No Mean City (Saturday Evening Post serial)/Part 2
V
THE shots of the day shift were the call to supper, shots of the night shift the summons to rise and shine in the morning. After breakfast Banner of the day shift remained behind to help Kendall unload the freight wagon, and afterward to sharpen drills; Green, Dorsey and Case trudged to the shaft, two to work the windlass and one to fill the bucket; while the night shift drifted away to the bunk house. Apgar and Uncle Ben saddled up and drove the mules and the extra horse to the lake.
There was more skillful engineering through that westward break in the circle of hills which fenced Rockingstone Valley. This time the road did not follow the deep cañon floor,but kept to a level in a dugway blasted out along the northern slope. Passing this last barrier it came out on a mesa—a triangle, with the lake for base, sloping gently to the water's edge: below, the cañon turned sharply to the left to join the lake long mile to southward.
“Except a strip at the foot of this bench, the shore line of the lake looks like a fever chart along here, where it backs up between the ridge,” said Apgar. “And the islands—see them? About a dozen here and there, where there was a bump or a knoll on the submerged ridges. All the way from a hundred yards to a mile from the mainland. There's the biggest one, to the right the flat-topped one with the cedars on it. There's a big black lava island nearly a mile square, down the river a bit. You can see it after a while.”
“Ever go out to explore them?”
“Oh, yes—some of them; in duck-shooting time, and fishing, sometimes. I've got a boat down here. But I'm pretty busy—don't use it much. The boys splash round on Sundays, sometimes, when they go down to swim. Looks different here than it used to in your day, doesn't it?”
“Yes—except that I never was up behind this mountain much,” said Uncle Ben. “Not north of here, anyway. I reckon this strip between the river and the Christobals, and from here to Paraje, must ha' been the lonesomest place on the whole world. I made the trip once, and that was enough for me. Far as that goes, I never did hear of anyone else going through here—though I suppose plenty of 'em did. Up and down and repeat—cañons and barrancos and mesquite thickets—roughest place I ever see. Too rough to run cattle. Frank Hill run the Heart-Diamond stock from here south for a year or two, I'm told. But that was while I was gone. The old Gonzales settlement was the furthest north in my day. Hello! The road splits here! Where does that right-hand fork go to?”
“That's where we get our wood, up in the ridges to the north,” said Apgar carelessly.
Uncle Ben did some swift thinking, of which his wizened old brown face gave no sign. The wood road was as well worn as the water road; yet the camp would use comparatively little wood. Again, there was wood, scattered but plentiful enough, in the open country above Rockingstone, halfway from the camp to the summit. Now why would anyone choose to haul wood uphill rather than down?
They Came to Ship Island in a Whispering Midnight; They Crept Along That Wavering Shore, Groping in the Shadows
Aloud he said contemplatively: “Someone will try running cattle in here again some of these days, now there's water everywhere, and the bosques all drowned, where cattle used to go wild on us. You'll see! The west slope of the Christobal isn't on the Armendari grant—know that?”
“Certainly I do. There's an offset here, and the line runs along the crest of Christobal Mountain. But what it was ever laid out that way for—that is what I will never tell you.”
“That's easy,” said Uncle Ben. “Old Armendaris, he took one look on this side and that as aplenty. 'I gotta draw the line somewhere,' he says to the King of Spain, 'and I draw it right here. Nothing west of the Christobals,' he says. 'The United States is a goin' to start up business in a hundred years or so, maybe,' he says. “Another hundred years after that, and they'll have this country and then do you suppose I want to pay taxes on the whole dum Christobal Mountain. Not much!' he says. But about them cattle—look at this! Throw a string of wire fence from the south end of the mountain to the river—and you could make the grant people build half if you built it on the line. Then fence up that box cañon above Rockingstone, and somebody'd have a powerful big pasture, cheap, even if it is a mighty rough one. Why don't you tackle it) yourself?”
“Me? Oh, I'm no cowman.”
“You think it over,” urged Uncle Ben, sparkling with enthusiasm. “You done got your wagon road made, and that removes the biggest drawback to a ranch here. Grass, water and fence, a good road to to your door ready made—what more do you want? No jungles of cottonwood and mesquite or tornillo for stock to hide out in now, like there used to be. All at the bottom of the lake. And that spring I was tellin' you about—it's up in the pinnacles beyond your powder house—pipe that down and make Rockingstone Valley your home ranch—fine! Pity you hadn't known about Squawberry Spring. Might have saved five hundred dollars' worth of wagon road. I'll take you up and show you that spring this afternoon.”
“Some other time, if you don't mind,” said Apgar. “I've got some letters to write this afternoon. And later, after the night shift wakes up, I'd like to try out that rifle of yours. I want to have Kendall try a few shots too. He's a marksman. But he will have to come down here this afternoon to fill up the water wagon.”
“Well, you turn that cattle proposition over in your mind,” enjoined Teagardner. “That wagon road must ha' cost you four or five thousand perfectly good plunks, all told. And if your mine fizzles on you, that's how you save part of your losings. Start the Y Rockingstone Cattle Company. I'll take a few shares myself.”
“I'll think about it,” smiled Apgar. “Here we are at the lake. Here's where he drives in to fill up his tank—rock bottom, you see. And there's my boat, tied to that juniper tree. Pretty good boat for a home made one, isn't it?”
“It is so. You make it yourself?”
“Dear me, no! I'm no carpenter. One of the men on the night shift made it—Miller, the big fellow. It's pretty large—hard for one man to manage unless he is used to boats. But I figured some of the boys would like to go fishing Sundays.”
That target practice was destined never to take place. An hour later Apgar and Uncle Ben returned to camp a buckboard rattled out of Rockingstone Cañon: a shackly one-seated buckboard with the shabby top from an old buggy toggled clumsily to the seat for the sake of shade. A big canteen was strapped to the ribs of the buggy top, sharing the shade wit a 30-30 rifle; two nose bags and a a feed of grain in a gunny sack, for all cargo, was tied by two neck ropes to the iron railing behind the seat and Joe Cady was the driver. The team, a pair of spanking buckskins, contrasted oddly with the patched harness and the shabby rig.
Cady brought his pair to a halt at the corral gate.
“Mornin', folks!” he said. “Telegram for you, Uncle Ben. Operator allowed mebbe I'd better carry it out to you. He knowed what was in it, whether it was big medicine or not. so I up and come.”
Teagardner opened the brown envelope and scanned the contents swiftly.
“Shucks! I got to go,” he said with some vexation. “Wouldn't that jar you?”
He handed the message to Apgar, who read:
Trinidad, Colorado, July 31, 1918
Ben Teagardner,
Engle, New Mexico.
Couldn't come Engle this trip. Meet me at Albuquerque, Aug 2.
A. K. Witherspoon
“And this is the first of August! Drat the luck!” cried Uncle Ben. “I bet I never do see that old eel in Engle. You see how it is, Apgar. I've got to quit you.”
“Sorry to lose your company, Mr. Teagardner. You'll stay till after dinner, of course. Unhitch your team, Cady. We can spare you water from the tank.”
“I brought along your mail, Mr. Apgar. Though you'd want it. And this morning's paper. Here's the headlines. 'The Huns are in retreat along the whole Front north of the Marne. The Frenchies and the Yanks have'—where is it?—'driven nine miles northeast of Château-Thierry, and two north of Fère-en-Tardenois'—crossed the Oureq River, and captured Sergy and a heap more of them towns. German papers please copy. And there is a movement on foot,” said Cady, dropping the tugs, “to provide every German soldier with a Wooden Cross.”
“Bully!” said Apgar
“The treacherous, bloody dogs!” said Uncle Ben as the buckboard crunched slowly up the grade in the box of Rockingstone Cañon. Uncle Ben sat with Cady; Sleepycat at the end of a lead rope followed behind.
