Book: The Freebooters of the Wilderness

A >> Agnes C. Laut >> The Freebooters of the Wilderness




It was one thing to pray under the rose-colored windows of a college
chapel, and another thing to pray under the yellow, brazen Desert sky.
There was only the dreadful Desert silence, with the rattle from the
laboured breathing of the unconscious man. If there was no God, then
the fight for Right was the futility of fools: Right was only the Right
of the strong to prey upon the weak, till the weak became in turn
strong enough to prey; and that meant anarchy. If Right was right as
two and two make four in Heaven or Hell, then _where_ was the God from
whom Right, laws of Right emanated, guiding the unwise as laws of
gravity guide the stars?

He didn't know that he had been staggering from physical weakness as he
climbed the ridge of sand. There was the fresh horse. _One of them_
might escape in a night by riding it to death. Then, there was the
possibility of the railroad being within reach. One of them might go
out to the railroad, _but not both_. The old frontiersman had passed
the point of being able to ride; and a very few hours would probably
witness the end of his life. He could tie the old man to the fresh
horse, but the slow pace that would be necessary would sacrifice both
their lives. There was another possibility: the fresh man on the fresh
horse. That way out did not enter Wayland's mind; but he did ask
himself _why_ the outlaws had not come down to the false pool. Why had
they gone on? They were as near the end of their tether as he was of
his.

Then he became suddenly conscious that he had eaten almost nothing for
twenty-four hours and that the quivering air darkening to night rolled
above the yellow sands in a way not caused by heat. Was it saddle wear
or exhaustion that he stumbled as he walked? He looked at the silver
strip of mountains above the westering sky. A fore-shortening haze
swam into his sight. There was the mountain flecked with silver. Then
it had gone into a milky black and pools, pools of water, fringed by
the pines of the North, hung in the blue haze of mid-air,
fore-shortening, shifting like a blurred sieve into the silver strip of
mountain and milky blot, then back again, pools of crystal water, cool
mountain lakes, this time with the trees up side down and figures among
the trees. He knew by the trees being up side down, though he was
dreaming of laughing as he drank and drank, that it must be a mirage!
Then he came to himself wondering how in the world he was sitting on
the sand bank. And why hadn't he kept the tea leaves to put on his
eyes in case of heat inflammation? Then, it tripped almost under his
feet, you understand _he_ did not trip, he had struck at it with his
Service axe--the wolf thing tracking the red stain of the outlaws'
trail along the base of the sand bank out across the ash colored silt
sands. He watched it pausing, where the wind had eddied the dust in
serpentine lines over the tracks, sniffing the air, loping across the
break, and on out again at a run, nose down to earth: a blot against
the sky; the burned out sulphur sky above an earth of embers and ashes.
Was it a mirage; or was he going delirious; or had he fallen asleep to
dream her face framed in the blur of the purpling haze, receding from
him, drawing him with the shine of the stars in her eyes, drawing him
with the warmth of their first passion kiss on her lips? He would rise
from his grave, and follow her from death, if she wove such spells,
whether of dreams or delirium or mirage! The Ranger found himself
stumbling across the baked silt and lava rocks, stripped of his hat and
his boots, stripped like a marathon runner, vaguely conscious that he
ought to have kept those tea leaves for that burn in his eyes, that the
silver strip of the mountain was there just ahead; now a crystal pool
of the cool mountain lake in mid air; now her face had vanished into
the blue haze. Suddenly, winged things flappered up with raucous
protest. The coyote had skulked over the edge of the lava dip; not the
burnt-oil earth-scorched Desert smell, but the shrivelled putridity of
flesh smote and nauseated his senses. The white pack horse of the
outlaw drovers lay dead across the trail at his feet, a pool of clotted
blood darkening the ashy sand. Its throat had been cut. . . .

The Ranger drew off, rubbed his eyes and looked again. The crumbly
silt had been trampled all round the dead horse. So they, too, were
dying of thirst on the Desert. Which way to follow now? There were
the hoof prints across the open level; but forking from the main trail
was another track: that of a man dragged or dragging or crawling
forward on his hands and knees. Had they deserted the third man; or
had the third man dropped back from them to cut his horse's throat?
The Ranger laughed aloud, a harsh cracked laugh; he knew he was
delirious. The Lord had played an ace and he wouldn't trump His trick
by going after the trail of the man who had crawled away to die. There
was a Deity of retribution at least, whether God or demon: he had vowed
he would make those blackguards drink horse blood!

