Cy Warman - The Last Spike
C >>
Cy Warman >> The Last Spike
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 | 6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11
"I reckon--what's that?" said the sheriff. It was the wild, long whistle
of the lone black engine just leaving the yards. The two officers faced
each other and stood listening to the flutter of the straight stack of
the black racer as she responded to the touch of the erstwhile drowsy
driver, who was at that moment laughing at the high sheriff, and who
would return to tell of it, and gloat in the streets of Spokane.
The sheriff knew that three of the men for whom he held warrants were at
Hillier, seven miles on the way to Canada. This engine, then, had been
sent to pick them up and bear them away over the border. An electric
line paralleled the steam way to Hillier, and now the sheriff boarded a
trolley and set sail to capture the engine, leaving one deputy to guard
the special car.
By the time the engineer got the water worked out of his cylinders, the
trolley was creeping up beside his tank. He saw the flash from the wire
above as the car, nodding and dipping like a light boat in the wake of a
ferry, shot beneath the cross-wires, and knew instantly that she was
after him.
An electric car would not be ploughing through the gloom at that rate,
without a ray of light, merely for the fun of the thing. A smile of
contempt curled the lip of the driver as he cut the reverse-lever back
to the first notch, put on the injector, and opened the throttle yet a
little wider.
The two machines were running almost neck and neck now. The trolley
cried, hissed, and spat fire in her mad effort to pass the locomotive. A
few stray sparks went out of the engine-stack, and fell upon the roof of
the racing car. At intervals of half a minute the fireman opened the
furnace door; and by the flare of light from the white-hot fire-box the
engine-driver could see the men on the teetering trolley,--the
motor-man, the conductor, the sheriff, and his deputy.
Slowly now the black flier began to slip away from the electric machine.
The driver, smiling across the glare of the furnace door at his silent,
sooty companion, touched the throttle again; and the great engine drew
away from the trolley, as a jack-rabbit who has been fooling with a
yellow dog passes swiftly out of reach of his silly yelp.
Now the men on the trolley heard the wild, triumphant scream of the iron
horse whistling for Hillier. The three directors of Le Roi had been
warned by wire, and were waiting, ready to board the engine.
The big wheels had scarcely stopped revolving when the men began to get
on. They had barely begun to turn again when the trolley dashed into
Hillier. The sheriff leaped to the ground and came running for the
engine. The wheels slipped; and each passing second brought the mighty
hand of the law, now outstretched, still nearer to the tail of the tank.
She was moving now, but the sheriff was doing better. Ten feet separated
the pursued and the pursuer. She slipped again, and the sheriff caught
the corner of the engine-tank. By this time the driver had got the sand
running; and now, as the wheels held the rail, the big engine bounded
forward, almost shaking the sheriff loose. With each turn of the wheels
the speed was increasing. The sheriff held on; and in three or four
seconds he was taking only about two steps between telegraph poles, and
then--he let go.
III
While the locomotive and the trolley were racing across the country the
Governor, who was engineering it all, invested another thousand. He
ordered another engine, and when she backed onto the coach the deputy
sheriff told the driver that he must not leave the station. The engineer
held his torch high above his head, looked the deputy over, and then
went on oiling his engine. In the meantime the Governor had stored his
friends away in the dark coach, including the secretary with the
company's great seal. Now the deputy became uneasy.
He dared not leave the train to send a wire to his chief at Hillier, for
the sheriff had said, "Keep your eye on the car."
The despatcher, whose only interest in the matter was to run the trains
and earn money for his employer, having given written and verbal orders
to the engineer, watched his chance and, when the sheriff was pounding
on the rear door, dodged in at the front, signalling with the bell-rope
to the driver to go. Frantically now the deputy beat upon the rear door
of the car, but the men within only laughed as the wheels rattled over
the last switch and left the lights of Spokane far behind.
Away they went over a new and crooked track, the sand and cinders
sucking in round the tail of the train to torment the luckless deputy.
Away over hills and rills, past Hillier, where the sheriff still stood
staring down the darkness after the vanishing engine; over switches and
through the Seven Devils, while the unhappy deputy hung to the rear
railing with one hand and crossed himself.
Each passing moment brought the racing train still nearer the
border,--to that invisible line that marks the end of Yankeeland and the
beginning of the British possessions. The sheriff knew this and beat
loudly upon the car door with an iron gun. The Governor let the sash
fall at the top of the door and spoke, or rather yelled, to the deputy.
