Shadow on the Land

by Wayne D. Overholser

  Chapter Ten

  If Nature could have foreseen the clash of brains and brawn that soon was to grip the attention of all of Oregon and the railroad world, she could not have better prepared the Girt homestead for the purpose Lee intended using it. It lay on the plateau at the very rim of the vast and awesome Deschutes cañon, which dropped two thousand feet to the river. Here two smaller lateral cañons angled nearly together on either side of the great bluff down which Twohy Brothers’ new road twisted in a two mile, twenty percent grade to water level, so narrow that only in three places could wagons pass. There was no route by which a wagon road could connect the rail point of Grass Valley with this road except by crossing the Girt homestead, which set athwart the apex of the angle formed by the cañons, in stubborn perversity.

  Horseshoe Bend was a huge curve in the Deschutes, one and a half miles around, a tongue of land running the length of the curve that was one thousand feet across at the base. The natural approach to the engineering problem at this point was a tunnel across the base, by which some eight thousand feet of difficult rock excavation could be avoided—and there was room for only one.

  Twohy Brothers had reached the site first, and had established camps on the brink of the bluff. It had taken two hundred men twenty days to build the access road, and, when it was finished, the camps on the bluff had been moved into the cañon. Three hundred men now were preparing to begin work on either end of the tunnel. With the seizure of the Girt homestead they were cut off from equipment, materials, and supplies.

  It was dark when Lee reached the Girt place with Johnson Porter, who had decided to come with him, and a handful of men. They could hear the dim growl of the river, and stars made a sharp brightness across the sky. They swung to the ground, and stretched their legs.

  Quickly Lee put his crew to work. They found the Girt homestead fenced with barbed wire, the road entering the upper side of the place through a wire gate and leaving by a board gate just before it tipped into the cañon. The men pitched a tent fifty feet from the wire gate, left supplies and two Winchesters, then chained and padlocked both gates.

  There was no retreating now, and Lee, watching Johnson Porter as they stood beside a fire the men had built, sensed that the tall man was aware of that fact.

  “Just one point in twenty-nine miles of the cañon that’s in conflict,” Porter said, and chuckled softly. “We have prior claim, but it won’t be so good if the Twohys get in first construction. You’ve eased a big worry for me, Lee. They’ll be ready to start digging their tunnel right away, while we’re only now getting our heavy equipment into The Dalles, and there’s a lot of rough country to cross. Now we can establish our own camp down there at once, and we’ll have a road to haul our stuff over.”

  Filling his pipe, Lee nodded. “They can get some food and horse feed down by pack train, using Max or Sixteen Cañon, but they’ll have a tough time getting heavy stuff like scrapers and work cars down on pack mules.” He brought a match to life and sucked the flame into the bowl. “One thing worries me. I know Mike Quinn. He’s got a way of coming up with a Sunday punch when you aren’t looking.”

  “Then it’s up to you to keep looking,” Porter said dryly.

  There was silence for a time, the men smoking and staring into the fire, the possible results of this step weighing heavily on all of them, for two miles below were three hundred men who would react to this move in characteristic railroad-building fashion, while what would happen in the Harriman field quarters at Grass Valley and again in Portland was beyond reckoning.

  Before dawn they cooked a meal, and, when they had eaten, Porter said: “Guess it’s time to roll. Lee, I’ll get word to Magoon in Shaniko. I’ll leave Baldy”—he nodded at a square-built man who stood across the fire from Lee—“with you. The fewer men you have on hand, the less likely you are to touch off violence. Have you got a revolver?”

  Lee nodded. “Took it out of my grip before I left Grass Valley.”

  “Keep it in your pocket. There’ll be reporters around, and there’s no sense in getting any more adverse publicity than we can help.” He stood kicking at the fire, a tall, almost gaunt man, lean face red in the light of the flames. “No Twohy freight wagons go through. Beyond that you’re free to use your own judgment. We’ll stand on our legal rights. If there’s any show of force, let it come from them.”

  “Baldy says the Harriman camps have been getting their water from some springs up on top. How about that?”

  “If it’s on our property, we’ll use the water.” He pinned his eyes on Lee for a moment, then wheeled away from the fire. He said: “Let’s roll.”