If he hounded along the trail, perhaps he might overhaul the other two.
Then, then if he did perish in the Desert, he would not have perished
for naught! It was then, the earth performed the acrobatic feat of
heaving up, and he fell! This time, he knew he had fallen. It was no
trip. He was down and out and done for; and he knew it. He rose to
his knees steadying himself on his Service axe. Then, it came again,
the silver strip of mountain on the sky line with the cool lakes and
the blue haze, and her face, the face in the Watts' picture of "the
Happy Warrior," weaving the spell, receding from him, drawing him with
the love light in her eyes and the passion kiss on her lips, beckoning,
beckoning; he would rise and follow her from the dead if she beckoned
with that light in her eyes. She was receding _not_ along the trail of
the fleeing Desert runners, but down the dragged track of the body that
had crawled to the foot of a sand bank. Wayland never knew whether he
staggered or crept down the trail of the dragged body away from the
hoof prints of the drovers' horses across the alkali sink; but between
him and the silver strip of mountain on the far skyline, above the
yellow sand so hot to his palms, beckoned her face, the love light in
her eyes, weaving the spell. Then the coyote had bounded into the air,
and the red-combed Desert condors, the scavengers of an outcast world,
rose from their quarry; and Wayland, fevered, delirious, laughing,
crying, kneeled over the body of a man lying on his face with his
bloody hand clutched in death grip round an upright post driven into
the alkali bottoms, a post with a drinking cup hung on the notched
crotch, the Desert sign of a water spring beneath the drifted sands.

Wayland pushed the body aside. The man's face was red-smeared. He was
dead. Wayland had to unlock the clutched fingers from the post.
Somewhere, from the submerged consciousness of forgotten college lore
came memory that the water table lay ten feet deep beneath the Desert
silt. The Ranger slid down the sand drift and was chopping, hacking,
digging, into the side of the bank, thanking God; God _was_ on the job
after all; scooping the sand drift out with his naked hand, burrowing
at the earth as the animals of the wilderness-struggle tear in maddened
thirst for the hidden life beneath the sand death. He heard the suck
and gurgle of the water, not the joyous silver laugh of Northern
springs, but the sullen coming of water compelled; and his lips were at
the sand; drinking, drinking, drinking. Then, he suddenly remembered
her face. He looked up. Gone the silver strip of shining mountain;
gone the mirage of the crystal pool; darkness, velvet pansy darkness of
the Desert night; and an earth bat winged past his face. Even as he
drank he felt the puff and whirl of the wind rising; he laughed. He
felt the cool water trickle and settle and pool in the sand hole. Then
he laved his temples and wrists, and laughed softly, and called a low
long tremulous call; that foolish Saxon word he had told her to look up
in the dictionary.

The wind might blow great guns, and wipe out the fugitive trail. He
would go no farther. The wind would attend to the other two men. He
had found water: he had found life. God had played the trick; and he
had not trumped the ace; four of the six outlaws dead, and the last two
hastening to the alkali death across the Desert sands. He drank again,
this time from the cup, sip by sip, slowly, then in deep draughts of
God-given waters.


He didn't thank God in so many words, or in testimony to pass muster at
a prayer meeting; but he paused twice on his way back to the saline
sink to say: "He's on the job. You bet He's on the job!" He spent the
rest of the week nursing the old frontiersman back to life.




PART II

THE MAN HIGHER UP




CHAPTER XVIII

WITHOUT MALICE

The Senator sat in his office with his hat on the back of his head and
a U. S. Geological Survey map spread out on the desk in front of him.
Bat stood sleepily at attention on the other side of the desk with his
hat in his hand. It was a sweltering July afternoon in Smelter City,
the air athrob with the derricks and the trucks and the cranes and the
pulleys and the steam hoists and the cable car tramway run up and down
the face of Coal Hill by natural gravitation. The light was dusky
yellow from the smelter smoke; and loafers round the transcontinental
railroad station across the street chose the shady side of the
building, where they sat swinging their legs from the platform and
aiming tobacco juice with regularity and precision in the exact centre
of the gray dusty road.

The Senator wore a pair of pince nez glasses. He looked up over the
top of them through the yellow sun-light of the open street door.

"Declare, Brydges, the damned rascals are too lazy to brush the flies
off," he observed of the brigade of loafers across the street.

Bat threw a glance over his shoulder at the coterie of loafers, and
brought his drowsy tortoise-shell glance back to the map lying before
the Senator.

"I guess the flies won't bother 'em long as they vote right, Mr.
Senator."

