn hundreds of their workmen against coming in to play in my place? Didn't these young hounds keep me from winning thousands of dollars of railroad money? Ash, I tell you, these young fellows have hit me hard! First, they broke up my games. Next, they talked their men out of going into Paloma and spending money for drink. Why, Ash, next thing you know, they would have brought missionaries to Paloma to convert men and to build churches!”
As Ashby glared at the unconscious boys from under his black brows he looked as though he believed them capable of all the wickedness that Jim Duff's imagination had charged against them.
“I can't wait!” groaned the hotel man. “Just one barrel of shot apiece into each of 'em!”
“No, no, no, Ash! Haven't I always been your good friend?”
“You surely have, Jim Duff,” admitted the mad hotel man. “You're the one man alive to-night that I'd trust.”
“Then trust me a little further,” coaxed the gambler virtuously. “Trust to my brains tonight, George, and you'll feast on revenge!”
“But you keep me waiting so long for it!” complained the lunatic.
“Don't you trust me, George?”
“You know I do, Jim Duff.”
“Then trust me a little longer. Be quiet, and be patient.”
“But—”
“Sh!” warned Duff suddenly, throwing himself flat on the ground. “Down with you, Ash!”
“What is it?” whispered the hotel man in the gambler's ear as he too sank to the ground.
“Sh!” once more warned the gambler. “Use your eyes, George. Look out over the sand in the darkness. Do you see two men prowling this way?”
“Yes,” assented the hotel man, after a pause.
“They're looking for us—enemies, George. Use all your cunning. Above all, be silent and lie low! Don't make a move, unless I tell you to do so. Show your trust in me, Ash, as you've never shown it before. If you don't, we'll be cheated out of our revenge!”
The two men whom the craven gambler had sighted were coming slowly onward, their movements suggesting a good deal of care and watchfulness.
Nor did they come in a wholly straight line. That they did not suspect the nearness of Jim Duff and his mad companion was plain at a glance.
“Burrow in the sand!” whispered the gambler in Ashby's ear. “Quiet! Be ready, but don't do anything unless I give you the word.”
“When you do give me the word,” trembled the hotel man, “I'll kill 'em both.”
“Not unless we have to do so—remember!” ordered the gambler. “We want, if possible, to take 'em alive.”
Let us now go back to the two men whom Duff and Ashby were watching so closely.
They were Rafe Bodson and Jeff Moore.
Both had come out of the recent fighting unharmed. Neither Rafe nor Jeff had fired a shot at the invading forces led by Hawkins. Instead, the pair had slipped stealthily away, until they had gotten out of the immediate zone of the hot firing. Then they hid under some bushes.
“An hour ago I'd have felt like a sneak, not standing by the gang any better,” whispered Jeff uneasily.
“Same here,” Rafe admitted. “In fact, I'm wondering whether I acted straight in running off like this.”
“Aren't you sure about it in your own mind?” asked Jeff slowly.
“Almost,” Rafe returned. “All that bothers me is not sticking by the same crowd that we started out with to-night. As for Jim Duff—”
“He's poison, and deadly poison at that,” broke in Jeff.
“That's just what he is, pardner.”
“Yet I used to like Duff pretty well.”
“So did I,” nodded Jeff. “But that was when I thought he had some sand.”
“The fellow's a skulking coyote!”
“A coyote is brave, compared with Jim Duff,” contended Jeff Moore.
“Reade and Hazelton showed the real sand!”
“I never thought tenderfeet could be as brave,” glowed Moore.
“Jeff, I reckon Reade and Hazelton aren't real tenderfeet any more. They've been west some time. But, then, such fellows wouldn't be tenderfeet even if they lived in New Jersey all the time. Courage belongs in some fellows, no matter where they work.”
“The fighting seems to be over,” observed Jeff Moore.
“Then the friends of the two engineers must have found them,” suggested Bodson.
“It doesn't sound like it over there. The newcomers seem to be doing a lot of hunting in the gully.”
“Let's move in closer,” proposed Rafe.
Crawling on their stomachs, the pair moved in closer. As they arrived, unseen, they were in time to see the late fighting men clamber into their automobiles. Hawkins could be heard giving directions for the further search for Reade and Hazelton.
