Kitobni o'qish: «Out of the Depths: A Romance of Reclamation», sahifa 10

CHAPTER XVII
A SHOT IN THE DUSK

They returned to their grazing ponies, and at once started the descent of the mountain, after crossing the ravine where they had seen the wolf. Blake chose a route that brought them down into the valley above the waterhole shortly before five o’clock. They cantered the remaining distance along the wide, gravelly wash of the creek bed to the dike.

Looking down from the dike, they saw that Knowles and Gowan had come up the creek and were waiting for them in company with the ladies. Ashton set spurs to his horse and dashed across above the pool, to descend the slope to the party. Blake descended on the other side, to water his horse and slake his own thirst.

To Ashton’s chagrin, Isobel joined Genevieve in hastening to meet the engineer. He rode down beside the two men and jumped off to follow the ladies. But Gowan sprang before him.

“Hold on,” he said. “Mr. Knowles wants your report.”

“If you’ll oblige us, Lafe,” added the cowman. “I’m pretty much worked up.”

“You have cause to be!” replied Ashton. “He says the only question left is whether the water in the cañon is not at too low a level. We measured across from the creek gulch to the cañon. A tunnel is practicable, he says.”

“Through all that mountain?” scoffed Gowan. “It’s solid rock, clean through. It would take him a hundred years to burrow a hole like that.”

“You know nothing of engineering and its tools. We now have electric drills that will eat into granite like cheese,” condescendingly explained Ashton.

“Think I don’t know that? But just you try to figure out how he’s going to get his electricity for his drills,” retorted Gowan.

Without stopping for his disconcerted rival to reply, he turned his back on him and started towards Isobel. The girl was running up from the pool, her face almost pitiful with disappointment.

“Oh, Daddy!” she called, “Mr. Blake says that if the water in the cañon–”

“Needn’t tell me, honey. I know already,” broke in her father, hastening to meet her.

She flung her arms about his neck, and sobbed brokenly: “I’m–I’m so sorry for you, D-Daddy!”

“There, there now!” he soothed, awkwardly patting her back. “’Tisn’t like you to cry before you’re hurt.”

“No, no–you! not me. It doesn’t matter about me!”

“Doesn’t it, though! But I’m not hurt either, as yet. It’s a long ways from being a sure thing.”

“All the way down to the bottom of Deep Cañon!” put in Ashton.

“And then some!” added Gowan. “I’ve hit on another ‘if,’ Miss Chuckie.”

“You have? Oh, Kid, tell us!”

“It’s this: How’s he going to get electricity to dig his tunnel?”

Blake was coming up from the pool, with his baby in one arm and his wife clinging fondly to the other. He met the coldly exultant glance of Gowan, and smiled.

“The only question regarding the power is one of cost, Mr. Gowan,” he said. “There is no coal near enough to be hauled. But gasolene is not bulky. If there was water power to generate electricity, a tunnel could be bored at half the cost I have figured. The point is that there is no water power available, nor will there be until the tunnel is finished.”

“What! You talk about finishing the tunnel? Didn’t you say it is still uncertain about the water?” demanded Knowles.

“I was merely explaining to Mr. Gowan,” replied Blake. “The question he raised is one of the factors in our problem as to whether an irrigation project is practicable. We now know that we have the land for it, the tunnel site, the reservoir site–” he pointed to the valley above the dike–“and I have figured that the cost of construction would not be excessive. All that remains is to determine if we have the water. I have already explained that this will require a descent into the cañon.”

“You say that that will decide it, one way or the other?” queried Knowles, his forehead creased with deep lines of foreboding.

“Yes,” replied Blake. “I regret that you feel as you do about it. Consider what it would mean to hundreds, yes, thousands of people, if this mesa were watered. I assure you that you, too, would benefit by the project.”

“I don’t care for any such benefit, Mr. Blake. I’ve been a cowman for twenty-five years. I want to keep my range until the time comes for me to take the long trail.”

“It would be hard to change,” agreed the engineer. “However, the point now is to find what Deep Cañon has to tell us.”

“You still think you can go down it?”

“Yes, if I have ropes, a two-pound hammer, and some iron pins; railroad spikes and picket-pins would do.”

“Going to rope the rocks and pull them up for steps?” asked Gowan.

“I shall need two or three hundred feet of half-inch manila,” said Blake, ignoring the sarcasm.

“They may have it at Stockchute,” said Knowles. “Kid, you can drive over with the wagon and fetch Mr. Blake all the rope and other things he wants. I can’t stand this waiting much longer.”

