The Cowpuncher (11 page)

Two miles south of where Dominguez Creek roared from the mouth of its canyon, the single-track railroad swerved from the creek bank and, for an eighth of a mile or so, after dipping over a crest, followed a gentle down-grade before resuming its steady climb northward at water level. By so doing, it chorded the wide curve made by the creek and saved nearly a mile of distance.

At the foot of the down-grade was a sharp bend around a jutting shoulder of cliff. The long strings of empties, coasting swiftly down the grade, took that curve with screeching wheels and reduced speed before straightening out on the tangent and thundering on toward the canyon mouth.

Five miles below the crest of the rise was a siding upon which empties, and sometimes loads of supplies and machinery, were stored until needed at the mine or until room was made for them in the mine yards inside the canyon. Three miles farther south, the railroad left the gorge of Dominguez Creek below the canyon and bridged the Apishapa River.

From the siding to the bridge, the gorge walls drew together like the narrowing tip of a funnel. Here the tall cliffs overhung the railroad and the hurrying stream which seemed to have thrust aside
the walls of eternal rock to reach its destination, the Apishapa. The north abutment of the bridge was at the very tip of the narrowing funnel mouth, with the cliff wall frowning above, the hurrying river washing its submerged base.

Old Mose Baldwell, veteran C. & P. engineer, rumbled a long string of empties, with two cars of dynamite next the caboose, across the bridge, squealed them around the curve where the glowering cliff walls seemed to reach for his engine on either side, and straightened out for the long pull up Dominguez Creek to the mine.

He settled himself comfortably on his seatbox, cocked an eye at his water glass and at the steam gauge, where the needle quivered against the two-hundred-pound pressure mark. He cast an approving glance at his fireman, hauled his reverse lever up a notch and widened his throttle a bit.

The big locomotive responded to his touch with a faster spinning of her ponderous drivers. Her exhaust cracking, black smoke pouring from her stubby stack, and a squirrel tail of steam drifting back from her trembling safety valve, she roared through the night.

With all that racket of booming stack, grinding wheels and jangling brake rigging, Mose could hardly be expected to hear the low throb of drums far to the north. Even if he had heard them, he would have paid them no heed He would have just worried off another hunk of eatin’ tobacco, hauled the cracked peak of his cap a little lower and glinted out the window with his keen eyes. What
in time did Injun drums bangin’ in the night have to do with railroadin’!

Back in the early days when the C. & P. was pushing its ribbons of steel across the prairie lands and the Sioux and Blackfeet and Crows were disputing every foot of progress, yes, but the Sioux had long since been vanquished, and the mountain Indians had too much respect for the Long Knives, Uncle Sam’s blue-clad cavalrymen, to interfere with the railroad. Mail and express robbers were all the railroad man had to worry about now, and Mose and his thundering “556” were hauling neither.

So the “556” snorted beside the winding Dominguez Creek, all too heedless of that ominous throb and mutter in the north, the sound which had sent Huck Brannon scurrying about to check his workers and assure himself none was wandering about the hills.

Old Mose and his fireman were warm and comfortable in their engine cab. The head brakeman dozed on his little perch in front of the fireman’s seatbox. The conductor and rear “shack” were equally comfortable in their caboose with the two cars of dynamite swaying along just in front. From his seat in the cupola, the “con” could peer across the tops of the two boxcars and dimly see the long string of empties snaking through the gloom.

Not so comfortable was the lithe young Mexican who shivered in an empty coal car midway along the train. He was not unhappy, however, being of an optimistic turn of mind, and considered momentary discomfort negligible when weighed
against the good job he felt confident he would find once he reached the mine.

So he hunched his shoulders against the biting blasts, snugged his sinewy neck down into his turned-up collar and whistled musically beneath his breath. He was unfamiliar with the route over which he was traveling and knew only that his destination was a few miles beyond the lip of the rise over which the big engine would dip in a few minutes.

The “556” topped the rise and rolled down the gentle grade. Old Mose eased his throttle, and, as the last of his train reached the crest, closed it altogether. The long train coasted, Baldwell checking the speed with his engine brake, in preparation for the sharp curve at the foot of the grade. He opened the throttle again as the flanges screeched on the curve and the “556” swung to the change of direction. Around the shoulder of the cliff nosed the big locomotive; and Baldwell slammed his throttle shut again and “dynamited” his train!