“Apgar tipped his hand, then?”
“Tipped his hand? The damned murderer spread it out, face up, a dozen times. Didn't know where Squawberry Spring is! But old Springtime Morgan brought him here, by his tell. And Springtime wouldn't miss showin' him that spring once in a million chances—not to mention that anybody in the world camping there would find it right away. Son, I've felt it in my bones all the time, and so have you. All the same, it seems monstrous to put it in cold words—but this whole play is an alibi. What they plan is to blow up Engle Dam and drown fifty thousand people. Takin' six month fixin' to play it safe—fixin' to be above all suspicion.”
“Evidence,” marked Cady. “I had suspicions aplenty of my own, just by instinct—same as a colt knows his first rattlesnake or a chicken knows a hawk. I'm strong for hunches. A man that won't play his hunch is blind in one eye. All the same, if you've got any facts on hand trot 'em out.”
“The powder house is nigh a mile from camp—just as far they could and in the valley. Something besides there dynamite; TNT, mebbe—or some other high explosive we don't know about. Perhaps that's why they've waited so long—till they could smuggle in the stuff a little at a time—though God only knows where they get it. Dynamite, of course, they can get plenty of.”
“One fact and one good guess. Any more facts?”
“The night shift wasn't asleep when I come, and the night shift didn't sleep much this morning, and the night shift didn't work last night. Set off four or five sticks of loose powder with a little trash on 'em, thinkin' I wouldn't know the difference—and me a miner since I was a boy in Pontypridd! Then the whole delirious shootin'-match—no card playin', throwing horseshoes, singin'; no fun, no joking—quiet and still. Close corporation; and still no new men to work; none quit in six months; none of 'em ever came down to Engle once. Not natural.”
“One big fact and some interestin' observations. Yes?”
“Goin' down to the river,” shrilled Uncle Ben wrathfully, “their new road splits. Right-hand prong wanders off into the lonesome north For wood, says Apgar. No man on earth ever hauled wood up a two-thousand-foot climb without a reason—not with plenty wood up here to haul downhill. Whatever is wrong, that wood road leads to it
“Another thing—down where they get their water they've got a boat; a first-class little boat that they made themselves. And in the tool house at camp, all the carpenter's tools a man would use in making a boat were missing. Tally?”
“Three perfectly good facts,” said Cady respectfully.
“I'm going to use those facts. Watch me! Say, drive slow and stop once in a while. I want time enough to have our talk out. Because I'm going to quit you when we get to the upper end of the box, and go back over the cliffs to see what is doing, while you go on into town. Ten to one they follow us up to watch us. You got that spyglass and grub?”
“Under the seat, everything just as you told me. Better let me take that hill job, Uncle Ben. You're pretty old for climbing and sleeping out.”
“Pish! I know these hills like the palm of my hand. I've prospected this country out; I can get back and overlook that camp and never set my foot down except on a rock. You'd leave tracks somewhere. Say, who's bossing this outfit, you or me?”
“You, every time, Uncle Ben. You've got it over me nine ways from the jack. You tell me what to do and I'll do it.”
“I got something for you to do presently that will take all your time,” said Uncle Ben grimly. “Now to go back to our facts. You haven't forgotten them?”
“Nary a fact.”
“These facts, then, force me to think about as follows: They've built a heap bigger boat—or are building it now with those missing carpenter's tools— up in the lonesome country, where their wood road goes. My guess is the boat is finished and floated off behind one of the islands—the lake's full of islands—to be out of sight, where no man will happen on to it. I guess that they're now loading that boat with dynamite in the nth degree; that they've been waiting for the rains to fill the lake brimful, to do the utmost damage when it breaks: that they are waiting the dark of the moon. Along about with the third, fourth and fifth of August there will be no moon to speak of. I judge they won't wait any for the entirely moonless nights. They must be weary of waiting. I judge that they mean to work their barge down halfway or more the first night, mooring behind the big island below Alamocita—where that big square flat-topped lava butte used to be; that the next night they work her down to the dam, by or before midnight, lower their weighted explosive to the level of the lower sluice gates, wired to an electric battery adjusted for a time explosion that will blow up the dam just before daybreak. They'll take along the little boat, of course, so they can row back.”
“Uncle Ben, you guess like an adding machine,” said Cady.
“Another thing—their big barge will be painted black, so the watchman on the dam won't see it. And so the barge will harmonize with the big black lava blocks on the Alamocite Island—where they'll jam her in the night before. And so I won't have any facts left on my hands—for I'll not deceive you; all along I've been constructin' my the'ries to fit the known facts; now I'm going to fit my last unused fact into my the'ry: Son, in the Rocking-Horse tool house was some several cans of black paint, and no cans of any other color, and no paintbrushes. But there isn't one single tor-plagued thing in that camp painted, black or anything else, inside or out.”
“That barge,” said Joe promptly, “is painted black. Uncle Ben, why don't we go back and shoot 'em now?”
“For one thing, people would likely be askin' questions. What is a good deal more to the point—I don't want to let them off so easy as all that. Son,” said Uncle Ben earnestly, “I'm aimin' to hurt them fellows. They've not done right. There's ten of them, not counting Apgar. At least half of em, besides Apgar, will stay behind to make a showin' if somebody should happen to stray into camp though I reckon nobody ever does, from what they tell me, except them that Apgar drags up here like he did me, so they can bear witness to the innocence of Rocking-Horse. That little boat will nicely hold four; or five, with one at the rudder. Two pairs of oars; they'll figure on making good time coming back; they can make better time with a steersman. Five to go and five to stay. Joe, if it can be done, we want to manage so any that stay behind will wish hard they'd been the ones that went! I don't just know how yet, but we'll find a way.”
“What do I do?” demanded Joe.
“Drive to town. They'll send along a scout to be sure that we really leave. He will see you go and he'll see old Sleepycat tagging along behind. Then they'll proceed to biz—and I'll be up in the cliffs with my spyglass, framing up sorrow for them. You get grub for three days, slip out of Engle to-morrow without exciting any comment, and join me at sundown.”
“How'll I get to you without leaving sign?”
“Water leaves no tracks. Clayton keeps a little skiff down where the lake backs up in old Fort McRae Cañon. I'll give you a note to Clayton. You get the key and sidle down to the boat to-morrow. Turn your horse loose and hide your saddle. Row out in the main big lake and paddle along upstream. You know where the old Gonzales place used to be? Well, just east of there is a lava cliff sharp as a knife blade, half a mile long, and high. Only it really isn't a cliff—it's a dike; and it isn't lava, but obsidian. I'll beat the south end of it. By that time I ought to have the proper dope or the makings of it. That's all. Drive on.”
A few minutes later, where the road was cut in the southern hillside, Joe stopped his buckboard at the upper end of the box, with the hub against a limestone ledge. He stood up; Uncle Ben raised the cushion, and from the little box under the seat took out a cloth flour sack, partly filled, and his ancient field glass with its leather case and strap. He slipped the strap over his head, picked up his rifle and his canteen, and stepped up to the rocky ledge; Joe handed him the grub sack.
“Hadn't you better take the big canteen, Uncle Ben?”
Teagardner grinned. “I told that baby killer about Squawberry, but I didn't tell him about Hidden Spring. That's up in the cliffs on this side. And the oldest man in the world couldn't tell the smartest one how to find it. That's another reason why you go to town and I don't.”
“That old buffalo gun is mighty heavy. Don't you want mine?”
“I'm used to this gun. And you're used to yours. We might need 'em. I've got all the time there is. You drive on! No, wait! One thing more: Apgar & Co. have made a mistake and I may be making another one. We can't always sometimes tell. If anything should happen to me, Joe—don't you forget Brother Bowman! He is mixed up in this or worse. You keep his memory gangrene!”
