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 allabout. Its form is that of a crater split from north to south intoirregular halves. Through that narrow cleft ran a straight road, oncethe well-traveled thoroughfare from Rainbow to El Paso. For there wasprecious water within those upheaved walls; it was but three miles fromportal to portal; the slight climb to the divide had not been grudged.Time was when campfires were nightly merry to light the narrow cliffs ofDouble Mountain; when songs were gay to echo from them; when this hadbeen the only watering place to break the long span across the desert.The railroad had changed all this, and the silent leagues of that oldroad lay untrodden in the sun.
Not untrodden on this the day after Jeff had established his alibi. Atraveler 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 JeffBransford had borrowed from the hitching-rail of the courthouse square;the traveler was that able negotiator himself; and the pursuing dust, tothe best of Jeff's knowledge and belief, meant him no good tidings.
"Now, I got safe away from the foothills before day," soliloquizedJeff. "Some gentleman has overtaken me with a spyglass, I reckon.Civilization's getting this country plumb ruined! And their horses arefresh. Peg along, Alibi! Maybe I can pick up a stray horse at DoubleMountain. 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 cheerup! You done fine, old man! If I ever get out of this I'll buy you andmake 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 anunbroken tangent of ninety miles' stretch. A southbound passenger traincrawled along the west like a resolute centipede plodding to a date:behind the fugitive, abreast, now far ahead, creeping along the shiningstraightaway. Forty miles the hour was her schedule; yet against thisvast horizon she could hardly be said to change place until, sightingbeyond her puny length, a new angle of the far western wall completedthe trinomial line.
Escondido was hidden in a dip of plain--whence the name, Hidden, whendone into Saxon speech. The train was lost to sight when she stoppedthere, but Jeff saw the tiny steam plume of her whistling rise in theclear and taintless air; long after, the faint sound of it hummeddrowsily by, like passing, far-blown horns of faerie in a dream. And, atno great interval thereafter, a low-lying dust appeared suddenly on thehither rim of Escondido's sunken valley.
Jeff knew the land as you know your hallway. That line of dust markedthe 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 thespring in Double Mountain Basin he would be intercepted. Escape byflight was impossible. To fight his way out was impossible. He had nogun; and, even if he had a gun, he could not see his way to fight, underthe circumstances. The men who hunted him down were only doing the rightthing as they saw it. Had Jeff been guilty, it would have been adifferent affair. Being innocent, he could make no fight for it. He wascornered.
"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--isthe power to meet the emergency: to do your best and a little betterthan your best when nothing less will serve: to be a pinch hitter. It isto be thought that certain stages of affection, and more particularlythe presence of its object, affect unfavorably the workings of pureintellect. Certain it is that capable Bransford, who had cut so sorry afigure in Eden garden, now, in these distressing but Evelesscircumstances, rose to the occasion. Collected, resourceful, he graspedevery possible angle of the situation and, with the rope virtually abouthis neck, cheerfully planned the impossible--the essence of his elasticplan 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 followmy tracks," said Jeff to Jeff. Men who are much alone so shape theirthoughts by voicing them, just as you practice conversation rather tomake your own thought clear to yourself than to enlighten yourvictim--beg pardon--your neighbor. Just a slip of the tongue. _Vecino_is the Spanish for neighbor, you know. Not so much to enlighten yourneighbor 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. 'Upa chimney, up----' Naw, that's backward! 'Up a chimney, down, or down achimney, down; but not up a chimney, up, nor down a chimney, up!' Sothat's settled! Now let me see, says the little man. Mighty fewArcadians know me well enough not to be fooled--mebbe so. Lake? Lakewon't come. He'll be busy. There's Jimmy; but Jimmy's got a shocking badmemory for faces sometimes, just now, my face. I think, maybe, I couldmanage Jimmy. The sheriff? That would be real awkward, I reckon. I'lljust play the sheriff isn't in the bunch and build my little bluffaccording to that pleasing fancy; for if he comes along it is all offwith 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. Mightyinterestin' talker, Gwin is. And if no one's there, I'll be there. NotJeff 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 tookwas a new name!"
Far away on the side of Double Mountain he could even now see the whitetriangle of the tent at Gwin's mine--the Ophir--and the gray dumpspilling down the hillside. There was no smoke to be seen. Jeff made uphis mind there was no one at the mine--which was what he devoutlyhoped--and further developed his gleeful hypothesis.