Moyese was slowly turning and turning the thick stub of a crayon pencil
between his thumb and fore finger. Bat knew that trick of
absent-minded motion always presaged senatorial sermonizing, just as
the soft laugh down in the crinkles of the white vest forewarned
danger. ("When I see the tummy wrinkles coming, I always feel like
telling the other fellow to get the button off his fencing sword--You
bet _that_ means business," Bat often confided to the newseditor.)

"Brydges, this country is rapidly lining up two opposing sides:
fighting lines, too, by George! Mobocracy _versus_ Plutocracy! I'm
only a cog in the wheel, myself, a mere marker for the big counters, my
boy; but if I have to put up with the tyranny of one or t'other, I'm
damned if I don't prefer the tyranny of the rich to the tyranny of the
poor, any day! _Why_, is any man poor in this country, Brydges?
Because he's a damned incompetent unfit swinish hog, too lazy to plant
and hoe his own row; so he gets the husks of the corn while the
competent man gets the cob--the cob with the corn on, you bet, number
one, Silver King, Hard, seventy cents a bushel! If I have to put up
with one or t'other, I'm damned if I don't prefer the tyranny of
knowledge to the tyranny of ignorance! One butters your bread, anyway,
and sometimes puts some jam on with the butter. The other snivels and
whines and begs a crust from the other fellow's table, and snaps at the
hand that gives him the crust, and spends the time in self-pity that he
should spend in work! Look at that row of free-born American citizens,
kings in disguise, Brydges! Not a damned man of them ever did a stroke
of honest work in his life except on election day, when we line 'em up;
and damn it, aren't we right, to line 'em up? What kind of rule are
you going to get from that kind of rulership if some one doesn't jump
in and group it and direct it; yes, by George, and _compel_ it to keep
in line and vote right, just as a general licks his recruits in shape
on pain of court martial? Think any battle would ever be won, Brydges,
if the commanding officer hadn't the power of a despot? He makes
mistakes. Of course, he makes mistakes! So do we! But we're keeping
those damned rascals in line for the good of the country; and so, I
say, the plutocrats who are being cursed from one end of the country to
the other to-day, are playing the same part in modern life as the big
war chiefs of the Middle Ages. They are marshalling the forces;
leading the advance; conquering the countries with commerce that the
old war chiefs used to conquer with arms; building up, constructing,
amassing, concentrating in trust and combine all the scattered
abilities of men, who would be powerless individually; and we use our
tools, that parcel of beauties out there, same as the old war chiefs
used their blackguard mercenaries! It's cheaper for us to buy 'em than
be bossed by 'em, a darn sight cheaper, Brydges; for us to swing 'em
into a bunch and control 'em than be blackmailed by 'em, Brydges! If
every penny grafter didn't hold up the corporation, every damned little
squirt of a county supervisor and road contractor and town councilman,
if they didn't hold the corporation up for blackmail way the highwaymen
of old used to hold up the lone traveller, if they didn't hold us up
for blackmail, Brydges, it wouldn't be necessary for us to man that
gang across the way on voting day!

"Freedom, pah!" The Senator had stopped swirling the stub pencil. He
reached forward to a jar of roses on his desk. "Equality? Pah! Dream
of fools, Brydges! Doesn't exist! Never did exist! Never can exist!
Know how we develop Silver King Corn that gives ninety bushels to the
acre instead of old thirty bushel yield?"

Bat had sat down, still sleepily watchful through the tortoise-shell
eyes, but a bit wilted in the heat. Some of the men swinging corduroy
and blue jean legs from the station platform evidently perpetrated a
pleasantry; for there was a loud guffaw, and a shower of tobacco wads
into the middle of the road.

"Know how we get high grade corn, high grade rose like this American
Beauty: in fact, high grade anything? Well, I'll tell you. It's the
same process that brings out high grade men. You go into a field of
corn. You pick out best specimens. You keep that for seed, special
care, special fine ground, special careful cultivation. You let the
others go, feed 'em to the hogs, understand, Bat? It's the same with
the roses, and the same with men; and now where's your fine theory of
all men equal?"

As Bat did not care to remind the Senator that his own career from the
ghetto up contradicted all this fine philosophy, he left the question
unanswered.

Moyese pushed the glasses up on his nose and returned to the map.

"How many homesteaders did you succeed in nabbing out of that last
train-load?"

"About a hundred, Senator! I've got the list of 'em here . . . haven't
counted, but think it will tally up about a hundred."

"What are they, Germans?"

"No, Swedes."

