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The Danger Trail, a novel by James Oliver Curwood |
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Chapter 7. The Blowing Of The Coyote |
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_ CHAPTER VII. THE BLOWING OF THE COYOTE In the new excitement that pulsated with every fiber of his being, Howland forgot his own danger, forgot his old caution and the fears that gave birth to it, forgot everything in these moments but Meleese and his own great happiness. For he was happy, happier than he had ever been in his life, happier than he had ever expected to be. He was conscious of no madness in this strange, new joy that swept through his being like a fire; he did not stop to weigh with himself the unreasoning impulses that filled him. He had held Meleese in his arms, he had told her of his love, and though she had accepted it with gentle unresponsiveness he was thrilled by the memory of that last look in her eyes, which had spoken faith, confidence, and perhaps even more. And his faith in her had become as limitless as the blue space above him. He had known her for but a few hours and yet in that time it seemed to him that he had lived longer than in all of the years that had gone before. She had lied to him, had divulged only a part of her identity--and yet he knew that there were reasons for these things. To-morrow night he would see her again, and then-- What would she tell him? Whatever it was, it was to be a reward for his own love. He knew that, by the half-fearing tremble of her voice, the sobbing catch of her breath, the soft glow in her eyes. Impelled by that love, would she confide in him? And then--would he go back into the South? He laughed, softly, joyfully. Yes, he would go back into the South--he would go to the other end of the earth, if she would go with him. What was the building of this railroad now to that other great thing that had come into his life? For the first time he saw duty in another light. There were others who could build the road; success, fortune, ambition--in the old way he had seen them--were overshadowed now by this love of a girl. He stopped and lighted his pipe. The fragrant odor of the tobacco, the flavor of the warm smoke in his mouth, helped to readjust him, to cool his heated brain. The old fighting instincts leaped into life again. Go into the South? He asked himself the question once more, and in the gloomy silence of the forest his low laugh fell again as he clenched his hands in anticipation of what was ahead of him. No--he would build the road! And in building it he would win this girl, if it was given for him to possess her. His saner thoughts brought back his caution. He went more slowly toward the cabin, keeping in the deep shadows and stopping now and then to listen. At the edge of the clearing he paused for a long time. There was no sign of life about the cabin abandoned by Gregson and Thorne. It was probable that the two men who had passed along the path had returned to the camp by another trail, and still keeping as much within the shadows as possible he went to the door and entered. With his feet propped in front of the big box stove sat Jackpine. The Indian rose as Howland entered, and something in the sullen gloom of his face caused the young engineer to eye him questioningly. "Any one been here, Jackpine?" The old sledge-driver gave his head a negative shake and hunched his shoulders, pointing at the same time to the table, on which lay a carefully folded piece of paper. "Thorne," he grunted. Howland spread out the paper in the light of the lamp, and read: "MY DEAR HOWLAND: "I forgot to tell you that our mail sledge starts for Le Pas to-morrow at noon, and as I'm planning on going down with it I want you to get over as early as you can in the morning. Can put you on to everything in the camp between eight and twelve. THORNE." A whistle of astonishment escaped Howland's lips. "Where do you sleep, Jackpine?" he asked suddenly. "Cabin in edge of woods," replied the Indian. "How about breakfast? Thorne hasn't put me on to the grub line yet." "Thorne say you eat with heem in mornin'. I come early--wake you. After heem go--to-morrow--eat here." "You needn't wake me," said Howland, throwing off his coat. "I'll find Thorne--probably before he's up. Good night." Jackpine had half opened the door, and for a moment the engineer caught a glimpse of his dark, grinning face looking back over his shoulder. He hesitated, as if about to speak, and then with a mouthful of his inimitable chuckles, he went out. After bolting the door Howland lighted a small table lamp, entered the sleeping room and prepared for bed. "Got to have a little sleep no matter if things are going off like a Fourth of July celebration," he