The Man from the Bitter Roots

by Lockhart, Caroline

  The impetus sent it well over the river. Then it struck the slack in the cable and slowed up. Bruce set his teeth and went at it hand over hand. The test came when it started up grade. No ordinary man could have budged it and Bruce pulled to the very last ounce of his strength. He moved it only an inch at a time—slipping back two inches frequently when he changed hands.

  If he lost the grip of both hands for a single second and slid back to the middle of the slack he realized that he was too near exhausted to pull up again, so, somehow, he hung on, making inarticulate sounds as he exerted superhuman strength, groaning like an animal loaded beyond its limit. If only he could last!

  When he reached the platform on the other side he was just able to throw an arm around the tree and crawl out while the ponderous iron cage squeaking on the rusty cable rolled back to the middle of the river, where it swung to and fro.

  Bruce gathered himself and tried to run. His legs refused to obey his will and he had to fall back to a walk. He hung over from the waist like a bent old man, his arms swinging limply at his sides.

  He knew from the small amount of water going over the spillway that the machinery was still running and as he drew nearer to the power-house he could hear the hiss of the 200-feet head as it hit the wheel.

  He dreaded entering for fear of what he should see. He had little doubt but that Smaltz was dead—electrocuted—roasted. He expected the sickening odor of burning flesh. He had been so long in getting there—but he had done his best—the power must be shut off first—he must get to the lever—if only he could run. His thoughts were incoherent—disconnected, but all of Smaltz. Smaltz had been loyal; Smaltz never had shirked; but he never had shown Smaltz the slightest evidence of friendship because of his unconquerable dislike.

  Bruce was reproaching himself as he stepped up on the wooden casing which covered the pipes and nozzles inside the power-house. There he stopped and stood quite motionless, looking at Smaltz. Smaltz’s face wore a look of keenest interest, as with one shoulder braced against the side of the building, his hands in his pockets, he watched the plant burn up.

  Down below, Banule had thrown out the switch and the machinery was running away. A rim of fire encircled the commutators. The cold, blue flame of electrical energy was shooting its jagged flashes from every piece of magnetic metal it could reach, while the crackling of the short-circuited wires was like the continuous, rattling reports of a rapid-fire gun.

  There was something terrifying in the sight of the racing machinery, something awe-inspiring in the spectacle of a great power gone mad. The wind from the round blur that represented the fly-wheel was a gale and in the semi-dusk,—Smaltz had closed the double-doors—the leaping flames and the screech of the red-hot bearings made the place an Inferno.

  For a moment the amazing, unexpected sight deprived Bruce of the power to move. Then he jumped for the lever and shut down. It was not until the machinery responded that Smaltz turned. His yellow-brown eyes widened until they looked round. He had not counted on anyone’s being able to cross the river for fully half an hour.

  If Smaltz had been the villain of fiction, he would have been a coward as well. But Smaltz was not a coward. It is true he was startled—so startled that his skin turned a curious yellow-green like a half-ripe pear—but he was not afraid. He knew that he was “in for it.” He knew that something was going to happen, and quick. That Bruce was sitting on the wooden casing quietly pulling off his heavy boots did not deceive him in the least.

  It was as still as the tomb in the power-house when Bruce stood up and walked toward Smaltz. Grimy streaks of perspiration showed on his colorless face, from which every drop of blood seemed to have fled, and his black eyes, that shone always with the soft brilliancy of a warm, impulsive nature and an imaginative mind, were glittering and purposeful.

  Smaltz stood his ground as Bruce advanced.

  “Why didn’t you answer that telephone, Smaltz?”

  In feigned surprise Smaltz glanced at the box.

  “I declare—the receiver’s dropped off the hook!”

  Bruce ignored the answer; he did not even look, but stepped closer.

  “Why didn’t you shut down?”

  Smaltz summoned his impudent grin, but it wavered and faded under Bruce’s burning eyes even while he replied in a tone of injured innocence—

  “How should I know? The bell didn’t ring—Banule hadn’t told me to.”

