Newspaper Page Text
The Ciri, a Horse and a Dog Biy FRAnciS L]ynDE b yriCht by haýe s o CHAPTER XVi.-continued -10 Now the presence of a wagon on our bench at this early hour in the morn ing might mean either one of two diametrically opposite things: Our deliverance; or the upcoming of re inforcements for the raiders. We were not left long in doubt. Shortly after the rack-rack of the wagon wheels stopped we heard footsteps, and the %alr stiffened on Barney's back. Next we beard Bullerton's voice, just out side and apparently under our window openings. "Broughton !" the voice called; "can you hear me?" "So well that you'd better keep out I of range!" I snapped back. "All right-Jlisten. You've got to get out, Broughton--that's flat. I haven't wanted to go to extremes. For per fectly obvious and commonplace rea- 1 sons I don't want to have to kill you I to get rid of you. But we are not go ing to gentle you any more. You've already hurt four of my men, and two of the four are crippled. The next time we hit you, it'll be for a finish." "Yes," said I. "You brought the t new club up in a wagon, didn't you?" He ignored this. E "We could starve you out if we t chose to take the time. I know pretty t well what you've got to eat-or rather t what you haven't got. It's your privi lege to take your life in your own c hands, Broughton;' that's up to you. 1 But how about the old man' " I "The old man's a-plenty good and I able to speak for hisseif!" yapped t Daddy. "You do your durndest, c Charley Bullerton !" "All right, once more. You'll hear t from us directly, now; and as I said c before, we've quit gentling you. That's my last word." For a time after this the silence, I and the darkness, since it was the hour before dawn, were thick enough to be t cut with an ax. But the dog was d more restless than ever, and we knew a that something we could neither see t nor hear must be going on. After a I while I asked the question that had been worrying me ever since I had . heard the wagon wheels. s "What did they bring up in that _ wagon, Daddy-a Gatllngr' I "The Lord only knows Stannie-and v he won't tell," was the oldprospector's a reply, made with no touch of irrever- a enes; and the words were scarcely out I of his mouth before a thanderbolt a striuck the slhaftheuse. a a C CHAPTER XVII. Tit for Tat. T hat word "thunderbolt" is hardly :a ure of speech. The thing that hit us: eoldn't be compared to anything mUler than thunder an( rightning. There was a fiish, a rending, ripping roaV as If the solid earth were split ting in two, and the tr was filletdwith S ying fragments and splfnters. ~fr, I l.ay. Ibut the acrid, hoking gas which ailRed the afthbuase could scarcely be eaerd air. 'Y Damit'e-sht whatfhey fethed in that wagenr" gargled the old man at ;ay side, and I could hare atoied toijoy at the mere s6bund of his voice, aleb it was an assurance .that e h_ ds good.: e baa iuldently ete we've to be even at w o t cnaaj eo liw aef " *** * aset as apaehis t h l -oiee "Then you do believe that Jeanie went with Bullerton?" [r "Looks like there ain't nothing else z. left to believe," he asserted dolefully. 'o "Look at it for yourself, son: she's ir been gone three whole days. If she hadn't gone with him-and the good e tord only knows where else she could *r have gone-don't you reckon she'd 've Is been back here long afore this? No, e Stannie; we been lettin' the 'wish it t was' run away with the 'had to be.' I t- reckon we just got to grit our teeth, v son, and tough it out the best we can." During this waiting interval, which n seemed like hours and was probably only a few minutes, we were momen t tarily expecting another crash. It did not come; but in due course of time t we heard a stir outside and then t voices, and one of the voices, which was not Bullerton's said: "I'll bet that ca'tridge smoked 'em out good an' a plenty, cap'n. Gimme th' ax, Tom, till we bu'st open the door an' have a a squint at 'em." Just at that moment a submerging t wave of depression surged over me and shoved me down so deep that I e think possibly if Bullerton had called out and. demanded our surrender I should have been tempted to tell him ; that I was not so much of a hog as r not to know when I had enough. But r the old man squeezed in beside me un - der the arched boiler plate was made 1 of better fiber; he was game to the last hair in his beard. With a wild Indian yell, he hunched his Winchester 1 into position