The Cowpuncher

by Bradford Scott

  Sue appeared with Mrs. Donovan close behind her. Huck took one look at them and roared.

  “Sue, Mrs. Donovan—head for higher ground. Ah Sing, go with them. No telling when hell is going to break loose around here.”

  Without another word, he turned toward his men. There was nothing left for the three to do but to follow Huck’s orders.

  Cursing, the Mexican miners swarmed to work.

  Although there was water on the floor of the pumphouse and hissing on the hot ashes beneath the boiler, the monotonous clanking of the pumps still went on. The engineer, shaker bar in hand, stood ready to dump his fires if necessary and avoid clinkering his grates. Dubiously he watched the water level rise, then cursed profound relief as it remained stationery and began to recede.

  “You got it, Boss!” he bellowed to Huck Brannon. “She’s goin’ down! You got it beat! But how in the blankety-blank-blank we gonna get inter the mine ‘thout divin’ suits?”

  Water was still roaring down the cliff wall in unabated volume. Huck stared at the yellow torrent, and then turned to his grouped men.

  “Get sledges and drills and picks and blasting powder,” he told them. “Lank, you and the foremen bring rifles. Sift sand, now, before the whole yard is washed away. The crick is rising by the minute and we’ll have an unholy flood on our hands to add to our troubles if we don’t straighten out this mess pronto.”

  Down the canyon, sloshing through pools, stumbling over partially submerged boulders, he led his laden crew. Lank Mason and the six foremen, Winchesters tucked under arms, followed close behind the cowboy in grim silence. They were beginning to understand what had happened and were seething with anger.

  Leaving the canyon, they clambered into the streaming hills and turned sharply north. The gray dawn of a rainy morning had fully broken when they reached the juncture of the natural bed of Dominguez Creek and the old man-made channel.

  “See how they did it?” Huck remarked to Lank.

  He pointed upstream past where he and his partners had turned the creek back into its natural bed, months before.

  Lank stared, cursing bitterly. “Did jest ‘bout the same as that damned old Spaniard did nigh onto a hundred years back,” he growled. “They dug the old channel a little further upstream, turnin’ it to the west, walled it up good and high where it paralleled the cut we made, and then blowed what was left of the crick bank up ‘bove here.

  “Course the water turned inter the channel which was again jest a little lower than the upper crick bed. Worked in that big thicket up ahaid, where nobody’d see them and picked a nice rainy night to finish the job. No wonder they was poundin’ their damn drums last night—crowin’ over what they’d done to us! But how in blazes did they do all this work ‘thout anybody seein’ ‘em?”

  “Remember nobody has been coming up here since Montez was murdered last winter,” Huck pointed out. “Begins to look like they figured that a killing would stop everybody from coming up here. We played right into their hands. C’mon and let’s get up where they made the cut. We’ve got to turn this water back where it belongs and then rip this channel to pieces so’s they can’t pull this stunt again.”

  The rain had stopped and the sun was shining brightly through chinks in the thinning clouds. It was the brilliant sunshine, and Huck Brannon’s keen eyesight and uncanny gift for noticing anything out of the ordinary, that saved the party.

  It was only a quick glint flashing from the dense thicket ahead, but it was enough.

  “Down! Down behind the rocks!” the cowboy yelled.

  Without an instant’s hesitation his followers obeyed, falling flat on their faces the instant before puffs of smoke spurted from the undergrowth and lead stormed through the air.

  Almost before the crackle of the reports had ceased, Huck was on his feet again, zigzagging for the thicket, ducking, weaving, slewing from side to side, both guns out and blazing. Behind him Lank and his men hammered the thicket with rifle bullets.

  From the growth sounded yells of pain and anger. This was more than the drygulchers had counted on. They had doubtless been licking their lips over the helpless victims who would walk blindly into their trap. An entirely different matter were those blazing sixguns and roaring rifles. As Huck and his posse swooped down on the thicket, the brush was smashing and crackling with the passage of running forms. They crashed into the growth just in time to hear the clatter of swift hoofs speeding into the north.

  “Had horses all ready to trail rope,” panted the cowboy. “Hold it—it’s no use running our legs off for nothing.”