  Bruce paid no attention to the foolish excuse. He demanded again:

  “Why didn’t you shut down, Smaltz?”

  “I’ve told you once,” was the sullen answer.

  Bruce turned to the telephone and rang the bell hard.

  “Hello—hello—hello!” came the frantic reply.

  “Can you swim, Banule?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then take it where the cable crosses the river. Come quick.” He put the receiver back on its hook and stepped to the lever. Smaltz’s eyes opened wide as Bruce shoved it hard. He stared as though he thought Bruce had gone out of his mind. Then the dynamos began to pick up.

  “What you goin’ to do?” he shouted above the screech of the belting and the hot bearings.

  “You’re going to tell the truth!” The last vestige of Bruce’s self-control vanished. His voice, which had been nearly a whisper, was like the sudden roar of a deep-hurt bear. His dark face was distorted to ugliness with rage. He rushed Smaltz—with his head down—and Smaltz staggered with the shock. Then they grappled and went down. Once more it was pandemonium in the power-house with the screeching of the red hot bearings and the glare of the crackling blue flames that meant the final and complete destruction of the plant. Over and over the grimy, grease-soaked floor of the power-house they rolled and fought. Brutally, in utter savagery, Bruce ground Smaltz’s face into the rough planks littered with nails and sharp-copper filings, whenever he could—dragging him, shoving him, working him each second a little closer to the machinery with the frenzy of haste. He had not yet recovered from his run but Smaltz was no match for his great strength.

  A glimmer of Bruce’s purpose came to Smaltz at last.

  “What—you tryin’—to do?” he panted.

  Bruce panted back:

  “I’m going to kill you! Do you hear?” His eyes were bloodshot, more than ever he looked like some battle-crazed grizzly seeing his victim through a blur or rage and pain. “If I can—throw you—across those commutators—before the fireworks stop—I’m goin’ to give you fifteen hundred volts!”

  A wild fright came in Smaltz’s eyes.

  “Let me up!” he begged.

  For answer Bruce shoved him closer to the dynamo. He fought with fresh desperation.

  “Don’t do that, Burt! My God—Don’t do that!”

  “Then talk—talk! She’s going fast. You’ve got to tell the truth before she stops! Why did you burn out this plant?”

  Smaltz would not answer. Bruce lifted him bodily from the floor. In the struggle he threw out a hand to save himself and his finger touched the spring that held the carbons. He screamed with the shock, but the blue flashes were close to his face blinding him before he suddenly relaxed:

  “I’m all in. I’ll tell.”

  Bruce let him drop back hard upon the floor and thrust a knee into his chest.

  “Goon, then—talk!”

  The words came with an effort; he seemed afraid of their effect upon Bruce, then, uncertainly:

  “I—was paid.”

  For the fraction of a second Bruce stared into Smaltz’s scared face. “You were paid,” he repeated slowly. “Who—” and then the word came rapier-like as had the thought—“Sprudell!”

  “He told me to see that you didn’t start. He left the rest to me.” With sullen satisfaction: “And it’s cost him plenty—you bet—”

  Inexplicable things suddenly grew clear to Bruce.

  “You turned the boat loose in Meadows—”

  “Yes.”

  “You wrecked it on that rock—�
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  “Yes.”

  “You fouled the mercury in the boxes?”

  “Yes.”

  “And Toy!” The look of murder came back into Bruce’s face, his hand crept toward Smaltz’s throat. “Don’t lie! What did you do to Toy?”

  Smaltz whispered—he could barely speak—“I’m tellin’ the truth—it was an accident. He jumped me—I threw him off and he fell in the sluice-box—backward—I tried to save him—I did—that’s straight.” Smaltz kept rolling his head back and forth in an oil-soaked spot where a grease cup leaked. Bruce’s knee was grinding into his ribs and chest and his fingers were tightening on his throat.

