CHAPTER XXII

_Good Intentions_

Returning from the station, Hartwell drove rapidly until he came to the foot of the mountain that rose above the nearly level mesa. Even then he tried to urge his jaded team into a pace in some consonance with his anxiety; but the steep grades and the rarefied air appealed more strongly to the exhausted animals than did the stinging lash he wielded.

As, utterly blown, they came to a rest at the top of a steep grade, Hartwell became aware of the presence of three men who rose leisurely as the team halted. Two of them stood close by the horses' heads, the third paused beside the wagon.

"Howdy!" he saluted, with a grin.

"What do you want?" A hold-up was the only thing that occurred to Hartwell.

"Just a little sociable talk. You ain't in no hurry?" The grin broadened.

"I am." Hartwell reached for his whip.

"None of that!" The grin died away. The two men each laid a firm hand on the bridles.

"Will you tell me what this means?" There was not a quaver in Hartwell's voice, no trace of fear in his eyes.

"By-and-by. You just wait. You got a gun?"

"No; I haven't."

"I don't like to dispute a gentleman; but it's better to be safe. Just put up your hands."

Hartwell complied with the request. The man pa.s.sed his hands rapidly over Hartwell's body, then turned away.

"All right," he said, then seated himself and began filling his pipe.

"How long am I expected to wait?" Hartwell's tone was sarcastic.

"Sorry I can't tell you. It just depends. I'll let you know when."

He relapsed into silence that Hartwell could not break with all his impatient questions or his open threats. The men left the horses' heads and seated themselves in the road. It occurred to Hartwell to make a dash for liberty, but there was a cartridge-belt on each man and holsters with ready guns.

In the deep canon the twilight was giving way to darkness that was only held in check by the strip of open sky above and by a band of yellow light that burned with lambent tongues on the waving foliage which overhung the eastern cliff. Chattering squirrels and scolding magpies had long since ceased their bickerings; if there were other sounds that came with the night, they were overcome by the complaining river which ceased not day nor night to fret among the boulders that strewed its bed. Like a shaft of light piercing the darkness a whistle sounded, mellowed by distance. The man near the wagon spoke.

"That's a special. Where in h.e.l.l's Jack?"

"On deck." A fourth man came to a halt. He paused, wiping the perspiration from his face. "They're coming, a hundred strong. Jakey coughed it up, and it didn't cost a cent." He laughed. "It's Jack Haskins's crowd, too."

The man by the wagon addressed Hartwell.

"I can tell you now. It's an all-night wait. Tumble out lively. Better take your blankets, if you've got any. It's liable to be cool before morning right here. It'll be hotter on the mountain, but you'd better stay here."

Hartwell did not stir.

"Out with you now, lively. We ain't got no time to waste."

Hartwell obeyed. The man sprang into the wagon and, pitching out the blankets, gathered up the lines.

"Come on, boys." Turning to his companion, he said, "You stay with him, Jack. He ain't heeled; but don't let him off." To Hartwell direct, "Don't try to get away. We'll deliver your message about the special."

His companions were already in the wagon and they started up the trail.

Jack turned to his charge.

"Now, if you'll just be a good boy and mind me, to-morrow I'll take you to the circus."

CHAPTER XXIII

_An Unexpected Recruit_

Like the majority of men in the West, Jake Studley took the view that all men are equal, and that the interests of one are the concerns of all. A civil answer to what in other climes would be considered impertinent curiosity was the unmistakable shibboleth of the coequal fraternity. Hartwell's manner had been interpreted by Jakey as a declaration of heresy to his orthodox code and the invitation to mind his own business as a breach of etiquette which the code entailed. Jakey thereupon a.s.sumed the duties of a defender of the faith, and, being prepared for action, moved immediately upon the enemy. The attack developed the unexpected. Hartwell's bill, tendered in desperation, was accepted in error, not as a bribe, but as an apology. Jakey sounded "cease firing" to his embattled lines, and called in his attacking forces. He had taken salt, henceforth he was Hartwell's friend and the friend of his friends.