  “Here’s a couple what ain’t goin’ anywhere!” Lank called grimly. “Damn their red hides!”

  Huck stared down at the two dead men. One was undoubtedly a full-blooded Goshoot Indian. The other he was inclined to believe was a halfbreed, but he could not be sure. Both were dressed in dirty buckskins and boot moccasins.

  “Damn good guns for Injuns to carry,” growled Lank, picking up a well oiled repeater.

  “This feller’s sportin’ a brand new Smith and Wesson, too,” said one of the foremen, pulling the big six from its holster.

  Huck went through the dead men’s pockets, turning out a miscellany of junk to which he attached no particular significance. A cunningly concealed pouch under the half-breed’s belt yielded something of interest—two bright and shiny tendollar gold pieces.

  “Brand new!” the cowboy muttered, turning them over in his slim fingers. “Look like they just come out of a bank—haven’t been carried hardly at all.”

  The concentration furrow was deep between his black brows as he stared at the gold. He glanced again at the expensive guns with which the Indians had been armed.

  “Looks like the hellions made a mighty good raid plumb recent,” remarked Lank Mason, “one what paid them plenty.”

  “Yes,” agreed Brannon, staring into the south with somber eyes, “one that paid them plenty.”

  XXI

  Blood and Steam

  It took a full day of hard work to get Dominguez Creek back where it belonged, and a good deal more than a week to repair the damage done to the mine equipment.

  During that week, the C. & P. firemen of the Mountain Division cursed fervently as they wrestled with clinkered grates and clogged flues, the result of the low-grade coal the road had to accept from the Cale Coleman mine.

  The coal wasn’t good, but the saving over what it cost to transport fuel from distant points was too great to be ignored. The road bought from Coleman while the Lost Padre was shut down and Cale pocketed a nice profit.

  “It’s a ill wind what don’t blow nobody no good,” misquoted Old Tom Gaylord, “but why the hell did it hafta blow good to that hyderphobia skunk? Blankety-blank-blank them Injuns, anyhow!”

  The Lost Padre got back into operation, the C. & P. firemen sighed prodigious relief, and for a while the drums muttered no more from the northern hills.

  “Cal’late we sorta give ‘em their come-uppance when we blasted a coupla them loose from their greasy hides,” said Lank Mason. “ ‘Sides, the way we cut and walled that channel, there ain’t no chance for ‘em to raise any more hell up there, and the way the railroad is patrolled ‘tween here and town, that section’s pretty safe. Looks like we may have easy goin’ from now on.”

  Huck Brannon hoped the miner was right, but was not entirely optimistic. Those two shiny gold pieces still puzzled Huck.

  “And what’s a feller that looks like an Apache ‘breed doing with the mountain Goshoots?” he asked Old Tom. “And that job on the crick was done almighty smooth for an ignorant Indian outfit.”

  “You figger mebbe somebody ‘sides the Injuns had somethin’ to do with it?” Old Tom asked. “Who could it be?”

  However, Huck did not care to hazard an answer to that question—yet.

  There came a day of fiesta in the Mexican quarter in Esmeralda. It also happened to be payday at the Lost Padre mine, and a Saturday. So Huck gave his Mexican pitmen the weekend off s
o they could properly celebrate the feast.

  Lank and the foremen decided to go to town also and see the fun. Old Ah Sing was in town purchasing kitchen supplies.

  And Mrs. Donovan had invited Sue to spend the day with her in town. The mere thought of missing a fiesta made Mrs. Donovan shudder. And the picture of the colorful celebration painted by her friend appealed to Sue, so that she too was eager to go.

  Which left Huck and the night engineer at the pump house in full charge of the mine. Huck had even dispensed with the two night watchmen, taking over their duties himself so that they would have the chance to enjoy themselves with their friends.

  “The boys all work hard and never complain,” he told the red-headed engineer as the grinning and cheering crew waved good-bye from the empty coal car which was taking them to town. “They deserve to have a little fun now and then.”