Air screeched through the port as he threw on every ounce of pressure in his brake cylinders. All along the train was the clang of brake shoes and the scream of protesting steel. The “556” bucked, reared, rocked like a living thing, then lunged ahead under the shove of the mighty mass of steel ramming her coupler.

With a yell of terror, the fireman went through the window. The head brakeman also “jined the bird gang.” Together they rolled down the rocky embankment to lie, bruised and bloody and unconscious, at its foot.

Most didn’t have time to get out. He was still on his seatbox, fighting to save his train, when the “556” crashed into the huge mass of rock that had been levered onto the track. Over she went, thundering and grinding, steam roaring from a tornoff cylinder, her cab smashed, her tender twisted loose fom the connecting bar. Gurgling water, snapping coals and hissing air added their quota to the general pandemonium.

There was another sound as Mose Bardwell staggered to his feet, his grizzled head bloody, one arm swinging useless at his side.

It was a sharp, spiteful sound—the crack of a high-power rifle.

Baldwell straightened, an amazed look on his crimson-streaked face. For an instant he stood poised, then he crumpled to the ground and lay motionless.

Lights were bobbing forward from the caboose. The conductor and the rear brakeman, bruised and bleeding, but not seriously injured, were hurrying to the assistance of their less fortunate fellow workers. Heedlessly they ran toward where, very silent, but very sure, death waited. They reached the scene of the wreck, panting for breath, bawling anxious questions. They paused irresolute for an instant, clearly outlined in the glare from the open firebox.

Again the unseen rifle cracked, and again. A moment later, a dozen shadowy forms stole past the bloody bundles that lay beside the still burning lanterns. They picked up the lanterns, cast callous glances at the still forms of the murdered trainmen, and hurried toward the rear of the train.

And from the black shadows inside an empty coal car, dark, burning eyes watched them pass, peered perplexedly at their operations at the rear of the train, and then filled with sudden understanding. On silent feet the young Mexican sped along in the shadow of the motionless cars, past the wrecked engine and on toward the black mouth of Dominguez Canyon.

Huck Brannon instinctively knew it was not time to get up, in spite of the hammering on his door. A glance through the window showed that the winter dawn had not fully broken. And yet old Ah Sing’s voice was shrilling to him:

“Get up, Huck! Get up, Huck!”

“What’s the matter with you, you yellow hootowl?” he bawled in peevish reply. He could hear old Lank cursing inside the inner room, then the solid thump of his bare feet on the floor.

“Get up, Huck!” screeched Ah Sing. “Hell bloke loose!”

Brannon snapped fully awake. He leaped to the door, flung it open. Ah Sing slipped in, beside him a young Mexican who gasped and panted for breath. Despite the bitter cold, his face streamed sweat and his shirt was dark with it.

“Him tell!” barked Ah Sing. “Get dlessed, Huck!”

“They wreck train,” panted the Mexican. “I, Pedro, saw all. They work to roll dynamite down the track and so blow up the bridge at the curve.”

“Wreck the train where?” Huck asked quietly as he hurried into his clothes.

“At the curve just below canyon mouth,” the Mexican replied. “Rocks on track. Shoot engineer—conductor. Dynamite in last two cars.”

“Hold it, feller,” Huck pointed out. “There’s a stretch of north downgrade there Those cars won’t run up hill, and they would have to get over the rise.”

“They have the—the—what you call—the move-car.”

“Car movers,” Huck interpreted.

“
Si, si!
That go click-click on end of pole. They move the cars up the grade little by little. They shove!”

Old Ah Sing screeched weird profanity. Lank, bellowing curses, flung open the door. Huck stopped him with a terse word.

“Wait!” he said. “Don’t go off half-cocked. This is going to take some thinking out. It’s four miles to that curve. They’ll be over the rise ‘fore we can get there with men. How many of them are there, Pedro?”

“The dozen, perhaps more,” replied the Mexican.

“And all armed,” muttered Huck. “Get Smoke,” he started to order Ah Sing, then instantly countermanded:

“Nope. No good. Even if I made it, they’d hear me coming and see me. Just wait till I was within rifle range and then pick me off. That wouldn’t help a thing.

