The Octopus - Frank Norris (novel24 .TXT) 📗

to eat?” Annixter’s head was under the saddle flap as he tore at the cinch. “Want anything to eat? Want any money? Want a gun?”

“Water,” returned Dyke. “They’ve watched every spring. I’m killed with thirst.”

“There’s the hydrant. Quick now.”

“I got as far as the Kern River, but they turned me back,” he said between breaths as he drank.

“Don’t stop to talk.”

“My mother, and the little tad–-”

“I’m taking care of them. They’re stopping with me.”

Here?

“You won’t see ‘em; by the Lord, you won’t. You’ll get away. Where’s that back cinch strap, BILLY? God damn it, are you going to let him be shot before he can get away? Now, Dyke, up you go. She’ll kill herself running before they can catch you.”

“God bless you, Annixter. Where’s the little tad? Is she well, Annixter, and the mother? Tell them–-”

“Yes, yes, yes. All clear, Pres? Let her have her own gait, Dyke. You’re on the best horse in the county now. Let go her head, Billy. Now, Dyke,—shake hands? You bet I will. That’s all right. Yes, God bless you. Let her go. You’re OFF.”

Answering the goad of the spur, and already quivering with the excitement of the men who surrounded her, the buckskin cleared the stable-corral in two leaps; then, gathering her legs under her, her head low, her neck stretched out, swung into the road from out the driveway disappearing in a blur of dust.

With the agility of a monkey, young Vacca swung himself into the framework of the artesian well, clambering aloft to its very top. He swept the country with a glance.

“Well?” demanded Annixter from the ground. The others cocked their heads to listen.

“I see him; I see him!” shouted Vacca. “He’s going like the devil. He’s headed for Guadalajara.”

“Look back, up the road, toward the Mission. Anything there?”

The answer came down in a shout of apprehension.

“There’s a party of men. Three or four—on horseback. There’s dogs with ‘em. They’re coming this way. Oh, I can hear the dogs. And, say, oh, say, there’s another party coming down the Lower Road, going towards Guadalajara, too. They got guns. I can see the shine of the barrels. And, oh, Lord, say, there’s three more men on horses coming down on the jump from the hills on the Los Muertos stock range. They’re making towards Guadalajara. And I can hear the courthouse bell in Bonneville ringing. Say, the whole county is up.”

As young Vacca slid down to the ground, two small black-and-tan hounds, with flapping ears and lolling tongues, loped into view on the road in front of the house. They were grey with dust, their noses were to the ground. At the gate where Dyke had turned into the ranch house grounds, they halted in confusion a moment. One started to follow the highwayman’s trail towards the stable corral, but the other, quartering over the road with lightning swiftness, suddenly picked up the new scent leading on towards Guadalajara. He tossed his head in the air, and Presley abruptly shut his hands over his ears.

Ah, that terrible cry! deep-toned, reverberating like the bourdon of a great bell. It was the trackers exulting on the trail of the pursued, the prolonged, raucous howl, eager, ominous, vibrating with the alarm of the tocsin, sullen with the heavy muffling note of death. But close upon the bay of the hounds, came the gallop of horses. Five men, their eyes upon the hounds, their rifles across their pommels, their horses reeking and black with sweat, swept by in a storm of dust, glinting hoofs, and streaming manes.

“That was Delaney’s gang,” exclaimed Annixter. “I saw him.”

“The other was that chap Christian,” said Vacca, “S. Behrman’s cousin. He had two deputies with him; and the chap in the white slouch hat was the sheriff from Visalia.”

“By the Lord, they aren’t far behind,” declared Annixter.

As the men turned towards the house again they saw Hilma and Mrs. Dyke in the doorway of the little house where the latter lived. They were looking out, bewildered, ignorant of what had happened. But on the porch of the Ranch house itself, alone, forgotten in the excitement, Sidney—the little tad—stood, with pale face and serious, wide-open eyes. She had seen everything, and had understood. She said nothing. Her head inclined towards the roadway, she listened to the faint and distant baying of the dogs.

Dyke thundered across the railway tracks by the depot at Guadalajara not five minutes ahead of his pursuers. Luck seemed to have deserted him. The station, usually so quiet, was now occupied by the crew of a freight train that lay on the down track; while on the up line, near at hand and headed in the same direction, was a detached locomotive, whose engineer and fireman recognized him, he was sure, as the buckskin leaped across the rails.

He had had no time to formulate a plan since that morning, when, tortured with thirst, he had ventured near the spring at the headwaters of Broderson Creek, on Quien Sabe, and had all but fallen into the hands of the posse that had been watching for that very move. It was useless now to regret that he had tried to foil pursuit by turning back on his tracks to regain the mountains east of Bonneville. Now Delaney was almost on him. To distance that posse, was the only thing to be thought of now. It was no longer a question of hiding till pursuit should flag; they had driven him out from the shelter of the mountains, down into this populous countryside, where an enemy might be met with at every turn of the road. Now it was life or death. He would either escape or be killed. He knew very well that he would never allow himself to be taken alive. But he had no mind to be killed—to turn and fight—till escape was blocked. His one thought was to leave pursuit behind.