Jakey took neither himself nor his life seriously. He was station agent, freight agent, express agent, and telegraph operator at Rainbow Station, R. G. S., and he performed his various duties with laudable promptness, when nothing more promising attracted his attention. Just now the "more promising" was in sight. The company had no scruples in dismissing employees without warning, and Jakey had no quixotic principles which restrained him for a moment from doing to others what they would do to him if occasion arose.

Jakey did not hold that the world owed him a living, but he considered that it possessed a goodly store of desirable things and that these were held in trust for those who chose to take them. Being "broke" did not appal him, nor the loss of a job fill him with quaking. The railroad was not the whole push, and if he could not pump electric juice he could wield a pick or rope a steer with equal zeal. Just now the most desirable thing that the world held in trust was the coming fight at the Rainbow. Accordingly he wired the R. G. S. officials that there was a vacancy at Rainbow Station. The said officials, being long accustomed to men of Jakey's stamp, merely remarked, "d.a.m.n!" and immediately wired to the nearest junction point to send another man to take the vacant position.

Jakey admired Firmstone, and this admiration prepossessed him in Firmstone's favour. The prepossession was by no means fixed and invulnerable, and had not Hartwell cleared himself of suspected heresy, he would have lent the same zeal, now kindling within him, to the Blue Goose rather than the Rainbow.

In what he recognised as the first round of the opening fight Jakey realised that the Blue Goose had scored. But, before the special pulled in, he was ready, and this time he was sure of his move.

"By the Great Spirit of the n.o.ble Red Man," Jakey was apostrophising the distant mountains in ornate language; "what kind of a low-down bird are you, to be gathered in by a goose, and a blue one at that?" Jakey paused, gazing earnestly at the retreating figure of the miner. Then, shaking his fist at the man's back, "Look here, you down-trodden serf of capitalistic oppression, I'll show you! Don't you fool yourself! Tipped me the grand ha-ha; did you? Well, you just listen to me! 'Stead of milking the old cow, you've just rubbed off a few drops from her calf's nose. That's what, as I'll proceed to demonstrate."

Jakey's loyalty had been wavering, pa.s.sive, and impersonal. Now his personal sympathies were enlisted, for the path of self-vindication lay through the triumph of the Rainbow.

Before the special had come to a standstill its animated cargo began to disembark. Coatless men with woollen shirts belted to trousers, the belts sagging with their heavy loads of guns and cartridges, every man with a roll of blankets and many with carbines as well, testified to the recognition of the fact that the path of the miner's pick must be cleared by burning powder.

Jakey, thrusting his way through the boisterous crowd, forced upon the resentful conductor his surrendered insignia of office, then mingled with his future a.s.sociates. He met a hilarious welcome, as the knowledge spread from man to man that he was with them. Its practical expression was accompanied by the thrusting of uncorked bottles at his face and demands that he should "drink hearty" as a pledge of fellowship. Jakey waved them aside.

"Put them up, boys, put them up. Them weapons ain't no use, not here.

They're too short range, and they shoot the wrong way."

The leader pushed his way through the crowd around Jakey.

"That's right, boys. It's close to tally now. Where's the Rainbow trail?"

With elaborate figures, punctuated by irreverent adjectives, Jakey pointed out the trail and his reasons against taking it.

"It's good medicine to fight a skunk head on," he concluded; "but when you go up against a skunk, a coyote, and a grizzly wrapped up in one skin, you want to be circ.u.mspect. Morrison's a skunk, Pierre's a coyote, and the rest are grizzlies, and you don't want to fool yourselves just because the skin of the beast grows feathers instead of fur."

The leader listened attentively and, from the thick husk of Jakey's figures, he stripped the hard grains of well-ripened truth. Jakey laid small emphasis on the manner in which the envoy of the Blue Goose had gained his information. He had personal reasons for that, but the fact that the information was gained sufficed.