The Cowpuncher (12 page)

“Maybe they’ll be too busy to notice me pass,” Brannon muttered. “If they aren’t—”

He grimly left the thought unfinished and devoted all his energies to fighting the raft around a rock-studded bend where the water smoked against glassy walls of stone.

He made it, gasping and panting, sweat beading his face, the veins of his forehead standing out like cords and black as ink. He straightened his aching back as a stretch of slightly smoother water appeared, and hitched his gun belts a little higher. The creek bank here was clothed by dense growth, but a little farther on the railroad drew nearer to the water and the protecting fringe of growth had been cleared away.

A moment later he saw the shining ribbons of steel writhing up the long and gradual rise. And almost to the crest were the reddish blobs of the two dynamite cars and the caboose. Behind the rear car, crouching figures manipulated the car movers. Others shoved sturdily against the back and sides of the car, which inched slowly upward toward where the ribbons of steel seemed to end and the crest of the ridge stood out hard and clear against the sky.

On shot the raft in the fierce grip of the current, reeling, rocking, swirling through the eddies, grazing deadly fangs of stone. Huck Brannon, cool, alert, eye and muscle perfectly co-ordinated, guided, controlled, averted disaster a score of times. And ahead, the dark line of the railroad drew ever nearer the water’s edge and the toiling figures loomed larger and larger.

A shout, thin with distance, sounded above the roar of the water. Huck Brannon cursed bitterly. He was beginning to hope that he might whisk by unnoticed. But that hope was abruptly dashed. Steadying himself on his precarious perch, he waited.

From the milling group about the dynamite cars mushroomed a puff of bluish smoke. Something wailed through the air close to Huck’s head. The cars still moved steadily up the grade, but a number of the pushers had detached themselves from the group and were running toward the creek. The rising sun glinted on the barrels of their rifles.

Another gun cracked, and another slug whined past. Huck measured the distance, planted his feet firmly, took a swift glance downstream. The stretch of water ahead was nearly free from rocks.

The drygulchers raced to the water’s edge, shooting as they came. Bullets stormed about the man on the bobbing raft, kicking up fountains of spray, knocking splinters from the ties. One clipped a chip from the pole he held in his hand.

But Huck Brannon waited, alert, gambling his very life against the aim of the running men. Suddenly he dropped the pole and went for his guns.

Out of their sheaths flashed the big Colts as the
raft swung toward the bank. The first of the drygulchers was almost to the water’s edge.

An instant later he yelled shrilly and plunged into the racing flood. Over his twitching form rolled a crimson ripple; then the current caught the flaccid body and hurled it downstream.

Huck Brannon’s long guns gushed reddish flame and wisping spirals of smoke. The reports merged in a drumroll of sound that crackled above the roar of the water and the yells of the drygulchers.

Another man went down, and another. The rest, dodging and ducking, fired wildly with little pretense of aim. A bullet whisked through the sleeve of Chuck’s woolen shirt. Another almost slammed his feet from under him as it removed a portion of his boot heel. His hammers clicked on empty shells, he holstered one gun and his hand flew to his cartridge belt.

Then he was past, and before he could reload he was out of pistol range. Rifle bullets whined by, but the raft was reeling and bobbing and the nerves of the killers were shaken. Another instant and a clump of growth hid him from view. On flew the raft, the crest of the rise dwindling and lowering in the distance.

And then over the lip, dark against the sunny sky, the lurching shape of the caboose hove into view. It swayed, dipped, a car followed it, and another. The cargo of destruction moved down the long grade, slowly at first, but gathering speed with every turn of the wheels.

On raced the raft, the white water lapping over the edges of the timbers, the black fangs of rock racing to meet it, the swirling eddies sucking like hungry mouths. Swiftly it drew away from the rumbling freight cars, until they were but a dim blotch in the distance. A bend and a shoulder of stone hid them from view; but still Huck Brannon could hear that ominous rumble ringing in his ears. His keen glance swept ahead, seeking the siding upon which rested the cars of material destined for the mine—and destined to be its salvation.

