The Charles Alden Seltzer Megapack

by Charles Alden Seltzer

  Coming home. Case sent back to Circuit Court for hearing. Depend on you to get evidence.

  Trevison crumpled the paper and shoved it savagely into a pocket. He stood for a long time on the station platform, in the dark, glowering at the lights of the town, then started abruptly and made his way into the gambling room of the Plaza, where he somberly watched the players. The rattle of chips, the whir of the wheel, the monotonous drone of the faro dealer, the hum of voices, some eager, some tense, others exultant or grumbling, the incessant jostling, irritated him. He went out the front door, stepped down into the street, and walked eastward. Passing an open space between two buildings he became aware of the figure of a woman, and he wheeled as she stepped forward and grasped his arm. He recognized her and tried to pass on, but she clung to him.

  “Trev!” she said, appealingly; “I want to talk with you. It’s very important—really. Just a minute, Trev. Won’t you talk that long! Come to my room—where—”

  “Talk fast,” he admonished, holding her off,“—and talk here.”

  She struggled with him, trying to come closer, twisting so that her body struck his, and the contact brought a grim laugh out of him. He seized her by the shoulders and held her at arm’s length. “Talk from there—it’s safer. Now, if you’ve anything important—”

  “O Trev—please—” She laughed, almost sobbing, but forced the tears back when she saw derision blazing in his eyes.

  “I told you it was all over!” He pushed her away and started off, but he had taken only two steps when she was at his side again.

  “I saw you from my window, Trev. I—I knew it was you—I couldn’t mistake you, anywhere. I followed you—saw you go into the Plaza. I came to warn you. Corrigan has planned to goad you into doing some rash thing so that he will have an excuse to jail or kill you!”

  “Where did you hear that?”

  “I—I just heard it. I was in the bank today, and I overheard him talking to a man—some officer, I think. Be careful, Trev—very careful, won’t you?”

  “Careful as I can,” he laughed, lowly. “Thank you.” He started on again, and she grasped his arm. “Trev,” she pleaded.

  “What’s the use, Hester?” he said; “it can’t be.”

  “Well, God bless you, anyway, dear,” she said chokingly.

  He passed on, leaving her in the shadows of the buildings, and walked far out on the plains. Making a circuit to avoid meeting the woman again, he skirted the back yards, stumbling over tin cans and debris in his progress. When he got to the shed where he had hitched Blackie he mounted and rode down the railroad tracks toward the cut, where an hour later he was joined by Clay Levins, who came toward him, riding slowly and cautiously.

  * * * *

  Patrick Carson had wooed sleep unsuccessfully. For hours he lay on his cot in the tent, staring out through the flap at the stars. A vague unrest had seized him. He heard the hilarious din of Manti steadily decrease in volume until only intermittent noises reached his ears. But even when comparative peace came he was still wide awake.

  “I’ll be gettin’ the willies av I lay here much longer widout slape,” he confided to his pillow. “Mebbe a turn down the track wid me dujeen wud do the thrick.” He got up, lighted his pipe and strode off into the semi-gloom of the railroad track. He went aimlessly, paying little attention to objects around him. He passed the tents wherein the laborers lay—and smiled as heavy snores smote his ears. “They slape a heap harder than they worruk, bedad!” he observed, grinning. “Nothin’ c’ud trouble a ginney’s conscience, annyway,” he scoffed. “But, accordin’ to that they must be a heap on me own!” Which observation sent his thoughts to Corrigan. “Begob, there’s a man! A domned rogue, if iver they was one!”

  He passed the tents, smoking thoughtfully. He paused when he came to the small buildings scattered about at quite a distance from the tents, then left the tracks and made his way through the deep alkali dust toward them.

  “Whativer wud Corrigan be askin’ about the dynamite for? ‘How much do ye kape av it?’ he was askin’. As if it was anny av his business!”

  He stopped puffing at his pipe and stood rigid, watching with bulging eyes, for he saw the door of the dynamite shed move outward several inches, as though someone inside had shoved it. It closed again, slowly, and Carson was convinced that he had been seen. He was no coward, but a cold sweat broke out on him and his knees doubled weakly. For any man who would visit the dynamite shed around midnight, in this stealthy manner, must be in a desperate frame of mind, and Carson’s virile imagination drew lurid pictures of a gun duel in which a stray shot penetrated the wall of the shed. He shivered at the roar of the explosion that followed; he even drew a gruesome picture of stretchers and mangled flesh that brought a groan out of him.