Weeks of flight had sharpened Dyke’s every sense. As he turned into the Upper Road beyond Guadalajara, he saw the three men galloping down from Derrick’s stock range, making for the road ahead of him. They would cut him off there. He swung the buckskin about. He must take the Lower Road across Los Muertos from Guadalajara, and he must reach it before Delaney’s dogs and posse. Back he galloped, the buckskin measuring her length with every leap. Once more the station came in sight. Rising in his stirrups, he looked across the fields in the direction of the Lower Road. There was a cloud of dust there. From a wagon? No, horses on the run, and their riders were armed! He could catch the flash of gun barrels. They were all closing in on him, converging on Guadalajara by every available road. The Upper Road west of Guadalajara led straight to Bonneville. That way was impossible. Was he in a trap? Had the time for fighting come at last?

But as Dyke neared the depot at Guadalajara, his eye fell upon the detached locomotive that lay quietly steaming on the up line, and with a thrill of exultation, he remembered that he was an engineer born and bred. Delaney’s dogs were already to be heard, and the roll of hoofs on the Lower Road was dinning in his ears, as he leaped from the buckskin before the depot. The train crew scattered like frightened sheep before him, but Dyke ignored them. His pistol was in his hand as, once more on foot, he sprang toward the lone engine.

“Out of the cab,” he shouted. “Both of you. Quick, or I’ll kill you both.”

The two men tumbled from the iron apron of the tender as Dyke swung himself up, dropping his pistol on the floor of the cab and reaching with the old instinct for the familiar levers. The great compound hissed and trembled as the steam was released, and the huge drivers stirred, turning slowly on the tracks. But there was a shout. Delaney’s posse, dogs and men, swung into view at the turn of the road, their figures leaning over as they took the curve at full speed. Dyke threw everything wide open and caught up his revolver. From behind came the challenge of a Winchester. The party on the Lower Road were even closer than Delaney. They had seen his manoeuvre, and the first shot of the fight shivered the cab windows above the engineer’s head.

But spinning futilely at first, the drivers of the engine at last caught the rails. The engine moved, advanced, travelled past the depot and the freight train, and gathering speed, rolled out on the track beyond. Smoke, black and boiling, shot skyward from the stack; not a joint that did not shudder with the mighty strain of the steam; hut the great iron brute—one of Baldwin’s newest and best—came to call, obedient and docile as soon as ever the great pulsing heart of it felt a master hand upon its levers. It gathered its speed, bracing its steel muscles, its thews of iron, and roared out upon the open track, filling the air with the rasp of its tempest-breath, blotting the sunshine with the belch of its hot, thick smoke. Already it was lessening in the distance, when Delaney, Christian, and the sheriff of Visalia dashed up to the station.

The posse had seen everything.

“Stuck. Curse the luck!” vociferated the cow-Puncher.

But the sheriff was already out of the saddle and into the telegraph office.

“There’s a derailing switch between here and Pixley, isn’t there?” he cried.

“Yes.”

“Wire ahead to open it. We’ll derail him there. Come on;” he turned to Delaney and the others. They sprang into the cab of the locomotive that was attached to the freight train.

“Name of the State of California,” shouted the sheriff to the bewildered engineer. “Cut off from your train.”

The sheriff was a man to be obeyed without hesitating. Time was not allowed the crew of the freight train for debating as to the right or the wrong of requisitioning the engine, and before anyone thought of the safety or danger of the affair, the freight engine was already flying out upon the down line, hot in pursuit of Dyke, now far ahead upon the up track.

“I remember perfectly well there’s a derailing switch between here and Pixley,” shouted the sheriff above the roar of the locomotive. “They use it in case they have to derail runaway engines. It runs right off into the country. We’ll pile him up there. Ready with your guns, boys.”

“If we should meet another train coming up on this track–-” protested the frightened engineer.

“Then we’d jump or be smashed. Hi! look! There he is.” As the freight engine rounded a curve, Dyke’s engine came into view, shooting on some quarter of a mile ahead of them, wreathed in whirling smoke.

“The switch ain’t much further on,” clamoured the engineer. “You can see Pixley now.”

Dyke, his hand on the grip of the valve that controlled the steam, his head out of the cab window, thundered on. He was back in his old place again; once more he was the engineer; once more he felt the engine quiver under him; the familiar noises were in his ears; the familiar buffeting of the wind surged, roaring at his face; the familiar odours of hot steam and smoke reeked in his nostrils, and on either side of him, parallel panoramas, the two halves of the landscape sliced, as it were, in two by the clashing wheels of his engine, streamed by in green and brown blurs.

He found himself settling to the old position on the cab seat, leaning on his elbow from the window, one hand on the controller. All at once, the instinct of the pursuit that of late had become so