Bransford of Rainbow Range Part 18

CHAPTER XI

THE NETTLE, DANGER

"Bushel o' wheat, bushel o' rye-- All 'at ain't ready, holler 'I'!"

--_Hide and Seek._

Double Mountain lies lost in the desert, dwarfed by the greatness all about. Its form is that of a crater split from north to south into irregular halves. Through that narrow cleft ran a straight road, once the well-traveled thoroughfare from Rainbow to El Paso. For there was precious water within those upheaved walls; it was but three miles from portal to portal; the slight climb to the divide had not been grudged.

Time was when campfires were nightly merry to light the narrow cliffs of Double Mountain; when songs were gay to echo from them; when this had been the only watering place to break the long span across the desert.

The railroad had changed all this, and the silent leagues of that old road lay untrodden in the sun.

Not untrodden on this the day after Jeff had established his alibi. A traveler followed that lonely road to Double Mountain; and behind, half-way to Rainbow Range, was a streak of dust; which gained on him.

The traveler's sorrel horse was weary, for it was the very horse Jeff Bransford had borrowed from the hitching-rail of the courthouse square; the traveler was that able negotiator himself; and the pursuing dust, to the best of Jeff's knowledge and belief, meant him no good tidings.

"Now, I got safe away from the foothills before day," soliloquized Jeff. "Some gentleman has overtaken me with a spygla.s.s, I reckon.

Civilization's getting this country plumb ruined! And their horses are fresh. Peg along, Alibi! Maybe I can pick up a stray horse at Double Mountain. If I can't there's no sort of use trying to get away on you!

I'll play hide-and-go-seek-'em. That'll let you out, anyway, so cheer up! You done fine, old man! If I ever get out of this I'll buy you and make it all right with you. Pension you off if you think you'll like it.

Get along now!"

Twenty miles to Jeff's right the railroad paralleled the wagonroad in an unbroken tangent of ninety miles' stretch. A southbound pa.s.senger train crawled along the west like a resolute centipede plodding to a date: behind the fugitive, abreast, now far ahead, creeping along the s.h.i.+ning straightaway. Forty miles the hour was her schedule; yet against this vast horizon she could hardly be said to change place until, sighting beyond her puny length, a new angle of the far western wall completed the trinomial line.

Escondido was hidden in a dip of plain--whence the name, Hidden, when done into Saxon speech. The train was lost to sight when she stopped there, but Jeff saw the tiny steam plume of her whistling rise in the clear and taintless air; long after, the faint sound of it hummed drowsily by, like pa.s.sing, far-blown horns of faerie in a dream. And, at no great interval thereafter, a low-lying dust appeared suddenly on the hither rim of Escondido's sunken valley.

Jeff knew the land as you know your hallway. That line of dust marked the trail from Escondido Valley to the farther gate of Double Mountain.

Even if he should be lucky enough to get a change of mounts at the spring in Double Mountain Basin he would be intercepted. Escape by flight was impossible. To fight his way out was impossible. He had no gun; and, even if he had a gun, he could not see his way to fight, under the circ.u.mstances. The men who hunted him down were only doing the right thing as they saw it. Had Jeff been guilty, it would have been a different affair. Being innocent, he could make no fight for it. He was cornered.

"Said the little Eohippus: 'I'm going to be a horse!'"

So chanted Jeff, perceiving the hopelessness of his plight.

The best gift to man--or, if not the best, then at least the rarest--is the power to meet the emergency: to do your best and a little better than your best when nothing less will serve: to be a pinch hitter. It is to be thought that certain stages of affection, and more particularly the presence of its object, affect unfavorably the workings of pure intellect. Certain it is that capable Bransford, who had cut so sorry a figure in Eden garden, now, in these distressing but Eveless circ.u.mstances, rose to the occasion. Collected, resourceful, he grasped every possible angle of the situation and, with the rope virtually about his neck, cheerfully planned the impossible--the essence of his elastic plan being to climb that very rope, hand over hand, to safety.

