The Road Builders Part 10

Scribner threw himself on the ground and drank up a mouthful from the stream. But he promptly spit it out.

"It's worse than the other!" he cried.

They were silent a moment. Then Carhart said, "Well--keep at it, Harry. I may look you up again after a little."

He walked over to his horse, mounted, nodded a good-by, and cantered back toward the camp. Scribner watched him ride off, then soberly turned and prepared to pack up and move on westward. He was thinking, as he gave the necessary orders, how much this little visit meant. The chief would have come only with matters at a bad pa.s.s.

Over a range of low waste hills, through a village of prairie-dogs,--and he fired humorously at them with his revolver as they sat on their mounds, and chuckled when they popped down out of sight,--across a plain studded from horizon to horizon with the bleached bones and skulls of thousands of buffaloes, past the camp and the grade where the men of the first division were at work, Paul Carhart rode, until, finally, the main camp and the trains and wagons came into view.

It was supper-time. The red, spent sun hung low in the west; the parched earth was awaiting the night breeze. Cantering easily on, Carhart soon reached the grade, and turned in toward the tents. The endless quiet of the desert gave place to an odd, tense quiet in the camp. The groups of laborers, standing or lying motionless, ceasing their low, excited talk as he pa.s.sed; the lowered eyes, the circle of Mexicans standing about the mules, the want of the relaxation and animal good-nature that should follow the night whistle: these signs were plain as print to his eyes and his senses.

He dismounted, walked rapidly to the headquarters tent, and found the two Vandervelts in anxious conversation. He had never observed so sharply the contrast between the brothers. The younger was smooth shaven, slender, with brown hair, and frank blue eyes that were dreamy at times; he would have looked the poet were it not for a square forehead, a straight, incisive mouth, and a chin as uncompromising as the forehead. There was in his face the promise of great capacity for work, dominated by a sympathetic imagination. The face of his brother was another story; some of the stronger qualities were there, but they were not tempered with the gentler. His stocky frame, his strong neck, the deep lines about his mouth, even the set of his cropped gray mustache, spoke of dogged, unimaginative persistence.

Evidently they were not in agreement. Both started at the sight of their chief--the younger brother with a frank expression of relief.

Carhart threw off his hat and gauntlet gloves, took his seat at the table, and looked from one to the other.

The elder brother nodded curtly. "Go ahead, Gus," he said. "Give Paul your view of it."

Thus granted the floor, Young Van briefly laid out the situation. "We put your orders into effect this morning, Mr. Carhart, and shortened the allowance of drinking water. In an hour the men began to get surly--just as they did the other time. But we kept them under until an hour or so ago. Then the sheriff of Clark County--a man named Lane, Bow-legged Bill Lane,"--Young Van smiled slightly as he p.r.o.nounced the name,--"rode in with a large posse. It seems he is on the trail of a gang of thieves, greasers, army deserters, and renegades generally. He had one brush with them some miles below here,--I think I had better tell you about this before I go on,--but they broke up into small parties and got away from him. He had some reason to think that they would work up this way, and try to stampede our horses and mules some night. He advises arming our men, and keeping up more of a guard at night. Another thing; he says that a good many Apaches are hanging around us,--he has seen signs of them over there in the hills,--and while they would never bother such a large party as this of ours, Bow-legged Bill"--he smiled again--"thinks it would be best to arm any small parties we may send out. If the Indians thought Harry Scribner, for instance, had anything worth stealing they might give him some trouble."

"Send half-a-dozen wagons forward to him to-morrow, under Dimond,"

said Carhart, briefly. "See that they carry rifles and cartridges enough for Scribner's whole party. And wire Tiffany to send on three hundred more rifles."

"All right; I will attend to it. I told the sheriff we came down here as peaceful railroad builders, not as border fighters; but he said what we came for hasn't much to do with it,--I couldn't repeat his language if I tried,--it's how we're going back that counts; whether it's to be on a 'red plush seat, or up in the baggage car on ice.' But so much for that. It seems that his men, mixing in with ours, found out that we are short of water. They promptly said that there is a first-rate pool, with all the water we could use, only about thirty-five miles southwest of here." He was coming now, having purposely brought up the minor matters first, to the real business.

Carhart heard him out. "It didn't take long to see that something was the matter with the men. Before the posse rode off the sheriff spoke to me about it, and offered to let us have a man to guide us to the pool if we wanted him. I am in favor of accepting. The men are trembling on the edge of an outbreak. If there was a Jack Flagg here to organize them, they would have taken the mules and started before you got back; and if they once got started, I'm not sure that even shooting would stop them. They are beyond all reason. It's nothing but luck that has kept them quiet up to now,--n.o.body has happened to say the word that would set them off. I think we ought to rea.s.sure them,--tell the sheriff we'll take the guide, and let the men know that a wagon train will start the first thing in the morning."

"That's it! That's it!" Old Van broke out angrily. "Always give in to those d--n rascals! There's just one thing to do, I tell you. Order them to their quarters and stand a guard over them from the iron squad."

"But you forget," Young Van replied hotly, "that they are not to blame."

"Not to blame! What the--!"

"Wait a minute!--They are actually suffering now. We are not dealing with malicious men--they are not even on strike for more pay. We're on the edge of a panic, that's what's the matter. And the question is, What is the best way to control that panic?"

"Wait, boys," said Carhart. "Gus is right. This trouble has its roots away down in human nature. If water is to be had, those men have a right to it. If we should put them under guard, and they should go crazy and make a break for it, what then? What if they call our bluff?

