"Is it all right now?" queried Ashton.

"Yes.--Seems to me someone _must_ have loosened this screw."

"What's the difference how it happened, if it will not happen again?"

irritably replied Ashton. "Guess this bacon is fried enough. Let's eat."

Blake recoupled the rifle, emptied the magazine, tested the mechanism, refilled the magazine, and joined his ravenous companion in his ill-cooked meal.

Immediately after eating, Ashton flung himself down in the tent. A few minutes later Blake crept in beside him and struck a match. The young man had already fallen into the deep slumber of utter physical and mental relaxation. Blake went outside and listened to the wailing of the coyotes. Difficult as it was to determine the direction of their mournful cries, he at last satisfied himself that they were circling entirely around the camp.

A watchdog could not have indicated with greater certainty that there was no other wild beast or any human being lurking near the waterhole.

Blake crept back into the tent and was soon fast asleep beside his companion.

CHAPTER XVIII

ON THE BRINK

Early to bed, early to rise. The two men were up at dawn. During the night the coyotes had sneaked into the camp. But Blake had fastened the food in the chuck-box and slung everything gnawable up in the branches out of reach of the sly thieves.

At sunrise the two started out on their day's work, Ashton carrying his rifle and canteen and the level rod, Blake with the level and a bag containing their lunch and a two-quart sirup-can of water.

"We'll run a new line from the dike bench, around the hill and across the valley the way we rode out yesterday," said the engineer, as they climbed the slope above the waterhole. "That will give us a check by cross-tying to the line of the creek levels where it runs into the gulch."

"Can't you trust to the accuracy of your own work?" asked Ashton with evident intent to mortify.

Blake smiled in his good-natured way. "You forget the first rule of engineering. Always check when you can, then re-check and check again.--Now, if you'll kindly give me a reading off that bench."

Ashton complied, though with evident ill will. He had wakened in good spirits, but was fast returning to his sullenness of the previous day.

He took his time in going from the bench-mark to the first turning point. Blake moved up past him with inspiring briskness, but the younger man kept to his leisurely saunter. In rounding the corner of the hill twice as much time was consumed as was necessary.

When they came to the last turn at the foot of the rocky slope, where the line struck out across the valley towards the foot of the mountain side, Ashton paused to roll a cigarette before holding his rod for the reading. Small as was the incident, it was particularly aggravating to an engineer. The reading would have taken only a moment, and he could then have rolled his cigarette and smoked it while Blake was moving past him for the next "set up." Instead, he deliberately kept Blake waiting until the cigarette had been rolled and lighted.

Blake "pulled up" his level and started forward, his face impa.s.sive.

Ashton leaned jauntily on the rod, sucked in a mouthful of smoke, and raising his cigarette, flicked the ash from the tip with his little finger. At the same instant a bullet from the crags above him pierced the crown of his hat. He pitched forward on his face, rolled half over, and lay quiet.

Most men would have been dumfounded by the frightful suddenness of the occurrence--the shot and the instant fall of Ashton. It was like a stroke of lightning out of a clear sky. Blake did not stand gaping even for a moment. As Ashton's senseless body struck the ground, he sprang sideways and bent to lay down his instrument, with the instinctive carefulness of an old railroad surveyor. A swift rush towards Ashton barely saved him from the second bullet that came pinging down from the hill crest. It burned across the back of his shoulder.

Heedless of the blood spurting from the wound in the side of Ashton's head, Blake s.n.a.t.c.hed up the automatic rifle and fired at a point between two k.n.o.bs of rock on the hill crest. Promptly a hat appeared, then an arm and a rifle. It might have been expected that a bullet would have instantly followed; yet the a.s.sa.s.sin was strangely deliberate about getting his aim. Blake did not wait for him. He began to fire as fast as the automatic ejector and reloader set the rifle trigger. Three bullets sped up at the a.s.sa.s.sin before he had time to drop back out of sight.

Blake started up the hillside, his pale eyes like white-hot steel. He was in a fury, but it was the cold fury of a man too courageous for reckless bravado. He went up the hill as an Apache would have charged, dodging from cover to cover and, wherever possible, keeping in line with a rock or tree in his successive rushes. At every brief stop he scanned the ridge crest for a sign of his enemy. But the a.s.sa.s.sin did not show himself. For all that Blake could tell, he might be waiting for a sure shot, or he might be lying with a bullet through his brain.