  But in spite of his mental stress he lunged forward, boldly, though his breath wheezed from his lungs in great gasps. His body lagged, but his will was indomitable, once he quit looking at the pictures of his imagination. He was at the door of the shed in a dozen strides.

  The lock had been forced; the hasp was hanging, suspended from a twisted staple. Carson had no pistol—it would have been useless, anyway.

  Carson hesitated, vacillating between two courses. Should he return for help, or should he secrete himself somewhere and watch? The utter foolhardiness of attempting the capture of the prowler single handed assailed him, and he decided on retreat. He took one step, and then stood rigid in his tracks, for a voice filtered thinly through the doorway, hoarse, vibrant:

  “Don’t forget the fuses.”

  Carson’s lips formed the word: “Trevison!”

  Carson’s breath came easier; his thoughts became more coherent, his recollection vivid; his sympathies leaped like living things. When his thoughts dwelt upon the scene at the butte during Trevison’s visit while the mining machinery was being erected—the trap that Corrigan had prepared for the man—a grim smile wreathed his face, for he strongly suspected what was meant by Trevison’s visit to the dynamite shed.

  He slipped cautiously around a corner of the shed, making no sound in the deep dust surrounding it, and stole back the way he had come, tingling.

  “Begob, I’ll slape now—a little while!”

  As Carson vanished down the tracks a head was stuck out through the doorway of the shed and turned so that its owner could scan his surroundings.

  “All clear,” he whispered.

  “Get going, then,” said another voice, and two men, their faces muffled with handkerchiefs, bearing something that bulked their pockets oddly, slipped out of the door and fled noiselessly, like gliding shadows, down the track toward the cut.

  * * * *

  Rosalind had been asleep in the rocker. A cool night breeze, laden with the strong, pungent aroma of sage, sent a shiver over her and she awoke, to see that the lights of Manti had vanished. An eerie lonesomeness had settled around her.

  “Why, it must be nearly midnight!” she said. She got up, yawning, and stepped toward the door, wondering why Agatha had not called her. But Agatha had retired, resenting the girl’s manner.

  Almost to the door, Rosalind detected movement in the ghostly semi-light that flooded the plains between the porch and the picturesque spot, more than a mile away, on which Levins’ cabin stood. She halted at the door and watched, and when the moving object resolved into a horse, loping swiftly, she strained her eyes toward it. At first it seemed to have no rider, but when it had approached to within a hundred yards of her, she gasped, leaped off the porch and ran toward the horse. An instant later she stood at the animal’s head, voicing her astonishment.

  “Why, it’s Chuck Levins! Why on earth are you riding around at this hour of the night?”

  “Sissy’s sick. Maw wants you to please come an’ see what you can do—if it ain’t too much trouble.”

  “Trouble?” The girl laughed. “I should say not! Wait until I saddle my horse!”

  She ran to the porch and stole silently into the house, emerging
with a small medicine case, which she stuck into a pocket of her coat. Once before she had had occasion to use her simple remedies on Sissy—an illness as simple as her remedies; but she could feel something of Mrs. Levins’ concern for her offspring, and—and it was an ideal night for a gallop over the plains.

  It was almost midnight by the Levins’ clock when she entered the cabin, and a quick diagnosis of her case with an immediate application of one of her remedies, brought results. At half past twelve Sissy was sleeping peacefully, and Chuck had dozed off, fully dressed, no doubt ready to re-enact his manly and heroic rôle upon call.

  It was not until Rosalind was ready to go that Mrs. Levins apologized for her husband’s rudeness to his guest.

  “Clay feels awfully bitter against Corrigan. It’s because Corrigan is fighting Trevison—and Trevison is Clay’s friend—they’ve been like brothers. Trevison has done so much for us.”

  Rosalind glanced around the cabin. She had meant to ask Chuck why his father had not come on the midnight errand, but had forebore. “Mr. Levins isn’t here?”