Moyese laughed. "Thrifty beggars will job round and earn double while
they're operating for us! Got good big families, Bat?"

It was the turn of the handy man to laugh. "I filed one fellow and
eight kids for one hundred and sixty acres each."

"You didn't contract to pay each of the little olive branches
three-hundred?"

"Lord, no! If the dad sits tight till we prove up entry, he's to get
three-hundred! No fear of his blabbing. He can't speak a word of
English; and when I told the woman, through the interpreter that we pay
their fare out and each of the kids would get a five, why, she kissed
my hand and slobbered gratitude all over me."

"Wayland won't be quite so grateful for that bunch."

"Oh, I didn't file that batch in the N. F. You bet, that's a little
too obvious! I put 'em in the Pass, lower end of the Pass, not by a
damn sight, I didn't put 'em in the N. F.! I thought Smelter people
wanted us to secure that Pass for a dam; and I bunched 'em all in just
above the Sheriff's place!"

"That's good! The Sheriff proves up this year; and if you get this
bunch in behind, that corks the Pass up pretty effectually! Where are
the bounds of the Forest there?"

Bat drew his fore-finger along the map. "Along the red line, here:
just to the trail through the canyon."

"Good: now what about the timber claim along the Gully? That's in the
Forests, Brydges. I want to force a contest on that; the Swede fellow
has cut the logs under his permit; but I'd like to make that doubly
sure before we go to trial. If we can get a double cinch on that,
we'll knock the claim of the Forestry Department to keep homesteaders
out into a cocked hat."

Bat's sleepy eyes emitted sparks and his good natured smile widened to
an open grin.

"The Swede happened to use a U. S. Forest hatchet when he cut those
logs," he said. "I told him to be sure and stamp the butt end of each
log U. S., duly inspected," he said.

Moyese dropped the map and the pencil and his heavy hand with a thud on
the desk and laughed noiselessly down into the creases of his fat
double chin and into the wrinkling rotundity of his white vest.

"And to cinch it," continued Brydges, "as the fellow's permit didn't
cover the Gully, I got some blanket railway scrip for an Irishman,
O'Finnigan, Shanty Town, and planked it on the Gully. You see,
Senator, by law the settlers _can_ go in on the National Forests
wherever it has been surveyed and declared agricultural land; but they
can't go in and get title till it is surveyed and passed. But you can
plaster the railway scrip _where it is unsurveyed_. That's the little
joker somebody tucked in when the scrip railway act was passed. I
guess by the time they have red-taped and trapesed round and wrangled
those two tangles of title out, the logs will be safe down the River;
and I guess that will about see the finish of Wayland before the coal
cases come up--"

"That's it, Brydges." Moyese had lowered his voice. "What about
Wayland? Have you found out anything? Where the devil is he? He
isn't on his patrol! He hasn't been at the Ridge for three weeks. He
hasn't been at the Ridge since I left for Washington. If we could
prove how he's been using Government time," he paused to reflect.
"_That_ might be shortest way out! Did you find out anything at the
MacDonald Ranch?"

Bat threw a precautionary glance over his shoulder towards the door
opening on the street. Then he rose, walked across the office, shut
the door, came back and drawing his chair close to the desk opposite
the Senator, sat down astride with his feet tucked back one round each
hind leg.

"Yes, I did; and no again, I didn't! It's just as it may strike you!
As a news man, I know _how_ this kind of yarn would be taken by the
public."

"Oh, come on with it, Brydges!" Moyese had pushed back and was holding
the edge of the desk with his hands. Mr. Bat Brydges recognized that
while the creases of good-nature crinkled at the chin, the jaws and the
hands had locked.

"Your newsman got this despatch from Mine City: you see it's pretty
vague: 'bodies of two men found forty miles from branch of P. & O.
Line, thought to be drovers overcome by heat and thirst.' I wired for
more particulars; but the railway hands had shovelled the bodies under."

"Brydges," interrupted Moyese sharply, "I'm going to tell you
something; and you put it in your pipe and smoke it; and don't waste
time running off on false clues. You leave that to women and
sissies--to the she-male man! Now listen, _a man can't lose himself in
the Desert: He can't lose himself in the Wilderness_. If he's a
damphool, he can get lost, but he can't lose himself, he can't hide in
the wilderness, not ever! He can lose himself in a city in one week.
He could drop out of sight right here in Smelter City; but he can't go
into the wilds and not come out again and people not know it. Somebody
sees him go in, and somebody doesn't see him come out; and there you
are! It's the same in the wilds as at the North Pole: you can't cook
up a fake. Man who goes into the wilds is a marked man till he comes
out. Every man, who meets him, takes a turn round to look at him; and
he's going to keep looking till the fellow comes out. Now, you take
this case. Wayland had on his Service Badge. If he had been one of
those two, the fact would have been flashed right down to Washington.
Now tell me facts, not rumors; exactly what did you find out?"

