Читать книгу The Fight on the Standing Stone - Lynde Francis - Страница 15

Table of Contents

Bully Gallagher, despot of track-layers, whose voice was as the grating of a rusty hinge, and whose scepter of authority was a pick-handle, had been driving his gang to the tune of an Irish quick-step for two full hours of the matchless September morning; and the steel, clanging musically into place on the cross-ties to be spiked home under the showering blows of the maul men, was now within a short half-mile of the big rock-cutting on the lower leg of the loop of the tunnel approach.

Looking down toward the canyon's mouth, where the uncertain and wavering lines of the new track bent themselves around the base of the Standing Stone, Gallagher, contemplative for the moment, saw a sight to make him lift his voice in imprecations in comparison with which his brow-beatings of the gang were but as love-whispers.

"Holy Tacks!" he rasped, when the volcanic eruption of objurgation had exhausted itself. And then to O'Hara, his understudy: "For the love o' Gawd, Patsy, look what's comin' to us—an' me widout me dress-suit and me eye-glasses!"

What Gallagher saw was sufficiently distressing to a man driving a track-gang at speed, the more so since the gang boss was of those who are firmly convinced that industrial speed bestirs itself only at the behest of many bull-bellowings and much profanity. Stannard, shortly after his morning's conference with Bailey and the material handlers in the Travois yard, had been set upon, just as he was leaving for the canyon battlefield, by eight-elevenths of the complement of the Egeria, the missing members of the party being only Mr. Westervelt, the chaperone, and the man who had been named to him as Vallory.

The bear hunters, waiting perforce until the guides and horses could be procured from Crumley's ranch, were reduced to the necessity of killing time. Wouldn't Mr. Stannard take them over the grade of the new line and show them the tunnel?

If any one save Anitra Westervelt had made the beseeching, Stannard's answer would have been a flat refusal. And how was he to know that Kitts, anticipating the refusal, had put Anitra forward to do the talking? With an inward groan and a wordless malediction broad enough to include at least seven of the would-be sight-seers, the Missourian dissembled his reluctance and fell into line, hoping that the newly laid canyon track, rough and hard to walk upon, would shortly discourage some one—the willowy Miss Wetmore, for example.

They had covered the half-mile intervening between the camp and the spire-like mass of granite guarding the mouth of the canyon when Gallagher first caught sight of them. After making her plea, Miss Westervelt had dexterously attached herself to the big boyish-looking Englishman, while the younger Miss Wetmore, whose mood of the moment was artistic, clung prettily to the arm of the landscape painter. Stannard saw teasing malice in this arrangement, which made him responsible for the pleasure and entertainment of the rather chilling young woman with the gray eyes and nice hair, and he made sure that at least three members of the party, Anitra, Kitts and the round-bodied, full-faced little broker who came stumbling on behind, were keenly enjoying his discomfiture.

"As I was saying, Mr. Stannard, everything out here seems so dreadfully crude and banal that I should think one would never get used to it," resumed the gray-eyed Miss Wetmore, after Padgett had broken in to ask the height of the cathedral-spired Standing Stone.

"Oh, but I say!" interposed the Honorable Eggie, "you wouldn't expect to find all the comforts of home in such a magnificent wilderness as this, don't you know. Directly we come to those carriages on ahead we can sit down and rest a bit."

Since the "carriages" referred to were the flats of the steel-laying train, Stannard swallowed his emotions with a gulp and tried to interest his unimpressionable companion in the torrent leaping and tossing its spray man-head high in its boulder-strewn bed at the foot of the narrow embankment.

"Oh, yes," was the lack-luster rejoinder; "of course, it's very fine and impressive, but it is also very noisy and very wet."

The young chief heard a sound behind him which, voicing itself in any throat less musical than Anitra Westervelt's, he would have compared to a chicken choking, and it prompted him to say: "Oh, no, Miss Wetmore, that is a mistaken idea that many Eastern people have. The water at this altitude is never what you might call really wet. If you will stay here long enough you will see our men working in it for days at a time without the slightest inconvenience."

Doctor Billy's comment on this remarkable piece of information was an explosive chortling, and Miss Una's perfectly penciled eyebrows went up in austere inquiry.

"Was that a joke, Mr. Stannard?"

"Mr. Stannard's jokes are like the Cubists' pictures; you have to be able to feel them," put in the sprightly younger sister, and again Kitts exploded.

"Really, though," bubbled the Honorable Eggie, adjusting his eye-glass for a better appraisal of Stannard's job, "this is a deucedly clever bit of engineering, what? Fancy tucking a railway line into such a place as this!" And then: "I say, Mr. Padgett, could you figure this all out in dollars?"