To avoid suicidal exposure, the engineer was compelled to veer off to the right in his ascent. He reached the ridge crest without a shot having been fired at him. Leaping suddenly to his feet, he scrambled up to the flat top of a high crag, from which he could peer down upon the others. The natural embrazure from which the a.s.sa.s.sin had fired was exposed to his view; but the place was empty. He looked cautiously about at the many huge bowlders behind which a hundred men might have been crouching unseen by him, advantageous as was his position. To flush the a.s.sa.s.sin would require a bold rush over and around the rocks.

Blake set his powerful jaw and gathered himself together for the leap down from his crag. At that moment his alert eye caught a glimpse of a swiftly moving object on the mesa at the foot of the far side of the hill. It was a horse and rider racing out of sight around the bend of a ridge point.

Blake whipped the rifle to his shoulder. But the cowardly fugitive had disappeared. He lowered the rifle and started back down the hill faster than he had come up. Leaping like a goat, sliding, rushing--he raced to the bottom in a direct line for Ashton.

The victim lay as he had fallen, his head ghastly red with blood, which was still oozing from his wound. Blake dropped down beside the flaccid body and tore open the front of the silk shirt. He thrust in his hand. For some moments he was baffled by the violent throbbing of his own pulse. Then, at last, he detected a heartbeat, very feeble and slow yet unmistakable.

He turned Ashton on his side, and washing away the blood with water from the canteen, examined the wound with utmost carefulness. The bullet had pierced the scalp and plowed a furrow down along the side of the skull, grazing but not penetrating the bone.

"Only stunned.... Mighty close, though," muttered Blake. He looked at the ashen face of the wounded man and added apprehensively, "Too close!... Concussion--"

Hastily he knotted a compress bandage made of handkerchiefs and neckerchiefs around the bleeding head, and stretching Ashton flat on his back, began to pump his arms up and down as is done in resuscitating a drowned person. After a time Ashton's face began to lose its deathly pallor. His heart beat less feebly; he drew in a deep sighing breath, and stared up dazedly at Blake, with slowly returning consciousness.

"I'll smoke all I please and when I please," he murmured in a supercilious drawl.

Blake dashed his face with the cupful of water still left in the canteen. The wounded man flushed with quick anger and attempted to rise.

"What--what you--How dare you?" he spluttered, only to sink back with a groan, "My head! O-o-oh! You've smashed my head!"

"You're in luck that your head _wasn't_ smashed," replied Blake. "It was a bullet knocked you over."

"Bullet?" echoed Ashton.

"Yes. Scoundrel up on the hill tried to get us both."

"Up on the hill?" Ashton twisted his head about, in alarm, to look at the hill crest. "But if he--He may shoot again."

"Not this time. I went up for him. He went down faster, other side the hill. Saw him on the run. The sneaking--" Blake closed his lips on the word. After a moment his grimness relaxed. "Came back to start your funeral. Found you'd cheated the undertaker. How do you feel now?"

"I believe I--" began Ashton, again trying to raise himself, only to sink back as before. "My head!--What makes me so weak?"

"Don't worry," rea.s.sured Blake. "It's only a scalp wound. You are weak from the shock and a little loss of blood. I'll get you a drink from my can, and then tote you into camp. You'll be all right in a day or two."

He fetched the can of water from his bag, which he had dropped beside the level. Ashton drank with the thirstiness of one who has lost blood. When at last his thirst was quenched, he glanced up at Blake with a look of half reluctant apology.

"I said something about your striking me," he murmured. "I did not understand--did not realize I had been shot. You see, just before--"

"That's all right," broke in Blake. "I owe you a bigger apology. Last evening, while you were out hunting, someone took a shot at me. It must have been this same sneaking skunk. I thought it was you."

"You thought I could try to--to shoot you?" muttered Ashton.

"Yes. There's the old matter of the bridge, and you seem to think I am responsible for what your father has done. But after you came in, I soon concluded that you had fired towards the camp unintentionally."

"If you had asked," explained Ashton, "I was around at the far end of these hills, nearly two miles from the camp, when I shot at the wolf and the rifle went wrong."

"That was a fortunate occurrence--your going out and seeing the wolf;"

said Blake. "If you hadn't taken that shot, we would not have known your rifle was out of gear. My first bullet merely made the sneak rise up to pot me. If the rapidity of the next three shots hadn't rattled him, I believe he would have potted me, instead of running."

"So that was it?" exclaimed Ashton. "Do you know, I believe it must be the same scoundrel who attacked me the first day I rode down Dry Fork. No doubt he remembered how I ripped loose at him with the automatic-catch set."

"Your thieving guide?" said Blake. "But why should he try to kill me?"

"I'm sure I don't know," murmured Ashton. "Another drink, please."