VI
IN THE Book of Revelations, where Christobal Mountain is the footnote to a page, the undergraduate may read among other things—how the earth contracted as it cooled and how the hardened outer crust of it, slow-sinking as it shrank to fit the denser central mass, left occasional surplus feet or miles of needless circumference. Then, where the crust was weak, those surplus feet or miles buckled and crumpled to wrinkles, such as we name Himalaya, Rocky or Andes; buckled and crimped, with arch and dip and fold, with lap and weld and overthrust. Outer miles of surface rock, sedimentary layers, cool and brittle, water-born, heaved up as a trapdoor is raised, bending, cracking, breaking to fold and splintered fault.
Deeper, the fire-born rock, held down by the enormous weight above, without room either to break or melt, yet forced to yield, was crushed together, the seamless rock interpiercing to greater density and a different texture; at the last, incompressible yet still compressed, was squeezed out and upward as paste is squeezed from a tube; was shoved up, irresistible, in dike or boss of granite, syenite, porphyry or gneiss, cleaving or lifting the mass above, shouldering it aside, fusing to living fire at the first touch of air, and stabbing upward in a last flaming thrust to stars and sky.
Christobal Mountain is among the least of these wrinkles. Insignificant and remote, it is yet part of the campus; and here, too, the candidate for a degree may find matter for consideration.
The granite circle which walls Rockingstone Valley, when it rose, tiptilted to forty-five degrees the thousand ledges of Rockingstone cañon. It follows that if you start at the upper end of the box cañon of the Rockingstone—where Uncle Ben stepped from the buckboard and follow down that cañon for three miles, until you reach the granite wedge which holds the mountain from falling over, you will see, in those miles of westing, precisely what you would have seen had you journeyed the like distance straight toward the center of the earth; which may possibly lead you to reflection upon the time used for the slow deposit of even one of these thousand tiptilt ledges, soapstone, sandstone, lime or shale; or the slow ages needed to press it from silt to stone.
On the Jornada, wells have been bored to twelve hundred feet. A hollow bit is used, diamond-pointed; a smooth core, three inches in diameter, is brought up as the drill cuts through rock. If you have a roll call of the various strata in Rockingstone Box, you may look at the last core and know surely what the next core will be—puddingstone, quartzite, lime or flint; and how far before the drill strikes the next stratum—making some allowance for the landslip when the mountain was upended.
Far Below Two Midget Horsemen Crawled to View Round a Curve in the Cañon
Another result is that, starting where Uncle Ben started, climbing as he climbed, you find a mountain of rocky steps, jagged, broken and bare; in outline most like a steep roof would be if the shingles were laid with the butts up; and shedding water just as such a roof would shed it. This mountain is known and shunned as Washboard Hill.
Keeping to the bare rock, Uncle Ben turned back to the west again. He climbed the steep ledge for a dozen yards. Here a fallen block of stone made for him a way to a higher ledge. Edging back, that he might not be in sight from the cañon, he toiled up until he came to a favoring sheltered hollow, where a bush of laurel and a starved and stunted cedar made a screen for him on the very brink of the cañon. Uncle Ben crept into this little basin and laid by his burdens, bestowing the canteen carefully on the shady side of a sotol.
Cady, letting the buckskins out now to a long swinging walk, was well over in the open country toward the divide. Already the team grew small in the distance, but the sound of their brisk feet came bell-clear across the still and windless air. They passed from sight into the little defile below the summit. Uncle Ben crawled to the cañon's edge and peered cautiously through the laurel.
While he had been climbing west and up for fifteen minutes the cañon had dropped west and down; so that it was already a respectable precipice over which he looked. Looking down, the cañon seemed incredibly steep as it fell away into the box. But the mountain itself rose stiffly with each westward mile; as the floodway plunged deep and deeper, bristling headlands of the cañon wall, jutting to bold cape and promontory, deep-gulfed by chasmed voids of nothingness between, rose high and higher, cliff on cliff, tier on tier; dimming to beauty beyond the pearl-misted abyss of the outmost gulf, but nearer by, all threatening, bleak and grim.
“Dern my eyes!” muttered Uncle Ben. “Here I've never seen the Grand Cañon yet! How silly of me! Deleted ass!”
He turned his eyes to Saddle Gap. Cady was in the open again, on the last steep pitch. He gained the divide, paused there a breathing space, sky-lined sharply against the blue; he dipped swiftly from sight. Uncle Ben waited.
Stir and clamor in the air, a hollow drumming against the cliffs, a rising wave of sound that shaped to the measured beat of horse hoofs, echoed and tossed from wall to high wall. Far below two midget horsemen crawled to view round a curve in the cañon.
An intervening shoulder hid them, the echoes dwindled to a drone; swelled suddenly as the horsemen came out into the nearer reaches of the cañon. Uncle Ben lay very still. They rode at leisure. They came closer; their faces could be seen—Apgar and Banner.
“This is final,” said Teagardner softly. “They might be guilty and not do this or innocent and not do this; they can't be innocent and do this.”
They rode below him; their words reached his hiding place.
“They've gone on, of course,” said Banner. “This is rather useless, you know.”
“In a way, yes. Not a chance that anything is wrong. Or only one chance out of all possible chances. We cannot afford to take that one chance. From now on we must omit no precaution. Do you keep a sharp lookout that no tracks turn aside. That old man is capable of anything.”
“We will be very wary of that dangerous person.” The palpable sneer was as much for Apgar as for Teagardner. “Why, if I may ask, did you find it expedient to entertain a fossil so formidable?”
“The man is Nestor; his influence with the community can hardly be overestimated. His word has almost the force of law. That stiff-necked old fool has always disliked me and distrusted me. Now he has seen for himself; his word will silence any chance questioning about us. Much more to the purpose, he will make no questioning of his own. It could hardly have fallen out better. I had pressed him to a longer stay; his own affairs called him back. So much for that. For the rest, sir, you grow insubordinate. It is not for you to call my acts into question. You forget yourself, I think.”
“This endless wait, wait, wait has been the most tedious business of my life,” returned Banner sullenly. “Only two days more—thank God for that!”
“It was necessary. Just as it will be necessary for us to stay on for a while—afterward.”
“For you, doubtless. You are the owner. But I am merely a blacksmith.”
“You are under my orders,” said Apgar haughtily.
“Until the job is finished—no longer. Then I move on. I am no enlisted man; nor are you an officer. I find you are too patient and painstaking for my temperament.” Banner's voice had been raised in anger. Even so, the fossil's straining ears could hardly hear the last sneering words. Apgar's reply, plainly vehement, was unintelligible; the fossil could only make out a word here and there. They rode on.
Uncle Ben twisted a few small tufted twigs from the dwarfed cedar, squirmed back to his pack, took his field glass from the sheath and masked it with the cedar twigs—lest some chance sparkle or reflection of sunlight on glass should catch a prowling eye—and trained it on Saddle Gap from the rim of his rocky stronghold. When the two horsemen reached the divide Uncle Ben's old eyes watched from behind his Lilliputian rampart.
They shunned the sky line; dismounting, they crept to the crest with a caution second only to Uncle Ben's, and peered over through a spyglass of their own; crawled back, mounted again, and turned back toward Rockingstone.
“All safe—the old fossil is gone,” croaked the old fossil grimly.
He dropped back into his shelter and buckled his field glasses into their case. He next became suddenly aware that his rocky stronghold, soaking up the sun, was uncomfortably warm, and that he was dripping with perspiration. Comforting himself with a mouthful of water from the canteen, he replaced it in the shade, unstoppered, that such faint breeze as stirred might help to keep it cool. Then he lay back and sweltered.
When his enemies passed he crawled to the outpost cedar to listen.
