To The Front Part 7

"Along at _eleven_! Man alive, the sheriff will be here with a posse of forty long before that!"

"_Long_ before that!" almost screamed old Shiner. "Look, there, what you see! He's coming now!"

And then Geordie Graham, listening with beating heart within the open doorway of the caboose, could stand the strain no longer. The man he must see, the man on whom everything depended, the old friend whom he most trusted and believed in stood in sore peril. The cause for which he had come all these miles must fail so sure as Nolan slipped into the power of the adversary, even though grasped by the hand of the law. It was no time for ethics--no time for casuists. He let his voice out in the old tone of authority:

"You've no time to lose, Mr. Cullin. Arrest them, too, and come on!"

With wonderment in his eyes, with Shiner whispering caution in his ear, "Long" Nolan was hustled aboard the caboose just as the wheels began to turn, his breathless followers clambering after, while afar up the divide toward the east, by twos and threes, in eager pursuit, egged on by lavish promise of reward, the sheriff of Yampah, with a score of his men, spurred furiously on the trail of a train that, starting slowly and heavily, speedily gained headway and soon went thundering up the grade, "leaving the wolves behind."

CHAPTER X

FIRST SHOTS OF THE SUMMER

Half-way up the scarred slope of mountain-side, and opposite the mouth of a deep ravine, hung the crude wooden buildings and costly machinery of a modern mine. Zigzagging up the heights, the road that led to it from the ramshackle town in the valley was dotted with groups of rough-coated men, all plodding steadily onward. Perched on "benches"

and shelves and dumps of blasted rock and fresh-heaped earth, similar though smaller cl.u.s.ters of buildings dotted the lower slopes, marring the grand outlines and sweeping curves of the great upheavals, cutting ugly gashes in the green and swelling billows, yet eagerly sought in the race for wealth and the greed for gold, because of the treasures they wrested from the bowels of the everlasting hills. Afar down the winding valley a turbid stream went frothing away to the foot-hills, telling of labor, turmoil, and strife. Beside it twisted and turned the railway that burrowed through the range barely five miles back of the town, and reappeared on the westward face of the Silver Bow, clinging dizzily to heights that looked down on rolling miles of pine, cedar, stunted oak, and almost primeval loneliness. The mineral wealth, said the experts, lay on the eastward side, and by thousands the miners were there, swarming like ants all over the surface seeking their golden gain.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SILVER SHIELD]

And something was surely amiss at the mines when the chimneys of as many as six of the "plants" gave forth no smoke, when the fires were out and the men adrift. Something had happened that called the craftsmen from a dozen other burrows to the aid of those at the new and lately thronging works, on that shoulder at the mouth of the gorge--the mine of the Silver Shield. Murder most foul, said the story, had been done in the name of the law. Armed guards of the property had shot down, it was said, a half-score of workmen, clamoring only for their pay and their rights. A son of the princ.i.p.al owner, so it was known, had ordered his men to fire. A son of an old soldier and settler, living in peace barely forty miles away, was one of the victims, for he had taken sides with Long Nolan, who without rhyme or reason had been discharged, and violently flung from the premises. There had been a wild rush on the guard, a volley, a recoil, a rally in force, and an outcry for vengeance. Then the guard had to shoot in earnest and self-defence, for their lives were at stake. Some of the men had gone to Argenta to plead with the owners, but most had remained to stir all hands within ten miles to the support of their fellows. The miscreant who had ordered "fire" had escaped across to Miners' Joy, only to be dealt with by sympathizers on the Narrow Gauge; but the men who fired and who shot to kill were trapped like rats in a hole. Surrounded on every side, every avenue of escape now guarded, they and the luckless manager of the mine were cooped in their log fortification, with two lives and several serious wounds to answer for, and as the sun went westering this long summer's day they had two hours left in which to decide--come out and surrender or be burned out where they lay.

Half the village had gone to swell the ranks of the rioters; another half--slatternly women and unkempt children--swarmed in the single street and gazed upward at the heights. Every ledge about the threatened buildings was black with men, men furious with hate and mad with liquor, men needing only determined and resolute leaders to go in and finish their fearful work.

