Part 19 (2/2)
When the contractor was gone, Ballard called the collegian into the pay office and put him in touch with the pressing facts. A raid was to be made on Colonel Craigmiles's cattle by a band of cattle thieves; the raid was to be prevented; means to the preventing end--three men and a Maxim automatic rapid-fire gun. Would Blacklock be one of the three?
”Would a hungry little dog eat his supper, Mr. Ballard? By Jove! but you're a good angel in disguise--to let me in for the fun! And you've pressed the right b.u.t.ton, too, by George! There's a Maxim in the military kit at college, and I can work her to the queen's taste.”
”Then you may consider yourself chief of the artillery,” was the prompt rejoinder. ”I suppose I don't need to ask if you can ride a range pony?”
Blacklock's laugh was an excited chuckle.
”Now you're shouting. What I don't know about cow-ponies would make the biggest book you ever saw. But I'd ride a striped zebra rather than be left out of this. Do we hike out now?--right away?”
”There is no rush; you can smoke a pipe or two--as I'm going to.
Fitzpatrick has to drive fourteen miles to work off his handicap.”
Ballard filled his pipe and lighting it sat down to let the mental polis.h.i.+ng wheels grind upon the details of his plan. Blacklock tried hard to a.s.sume the manly att.i.tude of nonchalance; tried and failed utterly. Once for every five minutes of the waiting he had to jump up and make a trip to the front of the commissary to ease off the excess pressure; and at the eleventh return Ballard was knocking the ash out of his pipe.
”Getting on your nerves, Jerry?” he asked. ”All right: we'll go and bore a couple of holes into the night, if that's what you're anxious to be doing.”
The start was made without advertis.e.m.e.nt. Fitzpatrick's horse-keeper was smoking cigarettes on the little porch platform, and at a word from Ballard he disappeared in the direction of the horse-rope. Giving him the necessary saddling time, the two made their way around the card-playing groups at the plaza fire, and at the back of the darkened mess-tent found the man waiting with three saddled broncos, all with rifle holsters under the stirrup leathers. Ballard asked a single question at the mounting moment.
”You haven't seen young Carson in the last hour or so, have you, Patsy?”
”Niver a hair av him: 'tis all day long he's been gone, wid Misther Bourke swearing thremenjous about the cayuse he took.”
Ballard took the bridle of the led horse and the ride down the line of the ca.n.a.l, with Fitzpatrick's ”piece of a moon” to silver the darkness, was begun as a part of the day's work by the engineer, but with some little trepidation by the young collegian, whose saddle-strivings. .h.i.therto had been confined to the well-behaved cobs in his father's stables.
At the end of the first mile Blacklock found himself growing painfully conscious of every start of the wiry little steed between his knees, and was fain to seek comfort.
”Say, Mr. Ballard; what do you do when a horse bucks under you?” he asked, wedging the inquiry between the jolts of the racking gallop.
”You don't do anything,” replied Ballard, taking the p.r.o.noun in the generic sense. ”The bronco usually does it all.”
”I--believe this brute's--getting ready to--buck,” gasped the tyro.
”He's working--my knee-holds loose--with his confounded sh--shoulder-blades.”
”Freeze to him,” laughed Ballard. Then he added the word of heartening: ”He can't buck while you keep him on the run. Here's a smooth bit of prairie: let him out a few notches.”
That was the beginning of a mad race that swept them down the ca.n.a.l line, past Riley's camp and out to the sand-floored cleft in the foothills far ahead of the planned meeting with Fitzpatrick. But this time the waiting interval was not wasted. Picketing the three horses, and arming themselves with a pair of the short-barrelled rifles, the advance guard of two made a careful study of the ground, pus.h.i.+ng the reconnaissance down to the mouth of the dry valley, and a little way along the main river trail in both directions.
”Right here,” said Ballard, indicating a point on the river trail just below the intersecting valley mouth, ”is where you will be posted with the Maxim. If you take this boulder for a s.h.i.+eld, you can command the gulch and the upper trail for a hundred yards or more, and still be out of range of their Winchesters. They'll probably shoot at you, but you won't mind that, with six or eight feet of granite for a breastwork, will you, Jerry?”
”Well, I should say not! Just you watch me burn 'em up when you give the word, Mr. Ballard. I believe I could hold a hundred of 'em from this rock.”
”That is exactly what I want you to do--to hold them. It would be cold-blooded murder to turn the Maxim loose on them from this short range unless they force you to it. Don't forget that, Jerry.”
”I sha'n't,” promised the collegian; and after some further study of the topographies, they went back to the horses.
Thereupon ensued a tedious wait of an hour or more, with no sight or sound of the expected waggon, and with anxiety growing like a juggler's rose during the slowly pa.s.sing minutes. Anyone of a dozen things might have happened to delay Fitzpatrick, or even to make his errand a fruitless one. The construction track was rough, and the hurrying engine might have jumped the rails. The rustlers might have got wind of the gun dash and ditched the locomotive. Failing that, some of their round-up men might have stumbled upon the contractor and halted and overpowered him. Ballard and Blacklock listened anxiously for the drumming of wheels. But when the silence was broken it was not by waggon noises; the sound was in the air--a distant lowing of a herd in motion, and the shuffling murmur of many hoofs. The inference was plain.
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