Then the cars started away.
“What do you reckon?” demanded Jeff, looking at Bodson.
“I reckon some of Duff's crowd slipped out of the fight, got the two youngsters, and slipped away with them,” Bodson answered.
“Then it was Duff—he was one of 'em,” returned Jeff, with a strong conviction. “From what I've seen of Duff to-night he'd rather do a running trick than a fighting one.”
“It would take two to carry both youngsters away. Who was the other one?” Rafe wondered aloud.
“Most likely the fellow who'd mind Duff best.”
“That must mean poor George Ashby.”
“Let's slip into the gully and see what we can find.”
One fact learned in the gully astonished both investigators. Despite the volleys that had been fired no dead or wounded men lay about. Of course Hawkins could have taken any injured men away in the automobiles. Plainly the raiders had been equally fortunate in getting their wounded away on their horses. Mounted men familiar with the desert would know many paths where horses could travel, but where automobiles could not follow.
“Our hosses are gone,” discovered Jeff a few moments.
“Of course,” nodded Rafe. “The crowd we were out with wouldn't be slow in a simple little piece of every-day honesty like stealing hosses!”
“I'm through with any such gang after this, Rafe. How about you?”
“I'm shore going to be careful about the kind of company I pick. But, Jeff, we'll have to travel away from these parts. No good company around here would welcome us. They wouldn't like the only references we could give, Jeff.”
“Oh, shore, we'll have to travel,” agreed Moore. “That is, if the sheriff doesn't take up our tickets before we get started.”
“All this talk isn't showing us what became of Reade and Hazelton,” remarked Rafe Bodson. “Let's go back under the trees and see if we can find what has become of Reade and Hazelton. Before I change my post-office box I'm going to try to do those two youngsters a good turn.”
So the pair had started off. Yet, like the automobile searchers, Jeff and Rafe did not expect to run across Tom and Harry and their captors so close to the gully.
For this reason the pair proceeded without very much caution at the outset.
Even now, after Duff and Ashby had sighted them, Moore and Bodson halted twice to light matches and examine the trail that their keen eyes had discovered as moving westward from the gully.
“Now, I reckon we've got the general direction,” muttered Rafe Bodson when, after having once more discovered the tracks he turned and got the general course. “We know the way to head.”
“Then we won't light any more matches,” suggested Jeff. “It might get us into trouble.”
Accordingly they kept on, guiding themselves now by their general knowledge of the country.
Jim Duff and Ashby were well concealed, not only by the sand, but by a little fringe of brush as well.
Hence it is not to be wondered at that Bodson and Moore went forward to be astonished by a sudden movement in the sand, followed by a hail of “Gentlemen, get your hands up, or take your medicine!”
The command came in Jim Duff's tones.
He was barely thirty feet away from the surprised pair, one of his revolvers leveled so to drop Bodson at a touch of the trigger.
George Ashby's sawed-off shotgun looked squarely at the region bounded by Jeff Moore's belt.
“It's your turn, gentlemen,” agreed Rafe, he put his hands in the air.
“You've got us—be decent,” grinned Jeff, as he, too, raised his hands upward.
“Get your hands up higher!” ordered Jim Duff in his deadliest tone. These men were now helpless, and the gambler merely chuckled inwardly at the thought.
“Is this where we shoot them?” queried the mad hotel keeper.
“Yes—after a minute or two!” nodded Jim Duff, who wished first to determine whether the automobiles of the searching party were moving too near to them.
“I can hardly wait for the word!” quivered Ashby.
“How long are we to keep our hands up, Duff?” questioned Jeff.
“Quiet,” hissed the gambler. “I'm listening.”
“If it's for friends of ours,” grimaced Rafe Bodson, “you needn't listen any longer. We haven't any friends in either crowd now.”
“Quiet, I tell you!” snarled Duff.
No noise of moving automobiles came to the gambler's keen ears in the darkness of the night.
“Ready,” faintly whispered Duff, giving Ashby a slight nudge.
“Shoot 'em?” whispered the mad hotel man.
“Yes; you hit Jeff. I'll take care of Rafe!”
Just then darkness fell upon the gambler. He was knocked flat and senseless by a blow of a fist from behind.