But here was their lack. The men they had counted on, one man in particular on whose account many of their number had braved the guard and threatened the owners--one man, Long Nolan himself, refused point blank to have aught to do with them or their plans. Another man, he whose son lay dying in the village, shot down by the guards, was there, sad-eyed yet stern-faced, to stay and dissuade them. The one train up from the East that day--the only one that could come, for now the road was blown out in a dozen places down the gorge--had brought with it Nolan and Shiner, with two or three friends at their back, and Nolan and Shiner, in spite of their wrongs, were pleading hard for peace, pleading so hard, so earnestly, that by 5 P.M. many a man, American born, had seen the force of their reasoning and had stepped back from the front.

But among the killed was a poor lad from the mountains of Bohemia.

Among the vengeful throng were swarms of foreigners who could understand little or nothing of what Nolan and his friends were saying, and who speedily would have scorned it could they have understood, for at five o'clock another speaker took the stand, a man of the people he called himself, a foreigner long on our sh.o.r.es, yet fluent in the language of the Slavs, and in ten minutes the torrent was turned. With terror in his eyes, a man who had long worked with Nolan, a foreigner, too, came running to the silent, anxious little group of Anglo-Saxons.

"Nolan--Nolan," he cried. "He says you was traitor! He says you was gone to Argenta and told all their secrets, and you was bought off--bribed--and you bring strangers to help you! He says you and they are just spies, an' now they come for _you_!"

One glance from where the little group were crouching, sheltered from possible shots from the buildings, yet between them and the throng, told Nolan and Shiner the alarm was real, the words were true. Like so many maddened beasts, a gang of uncouth, unkempt, blood-thirsty beings were now crowding up the narrow roadway from the bench below.

"My G.o.d, Mr. Geordie!" cried Nolan, in sudden agony of spirit, "I never once dreamed of this!"

It was, indeed, a moment of terror. Here, barely a dozen in all, were Nolan, Shiner, George Graham, and a few of the more intelligent, the Americans, among the miners. There, possibly a hundred yards away, and to the number of at least three hundred, a throng of human brutes, utterly ignorant, superst.i.tious, credulous, craftily inspired, were now surging slowly forward up the heights. Two minutes would bring them about the little party in overwhelming strength. Flight anywhere downhill was impossible. The one refuge in sight was that beleaguered little clump of buildings just beyond them up the slope, garrisoned by a dozen desperate men who had shouted warning again and again, they'd shoot down the first man that showed a head above the rocks.

But desperate straits need desperate measures. All on a sudden a tall, slender youth, in the coa.r.s.e dress of a railway fireman, sprang from the midst of the pallid-faced group and, waving his handkerchief over his head, called back, "Stay where you are one minute!" and then, without a second's falter or swerve, straight for the nearest building, a low, one-story log-house, the manager's office near the mouth of the mine, waving his white signal high as his arm could reach, and shouting, "Don't fire--we are friends!" George Graham swiftly climbed for the upper level. One rifle flashed. One bullet whizzed over his head, but he reached the road, then, both arms extended, rushed straight for the door.

It was thrown open to admit him by c.a.w.ker, the manager, white-faced almost as they whom Geordie had left. "Come out here!" cried Graham.

"See for yourself. Nolan, Shiner, with those few lads, are all that have stood between you and the mob below. Every American is out of it.

They're coming to kill Nolan for turning against them. Call him up!

Call them all--There's barely a dozen. Then you've got just as many more to stand by you!"

And c.a.w.ker had sense to see and to realize. "Call 'em yourself," said he. "Don't shoot, men! These are friends come to aid us!" he cried, running up and down in front of the loop-holes. "Come on, Nolan and all of you," he added, for Graham had gone bounding half-way back again, and, like so many goats, the threatened party came scrambling out of their shelter and up the steep incline, while afar down the hill-side rose a yell of baffled rage and vengeance.

"Hold the rest of them whatever you do!" shouted Geordie, again racing back. "Don't let that gang over the edge or you're gone!" And again the brown barrels of the rifles thrust forth from the wooden walls and were turned on the bend of the road. Almost breathless, Long Nolan, and with him the little squad of adherents, came running up to the door.