To the Governor's amazement, the sheriff pushed the bottle aside. Dry
and dusty as he was, he would not drink. He was too mad to swallow. He
poked his head into the dark coach and ordered the whole party to
surrender.
"Just say what you want," said a voice in the gloom, "and we'll pass it
out to you."
The sheriff became busy with some curves and reverse curves now, and
made no reply.
Presently the Governor came to the window in the rear door again and
called up the sheriff.
"We are now nearing the border," he said to the man on the platform.
"They won't know you over there. Here you stand for law and order, and I
respect you, though I don't care to meet you personally; but over the
border you'll only stand for your sentence,--two years for carrying a
cannon on your hip,--and then they'll take you away to prison."
The sheriff made no answer.
"Now we're going to slow down at the line to about twenty miles an hour,
more or less; and if you'll take a little friendly advice, you'll fall
off."
The train was still running at a furious pace. The whistle sounded,--one
long, wild scream,--and the speed of the train slackened.
"Here you are," the Governor called, and the sheriff stood on the lower
step.
The door opened and the Governor stepped out on the platform, followed
by his companions.
"I arrest you," the sheriff shouted, "all of you."
"But you can't,--you're in British Columbia," the men laughed.
"Let go, now," said the Governor, and a moment later the deputy picked
himself up and limped back over the border.
IN THE BLACK CANON
One Christmas, at least, will live long in the memory of the men and
women who hung up their stockings at La Veta Hotel in Gunnison in 18--.
Ah, those were the best days of Colorado. Then folks were brave and true
to the traditions of Red Hoss Mountain, when "money flowed like liquor,"
and coal strikes didn't matter, for the people all had something to
burn.
The Yankee proprietor of the dining-stations on this mountain line had
made them as famous almost as the Harvey houses on the Santa Fe were;
which praise is pardonable, since the Limited train with its cafe car
has closed them all.
But the best of the bunch was La Veta, and the presiding genius was Nora
O'Neal, the lady manager. Many an R. & W. excursionist reading this
story will recall her smile, her great gray eyes, her heaps of dark
brown hair, and the mountain trout that her tables held.
It will be remembered that at that time the main lines of the Rio Grande
lay by the banks of the Gunnison, through the Black Canon, over Cerro
Summit, and down the Uncompaghre and the Grande to Grand Junction, the
gate of the Utah Desert.
John Cassidy was an express messenger whose run was over this route and
whose heart and its secret were in the keeping of Nora O'Neal.
From day to day, from week to week, he had waited her answer, which was
to come to him "by Christmas."
And now, as only two days remained, he dreaded it, as he had hoped and
prayed for it since the aspen leaves began to gather their gold. He knew
by the troubled look she wore when off her guard that Nora was thinking.
* * * * *
Most of the men who were gunning in Gunnison in the early 80's were
fearless men, who, when a difference of opinion arose, faced each other
and fought it out; but there had come to live at La Veta a thin, quiet,
handsome fellow, who moved mysteriously in and out of the camp, slept a
lot by day, and showed a fondness for faro by night. When a name was
needed he signed "Buckingham." His icy hand was soft and white, and his
clothes fitted him faultlessly. He was handsome, and when he paid his
bill at the end of the fourth week he proposed to Nora O'Neal. He was so
fairer, physically, than Cassidy and so darker, morally, that Nora could
not make up her mind at all, at all.
In the shadow time, between sunset and gas-light, on the afternoon of
the last day but one before Christmas, Buck, as he came to be called,
leaned over the office counter and put a folded bit of white paper in
Nora's hand, saying, as he closed her fingers over it: "Put this powder
in Cassidy's cup." He knew Cassidy merely as the messenger whose freight
he coveted, and not as a contestant for Nora's heart and hand,--a hand
he prized, however, as he would a bob-tailed flush, but no more.
As for Cassidy, he would be glad, waking, to find himself alive; and if
this plan miscarried, Buck should be able to side-step the gallows.
Anyway, dope was preferable to death.
Nora opened her hand, and in utter amazement looked at the paper. Some
one interrupted them. Buck turned away, and Nora shoved the powder down
deep into her jacket pocket, feeling vaguely guilty.
No. 7, the Salt Lake Limited, was an hour late that night. The regular
dinner (we called it supper then) was over when Shanley whistled in.
