Moreover, knowing my father as he did—whose opinions on prospecting as a business were no secret in the community—Yetmore was sure that it was in the interest of Tom Connor we had been sent out; and it was equally plain to him that, such being the case, Tom’s information on the subject would be just as good as his own. He was, of course, unaware that our information was in reality a good deal better than his own, thanks to the hint given us by our friend, Peter, as to the deposit at the head of Big Reuben’s gorge.
Knowing all this, Yetmore had no doubt that Tom would be starting out the moment the foot-hills were bare, and as Long John could do no more—for it was obviously useless to start before the ground was clear—it would result in a race between the two as to who should get out first and keep ahead of the other; in which case Tom’s chances would be at least equal to his competitor’s.
But was there no way by which Tom Connor might be delayed in starting, if only for a day or two? That was the question; and very earnestly it was discussed between the pair.
Vain, however, were their discussions; they could think of no way of keeping Tom in town. For, though Long John threw out occasional hints as to how he would manage it, if his employer would only give him leave, his schemes always suggested the use of unlawful means of one sort or another, and Yetmore would have none of them; for he had at least sufficient respect for the law to be afraid of it.
A gleam of hope appeared when it was rumored about town that Tom Connor was trying to raise money on his house; a rumor which Yetmore very quickly took pains to verify. In this he had no trouble whatever, for everybody knew the circumstances, and everybody, Yetmore found, was loud in his praises of Tom’s self-sacrifice in spending his hard-earned savings for the benefit of Mrs. Murphy and her distressed family.
The fact that his rival was out of funds caused Yetmore to rub his hands with glee. Here, indeed, was a possible chance to keep him tied up in town. It all depended upon his being able to prevent Tom from securing the loan he sought, and diligently did the storekeeper canvass one plan after another in his own mind—but still in vain. The sum desired was so moderate that some one would almost surely be found to advance it.
While his schemes were still fermenting in his head, there came late one night a knock at his door—it was the very night that Tom Connor went boring for oil—and Long John Butterfield slipped into the house. Long John, too, had heard of Tom’s necessities; he, too, had perceived the value of the opportunity; and being untrammeled by any respect for law as long as there was little likelihood that the law would find him out, he had devised in his own mind a plan which would promptly and effectually prevent Tom from raising any money on his house.
“‘CAN FOLKS SEE IN FROM OUTSIDE?’”
This plan he had now come to suggest to his employer.
“Any one in the house with you, Mr. Yetmore?” he inquired.
“No, John, I’m all alone. Come in. Why do you ask?”
“Oh, I just wanted to talk to you, and I didn’t want anybody listening, that’s all. Can folks see in from outside?”
“No, not while the curtains are drawn. Come on in. What’s all this mystery about?”
Long John entered, and sitting down close to his friend, he began, speaking in a low tone:
“You’ve heard about Tom Connor trying to raise money on his house, o’ course? Well, I can stop him, if you say so. Any one can see what Tom wants the money for. He’ll get that hundred and fifty, sure, and then off he’ll go. He’s a thorough good prospector, better’n me, and with equal chances the betting will be in his favor. If there’s a big vein, there’s a big fortune for the finder, and it’s for you to say whether Tom Connor is to get a shot at it or not.”
Long John paused a moment, and then, emphasizing each point with an extended finger, he continued: “Without money Tom can’t move—that’s sure; he’s strapped just now—that’s sure; and his only way of getting the cash is by raising it on that house of his—and that’s sure. Now, Mr. Yetmore, you say the word and he shan’t get it. No personal violence that you’re always objecting to. Just the simplest little move; nobody hurt and nobody the wiser.”
Yetmore gazed at him earnestly for a few moments, and then said: “It’s against the law, I suppose.”
“Oh, yes,” replied Long John, with a careless shrug of his shoulders. “It’s against the law all right; but what does that matter to you? I’m the one to do the job, and I’m the only one the law can touch, if it can touch any one; and I don’t mean that it shall touch me. It’s safe and it’s sure.”
“Well, John, what is it?”
Long John rose from his chair, leaned forward, and whispered in the other’s ear a little sentence of five words.
For a moment Yetmore gazed open-eyed at his henchman, then suddenly turned pale, then shook his head.
“I daren’t, John,” said he. “It’s a simple plan and it looks safe; and even if it were found out it would be about impossible for the law to prove anything against me, whatever it might do to you. But it isn’t the law I’m afraid of—it’s the people. Tom Connor has always been a favorite, and just now he is more of a favorite than ever, and if it should be found out, or even suspected, that I had any part in such a deed my business would be ruined: the whole population would turn their backs upon me. I daren’t do it, John.”
“Well, boss,”said Long John, with an air of resignation, shoving his hands deep into his pockets and thrusting out his long legs to the fire, “if you won’t, you won’t, I suppose; but it seems to me you’re a bit over-timorous. Who’s to suspect, anyhow?”