"Mr. Padgett is busy walking the ties; please don't interrupt him," pleaded Anitra. Then to Kitts: "Why don't you and Dolly laugh at that, too?"

Doctor Billy did, and the brown-eyed young bride hanging on his arm smiled seraphically in harmony with her haloed hero. Padgett stopped to light a cigar and then stumbled on to pass the fat and well-filled Morocco-leather case to the other men of the party.

"I'm game," he puffed. "So far, I've only turned my ankle twice and knocked the cap off one knee with the other. How much do we get of this, Stannard?"

"Ten miles,—if we walk the grade to the tunnel mouth."

Miss Una shrieked decorously, and Carroll stopped to take out his handkerchief and flick the dust from his patent-leathers.

"You don't mean to say that you're going to tramp us ten miles to get to your blooming hole in the ground, do you, Mr. Stannard?" he demanded.

"Sure," laughed the Missourian, equal now to anything. "After you have ridden one of Crumley's cow-ponies over two or three counties, you'll enjoy a little hike like this. Besides, when we come to the 'carriages,' as Mr. Montjoy calls them, we can stop and rest."

Once more the stalwart young doctor snorted; and Carroll said: "You can count me out on the ten-mile tramp. I wouldn't walk that far over a railroad grade for a farm in Paradise."

"There weren't any farms in Paradise; nothing but apple-orchards," Miss Westervelt put in, adding with the accent malicious, "Ask Mr. Stannard. He knows."

"You make me extremely tired, all of you," sighed the younger Miss Wetmore. "How any one can make wretched jokes and talk such vapid nonsense, with this glorious scenery making its silent appeal to all that is highest and best——"

Stannard excused himself abruptly and tramped on ahead. It had suddenly occurred to him that Gallagher might not have noticed the coming invasion; in which case the big foreman might be helplessly surprised in the midst of one of his prayerful appeals to his men. The precautionary measure was not without its effect. When the lagging time-killers came up, Gallagher was sweetly adjuring the track-gang, as thus:

"Now, thin, gentlemin—aisy wid that bit av steel, lest ye'd be breakin' ut. Shquint ut into pla-ace, Misther O'Hara, if ye plaze. Right ye are. Shpikes! but don't be hittin' thim too har-rd lest ye'd be hurtin' their poor little feelin's. 'Tis a foine day, Misther Stannard, an' 'twas a grand thing f'r ye to be bringin' yer friends up to see us puttin' the nate little pieces av steel to bed on the cross-ties. Misther Bannagher"—to the man who was spacing the rails—"that thrack-gauge is ornamintal, to be sure, but 'tis also mint to be used. Tim Grogan, ye shouldn't shpit on yer hands in the presence av the ladies—'tis an onpleasant habit ye have."

"Isn't it the truth that there is no gentleman quite like the Irish gentleman, wherever you find him," remarked the younger Miss Wetmore, in an aside to any who cared to hear.

Carroll had unlimbered his sketching kit and was preparing to make a study of the strenuous activities, with the Standing Stone and the forested shoulderings of the Buckskin for a background. Stannard drew a little aside, hoping that the pause would not outlast Gallagher's ability to sit on the safety valve. Miss Westervelt joined him when the others had gathered around the impressionist's easel.

"Are you really going to punish us by making us walk ten dreadful miles around the grade?" she asked.

"Of course not," he returned. "The rock men are working in the cut just above here and we couldn't very well pass them without climbing the Dogtooth. We'll turn back when you're quite sure you have seen enough."

"You must punish Doc Billy," she said airily. "He dared me to ask you, and you said, last night, that you'd show me what you are doing. I know you are just too busy to breathe, and you're hating us all like poison for taking your time. If I say that I am sorry, will that make up for it?"

"Amply," said Stannard; and further to show his magnanimity he walked her on up the grade and over a climbing path among the red firs which brought them out upon the brink of the great rock-cutting where they could look down into the gash which was growing slowly under the gnawings of the drills and the dynamite.

When they first looked down, the noise of the battering air-drills was deafening. But a little later the clamor and fusillade stopped and there was a hurried placing of iron shields over the machinery and a scattering of the small army of rock-men.

"They are getting ready to shoot," Stannard explained; and then: "Perhaps we'd better give them a little more distance."

"You mean that they are going to blast the rock?"

"Yes."

"That is something I've always wanted to see. Won't it be safe if we stay here?"

Stannard measured the hazard with a calculating eye. There was only one chance in a hundred that any of the fragments would be blown as far as their brink of observation. None the less, he was unwilling to take even the small risk.