“There will be no time lost,” said Blake. “It will take Ashton and me all of tomorrow to carry a line of levels up the mountain.”

“Why need you do that, Tom?” asked his wife.

“Yes, why, if all that’s left is to go down into the cañon?” added Isobel, dabbing the tears from her wet eyes.

Ashton thrust in an answer before Blake could speak. “We must see how high the upper mesa is above this one, Miss Chuckie, and then compare the difference of altitude with the depth of the cañon, to see whether its bottom is above or below the bottom of the gulch.”

“Oh–measure up and then down, to see which way is longest,” said Genevieve.

“Sorry, ma’am,” broke in Knowles. “We’ll have to be starting now to get home by dark. If you think you can trust me with that young man, I’d like the honor of packing him all the way in. I’ve toted calves for miles, so I guess I can hold onto a baby if I use both hands.”

“You shall have him!” replied Genevieve, smiling like a daughter as she met the look in his grave eyes. “Tom, give Thomas to Mr. Knowles–when he is safe in the saddle.”

Even Gowan cracked a smile at this cautious qualification. He hastened to bring Isobel’s horse and hold him for her–which gave Ashton the opportunity to help her mount. Both services were needless, but she rewarded each eager servitor with a dimpled smile. When Blake handed the baby up to Knowles, his wife, untroubled by mock modesty, gave him a loving kiss. He lifted her bodily into the saddle, and she rode off with her three companions.

Isobel, however, wheeled within the first few yards, and came back for a parting word: “You can expect us quite early tomorrow. We will overtake you on your way up the mountain. I wish Genevieve to see the cañon. Good night–Pleasant dreams!”

She had addressed Ashton, but her last smile was for Blake, and it was undisguisedly affectionate. As she loped away after the others, Ashton frowned, and, picking up his rifle, started off up the valley. Blake was staring after the girl with a wondering look. He turned to cast a quizzical glance at the back of the resentful lover.

When the latter had disappeared around the hill, the engineer took the frying pan and walked up into the creek bed above the dike. After going some distance over the gravel bars, he came to a place where the swirl of the last freshet had gouged a hole almost to bedrock. Scooping a panful of sand and gravel from the bottom of the hole, he went back and squatted down beside the pool within easy reach of the water.

He picked the larger pebbles from the pan, added water, and began to swirl the contents around with a circular motion. Each turn flirted some of the sand and water over the pan’s beveled edge. Every little while he renewed the water. At last the pan’s contents were reduced to a half dozen, irregular, dirty, little lumps and a handful of “black sand” in which gleamed numbers of yellow particles.

Blake put the nuggets into his pocket and threw the rest out into the pool. He returned to the tent and sat down to re-check his level-book and his calculations on the approximate cost of the tunnel. Sundown found him still figuring; but when twilight faded into dusk, he put away his fieldbook and started a fire for supper.

He was in the act of setting on a pan of bacon when, without the slightest warning, a bullet cut the knot of the loose neckerchief under his downbent chin. In the same instant that he heard the ping of the shot he pitched sideways and flattened himself on the ground with the chuck-box between him and the fire. A roll and a quick crawl took him into the underbrush beyond the circle of firelight. No second bullet followed him in his amazingly swift movements. He lay motionless, listening intently, but no sound broke the stillness of the evening except the distant wail of a coyote and the hoot of an owl.

Half an hour passed, and still the engineer waited. The dusk deepened into darkness. At last a heavy footfall sounded up on the dike. Blake rose, and slipping silently to the tent, groped about until he found a heavy iron picket-pin.

Someone came down the slope and kicked his way petulantly through the bushes to the dying fire. He threw on an armful of brush. The light of the up-blazing flame showed Ashton standing beside the chuck-box, rifle in hand. But he dropped the weapon to pick up the overturned frying pan, which lay at his feet.

“Hello, Blake!” he sang out irritably. “I supposed you’d have supper waiting. Haven’t turned in this early, have you?”

“No,” replied Blake, and he came forward, carelessly swinging the picket-pin. “Thought I saw a coyote sneaking about, and tried to trick him into coming close enough for me to nail him with this pin.”

“With that!” scoffed Ashton. “But it would do as well as my rifle. I took a shot at a wolf, and then the mechanism jammed. I can’t get it to work.”

“You fired a shot?” asked Blake.

“Yes. Was it too far off for you to hear? I circled all around these hills.”

“No, I heard it,” replied Blake, looking close into the other’s sullen face. “You may not have been as far away as you thought.”

“I was far enough,” grumbled Ashton. “I’ve walked till I’m hungry as a shark.”

