Wild Western Tales 2: 101 Classic Western Stories Vol. 2 (Civitas Library Classics)

by Various

  The rising moon shone full and square into the ravine, illuminating every inch of the ascent. A very poor shot could hardly miss in such a light and with such a background. The two cowmen realised this and settled down more comfortably behind their breastwork. Tom cautiously raised the pony's head with a little chunk of rock, thus making a loophole through which to keep tab on the enemy, after which he rolled on his belly and began whittling in the hard clay, for Tom had the carving habit--like many a younger boy. Alfred carefully extracted a short pipe from beneath his chaparajos, pushed down with his blunt forefinger the charge with which it was already loaded, and struck a match. He poised this for a moment above the bowl of the pipe.

  "What's the row anyway?" he inquired, with pardonable curiosity.

  "Now, it's jest fifteen mile to th' cut," said Tom, disregarding Alfred's question entirely, "an' of co'se they's goin' to send a posse down thar on th' keen jump. That'll take clost onto three hours in this light. Then they'll jest pot us a lot from on top."

  Alfred puffed three times toward the moonlight, and looked as though the thing were sufficiently obvious without wasting so much breath over it.

  "We've jest got to git out!" concluded Tom, earnestly.

  Alfred grunted.

  "An' how are we goin' to do it?"

  Alfred paused in the act of blowing a cloud.

  "Because, if we makes a break, those Greasers jest nat'rally plugs us from behind th' minute we begins to climb."

  Alfred condescended to nod. Tom suspended his whittling for a reply.

  "Well," said Alfred, taking his pipe from his mouth--Tom contentedly took up whittling again--"there's only one way to do it, and that's to keep them so damn busy in front that they can't plug us."

  Tom looked perplexed.

  "We just got to take our chances on the climbing. Of course, there's bound to be th' risk of accident. But when I give th' word, you mosey, and if one of them pots you, it'll be because my six-shooter's empty."

  "But you can't expec' t' shoot an' climb!" objected Tom.

  "Course not," replied Alfred, calmly. "Division of labour: you climb; I shoot."

  A light dawned in Tom's eyes, and he shut his jaws with a snap.

  "I guess not!" said he, quietly.

  "Yo' laigs is longer," Alfred urged, in his gentle voice, "and yo'll get to Peterson's quicker;" and then he looked in Tom's eyes and changed his tone. "All right!" he said, in a business-like manner. "I'll toss you for it."

  For reply, Tom fished out an old pack of cards.

  "I tell you," he proposed, triumphantly, "I'll turn you fer it. First man that gits a jack in th' hand-out stays."

  He began to manipulate the cards, lying cramped on his side, and in doing so dropped two or three. Alfred turned to pick them up. Tom deftly slipped the jack of diamonds to the bottom of the pack. He inserted in the centre those Alfred handed him, and began at once to deal.

  "Thar's yore's," he said, laying out the four of clubs, "an' yere's mine," he concluded, producing the jack of diamonds. "Luck's ag'in me early in th' game," was his cheerful comment.

  For a minute Alfred was silent, and a decided objection appeared in his eyes. Then his instinct of fair play in the game took the ascendant. He kicked off his chaps in the most business-like manner, unbuckled his six-shooter and gave it to Tom, and perched his hat on the end of his quirt, which he then raised slowly above the pony's side for the purpose of drawing the enemy's fire. He did these things quickly and without heroics, because he was a plainsman. Hardly had the bullets from three Winchesters spatted against the clay before he was up and climbing for dear life.

  The Mexicans rushed to the opening from either side, fully expecting to be able either to take wing-shots at close range, or to climb so fast as to close in before the cowboys would have time to make a stand at the top. In this they shut off their most effective fire--that of the three men with the Winchesters--and, instead of getting wing-shots themselves, they received an enthusiastic battering from Tom at the range of six yards. Even a tenderfoot cannot over-shoot at six yards. What was left of the Mexicans disappeared quicker than they had come, and the three of the Winchesters scuttled back to cover like a spent covey of quail.