They rode by, wordless and sullen. When they passed out of sight down the cañon Uncle Ben got to his feet with a sigh of relief, arranged his pack, grub sack, canteen and spyglass, picked up his rifle, and set forth for the crest of Washboard Hill.
He climbed in long slow zigzags, and each one took him farther and farther from Rockingstone Box, until at last he came out to the southern edge of Washboard Hill. The great long lake spread out below him in full view, inlet and sprawling creek, gulf and bay, deep fiord and dotted islands; the black crater above Fort McRae; the far white-gleaming crest of the dam; the high sharp profile of Caballo Mountain beyond, a spear point thrusting at the dam; the misty winding valley below; in the west the towering bulk of San Mateo, the long panorama of the Black Range, the nearer jagged outline of Cuchillo Negro; in the south, the far blue parapets of Cook's Peak, and Florida Mountain swimming in blue haze.
Teagardner dropped from the edge of Washboard to the southern slope, and there took to a narrow trail-like ledge. It bent to the right and came out in a deep notch; by taking to the hillside he had avoided a long and wasted climb to an abrupt step-off; in fact he followed, on the hillside at least, an old Indian war trail. The Apache on the warpath shunned the broad and easy way and traveled in the most inaccessible and improbable country he could find.
He walked slowly, with frequent rests; but as the afternoon wore on he went no more slowly than at first. He traversed another weary sequence of zigzags; again he left the staircase hill to wind round the southern slope. When first he had followed that old trail it had been lately traveled by savage warriors; it was fresh marked by broken twig and patrin. Far down the steep, Uncle Ben saw monuments of his building—and another's. The Horace Greeley Mine—so long ago!
“Old Pres!” Uncle Ben whispered. His bent shoulders straightened; his faded eyes kindled with a smile for his youth and his dead friend.
He turned into a second gap-tooth note! He drank sparingly; the canteen was light now. Then he set himself to a third splintered slope, and so came late to the last and highest peak of Washboard Hill, looking down upon Rockingstone Valley.
For some time he had kept in toward the right; he was near the edge; close at hand, beyond the canon, the northern wall heaved up in mighty masonry
Again he put by his pack; taking his glasses only, again he crawled to the brink, seeking cover behind a prickly pear. This time his caution was needed. A third of a mile away, beyond the mouth of the box cañon and almost on a level with him, a sentinel sat under the Rocking Stone and kept watch up the cañon.
The old man squirmed back, took up his belongings—heavy belongings now!—and made a wide detour to the south. He found a hazardous way down a shattered limestone cliff to a tumbled and bowlder-strewn slope; turned back to the right and came to a southbound cañon haeding in a deep pass gashed between Washboard Hill and the upshooting granite walls of Rockingstone Valley; a steep slope on this side, sheer and inaccessible toward the valley.
New thin soil on the granite, kinder than the tumult of broken stone in the limestone country, was shaggy with shrub and bush, brown mahogany brush or thrifty laurel, with here and there a gnarled scrub oak.
At the head of the pass Uncle Ben came to a thicket of greenery. He leveled his field glass across the dizzy chasm to the watchful sentinel, and then turned to inspect the valley.
Rocking Horse Camp was tiny in the depth. The wagon was gone, the saddle horses were gone; a wisp of smoke from the cookhouse was the only sign of life. He turned his glasses toward the western water gap; after a long and patient search he found that which he sought, high on the slopes—a second sentinel, keeping watch toward the lake.
The cook bustled out and carried in an arm load of wood. Uncle Ben waited—and waiting, was suddenly assailed by fears and doubts. Had he taken too much upon himself? Should he have called upon the authorities; warned, at least, the soldiers guarding the dam? “Only two days more?” Yes, two days—but did that mean to the start—or to the finish? What if he had waited too long? Sweat beaded on his forehead, oozed clammy in the palms of his hands. For the first time his stout old heart trembled; for the first time he felt the burden of his years. He brushed the cold sweat from his forehead with his sleeve and waited, sick and shaken.
Not for long. Mule team and wagon came in sight, toiling up through the water gap, two slow horsemen behind. Uncle Ben drew a long breath.
“You cussed old fool!” he growled joyfully. “As if any man alive wouldn't surely wait for moonless nights—only two nights more—for such an enterprise as this! Lost confidence in your thinker, have you?... I'm a very old man and a very tired man and an empty one. What's that? Don't you lie to me, Ben! Damn you—you were scared!”
The wagon turned up the road to the powder house; the horsemen came on to camp. Teagardner took up his glasses; his hand shook. The horsemen were Banner and Apgar. With the teamster went the men he had met as Brooks, Miller and Hayes of the quondam night shift, Baker and Case of the day shift. He had identified the nearer sentry as Green. That left Dorsey for the man on guard at the farther outpost. “Humph! They took a heap of pains to pick good English and Irish names, all except Apgar. Dern him! That sounds like a Welsh name too—though I have no mind of it.”
The wagon drew up at the powder-house door. There greatly to the astonishment of the onlooker five suitcases were unloaded.
They loaded the wagon with boxes from the powder house—boxes which they handled with great care. Teagardner slipped a long cartridge into the rifle. “Butchers!” His hand was steady now, he cuddled the long rifle to his cheek. But he laid it down reluctantly. “That would let five get away—Apgar with them. But by the living God, if they bring that stuff to camp I'll take no more chances. They all go together!”
Kendall drove down the hill with marked caution. The five men picked up the five suitcases and went into the powder house, reappearing after a little, each bearing a suitcase unrecklessly. They followed the wagon.
Plainly the suitcases were laden with some higher explosive than dynamite, to be carried by man power to the river; or possibly to be taken in Apgar's car.
“Bring it to camp! Bring in the bunch!” implored Teagardner fervently. “Then, Lord, let thy servant depart in pieces!”
But they did not bring it into camp. The wagon came to the forks of the road and went on toward the lake for several hundred yards. Kendall unhitched and started the mules to camp. The burden bearers followed slowly, deposited the five suitcases gingerly beneath the wagon and turned back to camp. The sun was low over San Mateo Peak; the two sentries came down from their respective aeries.
“That will be all for to-night,” quoth Uncle Ben.
He shouldered his load; he followed the downward course of the cañon for a southward mile. A hundred arroyos and little intersecting cañons had joined it, rushing down from the granite dome behind. At last he turned aside, where the slightest of these cañons came in at right angles to the main course, through a narrow cleft between walls of smooth and polished granite. He followed this painfully between walls ever higher and narrowing; his weary feet slipped on the curving glossy floor. He came to a sudden turn, and there, high in the wall above him, a thinnest trickle of water crept from a moss-grown crevice and fell—drip—drip—drip!—into a basin, slightly oval, smooth and symmetrical. Time and that falling water, drop by drop, had hollowed that basin in the living rock. Granite is stubborn—water finds a way.
The old man lay flat on the smooth floor and drank deep from the brimming pool. He sat up and opened his grub sack, finding there jerky, cheese and crackers, and a small sack of ground coffee; the last, with a small tin cup and a tiny bag of salt, packed in a clean and empty tomato can. He dipped up water and washed his hands, holding the cup between his teeth; he poured water on his handkerchief and swabbed his salty face. He sniffed regretfully at the coffee sack, and repacked it, shaking his head. “I do believe I'm tired!” said Uncle Ben.
He made a joyful meal of his three staples; he thumped the granite floor tentatively. “Hard!” he sighed. He made his pack, refilled his canteen and went down the narrow way at a gait between a scuff and a swagger. The rest had stiffened his poor old knees and the good supper had stiffened his brave old heart.
Once in the open he crawled under the next bush to a soft mattress of fresh warm earth, folded his old hat for pillow, tucked the warm sky about his shoulders, and fell luxuriously asleep.