and fired once, twice, I thrice, at the door, as rapidly as he could pump the reloading lever. A spattering fusillade was the reply r to this, but the aim was bad and the I only result was to set the air of our prison fortress to buzzing as if a swarm of angry bees had been turned lose on us. After this, the raiders withdrew, so we judged; at all events, the silence of the dark hour before s daybreak shut down upan us again, and once more we had space in which to "gather our minds," as Daddy put it. It may be a dastardly confession of I weakness to admit it, but I am fiee to say that thes prolonged struggle was gradually undermining my nerve. If Bullerton had made up his mind to I write off the loss of the mine buildings i and machinery, it was a battle lost for -- us. It could be only a question of a t ttle time, and enough daylight to en t~able the bombers to throw straight, until we should be buried in the wreck of the sabfthouse and hoist-;.and with out the privilege of dying in a good, old-fashioned, stand-up fight All of this I hastily pointed out to i Daddy Hiram, adding tiat, fbr Jeanie's S sake, If for no better reason, he ought to take his bchance of staying upon earth. As long as I live I shall always have a high respect for the wrath of a mid-~iannered man. The i4 prospector- was ftirly Berserk, mad, foaming at the mouth, and short to dragging bias out by main strength There was noe way of making him let go, "No, air; I done promaised your gra'gpaw 'at Id stand by for him, and h le - meiar oney fe doin' it When tem hellms get thil here miane, they're gels' to dg la hole someiwhere .n.I ury .mie afterward,"was al l I ome ld $i ot him. - We ae ot altenvery "much more time $or dIciusmelo, r fo anything else. e rtm fanraying dawn was ming, lad with the -partial lighten In t te tiner i-oan, we craned urQ heeks--1Me a doubie-beade4 turtile .pealug out ot4ts. sbell--ad got a s pe of jthae -atg done by theis rlw'sawritt wltheat sue` Iet 4 reat hole torn in the . e:iwrecty over the hoit s eath. Knowing the se es eplqedes p lretty w ' ue. the bomb a 'D g `e . o had enpioded ;beore it eIIghi,. te m a m t rot ., "..dat-4f it ia bteeU laytol'< le~hs it *went ot--gre s-: *j 4 down through that hole fixes us a plenty. Sufferin' Methusaleh what all is the folks down yonder at 'Tro pla a-dreamin' about, to let all this bangin' and whangin' go on up here without comin' up to find out what's makin' it?" The Atropia that I remembered was so nearly moribund that I didn't won der it wasn't making any stir in our behalf; so, when a few pattering rifle shots which seemed to originate on the great bench below began to sift in among the bomb echoes, I took it that Bullerton had divided his force and was trying to rattle us two ways at once. As for that, however, the bigger bombardment kept us from speculating very curiously upon any thing else. Two more of the giant crackers had fallen to the right of us, one of them into the wreck of the blacksmith shop, to send up a spout ing volcano of scrap which fell a sec ond or so later in a thunderous rain; and then... For a flitting instant it seemed as if it must drop squarely in front of the iron shield under which we were jammed-in which case even the un dertaker wouldn't have been needed not any whatsover, as Daddy Hiram would have said. But at the critical point in its flight the hurtling thing "ticked" the top of the hoist frame and its downward course was deflect ed the needed hair's-breadth, causing it to come down beyond the machin ery, and not on our side of things. Nevertheless, we were cowering in an ticipation of a blast which would most likely heave the entire machinery ag gregation over bodily upon us when the explosion came. We saw the" belching column of flame and gas going skyward beyond the machinery barrier, taking a full half of the roof with it, as if the blast had come from the mouth of a gigan tie cannon. We were dazed and deaf ened by the shock, and half choked by the fumes, but neither of us was so far gone as not to hear distinctly a prolonged and rumbling crash like the thunder of a small Niagara, coming after the smash I "The shaft l" shrilled Daddy Hiram, in a thin, choked voice; "it went off down in the shaft I And, say 1- what-all's that we're a-listenin' to now !" If there had been a dozen of the bombs raining down I don't believe the threat of them would have kept us from bursting but of of out dodge-hole to