The Mystery of The Barranca Part 11

"Pig! Hog!" Seyd found a vent for his own surplus feelings by punching Billy in the chest. "Think how much worse off we should have been if we had had to mine it. Go down on your American knee bones and thank your lucky stars for the English Johnnies."

Still smiling, he lay again to watch the glowing matte as Billy ladled it out of the well. It was the culmination of their long labor, but he was too tired even to think, and, giving himself up to a dim luxurious feeling, he insensibly pa.s.sed into sleep.

"Wake up, Bob, and go to bed. You still have four hours."

Only half aroused, he arose and stumbled across to the adobe, threw himself down on the bunk without waiting to remove even his boots, and fell into slumber at once so dead and dreamless that it seemed as if his head had no more than touched the pillow before Billy's voice again rang in his ear.

"Seven o'clock, Bob. I gave you an extra hour."

"Oh, quit your joshing." He murmured it, rolling over, and was again almost asleep when a sudden report, louder than thunder, but with a peculiar vibrant note, brought him swiftly to his feet. A second later the door banged to and stuck, but not before they had caught a glimpse of a huge cloud plume, densely yellow, shooting upward above the smelter.

During the moment required to wrench the door from its frame the adobe rocked under the concussion and scattered mud bricks, and there was a rain of stores from the shelves to the floor. It did not require Caliban's frightened yell on the outside, "_Explosion! Una explosion_, senores!" to tell them what had happened. The first glance, as they rushed out over the broken door, merely filled in the details of the vivid mental picture each had formed for himself. Hundreds of feet in mid air, the explosion cloud floated like a yellow balloon above the stump of a stack, the half-fused bricks of which were scattered over the bench. A cavity had been torn downward through the solid brick bed to the clay beneath, and, looking down into it, Seyd read the sign.

"Dynamite! What was the last thing you did?"

"Stoked up and sent Calixto to call Caliban while I came for you.

Luckily for him that I did."

The charcoal piles were also leveled and spread over half an acre, and, walking to and fro, Seyd began to pick up and break the larger pieces.

And it was only a few minutes before he called out: "Look here! Stick dynamite, broken in two and gummed over with charcoal dust--a bushel of it right here."

"Do you suppose--" Billy glanced toward the peons, who stood close by.

Seyd shook his head. "No, they had nothing to gain by it, and everything to lose. It was the easiest thing in the world for anybody to steal into the woods at night and slip a ton of this into the charcoal piles."

"Man, why didn't we think of it?" Billy groaned.

In moments of stress no two natures will express themselves in quite the same way. As they stood looking gloomily over the wreck big tears slowly forced themselves out of Billy's inflamed eyes and washed white runnels down the soot. Heartbroken, he looked up in sudden fright as Seyd burst out laughing.

"Bob! Bob!" he pleaded. "Have you gone crazy? Get a grip on yourself, there's a good fellow!"

But his pathetic anxiety merely caused Seyd to laugh the more. It was not that he was hysterical. Somehow the thought of the pain and travail, trouble, anxiety, and discomforts they had endured during the past three months touched his sense of humor.

"We have to allow that they made a pretty clean job," he said, wiping his eyes. "Let's be thankful that you were out of the way."

"Where are you going?" Billy called out, as he began to walk away.

"To finish my sleep and catch up a few hours on all that I have lost in the last three months. Take a nap yourself."

"Oh, I couldn't."

He undoubtedly thought so, yet when Seyd came out again, having slept the clock round, it was to find Billy curled up and snoring hard under the shade of the palm mat that Caliban had stretched between him and the sun. "Quit your fooling," he broke in severely on Seyd's chaffing.

"Don't you know that we are down to our last dollar?"

"Thirty-three dollars and sixty cents Mex," Seyd gravely corrected.

Kicking a chunk of cooled matte, he added: "But we now have this. It ought to stake us for a new start."

Billy, however, was not to be so easily separated from his grief. "Where are you going to raise capital," he demanded, "with every spare dollar in California locked up in the Nevada gold fields? If this had happened a year ago, before the Tonopah rush, we might have done it. But now?" He shook a doleful head.

"Well--New York?"

"Worse and more of it. The New Yorkers want all the bacon for killing the pig. Might as well give them the mine at once. No, Bob, it's all off. We're done--cooked a lovely brown in our own grease. Why _didn't_ we guard those piles! Who do you suppose did it? Don Luis?"

Seyd shrugged. "_Quien sabe?_ Doesn't look like his style. Of one thing, however, we can be certain. Your common peon doesn't habitually walk around with dynamite in his jeans. If I was going to lay any money, I'd place it on your friend Sebastien. But we haven't any time to fool on detective work. The question is--what's to be done?"

It was no light problem. As Billy had said, every dollar of Western mining capital was invested in Nevada, and Mexican projects, however good, would have to wait till the new gold fields were completely exploited. A canva.s.s of moneyed friends yielded no results, for, while the wreck lay there under their eyes to emphasize the possibility of similar future troubles, they could not but feel it to be a hazardous venture for any person of limited means. Night brought no conclusion.

But, having slept on it again, they arose and began once more, unconscious of the fact that while they lay in the heavy shade of a wild fig tree, proposing, debating, rejecting various plans, the solution was fast approaching upon its own legs.

Obviously, neither of them recognized the solution in the person of Don Luis when, about the middle of the forenoon, his horse lifted him up over the edge of the grade. On the contrary, it is doubtful whether smiling fortune was ever met with a blacker scowl than Billy's.

Growling, "He's come up for a huge gloat," he would undoubtedly have returned some insult to the old man's greeting but for Seyd's stealthy kick on the shins.

Prepared as he was by the reports that charcoal-burners had brought to San Nicolas, Don Luis's face expressed his utter astonishment at the extent of the ruin. "We but heard of it last night," he told them. "It was, I suppose, accidental? I understand that these furnaces--dynamite?

_Senor?_" He glanced with an interrogative frown at the peons asleep in the shade of the adobe. "It was not they?"

Rea.s.sured on that point, he nodded in confirmation of Seyd's statement that it would be foolish to hunt for the culprit. "As well try to single out a flea on a peon's dog. I warned you, senor, to expect an enemy in every stone of the Barranca. It would have been well had you listened.

But"--his eyes, hands, and shoulders expressed his acceptance of fate--"it is done. And now?"

"We shall rebuild--as soon as we can raise the money."

Turning to survey the destruction, Don Luis hid a sudden gleam that was evenly compounded of admiration and irritation. When he spoke again, shrewd calculation peered from his half-closed eyes. "This time you will build a larger--"

"--Plant?" Seyd supplied the word. "No."

"But I am told, senor, that the larger the plant the greater the profits."

Seyd raised comical brows. "Fifty thousand dollars, senor--gold?"

"A small sum to your rich American capitalists."

"But we are not capitalists. No, we shall have to get along with a small furnace."

The calculation deepened in the old man's brown eyes. After a pause, to their utter astonishment, it took form in words. "But if you could raise the money?"

"What's the use of talking; we can't."

"If I were to lend it to you?"

"_You!_" It was Billy who expressed their wonder. Seyd added, after a pause, "But we have no security to offer--that is, nothing but the mine."

"And if we ran away?" Billy suggested, grinning. "Took your money and never came back?"

For the first time in their acquaintance a touch of humor lightened the heavy bronzed face. "There are some in this valley, senor, who might not count it too high a price. But as you say"--he bowed to Seyd--"the mine is security enough. Now that you have shown how, I might even work it myself. To put in a complete--"

"--Plant." Billy supplied the strange word.

"How long?"