The wan crescent of low late moon rode hour-high when Uncle Ben woke, between two and three the next morning. Uncle Ben was something wan himself—not to mention that he was lame and stiff and sore. But he had open country to cross before he could win to the black cliff of his tryst, and he was very desirous to cross that open before daylight.
He set forth, limping. Yet he made good time, for his way was downward now. He passed the paved rocklands and came to a low country overblown with dune and drift, wind-borne from the endless sand hills beyond the deep-drowned river.
It was heavy walking. Dawn sparkled in the east; there was no time for delay. He pushed on through the deep sand at the narrowest isthmus of it, and came to the cover of little broken hills in the first dim of day.
So far he had borne quartering to the south, bent to cross that long bare finger of sand. He turned lakeward now, due west. Far below, a black ragged line peeped up, irresolute over the down-rushing ridges—a furtive wavering line that made the black crown of his obsidian cliff.
Sun gold blazed on the high crest of San Mateo Peak, flamed swiftly down the tawny sides of it, crept eastward, sluggish, from bench to low bench. But when Teagardner came to his trysting place the cool black shadow of Fra Christobal yet lay dim and darkling on the wide lake, on the long slow ridges behind him and on the black dike of the trysting cliff.
The low waves murmured along that burnished dike and foamed at its glassy angles. At the southern extremity of it, where a little bay ran in, Uncle Ben built a tiny fire and boiled coffee. His features arranged themselves to joyous expectancy.
Breakfast over, he arranged his bed by folding his hat once more to a pillow and resting his gray head upon it.
“Now if I could be 'sustained and soothed by an unfaltering trust'—or even a lively stock company,” said Uncle Ben drowsily, “I might go—to sleep. I think maybe I—ergh!—will—anyway!
VII
JOE CADY came early to McRae Inlet, storing his saddle in a neighboring tree top. He stowed his cargo in the little boat and embarked at once. It was not much of a cargo, even for a boat as small as Clayton's; a plump grub sack, a 30-40 rifle, two heavy double blankets, a heavy saddle blanket. But it had been ample cargo for Cady's horse when added to forty pounds of saddle and a hundred and sixty pounds of Cady.
Joe was no great waterman and made but awkward and floundering progress at first. But he took his own time, putting back and head to it.
He came into the main lake just where Engle Ferry had been; so much he knew by reason of the level black headland at his left, supporting McRae Crater. There could be no mistaking that frowning foursquare battlement.
Even in such brief experience Joe had learned to hold his small craft more or less in a general direction, and to maintain a decidedly forward motion. By this time he might have been ranked fairly as a willing seaman.
He turned up the broad lake and pulled sturdily against the slight and almost imperceptible current. Rowing grew easier as the boat moved faster; Joe began to have time to think of what the great dam really meant, and to marvel at so much of new and strange in this old valley.
Once and again he rested his oars to enjoy some new beauty or last surprise of scroll-saw shore or newborn island. A queer feeling came to him as he reflected that he must have been rowing for the last hour over the old round-up ground by Zapato Bottom.
Again, the lake water was clear. Now the water of the Rio Grande had been brown—too thick for batter and too thin for dough. Plainly the mud had settled. Joe wondered how long it would take for the settlings to fill the entire lake basin, and what provision, if any, had been made at the dam for drawing off the silt. What had Uncle Ben said about deep sluiceways? It would certainly be a hard problem. Another thing—the sand used to blow in and then blow out again; but what blew in now would stay in. Joe looked over the side, and caught his breath. He floated above a still and silent forest, far beneath him in the clear depths. Leafless and bare it stretched far away across the lake floor; at the left he had a glimpse of unforgotten outlines, buried headland and hill—why, this was Alamocita bosque! Cady peered long into those deeps, remembering. He straightened up at last, shiversome, and resumed his voyagings
So far, Cady's attention had been fairly halved between navigation and the practicalities of wonder and delight. But now his thought took up the day's puzzling work. For long he speculated upon the relations and reactions of surmised explosives in connection with problematical sluiceways of unknown depth; he came at last to the sage conclusion that such matters had best be confined to the abstract, and that a practical demonstration was highly undesirable.
So deciding, he turned his head and saw, close on the starboard bow, the shining cliff of his rendezvous.
“Joe, I own up—I was scared! I never was scared so bad in my life. I don't believe anybody else was ever scared so bad, not in the whole world—or had so good a reason.”
“You thought we'd waited too long, Uncle Ben?”
“Just that. And when I glimpsed that wagonful of murderers coming back after all—I want to tell you, I felt good! And right then I saw a great light.”
The boat was anchored in the little cove under the cliff. Joe and Uncle Ben sat in the shade of a great cedar. A practical observer, noting the coals of the dying fire, the grounds in the empty coffee can, the half loaf of bread, and the half slab of bacon on a flat stone, the scorched and greasy prongs of the two green and fresh-peeled mesquite branches beside the fire, might well havee glanced at the earnest noon-high sun and drawn the inference that here were men who had just been eating dinner.
“Joe,” said Uncle Ben with conviction, “you and me, we've been a pair of damned fools!”
“Aye, aye, sir!” said Joe—jolly tar that he was—and knuckled his forelock smartly.
“Blind, pig-headed, rattle-brained fools!” said Uncle Ben, encouraged. “We're a disgrace to Engle. We had no right to take chances, like we've been doing. 'Tisn't as if we was young fellows with no families, riskin' nothing but ourselves. No, sir, Joe! I reckon we got more families than any two men in the world!”
Joe nodded a sober assent. “All them below the dam is ours, just now.”
“Exactly. We're responsible for all those lives. And here we've been frisking and sky-larkin' round like a couple of kids just out of three-cornered pants. Our duty was to make Engle Dam safe and not to be makin' grand-stand plays to amuse the angels. It's only by the mercy of God that them dachshunds didn't beat us to it and blow up Engle Dam.”
“But until you actually saw them load the wagon with dynamite yesterday you were only guessing, ” objected Cady.
“Guessing!” said Teagardner, “Guessing! Commodore, when you take your observations and figure out your latitude and longitude do you 'just guess' that you're maybe somewhere about such-and-such a place?”
“Why—no,” said Joe, much impressed by this professional argument. “But wouldn't you kind of hate to kill eleven men on snap judgment and then find out they was innocent?'
“No, I wouldn't! You know I wouldn't. Not when the innocent men are as guilty as them eleven hyenas are. There's fifty thousand more or less innocent people below that dam, if you like. Don't talk to me!"
“It was a mighty hard thing to believe,” said Joe.
“You knew it, but you wouldn't believe it,” jeered Teagardner. “Do you believe it now?”
“Sure I do. The choice is not left me.”
“Listen to me, then! You remember how I bragged what-all I was going to do to that gang—make a clean sweep and everything? Well, that plan is all changed. Our business is to keep them from dynamiting Engle Dam. We'll row along up to-night and let the curlicues go.
“But and nevertheless, because we've played the fool once is no reason for doing it again. This place where we are now is where we have no right to be. By all good rights we should have got ourselves killed yesterday. Not us! We wanted to do the job with a flourish—make a full clean-up and fix Apgar so he'd have a little time for regret. I did, anyway. Pure self-indulgence!
“But since we are here it would be an added folly not to use the advantage we have gained by taking a foolish risk. It was an unjustifiable risk, but we got away with it. As a result we can slip up there to-night and find that dynamite, and then hide out in easy gunshot. Once we've done that the game will be in our hands; we can shoot into that boatload of dynamite when and whenever we get ready. Once we get that far along we will have a right to wait. It would be a rank shame to have all that powder wasted. We might just as well lay still till we can get enough Huns for a mess.”