"Inside, quick as you can!" shouted c.a.w.ker. "We've got to give those blood-hounds a lesson."

Even as he spoke a shot struck the thick, iron hinge of the heavy door, the lead spattering viciously. Another ripped through the cas.e.m.e.nt of the nearest window, and a shiver of gla.s.s was heard within, as the bullet spun through the shade of a lamp swinging from the beam above.

c.a.w.ker ducked, unaccustomed to such sounds, and dove to the interior.

Old Nolan, soldier of the Civil War and veteran of many an Indian skirmish, disdained to notice it. Geordie, bemoaning the luck that had left his pet rifle in Denver, busied himself with Nolan in "herding"

the party within before himself following. Then Shiner was found missing.

"He started with us," cried Nolan. "He wanted to go back to be with his boy, but we showed him he'd never get through. Those brutes would head him off and kick his life out. He must have--Good G.o.d, Mr. Geordie!

Look where he lies!"

And then they saw that the old plainsman, in his eagerness to make a way back to his possibly dying son, had quit the rush when half-way up, had turned eastward and sought a foot-path down the mountain-side, had found it guarded, like the rest, by a gang that yelled savage welcome at sight of him. Then, too late, he had turned again, had managed to run some fifty yards along the jagged slope, when a shot from a well-aimed rifle laid him low. With a leg broken just above the knee, poor Shiner went down, and without so much as a word, with only one glance into each other's eyes, Long Nolan and Geordie swooped down to the rescue.

Breasting the hill fifty yards below him came the heaving throng of rioters, few of them, luckily, with fire-arms, but all bent on vengeance. Darting downhill to Shiner came the old and the new of the regiment he had known for years and swore by to the end--Nolan, its oldest sergeant when discharged; Graham, its youngest subaltern when so recently commissioned. But, old and new, they were one in purpose and in spirit. The trained muscles, the lithe young limbs of the new bore him bounding down the slope in half the time it took the elder. Shiner lay facing the coming throng, grim hate in his eyes and revolver in hand. In the fury of yells that arose he never heard the shout of encouragement from above. Geordie was bending over him, had seized him by the arm, was slinging him on his broad young back before ever Shiner saw the face of his rescuer, and Geordie, with his helpless burden, was stumbling up the height again before Nolan could join and aid him.

By that time the peering guardians of the office had caught sight of the cause of the pandemonium of howls and curses from below, and the onward rush was stayed by the sound of shots from the hill and bullets whistling overhead. Yet only for a moment. Bullets sent downhill almost always fly high, and finding this to be so the mob took courage and came on again, those who had guns or revolvers shooting frantically up the slope, splintering rocks and spattering dirt as they bit at the heels of the rescuers. It was a desperate, do or die, neck or nothing, bit of daring and devotion--Nolan's third and Geordie's first experience in just such a feat. But the blood of the Graemes was up, and the younger soldier was not to be outdone by the old. The guards at the office burst into a cheer as the two came staggering up to the level, with poor Shiner groaning between them, and then quick work and hot was needed, for the mob came fierce on their trail.

"There's more Winchesters there in the gun-rack," shouted c.a.w.ker, as Shiner was laid on a bunk in a back room. "They'll be all round us here in a minute."

"Aim low and pick out the leaders, d'ye hear?" panted Nolan. "Don't let 'em get within reach of the buildings, whatever you do. They'll burn 'em over our heads. Let me have your loop-hole, _you_!" he ordered a young fellow, whose lips were blue with excitement and dread. "Go sit by Shiner and give him water till I spoil a few of these voters." And the presence of the veteran, the confident ring of his voice, seemed to lend instant courage to the defence.

And courage, cool courage and grit, were needed, for the situation was difficult, if not, indeed, desperate. With any skilled leader to direct the mob, the refuge sought by the defence would already have been ruined. The office building, made of hewn logs laid horizontally and with possible view of defence, had been placed at the brow of the slope on one side and near the mouth of the mine on the other. Later, however, rude structures of unplaned pine sprung up--compressor-plant, blacksmith-shop, and the like--about it, no one of them strong enough to serve as a fort, and all of them a menace now because they screened the approaches on two sides and could be fired in a dozen places.