  A moment later they had disappeared into the darkness, the clatter of wheels dying in the distance. Filling his pipe again and lighting it, Lee took a moment to study Baldy, a middle-aged, mustached man with kindly gray eyes and the seamy, weather-beaten face of one who belongs under the sun, his feet in stubble or the furrow of a plowed grain field. Whether he had the sand in his craw to stand up under what lay ahead Lee couldn’t tell, but he was certain that the man was thoroughly honest and level-headed.

  “Let’s turn off their water, Baldy,” Lee said presently. He had brought a number of No Trespass signs. He got one from the tent, and fishing a stubby pencil from his pocket, printed in high letters: NO WATER TO SPARE. PORTER BROTHERS. He handed it to Baldy with a grin. “Go get us a bucket of water and tack that up by the spring.”

  With a hammer, tacks, and a bundle of trespass warnings, Lee set to work. Moving first south and then north, he spaced the signs at regular intervals, tacking them firmly to the juniper posts, so that no wind could blow them off. He saved one for the lower gate, and, when he had finished, the gray half light of dawn had spread across the land.

  The air was thin and cold and Lee shivered a little as he turned toward camp. The dusty smell of the hoof-churned earth was in the air; the faint sound of Baldy’s throaty cough came to him. Then Lee was pitching forward in a reflex movement. It had come without warning, the thwack of a bullet cutting through the crown of his hat, the sharp report of a Winchester breaking into the lonely quiet.

  Lee, acting involuntarily, rolled over and jerked the gun from his pocket. There was no cover within fifty yards. He lay, nerves taut, cocked gun held in front of him, eyes searching the rim of the side cañon and expecting a bullet that never came. Presently he heard the run of a horse, and he caught the blur of the animal as it came onto the plateau from the side cañon, the rider bending low in the saddle. A moment later horse and man disappeared.

  Baldy came running from the camp, a Winchester in his hand. He called: “Still on your feet, Dawes?”

  “I managed to climb back on them,” Lee answered with more coolness than he felt. He took off his Stetson, and poked a finger through the bullet hole. “He wasn’t fooling, whoever he was.”

  Baldy swore fiercely. “How’d they guess what we was up to?”

  “Somebody’s watching every move we make,” Lee said somberly, “and they’ve got damned good eyes.”

  They turned back toward camp, Lee thinking about this attack. The man had been waiting for him, had fired from deliberate ambush. It didn’t square with Harriman tactics nor with Mike Quinn. His thoughts ran swiftly back to his talks with John Stevens, and the mysterious third party. The man who had slugged him behind the Shaniko hotel would be capable of this kind of attack. It could well be Boston Bull, with Cyrus P. Jepson the driving power behind the attempted killing. But why? Lee could find no answer, except the personal hatred Bull felt for him, and that could hardly account for an attack at this particular place and time.

  The sun was up by the time they reached the tent, crimson streamers flowing across the land, the eastern hills dark purple with receding shadows.

  “I’ll tack this other sign up at the lower gate,” Lee said, and swung away along the road.

  It was at the lower gate that Lee got his second look into the great cañon. The river ran like a looping silver cord far below
. He could see the Harriman camp, the tents, like dirty gray handkerchiefs, spread on the riverbank. Men moving toward what was apparently the newly started portals of the tunnel were like tiny stick figures.

  He could see the looping tongue that made Horseshoe Bend. Beyond the river, a precipice lifted in a half circle for three thousand feet, sheer rock that ledged back only slightly as it rose. No road would ever be built down that wall. This, then, was the one access to Horseshoe Bend.

  A sudden chill raveled along his spine as he thought of his part in this, and he thrilled to the thought, satisfaction a pleasant warmth in him. He smiled as he caught a little of the feeling that would be in the Twohys and Mike Quinn when they learned of this shift in the fortunes of war, and he sensed the big events that would be built upon this cool, breeze-swept dawn.

  Lee tacked his remaining trespass warning to the top board of the gate, and returned to camp. Baldy had built up the fire, and the smell of frying bacon rode the air, and hurried Lee’s step.