"Let's see now, Tobe. Got to study this all out. They most always leaveall their kegs full of water when they go away, so they won't have topack 'em up the first thing when they come back. If they did, I'm allright. If they didn't, I'm in a hell of a fix! They'll leave 'em full,though. Of course they did--else the kegs would all dry up and falldown." He glanced over his shoulder. "Them fellows are ten or twelvemiles back, I reckon. They'll slow up so soon as they see I'm headedoff. I'll have time to fix things up--if only there's water in the kegsat the mine!" He patted Alibi's head: "Now, old man, do your damnedest!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 inthe foothills, the bitter water of a gyp spring, and the scanty grass ofa cedar thicket; but he did his plucky best. On the legal other hand, asJeff had prophesied, the dustmakers behind had slackened their gait whenthey perceived, by the dust of Escondido trail, that their allies mustcut the quarry off. So Alibi held his own with the pursuit.
He came to the rising ground leading to the sheer base of DoubleMountain; then to the narrow Gap where the mountain had fallen asunderin some age-old cataclysm. To the left, the dump of Ophir Mine hung onthe hillside above the pass; and on the broad trail zigzagging up to itwere burro-tracks, but no fresh tracks of men. The flaps of the whitetent on the dump were tightly closed. There was no one at the mine. Jeffpassed within the walls, through frowning gates of porphyry and gneiss,and urged Alibi up the canyon. It was half a mile to the spring. On theway he found three shaggy burros grazing beside the road. He drove theminto 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, andsearched his pockets for an old letter. This found, he penciled a noteand 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 hedrank deep; thence beyond, through the sandy soil, to the nearest rockyridge. Then, careful that every step fell on a bare rock, he camecircuitously back to the corral, climbed the fence, made his way to thetied burro, improvised a bridle of cunning half-hitches, slipped fromthe fence to the burro's back--a burro, by the way, is a donkey--namedthe burro anew as Balaam, and went back down the canyon at the best paceof which the belabored and astonished Balaam was capable. As Jeff hadhoped, the two other burros--or the other two burros, to beprecise--followed sociably, braying remonstrance.
Without the mouth of the canyon Jeff rode up the steep trail to the mine,also to the great disgust of his mount; but he must not walk--it wouldleave boot-tracks. For the same reason, after freeing Balaam, his firstaction was to pull off the telltale boots and replace them with thesmallest pair of hobnailed miner's shoes in the tent. With these hecarefully obliterated the few boot-tracks at the tent door.
The water-kegs were full; Jeff swore his joyful gratitude and turned hiseye to the plain. The pursuing dust was still far away--seven miles, heestimated, or possibly eight. The three burros nibbled on the bushesbelow the dump; plainly intending to stay round camp with an eye forpossible tips. Jeff gave his whole-hearted attention to the_mise-en-scene_.
Never did stage manager toil so hard, so faithfully, so effectively asthis one--or with so great a need. He took stock of the available stageproperties, beginning with a careful inventory of the grub-chest. Tobetray ignorance of its possibilities or deficiencies would be fatal.Following a narrow trail round a little shoulder of hill, he found thepowder magazine. Taking three sticks of dynamite, with fuse and caps, hesearched the tent for the candle-box, lit a candle and went into thetunnel with a brisk trot. "If this was a case of fight, now, I'd havesome pretty fair weapons here for close quarters," said Jeff; "but theway 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 chunksof rock stacked along the wall near the breast--evidently reserved forthe ore pile at a more convenient season. Beneath three of the largestof these rocks he carefully adjusted the three sticks of giant powder,properly capped and fused, lit the fuses and retreated to the safety ofthe dump. Three muffled detonations followed at short intervals. Havingthus announced the presence of mining operations, he built a fire on thekitchen side of the dump to further advertise a mind conscious of itsown rectitude. The pleasant shadow of the hills was cool about him; theflame rose clear and bright in the windless air, to be seen from faraway.
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, partlybecause 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 nolonger Gwin's sole property. The notice bore the signatures of J. Gwin,C. W. Sanders and Walter Fleck. Jeff grinned and his eye brightened. Heknew Fleck only slightly; but Fleck's reputation among the cowmen wasgood--that is to say, as you would see it, very bad.
Pappy Sanders, postmaster and storekeeper of Escondido, was an old andsorely tried friend of Jeff's. If Pappy had grub-staked the outfit----Afar-away plan began to shape vaguely in his fertile brain. He took thelittle turquoise horse from his pocket and laid it in the till of theviolated trunk. Were you told about the violated trunk? Never mind--hehad done any amount of other things of which you have not been told; forit was his task, in the brief time allotted to him, to master all theinnumerable details needful for an intelligent reading of his part. Hemust make no blunders.
He toiled like two men, each swifter and more savagely efficient thanhimself; he upset the prim, old he-maidenish order of that carefullypacked, 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 generallygave things a cozy and habitable appearance.
