In the Shadow of the Hills Part 40

"I can be there in five minutes in my car. The road is on the north side of the stream, as is this camp: the gang that's heading here to blow things up is coming up from the south, so it will not block the way. Men could be here in twenty minutes from down yonder by running."

"A good suggestion, doctor," Pollock said. "It may take you a bit longer to find and tell them what's occurring, but even so they may return in time. Fifty, or even twenty, might give us enough a.s.sistance to beat off the attack."

"There comes the moon," said the man who had been at the spring. "They must be near now."

Far in the east the moon was stealing above the horizon. Under its light the mesa took form out of the darkness--the level sagebrush plain criss-crossed by willow-lined ditches and checkered by small Mexican fields, the winding shimmering Burntwood River with its border of cottonwoods, the narrow road, the distant town of San Mateo, a vague blot of shadow picked out by tiny specks of light.

The mountains too now reared in view, silent, silvered, majestic, towering about the camp on the lower base. One could see, as the moon swam higher, the low long buildings of the camp cl.u.s.tered on the hillside above the canyon, in the bottom of which was the dashing stream and the bone-white core of the dam.

"Look down yonder on the other side!" Martinez exclaimed suddenly, pointing a long thin forefinger at the mouth of the canyon where a group of black dots were moving up the river.

"That's them," said the man who had given the warning.

"And they're armed," said another. "You can see the moon shine on their gun-barrels."

On the opposite side of the stream, some two hundred yards below the dam and three or four hundred feet lower in elevation than the camp, advancing up the canyon in a string, the men looked like a line of insects.

"I'm off for help," the doctor said, springing into his car. "Janet, you and Mary go higher up among the rocks and hide if these buildings are attacked." Away he went, buzzing down the hillside to the long stretch of road.

Weir now came into sight, walking quickly towards the group. That he saw the Mexicans down in the canyon was evident from his swift appraising glances thither.

"Johnson, move your men down halfway to the dam and have them scatter there behind bowlders. I shall go still lower down," he said. "You will hold your fire until I signal with my hat from the dam."

"You're going to the dam?"

"Yes."

"We ought to go with you."

"I don't need you. You'll be more effective hidden above. You'll have plenty of light as the moon is shining squarely in the gorge. And await my signal."

"All right; you're the general."

"But take no extreme risks, Weir. The company doesn't ask you to sacrifice yourself," Pollock stated.

"The sacrifice will be down among those fellows," Steele replied, with set jaw. "Don't worry about me. Now, start, men."

He stood for a little watching the rate of progress of the line of Mexicans ascending the stream, which was not rapid owing to the broken rocks lining the bank. Then he swung about to the two girls.

"Every one here now is under my orders," he said. "You two will take your car and go at once. This is no place for you."

"But----" Janet began.

"I'm taking no chances that you shall fall into the hands of those scoundrels," he declared, sternly. "They may succeed in reaching this spot. You must not be here; you must go."

Taking each by an arm he piloted them to the car.

"Sorry, but it has to be," he added. "This is work for men, and men alone."

Janet and Mary climbed up into the seat.

"You--you will take care of yourself," Janet said, tremulously.

"I expect to. Still, this isn't going to be a croquet party; anything may happen. Good-by."

With that he swung about and breaking into a run made for a small building half-buried in the hillside and apart from the camp. There he stooped and picked up under each arm what looked like a cylinder of some size and went down towards the dam. For a time they could see him, but all at once he slipped behind an outcrop of rock and they saw him no more.

Janet turned to eye her companion. Once more her face was pale.

"Well?" she inquired of Mary.

"I reckon we'd better do as he says. He'd be awful mad if we didn't.

Did you see his eyes when he talked to us?"

"But if he--he and others are wounded?"

Uneasily Mary gazed at the older girl and then down at the canyon. On the hillside the men led by her father were no longer in sight, somewhere concealed among the stones that dotted the earth. But down by the stream and now scarcely fifty yards from the white stretch of concrete barring the river bed through a tunnel in which the water foamed and escaped, the Mexicans were clearly visible, their hats bobbing about, their guns flinging upward an occasional gleam.

"It doesn't seem as if anything was going to happen," Mary went on in awed tones. "Things are so quiet and peaceful."

Still Janet delayed starting the car, divided in feelings between a wish to respect Steele Weir's insistent command and a growing fear for his safety. She could see nothing of him. Into the shadow of a rock he had disappeared and thither she gazed with straining eyes, hoping to see again his straight strong figure.

"Why, look down there at the dam," Mary said, whose eyes had been wandering from, point to point of the scene. "Isn't that him?"

Janet's heart gave a quicker beat, then seemed to sink in her breast as staring downward she recognized the engineer. He had come out all at once from the shade cast by a wooden framework. He had with him the burdens he had lifted from the ground before the little detached stone house at the edge of the camp, and these, the cylinders, he placed on the surface of the concrete core at the spot where he stood. Then he knelt down, struck a match, lighted a cigar--as if any man in his senses would stop to smoke in such a situation!--and busied himself at some task over the cylinders.

Only for an instant had he stood erect on the flat top of the dam.

Apparently he had been unseen by the attackers, engaged in picking their footing: and now in his crouching position, retired from the upper edge of the dam's front as he was, it was very likely that he was wholly out of view of the band.

At last Weir moved his cylinders forward towards this edge. Afterwards he straightened up and standing hands on hips, smoking his cigar, the tiny crimson glow of which rose and fell, he watched the party nearing the foot of the white gleaming wall, fifty feet below him.

For Janet the sight was too much. His indifference to risk froze her; he appeared to be courting death; and she strove to open her lips to send down to him an imploring cry to draw back, but succeeded in uttering only a tremulous wail.

"They'll shoot him," Mary was saying, "oh, they'll kill him!"

A surge of terror swept Janet. Next thing she knew she was out of the car and running down the hillside among the stones and the stalks of sagebrush, frantic to reach him, to pull him out of view of the men beneath. Only a single one of them had to cast a glance upward and to raise his gun and fire, then he would die. He should not die! She should fling herself as a protection before him rather than that he should be slain!

On a sudden a hand reached up from a rock and seized her arm, stopping her with a jerk. Then she was roughly pulled down beside it. The man was Madden, the sheriff.

"What in h.e.l.l are you doing?" he demanded harshly. "Have you gone crazy?"

His grip was not relinquished.

"But see him! Aren't you men going to help him? Are you going to let him be killed?"

Madden forced her to her knees, so that she was sheltered by the outcrop of stone.

"Any man who can smoke a cigar like that at such a time as this knows just what he's doing," was the answer. "Keep quiet and watch."