“Who’s to suspect!”exclaimed Yetmore, sharply. “Why, Tom Connor, himself, and old Crawford and those two meddling boys of his. They’d not only suspect—they’d know that you had done the job and that I’d paid you for it. And if they should go around telling their version of the story, everybody would believe them and nothing I could say would count against them; for they’ve all of them, worse luck, got the reputation of being as truthful as daylight, while, as for me——”
Long John laughed. “As for you, you haven’t, eh? Well, Mr. Yetmore, it’s for you to say, of course, but it seems to me you’re missing the chance of a lifetime. Anyhow, my offer stands good, and if you change your mind you’ve only got to wink at me and I’ll trump Tom Connor’s ace for him so sudden he’ll be dizzy for a week.”
With that, Long John arose, slipped out of the house and sneaked off home by a back alley, leaving Yetmore pacing up and down his room with his hands behind him, thinking over and over again what would be the result if he should authorize Long John to go ahead.
“No,”said he at last, as he took up the lamp to go to bed, “I daren’t. It’s a good idea, simple, sure and probably safe, but I daren’t risk it. No. Law or no law, the public would be down on me for certain. I must think up some other scheme.”
Though he thus dismissed the subject from his mind, as he believed, the idea still lurked in the corners of his brain in spite of himself, and when at six in the morning he awoke, there was the little black imp sitting on the pillow, as it were, waiting to go on with the discussion.
Yetmore, however, brushed aside the tempter, jumped into his clothes and walked off to the store, where he found the putty-faced boy anxiously awaiting his appearance in order that he himself might be off to his breakfast.
“Pht!”exclaimed the proprietor, the moment he set foot inside the store. “What’s this smell of coal oil?”
“I don’t smell it,”replied the boy.
“You don’t! Hm! I suppose you’ve got used to it. Well, get along to your breakfast.”
As the boy ran off, Yetmore walked to the back of the building. Here the scent was so strong that he was convinced the barrel must be leaking, so, seizing hold of it, he gave a mighty heave, when the empty barrel came away in his hands, as the saying is. He almost fell over.
To ascertain the nature of the leak was the work of a moment; to trail the sled to Mrs. Appleby’s bac
k yard was the work of five minutes; but having done this, Yetmore was at fault, for, knowing well enough that neither the widow nor her son were capable of such an undertaking, he was at a loss to imagine who the culprit might be.
It was only when Tom Connor a minute later stepped into the store and arranged that story of the leaky oil-barrel which he had described as being “agreeable”to Yetmore, that the storekeeper arrived at a true understanding of the whole matter. To say that he was enraged would be to put it too mildly, and, as always seems to be the case, the fact that he, himself, had been in the wrong to begin with, only exasperated him the more.
The result was what any one might have expected.
Hardly had Connor turned the corner out of sight, than there appeared, “snooping”up the street, that sheep in wolfs clothing, Long John Butterfield. Instantly Yetmore’s resolution was taken. Seizing a broom, he stepped outside and made pretense to sweep the sidewalk, and as Long John, with a casual nod, sauntered past, the angry storekeeper caught his eye and whispered:
“I’ve reconsidered. Go ahead.”
“Bully for you,”replied the other in a low tone; and passed on.
No one would have guessed that in that brief instant a criminal act had been arranged. Nor did Tom Connor, as he went chuckling up the street, guess that by his lawless recovery of the widow’s property he had given Yetmore the excuse he longed for to defy the law himself. Least of all did any of them—not even Long John—guess that between them they were to come within an ace of snuffing out the lives of two innocent outsiders, namely, Joe Garnier and myself. Yet such was the case. It was only the accidental putting in of Tom’s second window that saved us.
Long John, being authorized to proceed, at once made his preparations, which were simple enough, and all he wanted now was an opportunity. By an unlooked-for chance, which, with his perverted sense of right and wrong, seemed to him to be providential, his opportunity turned up that very night.
The miner, George Simpson, hastening homeward from Connor’s house, happened to overtake Long John in the street, and as he passed gave him a friendly “Good-night.”
“Good-night,”said John. “You’re late to-night, aren’t you?”
“Yes, a bit late. One of our men’s sick, and I’ve been fixing things so’s he won’t lose his job. Tom Connor and I are going to work his shift for him.”
“So!”cried Long John, with sudden interest. “Which half do you take?”
“The second. Tom’s gone off already, and I’m going to relieve him at eleven. So I must be getting along: I want my supper and two or three hours’ sleep.”
So Tom would be out of his house till eleven o’clock! Such a chance might never occur again. Long John hastened home at once and got everything ready.
As it would not do to start too early, because people might be about, John waited till nearly ten o’clock, and then sallied out. As he rounded the corner of his shack a furious blast of wind, driving the rain before it, almost knocked him over.
“Good!”he exclaimed. “There won’t be a soul out o’ doors to-night.”
With his head bent to the storm and his hat pulled down over his ears, John made his way through alleys and bye-streets to the edge of town, and then set off across the intervening empty space towards the house where Joe and I were at that moment playing our last game of checkers. As he approached, he saw dimly through the blur of rain the light of two windows.
“Good!”he exclaimed a second time. “Old Snyder not gone to bed yet. Mighty kind of the old gent to leave his light burning for me to steer by. If it hadn’t been for him I’d ’a’ had a job to tell which was the right house. As it is, I’ve borne more to the right than I thought.”
