“Is that what you want to be, Huck?” she asked, staring frankly into his eyes. “A mine owner?”
“Why not?” he demanded. “It’s as good as being anything else—especially if it pays off.”
It was a lie, he knew. But once he had started to lie, he found it difficult to stop. Moreover, he had to keep his story straight.
After having hired a room for Sue with the wife of Jagger Dunn’s foreman, Huck made his way slowly down the main street to his office.
He cursed himself for being a fool. When he had sent the telegram to Doyle, he had deliberately omitted sending a message to Sue. He was asking for a loan, and until the loan could be paid back he had determined to forget about Sue completely.
And now, it was all mixed up. If she had only stayed away until he had gotten the mind running and the loan repaid, he wouldn’t be feeling sorry that he had kissed her. Not that he was sorry he kissed her—no, certainly not. But he was—damn it!
When he entered his office, he found it difficult to shut out a certain picture and concentrate on the work before him.
Sue Doyle had trouble falling asleep that night.
Her search was over—she had found Huck Brannon. She had been ecstatically happy when he took her in his arms and kissed her. The reason for her coming had been fulfilled. She now knew definitely what Huck would do when he saw her. She knew because he had already done it. He kissed her—and she had been idiotically happy.
That is, until Huck had taken her to the restaurant. There, something had happened to him. She saw it happen before her eyes. He had turned cold and hard suddenly. He no longer looked at her the way he did when he first saw her. As she thought of it now, her heart stiffened.
She had been sure—positive—of his feeling. Now she wasn’t any longer. She had been happy—wildly—at first. Now the cold tentacles of fear clutched at her heart, fear that something—some insurmountable obstacle stood between them.
Sue Doyle was most miserable before she fell asleep that night.
XVI
“We Will Kill You, If We Can”
The ghost of grim old Don Fernando de Castro would have been hard put to recognize his silver mine when the sun of returning Spring melted the snows on the mountains and clothed the hillsides with myriad shades of green. Instead of silence broken only by the low thunder of falling water, the cry of the eagle and the scream of the stalking panther there was the whine and rumble of machinery, the crackle of locomotive exhausts, the screech of complaining wheels and the crash of steel on steel. Instead of the stainless blue of the arching sky, there were sullen clouds belching forth from stack and chimney.
Inside the mine there were also changes. Drawn by mules and rumbling along on narrow-gauge tracks were trains of little cars heaped high with glistening black lumps. In the rooms cut back from the main galleries there was a thumping of picks and a pounding of drills, with ever and anon the rumble of explosions.
A deep shaft had been sunk within the mine and there were levels beneath the original borings. Cages raised and lowered by cables sent men into the lower levels and brought them forth. Other lifts brought forth the black diamonds torn from the heart of the mountain. There was a constant whistling of blowers that pumped the inflammable gas from the mine.
For the Lost Padre was a dangerous mine. It was, as Lank had predicted, a “blazer.” Always present was the threat of an explosion that would leave death and destruction in its wake. Smoking was forbidden inside the mine and only the Davey safety lamps were used to provide illumination. Quite different from the smoking torches used by the doomed Indians who got out the silver for Don Fernando de Castro and His Imperial and Holy Majesty of Spain.
Only one thing was unchanged. Within their night-black tomb, the silence of which was broken only by the monotonous drip and trickle of water, the murdered Indians slept undisturbed their last long sleep. Huck Brannon had thought at first to remove the bodies and give them burial, but Tom Gaylord counseled against it.
“Our Mexican fellers is mighty superstitious,” said Tom. “I got a notion they wouldn’t take overkindly to shovin’ them corpses ‘round. Fact is, I cal’late it’s best if they don’t even know they’re in there.”
“Maybe you’re right,” Huck admitted. “Lank, take your rock-busters in there and throw up a wall across the gallery that leads into the cave where those poor devils are. Let ‘em rest in peace where they been all these years.”
So a light stone wall was built across the gallery from floor to ceiling. A shallow conduit with an arching top was constructed beneath the wall at one side, so that the seeping of water could be carried off.
