Part 20 (2/2)
”Line them up for the back trail,” was Ballard's crisp command, when Fitzpatrick and Blacklock had dragged the Maxim in from its boulder redoubt and had loaded it into the waggon beside the rope-wound Billings.
”Whereabouts does this here back trail end up--for us easy-marks, Cap'n Ballard?” It was Carson who wanted to know.
”That's for a jury to say,” was the brief reply.
”You've et my bread and stabled yo' hawss in my corral,” the chief rustler went on gloomily. ”But that's all right--if you feel called to take up for ol' King Adam, that's fightin' ever' last shovelful o' mud you turn over in th' big valley.”
Fitzpatrick was leading the way up the hoof-trampled bed of the dry valley with the waggon team, and Blacklock was marshalling the line of prisoners to follow in single file when Ballard wheeled his bronco to mount.
”I fight my own battles, Carson,” he said, quietly. ”You set a deadfall for me, and I tumbled in like a tenderfoot. That put it up to me to knock out your raid. Incidentally, you and your gang will get what is coming to you for blowing a few thousand yards of earth into our ca.n.a.l.
That's all. Line up there with the others; you've shot your string and lost.”
The return route led the straggling cavalcade through the arroyo mouth, and among the low hills back of Riley's camp to a junction with the ca.n.a.l line grade half way to Fitzpatrick's headquarters. Approaching the big camp, Ballard held a conference with the contractor, as a result of which the waggon mules were headed to the left in a semicircular detour around the sleeping camp, the string of prisoners following as the knotted trail ropes steered it.
Another hour of easting saw the crescent moon poising over the black sky-line of the Elks, and it brought captors and captured to the end of track of the railroad where there was a siding, with a half-dozen empty material cars and Bromley's artillery special, the engine hissing softly and the men asleep on the cab cus.h.i.+ons.
Ballard cut his prisoners foot-free, dismounted them, and locked them into an empty box-car. This done, the engine crew was aroused, the Maxim was reloaded upon the tender, and the chief gave the trainmen their instructions.
”Take the gun, and that locked box-car, back to Elbow Canyon,” he directed. ”Mr. Bromley will give you orders from there.”
”Carload o' hosses?” said the engineman, noting the position of the box-car opposite a temporary chute built for debarking a consignment of Fitzpatrick's sc.r.a.per teams.
”No; jacka.s.ses,” was Ballard's correction; and when the engine was clattering away to the eastward with its one-car train, the waggon was headed westward, with Blacklock sharing the seat beside Fitzpatrick, Ballard lying full-length on his back in the deep box-bed, and the long string of saddle animals towing from the tailboard.
At the headquarters commissary Blacklock tumbled into the handiest bunk and was asleep when he did it. But Ballard roused himself sufficiently to send a message over the wire to Bromley directing the disposal of the captured cattle thieves, who were to be transported by way of Alta Vista and the D. & U. P. to the county seat.
After that he remembered nothing until he awoke to blink at the sun s.h.i.+ning into the little bunk room at the back of the pay office; awoke with a start to find Fitzpatrick handing him a telegram scrawled upon a bit of wrapping-paper.
”I'm just this minut' taking this off the wire,” said the contractor, grinning sheepishly; and Ballard read the scrawl:
”D. & U. P. box-car No. 3546 here all O. K. with both side doors carefully locked and end door wide open. Nothing inside but a few bits of rope and a stale smell of tobacco smoke and corn whiskey.
”BROMLEY.”
XV
HOSPES ET HOSTIS
It was two days after the double fiasco of the cattle raid before Ballard returned to his own headquarters at Elbow Canyon; but Bromley's laugh on his friend and chief was only biding its time.
”What you didn't do to Carson and his gang was good and plenty, wasn't it, Breckenridge?” was his grinning comment, when they had been over the interval work on the dam together, and were smoking an afternoon peace pipe on the porch of the adobe office. ”It's the joke of the camp. I tried to keep it dark, but the enginemen bleated about it like a pair of sheep, of course.”
”a.s.sume that I have some glimmerings of a sense of humour, and let it go at that,” growled Ballard; adding; ”I'm glad the hoodoo has let up on you long enough to give this outfit a chance to be amused--even at a poor joke on me.”
”It has,” said Bromley. ”We haven't had a shock or a shudder since you went down-valley. And I've been wondering why.”
”Forget it,” suggested the chief, shortly. ”Call it safely dead and buried, and don't dig it up again. We have grief enough without it.”
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