  Tom then lit Alfred's pipe, and continued his excellent sculpture in the bed of hard clay. He knew nothing more would happen until the posse came. The game had passed out of his hands. It had become a race between a short-legged man on foot and a band of hard riders on the backs of very good horses. Viewing the matter dispassionately, Tom would not have cared to bet on the chances.

  As has been stated, Alfred was a small man and his legs were short--and not only short, but unused to exertion of any kind, for Alfred's daylight hours were spent on a horse. At the end of said legs were tight boots with high French heels, which most Easterners would have considered a silly affectation, but which all Westerners knew to be purposeful in the extreme--they kept his feet from slipping forward through the wide stirrups. In other respects, too, Alfred was handicapped. His shoulders were narrow and sloping and his chest was flat. Indoors and back East he would probably have been a consumptive; out here, he was merely short-winded.

  So it happened that Alfred lost the race.

  The wonder was not that he lost, but that he succeeded in finishing at Peterson's at all. He did it somehow, and even made a good effort to ride back with the rescuing party, but fell like a log when he tried to pick up his hat. So someone took off his boots, also, and put him to bed.

  As to the rescuing party, it disbanded less than an hour later. Immediately afterward it reorganized into a hunting party--and its game was men. The hunt was a long one, and the game was bagged even unto the last, but that is neither here nor there.

  Poor Tom was found stripped to the hide, and hacked to pieces. Mexicans are impulsive, especially after a few of them have been killed. His equipment had been stolen. The naked horse and the naked man, bathed in the light of a gray dawn, that was all--except that here and there fluttered bits of paper that had once been a pack of cards. The clay slab was carved deeply--a man can do much of that sort of thing with two hours to waste. Most of the decorative effects were arrows, or hearts, or brands, but in one corner were the words, "passing the love of woman," which was a little impressive after all, even though Tom had not meant them, being, as I said, only an ordinary battered Arizona cow-puncher incapable of the higher feelings.

  How do I know he played the jack of diamonds on purpose? Why, I knew Tom, and that's enough.

  Contents

  THE RIVER-BOSS

  By Stewart Edward White

  "Obey orders if you break owners" is a good rule, but a really efficient river-boss knows a better. It runs, "Get the logs out. Get them out peaceably if you can, but get them out." He does not need a field-telephone to headquarters to teach him how to live up to the spirit of this rule. That might involve headquarters.

  Jimmy was such a river-boss. Therefore when Mr. Daly, of the firm of Morrison & Daly, unexpectedly contracted to deliver five million feet of logs on a certain date, and the logs an impossible number of miles up river, he called in Jimmy.

  Jimmy was a small man, changeless as the Egyptian sphinx. A number of years ago a French comic journal published a series of sketches supposed to represent the Shah of Persia influenced by various emotions. Under each was an appropriate caption, such as Surprise, Grief, Anger, or Astonishment. The portraits were identically alike, and uniformly impassive.

  Well, that was Jimmy. He looked always the same. His hair, thick and black, grew low on his forehead; his beard, thick and black, mounted over the ridge of his cheek-bones; and his eyebrows, thick and black, extended in an uninterrupted straight line from one temple to the other. Whatever his small, compact, muscular body might be doing, the mask of his black and white imperturbability remained always unchanged. Generally he sat clasping one knee, staring directly in front of him, and puffing regularly on a "meerschaum" pipe he had earned by saving the tags of Spearhead tobacc
o. Whatever you said to him sank without splash into this almost primal calm and was lost to your view forever. Perhaps after a time he might do something about it, but always without explanation, calmly, with the lofty inevitability of fate. In fact, he never explained himself, even to his employers.

  Daly swung his bulk back and forth in the office chair. Jimmy sat bolt upright, his black hat pendant between his knees.

  "I want you to take charge of the driving crew, Jimmy," said the big man; "I want you to drive those logs down to our booms as fast as you can. I give you about twenty days. It ought to be done in that. Sanders will keep time for you, and Merrill will cook. You can get a pretty good crew from the East Branch, where the drive is just over."

  When Daly had quite finished his remarks, Jimmy got up and went out without a word. Two days later he and sixty men were breaking rollways forty-five miles up-stream.