  “Clay went away about nine o’clock.” The woman did not meet Rosalind’s direct gaze; she flushed under it and looked downward, twisting her fingers in her apron. Rosalind had noted a strangeness in the woman’s manner when she had entered the cabin, but she had ascribed it to the child’s illness, and had thought nothing more of it. But now it burst upon her with added force, and when she looked up again Rosalind saw there was an odd, strained light in her eyes—a fear, a dread—a sinister something that she shrank from. Rosalind remembered the killing of Marchmont, and had a quick divination of impending trouble.

  “What is it, Mrs. Levins? What has happened?”

  The woman gulped hard, and clenched her hands. Evidently, whatever her trouble, she had determined to bear it alone, but was now wavering.

  “Tell me, Mrs. Levins; perhaps I can help you?”

  “You can!” The words burst sobbingly from the woman. “Maybe you can prevent it. But, oh, Miss Rosalind, I wasn’t to say anything—Clay told me not to. But I’m so afraid! Clay’s so hot-headed, and Trevison is so daring! I’m afraid they won’t stop at anything!”

  “But what is it?” demanded Rosalind, catching something of the woman’s excitement.

  “It’s about the machinery at the butte—the mining machinery. My God, you’ll never say I told you—will you? But they’re going to blow it up tonight—Clay and Trevison; they’re going to dynamite it! I’m afraid there will be murder done!”

  “Why didn’t you tell me before?” The girl stood rigid, white, breathless.

  “Oh, I ought to,” moaned the woman. “But I was afraid you’d tell—Corrigan—somebody—and—and they’d get into trouble with the law!”

  “I won’t tell—but I’ll stop it—if there’s time! For your sake. Trevison is the one to blame.”

  She inquired about the location of the butte; the shortest trail, and then ran out to her horse. Once in the saddle she drew a deep breath and sent the animal scampering into the flood of moonlight.

  * * * *

  Down toward the cut the two men ran, and when they reached a gully at a distance of several hundred feet from the dynamite shed they came upon their horses. Mounting, they rode rapidly down the track toward the butte where the mining machinery was being erected. They had taken the handkerchiefs off while they ran, and now Trevison laughed with the hearty abandon of a boy whose mischievous prank has succeeded.

  “That was easy. I thought I heard a noise, though, when you backed against the door and shoved it open.”

  “Nobody usually monkeys around a dynamite shed at night,” returned Levins. “Whew! There’s enough of that stuff there to blow Manti to Kingdom Come—wherever that is.”

  They rode boldly across the level at the base of the butte, for they had reconnoitered after meeting on the plains just outside of town, and knew Corrigan had left no one on guard.

  “It’s a cinch,” Levins declared as they dismounted from their horses in the shelter of a shoulder of the butte, about a hundred yards from where the corrugated iron building, nearly complete, loomed somberly on the level. “But if they’d ever get evidence that we done it—”

  Trevison laughed lowly, with a grim humor that made Levins look sharply at him. “That abandoned pueblo on the creek near your shack is built like a fortress, Levins.”

  “What in hell has this job got to do with that dobie pile?” questioned the other.

  “Plenty. Oh, you’re curious, now. But I’m going to keep you guessing for a day or two.”

  “You’ll go loco—give you time,” scoffed Levins.

  “Somebody else will go crazy when this stuff lets go,” laughed Trevison, tapping his pockets.

  Levins snickered. They trailed the reins over the heads of their horses, and walked swiftly toward the corrugated iron building. Halting in the shadow of it, they held a hurried conference, and then separated, Trevison going toward the engine, already set up, with its flimsy roof covering it, and working around it for a few minutes, then darting from it to a small building filled with tools and stores, and to a pile of machinery and supplies stacked against the wall of the butte. They worked rapidly, elusive as shadows in the deep gloom of the wall of the butte, and when their work was completed they met in the full glare of the moonlight near the corrugated iron building and whispered again.