* * * * *
As the headlight of the Rockaway engine gleamed along the hotel windows,
Nora went back to see that everything was ready.
In the narrow passage between the kitchen and the dining-room she met
Buckingham. "What are you doing here?" she demanded.
"Now, my beauty," said Buck, laying a cold hand on her arm, "don't be
excited."
She turned her honest eyes to him and he almost visibly shrank from
them, as she had shuddered at the strange, cold touch of his hand.
"Put that powder in Cassidy's cup," he said, and in the half-light of
the little hallway she saw his cruel smile.
"And kill Cassidy, the best friend I have on earth?"
"It will not kill him, but it may save his life. I shall be in his car
to-night. Sabe? Do as I tell you. He will only fall asleep for a little
while, otherwise--well, he may oversleep himself." She would have passed
on, but he stayed her. "Where is it?" he demanded, with a meaning
glance.
She touched her jacket pocket, and he released his hold on her arm.
The shuffle and scuffle of the feet of hungry travellers who were piling
into the dining-room had disturbed them. Nora passed on to the rear,
Buck out to sit down and dine with the passengers, who always had a
shade the best of the bill.
From his favorite seat, facing the audience, he watched the trainmen
tumbling into the alcove off the west wing, in one corner of which a
couple of Pullman porters in blue and gold sat at a small table, feeding
with their forks and behaving better than some of their white comrades
behaved.
* * * * *
Cassidy came in a moment later, sat down, and looked over to see if his
rival was in his accustomed place. The big messenger looked steadily at
the other man, who had never guessed the messenger's secret, and the
other man looked down.
Already his supper, steaming hot, stood before him, while the table-girl
danced attendance for the tip she was always sure of at the finish. She
studied his tastes and knew his wants, from rare roast down to the
small, black coffee with which he invariably concluded his meal.
When Buck looked up again he saw Nora approach the table, smile at
Cassidy, and put a cup of coffee down by his plate.
The trainmen were soon through with their supper, being notoriously
rapid feeders,--which disastrous habit they acquire while on freight,
when they are expected to eat dinner and do an hour's switching in
twenty minutes.
Unusually early for him, Buck passed out. Nora purposely avoided him,
but watched him from the unlighted little private office. She saw him
light a cigar and stroll down the long platform. At the rear of the last
Pullman he threw his cigar away and crossed quickly to the shadow side
of the train. She saw him pass along, for there were no vestibules
then, and made no doubt he was climbing into Cassidy's car. As the
messenger reached for his change, the cashier-manager caught his hand,
drew it across the counter, leaned toward him, saying excitedly: "Be
careful to-night, John; don't fall asleep or nod for a moment. Oh, be
careful!" she repeated, with ever-increasing intensity, her hot hand
trembling on his great wrist; "be careful, come back safe, and you shall
have your answer."
When Cassidy came back to earth he was surrounded by half a dozen
good-natured passengers, men and women, who had come out of the
dining-room during the ten or fifteen seconds he had spent in Paradise.
A swift glance at the faces about told him that they had seen, another
at Nora that she was embarrassed; but in two ticks of the office clock
he protected her, as he would his safe; for his work and time had
trained him to be ready instantly for any emergency.
"Good-night, sister," he called cheerily, as he hurried toward the door.
"Good-night, John," said Nora, glancing up from the till, radiant with
the excitement of her "sweet distress."
"Oh, by Jove!" said a man.
"Huh!" said a woman, and they looked like people who had just missed a
boat.
With her face against the window, Nora watched the red lights on the
rear of No. 7 swing out to the main line.
* * * * *
Closing the desk, she climbed to her room on the third floor and knelt
by the window. Away out on the shrouded vale she saw the dark train
creeping, a solid stream of fire flowing from the short stack of the
"shotgun"; for Peasley was pounding her for all she was worth in an
honest effort to make up the hour that Shanley had lost in the
snowdrifts of Marshall Pass. Presently she heard the muffled roar of the
train on a trestle, and a moment later saw the Salt Lake Limited
swallowed by the Black Canon, in whose sunless gorges many a driver died
before the scenery settled after having been disturbed by the builders
of the road.
Over ahead in his quiet car Cassidy sat musing, smoking, and wondering
why Nora should seem so anxious about him. Turning, he glanced about.
Everything looked right, but the girl's anxiety bothered him.
Picking up a bundle of way-bills, he began checking up. The engine
screamed for Sapinero, and a moment later he felt the list as they
rounded Dead Man's Curve.