  Bruce raised himself a little and looked down at Smaltz. As he stared at the smudged, bleeding face and into the yellow-brown eyes with their dilated pupils, the rage in his own gave place to a kind of intense curiosity, the scrutiny one gives to a repulsive and venomous insect or reptile he has captured. He was trying to impress upon his own mind the incredible fact that this human being, lying helpless beneath him, watching him with questioning fear, had ruined him without the least personal malice—had robbed him of all he had strained, and worked, and fought for, for pay! It seemed like a preposterous, illogical dream; yet there he lay, alive, real, his face less than two feet from his own.

  Finally, Bruce took his knee from his chest and got up. Smaltz pulled himself to his feet and stood uncertainly.

  “Well—I suppose it’s jail.” There was sullen resignation in his voice.

  Bruce stopped the machinery without answering. Then he folded his arms and leaned his broad shoulders against the rough boards of the power-house while, eying Smaltz, he considered. A year ago he would have killed him—he would have killed him begging on his knees, but taking a human life either makes a man callous or sobers him and the remorse which had followed the tragedy in the cabin was a sensation Bruce never wanted to experience again.

  Penitentiaries were made for men like Smaltz—but in a country of long and difficult distances, with the lax courts and laws indifferently enforced, to put Smaltz where he belonged was not so simple as it might sound. It required time and money; Bruce had neither to spare.

  It was so still in the power-house that the ticking of the dollar watch hanging on a nail sounded like a clock. Smaltz shifted feet nervously. At last Bruce walked to the work-bench and took a carpenter’s pencil from a box and sharpened it. He smoothed out some wrapping paper then motioned Smaltz to sit down.

  “I want you to write what you told me—exactly—word for word. Write it in duplicate and sign your name.”

  Consternation overspread Smaltz’s face. A verbal confession to save himself from being electrocuted was one thing, to put it in black and white was quite another. He hesitated. Bruce saw the mutiny in his face; also the quick, involuntary glance he gave toward a monkey-wrench which lay on the end of the work-bench within his reach.

  Rage burned up in Bruce again.

  “Don’t you know when you’ve got enough?” He stepped forward and removed the heavy wrench from Smaltz’s reach. “I’ll give you just one minute by the watch there to make up your mind. You’d better write, for you won’t be able when I’m through!”

  They measured each other, eye to eye again. Each could hear the breathing of the other in the silence while the watch ticked off the seconds. An over-sanguine pack-rat tried to scramble up the tar-paper covering on the outside and squeaked as he fell back with a thud, but the face of neither man relaxed. Smaltz took the full limit of the time. He saw Bruce’s fingers work, then clinch. Suddenly he grinned—a sheepish, unresentful grin.

  “I guess you’re the best man,” He slouched to the bench and sat down.

  He was still writing when Banule came, breathing hard and still dripping from his frigid swim. He stopped short and his jaw dropped at seeing Smaltz. He was obviously disappointed at finding him alive.

  Smaltz handed Bruce the paper when he had finished and signed his name. Neither the writing or composition was that of an illiterate man. Bruce read it carefully and handed it to Banule:

  “Read this and witness it.”

  Banule did as he was told, for once, apparently, too dumfounded for comment.

  “Now copy it,” said Bruce, and Smaltz obeyed.

  When this was done, signed and witnessed Smaltz looked up inquiringly—his expression said—“What next?”

  Bruce stepped to the double doors and slid the bolt.

  “There’s your trail—now hit it!” He motioned into the wilderness as he threw the doors wide.

  Incredulity, amazement, appeared on Smaltz’s face.

  In the instant that he stood staring a vein swelled on Bruce’s temple and in a spasm of fury he cried:

  “Go, I tell you! Go while I can keep my hands off you—you—” he finished with an oath.

  Smaltz went. He snatched his coat from its nail as he passed but did not stop for his hat. It was not until he reached the slab which served as a bridge over the water from the spillway that he recovered anything of his impudent nonchalance. He was in the centre of it when he heard Banule say:

  “If it ud be me I’d a put a lash rope round his neck and drug him up that hill to jail.”

  Smaltz wheeled and came back a step.

  “Oh, you would, would you? Say, you fakir, I’m glad you spoke. I almost forgot you.” There was sneering, utter contempt in Smaltz’s voice. “Fakir,” he reiterated, “you get that, do you, for I’m pickin’ my words and not callin’ names by chance. You’re the worst that ever come off the Pacific coast—and that’s goin’ some.”