In the same instant a man leaped upon George Ashby, bearing him to earth.
Bang! The noise of the discharging shotgun broke on the night's stillness. Bang! crashed the other barrel.
The muzzle had been pointed skyward, however, and both charges of buckshot had been driven off into space, to fall to the earth many yards beyond.
“Reade! Hazelton!” choked Rafe Bodson, leaping forward. “You fellows certainly have grit! Here, Hazelton, let me help you with that loco (crazy) hotel man.”
Jeff, in the meantime had rolled Jim Duff over on his back, then sat on him. When Duff returned to consciousness he found himself gazing into the muzzle of an automatic revolver.
Harry and Bodson made a quick, sure job of tying Ashby's wrists with a cord that Rafe supplied.
“You think you've stopped me, don't you?” snarled the hotel man, wild with rage.
“We stopped you in time to keep you from shooting down two men who were at your mercy,” retorted Harry sternly.
“What's that?” gasped Rafe.
“They were going to shoot you with your hands in the air,” Tom declared.
“That's another of your lies, Reade,” snarled the gambler.
“It's you who are doing the lying, Duff,” rejoined Tom stiffly. “I came to my senses just in time to hear you tell Ashby to kill one man while you killed the other.”
“So that was the game, was it?” said Jeff.
“No, it wasn't,” snapped Jim Duff.
“Shut up,” ordered Jeff unbelievingly. “Duff, we've seen enough of you to-night to know that an Apache has ten times as much honor as you have, and a rattlesnake has twenty times as much decency. You lying, miserable, white-livered, smooth-tongued, poisonous reptile in human form. If you open your mouth to say another word you'll have me so wild that I'll pull the trigger of this automatic before I intend to do so.”
“Thank goodness you had become conscious too, Harry!” breathed Tom fervently. “I don't believe I could have knocked both men over in time to prevent a killing. I managed to get my hands free just in time to get on the job.”
“I had known for some moments what was going on around me,” Hazelton replied. “But I was lying with my eyes closed, and keeping mighty quiet. I was trying to hear your breathing, so I could decide whether you had come to your senses, when all of a sudden you sat up and freed my hands. Ugh!” he added with disgust, as he reached up and slipped the remnant of rawhide noose from around his neck.
“What'll we do with this snake and, his weak-minded brother?” asked Jeff dryly. “Tie 'em up and ship 'em into Paloma?”
“Fire off your revolver two or three times,” suggested Tom, who had caught a faint, far away sound of an automobile. “That may bring a machine over here.”
“You shoot, Rafe,” urge Moore. “I'll want to keep my weapon handy for this crooked card-sharp.”
Rafe obligingly emptied one of his revolvers into the air. From a distance came the honk of an automobile horn, as though in answer to the signal shots. Soon the noise of an automobile engine became more distinct. Finally the body of a large car loomed up in the darkness. A few shouts brought the car to the spot.
“This you, Mr. Reade?” called the joy voice of Superintendent Hawkins. “And Hazelton, safe, also?”
All five seats in this car were occupied. Six more men had to be crowded in somehow, after Jim Duff had been tied with his hands behind him. Most of them had to stand.
“Back to Paloma, as fast as you can go with safety,” ordered Mr. Hawkins, as soon as all were inside. “Gracious, but there'll be a joyful demonstration back in camp as soon as the good word is received.”
As the car sped along over the desert the story was told of how the pursuit had been made.
It was Mr. Hawkins who had tried to wire from camp into town, calling for cars and posses to go in pursuit of the raiders.
As Tom had imagined at the outset, the raiders had cut the railroad telegraph wire. Discovering this, Mr. Hawkins had leaped on to the bare back of a horse at camp and had covered the distance at a gallop.
Men had been quickly rounded up within the very few minutes that were needed in getting the cars out and ready to run. There were hundreds of men in Paloma who had grown to despise Duff and all the evil crew behind the gambler.
From the outset the leaders of the posse, on hearing, of the direction first taken by the fleeing raiders, had calculated on the gully as the probable place of halting.
While the posse was still on the way out to the gully, and at some distance away, the sound of Ashby's discharging gun had reached them. Reasoning that the raiders would probably place a guard only on the town end of the gully, the posse had made a wide detour, so as to approach the gully from the westward. Leaving the cars at a considerable distance, the pursuers, with Mr. Hawkins at their head, had made quick time on foot.
