The Cross-Cut Part 39

"But there 's the telegraph!"

"It 'd take half an hour to get the operator out of bed--office is closed. Nope. We 'll take the short cut. And we 'll beat him there by a half-hour!"

Anita started.

"You mean the Argonaut tunnel?"

"Yes. Call up there and tell them to get a motor ready for us to shoot straight through. We can make it at thirty miles an hour, and the skip in the Reunion Mine will get us to the surface in five minutes. The tunnel ends sixteen hundred feet underground, about a thousand feet from Center City," he explained, as he noted Fairchild's wondering gaze. "You stay here. We 've got to wait for those prisoners--and lock 'em up. I 'll be getting my car warmed up to take us to the tunnel."

Anita already was at the 'phone, and Fairchild sank into a chair, watching her with luminous eyes. The world was becoming brighter; it might be night, with a blizzard blowing, to every one else,--but to Fairchild the sun was shining as it never had shone before. A thumping sound came from without. Harry entered with his two charges, followed shortly by Bardwell, the sheriff, while just beneath the office window a motor roared in the process of "warming up." The sheriff looked from one to the other of the two men.

"These people have made charges against you," he said shortly. "I want to know a little more about them before I go any farther. They say you 've been high-jacking."

Taylor Bill nodded in the affirmative.

"And that you robbed the Old Times dance and framed the evidence against this big Cornishman?"

Taylor Bill sc.r.a.ped a foot on the floor.

"It's true. Squint Rodaine wanted me to do it. He 'd been trying for thirty years to get that Blue Poppy mine. There was some kind of a mix-up away back there that I did n't know much about--fact is, I did n't know anything. The Silver Queen didn't amount to much and when demonetization set in, I quit--you 'll remember, Sheriff--and went away. I 'd worked for Squint before, and when I came back a couple of years ago, I naturally went to him for a job again. Then he put this proposition up to me at ten dollars a day and ten per cent. It looked too good to be turned down."

"How about you?" Bardwell faced Blindeye. The sandy lashes blinked and the weak eyes turned toward the floor.

"I--was in on it."

That was enough. The sheriff reached for his keys. A moment more and a steel door clanged upon the two men while the officer led the way to his motor car. There he looked quizzically at Anita Richmond, piling without hesitation into the front seat.

"You going too?"

"I certainly am," and she covered her intensity with a laugh, "there are a number of things that I want to say to Mr. Maurice Rodaine--and I have n't the patience to wait!"

Bardwell chuckled. The doors of the car slammed and the engine roared louder than ever. Soon they were churning along through the driving snow toward the great buildings of the Argonaut Tunnel Company, far at the other end of town. There men awaited them, and a tram motor, together with its operator,--happy in the expectation of a departure from the usual routine of hauling out the long strings of ore and refuse cars from the great tunnel which, driving straight through the mountains, had been built in the boom days to cut the workings of mine after mine, relieving the owners of those holdings of the necessity of taking their product by the slow method of burro packs to the railroads, and gaining for the company a freight business as enriching as a bonanza itself. The four pursuers took their places on the benches of the car behind the motor. The trolley was attached. A great door was opened, allowing the cold blast of the blizzard to whine within the tunnel. Then, clattering over the frogs, green lights flashing from the trolley wire, the speeding journey was begun.

It was all new to Fairchild, engrossing, exciting. Close above them were the ragged rocks of the tunnel roof, seeming to reach down as if to seize them as they roared and clattered beneath. Seepage dripped at intervals, flying into their faces like spray as they dashed through it. Side tracks appeared momentarily when they pa.s.sed the opening of some mine where the ore cars stood in long lines, awaiting their turn to be filled. The air grew warmer. The minutes were pa.s.sing, and they were nearing the center of the tunnel. Great gateways sped past them; the motor smashed over sidetracks and spurs and switches as they clattered by the various mine openings, the operator reaching above him to hold the trolley steady as they went under narrow, low places where the timbers had been placed, thick and heavy, to hold back the sagging earth above.