  “The saddle-colored hellions are good fellers when you get to know ‘em,” the engineer agreed, cutting off a chunk of amazingly strong and black tobacco from a plug and stuffing it into an equally amazingly strong and blackened pipe. “When I had that bad sick spell last month, two of ‘em insisted on settin’ up all night with me, after having worked hard all that day and having to work hard the next. Treat ‘em right and they treat you right, and glad of the chanct.”

  The day wore on without event and the lovely blue dusk sifted down from the flame-wrapped mountain tops to brim the canyon with purple shadows. Stars like points of golden fire pierced the black velvet of the sky and a soft little wind chuckled around in the tree tops and wondered where to go next.

  It was a silent night, with only the low rumble of Dominguez Creek and the steady clank of the pumps to break the hush. Huck Brannon, smoking outside his cabin, his chair propped back against the wall and the high heels of his boots hooked over a rung, was filled with a quiet content. Dreamily he watched the great clock in the sky wheel from east to west.

  In his musing, the clock took the shape of a face. A familiar face. The corners of his gray eyes crinkled in the slow beginnings of a smile. To an observer, it might have looked as though Huck Brannon were settling back in his chair prepared to enjoy himself in pleasant recollections.

  Thought of Sue Doyle gave him a curious sense of well-being, and of optimism. Barring accidents in the mine, he would soon be in a position to speak his piece to her. To tell her how soft he had gone over her. To tell her that he had not meant what he said that day they rode into the Apishapa River Valley. That he really wanted that spread more than he wanted anything else in the world—with one exception, of course. And that he had set his heart on it long ago, and always thought of it as his.

  Yes, he would soon be in a position to pay Old Man Doyle back the five thousand dollars he had borrowed from him—and then borrow, permanently, the Old Man’s daughter. Fair exchange, he thought, grinning. No, it was not. He, Huck, was getting the better of it—by a long, long shot.

  A sense of well-being and contentment enveloped Huck Brannon.

  He could see the intermittent glow of the engineer’s pipe where he took his seat beside the pumphouse door. Otherwise there was no sign of life in the valley. Even the owls were silent and the panthers had evidently enjoyed good hunting and were too well filled to do any squalling.

  Suddenly, however, sounds of life broke the silence. Somebody was coming up the canyon, and coming fast. Huck could hear the clatter of hoofs and a prodigious blowing. His booted feet dropped to the ground and he stood up, peering through the darkness.

  “What the hell?” called the engineer, who was also standing.

  A shadow flickered through the bar of light streaming through the open door of the pump house and slithered to a halt. In another instant old Ah Sing flung himself from the back of his mule and came pattering across to Huck’s cabin.

  “What the hell’s wrong with you?” demanded the puncher.

  The Chinaman’s face was working convulsively, his beady eyes snapping with excitement. He was blowing almost as hard as the sweat streaked mule.

  “Men come!” he gurgled. “Injun men!” He gulped, sputtered and relapsed into crackling Chinese that sounded like shot rolling around in a tin can.

  “Stop it!” barked Brannon. “Shut up and get your breath and then talk sense! What about Indian men?”

  “Come to bust mine,” said Ah Sing, gaining some degree of calmness. “Be soon come damn quick. Got guns—sledge hammels—heap damn mad!”

  “Start at the beginning,” Huck told him tersely. “How’d you find this out?”

  “Me lidin’ to mouth of canyon,” replied Ah Sing. “Almost to—see light up ‘longside cliff west of canyon mouth. Think funny—go see. Men sit ‘lound camp fi’, eat, talk—talk Spanish talk—me know Spanish talk, listen. Talk othel talk, too—me no know—Injun talk. They wait till moon go topside ‘neath, then come—bust mine. Me tie bullos with glub in thicket—come fast on mule. Can do!”

  “How many were there?” Huck asked quietly, hitching his double cartridge belts a little higher.

  “Mebbe twenty-fi’ and half,” replied Ah Sing.

  “Thirty-five or forty eh?” Huck translated. “You sure they Indian men, Ah Sing?”

  “Most. Some Injun-half, mebbe Mexican-half, not many.”

  For a moment Huck stood staring down the dark canyon. Ah Sing waited expectantly. Mike, the engineer, muttered vivid profanity and picked up a heavy spanner.