From time to time his gaze lifted to the frowning, overhanging cliffs, and each time he shook his head.

“Would be mighty easy if it wasn’t for those damn rocks,” he muttered. “All we’d have to do is shove the materials cars out on the main line, let the dynamite slam into ‘em and blow to glory. But we can’t afford to take the chance. Almost as certain to bring down the cliffs here as at the bridge. No, that won’t do. If I can just get far enough ahead of those damn runaways!”

Anxiously he glanced over his shoulder, back along the shimmering rails that drew together in the distance. Fearfully he expected to see the bulk of the runaways roar around the last curve.

“Not in sight yet, anyway.” He breathed relief, and turned to stare ahead.

The raft swept past a clump of growth and Huck saw the materials cars on the siding less than half a mile ahead. Instantly he began to fight the raft toward the outer bank of the stream.

Stubbornly the clumsy craft resisted his muscles, while the current sought powerfully to hurl it back into midstream. For hundreds of yards he didn’t seem to gain a foot. Then the raft slowly responded to the pull of his sweating and aching arms. Inch by inch it swerved toward the shore, its speed decreasing as it forged away from the full force of the current.

That slowing added to Huck’s anxiety. He could not afford to take too much time in reaching the siding. The runaways would be upon him before he could act. He redoubled his efforts as the head of the siding came opposite him. The strong pole creaked and groaned, bent more and more. He got a purchase on a clump of stone and gave a final mighty shove. The next instant he was sprawling on the spiked crossties, a short section of the shivered pole in his hands. The raft rocked crazily, swung about and headed for midstream once more.

Huck scrambled to his feet, measured the distance to the rocky shore and leaped, the heavy car mover hugged to his breast.

The leap, prodigious though it was, was short. He hit the water with a splash, reeling and swaying. With a surge of thanksgiving he realized he had made it to the shallows. The water was scarcely a foot deep. He kept his footing and scrambled for
the bank. Another moment and he was racing toward the materials cars, which stood on the lower end of the siding, but a short distance from the switch stand.

Huck passed the cars and reached the switch stand. A blow of the car mover shattered the lock. He seized the lever and opened the switch. Then he raced back to the cars, scrambled up the ladder of the first one and released the brakes of each in turn. Another instant and he was on the ground, clicking the foot of the car mover beneath a rear wheel of the last car.

The car stubbornly resisted the leverage. Huck rocked his weight on the handle of the mover, surging up and down. There was a groan, a creak, a squeal of protesting metal. The wheel moved a little. Huck frantically worked the lever and the wheel turned more. Then gravity came to his aid and the cars began to slowly move down the siding. Gaining speed, they clattered over the frog and onto the main line.

The cowpuncher swung the switch shut, raced after the moving cars and swarmed up the ladder. As he reached the top a faint, unmistakable rumble came to his ears—the roar of the runaways. Glancing back he saw them, a black blotch swinging around the distant curve.

With appalling speed they rushed toward him. The cars he was riding were also picking up speed, beginning to sway, their wheels clicking out a fast tempo. But as yet it was nothing to that of the rocketing cars of dynamite.

There was nothing Huck could do but wait. He
knew he was gambling his life. Already the speed of the car he was riding made leaping to the ground little less than suicide. And if that thundering cargo of destruction caught up with him before the materials cars had gained speed nearly equalling theirs, he would be blown clean to New Mexico by the explosion. Grimly he waited, his hands on the brake wheel of the rearmost car, his narrowed eyes watching the runaways close their distance.

The dope in their journal boxes had caught fire from the terrific friction aroused by the spinning axles. Sheets of flame shot out on either side of the dynamite cars, adding the hazard of fire to that of concussion. Huck shook his head as he watched.

“Even if I get ‘em stopped, it’ll be a miracle if I get that fire out in time,” he muttered. He glanced anxiously ahead, gauging the distance to the deadly curve at the bridge.