“Do you realize that you want to be careful how you shoot with these high-power rifles?” asked Blake. “They carry a mile or more.”

“I’ve carried mine more than that, and it won’t carry an inch,” complained Ashton. “Wish you would see if you can fix it, while I get on some bacon.”

Blake took his scrutinizing gaze from his companion’s face, and picked up the rifle. Ashton showed plainly that he was tired and hungry and very irritable, but there was no trace of guilt in his look or manner. While he hurriedly prepared supper, Blake took apart the mechanism of the rifle. He discovered the trouble at once.

“This is easy,” he said. “Nothing broken–just a screw loose. Have you been monkeying with the parts, to see how they work?”

“No; I don’t care a hang how they work. What gets me is that they didn’t work!”

“Queer, then, how this screw got loose,” said Blake as he tightened it with the blade of his pocket knife. “It sets tight enough. Of course it might have come from the factory a bit loose, and jarred out with the firing; but neither seems probable.”

“Is it all right now?” queried Ashton.

“Yes.–Seems to me someone must have loosened this screw.”

“What’s the difference how it happened, if it will not happen again?” irritably replied Ashton. “Guess this bacon is fried enough. Let’s eat.”

Blake recoupled the rifle, emptied the magazine, tested the mechanism, refilled the magazine, and joined his ravenous companion in his ill-cooked meal.

Immediately after eating, Ashton flung himself down in the tent. A few minutes later Blake crept in beside him and struck a match. The young man had already fallen into the deep slumber of utter physical and mental relaxation. Blake went outside and listened to the wailing of the coyotes. Difficult as it was to determine the direction of their mournful cries, he at last satisfied himself that they were circling entirely around the camp.

A watchdog could not have indicated with greater certainty that there was no other wild beast or any human being lurking near the waterhole. Blake crept back into the tent and was soon fast asleep beside his companion.

CHAPTER XVIII
ON THE BRINK

Early to bed, early to rise. The two men were up at dawn. During the night the coyotes had sneaked into the camp. But Blake had fastened the food in the chuck-box and slung everything gnawable up in the branches out of reach of the sly thieves.

At sunrise the two started out on their day’s work, Ashton carrying his rifle and canteen and the level rod, Blake with the level and a bag containing their lunch and a two-quart sirup-can of water.

“We’ll run a new line from the dike bench, around the hill and across the valley the way we rode out yesterday,” said the engineer, as they climbed the slope above the waterhole. “That will give us a check by cross-tying to the line of the creek levels where it runs into the gulch.”

“Can’t you trust to the accuracy of your own work?” asked Ashton with evident intent to mortify.

Blake smiled in his good-natured way. “You forget the first rule of engineering. Always check when you can, then re-check and check again.–Now, if you’ll kindly give me a reading off that bench.”

Ashton complied, though with evident ill will. He had wakened in good spirits, but was fast returning to his sullenness of the previous day. He took his time in going from the bench-mark to the first turning point. Blake moved up past him with inspiring briskness, but the younger man kept to his leisurely saunter. In rounding the corner of the hill twice as much time was consumed as was necessary.

When they came to the last turn at the foot of the rocky slope, where the line struck out across the valley towards the foot of the mountain side, Ashton paused to roll a cigarette before holding his rod for the reading. Small as was the incident, it was particularly aggravating to an engineer. The reading would have taken only a moment, and he could then have rolled his cigarette and smoked it while Blake was moving past him for the next “set up.” Instead, he deliberately kept Blake waiting until the cigarette had been rolled and lighted.

Blake “pulled up” his level and started forward, his face impassive. Ashton leaned jauntily on the rod, sucked in a mouthful of smoke, and raising his cigarette, flicked the ash from the tip with his little finger. At the same instant a bullet from the crags above him pierced the crown of his hat. He pitched forward on his face, rolled half over, and lay quiet.

Most men would have been dumfounded by the frightful suddenness of the occurrence–the shot and the instant fall of Ashton. It was like a stroke of lightning out of a clear sky. Blake did not stand gaping even for a moment. As Ashton’s senseless body struck the ground, he sprang sideways and bent to lay down his instrument, with the instinctive carefulness of an old railroad surveyor. A swift rush towards Ashton barely saved him from the second bullet that came pinging down from the hill crest. It burned across the back of his shoulder.