“I'm with you there,” said Joe. “I'd never get over hating it if we couldn't use some of them. And I'll be honest with you. It would always grind me if Head Devil Apgar was to get plumb clear.”
“Me too,” confessed Uncle Ben.
“I wouldn't want to dynamite Apgar, exactly, either,” said Joe. “He deserves to know what's going on, Apgar does.”
“Admiral,” said Uncle Ben, “I'd be ashamed to tell you even half of all the different surprises I've planned for Apgar. There was one about tying him under the rocking stone and wedging it over on him, right slow. Too bad! That was to induce him to tell who furnished him with all that TNT—or whatever it was that he got. Wish I knew about that. He brought some of it back from those little pleasure trips he was always takin' in his car, I reckon, Don't you forget Bowman, Joe!
“I've got him logged, sir,” said the nautical man,
“Look, Joe! We'll build a compromise about Mr. Apgar. It is not just or fair to suffer the inconvenience of being a fool and at the same time miss all the compensations of it. Am I right? I am. Then we go up to-night and find that powder boat, real quiet. It is possible that they'll set a guard. Well, I'll have my old gun in my hand. If there's a guard, then you and me and Mister Guard will be done with all our troubles at one and the same time.”
“But if there's no guard there, then we'll be free to consider the case of Mr. Kinny Apgar?”
“Exactly. I certainly would like to give Apgar a thrill. Now, listen! Here's what we will do if their powder scow is where I think it is—at the island I told you about, hereinafter referred to as Ship Island. There's where it is, Joe—right at Ship Island. And I'll tell you why. Yesterday afternoon that wagon got back in camp too early to have made two trips to the lake left, and too late for just one trip. They had been ferrying the stuff to Ship Island in the little boat—that's what! Not to mention that they wouldn't dare risk mooring the big boat at the mainland. Somebody might come along. Mighty few does, but there's a man once in a while.
“And they wouldn't dare bring the big boat across to be loaded. Men in a little skiff—nobody would think anything of that—fishing or just rowing for fun. Natural enough—never cause a second thought. But a big boat—big as an old-fashioned ferryboat, likely—that would be different. A man would want to know. No, sir, that big boat was never to be seen. So we'll find it at Ship Island. It can't be any other way. Now half a mile this side of Ship Island, and farther out in the lake, is another little old land no bigger than a brick church, a little knoll all thick with cedar brush for you to hide in. Well, I'll maroon you there, and I'll drop down a ways and go ashore, hide my boat and myself and try to study up frivolities for Apgar.
“Your part will be to keep your gun sights on that dynamite, and to shoot right into the big middle of it under any of the following circumstances: First, if they show any signs of casting loose; second, if they show any signs of suspecting anything amiss—like rowing over toward your island, for instance; third, any time you catch ten of them Germans on Ship Island at once—or nine, or eight; fourth, any time you feel like it.
“In the big meantime if I get Apgar where I want him, I'll fire a shot as a signal. When you hear a shot—shoot! These fellows are busy. They'll have no time for shooting. If they do they'll be making a mistake, for any shot, anywhere, will be your signal. Don't wait. We'll take no more risks, So long as we're there, unsuspected, we'll give Apgar his chance till to-morrow night at quitting time. Not another minute. When you see your crowd fixin' to pull ashore for the night, don't you wait any longer. Blow 'em to hell!
Uncle Ben Was Suddenly Assailed by Fears and Doubts. Should He Have Called Upon the Authorities; Warned, at Least, the Soldiers Guarding the Dam?
“You may have to side em, Joe. We don't know how much of that stuff isn't dynamite, and we don't know what else it is. If it should happen to be all TNT and much of it, it might stir up a wave to wash you off, or drop Ship Island on top of you, or upset your own little island—anything. It must be powerful stuff if they figured on smashing Engle Dam with it. But then again they was going to use it as a depth bomb there, I reckon.
“And anyway you size up the contract you are getting the short end of it, Joe. That is a matter which I would recommend to your particular attention. It may most mighty easy mean curtains for little Joe; but Uncle Ben, he'll be safe ashore.”
“It is a sailor's duty,” said Joe fervently, “to obey orders if he breaks owners.”
Uncle Ben twinkled. “Your watch below, then. I slept all morning. Once we leave here we get no more sleep till our job is done. We've got to make a good job of it, my bold mariner. We want to be a credit to Engle.”
“Bos'n,” said Uncle Ben, “wake up! It has just struck hell's bells!”
“Eh! What!” Joe came to his feet with a leap. “Anything wrong?”
“Nary. But this might be your last sunset, and I want to tell you it is some sunset! Thought you ought to see it. Take a good big look, and then eat—it's all ready. Action is what I want—action! I haven't been so impatient before since I was a Missouri twelve-year-old and laid awake all night when Dan Rice's Circus was coming to Joplin.”
Cady looked at the flaming magnificence in the west, and then turned a slow and speculative eye to the north.
“Uncle Ben, either those fellows up there have gone back to Rocking Horse Camp now, or they haven't. If they stay where their powder is or if they leave a guard there—you and I are done seeing things. Get into the boat. I want to show you one more thing while the sunlight holds out.”
“But if they should be looking through a spyglass and see us?” objected Uncle Ben. “Only one chance in a million, of course, but”
“They'd see two men in a boat rowing downstream to Elephant Butte. Get into the boat. I'll pass up the coffee. The rest of the stuff we can eat any time. Bring your pack, Uncle Ben.”
“I suppose it is too late to quit now,” said Uncle Ben doubtfully, as Joe piled their slender outfit in the boat.
“Quit what?” said Joe, pushing off.
“Doing what I ought not to. Because somebody told me to, mostly. Might as well keep it up, I reckon. Man born of woman,” said Uncle Ben, “is a queer fish.”
Joe pulled out into the lake vigorously for a quarter of a mile. Then he turned downstream and shipped his oars. The boat drifted gently.
“There!” said Joe, and pointed. Uncle Ben looked over the side. A hundred feet beneath them, clear seen through the golden waters, was a long, low, rambling building, with other houses, smaller, clustered near by. The doors were open. White trunks and branches of two gigantic cottonwoods, tall and spectral, stood before the big house. Beyond were corrals, outbuildings, fences and long rows of an orchard—long rows fading in the dimness.
“Good God!" said Teagardner. “The old Gonzales place! Back water, Joe! Let me look. They were fine people, Joe. I've had a heap of good times here.”
“Me too. They were sure good people.”
Teagardner gazed long at that quiet house before he spoke again.
“All lived together—the old man and all his sons. When one of the boys got married they'd build a new house. Some of the daughters stayed here, too, when they married. And grandchildren! This was a fine old nest and mighty fine people!”
“Uncle Ben,” said Joe soberly, “this was more like a real home than any place I ever saw. It wasn't everybody just working for himself. They was pulling for the homestead.” The light died slowly; the old homestead dimmed and faded.
“They were fine people,” said Teagardner again. “Let's go, Joe.”
“Downstream?”
“Might as well, while the light holds. When it gets dark we can turn back.”
They drifted down; Joe's oars dipped softly and slowly; and Joe sang—because he could not help it—that saddest of all sad songs, La Golondrina:
Mansión de amor! Celestial Paraíso!
Nací en tu seno y mil diches gocé
Voy á partir á leianos regiones
Do nunca más, nunca más volveré!
“It wasn't a mansion—it was an old adobe,” said Uncle Ben. “And it wasn't a celestial paradise, either. But it was a damn sight better thing. It was a home.”
New Mexican twilights are brief, surprisingly brief to visitors from colder lands. The velvet dusk rushed down upon them, the stars blazed out.
“Port your hellum! Give him the spurs! Stand by on the weather brace! Ride him, cowboy, you're doing fine! Sta-ay with him! No'th—no'theast by south, three points west!