  * * * *

  Lashing her horse over a strange trail, Rosalind Benham came to a thicket of gnarled fir-balsam and scrub oak that barred her way completely. She had ridden hard and her horse breathed heavily during the short time she spent looking about her. Her own breath was coming sharply, sobbing in her throat, but it was more from excitement than from the hazard and labor of the ride, for she had paid little attention to the trail, beyond giving the horse direction, trusting to the animal’s wisdom, accepting the risks as a matter-of-course. It was the imminence of violence that had aroused her, the portent of a lawless deed that might result in tragedy. She had told Mrs. Levins that she was doing this thing for her sake, but she knew better. She did consider the woman, but she realized that her dominating passion was for the grim-faced young man who, discouraged, driven to desperation by the force of circumstances—just or not—was fighting for what he considered were his rights—the accumulated results of ten years of exile and work. She wanted to save him from this deed, from the results of it, even though there was nothing but condemnation in her heart for him because of it.

  “To the left of the thicket is a slope,” Mrs. Levins had told her. She stopped only long enough to get her bearings, and at her panting, “Go!” the horse leaped. They were at the crest of the slope quickly, facing the bottom, yawning, deep, dark. She shut her eyes as the horse took it, leaning back to keep from falling over the animal’s head, holding tightly to the pommel of the saddle. They got down, someway, and when she felt the level under them she lashed the horse again, and urged him around a shoulder of the precipitous wall that loomed above her, frowning and somber.

  She heard a horse whinny as she flashed past the shoulder, her own beast tearing over the level with great catlike leaps, but she did not look back, straining her eyes to peer into the darkness along the wall of the butte for sight of the buildings and machinery.

  She saw them soon after passing the shoulder, and exclaimed her thanks sharply.

  * * * *

  “All set,” said one of the shadowy figures near the corrugated iron building. A match flared, was applied to a stick of punk in the hands of each man, and again they separated, each running, applying the glowing wand here and there.

  Trevison’s work took him longest, and when he leaped from the side of a mound of supplies Levins was already running back toward the shoulder where they had left their horses. They joined, then split apart, their weapons leaping into their hands, for they heard the rapid drumming of horse’s hoofs.

  “They’re coming!” panted Trevison, his jaws setting as he plunged on toward the should
er of the butte. “Run low and duck at the flash of their guns!” he warned Levins.

  A wide swoop brought the oncoming horse around the shoulder of the butte into full view. As the moonlight shone, momentarily, on the rider, Trevison cried out, hoarsely:

  “God, it’s a woman!”

  He leaped, at the words, out of the shadow of the butte into the moonlight of the level, straight into the path of the running horse, which at sight of him slid, reared and came to a halt, snorting and trembling. Trevison had recognized the girl; he flung himself at the horse, muttering: “Dynamite!” seized the beast by the bridle, forced its head around despite the girl’s objections and incoherent pleadings—some phrases of which sank home, but were disregarded.

  “Don’t!” she cried, fiercely, as he struck the animal with his fist to accelerate its movements. She was still crying to him, wildly, hysterically, as he got the animal’s head around and slapped it sharply on the hip, his pistol crashing at its heels.

  The frightened animal clattered over the back trail, Trevison running after it. He reached Blackie, flung himself into the saddle, and raced after Levins, who was already far down the level, following Rosalind’s horse. At a turn in the butte he came upon them both, their horses halted, the girl berating Levins, the man laughing lowly at her.

  “Don’t!” she cried to Trevison as he rode up. “Please, Trevison—don’t let that happen! It’s criminal; it’s outlawry!”

  “Too late,” he said grimly, and rode close to her to grasp the bridle of her horse. Standing thus, they waited—an age, to the girl, in reality only a few seconds. Then the deep, solemn silence of the night was split by a hollow roar, which echoed and re-echoed as though a thousand thunder storms had centered over their heads. A vivid flash, extended, effulgent, lit the sky, the earth rocked, the canyon walls towering above them seemed to sway and reel drunkenly. The girl covered her face with her hands. Another blast smote the night, reverberating on the heels of the other; there followed another and another, so quickly that they blended; then another, with a distinct interval between. Then a breathless, unreal calm, through which distant echoes rumbled; then a dead silence, shattered at last by a heavy, distant clatter, as though myriad big hailstones were falling on a pavement. And then another silence—the period of reeling calm after an earthquake.