Heedless of the blood spurting from the wound in the side of Ashton’s head, Blake snatched up the automatic rifle and fired at a point between two knobs of rock on the hill crest. Promptly a hat appeared, then an arm and a rifle. It might have been expected that a bullet would have instantly followed; yet the assassin was strangely deliberate about getting his aim. Blake did not wait for him. He began to fire as fast as the automatic ejector and reloader set the rifle trigger. Three bullets sped up at the assassin before he had time to drop back out of sight.

Blake started up the hillside, his pale eyes like white-hot steel. He was in a fury, but it was the cold fury of a man too courageous for reckless bravado. He went up the hill as an Apache would have charged, dodging from cover to cover and, wherever possible, keeping in line with a rock or tree in his successive rushes. At every brief stop he scanned the ridge crest for a sign of his enemy. But the assassin did not show himself. For all that Blake could tell, he might be waiting for a sure shot, or he might be lying with a bullet through his brain.

To avoid suicidal exposure, the engineer was compelled to veer off to the right in his ascent. He reached the ridge crest without a shot having been fired at him. Leaping suddenly to his feet, he scrambled up to the flat top of a high crag, from which he could peer down upon the others. The natural embrazure from which the assassin had fired was exposed to his view; but the place was empty. He looked cautiously about at the many huge bowlders behind which a hundred men might have been crouching unseen by him, advantageous as was his position. To flush the assassin would require a bold rush over and around the rocks.

Blake set his powerful jaw and gathered himself together for the leap down from his crag. At that moment his alert eye caught a glimpse of a swiftly moving object on the mesa at the foot of the far side of the hill. It was a horse and rider racing out of sight around the bend of a ridge point.

Blake whipped the rifle to his shoulder. But the cowardly fugitive had disappeared. He lowered the rifle and started back down the hill faster than he had come up. Leaping like a goat, sliding, rushing–he raced to the bottom in a direct line for Ashton.

The victim lay as he had fallen, his head ghastly red with blood, which was still oozing from his wound. Blake dropped down beside the flaccid body and tore open the front of the silk shirt. He thrust in his hand. For some moments he was baffled by the violent throbbing of his own pulse. Then, at last, he detected a heartbeat, very feeble and slow yet unmistakable.

He turned Ashton on his side, and washing away the blood with water from the canteen, examined the wound with utmost carefulness. The bullet had pierced the scalp and plowed a furrow down along the side of the skull, grazing but not penetrating the bone.

“Only stunned… Mighty close, though,” muttered Blake. He looked at the ashen face of the wounded man and added apprehensively, “Too close!.. Concussion–”

Hastily he knotted a compress bandage made of handkerchiefs and neckerchiefs around the bleeding head, and stretching Ashton flat on his back, began to pump his arms up and down as is done in resuscitating a drowned person. After a time Ashton’s face began to lose its deathly pallor. His heart beat less feebly; he drew in a deep sighing breath, and stared up dazedly at Blake, with slowly returning consciousness.

“I’ll smoke all I please and when I please,” he murmured in a supercilious drawl.

Blake dashed his face with the cupful of water still left in the canteen. The wounded man flushed with quick anger and attempted to rise.

“What–what you–How dare you?” he spluttered, only to sink back with a groan, “My head! O-o-oh! You’ve smashed my head!”

“You’re in luck that your head wasn’t smashed,” replied Blake. “It was a bullet knocked you over.”

“Bullet?” echoed Ashton.

“Yes. Scoundrel up on the hill tried to get us both.”

“Up on the hill?” Ashton twisted his head about, in alarm, to look at the hill crest. “But if he–He may shoot again.”

“Not this time. I went up for him. He went down faster, other side the hill. Saw him on the run. The sneaking–” Blake closed his lips on the word. After a moment his grimness relaxed. “Came back to start your funeral. Found you’d cheated the undertaker. How do you feel now?”

“I believe I–” began Ashton, again trying to raise himself, only to sink back as before. “My head!–What makes me so weak?”

“Don’t worry,” reassured Blake. “It’s only a scalp wound. You are weak from the shock and a little loss of blood. I’ll get you a drink from my can, and then tote you into camp. You’ll be all right in a day or two.”

He fetched the can of water from his bag, which he had dropped beside the level. Ashton drank with the thirstiness of one who has lost blood. When at last his thirst was quenched, he glanced up at Blake with a look of half reluctant apology.

“I said something about your striking me,” he murmured. “I did not understand–did not realize I had been shot. You see, just before–”

“That’s all right,” broke in Blake. “I owe you a bigger apology. Last evening, while you were out hunting, someone took a shot at me. It must have been this same sneaking skunk. I thought it was you.”

“You thought I could try to–to shoot you?” muttered Ashton.