“All together, my hearties!”
Bawling these masterly commands in right seamanly spirit, Joe turned the boat's nose to the north and settled down for the long pull.
Your language is singularly superfluent and technical, captain,” said Teagardner gravely. “But you got a damn poor idea of a jolly deep-sea chantey. What you need for a nice clear starry night and an errand like ours is something cheerful, like this:
“The bells of hell go ting-a-ling-a-ling,
For you, but not for me!
I hear them angels sing-a-ling-a-ling,
Their conquering palms I see.
O Death, where is thy sting-a-ling-a-ling?
O Grave, thy victor-ree?
The bells of hell go ting-a-ling-a-ling,
For you, but not for me!”
VIII
THEY came to Ship Island in a whispering midnight; they crept along that wavering shore, groping in the shadows, so softly that the little lapping waves made more sound than they; and in the darkest shadow under overhanging trees they found the hidden boat they sought. They boarded her with infinite caution. Side by side they made a snail-like progress to the farther end, feeling with probing fingers at all they came to—a workbench, barrels, boxes, oars, litter, windlasses and several coils of wire rope.
“Here's the dynamite!” announced Cady in a subdued voice. “There's a mountain of it—I can smell it. This is the time Engle puts one over on Berlin! And there's no watchman. Even if there should be a watchman somewhere up on the island the worst he can do is to set off the powder himself and save us the trouble.”
“Well, then, why don't you speak up natural? No need of keeping your voice down. Cap Tuttle told me once,” said Teagardner complacently, “that a couple of these astronomer chaps figured out the planet Neptune, size, home and habits, before any human eye had ever seen it just by observing the results of causes and reasoning from hither to hence. I don't see how them astronomers had anything on us. We done discovered a boat that same way. And we got the size and shape mighty near right too. She nearly fits the specifications of an old square-end ferry-boat so far as here. But by cripes! My hands report that this end is the queerest rig of a boat they ever felt of. Strike a match, Joe. Let's see what new kind of a devil machine German science has went and gone and rigged up now.”
Joe struck a match, and then several more. “Well, I am damned!” he said. “They've made two boats! There's a big one, this one we are on—a smaller one coupled right against it behind, with the dynamite lashed tight—two or three tons of it. Wait, now let me figure on this, Uncle Ben. If you can study out what you have never seen I ought to be able to get the why and how of what I can see. Let me feel round.
“They've got two big spars running out behind the big boat, clear of the water. The smaller boat is lashed to them two spars; they are to hold up the weight of the dynamite.
“When they get close to the dam they'll anchor—here's a big homemade anchor with three prongs”
“It's a grapnel,” said Uncle Ben.
“I don't know the name of it, but I know what it's for—it's a grabhook. And I had my hands on a little one back there—good deal smaller, but the same shape.... I see! Are there lights on the top of the dam, Uncle Ben?”
“Lights and guards.”
“That's it, then,” said Cady. “They aim to work their old scow down pretty close to the dam, and anchor there. Then they cut the lashings on the spars, and the little square boat sinks under the weight of the dynamite. They've got valves or plugs, likely, to scuttle her with. They'll hook some of those little wire cables on her first. They know just how deep to let her down; they'll lower her down with them windlasses; the big boat will float her and hold the dynamite just as deep as they want it. Why, Uncle Ben, this will be the biggest depth bomb in the world!”
“Was to be,” suggested Uncle Ben
“Right you are! Was to be! When this craft leaves here she goes as dust! Now, let's see. They'll have the battery wires connected up with the dynamite, and that little anchor—yes, they might have one of those empty barrels for a buoy, or maybe two or three with a little platform in between—they'll fasten their batteries on that, anchor it, set their time mechanism to going and pile into the boat they've towed along to row home in. Then they'll turn the barge loose and let it drift down to the dam, with the dynamite underneath. Or maybe they'll have the anchor cable fixed with a pulley on the barge, so they can let the cable out from the rowboat, and guide the barge just where they want it by rowing one way or the other till they are ready to let the cable slip
“Or they can tie a knot in the cable to jam in the pulley if they don't want the barge to drift into the light. Or a traveler. That will be it. When they've let the barge down as near to the light as they dare they'll send a traveler down the cable and jam it in the pulley block. Why, damn their eyes, they've thought of everything! They couldn't have a gas engine to work their old barge; it would be heard. They have to row. They've thought of everything. This is what they've been working on—all these windlasses and contrivances. And they're not ready yet. They've not got their wire ropes attached to their dynamite boat, nor their battery wires hooked up. They'll be here to-morrow. Praise God! I'm sure glad it's my gun that is going to set this stuff off to-morrow!”
“I wish it was my old gun,” said Teagardner, half enviously. “It has been a good old gun. Is yet. I half promised Apgar to show him some surprising marksmanship with it too.”
“You make a divvy of that grub, take your sack and go ashore to entertain Apgar,” said Joe indignantly. “I'm the naval authority of this A. E. F., and don't you forget it. You let me have the spyglass, so I can see what's going on here, and I'll tend to the dynamite part. You look after Apgar and I'll hold down the ten others. I can do easy thinking, as I just showed you—if I've got anything to think about. But I'm noways nimble-minded enough to play with Herr Apgar if he's the man that planned this job. Let's go hunt my island. We've got nothing more to do here.
“There's your old island,” said Teagardner, when they were out in the clear starlight. “But we'd better change our plans again, Joe. Set me ashore and you keep the boat—and keep it about an inch from your hand. You may need it. There's an awful lot of that dynamite and stuff—two or three tons, I reckon. We don't know just what it may do in the way of an amateur tidal wave.”
“Say when,” said Joe, and changed his course.
“There's Apgar's landing, over here,” said Uncle Ben. “Drop down about a quarter, and you'll see a little point. Anywhere beyond that will do me.”
Joe doubled the little cape and drove the boat ashore on a shelving bank. Picking up his rifle Uncle Ben stepped out—and immediately reached back for the boat.
“Here, this won't do! Quicksand!” he said. He laid the rifle in the extra oarlocks, clutched the gunwale with both hands, wrenched his feet loose with a violent effort. Behind each foot as it came free the quicksand closed with a loud sucking.
“Bad stuff!" said Uncle Ben. “Near lost a boot. You scout along up toward the point till you find me a rocky place to land on.” He squeezed by Joe into the stern of the boat, so that his weight there would lift the bow out of the sand while Joe backed off.
The rocky place was soon found and Uncle Ben disembarked successfully.
“Well—so long, old-timer,” said Joe cheerfully. “I'm off!”
“Good luck, Joe. So long!”
Uncle Ben sat on a bowlder for a long time, a very thoughtful old man. From time to time he removed his hat and scratched his head. To vary this proceeding he rubbed the side of his nose vigorously or twisted his beard.
The moon rose, a thin sickle. Then Uncle Ben bestirred himself briskly, as one who has arrived at a decision. He took off his boots, tied them together and strung them round his neck, first stuffing his socks into the boots. He rolled up his overalls, picked up gun and grub sack and stepped gingerly into the water.
He turned up the lake, keeping at the water's edge; he passed Apgar's landing. Fifty yards beyond he came to a little sudden cove no bigger than a hall bedroom, and hardly as wide. Uncle Ben investigated, finding that the little cove, a bowlder and a clump of half-grown cedars, made an ideal covert.
It was for something like this that Uncle Ben had been searching. He burrowed under the low branches to a satisfactory lodging place, and stayed there.
Dawn came, and the spreading wild beauty of the lake; the pageant of the sun on San Mateo; the long slow shadow from Fra Christobal, blacker and deeper for the brilliant sunlight all beyond and all about; an enchanted shadow, fresh with an incense not to be forgotten; the slow sun at last
Long after a wagon came creaking to the landing; a water wagon, Kendall's, carrying three men besides Kendall: Case, Dorsey and Miller. Close behind followed a car, Apgar's, carrying three men besides Apgar: Banner, Baker and Green.