  “Our fun will start before long,” Lee said as he came up to the fire. “About noon maybe.”

  Looking up from where he squatted beside the coffee pot, Baldy fixed his eyes on the bullet hole in Lee’s hat. He said solemnly: “Damn it, Dawes, I plumb forgot to fix my will before I left town.”

  Lee’s guess proved close to right. Shortly after noon, Mike Quinn and a man with a sheriff’s star on his chest rode up to the gate. Seeing them coming, Lee said: “Baldy, stay inside the tent with a Winchester handy. I don’t look for trouble, but I like to have some backing.”

  Moving to the wire gate, Lee stood there, a small grin on his lips.

  Quinn reined his horse to a stop, and stood glaring down at Lee for a long and pregnant moment.

  “Going fishing, Mike?” Lee asked. “Kind of late in the season. You’d better go back and try it again about next spring. The railroad will be built then.”

  Quinn swung down and strode forward, powerful shoulders rolled into a menacing hunch. He poked a stubby finger at the NO TRESPASS sign. “Throw the damned sign away and unlock the gate. We built this road, and we figure to use it.”

  “Your road’s right where you left it, Mike,” Lee said easily. “It’s on government land, and we’ve sure got no objection to your using it, but this is private land belonging to Porter Brothers. They don’t want it all messed up with wheel tracks.”

  Quinn scowled, fingertips massaging a blocky chin. He said: “Dawes, I doubt that you ever bought this land.”

  “He’d better have,” the sheriff said darkly.

  Lee drew a folded paper from his pocket. “Got some doubt, have you, Mike? Then listen to this contract of sale. It says . . . ‘Fred Girt to Johnson Porter. This agreement made and entered into the Twenty- Fifth day of July, Nineteen Oh Nine, by and between Fred Girt of Sherman County. . . .’”

  “We haven’t got time to listen to no damned legal document,” Quinn growled.

  “I’m just aiming to settle your doubts.” Lee’s tone was gently prodding. “I’ll skip on down to where it says . . . ‘It is further mutually agreed that possession shall be given to grantees at the signing of this contract.’” Lee raised his eyes to Quinn. “Porter Brothers has taken possession, Mike.”

  “We were tipped off by a man in a position to know, Dawes, but I wanted to see if you were fool enough to think you could pull this off. We can condemn a road across this place.”

  “And by that time we’ll be halfway to Trout Creek.”

  Quinn wheeled to face the sheriff. “I’ve got some wagons in Grass Valley loaded with supplies for the camps. What are you going to do about this?”

  “Seeing as they locked the gate and posted the land, I don’t know what I can do, Quinn. They’re inside the law. After hearing that contract, I don’t have any doubts about their rights.”

  Quinn cuffed back his hat, anger bringing its color all the way to his sandy hair, the twist of his lips showing the bitter taste of frustration. Without a word he stepped back into the saddle, wheeled his horse, and galloped back toward Grass Valley, the sheriff beside him.

  Baldy came out of the tent. “What do you make of it?”

  “We’ll hear from that Irishman again,” Lee answered.

  Late in the afternoon an automobile came grinding over the rough road, a long plume of dust trailing it, swung around at the gate, and a man stepped down. “I’d like to get through!” he called.

  Watching from the second post, Lee guessed he was a reporter. “You a Twohy man?”

  “No. I want to find out what they’re thinking of this in camp.”

  “Where you from?”

  “Portland.”

  “All right,” Lee said. “You can go through if you want to walk.”

  “Thanks.” The reporter paid the driver, and crawled under the barbed wire. He stood eyeing Lee a moment. “You aren’t armed, are you?”

  “See a gun?”

  “That side pocket has a suspicious bulge.”

  “Full of crackers. I feed ’em to the sidehill gougers. Ever see a sidehill gouger, mister?”

  “No.”

  “Keep your eyes open when you go down the road. You might stumble on one. Front and hind legs on their left sides are ’bout six inches shorter’n the right ones, so they can only travel on the side of the cañon. Can’t turn around. Just got to keep going.” Lee shook his head. “I feel sorry for the little devils. Fact is, they’re damned near extinct.”

  The man grinned politely, and walked on toward the cañon.