We must either let them go--or shoot."

"Then I say shoot," cried Old Vandervelt.

"No, Van," Carhart replied, "you're wrong. As Gus says, we are uncomfortably close to a panic. Well, let them have their panic. Put them on the wagons and let them run off their heat. Organize this panic with ourselves at the head of it." His voice took on a crisper quality. "Van, you stay here in charge of the camp. Pick out a dozen of the iron squad, give them rifles, and keep three at a time on extra watch all night."

"Hold on," said the veteran, bewildered, "when are you going to start on this--?"

"Now."

"Now? To-night?"

"To-night. Gus, you find your sheriff. He can't be far off."

"No; half a mile down the line."

"You find him, explain the situation, and tell him we want that man in half an hour."

The conference broke up sharply. Gus Vandervelt hurried out, saddled his horse, and rode off into the thickening dusk. Old Van went to select his guards. Carhart saw them go; then, pausing to note with satisfaction the prospect of only moderate darkness, he set about organizing his force. All the empty casks and barrels were loaded on wagons. Mules were hitched four and six in hand. Water, beyond a canteen for each man, could not be spared; but Charlie packed provisions enough--so he thought--for twenty-four hours.

The tremulous, brilliant afterglow faded away. The stars peeped out, one by one, and twinkled faintly. The dead plain--alive only with scorpions, horned frogs, tarantulas, striped lizards, centipedes, and the stunted sage-brush--stretched silently away to the dim mountains on the horizon. The bleaching bones--ghostly white out there in the sand--began to slip off into the distance and the dark. All about was rest, patience, eternity. Here in camp were feverish laborers with shattered nerves; men who started at the swish of a mule's tail--and swore, no matter what their native tongue, in English, that famous vehicle for profane thoughts. The mules, full of life after their enforced rest, took advantage of the dark and confusion to tangle their harness wofully. Leaders swung around and mingled fraternally with wheelers, whereupon boy drivers swore horrible oaths in voices that wavered between treble and ba.s.s. Lanterns waved and bobbed about.

Men shouted aimlessly.

Suddenly the babel quieted--the laborers were bolting a belated supper. Then, after a moment of confusion, three men rode out of the circle of lanterns, put their horses at the grade, stood out for a vivid moment in the path of light thrown by the nearest engine,--Paul Carhart, Young Vandervelt, and the easy-riding guide,--plunged down the farther side of the grade, and blended into the night. One after another the long line of wagons followed after, whips cracking, mules balking and breaking, men tugging at the spokes of the wheels. Then, at last, they were all over; the shouts had softened into silence. And Old Van stood alone on the grade and looked after them with eyes that were dogged and gloomy.

Paul Carhart had organized the panic; now he was resolved to "work it out of them," as he explained aside to Young Van. He estimated that they should reach the pool before eight o'clock in the morning. That would mean continuous driving, but the endurance of mules is a wonderfully elastic thing; and as for the men, the sooner they were tired, the less danger would there be of a panic. Accordingly, the three leaders set off at a canter. The drivers caught the pace, lashing out with their whips and shouting in a frenzied waste of strength. The mules galloped angrily; the wagons rattled and b.u.mped and leaped the mounds, for there was not the semblance of road or trail. Now and again a barrel was jolted off, and it lay there unheeded by the madmen who came swaying and cursing by. Here and there one calmer than his fellows climbed back from a seat by his driver and kept the kegs and barrels in place.

Wonderfully they held the pace, over mile after mile of rough plain.

Then, after a time, came the hills,--low at first, but rising steadily higher.

In the faint light the sage-brush slipped by like the ghosts of dead vegetation. The rocks and the heaps of bones gave the wheels many a wrench. The steady climb was telling on the mules. They hung back, slowed to a walk all along the line, and under the whip merely plunged or kicked. Up and up they climbed, winding through the low range by a pa.s.s known only to the guide. One mule, a leader in a team of six, stumbled among the rocks, fell to his knees, and was dragged and pushed along in a tangle of harness before his fellows came to a stop.

In a moment a score of men were crowding around. Up ahead the wagons were winding on out of sight; behind, the line was blocked.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Wonderfully they held the pace."]

"Vat you waiting for?" cried a New Orleans man, feverishly. He had been drinking, and had lost his way among the languages. "_Laissez pa.s.ser! Laissez pa.s.ser!_"

The boys were cooler than the men--not knowing so well what it all meant. "Hi there, _Oui-Oui_, gimme a knife!" cried the youthful driver, shrilly.

He slashed at the harness, cut the mule loose, and drove on. And one by one the wagons circled by the struggling beast and pushed ahead to close up the gap in the line.

Eight hours were got through. It was four in the morning. The hills lay behind, an alkaline waste before. The mules were tugging heavily and dejectedly through the sand. Certain of the drivers sat upright with lined faces and ringed eyes, others lay sleeping on the seats with the reins tied. All were subdued. The penetrating dust aggravated their thirst.

Carhart p.r.i.c.ked forward beside the guide.

"How much farther?" he asked.

"Well, it ain't easy to say. We might be halfway there."

"Halfway! Do you mean to say we've done only fifteen or eighteen miles in eight hours?"

"No, I didn't say that."

"Look here. How far is it to this pool!"

"Well, it's hard to say."

Carhart frowned and gave it up. The "thirty or thirty-five miles" had apparently been the roughest sort of an estimate.