“That’s fine,” Lank Mason observed, eyeing the completed wall with satisfaction. “That’ll keep the boys outa there and from gettin’ the livin’ blue blazin’ daylights scairt outa them. Fact is, I been hearin’ things already. There’s a whisper goin’ around in town that this mine has a cuss on it, and that the Injuns what live back in the hills is mighty put out over us startin’ operations here again.
“The Injuns say, I’m told, that this mine should stay closed forever and forever. They say it’ll be a mighty bad thing for the red people if anythin’ is taken outa the mountain again—say the hill gods’ll be mad ‘bout it. They figger the hill gods’ll blame them if they don’t stop it.”
“Now who’s starting those yarns?” demanded Huck.
“Dunno,” Lank admitted. “They jest start; but they shore spread.”
Sue joined them. She overheard Mason.
“What’s sure to spread, Lank?” she asked him.
“Why, nothing, Sue—nothing,” replied Huck quickly. “Lank was talking about some gas in the lower chambers. Said it was sure to spread if we didn’t keep the blowers goin’.”
For a moment Sue eyed him without saying a word, and she colored slightly. “Huck,” she said calmly, “you’re still treating me like a little girl. I know what’s going on. There’s talk of a curse on E1 Padre.”
“Yes,” Huck said. “Some blame fool’s spreading the yarn. There isn’t a word of truth to it. I just didn’t want you to worry is all.”
“It doesn’t worry me, Huck,” said Sue.
“Say,” Lank interpolated. “I gotta hand it to yuh women. I ain’t had meals like them since I was knee high to a pup. Why, since yuh came to stay at E1 Padre to do the cookin’, I ain’t heard a peep outa any of the men ‘bout hard work, or nothin’!”
Sue blushed warmly at the praise.
“Thanks, Lank,” she said.
When Sue Doyle had first come to Esmeralda, a short time back, she had no idea that she would soon become assistant camp cook for Huck Brannon at his El Padre Mine.
Yet it had come about in the most natural way in the world. The wife of Jagger Dunn’s foreman, with whom Sue roomed when she arrived, was a robust, bustling Irishwoman, named Mamie Donovan. Bristling with an over-supply of vitality and energy, she had suggested to Huck at the opening of his mine, that she join his camp as cook.
Huck, immediately perceiving the advantage of obtaining the services of Mamie Donovan—for her cooking prowess was too well-known for dispute—hired her on the spot.
The good Mrs. Donovan immediately hired as assistant Sue Doyle, whom she had taken wholeheartedly to her more than ample bosom. And although Huck had at first protested at Sue’s being on location, on the grounds that it was too dangerous for her, he finally had gratefully accepted her presence.
Sue, after the first shock of disappointment had worn off following the change in Huck’s attitude toward her, had determined to stick it out—for a while at least—and had wired her father. Her pride was trampled and sore, but she refused to indulge it.
Lank and Old Tom, who had observed the situation with knowing eyes, had diagnosed the symptoms and read the chart accurately, were at a loss to understand their partner’s reactions. Their oblique comments, however, had been cut short by Huck, who brooked no invasion of his privacy—and minced no words in ma
king it clear to them.
Naturally, the oldsters’ sympathies lay with the feminine side of the apparently insoluble equation. And in revenge for Huck’s blistering tongue, they constantly praised Sue, extolled her virtues, her character, her beauty, to the very skies. And revenge it was, for they could see their partner squirm.
Fortunately for Huck, there were other things to be done around the mine than talk. Yet they never lost an opportunity to remind Huck what a fine girl she was. And they meant it, too. Right now Lank Mason had another chance. And, as usual, he didn’t let it slip.
“She’s a beauty, isn’t she?” he said after Sue had left, watching Huck out of the corner of his eye.
The big, tanned puncher was also watching Sue walk past the pumphouse toward the cabin which she shared with Mrs. Donovan.
“Yes,” he said, almost to himself, “a beauty.”