Three miles, four, five, while Anita Richmond held close to Fairchild as the speed became greater and the sparks from the wire above threw their green, vicious light over the yawning stretch before them. A last spurt, slightly down-grade, with the motor pushing the wheels at their greatest velocity; then the crackling of electricity suddenly ceased, the motor slowed in its progress, finally to stop. The driver pointed to the right.

"Over there, sheriff--about fifty feet; that's the Reunion opening."

"Thanks!" They ran across the spur tracks in the faint light of a dirty incandescent, gleaming from above. A greasy being faced them and Bardwell, the sheriff, shouted his mission.

"Got to catch some people that are making a get-away through Center City. Can you send us up in the skip?"

"Yes, two at a time."

"All right!" The sheriff turned to Harry. "You and I 'll go on the first trip and hurry for the Ohadi road. Fairchild and Miss Richmond will wait for the second and go to Sheriff Mason's office and tell him what's up. Meet us there," he said to Fairchild, as he went forward.

Already the hoist was working; from far above came the grinding of wheels on rails as the skip was lowered. A wave of the hand, then Bardwell and Harry entered the big, steel receptacle. At the wall the greasy workman pulled three times on the electric signal; a moment more and the skip with its two occupants had pa.s.sed out of sight.

A long wait followed while Fairchild strove to talk of many things,--and failed in all of them. Things were happening too swiftly for them to be put into crisp sentences by a man whose thoughts were muddled by the fact that beside him waited a girl in a whipcord riding suit--the same girl who had leaped from an automobile on the Denver highway and--

It crystallized things for him momentarily.

"I 'm going to ask you something after a while--something that I 've wondered and wondered about. I know it was n't anything--but--"

She laughed up at him.

"It did look terrible, didn't it?"

"Well, it would n't have been so mysterious if you had n't hurried away so quick. And then--"

"You really did n't think I was the Smelter bandit, did you?" the laugh still was on her lips. Fairchild scratched his head.

"Darned if I know what I thought. And I don't know what I think yet."

"But you 've managed to live through it."

"Yes--but--"

She touched his arm and put on a scowl.

"It's very, very awful!" came in a low, mock-awed voice. "But--" then the laugh came again--"maybe if you 're good and--well, maybe I 'll tell you after a while."

"Honest?"

"Of course I 'm honest! Is n't that the skip?"

Fairchild walked to the shaft. But the skip was not in sight. A long ten minutes they waited, while the great steel carrier made the trip to the surface with Harry and Sheriff Bardwell, then came lumbering down again. Fairchild stepped in and lifted Anita to his side.

The journey was made in darkness,--darkness which Fairchild longed to turn to his advantage, darkness which seemed to call to him to throw his arms about the girl at his side, to crush her to him, to seek out with an instinct that needed no guiding light the laughing, pretty lips which had caused him many a day of happiness, many a day of worried wonderment. He strove to talk away the desire--but the grinding of the wheels in the narrow shaft denied that. His fingers twitched, his arms trembled as he sought to hold back the muscles, then, yielding to the impulse, he started--

"Da-a-a-g-gone it!"

"What's the matter?"

"Nothing."

But Fairchild was n't telling the truth. They had reached the light just at the wrong, wrong moment. Out of the skip he lifted her, then inquired the way to the sheriff's office of this, a new county. The direction was given, and they went there. They told their story. The big-shouldered, heavily mustached man at the desk grinned cheerily.

"That there's the best news I 've heard in forty moons," he announced.

"I always did hate that fellow. You say Bardwell and your partner went out on the Ohadi road to head the young 'un off?"

"Yes. They had about a fifteen-minute start on us. Do you think--?"

"We 'll wait here. They 're hefty and strong. They can handle him alone."

But an hour pa.s.sed without word from the two Searchers. Two more went by. The sheriff rose from his chair, stamped about the room, and looked out at the night, a driving, aimless thing in the clutch of a blizzard.

"Hope they ain't lost," came at last.