  * * * * *

  The Hours Wore On To Evening, And No One Came From The Harriman Camps In The CañOn Or From Town. Returning From The Spring With A Bucket Of Water, Baldy Said: “There’S A Bunch Of Our Wagons Headed Here From The Dalles. Some Of ’em Oughta Pull In Tonight.”

  Lee nodded. “We’re really going to kick this hornet’s nest over when we set up a camp below here. Baldy, did you ever do any blasting?”

  “Some.”

  “If you’re game to take a swing down the road, it might be a good idea to take a look before we put our wagons over it.”

  Baldy stared. “You think they’ve got some powder holes in that road?”

  “It’d be a damned poor thing to find out with our outfit halfway down.”

  Baldy picked up a Winchester and set a fast pace toward the lower gate.

  * * * * *

  The sun dropped over the Cascades and shadows came into the great cañon, forming a strange, purple dusk. Darkness followed, soundless and still, and a cold came to the air and night was all about, hiding the movements and purposes of men. Then a pulse quickened in Lee. Wagons were rolling in from the plateau, and presently their shadows bulked darkly across the fence. Lee drew a gun, and waited until a man called: “This is a Porter wagon train, guard! Open up!”

  “Let’s have a look,” Lee answered, the cock of his gun an ominous punctuation to his words.

  Men loomed in the darkness. One struck a match, holding it to his face and that of the man beside him, and Lee saw they were men who had been with him the night before. He unlocked and swung back the gate. The wagons rolled through, heavy and dusty, horses and men lax with travel weariness. A stooped man with glasses, who seemed to be the wagon master, stood at the fire until the gates were closed and locked. When Lee came up to him, he said: “We’ll go down tonight.”

  Lee stared incredulously. “You’re crazy. That isn’t a road. It’s a goat trail.”

  “The boss said we had to get to digging a tunnel in the morning.”

  “How many men have you got?”

  “Thirty.”

  “Thirty, and you want to go down there and get chummy with three hundred Harriman men? Mister, they’ll throw you into the Deschutes, and first thing you know you’ll be in the Columbia.”

  Baldy emerged from the darkness and came to the fire. He nodded to the wagon master. “Howdy, Sam. Better unhitch and cook your supper.”

  “We’re going on down.”

/>   Baldy’s glance switched to Lee, his lips holding a thin smile. “Then you’d better fix yourself with the Almighty before you start, because there’s enough powder under that road to blow it to the sky in one piece. In the dark it’ll be a cinch for them to sneak men up to light the fuses.”

  The stooped man shrugged. “Hell, they won’t touch it off till they know they ain’t getting it back. We’re rolling down.”

  “I guess I’ll go along,” Lee said. “I’m supposed to be running this part of the show, and, if that’s where the fun’s going to be, I’ll mosey on down with you boys and see it.”

  Chapter Eleven

  They came down the road like stars wheeling across the sky. Brakes locked, lanterns swinging, they came with dust boiling behind them and rocks rolling down the face of the cliff and bouncing into dizzy space and falling like mammoth hailstones into the Harriman camp. They came with strong arms holding to lines, a stream of oaths pouring upon the horses, comforting and guiding them as only teamsters’ oaths can, down the switchbacks along a twenty percent grade, around twists in the narrow road, with open space hanging below. And above all of it was the shadowing knowledge that they were traveling over live powder that might at any moment send them pin-wheeling into eternity.

  Below the road the Harriman camp stirred into action. Lights sprang to life. Men called and hurried from tents to stare upward. One shouted: “There’s a million of them!”

  “There’s only a handful!” the engineer yelled. “They won’t do anything except start digging so they can tie us up in the courts.”

  An American pushed his way through the crowd of Italian laborers. “Want us to set ’em off, boss?” he asked.

  “No. There aren’t enough to hurt us. Marstoni, get your men dressed and start ’em to shoveling. If they take us into court, we’ll show them we meant to dig a tunnel.”

  But the Hill men did not have their minds on tunnel digging that night. They rolled onto the flat beside the river, the stooped man stepping down and with a lantern signaling the wagons into an arc between the Deschutes and the cañon wall.