“Now then, off you go! Green, you bring the boat back and ride up with Kendall,” said Apgar. “I'll row out after dinner for a final inspection. You fellows ought to have everything ready by noon at most; then you can sleep till sundown.”
Apgar turned his car and went spinning up the road. Kendall drove into the shallow water, turned the wagon and began pumping into the tank. The six others crowded into the boat and rowed out to Ship Island. An eternity lapsed—almost an hour—before Green rowed back from Ship Island and climbed onto the wagon.
The last sound of that wagon's departure died away. Sometime later a branch of cedar brush came softly down the lake, close to the shore, bobbing gently, drifting with the slow current. It would seem that the current set in to the shore, for the cedar brush drifted against the boat. Had any man been there to see—as there was not—he would have noted that this bobbing cedar brush was not one large branch, but a number of small branches, lately cut by a jackknife and bunched to make a miniature raft; that along the top of that raft lay a very heavy rifle and a very light flour sack, together with a leather belt holding a few enormous cartridges, and a soft gray hat; and would further have noted that the rifle was held in position by a wrinkled hand.
Had this aroused curiosity—as might have happened—this man who was not there might have looked closer and seen under the cedar branches a withered and wrinkled brown face and a sprightly eye; both appertaining to Uncle Ben Teagardner.
Uncle Ben pushed the rifle into the boat, holding it level, so that it barely cleared the side, and dropped it gently on the thwarts. Belt, hat and flour sack followed. Then he ducked under the boat and came up on the lower side.
Sheltered from any possible watchful eye on Ship Island Uncle Ben worked up the side of the boat to the bank; he crawled, belly-flat, and unsnapped the boat's chain from a ring at the juniper trees; slowly, cautiously, he pushed the boat into deep water where the slow current caught it and bore it away, drifting idly, rocking, dancing in the sunlight. The cedar brush followed, gay-bobbing, but fell behind because it was closer inshore, where the current was slower. On that side of the boat farthest from Ship Island Uncle Ben Teagardner floated peacefully, supporting himself with a light hand on an oarlock.
Mr. Kinny Apgar drove his car to the landing place at about half past one. He leaped out briskly. Then he stared and swore. His boat was gone.
Apgar was furious. Cursing Green for carelessness, with a guttural oath quite unlike our kindly, familiar English speech, he set out down the lake shore in search of the derelict. A few hundred yards down he came to a low rocky cape; and here his face cleared, for he saw the runaway boat, safely stranded on the farther side of a little bay beyond. He marched down to the beach, still muttering his wrath.
It was sticky going. A little crust of ground quivered under his foot. He skipped forward lightly; his foot went in over the shoe top. Cursing savagely, he lunged again. His left foot plunged through the crust, calf deep. He tugged to free himself His right foot broke through.
Thoroughly frightened, Apgar went down on hands and knees. With a prodigious effort he pulled his right foot free. The quicksand closed with a sucking gurgle. His left foot sank deeper. He threw his body round in an effort to turn back. His foot would not twist. He floundered, heaved and strained; he felt the quicksand quiver and shake under his hands, and rose up shuddering. The crust shook to a jelly under the frantic thrust with which he rose. His right foot broke through. He struggled desperately, sinking deeper with every move.
The quicksand rose above his knees.
He stood a moment, terrified. Round him, in a circle of which he was the center, the crust bent and wrinkled to darting cracks, to fine radiating cracks with connecting ares—cracks which smoothed instantly and darted out again in another place, like some horrible animated cartoon, flashing always to the same ghastly shape of a gigantic spider web. Here and there a crack gaped wide to a horrible mouth, square and deep—which quivered an instant, closed with a shuddering gurgle, and left no trace.
Apgar shrieked aloud. He was mid-thigh in the quicksand, he went deeper with every frantic struggle; it was his sinking weight which tensed the yielding crust to that nightmare web, to those awful gaping mouths!
He turned his distorted face toward Ship Island; he fumbled at the revolver at his belt. If he could make them hear and understand! They could see him. Baker could swim.
“Hello there! You seem to be in trouble!” said a voice behind him.
Apgar's body whirled. Old Man Teagardner with his long rifle in his hand came slowly down a sandy ridge through the ragged gap of a mesquite hedge. Apgar screamed; tears of relief came to his eyes as he pushed the revolver back into the scabbard.
“Oh, thank God! Thank God! I'm caught in the quicksands, Teagardner! Help me out! Get the oars and the boat seats. Hurry! Hurry!”
“Oh, don't be so scared,” said Teagardner placidly. He moved toward the boat and then stopped, beaming. “You want to hear the war news first. Mighty good! I got it last night. The French have taken Soissons and crossed the Crise River, the entire Marne salient is crushed, the Yanks are hammering north.”
“Teagardner! Uncle Ben! Hurry! Help me out!”
“Why?” said Uncle Ben. He sat down on a rock with his long rifle on his knees, “Why?” he repeated unemotionally; and with the flat and colorless tones came to Apgar the stabbing thought which showed him trapped and doomed: Uncle Ben was supposed to be now in Colorado! His terror had forgotten that.
Apgar went white to the lips; his voice broke out in a dreadful scream
“Almighty God!”
“God, baby killer? This is late to talk of God. Think it over, Apgar!”
“For God's sake, Teagardner!”
The sand rose to his thighs. He was weeping, raving, cursing, begging. Then a new note came to his cracked and straining voice. “Is it money you want? Get me out! You shall have ten thousand twenty—fifty!”
“Not for all Germany,” said Teagardner
“Then, by God, I'll shoot you now!” Apgar clutched at the forgotten gun.
“That would be very curious.” Uncle Ben glanced at him indifferently. “You might try it. Perhaps after you kill me I'll come and pull you out. I don't think you could hit me, but you might as well try it.” He looked out across the water. “I'm pretty old. A year or so more or less won't hurt me.” He turned his stern eyes back to Apgar and spoke sharply. “Well, baby killer, why don't you shoot?”
Screaming hoarsely Apgar leveled the gun and fired. The bullet struck between Teagardner's feet.
Teagardner held up his hand
“I thought so,” he said, and pointed, “Look!”
Fascinated, without power to disobey, Apgar twisted his head to look.
With a crash of inconceivable thunders Ship Island leaped and shattered in spouting flame, awful lines of red and black against a rocking sky. Apgar fell forward on his hands; his revolver dropped; he struggled up again, stunned and dazed. The crashing air, in thousand-volleyed shocks, came back from San Mateo, from Christobal cliffs.
A giant wave rose from the hissing caldron where that lost island had been. It swept down the lake at incredible speed; the edge of it broke on the rocky cape above a white crest flung up in the sky overleaped the cape and flooded the little bay, buried Apgar for one heartbeat's space and broke to Teagardner's knees where he stood, staring. Receding, it swept the boat away; while on the broad lake the great wave went foaming, roaring by.
The water fell from the little bay in white runnels of froth! Apgar covered his face, moaning.
He was hip deep in the quicksand.
Teagardner stared hard at the little island in the lake and caught at last a glimpse of a little boat. Joe's boat—tossed in the swirl of crossing wave and the flashing of white oars in the sun. His heart leaped with joy at that sight
Teagardner limped up the slope toward the little cape. After a few steps he turned and called back.
“Apgar, you've dropped your gun. You shot at the wrong man. You should have used your bullet or ourself. Well—I'm going now.”
Apgar turned wild imploring eyes to him. “You won't leave me here to die like a dog! For God's sake, Teagardner! Have pity, have mercy!”
“The mercy you planned!” said Teagardner.
(THE END)