The dynamite cars were still closing up, but not so swiftly. Gradually the speed-relation between the two strings became static. Chuck began cautiously to wind up chain on the brake wheel rod. Brake shoes screeched against the wheels; the speed of the materials cars slackened a trifle. And as it slackened, the thundering runaways crept slowly nearer and nearer.

Not quite slowly enough. Huck eased off on the brake wheel a little. The dynamite cars were leaping toward him. His own cars did not respond as readily to the loosened brakes as he had expected. He twirled the brake wheel madly, heard the jangle of the loosened chain, felt the car beneath him
hurtle forward to the pull of those in front. Then he was knocked sprawling by the crash of the dynamite cars striking coupler to coupler with the rearmost materials car. Huck held his breath for the explosion—that did not come.

With redoubled speed the lengthened string shot forward. Huck leaped to his feet and frantically twisted the brake wheel until it would turn no more. He raced along the swaying catwalk, leaped across the space separating the reeling cars and twisted another wheel. He had escaped one deadly danger, but another was racing toward him. Already he could see the taller cliffs that marked the narrow gut where Dominguez Creek joined with the hurrying Apishapa, where the rails curved with dizzy sharpness to leap onto the bridge.

He tightened the wheel of the third car to the last notch, turned and sped back the way he had come. He coughed and his eyes stung from the acrid smoke as he leaped onto the foremost dynamite car and spun the brake wheel. Dizzily he reeled back, braked the second car, and then the third. Then he stumbled forward again until he was perched on the foremost materials car, watching the jutting cliffs that marked the curve rush toward him.

Rocking, swaying, lurching, with a screeching of wheels and a mighty squalling of brakes, the string rolled toward the bridge. The flanges of the front wheels hit the curve, and Huck felt them climb. His teeth ground together and his nails bit deep into the flesh of his palms. Then with a clang
the wheels fell back upon the rails. He scrambled and clutched as the car swung dizzily around the curve. An instant later it rumbled out onto the bridge, the others, shrieking protest, still following at frightful speed.

Huck breathed deep relief as the string straightened out on the bridge. Then his breath caught in a gasp. Directly ahead a plume of black smoke was rising into the wintry air. Less than a thousand yards distant stood the wreck train, summoned by Lank Mason by telegraph from Esmeralda. There it stood, at what it considered a safe distance from the expected explosion on the far side of the bridge. Toward it roared the runaways, answering to the brakes clamped against the wheels, but still traveling at dangerous speed.

As the dynamite rushed toward it, the wreck train boiled with action. Men leaped from the camp cars and fled madly from the tracks. The plume of black smoke shot upward in a prodigious column streaked with milky swords of steam. Above the rumble of the wheels the roar of the exhaust came to Huck’s ears.

The engine’s huge drivers spun, grinding flakes of steel and showers of sparks from the rails. They caught, held, spun again. They caught once more, held. Arose a mighty jangle of couplings. The wreck train began to move backward, slowly at first, gathering speed with every turn of the wheels. The exhaust roared and thundered, shooting up clots of fire and clouds of smoke, the siderods clanged, the drivers screeched against the iron. She was moving fast when the runaways hit with a jangling crash.

Again Huck Bannon held his breath as he clung to the reeling catwalk. And once again the impact was not quite severe enough to set off the carefully stored and bolstered dynamite.

The engineer of the wreck train closed his throttle and began applying his brakes. Before the jostling string had stopped moving, Huck Brannon was down the ladder and on the ground, roaring instructions to the panicky wreckers.

In obedience to his bellowed commands, men came running with buckets of water which they sloshed on the flames eating their way through the sides and bottoms of the cars. The white-faced engineer of the wrecker coupled on a long length of sprinkling hose and together they got the fire under control.

Utterly weary, Huck Brannon sat on a boulder and watched the wreckers beat out the last sparks and prepare to run the dynamite cars back to the siding, so they could proceed to the scene of the wreck.

But Huck was not thinking of the wreck at that moment, nor of his own hairbreadth escapes from death. Moodily he stared straight ahead of him, his black brows drawn together. Finally he arose, stretched his arms above his head and shook himself like a great dog.