In the fighting that had followed five men of the posse had been hit, though none dangerously. These wounded men, after the fight, had been sent back to Paloma in one of the automobiles.
“We saw some of the raiders fall during the lighting,” said Mr. Hawkins, “but their friends made a quick retreat and got all hands back to their horses. We felt sure they didn't have you, Mr. Reade and Mr. Hazelton, so we let the raiders slip away and spent our time in trying to find where you had been taken or if you had escaped. Well, it's all right now!”
As the automobile party approached the town, searchlights from other cars showed the remaining pursuers had heard the signals sounded by the horn of the first automobile and were returning.
As the returning men entered the outlaying streets the little town was found to be anything but a quiet community. Despite the early morning hour, the streets were crowded.
“Where's the chief of police?” inquired Mr. Hawkins, as the first car entered the town and pulled up.
“I'll find him for you, Cap,” offered a man on horseback.
“If you will be so good.”
As the horseman galloped away Hawkins signed to the others to step out.
“Duff, we're not going to be troubled with your company much longer,” smiled Hawkins.
Tom and Harry had already leaped down to the sidewalk when the gambler was helped to alight. Duff's hands were still behind his back though, unknown to his captors, he had succeeded in working them free.
With a stealthy movement the gambler suddenly reached forward, drawing a revolver from another man's holster.
Ere the owner was aware of the loss of the weapon Duff took full aim at Tom Reade.
Crack!
It was the pistol of a deputy sheriff that spoke first. That officer had been the only one to detect the gambler's action, and he had fired instantly.
Jim Duff sank, to the sidewalk, groaning while the deputy sheriff dryly explained the cause of his firing. A loaded revolver was still gripped in Duff's right hand, though the gambler was too weak and in too much pain to fire.
Dr. Furniss' office was near by, and the young physician, sharing in the popular excitement, was awake. He came out on the run, bending over the wounded man to examine him. “Duff,” said Dr. Furniss gravely, after a brief examination, “I deem it my duty to tell you that you've dealt your last card. Have you any wishes to express before we move you?”
“I—want to—talk to—Reade,” groaned the injured man.
“Certainly,” replied Tom, when the request was repeated to him. Stepping softly to where the gambler lay on the sidewalk, Reade bent over him.
“Duff,” said Reade gravely, “you and I haven't always been the best of friends, but I can say honestly that I'm sorry to see you in this plight. I hope that you may recover, yet get some happiness out of life.”
But the gambler's eyes blazed with ferocity.
“Don't waste any soft soap on me, Reade,” he said slowly, and with many pauses. “The Doc is a fool. I'm going to get well, and there will be just one happiness ahead of me. That will be to find you, wherever you may be, and to what I tried to do to you to-night.”
“Can't you forget that sort of thing, Duff?” asked Tom gravely. “Not that I'm afraid of you; you've seen enough of me to-night to know that I'm not afraid of you. But I'm afraid for you. You're close to eternity, Duff, and I'd like to see you go to your death with a calm, hopeful, decent mind. I'd like to see you go with a hope of a better life hereafter.”
“Don't give me any of your canting talk, Reade,” snarled the gambler weakly.
“I'm not going to do so,” sighed Tom, rising. “I'm afraid it would be useless. Try to remember, Duff, that I allow myself to have no hard feelings against you. If you possibly can recover I shall be glad to hear that you've done so.”
Then Tom stepped over to Dr. Furniss' side, whispering to him:
“Doc, you'll see to it that some clergyman is called, won't you? Any clergyman that is the most likely to reach the heart and the soul of a hardened fellow like Jim Duff.”
Dr. Furniss nodded. Men appeared with an old door that was to be used as a stretcher. On this the gambler was placed, and the physician gave him such immediate attention as could be supplied on the sidewalk, for Jim Duff had been shot through the right lung. Then the bearers lifted the door, bearing the gambler back to the now gloomy Mansion House, the doctor following. Ashby, who had been strangely quiet after the shooting, was taken to the local police station and placed in a cell.