  Jimmy knew as well as Daly that the latter had given him a hard task. Twenty days was too brief a time. However, that was none of his business.

  The logs, during the winter, had been piled in the bed of the stream. They extended over three miles of rollways. Jimmy and his crew began at the down-stream end to tumble the big piles into the current. Sometimes only two or three logs would rattle down; at others the whole deck would bulge outward, hover for a moment, and roar into the stream like grain from an elevator. Shortly the narrows below the rollways jammed. Twelve men were detailed as the jam crew. Their business was to keep the stream free in order that the constantly increasing supply from the rollways might not fill up the river. It was not an easy business, nor a very safe. As the "jam" strung out over more and more of the river, the jam crew was constantly recruited from the men on the rollways. Thus some of the logs, a very few, the luckiest, drifted into the dam pond at Grand Rapids within a few days; the bulk jammed and broke and jammed again at a point a few miles below the rollways, while a large proportion stranded, plugged, caught, and tangled at the very rollways themselves.

  Jimmy had permitted himself two days in which to "break out" the rollways. It was done in two. Then the "rear" was started. Men in the rear crew had to see that every last log got into the current. When a jam broke, the middle of it shot down-stream in a most spectacular fashion, but along the banks "winged out" most distressingly. Sometimes the heavy sticks of timber had been forced right out on the dry land. The rear crew lifted them back. When an obstinate log grounded, they jumped cheerfully into the water--with the rotten ice swirling around them--and pried the thing off bottom. Between times they stood upright on single, unstable logs and pushed mightily with poles, while the ice-water sucked in and out of their spiked river shoes.

  As for the compensations, naturally there was a good deal of rivalry between the men on the right and left banks of the river as to which "wing" should advance the fastest; and one experiences a certain physical thrill in venturing under thirty feet of jammed logs for the sole purpose of teasing the whole mass to cascade down on one, or of shooting a rapid while standing upright on a single timber. I believe, too, it is considered the height of glory to belong to a rear crew. Still, the water is cold and the hours long, and you have to sleep in a tent.

  It can readily be seen that the progress of the "rear" measures the progress of the drive. Some few logs in the "jam" may run fifty miles a day--and often do--but if the sacking has gone slowly at the rear, the drive may not have gained more than a thousand yards. Therefore Jimmy stayed at the rear.

  Jimmy was a mighty good riverman. Of course he had nerve, and could do anything with a log and a peavy, and would fight at the drop of a hat--any "bully boy" would qualify there--but also he had judgment. He knew how to use the water, how to recognise the key log of jams, where to place his men--in short, he could get out the logs. Now Jimmy also knew the river from one end to the other, so he had arranged in his mind a sort of schedule for the twenty days. Forty-eight hours for the rollways; a day and a half to the upper rapids; three days into the dam pond; one day to sluice the drive through the Grand Rapids dam; three days for the Crossing; and so on. If everything went well, he could do it, but there must be no hitches in the programme.

  Even from this imperfect fragment of the schedule the inexperienced might imagine Jimmy had allowed an altogether disproportionate time to cover the mile or so from the rapids to the dam pond. As it turned, however, he found he had not allowed enough, for at this point the river was peculiar and very trying.

  The backwater of the dam extended up-stream a half mile; then occurred a rise of four feet, down the slope of which the water whirled and tumbled, only to spread out over a broad fan of gravel shallows. These shallows did the business. When the logs had bumped through the tribulations of the rapids, they seemed to insist obstinately on resting in the shallows, like a lot of wearied cattle. The rear crew had to wade in. They heaved and pried and pushed industriously, and at the end of it had the satisfaction of seeing a single log slide reluctantly into the current. Sometimes a dozen of them would clamp their peavies on either side, and by sheer brute force carry the stick to deep water. When you reflect that there were some twenty thousand pieces in the drive, and that a good fifty per cent. of them balked below the rapids, you can see that a rear crew of thirty men had its work cut out for it. Jimmy's three days were three-fourths gone, and his job not more than a third finished. McGann, the sluice boss, did a little figuring.