go and see what' had happened in the mine shaft But before we could determine anything more than that the mouth of the shaft was complete ly hidden under a mass of wreckage, and that the mysterious Niagara roar, dwindled somewhat, -but yet hollowly audible, was still going on under the concealing mass of broken -timbers and sheet-tron, there was a masterful interruption. Shots, yells, shoutings and hot curses told us that a fierce battle of some kind was staging itself just outside of our wrecked fortreg~;' whereupon Daddy Hiram began paw ing his way to the door, yelling like a man suddenly gone dotty. " "haE thtre' old Ike B! essle dad-blae his old hide!" he chittered. -"There ain't nary 'nother man in th! Tiranyontu 'at can cuss lke that. He's come with a pose; se, dthey're layin* out Charley Bullerton's eriPdw!" _here was a fne ittle tableau read~i ing itsel out 9 for us when we .ad casibered esr the wrecae andt boiled to a man, they looked to be had surrounded a fair half of the would-be "jumpers" and were hand cuffing them with a celerity that was truly admirable. And Beasley, him self, square-jawed and peremptory, was shoving Bullerton up against the side of the shaft-house, snapping the irons upon his wrists and counseling him, with choice epithets intermin gled, to save up his troubles and tell them to the judge. As we emerged from our wrecked fortress, other members of the posse were scattering to round up the out lying bomb-throwers, who had appar ently taken to the tall timber in a panic-stricken effort to escape. Down on the bench below there were horses and horse-holde'rs; and among the horses one whose boyish-looking rider was just slipping from the saddle. While I was wondering vaguely why the Angels town marshal had let a mere boy come aldhg on such a battle errand, the boyish figure ran up the road and darted in among us to fling itself into Daddy Hiram's arms, gur gling and half crying and begging to be told if he was hurt. I didn't know at the time how much or how little the big marshal knew of the various and muddled involvements which were climaxing right there in the early morning sunshine on the old Cinnabar dump head; but I do know that he quickly turned his captures over to some of his deputies and had them promptly hustled down stage and off scene. While this was going on I was merely waiting for my cue, and I got it, or thought I got it when the boy who wasn't a boy slipped from Daddy's arms and faced me. *"I'm not hurt, either," I ventured to say, hoping that the brain storm had subsided sufficiently to make me visible. "Welcome home, Miss Twom bly-or should I say Mrs. Bullerton?" The look she gave me was just plain deadly; you wouldn't think that vio let-blue eyes could do it, but they can. Then she drew a folded paper from somewhere inside of her clothes and held it out to me. "There is the deed to your mine, Mr. Broughton," she said nippingly, and with a fairly tragical emphasis on the courtesy title. "You wouldn't take the trouble to go to Copah and get it recorded, so I thought I'd better do it. I hope youql pardon me for be ing so forward and meddlesome." It was the super-lminax of the en tire Arabian-Nights business, and be cause my feelings would no longer be denied their rightful fling, I sat down on the shaft-house doorstep and shouted and laughed like a fool But after all, it was Mr. Isaac Beasley, deputy sheriff and marshal of Angels, who put the weather-vane, so to speak, upon the fantastic structure. "I been lookin' 'round for you a right smart while," he told me gruffly. "When you get plum' over your laugh and feel that you're needin' a little sashay over the hills f'r exercise, you can come along with me and go to jail f'r stealin' that railroad car." CHAPTER XVIII. The Hold-Up. Beasley left me sitting on the door step--'ve a notion hea notion he hadrun out of handeons,-else henmight have clapped a pair of .them on me-while he start edhis posse down to Atropia with the captured raiders and their. leader. When he came back we took time, Daddy and I and the big marshal, to aie up the damage that had been w.iught, and beyond that. to dig into the l ystety of the continuous gram 4blng roar which was stiltlasedlng iue a- the wreek-cevered . .ne.hft - Beasley stayed with us, iar as I took it, to get his breakfast before he ra me off to jal, and th-three of us. .ell to work dclaring tay the fallen timbers and roo M I.rond Di d Eiam leading the attack and be. athe la t to stickbhlfhad through wat rmaineda of the tnle snd hang .it=A the edge at the sit'" oth. V ooray !" he .yelled his iroles souing as if it came frm the inside of a barrel; and thenl agate. 