"Going round the mountain is no good on a give-out horse. They'll follow my tracks," said Jeff to Jeff. Men who are much alone so shape their thoughts by voicing them, just as you practice conversation rather to make your own thought clear to yourself than to enlighten your victim--beg pardon--your neighbor. Just a slip of the tongue. _Vecino_ is the Spanish for neighbor, you know. Not so much to enlighten your neighbor as to find out for yourself precisely what it is you think.

"Hiding in the Basin is no good. Can't get out. Would I were a bird!

Only one way. Got to go straight up--disappear--vanish in the air. 'Up a chimney, up----' Naw, that's backward! 'Up a chimney, down, or down a chimney, down; but not up a chimney, up, nor down a chimney, up!' So that's settled! Now let me see, says the little man. Mighty few Arcadians know me well enough not to be fooled--mebbe so. Lake? Lake won't come. He'll be busy. There's Jimmy; but Jimmy's got a shocking bad memory for faces sometimes, just now, my face. I think, maybe, I could manage Jimmy. The sheriff? That would be real awkward, I reckon. I'll just play the sheriff isn't in the bunch and build my little bluff according to that pleasing fancy; for if he comes along it is all off with little Jeff!

"Now lemme see! If Gwin's working that little old mine of his--why, he'll lie himself black in the face just for the principle of it. Mighty interestin' talker, Gwin is. And if no one's there, I'll be there. Not Jeff Bransford; he got away. I'll be Long--Tobe Long--working for Gwin.

Tobe Long. I apprenticed my son to a miner, and the first thing he took was a new name!"

Far away on the side of Double Mountain he could even now see the white triangle of the tent at Gwin's mine--the Ophir--and the gray dump spilling down the hillside. There was no smoke to be seen. Jeff made up his mind there was no one at the mine--which was what he devoutly hoped--and further developed his gleeful hypothesis.

"Let's see now, Tobe. Got to study this all out. They most always leave all their kegs full of water when they go away, so they won't have to pack 'em up the first thing when they come back. If they did, I'm all right. If they didn't, I'm in a h.e.l.l of a fix! They'll leave 'em full, though. Of course they did--else the kegs would all dry up and fall down." He glanced over his shoulder. "Them fellows are ten or twelve miles back, I reckon. They'll slow up so soon as they see I'm headed off. I'll have time to fix things up--if only there's water in the kegs at the mine!" He patted Alibi's head: "Now, old man, do your d.a.m.nedest!

It's pretty tough on you, but your part will soon be over."

Alibi had made a poor night of it, what with doubling and twisting in the foothills, the bitter water of a gyp spring, and the scanty gra.s.s of a cedar thicket; but he did his plucky best. On the legal other hand, as Jeff had prophesied, the dustmakers behind had slackened their gait when they perceived, by the dust of Escondido trail, that their allies must cut the quarry off. So Alibi held his own with the pursuit.

He came to the rising ground leading to the sheer base of Double Mountain; then to the narrow Gap where the mountain had fallen asunder in some age-old cataclysm. To the left, the dump of Ophir Mine hung on the hillside above the pa.s.s; and on the broad trail zigzagging up to it were burro-tracks, but no fresh tracks of men. The flaps of the white tent on the dump were tightly closed. There was no one at the mine. Jeff pa.s.sed within the walls, through frowning gates of porphyry and gneiss, and urged Alibi up the canon. It was half a mile to the spring. On the way he found three s.h.a.ggy burros grazing beside the road. He drove them into the small pen by the spring and tossed his rope on the largest one.

Then he unsaddled Alibi, tied him to the fence by the bridle rein, and searched his pockets for an old letter. This found, he penciled a note and tied it to the saddle. It was brief:

EN ROUTE, FOUR P.M.

Please water my horse when he cools off.

Your little friend, JEFF BRANSFORD.

P. S. Excuse haste.

He made a plain trail of high-heeled boot-tracks to the spring, where he drank deep; thence beyond, through the sandy soil, to the nearest rocky ridge. Then, careful that every step fell on a bare rock, he came circuitously back to the corral, climbed the fence, made his way to the tied burro, improvised a bridle of cunning half-hitches, slipped from the fence to the burro's back--a burro, by the way, is a donkey--named the burro anew as Balaam, and went back down the canon at the best pace of which the belabored and astonished Balaam was capable. As Jeff had hoped, the two other burros--or the other two burros, to be precise--followed sociably, braying remonstrance.

