The Mountain Divide - Frank H. Spearman (english reading book .txt) 📗

When Hawk saw Bob Scott, two hours later, riding into his camp on the Brushwood with the two prisoners, he was taciturn but very much surprised.

Scott was disposed to make light of the lucky chance, as he termed it, that had thrown the two men into his way. Hawk, on the other hand, declared in his arbitrary manner that it was not wholly a lucky chance. He understood the Indian’s dogged tenacity too well to think for a moment that the fugitives could have escaped him, even had he not ridden into Casement’s camp as he so fortuitously had done.

The scout, Hawk knew, had the characteristic intuition of the frontiersman; the mental attributes that combine with keen observation and unusually good judgment as aids to success when circumstances are seemingly hopeless. Such men may be at fault in details, and frequently are, but 242 they are not often wholly wrong in conclusions. And in their pursuit of a criminal they are like trained hounds, which may frequently lose their trail for a moment, but, before they have gone very far astray, come unerringly back to it.

“If they ever give you a chance, Bob, you will make a great thief-catcher,” exclaimed Hawk with his naturally prodigal generosity of appreciation.

“I certainly never expected to catch Rebstock and this fellow Seagrue as easily as that,” smiled Scott, as the troopers took charge of his men.

“If you hadn’t caught them there you would have trailed them there. It would only have meant a longer chase.”

“A whole lot longer.”

“When you come to think of it, Bob, the railroad was their only hope, anyway. They did right in striking for it. Without horses, the big camp and the trains for Medicine Bend every day were their one chance to get away.”

Scott assented. “The trouble with us,” he smiled, “was that we didn’t think until after it was all over. Sometime a man will come to 243 these mountains who thinks things out before they happen instead of after. Then we will have a man fit to run the secret service on this railroad. But we are losing time,” he added, tightening up his saddle girths.

“What are you going to do now? And why,” demanded Hawk without waiting for an answer, “did you drag these men away down here instead of leaving them for Casement to lock up until we were ready to take them to Medicine Bend?”

“I am going to drag them farther yet,” announced Scott. “I am going to ride after the French trader and fit these two fellows out in their own clothes again to make it easier for Bucks to indentify them.”

“Don’t say ‘indentify,’ Bob, say ‘identify,’” returned Hawk testily.

Bob Scott usually turned away a sharp word with silence, and although he felt confident Hawk was wrong, he argued no further with him, but stuck just the same to his own construction of the troublesome word.

“You’ve got the right idea, Bob, if you have 244 got the wrong word,” muttered Hawk. “Why didn’t you think of that sooner?”

They broke camp and started promptly. About noon they overtook the trading outfit and after some threatening forced the tricky teamster to rig the two gamblers out in their own apparel. Having done this, they started on a long ride for Casement’s camp, reaching it again with their prisoners, and all very dusty and fatigued, long after dark.

The hard work voluntarily undertaken by the scout to aid the boy, as he termed Bucks, in identifying his graceless assailants was vindicated when, the next morning, the party with their prisoners arrived on a special train at Point of Rocks, and Bucks immediately pointed to Seagrue as the man who had first fired at him.

There were a few pretty hot moments on the platform when Bucks, among a group of five camp malefactors on their way to Medicine Bend, confronted the two men who had tried to kill him, and unhesitatingly pointed them out. Seagrue, tall and surly, denied vehemently ever having been 245 at Point of Rocks and ever having seen Bucks. He declared the whole affair was “framed up” to send him to the penitentiary. He threatened if he were “sent up” to come back and kill Bucks if it was twenty years later––and did, in that respect, try to keep his word.

But his threats availed him nothing, and John Rebstock who, though still young, was a sly fox in crooked ways, contented himself with a philosophical denial of everything alleged against him, adding only in an injured tone that nobody would believe a fat man anyway.

It was he, however, rather than the less clever Seagrue, who had begun to excite sympathy for what he called his luckless plight and that of his companion, before they had left the railroad camp. Among the five evil-doers who had been rounded-up and deported for the jail at Medicine Bend, and now accompanied the two gamblers, Rebstock spread every story he could think of to arouse his friends at Medicine Bend to a demonstration in his behalf.

The very first efforts at putting civil law and 246 order into effect were just then being tried in the new and lawless frontier railroad town and the contest between the two elements of decency and of license had reached an acute pass when Rebstock and Seagrue were thrown into jail at Medicine Bend. A case of sympathy for them was not hard to work up among men of their own kind and threats were heard up and down Front Street that if the railroading of two innocent men to the penitentiary were attempted something would happen.

Railroad men themselves, hearing the mutterings, brought word of them to head-quarters, but Stanley was in no wise disturbed. He had wanted to make an example for the benefit of the criminals who swarmed to the town, and now welcomed the chance to put the law’s rigor on the men that had tried to assassinate his favorite operator. Bucks, lest he might be made the victim of a more successful attack, was brought down from Point of Rocks the first moment he could be relieved. A plot to put him out of the way, as the sole witness against the accused gamblers, 247 was uncovered by Scott almost as soon as Bucks had returned to the big town and, warned by his careful friend, he rarely went up street except with a companion––most frequently with Scott himself.

As the day set for Rebstock’s trial drew near, rumors were heard of a jail delivery. The jail itself was a flimsy wooden affair, and so crude in its appointments that any civilized man would have been justified in breaking out of it.

Nor was Brush, the sheriff, much more formidable than the jail itself. This official sought to curry favor with the townspeople––and that meant, pretty nearly, with the desperadoes––as well as to stand well with the railroad men; and in his effort to do both he succeeded in doing neither.

Bucks was given a night trick on his old wire in the local station, and in spite of the round of excitement about him settled down to the routine of regular work. The constant westbound movement of construction material made his duties heavier than before, but he seemed able to do whatever work he was assigned to and gained 248 the reputation of being dependable, wherever put.

He had risen one night from his key, after despatching a batch of messages, to stir the fire––the night was frosty––when he heard an altercation outside on the platform. In another moment the waiting-room door was thrown open and Bucks turned from the stove, poker in hand, to see a man in the extremity of fear rush into his lonely office.

The man, hatless and coatless and evidently trying to escape from some one, was so panic-stricken that his eyes bulged from their sockets, and his beard was so awry that it was a moment before Bucks recognized his old acquaintance Dan Baggs.

“They are after me, Bucks,” cried Baggs, closing the door in desperation. “They will kill me––hide me or they’ll kill me.”

Before the operator could ask a question in explanation, almost before the words were out of the frightened engineman’s mouth, and with Bucks pointing with his poker to the door, trying to tell 249 Baggs to lock it, the door again flew open and Bucks saw the face of a Front Street confidence man bursting through it.

Bucks sprang forward to secure the door behind the intruder, but he was too late even for that. Half a dozen more men crowded into the room. To ask questions was useless; every one began talking at once. Baggs, paralyzed with fear, cowered behind the stove and the confidence man, catching sight of him, tried to crowd through the wicket gate. As he sprang toward it, Bucks confronted him with his poker.

“Let that gate alone or I’ll brain you,” he cried, hardly realizing what he was saying, but well resolved what to do.

The gambler, infuriated, pointed to Baggs. “Throw that cur out here,” he yelled.

Baggs, now less exposed to his enemies, summoned the small remnant of his own courage and began to abuse his pursuer.