“Mountain Indians, hell!” he growled under his breath. “Those hellions that gunned me back there were white men made up to look like Indians—or I’m a sheepherder! The Indians may be in on this shindig, all right, but they’re sure not alone!”

Huck rode into town the following day and discovered that Jaggers Dunn had doubled his force of track walkers on the new line and had ordered them armed. He also learned that Cale Coleman had opened a mine twenty miles up the river from Esmeralda.

“Yes, he’s got coal,” said Jaggers Dunn when Chuck dropped in to talk things over. “It’s nothing like stuff you are getting out—not much better than black lignite and with a high sulphur content—but
it’s marketable in certain sections. His percentage of profit will be small, I figure, because of the distance he will have to ship, but it’ll be plenty to pay him to operate. My opinion is that most of the coal which will be developed in this district sooner or later will be more of the type the Coleman mine is working, with perhaps a fair output of good bituminous. Your working is unique to the district, I believe.”

“Just as the silver output of the old mine was unique,” Huck observed. “Judging from what fragments we found, it was almost pure silver—high grade native metal. Must have been a high old time around that section a few million years ago when all that compression was going on.”

“Yes, a flow of molten masses which formed the igneous rocks of the district was responsible, I presume,” said Dunn. “No,” he replied to a question Huck asked, “no, we won’t buy any coal from Coleman—at least not as long as you can supply us; there is no comparison in quality. And, by the way, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to step up your production as soon as you are able. I had a little talk with the directors and it has been thought wise to supply the Plains and Western Divisions with Lost Padre coal, if it can be obtained in sufficient quantities.”

Huck left the empire builder’s office highly elated; and immediately put in an order for supplementary equipment and hired additional hands.

And on the desolate slopes above Dominguez Canyon the drums whispered threateningly and
the evil hill gods chuckled in their icy fastnesses upon the mountain tops.

The early morning sun, golden and yellow, was poking its ray-arms over the mountainous ridges and towering purple cliffs that lay like a linked chain around the Apishapa River Valley when Huck and Sue edged their way through the slash the north gap made on entering the valley.

They reined in and stood their horses, silent before the mighty spectacle of the sunrise breaking over the huge, almost oval valley. Beneath them, sinuous and slithering, ran the silver-streaked Apishapa River. Their eyes followed its winding course until it slipped through a gorge at the far end of the valley, and disappeared from sight.

“It’s lovely here, Huck,” said Sue, lips parted, eyes glistening.

“It’s mighty fine,” Huck agreed. “I sure—” He opened his mouth to say something further; but hesitated and decided against it.

“What is it, Huck?”

“Nothing,” he replied, feeling her eyes on his face. “I was just going to say again how pretty this valley is,” he added lamely.

“What a cattleman couldn’t do with this spread,” said Sue, almost to herself. But the words rang in Huck’s ears.

“Yes,” muttered Huck under his breath. “I sure could.”

“What?”

“Huh?” ejaculated Huck, afraid that Sue had heard him. “Nothing. Talking to myself.”

She laughed. “Don’t let anyone hear you, Huck,” she said. “They might think you escaped from an asylum.”

“Maybe they’d be right,” Huck muttered to himself. Then aloud: “I’ve got a lot of things on my mind.”

He felt her eyes on him again, but avoided looking at her. Since that day at the river bank when he had yielded to a mad impulse—the same impulse called forth by seeing her that day when she first arrived in Esmeralda—he had avoided not only looking at her, but being alone with her.

He cursed himself again, now, for having suggested to her this morning that they ride out to the Apishapa River Valley. He hardly knew then why he had made the suggestion. But now it was clear to him. Perfectly clear.

He wanted her to see—and approve—the spread that he one day would own. Yes, he told himself, he would one day own it—and maybe in the not-too-distant future. The minute he had laid eyes on it when he first came there, he knew that this was what he had been looking for. This was the spread he’d been seeking. This valley held the object of his search.