“Lank,” the cowpuncher added, “if they get away with this, we’re sunk!”

“Hell!” exploded Mason, “that bridge won’t take long to put back, even if they do blow it.”

“No,” Huck replied quietly, “but an explosion at that curve, or anywhere in the gorge for that matter, will bring down the overhanging cliffs and dam the creek—it’s sure to. Before anything can be done the water will back up into the canyon and flood our mine. It’ll take weeks to pump it out, and cost thousands of dollars we haven’t got.”

“That damn creek!” growled Mason, glowering through the door at the offending body of water, “it’s allus causin’ trouble. Was it Injuns wrecked the train, feller?”

“I know not for sure,” replied the Mexican. “It was dark and I could not see well. I hear them make talk, and I thought to hear the speech of my people—the Spanish—but I could not be sure because of the rush of the water.”

Huck Brannon, tense, motionless, thinking furiously, gave a sudden start.

“Rushing water!” he repeated. “Man, I believe you’ve hit it!”

Instantly, and heedless of Lank’s bewildered sputters, he leaped into action.

The miners were already getting up for breakfast and Huck’s bellows brought them boiling from their cabins.

“Crossties!” he ordered. “Half a dozen or so. Get three or four of those heavy stringers and the longest spikes we got. Right over here to the creek bank. Mike, get a car mover and bring it to me.”

Within scant minutes he had the railroad ties laid side by side. Men with mauls were spiking them together. The heavy stringers were spiked to
them laterally. With miraculous speed a rough, unwieldy, but serviceable, raft was constructed.

“All right, into the water with it,” Huck ordered. “Lank, you and the boys break out all the guns we got and hustle down the canyon as fast as you can. Mebbe you’ll get there in time to pick off some of those murdering hellions.

“Pedro,” he called to the young Mexican, “did you notice whether there were cars on the siding, five miles south of the wreck?”

“Si,”
the Mexican youth replied. “I see as the train pass. There three—four boxcars.”

“Materials for the new tipple,” Lank put in. “Not quite ready for ‘em and no room to store in the yards.”

“Huck! Huck!”

Sue’s voice, pregnant with anxiety, suddenly cut the early morning dusk.

Swiftly the men turned toward the running figure. Sue was still drawing on a leather jacket against the morning chill when she reached them. A red flush, apparent even in the dim light, was staining her cheeks to a crimson color. She was out of breath.

“I can’t stop now, Sue,” cried Huck. He took a step toward her. “But in case something should happen to me—hell!” He swooped down, suddenly had her in his arms, held her for a moment, tight against his breast, kissed her—and then released her.

Sue swayed as she slipped out of his hands.

“Okay,” Brannon cried, taking a long pole from
the hands of a miner and stepping onto the bobbing raft.

“What you gonna do, Huck?” Lank asked anxiously.

“Stop those hellions from ruining our mine,” Huck told him grimly. “All right, you fellers, hand me that car mover, then let go and shove off.”

“You’ll be kilt!” bawled Lank as the raft swirled into the grip of the current. “You can’t outfight a dozen!”

“But maybe I can
out think
‘em,” Huck called back as the unwieldy contrivance whisked downstream.

Instantly, however, he had no more time for thinking. The creek ran like a mill race and the rushing water swirled and eddied. Fangs of black rock, with white spray spouting over their ragged edges, broke through the surface and it extended him to the utmost to keep his fagile craft from being capsized or dashed to pieces.

Body rigid, eyes staring, breathing heavily, and standing as though petrified, Sue watched Huck struggling with his raft. The blood had drained from her face and she was now as pale as the ghost light that sifted through the crack of dawn. Suddenly, she came to life.

“Huck!” she cried at the top of her lungs. “Be careful, darling. Be careful!”

But it was doubtful if he heard her, even though she ran along the bank of the river for a space. He was too busy in his fight with the elements. Too busy with eminent danger.

The tough wood of the pole groaned and crackled, bending like a reed as he fought with every
atom of his strength to stave off disaster. He whisked through the mouth of the canyon and the dizzy speed, if anything, increased. Far ahead, in the strengthening light, he could see an ominous black pillar rising into the wintry sky—the smoke from the wrecked locomotive. Beyond that would be the grade where the drygulchers labored to lift the dynamite cars over the rise.