'Hooray. -iinnie n heel-by th ghst+s of ld: fey; e gull ertOn's dome.game an ~~ egss *hat he said he could e eyr `mine o ye Climb tl ea Nd to m nth !a.that could all se e:,,Te bomb wai vch' had' ~flelb tre~ipi~..tlsthiO- Tstand w whch aDoedpllumofn t te a4 : their Msaty er' '"ý st y" 1 £WF t bý :ax. s ' ai, u ~pI~t - ty-S4· m there was a good and sufficient reason plainly visible from the pit's mouth. Some twenty feet down, and on the eastern side of the shaft, a stream of water big enough to run a good-sized hydro-electric plant was pouring into the perpendicular cavern, and it was its plunging descent into the bowels of the earth which was making the mimic thunder. Beasley was the first to find speech. "Where the blazes is all that water comin' from?" he exploded. "That's just what we're going to find out!" I barked. "Can you and Daddy handle my .weight in a rope sling?" They both protested that they could handle two of me if necessary, and a sling was quickly rigged and I was lowered into the pit. At the nearer view thus obtained, some of the mys teries were instantly made clear. The reason why the wooden boxing disap peared below a certain point in the shaft was that it had never extended any farther down. It had been mere ly a box with a bottom!-and all those pipe-dream impressions which had tried to register themselves on the day when I had my struggle with the ( 1 'Hoorayl"He Yelled. "Charley Bull erton's Dreened Your Mine for Ye!* suction-pipe octopus were Instantly translated Into facts. I could have sworn, then, that there was a bottom in the box, and there was a bottom. And that other impression-that I had encountered an inrushing stream of ice-cold water In the chilling depths; here was the stream; a foot-thick; never-failing cataract, pouring in through a perfectly good and substan tial conduit of twelve-inch iron pipe! In a flash the whole criminal mys tery involving the ostensibly flooded mine was illuminated for me. "Haul away!" I called to the two above; and kwhen they had drawn me up to the pit's mouth and I could get upon my feet, I yipped at Daddy and the marshal to come on, and led them in an out-door race along the mine ledge to the eastward; a hundred-yards dash which brought us to the banks of the swift little mountain torrent in the right-hand gulch. A brief search revealed precisely what I was expecting to find; what anyone in posseeion of the facts pre cedent would have expected to find. In the middle of a small pool slightly upstream from the path level-a pock eted bit of water neatly screened and half hidden by a growth of .low branhing _spruces-we saw a cane shaped whirlpoo swirl into which a good third of the stream flow was vanishing. Below this pool an appar :ently acddental heaping of rocks formed a small dam which kept the little reservooir full. Without a ward, Daddy Hiram and the Angelic. arshal plunged reekems ly-iito the stream and with their bare hands tore away the loose-rock da., With the a removal o the slight barrier and the consequent cleariy et the oerse of the stream, the p cet es vole Inmediataly sucked dry, tIh Inet ot the cataractnt pipe was exposed and the secret of the fooded Ctnnabar was secit =no longer. The schemae which had been elab orated and Bet in motion to "esoak" aGrandf r Ath sper Is psredi - tted l "hadlpo - The aInflbar i p oration nt produea to its capaiety, a worth, :o mearla asserte a that my ;arasather paid for it, and more-t t with the .aane h raln road. bailt to Its ier door, its: value 0 th preusatd. tbesul-e ito mawn ue lwa .W55, c lal pd ii n thoeliin oir saisd saer tim time t heq' X, Ita:gusa tie =tie wp+ tha - T r. length of time, setting the lesses do a shut-down over against the increasel profits when they should start up again. With our discoveries of the morning the plan of the robbery became per fect'y plain. Some giant of finance among the speculators had evolved a scheme by which the mine not only might be shut down during the inter val of waiting for the railroad to build over the bench, but at the same time be made to yield a bumper crop of profits. Taking its various steps in their or der, the first move in the game was to sell the mine to Grandfather Jasper while it was