“I been talkin’ to her,” said Lank Mason casually. “Been tryin’ to persuade her to go home. This mine ain’t no place for a girl like her.” He wasn’t looking at Huck now, but he felt the latter stiffening.
“What did she say?” asked Huck. His voice held little expression.
Purposely Lank withheld his answer for a moment. “She said no,” he said. Then he changed the subject. “What are yuh gonna do, Huck, ‘bout them yarns of the cuss on El Padre?”
“Keep our ears open,” said Huck. “Mebbe we can get our hands on the hombre or hombres spreadin’ them damn yarns.”
In the weeks that followed Huck was too busy to give the matter further thought. And then one night of wind-thinned moonlight, when the blazing winter stars seemed to brush the ghostly tops of the mountains and frost diamonds sparkled in the silver flood, he heard Lank call him from the inner room of the little cabin they occupied together.
He found the old miner leaning out the open window. Lank motioned to the puncher to join him and listen.
At first Huck could hear nothing but the muted roar of the distant waterfall and the monotonous clank of the pumps that drew the never-ceasing seepage from the lower levels of the mine. Then, filtering through the low rumble and the steady metallic clang, his straining ears caught a muffled throbbing that seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere, rising and falling, rising and falling on the crisply cold air. He glanced questioningly at Lank.
“Injun drums,” said the miner. “Injun drums beatin’ back in the hills. They’re havin’ some kind of a tom-tom pow-wow up there. I don’t like it.”
“I don’t suppose it has anything to do with us,” Huck demurred. “Tribal dance or feast or something.”
“Mebbe,” Lank admitted, “but I’ve heerd them before, and it almost always meant some deviltry was in the wind.”
For several minutes they listened to the throbbing of the drums. The moon sank below a crag and weird shadows crept over the cliffs that crouched like monsters waiting to spring and spilled their smoky dust into the canyon depths. Somewhere in the forest that clothed the lower slopes a panther screamed with a desolate unearthly note and an owl hooted solemn answer.
And still the whisper of the drums persisted through the gathering of the dark. The sound appeared to come from the west, with an answering echo from the north. To Huck it suddenly seemed that the drums were “talking,” that there was a sinister message sent forth by unseen hands upon the taut heads.
“We will kill you, if we can!” said the hidden men in the west.
“We will kill you, if we can!” said the men in the north.
Each flinging their ominous threat at the gloomy canyon wherein ancient taboos were being broken and long-dead evils brought to light. “We will kill you, if we can! We will kill you, if we can!”
Huck went back to bed not quite so skeptical of Old Lank’s forebodings. His skepticism vanished altogether when, two days later, the body of a miner who had gone up the cliff top to hunt for grouse and had not returned within a reasonable time was found by a searching party, shot in the back.
Huck immediately gave orders that nobody should wander alone into the hills, particularly along the wooded banks of Dominguez Creek and the old channel, whose frozen pools glittered in the sunlight and were traced by the shadows of the leafless growth which hung over them from either side.
“Stay down here in the canyon where you’re safe,” he warned his men. “Those red hellions are on the prod for some reason or other and are liable to be snooping around up there in the bush just waiting for a chance to drygulch one of you.”
He now renewed his efforts to induce Sue to leave the camp—to go home, or at least to return to Esmeralda until the threat of the evil that hung over the camp like a darkening pall, was lifted.
But she was as determined to stay as he was determined that she go. After a lengthy argument, they finally compromised on Sue’s promise to remain close to the camp and cabin at all times. Huck was not entirely satisfied, but he had to be content with the decision.
Moreover, Sue was not his only problem. His mine and his men were his obligation, too.
He was aroused to additional alertness when one night a couple of weeks later the drums throbbed again. Taking no chances, he made a swift check of the camp and was relieved to find all the workers either safe in their cabins or performing duties required of them.
“Reckon they’re just making medicine this time, and not celebrating any killings,” he told Lank.
XVII
Drums of Death
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 b
angin’ 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!
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