And now that Graham and Nolan were here to aid, this defect was noticed at once.

"This won't do at all, Mr. c.a.w.ker," said Graham, as he sprung the lever of a new Winchester and glanced into the chamber. "We'll be surrounded and burned out of here in ten minutes. We've got to occupy those others, too."

c.a.w.ker stared at the "young feller" with angering eyes. A moment agone and he was praising his daring, but that astonishing tone of authority nettled him. What business had a railway fireman telling him, a mine manager, what to do in case of a row?

"_You_ get to a loop-hole and 'tend to that," snapped he. "I'll 'tend to my business," and he turned to Long Nolan, just heaving up from a peep-hole, for support and approval. Nolan he knew for a soldier of old. He had learned to respect him quite as much as he jealously feared, and Nolan's answer took him utterly aback:

"You do as he tells you and do it quick. He knows his business better'n ever you'll begin to know yours."

CHAPTER XI

A NIGHT ON GUARD

Two minutes more, with eight men to back him, George Graham was knocking or sawing out holes in the blacksmith-shop, and presently a man with a reliable Winchester was crouched by each opening watching the next move of the foe. The shop was perched at the edge of a flat-topped "dump", commanding the rocky slopes to the roadway on one side, the hill on the other. It was exposed to shots from below, yet the hardest to reach by direct a.s.sault. In the larger building a bit farther back, the compressor-house, c.a.w.ker and four others were stationed, guarding the approach from the north. The manager had taken Nolan's broad hint, and the subsequent orders, with one long look of amaze, then with the light of comprehension in his eyes and the silence of consent on his lips. Did he not know that the main charge against Nolan had been loyalty to his old comrades rather than his new employers? Did he not know, or at least more than suspect, that the company was trying to "freeze out" the distant holders? Did he not know, down in his heart, that it was out and out robbery? And now, in spite of youth and disguise, the manager saw in this masterful stranger one of the very elements the owners had sought to keep at a distance and in ignorance of true conditions. So far from resenting, he now thanked G.o.d for his coming. What else could explain Nolan's deference--Nolan, the most independent and self-respecting man at the mines? What else could it mean but that this youth was one of his officers--men skilled and schooled in warfare if not in mining--men taught to face danger with stout heart and stubborn front? All in the s.p.a.ce of a few seconds the truth had flashed upon c.a.w.ker. It might not be just what the owners would want, thought he, but it's almighty good for us all.

Nolan, with a handful of men, still clung to the stoutest of the buildings. It stood without the entrance to the ravine in which had been discovered the outcropping that started the fame of Silver Shield.

In this, also, stood two other buildings, but these were so far from the outer shop that flames need not be feared. Nolan was to care for the wounded and guard the outward approach, and all three were in close support of each other. Whoever managed to rush that little group of buildings would know, if he lived, that he had been through a fight.

And now it was after six of the long summer day. The rioters had received a wholesome lesson in the volley that met their first attempt to swarm up from the south. They had gone tumbling and cursing back to shelter, with three men wounded and many of the others badly scared, and now were being harangued by their vociferous leader, and hundreds had come to hear. Graham turned to the young Slav who had borne the first news to Nolan. "Creep out there as far as you can," he ordered, "listen to what is said, and tell me. They cannot reach you." But the frightened lad crouched and whimpered. He _dared_ not.

"Come on, then," answered Geordie, grasping the stout collar of the hickory shirt, and come he had to, moaning and imploring. With revolver in his right hand, his unwilling interpreter in the left, Geordie scrambled down to the roadway, and then, coming in view of the gang, crouched with his prisoner behind sheltering bowlders, regardless of the shots which began to hiss from below. The speaker was still shouting; his words were easily heard. Yells of approval and savage delight punctuated every other sentence. "What was that?" demanded Geordie, as the applause became furious.

"He say they make circle--all sides, uphill, sidehill, downhill. They all together run in when he give the word."