Without the mouth of the canon Jeff rode up the steep trail to the mine, also to the great disgust of his mount; but he must not walk--it would leave boot-tracks. For the same reason, after freeing Balaam, his first action was to pull off the telltale boots and replace them with the smallest pair of hobnailed miner's shoes in the tent. With these he carefully obliterated the few boot-tracks at the tent door.

The water-kegs were full; Jeff swore his joyful grat.i.tude and turned his eye to the plain. The pursuing dust was still far away--seven miles, he estimated, or possibly eight. The three burros nibbled on the bushes below the dump; plainly intending to stay round camp with an eye for possible tips. Jeff gave his whole-hearted attention to the _mise-en-scene_.

Never did stage manager toil so hard, so faithfully, so effectively as this one--or with so great a need. He took stock of the available stage properties, beginning with a careful inventory of the grub-chest. To betray ignorance of its possibilities or deficiencies would be fatal.

Following a narrow trail round a little shoulder of hill, he found the powder magazine. Taking three sticks of dynamite, with fuse and caps, he searched the tent for the candle-box, lit a candle and went into the tunnel with a brisk trot. "If this was a case of fight, now, I'd have some pretty fair weapons here for close quarters," said Jeff; "but the way I'm fixed I can't. No fighting goes--unless Lake comes."

In the tunnel his luck held good. He found a number of good-sized chunks of rock stacked along the wall near the breast--evidently reserved for the ore pile at a more convenient season. Beneath three of the largest of these rocks he carefully adjusted the three sticks of giant powder, properly capped and fused, lit the fuses and retreated to the safety of the dump. Three m.u.f.fled detonations followed at short intervals. Having thus announced the presence of mining operations, he built a fire on the kitchen side of the dump to further advertise a mind conscious of its own rect.i.tude. The pleasant shadow of the hills was cool about him; the flame rose clear and bright in the windless air, to be seen from far away.

He looked at the location papers in the monument by the ore stack; simultaneously, by way of economizing time, emptying a can of salmon.

This was partly for the added verisimilitude of the empty tin, partly because he was ravenously hungry. You may guess how he emptied the tin.

The mine had changed owners since Jeff's knowledge of it. It was no longer Gwin's sole property. The notice bore the signatures of J. Gwin, C. W. Sanders and Walter Fleck. Jeff grinned and his eye brightened. He knew Fleck only slightly; but Fleck's reputation among the cowmen was good--that is to say, as you would see it, very bad.

Pappy Sanders, postmaster and storekeeper of Escondido, was an old and sorely tried friend of Jeff's. If Pappy had grub-staked the outfit----A far-away plan began to shape vaguely in his fertile brain. He took the little turquoise horse from his pocket and laid it in the till of the violated trunk. Were you told about the violated trunk? Never mind--he had done any amount of other things of which you have not been told; for it was his task, in the brief time allotted to him, to master all the innumerable details needful for an intelligent reading of his part. He must make no blunders.

He toiled like two men, each swifter and more savagely efficient than himself; he upset the prim, old he-maidenish order of that carefully packed, spick-and-span camp; he rumpled the beds; strewed old clothes, books, candles, specimens, pipes and cigarette papers with lavish hand; made untidy, sprawling heaps of tin plates; knives, forks and spoons; spilled candle-grease and tobacco on the scoured table; and generally gave things a cozy and habitable appearance.

He gave a hundred deft touches here and there. He spread an open book face downward on the table. (It was "Alice in Wonderland," and he opened it at the Mock-Turtle.) Meanwhile an unoccupied eye s.n.a.t.c.hed t.i.tles from a shelf of books against possible question; he penned a short note to himself--Mr. Tobe Long--in Gwin's handwriting, folded the note to creases, twisted it to a spill, lit it, burned a corner of it, pinched it out and threw it under the table; and, while doing these and other things, he somehow managed to shed every article of Jeff Bransford's clothing and to put on the work-stained garments of a miner.