  "She'll hang over thim twinty days," he confided to Jimmy. "Shure!"

  Jimmy replied not a word, but puffed piston-like smoke from his pipe. McGann shrugged in Celtic despair.

  But the little man had been figuring, too, and his arrangements were more elaborate and more nearly completed than McGann suspected. That very morning he sauntered leisurely out over the rear logs, his hands in his pockets. Every once in a while he stopped to utter a few low-voiced words to one or another of the men. The person addressed first looked extremely astonished; then shouldered his peavy and started for camp, leaving the diminished rear a prey to curiosity. Soon the word went about. "Day and night work," they whispered, though it was a little difficult to see the difference in ultimate effectiveness between a half crew working all the time and a whole crew working half the time.

  About now Daly began to worry. He took the train to Grand Rapids, anxiety written deep in his brows. When he saw the little inadequate crew pecking in a futile fashion at the logs winged out over the shallows, he swore fervidly and sought Jimmy.

  Jimmy appeared calm.

  "We'll get them out all right, Mr. Daly," said he.

  "Get them out!" growled Daly. "Sure! But when? We ain't got all the summer this season. Those logs have got to hit our booms in fourteen days or they're no good to us!"

  "You'll have 'em," assured Jimmy.

  Such talk made Daly tired, and he said so.

  "Why, it'll take you a week to get her over those confounded shallows," he concluded. "You got to get more men, Jimmy."

  "I've tried," answered the boss. "They ain't no more men to be had."

  "Suffering Moses!" groaned the owner. "It means the loss of a fifty-thousand-dollar contract to me. You needn't tell me! I've been on the river all my life. I know you can't get them off inside of a week."

  "I'll have 'em off to-morrow morning, but it may cost a little something," asserted Jimmy, calmly.

  Daly took one look at the mass of logs, and the fifteen men pulling out an average of one a minute. Then he returned in disgust to the city, where he began to adjust his ideas to a loss on his contract.

  At sundown the rear crew quit work, and swarmed to the encampment of white tents on the river-bank. There they hung wet clothes over a big skeleton framework built around a monster fire, and ate a dozen eggs apiece as a side dish to supper, and smoked pipes of strong "Peerless" tobacco, and swapped yarns, and sang songs, and asked questions. To the latter they received no satisfactory replies. The crew that had been laid off knew nothing. It appeared they were to go to work after supper. After supper, however, J
immy told them to turn in and get a little more sleep. They did turn in, and speedily forgot to puzzle.

  At midnight, however, Jimmy entered the big tent quietly with a lantern, touching each of the fresh men on the shoulder. They arose without comment, and followed him outside. There they were given tools. Then the little band filed silently down river under the stars.

  Jimmy led them, his hands deep in his pockets, puffing white steam-clouds at regular intervals from his "meerschaum" pipe. After twenty minutes they struck the Water Works, then the board-walk of Canal Street. The word passed back for silence. Near the Oriole Factory their leader suddenly dodged in behind the piles of sawed lumber, motioning them to haste. A moment later a fat and dignified officer passed, swinging his club. After the policeman had gone, Jimmy again took up his march at the head of fifteen men, now thoroughly aroused to the fact that something unusual was afoot. Soon a faint roar lifted the night silence. They crossed a street, and a moment after stood at one end of the power-dam.

  The long smooth water shot over, like fluid steel, silent and inevitable, mirroring distorted flashes of light that were the stars. Below, it broke in white turmoil, shouting defiance at the calm velvet rush above. Ten seconds later the current was broken. A man, his heels caught against the combing, up to his knees in water, was braced back at the exact angle to withstand the rush. Two other men passed down to him a short heavy timber. A third, plunging his arms and shoulders into the liquid, nailed it home with heavy, inaudible strokes. As though by magic a second timber braced the first, bolted through sockets already cut for it. The workers moved on eight feet, then another eight, then another. More men entered the water. A row of heavy, slanted supports grew out from the shoulder of the dam, dividing the waters into long, arrow-shaped furrows of light. At half-past twelve Tom Clute was swept over the dam into the eddy. He swam ashore. Purdy took his place.