Unless they were flagged, the next stop would be at Cimarron, at the
other end of the canon.
His work done, the messenger lighted his pipe, settled himself in his
high-backed canvas camp-chair, and put his feet up on his box for a good
smoke. He tried to think of a number of things that had nothing whatever
to do with Nora, but somehow she invariably elbowed into his thoughts.
He leaned over and opened his box--not the strong-box, but the wooden,
trunk-like box that holds the messenger's street-coat when he's on duty
and his jumper when he's off. On the under side of the lifted lid he had
fixed a large panel picture of Nora O'Neal.
* * * * *
Buckingham, peering over a piano-box, behind which he had hidden at
Gunnison, saw and recognized the photograph; for the messenger's white
light stood on the little safe near the picture. For half an hour he had
been watching Cassidy, wondering why he did not fall asleep. He had seen
Nora put the cup down with her own hand, to guard, as he thought,
against the possibility of a mistake. What will a woman not dare and do
for the man she loves? He sighed softly. He recalled now that he had
always exercised a powerful influence over women,--that is, the few he
had known,--but he was surprised that this consistent Catholic girl
should be so "dead easy."
"And now look at this one hundred and ninety-eight pounds of egotism
sitting here smiling on the likeness of the lady who has just dropped
bug-dust in his coffee. It's positively funny."
Such were the half-whispered musings of the would-be robber.
He actually grew drowsy waiting for Cassidy to go to sleep. The car
lurched on a sharp curve, dislodging some boxes. Buck felt a strange,
tingling sensation in his fingers and toes. Presently he nodded.
Cassidy sat gazing on the pictured face that had hovered over him in all
his dreams for months, and as he gazed, seemed to feel her living
presence. He rose as if to greet her, but kept his eyes upon the
picture.
Suddenly realizing that something was wrong in his end of the car, Buck
stood up, gripping the top of the piano-box. The scream of the engine
startled him. The car crashed over the switch-frog at Curecanti, and
Curecanti's Needle stabbed the starry vault above. The car swayed
strangely and the lights grew dim.
Suddenly the awful truth flashed through his bewildered brain.
"O-o-o-oh, the wench!" he hissed, pulling his guns.
* * * * *
Cassidy, absorbed in the photo, heard a door slam; and it came to him
instantly that Nora had boarded the train at Gunnison, and that some one
was showing her over to the head end. As he turned to meet her, he saw
Buck staggering toward him, holding a murderous gun in each hand.
Instantly he reached for his revolver, but a double flash from the guns
of the enemy blinded him and put out the bracket-lamps. As the
messenger sprang forward to find his foe, the desperado lunged against
him. Cassidy grabbed him, lifted him bodily, and smashed him to the
floor of the car; but with the amazing tenacity and wonderful agility of
the trained gun-fighter, Buck managed to fire as he fell. The big bullet
grazed the top of Cassidy's head, and he fell unconscious across the
half-dead desperado.
Buck felt about for his gun, which had fallen from his hand; but already
the "bug-dust" was getting in its work. Sighing heavily, he joined the
messenger in a quiet sleep.
At Cimarron they broke the car open, revived the sleepers, restored the
outlaw to the Ohio State Prison, from which he had escaped, and the
messenger to Nora O'Neal.
JACK RAMSEY'S REASON
When Bill Ross romped up over the range and blew into Edmonton in the
wake of a warm chinook, bought tobacco at the Hudson's Bay store, and
began to regale the gang with weird tales of true fissures, paying
placers, and rich loads lying "virgin," as he said, in Northern British
Columbia, the gang accepted his tobacco and stories for what they were
worth; for it is a tradition up there that all men who come in with the
Mudjekeewis are liars.
That was thirty years ago.
The same chinook winds that wafted Bill Ross and his rose-hued romances
into town have winged them, and the memory of them, away.
In the meantime Ross reformed, forgot, the people forgave and made him
Mayor of Edmonton.
* * * * *
When Jack Ramsey called at the capital of British Columbia and told of a
territory in that great Province where the winter winds blew warm,
where snow fell only once in a while and was gone again with the first
peep of the sun; of a mountain-walled wonderland between the Coast Range
and the Rockies, where flowers bloomed nine months in the year and gold
could be panned on almost any of the countless rivers, men said he had
come down from Alaska, and that he lied.