  He turned sharply to Bruce.

  “You know even a liar sometimes tells the truth and I’m goin’ to give it to you straight now. I’ve nothin’ to win or lose. This machinery never will run. The plant was a failure before it was put up. And,” he nodded contemptuously at Banule, “nobody knew it better than that dub.”

  “Jennings,” he went on “advised this old-fashioned type of machinery because it was the only kind he understood and he wanted the job of putting it up, honestly believin’ at the time that he could. When he realized that he couldn’t, he sent for Banule to pull him through.

  “Jennings failed because of his ignorance but this feller knows, and whatever he’s done he has done knowin’ that his work couldn’t by any chance last. All he’s thought of was gettin’ the plant up somehow so it would run temporarily—any old way to get through—get his money, and get out. He’s experimented continually at your expense; he’s bungled the job from beginning to end with his carelessness—his ‘good enough’ work.

  “You were queered from the start with them armatures he wound back there on the Coast. He and Jennings took an old fifty horse-power motor and tried to wind it for seventy-five. There wasn’t room for the copper so they hammered in the coils. They ruptured the insulation in the armature and that’s why it’s always short-circuited and sparked. He rated it at seventy-five and it’s never registered but fifty at its best. He rated the small motor at fifty and it developed thirty—no more. The blue print calls for 1500 revolutions on the big pump and the speed indicator shows 900. Even if the motors were all right, the vibration from that bum foundation that he told you was ‘good enough’ would throw them out, in time.

  “All through he’s lied and bluffed, and faked. He has yet to put up his first successful plant. Look up his record if you think it ain’t the truth. What’s happened here is only a repetition of what’s happened everywhere he’s ever been. It would be a fortune if ’twas figured what his carelessness has cost the men for whom he’s worked.

  “In the eyes of the law I’m guilty of wreckin’ this plant but in fact I only put on the finishin’ touches. I’ve shortened your misery, Burt, I’ve saved you money, for otherwise you’d have gone tryin’ to tinker it up. Don’t do it. Take it from me it isn’t worth it. From start to finish you’ve been stung.”

  He turned mockingly to Banule:

  “As we know, Alphy, generally there’s a kin
d of honor among crooks that keeps us from squeakin’ on each other, but that little speech of yourn about takin’ a turn of a las’ rope round my neck kind of put me on the prod. That virtuous pose of yours sort of set my teeth on edge, knowin’ what I do, and I ain’t told half of what I could if I had the time. However, Alphy,” he shot a look at Bruce’s face, “if you’ll take the advice of a gent what feels as though a log had rolled over him, you’ll sift along without puttin’ up any holler about your pay.”

  * * *

  XXVI

  Failure

  Smaltz was a liar, as he said, but Bruce knew that he had told the truth regarding Banule’s work. He confirmed the suspicions and fears that had been in Bruce’s mind for months. Therefore, when he said quietly to Banule—“You’d better go up the hill!” there was that in his voice and eyes which made that person take his departure with only a little less celerity than Smaltz had taken his.

  It remained for Bruce to gather up Banule’s scattered tools, drain the pumps, and nail the pump-house door. When he closed the head gate and turned the water back into Big Squaw Creek, removed the belting from the pulleys in the power-house and shut the place up tight, he felt that it was much like making arrangements for his own funeral.

  At last everything was done and Porcupine Jim, who had stayed on a day or so to help, was waiting for Bruce to finish his letter to Helen Dunbar so he could take it up the hill. Jim sat by the kitchen stove whistling dismally through his teeth while Bruce groped for words in which to break the news of his complete failure.

  If only he could truthfully hold out some hope! But there was not the slightest that he could see. Harrah was out of it. The stockholders had lost both confidence and interest in him and his proposition and would sell out, as they had notified him they would do if the season’s work was a failure—and consider themselves lucky to have the chance. It was a foregone conclusion that Sprudell would shortly own the controlling stock.