"It will be safer farther back among the trees," he demurred.

Miss Westervelt put her back against the bole of a great fir and the pretty lips took on the curve of wilfulness. "But I want to stay right here, where I can see it," she insisted.

Since the risk was so small as to be all but negligible, Stannard yielded, and together they watched the men attaching the wires of the firing machine. The young engineer almost changed his mind when he counted the number of shots in the battery. There were eight of them and the blast promised to be a miniature earthquake. Unhappily there was no time for reopening the argument with his companion. The foreman was running back to give the signal to the firing boss, and the great gash in the river-fronting cliff was already emptied of every one else.

"Put your hands over your ears!" called Stannard sharply, and as he spoke the cutting below them was filled with a spurting eruption of dust and hurtling rocks, and the surrounding mountain sides echoed to a rumbling crash of mimic thunder.

Stannard could never explain to his own satisfaction afterward just how the untoward thing happened. Out of the spouting dust-cloud they both saw a fragment of stone no larger than a man's fist rise in a curving trajectory to the level of their cliff-edge to hurl itself among the trees. An instant later Stannard heard the stone strike something, and the next instant he saw it bounding leisurely toward them with its force so nearly spent as to make it improbable that it would cover half the distance.

When it became evident that the leisurely boundings were deceptive, he took the alarm; but then it was too late. The small stone, rolling almost to its stop, changed its course again to drop accurately at the butt of Miss Westervelt's tree, and with a cry of pain the girl collapsed in a stricken little heap.

"For heaven's sake!" gasped Stannard, dropping down beside her. "Where did it hit you?"

"It's my ankle," she faltered, setting her pretty teeth against a groan.

In a twinkling he had the dainty outing boot off and was feeling for broken bones. "It's my fault!" he protested in keen self-reproach. "I should have taken you to a safer distance. Does it hurt much?"

"Yes, it hurts like everything! But if you'll put my shoe on again, I'll try to walk. We must get back to the others, some way."

Stannard replaced the small tan boot, awkwardly enough, to be sure, but very gently. She told him she couldn't stand it to have it laced, so he tied it loosely and lifted her to let her make the essay at walking. The attempt was a failure, even with the help of his supporting arm, and one glance at her face decided him. Gathering her up as if she had been a child and telling her to put her arms around his neck and hang on, he stumbled back to the path and down the hillside, and it was thus that they made their reappearance on the track-laying scene.

Naturally, there was sympathy in abundance for the injured one, and Kitts took over the case and made a swift examination.

"It's only a bruise, but a pretty bad one," was his announcement, and then there arose the question of transportation to the Travois yard. Stannard solved that problem at once, to the crass delaying of the work and the speechless disgust of Bully Gallagher, by taking the construction engine and one of the steel flats for a special train. More than that, he took up a collection of coats from the track-layers and made a couch of them on the flat-car for Miss Westervelt.

A few minutes at the heels of the big locomotive sufficed for the making of the short journey to the camp yard, and Stannard, directing the movements of the emergency train from the engine cab, had the hospital car drawn in beside the Egeria. Yielding his place to no one, he put the Englishman aside at the stop, told Kitts gruffly that he didn't need any help, and once more taking Anitra in his arms, carried her into the private car.

Here, while he was putting the victim of the catapulting stone on the lounge in the open compartment, he had a chance to get acquainted with a gray-haired, motherly looking lady who was trying not to be too greatly flustered by the freshly added anxiety, but he scamped the chance, or so much of it as he could, hurrying out again to send the work engine back to Gallagher.

With this abrupt breaking up of the sight-seeing expedition, the harassed and still self-reproachful young chief of construction was free to go once more about his business of railroad building, and he did it, spending the greater portion of the day with Markley and Pearson in the tunnel drifts and coming back to the Travois camp only when Pearson's day-shift knocked off at late supper time.

Reaching the big yard on the engine of the laborers' train just as the masthead arc-lights were fizzing and sputtering into being, he meant to make it his first duty to go over to the Egeria to inquire about the bruised ankle. But before he had crossed the first of the intervening tracks, Roddy overtook him.

"You're wanted at the office 'phone, Clay," rasped the small man with the baby-blue eyes and the bad jaw. "Markley's at the wire. Ten minutes after you left him to cross the mountain this afternoon, his gang, hard-rocks and muckers to a man, walked out on him. Worse than that, they've taken possession of the works and they're swearing that they'll burn the tunnel timbering before they'll let you send in a bunch of strike-breakers to take their places."