still a going proposition; and this was done. But one of the conditions of the sale (Beasley told us this) was that the selling corporation should continue to operate the mine, not as a lessee, but under a contract by which the operating company should receive a certain percentage of the output; an arrangement which gave the holdup artists ample oppor tunity to prepare for the coup de main' How these preparations were made, and the secret of them kept from leak ing out, still remained one of the un solved mysteries, though Beasley sug gested that probably imported work men were employed, and that the work had been done under jealous super vision with all the needful precautions taken against publicity. The tight" wooden box-which would figure as a part of the shaft lining-had been built, and into the box the creek had been diverted by means of the small dam and the underground conduit. With the water admitted, to rise in the box to the level of its Intake in the creek reservoir, the trap was set and was ready to be sprung. Beyond this point there was a gap we were obliged to bridge by conjec ture, but the inferences were all plausi ble enough. Doubtless the plotters had notified my grandfather that his mine was flooded and was no longer workable. Doubtless, again, he had authorized them to buy the needful pumping machinery and to install it which they did. In this barefaced imposture the plot ters had conceivably builded some thing upon Grandfather Jasper's ad vanced age as an insurance against any too-searching investigation; but beyond this they had carefully dis armed any suspicion that he might otherwise have harbored by encourag ing him-in the actual purchase of the property--to take expert advice, and by craftily priming him, by under statements of the facts, to trust them. Only rumors of what had occurred at this visit reached Angels; but Beas ley could testify that my grandfather had come and returned alone, and that after the pumping demonstration had been made he had seemed disposed to pocket his huge loss and to call it a bad day's work. The later developments were not hard to figure out. Beasley was able to tell us that the proposed raiload branch to run to the new copper prop erties in Little Cinnabar gulch- was , now a certainty for the very near fu ture. Hence the time was fully ripe for the recovery of the Cinnabar by the plotters. No.doubt they had con fidently assumed that a repurchase of the property-not directly by them selves, of course, but by an agent who would figure as a disinterested third party-would be easy. Beasley said that there had been some talk of an underrunning drainage tunnel, such as Daddy and I had figured upon-this at the time of the springing of the flood trap-and that the cost had been -esti mated at half a millien. Unquestion ably the robbers had assumed that an old man who had already charged his venture up to profl and loss would sell for a sang rather than to venture again; and in this they were probably well within the truth. But at the moment when they were ready to-complete the circle of if posture, death-the death of- Grand father Jasper-had stepped-in to cos plicate matters. Somebody-pe.dbly Cousin Percy-had corresponded withW whoever -was representing the robber. syndicate, and by this measu the plot. ters had learnedthat they would ane have to reckon with an heir. How Bulertoa came to be employda by. them almost at the instant of bLi re turn from South Ameri~r we did not know; but we could easily understand that with the new complication ddeb had_ rish by reason of Grandfather Jasper's death, it was highly noipe awr' for some emissary .of the saydi cate to get on the ground quieklr-y. . pared to forestall by purchaseguale or, in the last resort by foesr say at' tempt of the Dudley heirs to py 1hts thibgs thdy were not to be-germitted to knew. The puadbig of the fight for pe-a-:a sloi to the final and propwd in etre ity was another atterheat Beasley was abbe to explai. "TO see; it was a ease o' fis'r cut jplaines t I he could rn =ot: ..a ouf- pronte, =nc get posipa >a uiy1@ come along to ask a ei V . plgted qistai , he stood about ý±s chance i:e a deon `to lie out af it waese wy. If uyrel got killed Ia ie seemanae,:Be'd scatter hIs men lWathse" s -r y geto' t `aie "a tryiog to git bis t: <;rmIEzNzUD.) W X-ak Fran myt Rthaook place ss a -s wviras e t auitmto There were e t 1-._ - the two- ebiI !eatu s at= 4'es ` _x ry Of