At this moment the town clock struck ten, and almost immediately afterwards the light in the windows went out.
“Never mind,”remarked John to himself. “I know where I am now.”
Advancing a little further, he caught sight of the dim outline of the house through the rain, and turning short to his left, he measured off one hundred steps along the empty street, a distance which brought him opposite the next house to the east.
All was dark and silent, as he had expected, but to make sure he approached the house and thumped upon the door. There was no reply. Again he thumped and struck the door sharply with the handle of his knife. Silence!
“He’s out all right,”muttered John. “Was there ever such a lucky chance? Howling wind, driving rain, dark as the ace of spades, and Tom Connor not coming back for an hour!”
Dark it surely was. The night was black. Not a glimmer of light in any direction. Even the town itself, only a quarter-mile away, seemed to have been blotted from the face of the earth.
As he had noticed in coming across the flats that there were lights still burning in two of the other houses, the patient plotter, in order to give the inmates a chance to get to bed and to sleep, sat waiting on the leeward side of the building for a full half hour. At the end of that time, however, he arose, moved along a few steps, and then, going down on his hands and knees, crept under the house. Ten minutes later he came crawling out again, feet foremost. Once outside, he struck a match, and sheltering it in his cupped hands he applied the flame to the end of something which looked like a long, stiff cord about as thick as a lead pencil. Presently there was a sharp “spit”from the ignited “cord,” blowing out the match and causing John to shake his hand with a gesture of pain, as though it had been scorched.
Next moment Long John sprang to his feet and fled away into the darkness; not straight across lots as he had come, but by a roundabout way which would bring him into town from the eastern side.
Then, for two minutes, except for the roaring of the wind, all was silence.
Joe and I were sound asleep on the floor of Tom’s back room, when by a single impulse we both sprang out of bed with an irrepressible cry of alarm, and stood for a moment trembling and clinging to each other in the darkness. The sound of a frightful explosion was ringing in our ears!
“What was it, Joe?”I cried. “Which direction?”
“I don’t know,”my companion replied. “I hope it isn’t an accident up at the Pelican. Let’s get into our clothes, Phil.”
Lighting the lamp, we quickly dressed, and putting on our hats and overcoats we went out into the storm. All was dark, except that in the windows of each of the occupied houses in the row we could see a light shining. The whole street had been roused up.
“It must have been a powder-magazine,”Joe shouted in my ear. “Or else the boiler in the engine-house of the Pelican. What do you say, Phil? Shall we go up there? We might be able to help.”
“Yes, come on!”I cried. “Let’s go and see first, though, if Tom hasn’t a second lantern. We shall save time by it if he has.”
Our hurried search for a lantern was vain, however, so we determined to set off without one. As we closed the door behind us, our clock struck eleven, and a moment later we heard faintly the eleven o’clock whistle up at the Pelican.
“Good!”cried Joe. “It isn’t the boiler blown up, anyhow, so Tom’s safe; for he is working underground and the explosion, whatever it was, was on the surface.”
With bent heads we pushed our way against the wind, until, looking up presently, I saw the light of a lantern coming quickly towards us.
“Here’s Tom, Joe,”I shouted. “Pull up!”
We stopped, and as the light swiftly approached we detected the beating footsteps of a man running furiously.
“Then there is an accident!”cried Joe. “Ho, Tom! That you?”he shouted.
It was Tom, who, suddenly stopping, held the lantern high, looking first at one and then at the other of us. He was still in his miner’s cap and slicker, his face was as white as a ghost’s, and he was so out of breath that for a moment he could not speak.
“Hurt, Tom?”I cried, in alarm.
“No,”—with a gasp.
“Anybody hurt?”
“No.”
“What is it, then?”
“Scared!”And then, still panting violently: “Come to the house,”said he.
Once inside, I brought Tom a dipper of water, which quickly restored him, when, turning his still blanched face towards us, he said:
“Boys, I’ve had the worst scare of my life!”
“How, Tom?”I asked. “That explosion? Was it up at the Pelican?”
“No, it wasn’t; and I didn’t know anything about it until I came up at eleven, when George, who was waiting to go on, told me there had been a heavy explosion down in the direction of my house. When he told me that, there rushed into my head all of a sudden an idea which nearly knocked me over—it was like a blow from a hammer. I grabbed the lantern, which I had just lighted, and ran for it. Can you guess what I expected to find?”
We shook our heads.
“I expected to find my house blown to pieces, and you two boys lying dead out in the rain!”
We stared at him in amazement.
“What do you mean?”I asked.
“Look here, boys,”Tom went on. “When George Simpson told me there had been an explosion down this way, it came into my head all at once that Yetmore or Long John—probably Long John—had heard that I was out at work to-night, and not knowing that you were staying the night with me, had come and wrecked my house.”
“But why should they?”Joe asked.
“So as to prevent my raising money on it, and so keep me tied up in town while they skipped out to look for that vein of galena. I’m glad to find I was wrong. I did ’em an in——”
The Boys of Crawford's Basin Page 13