“Yes. There’s the old matter of the bridge, and you seem to think I am responsible for what your father has done. But after you came in, I soon concluded that you had fired towards the camp unintentionally.”

“If you had asked,” explained Ashton, “I was around at the far end of these hills, nearly two miles from the camp, when I shot at the wolf and the rifle went wrong.”

“That was a fortunate occurrence–your going out and seeing the wolf;” said Blake. “If you hadn’t taken that shot, we would not have known your rifle was out of gear. My first bullet merely made the sneak rise up to pot me. If the rapidity of the next three shots hadn’t rattled him, I believe he would have potted me, instead of running.”

“So that was it?” exclaimed Ashton. “Do you know, I believe it must be the same scoundrel who attacked me the first day I rode down Dry Fork. No doubt he remembered how I ripped loose at him with the automatic-catch set.”

“Your thieving guide?” said Blake. “But why should he try to kill me?”

“I’m sure I don’t know,” murmured Ashton. “Another drink, please.”

“I shall tote you back to camp, and–No, I’ll lay you over there in the shade and go up to see if he is in sight.”

Picking up the wounded man as easily as if he had been a child, the engineer carried him over under a tree, fetched him the can of water, and for the second time climbed the rocky hillside. Scaling his lookout crag, he surveyed the country below him. A mile down the creek two riders were coming up towards the waterhole at an easy canter. He surmised that they were his wife and Miss Knowles.

Their approach brought a shade of anxiety into his strong face. He swept the landscape with his glance. A little cloud of dust far out on the mesa towards Split Peak caught his eye. He looked at it steadfastly under his hand, and drew a deep breath of relief as he made out a fleeing horse and rider.

He descended to Ashton, and taking him up pick-a-back, swung away for the camp with long, swift strides. Before he had gone half the distance, he felt Ashton’s arms loosening their clasp of his neck. He caught him as he sank in a swoon. Without a moment’s hesitation, he slung his senseless burden up on his shoulder like a sack of meal, and hastened on faster than before.

Swiftly as he walked, the ladies reached the camp before him. When he came to the top of the dike slope, his wife had dismounted and Isobel was handing down the baby to her. As the girl slipped out of the saddle she looked up the slope. With a startled cry, she darted to meet Blake.

Quick to forestall her alarm, he called in a gasping shout: “Not serious–not serious!”

“Oh, Tom–Mr. Blake!” she cried. “What has happened?”

“Scalp wound–faint–blood loss,” Blake panted in terse answer.

“He is wounded? O-o-oh!” She ran up and looked fearfully at the bloodsoaked bandages across Ashton’s hanging head.

Blake staggered on down the slope without pausing. Genevieve had started to meet him. But at her husband’s panting explanation, she laid the baby on the nearest soft spot of earth and darted to the kit-chest. She was opening a “first aid” box when Blake crashed through the bushes and sank down with his burden under the first tree.

Genevieve hastened towards the men, calling to her companion: “Water, Chuckie–that pail by the fireplace.”

The girl flew to fetch a bucket of water from the pool.

Blake was peering anxiously down into Ashton’s white face. “Didn’t–know–but–that–” he panted.

“No,” reassured his wife. “He will soon be all right.”

She drew the unconscious man flat on his back and held a bottle of ammonia to his nostrils. The powerful stimulant revived him just as the girl came running back with the water. He opened his eyes, and the first object they rested upon was her anxious pitiful face. He smiled and whispered gallantly: “Don’t be afraid. I’m all right–now!”

“Then I’ll drink first,” said Blake.

He took a deep draught from the pail, doused a hatful of water over his hot head and face, and stretched out to cool off. Genevieve, assisted by the deeply concerned girl, took the handkerchief bandage from Ashton’s head and washed the wound with an antiseptic solution. She then clipped away the hair from the edges and drew the scalp together with a number of stitches.

In this last the hardy cowgirl was unable to help. She clasped Ashton’s hand convulsively and sat shuddering. Ashton smiled up into her tender pitying eyes. Genevieve had numbed his wound with cocaine. He was quite satisfied with the situation.

Another antiseptic washing and a compress of sterilized cotton bound on with surgical bandages completed the operation. Then, when it was all over with, the young mother, who had gone through everything with the aplomb and deftness of a surgeon, quietly sank back in a faint. On the instant Blake was reaching for the ammonia bottle.

A whiff restored his wife to consciousness. She opened her eyes, and smiling at her weakness, sought to rise. He held her down with gentle force and ordered her to lie quiet.

“I shall fetch Tommy,” he added. “We’ll all take a siesta until noon.”