The perspiration on his face was no stage make-up, but good, honest sweat. He rubbed stone-dust and sand on his sweaty arms and into his sweaty hair; he rubbed most of it from his hair and into the two-days'

stubble on his face, simultaneously fis.h.i.+ng razor and mug from the trunk, leaving them in evidence on the table. He worked stone-dust into his ears, behind his ears; he grimed it on forehead and neck; he even dropped a little into his shoes, which all this while had been performing independent miracles to make the camp look comfortable. He threw on a dingy cap, thrust in the cap a miner's candlestick, with a lighted candle, that it might properly drip upon him while he arranged further details--and so faced the world as Tobe Long, a stooped and overworked man!

Mr. Tobe Long, working with feverish haste, dug a small cave half-way down the steep side of the dump farthest from the road and buried therein a tightly rolled bundle containing every article appertaining to the defunct Bransford, with the single exception of the little eohippus; a pocketknife, which a miner must have to cut powder and fuse, having been found in the trunk--what time also the little turquoise horse was transferred to Mr. Long's pocket to bring him luck in his new career--a poor thing compared with the cowman's keen blade, but better for Mr. Long's purposes, as smelling strongly of dynamite. Then Mr.

Long--Tobe--hid the grave by sliding and shoveling broken rock down the dump upon it.

Next he threw into a wheelbarrow drills, spoon, tamping stick, gads, drill-hammer, rock-hammer, canteen, shovel and pick--taking care, even in his haste, to select a properly matched set of drills--and trundled the barrow up the drift at a pace which would give a Miners' Union the rabies. At the breast, he uns.h.i.+pped his cargo in right miner's fas.h.i.+on, the drills in a graduated stepladder row along the wall; loaded the barrow with broken ore, a bit of charred fuse showing at the top, and wheeled it out at the same unprofessional gait, leaving it on the dump just above the spot where his late sepulchral rites had freshened the appearance of the sunbeaten dump.

He next performed his ablutions in an amateurish and perfunctory fas.h.i.+on, scrupulously observing a well-defined waterline.

"There!" said Mr. Long. "I near made a break that time!" He went back to the barrow and trundled it a.s.siduously to the tunnel's mouth and back several times, carefully never in quite the same place--finally leaving it not above the sepulchered spoil, but near the ore stack, as befitted its valuable contents. "I got to think of everything. One wrong break'll fix me good!" said Mr. Long. He felt his neck delicately, as if he detected some foreign presence there. "In the tunnel, now, there's only the one place where the wheel can go; so it don't matter so much in there."

The fire having now burned down to proper coals, Mr. Long set about supper; with the corner of his eye on the lookout for the pursuers of the late Bransford. He set the coffee-pot by the fire--they were now in the edge of the tar-brush; there were only two of them. He put on a pot of potatoes in their jackets--he could see them plainly, diminutive black hors.e.m.e.n twinkling through the brush; he sliced bacon into a frying-pan and put it aside to await his cue; he disposed other cooking ware in lifelike att.i.tudes near the fire--they were in the long shadow of Double Mountain; their horses were jaded; they rode slowly. He dropped the sour-dough jar and placed the broken pieces where they would be inconspicuously visible. Having thus a perfectly obvious excuse for not having sour-dough bread, which requires thirty-six hours of running start for preliminary rising, Jeff--Mr. Tobe Long--mixed up a just-as-good baking-powder subst.i.tute--they rode like young men; they rode like young men not to the saddle born, and Tobe permitted himself a chuckle: "By hooky, I've got an even chance for my little bluff!"

He shook his head reprovingly at himself for this last admission. With every minute he looked more like Tobe Long than ever--if only there had been any Tobe Long to look like. His mind ran upon nuggets, pockets, placers, faults, true fissure veins, the cyanide process, concentrates, chlorides, sulphides, a.s.says, leases and bonds; his face took on the strained wistfulness which marks the confirmed prospector: he _was_ Tobe Long!

The bell rang.