When his chief began in that dictatorial fashion, Bat let his facts go
in a running fire:

"Well, Flood saw him with his own eyes going up the Pass with that old
Canadian duffer the morning, the morning," Bat paused, manifestly
unable to specify which morning.

"Yes, the morning _after_," added the soft, even voice of Moyese. "And
the snow slide filled the Pass up to the neck, forty-eight hours later.
Yes, I know; but Wayland was too good a mountain man to be caught by a
slide."

"I told Flood to get out and examine that slide, anyway! He said
'twasn't any use, this hot weather would clean it up in a couple of
weeks. He was going up the Pass when I left for the Valley yesterday."

"What did you find out at the Ridge?"

"That's where the milk is in this cocoanut," answered Bat. "He hasn't
passed one night _at_ the Ridge since the night we were all up! You
remember _who_ was at the Cabin, night we went up? Well, keep that in
mind; when I went across to MacDonald's Ranch to express your regret
over this accident, found old man wasn't home. He's expected back from
the Upper Pass by train this week: seems he has been arranging new
grazing ground for another herd up there. You know how MacDonald house
is laid out? Big room as you enter; then a sort of back sitting room
for," Bat smiled queerly, a smile that said nothing, yet
subterraneously conveyed out to daylight one of those under currents of
thought that flows only in the dark, "for the lady. Well, sir, chill
blasts of North Pole were tropical zephyrs compared to what I got from
that MacDonald gurl."

"I thought her name was Miss MacDonald," suggested the Senator, softly.
He had lowered his chin and was looking over his eye glasses at Brydges.

"Hold on, Mr. Senator! I am coming to that! Her father has been away
a month. I found out from Calamity and the road gang that Wayland
hasn't been at the Cabin since that night I was there; and Gee
Whittiker," Brydges laughed sleepily, the same smile that said nothing
but came up from the subterranean under current, "he _was_ a bear with
a sore head that night; spent most of the night prancing the Ridge.
Well, a fellow can't exactly stand on one leg and then on t'other all
through a call. She didn't ask me to sit down. Said her father was
coming home by Smelter City and you could have the pleasure of
conveying your sympathy personally: kept standing herself all the time;
kept looking from me to the door. Well, sir, while she was looking
_through_ the door behind me, I was looking _through_ the door behind
her." And as Bat said it, he looked away. "Wayland's Range coat was
hanging in that inner room."

Bat smiled slowly and sleepily; then openly grinned as who should say
"now the cat _is_ out"; but when he turned to Moyese, his chief had
whirled in the swing chair and was sitting with hands clasped under his
hat, and the back of his head towards Brydges.

A glossy smile had come over Bat's face that is not good to see on man,
woman, child or beast; and it is the same kind of smile on all four,
not laughter, nor light, not definite enough to be malicious, nor
pointed enough to be self accusatory, nor direct enough to be
challenged and repudiated; a smile untellably familiar--a Satyr-faced
thought looking through a veil, somehow sinuously suggestive, saying
nothing at all, yet conveying the physical sensation of pus from an
ulcerous thing; and strangely enough, there are blow-fly natures that
prefer pus to nectar.

If Brydges had not been so absorbed in the jocularity of his own
sensations, he would have observed that his chief remained singularly
silent.

"Oh, I don't suppose he's there all this time." Bat rushed to the
defence of the absent, (Heaven bless such defenders). "That old
Canadian duffer, who seems to have hitched up with him on the Rim Rocks
accident, your ranch foreman saw 'em pass together at noon; tried to
telephone 'Herald,' but I choked _that_ off; that old fellow once wrote
our paper to know about Canadian settlers here. He recognized Calamity
and talked about old North West Rebellion days. It's my theory he's
here about something that's been hushed up! Like dad, like daughter,"
Bat pronounced.

"It's my theory when MacDonald comes back from the Upper Pass, Wayland
and the old fellow will turn up about the same time. Haven't been able
to learn what it is; but I'll bet dollars to doughnuts, they are all
absent on the same trail. If we let go a broadside, they'll have to
come out with the truth to shut us off; and there is where we are going
to get him; see? I've got another theory, too."

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