To be sure, they did not say that to Jack,--they only telegraphed it one
to another over their cigars in the club. Some of them actually believed
it, and one man who had made money in California and later in Leadville
said he _knew_ it was so; for, said he, "Jack Ramsey never says or does
a thing without a 'reason.'"
At the end of a week this English-bred Yankee had organized the "Chinook
Mining and Milling Company, Limited."
This man was at the head of the scheme, with Jack Ramsey as Managing
Director.
Ramsey was a prospector by nature made proficient by practice. He had
prospected in every mining camp from Mexico to Moose Factory. If he were
to find a real bonanza, his English-American friend used to say, he
would be miserable for the balance of his days, or rather his
to-morrows. He lived in his to-morrows,--in these and in dreams. He
loved women, wine, and music, and the laughter of little children; but
better than all these he loved the wilderness and the wildflowers and
the soft, low singing of mountain rills. He loved the flowers of the
North, for they were all sweet and innocent. On all the two thousand
five hundred miles of the Yukon, he used to say, there is not one
poisonous plant; and he reasoned that the plants of the Peace and the
Pine and the red roses of the Upper Athabasca would be the same.
And so, one March morning, he sailed up the Sound to enter his
mountain-walled wonderland by the portal of Port Simpson, which opens on
the Pacific. His English-American friend went up as far as Simpson, and
when the little coast steamer poked her prow into Work Channel he
touched the President of the Chinook Mining and Milling Company and
said, "The Gateway to God's world."
* * * * *
The head of the C.M. & M. Company was not surprised when Christmas came
ahead of Jack Ramsey's preliminary report. Jack was a careful,
conservative prospector, and would not send a report unless there was a
good and substantial reason for writing it out.
In the following summer a letter came,--an extremely short one,
considering what it contained; for it told, tersely, of great prospects
in the wonderland. It closed with a request for a new rifle, some
garden-seeds, and an H.B. letter of credit for five hundred dollars.
After a warm debate among the directors it was agreed the goods should
go.
The following summer--that is, the second summer in the life of the
Chinook Company--Dawson dawned on the world. That year about half the
floating population of the Republic went to Cuba and the other half to
the Klondike.
As the stream swelled and the channel between Vancouver Island and the
mainland grew black with boats, the President of the C.M. & M. Company
began to pant for Ramsey, that he might join the rush to the North. That
exciting summer died and another dawned, with no news from Ramsey.
When the adventurous English-American could withstand the strain no
longer, he shipped for Skagway himself. He dropped off at Port Simpson
and inquired about Ramsey.
Yes, the Hudson people said, it was quite probable that Ramsey had
passed in that way. Some hundreds of prospectors had gone in during the
past three years, but the current created by the Klondike rush had drawn
most of them out and up the Sound.
One man declared that he had seen Ramsey ship for Skagway on the
"Dirigo," and, after a little help and a few more drinks, gave a minute
description of a famous nugget pin which the passing pilgrim said the
prospector wore.
And so the capitalist took the next boat for Skagway.
By the time he reached Dawson the death-rattle had begun to assert
itself in the bosom of the boom. The most diligent inquiry failed to
reveal the presence of the noted prospector. On the contrary, many
old-timers from Colorado and California declared that Ramsey had never
reached the Dike--that is, not since the boom. In a walled tent on a
shimmering sand-bar at the mouth of the crystal Klondike, Captain Jack
Crawford, the "Poet Scout," severely sober in that land of large
thirsts, wearing his old-time halo of lady-like behavior and hair, was
conducting an "Ice Cream Emporium and Soft-drink Saloon."
"No," said the scout, with the tips of his tapered fingers trembling on
an empty table, straining forward and staring into the stranger's face;
"no, Jack Ramsey has not been here; and if what you say be true--he
sleeps alone in yonder fastness. Alas, poor Ramsey!--Ah knew 'im well";
and he sank on a seat, shaking with sobs.
* * * * *
The English-American, on his way out, stopped at Simpson again. From a
half-breed trapper he heard of a white man who had crossed the Coast
Range three grasses ago. This white man had three or four head of
cattle, a Cree servant, and a queer-looking cayuse with long ears and a
mournful, melancholy cry. This latter member of the gang carried the
outfit.
Taking this half-caste Cree to guide him, the mining man set out in
search of the long-lost Ramsey. They crossed the first range and
searched the streams north of the Peace River pass, almost to the crest
of the continent, but found no trace of the prospector.
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 | 6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11