Just after the two had been taken care of, and while the crowd still lingered, a young man pushed his way through to the center of the crowd.
“I heard that Jim Duff had returned to town,” began the young man. The speaker was Clarence Farnsworth, the foolish young easterner who had been sadly fleeced by the gambler.
“Yes; Duff came back,” said Mr. Hawkins, quietly.
“Where is he?” asked Farnsworth. “I must leave in the morning, and I owe Duff seven hundred dollars. I want to pay it to him.”
“Money you lost gambling with Duff?” questioned Hawkins.
“It's a debt of honor that I owe Mr. Duff,” Farnsworth replied, flushing considerably.
“Son, take one little hint from me,” continued Hawkins. “No money ever lost to a gambler in card playing is a debt of honor. It's merely the liability of a chump and a fool. No gambler ever uses any real honor. Men of honor work for the money that they need or want. Duff had a smooth way of talking, an agreeable manner with his profitable victims, but he never had a shred of honor. It isn't possible to be a gambler and a man of honor. If you've seven hundred dollars that you lost to Duff at cards, put it in your pocket and get out of Paloma as soon as you can. Duff won't need the money, anyway. He's down at the Mansion House, dying of a bullet wound that he got through his last piece of trickery. I hate to speak harshly of a dying man, but I'd like to see you get a grain or two of common sense into your head, boy.”
Again Farnsworth flushed, but three or four seasoned Arizona men who stood near by added their advice, in line with that of Mr. Hawkins. Clarence soon edged away.
An hour after daylight Jim Duff died. Dr. Furniss and the others who were with the gambler at the last were unable to state that Duff had offered any expression of regret for his evil life, or for his last wicked acts.
Jim Duff died as he had lived.
George Ashby was sent to an asylum and his property sold for his benefit. After a year he was discharged as cured. He has vanished, swallowed up in some other community, and nothing more has been heard of him.
Trailed by detectives of a fire insurance company, Frank Danes was soon caught and brought back to Arizona. He was fairly convicted of having set the old Cactus House on fire, though he could not be persuaded to admit himself an agent of the Colthwaite Company. Fred Ransom, the other agent, is believed to be still in the employ of the Colthwaite Company's “gloom department.”
Mr. Hawkins is still in the employ of the A., G. & N. M. So are foremen Bell, Rivers and Mendoza.
Tim Griggs proved himself so thoroughly while foreman at the building of the new rail-road hotel in Paloma, that he has gone on to other and better work. Griggs is now a prosperous man, and, best of all, he has his little daughter with him.
Lessee Carter has flourished in the new railroad hotel. Rafe Bodson and Jeff Moore are his clerks.
The day came when Tom Reade and Harry Hazelton were able to apply the final and most severe test to the roadbed that ran across the Man-killer quicksand. Their work was finished, and finished splendidly, adding another great triumph to their record as young engineers.
“These hot countries are fine, for a while,” grunted Harry Hazelton, as the young engineers left Paloma in a special Pullman car that General Manager Ellsworth had sent for their use.
“They are fine, in fact; but one gets tired of working on a blistering desert. I hope our next long undertaking will be in a country where ice grows as one of the natural fruits.”
“Greenland, for instance?” smiled Tom Reade.
“Alaska, at all events,” responded Harry hopefully.
“Do you know where I'm figuring on making my next stop?” Tom inquired.
“Where?”
“In good old Gridley, the town where we were born, boy! I'm fairly aching for a sight of the good old town. Will you go with me?”
“For a few weeks, yes,” Harry agreed. “But after that little rest?”
“After our visit to the good old home town,” Tom Reade replied, “we'll go anywhere on earth where a good, big chance for engineering offers. Harry, we've yet nearly all of our work ahead of us to do if we're ever going to be real, Class A engineers!”
That our young engineers found still greater work awaiting them will be discovered in the next volume in this series, which is published under the title, “The Young Engineers in Nevada; or, Seeking Fortune on the Turn of a Pick.”
In this narrative we find our young friends wholly away from railroad work, but engaged in an even greater undertaking. The adventures awaiting them were more exciting than any they had yet encountered. Fame and fortune, too, offered a greater opportunity. How the young engineers embraced the opportunity will be made plain to our readers.
THE END