He gave a hundred deft touches here and there. He spread an open bookface downward on the table. (It was "Alice in Wonderland," and he openedit at the Mock-Turtle.) Meanwhile an unoccupied eye snatched titles froma shelf of books against possible question; he penned a short note tohimself--Mr. Tobe Long--in Gwin's handwriting, folded the note tocreases, twisted it to a spill, lit it, burned a corner of it, pinchedit out and threw it under the table; and, while doing these and otherthings, he somehow managed to shed every article of Jeff Bransford'sclothing and to put on the work-stained garments of a miner.
The perspiration on his face was no stage make-up, but good, honestsweat. He rubbed stone-dust and sand on his sweaty arms and into hissweaty hair; he rubbed most of it from his hair and into the two-days'stubble on his face, simultaneously fishing razor and mug from thetrunk, leaving them in evidence on the table. He worked stone-dust intohis ears, behind his ears; he grimed it on forehead and neck; he evendropped a little into his shoes, which all this while had beenperforming independent miracles to make the camp look comfortable. Hethrew on a dingy cap, thrust in the cap a miner's candlestick, with alighted candle, that it might properly drip upon him while he arrangedfurther details--and so faced the world as Tobe Long, a stooped andoverworked man!
Mr. Tobe Long, working with feverish haste, dug a small cave half-waydown the steep side of the dump farthest from the road and buriedtherein a tightly rolled bundle containing every article appertaining tothe defunct Bransford, with the single exception of the little eohippus;a pocketknife, which a miner must have to cut powder and fuse, havingbeen found in the trunk--what time also the little turquoise horse wastransferred to Mr. Long's pocket to bring him luck in his new career--apoor thing compared with the cowman's keen blade, but better forMr. Long's purposes, as smelling strongly of dynamite. Then Mr.Long--Tobe--hid the grave by sliding and shoveling broken rock down thedump upon it.
Next he threw into a wheelbarrow drills, spoon, tamping stick, gads,drill-hammer, rock-hammer, canteen, shovel and pick--taking care, evenin his haste, to select a properly matched set of drills--and trundledthe barrow up the drift at a pace which would give a Miners' Union therabies. At the breast, he unshipped his cargo in right miner's fashion,the drills in a graduated stepladder row along the wall; loaded thebarrow with broken ore, a bit of charred fuse showing at the top, andwheeled it out at the same unprofessional gait, leaving it on the dumpjust above the spot where his late sepulchral rites had freshened theappearance of the sunbeaten dump.
He next performed his ablutions in an amateurish and perfunctoryfashion, scrupulously observing a well-defined waterline.
"There!" said Mr. Long. "I near made a break that time!" He went back tothe barrow and trundled it assiduously to the tunnel's mouth and backseveral times, carefully never in quite the same place--finally leavingit not above the sepulchered spoil, but near the ore stack, as befittedits valuable contents. "I got to think of everything. One wrong break'llfix me good!" said Mr. Long. He felt his neck delicately, as if hedetected some foreign presence there. "In the tunnel, now, there's onlythe one place where the wheel can go; so it don't matter so much inthere."
The fire having now burned down to proper coals, Mr. Long set aboutsupper; with the corner of his eye on the lookout for the pursuers ofthe late Bransford. He set the coffee-pot by the fire--they were now inthe edge of the tar-brush; there were only two of them. He put on a potof potatoes in their jackets--he could see them plainly, diminutiveblack horsemen twinkling through the brush; he sliced bacon into afrying-pan and put it aside to await his cue; he disposed other cookingware in lifelike attitudes near the fire--they were in the long shadowof Double Mountain; their horses were jaded; they rode slowly. Hedropped the sour-dough jar and placed the broken pieces where they wouldbe inconspicuously visible. Having thus a perfectly obvious excuse fornot having sour-dough bread, which requires thirty-six hours of runningsta
rt for preliminary rising, Jeff--Mr. Tobe Long--mixed up ajust-as-good baking-powder substitute--they rode like young men; theyrode like young men not to the saddle born, and Tobe permitted himself achuckle: "By hooky, I've got an even chance for my little bluff!"
He shook his head reprovingly at himself for this last admission. Withevery minute he looked more like Tobe Long than ever--if only there hadbeen any Tobe Long to look like. His mind ran upon nuggets, pockets,placers, faults, true fissure veins, the cyanide process, concentrates,chlorides, sulphides, assays, leases and bonds; his face took on thestrained wistfulness which marks the confirmed prospector: he _was_ TobeLong!
The bell rang.