Through the corner of his eyes he stole a look at her. But she seemed far from guessing at his secret. Slim and erect, she was sitting her horse, her eyes focused on the valley bed. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes held a deep and inward gleam. He was reminded of the day they rode the herd up to Stevens Gulch to shove them aboard the train headed for Kansas City. The day that he had
said good-bye to her—without knowing it, of course.

She had the same look on her face then; the same look of shyness, mixed with eagerness. Suddenly she turned to him.

“I’m glad you brought me here, Huck,” she said. “It’s beautiful. I oughtn’t say it—but it’s as good to look at as the Bar X spread. Maybe even better.”

“That’s hard on the Bar X, Sue,” said Huck, glad to get off the subject. “I reckon your father wouldn’t be pleased to hear you say that.”

“I don’t know,” she replied seriously. “I think even Dad would agree with me.”

“Not Doyle,” cried Huck. “For him the Bar X spread is the most beautiful thing this side of heaven—and I calculate I’d think the same if I stood in his boots.”

“But what do you think of the Apishapa Valley, Huck?” asked Sue softly.

Her head was turned so he couldn’t see what she was driving at—if anything.

“I figure,” he said casually, “it’s the likeliest looking spread my eyes have set on in a year of Sundays.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” she said, still without turning her head, “to hear one day that some smart business man bought up this valley, and stocked it with cattle. They would grow big and fat here. They’ve got water, plenty of good grass, likely looking spots to winter in—why, the valley has everything.”

A darting pang of fear knifed through Huck at the possibility voiced by Sue—that someone would
take this spread away from him before he could claim it. He grew angry as he realized she was right—and knew that he couldn’t do anything about it, for the time being at least. There were other obligations to be met first. Maybe in a few months or so. He shrugged his shoulders to drive away presentiments. Yet the fear had taken root and began to grow.

“Yes,” he admitted. “This valley’s got everything.”

“It would be a pity,” continued Sue, softly yet relentlessly, “if the wrong party got hold of it. Cale Coleman, for instance.”

He almost growled as he turned swiftly toward her. Yet she seemed innocent of any guile as she gazed fixedly on some far point down below, alongside the Apishapa River that chased a stream of silver through the valley.

Lank Mason had told him that about a month past, during a visit made by him and Sue to Esmeralda to pick up some supplies and provender for the kitchen, they had encountered Coleman. The latter had gazed with undisguised admiration at Sue, although he said nothing to either of them.

In the interim, Sue had learned something of Coleman’s character and needed no persuasion to stay away from the richest man in Esmeralda, for she had taken an instinctive dislike to him.

Suddenly Huck smiled. She was smart, all right. But he could see through her game. She was trying to get a rise out of him. However, two could play at that game. So when he spoke, it was with an easy air of nonchalance.

“Yes,” he said. “You’re dead right. It sure would be a pity if an hombre like Coleman got hold of this valley.”

Now she turned to gaze at him. But her expression was unfathomable.

“If I remember correctly,” she said, “I think I knew a cowboy once who would be mighty interested in this spread.”

“Who?”

“Someone who used to work for my dad,” she replied. “Can’t seem to recollect his name, but he was awfully anxious to own a piece of his own land—to stock it, and raise—”

“Yes,” Huck interrupted her. “I know who you mean. I know the man. Only he got mixed into the mining business and kind of forgot all about being a cowboy. He got so busy, I reckon he forgot about everything else, too.”

He saw Sue turn her face quickly to one side as though she had been attracted by the flight of a bird, or the echo of rock falling down the mountainside. He wasn’t sure, but he thought he saw a shadow pass over her face. Perhaps it was only a cloud that momentarily hid the sun from the earth.

“I think we ought to start back to camp,” Sue said. “Mrs. Donovan is going to need me.”

“Okay,” agreed Huck. “Let’s go.”

Slowly they turned their horses, almost with reluctance it seemed, and headed back through the north gap. Not once, however, did either turn back to look at the Apishapa River Valley.