  “Come to bust mine,” Huck repeated Ah Sing’s words. “That means to smash the pumps and the winding engine. Smash the pumps and it’ll take weeks to install new ones. And then more weeks to pump out the lower levels. Which will mean the finish of the Lost Padre, so far as we are concerned. Stop the pumps for any length of time and she’ll fill up to the top of the shaft. Always been a wet mine—wetter’n ever since they sent the crick down the channel.”

  XXII

  Pain and Panic

  He frowned as he recalled Lank’s report of a much greater volume of water coming from the cave in which the murdered Indians slept, the flow of which had been gradually lessening since the opening of the mine. The seepage in the lower levels had also greatly increased and the pumps were hard put to keep the workings free of water.

  His slim hands dropped to the butts of the heavy sixes swinging low on either thigh, and his face grew grim as he eyed the silvery half-disc of the moon still peering over the lip of the western wall. Soon that moon would be behind the western crags—“top-side ‘neath,” as Ah Sing had expressed it.

  Then the group would creep silently up the gloom filled canyon, knowing that only two men had been left there by the departing celebrants, and hoping for a quick surprise and little or no resistance.

  “They’re the ones due for a surprise, though!” the cowboy growled, tightening his grip on his guns. There were rifles in the cabin, and Ah Sing and the engineer could shoot after a fashion.

  Still, the odds were heavy. And there was something else that caused Huck Brannon to hesitate. From Ah Sing’s report, it appeared that the majority of the raiders were actually mountain Indians—people who really believed that the reopening of La Mina del Padre was fraught with evil for them. Leaning their belief as they did on the traditions that had come down to them, heaven knew they had cause to think so, Huck was forced to admit.

  They might be led by men who had other and more selfish interests in mind, men who had fanned the embers of superstition into flame to further their own ends, but the Indians were doubtless sincere enough in their beliefs. And Huck Brannon had a decided aversion to shooting down men who were doing what they believed to be right and acting under honest motives, no matter how mistaken they might be.

  Huck Brannon, unlike many cattlemen, believed that Mexicans, Indians and other “lesser tribes without the law” had their rights to be respected, and had in them the making of good citizens if given the chance.

  He did not propose to have his property destroyed by predatory interests, but he was determined that misg
uided dupes were not going to die at his hand if he could possibly prevent it. He racked his brains as he stared down the valley for some means of stopping the raiders without actually destroying them.

  It was the sudden sputtering hiss of the safety valve on the big boiler which furnished steam to operate pumps and winding engine that gave him inspiration.

  The engineer automatically stepped into the pump-house and opened the injector, which sent a stream of cold water into the over-pressured boiler. He glanced at rising water gauge and falling steam needle and shut the injector. He turned and bumped into Huck Brannon, who was striding into the pump house.

  “Hey!” bawled Mike in an injured tone, stumbling back and rubbing his bruised nose.

  Huck paid no attention to his protest.

  “I’ve got it, Mike!” he exclaimed. “I know how we can stop them without killing them! It’s a cinch.”

  “Huh?” grunted Mike, staring.

  Ah Sing, pattering at Huck’s heels, crowed exultantly.

  “Can do! Me betcha you me!” he declared.

  “Quick!” exclaimed Huck, “screw a sleeve into the blow-off cock at the base of the boiler—a sleeve with a union on the other end. Use a reducing bushing if you have to, and attach that big leather hose to the sleeve. Hurry, you grease monkey—you may have to cut threads on the sleeve, and we haven’t got all night—moon’s almost down!”

  Grunting profane admiration, the little engineer went to work, swiftly and efficiently. Huck and Ah Sing meanwhile extinguished the lights in Huck’s cabin and banked the front wall of the pump house with coal and timbers to stop the passage of bullets through the flimsy planks.

  “I got yore damn hose pipe fastened onto the cock,” Mike called before they had finished their task. “Moon’s outa sight,” he added heavily.

  Huck nodded and extinguished all the lights except one carefully shaded lantern. He examined the length of hose closely. It was new and strong and capable of taking plenty of pressure.