grumbled, and rolled between the sheets. In spite of his old habit of rising with the breaking of dawn it was Jackpine who awakened him a few hours later. The camp was hardly astir when he followed the Indian down among the log cabins to Thorne's quarters. The senior engineer was already dressed. "Sorry to hustle you so, Howland," he greeted, "but I've got to go down with the mail. Just between you and me I don't believe the camp doctor is much on his job. I've got a deuced bad shoulder and a worse arm, and I'm going down to a good surgeon as fast as I can." "Didn't they send Weston up with you?" asked Howland. He knew that Weston was the best "accident man" in the company's employ. "Yes--Weston," replied the senior, eying him sharply. "I don't mean to say he's not a good man, Howland," he amended quickly. "But he doesn't quite seem to take hold of this hurt of mine. By the way, I looked over our pay-roll and there is no Croisset on it." For an hour after breakfast the two men were busy with papers, maps and drawings relative to the camp work. Howland had kept in close touch with operations from Chicago and by the time they were ready to leave for outside inspection he was confident that he could take hold without the personal assistance of either Gregson or Thorne. Before that hour had passed he was certain of at least one other thing--that it was not incompetency that was taking the two senior engineers back to the home office. He had half expected to find the working-end in the same disorganized condition as its chiefs. But if Gregson and Thorne had been laboring under a tremendous strain of some kind it was not reflected in the company's work, as shown in the office records which the latter had spread out before him. "That's a big six months' work," said Thorne when they had finished. "Good Lord, man, when we first came up here a jack-rabbit couldn't hop through this place where you're sitting, and now see what we've got! Fifty cabins, four mess-halls, two of the biggest warehouses north of Winnipeg, a post-office, a hospital, three blacksmith shops and--a ship-yard!" "A ship-yard!" exclaimed Howland in genuine surprise. "Sure, with a fifty-ton ship half built and frozen stiff in the ice. You can finish her in the spring and you'll find her mighty useful for bringing supplies from the head of the Wekusko. We're using horses on the ice now. Had a deuced hard time in getting fifty of 'em up from Le Pas. And besides all this, we've got six miles of road-bed built to the south and three to the north. We've got a sub-camp at each working-end, but most of the men still prefer to come in at night." He dragged himself slowly and painfully to his feet as a knock sounded at the door. "That's MacDonald, our camp superintendent," he explained. "Told him to be here at eight. He's a corker for taking hold of things." A little, wiry, red-headed man hopped in as Thorne threw open the door. The moment his eyes fell on Howland he sprang forward with outstretched hand, smiling and bobbing his head. "Howland, of course!" he cried. "Glad to see you! Five minutes late--awful sorry--but they're having the devil's own time over at a coyote we're going to blow this morning, and that's what kept me." From Howland he whirled on the senior with the sudden movement of a cricket. "How's the arm, Thorne? And if there's any mercy in your corpus tell me if Jackpine brought me the cigarettes from Le Pas. If he forgot them, as the mail did, I'll have his life as sure--" "He brought them," said Thorne. "But how about this coyote, Mac? I thought it was ready to fire." "So it is--now. The south ridge is scheduled to go up at ten o'clock. We'll blow up the big north mountains sometime to-night. It'll make a glorious fireworks--one hundred and twenty-five barrels of powder and four fifty-pound cases of dynamite--and if you can't walk that far, Thorne, we'll take you up on a sledge. Mustn't allow you to miss it!" "Sorry, but I'll have to, Mac. I'm going south with the mail. That's why I want you with Howland and me this morning. It will be up to you to get him acquainted with every detail in camp." "Bully!" exclaimed the little superintendent, rubbing his hands with brisk enthusiasm. "Greggy and Thorne have done some remarkable things, Mr. Howland. You'll open your eyes when you see 'em! Talk about building railroads! We've got 'em all beat a thousand ways--tearing through forests, swamps and those blooming ridge-mountains--and here we are pretty near up at the end of the earth. The new Trans-continental isn't in it with us! The--" "Ring off, Mac!" exclaimed Thorne; and Howland found himself laughing down into the red, freckled face of the superintendent. He liked this man immensely from the first. "He's a bunch of live wires, double-charged all the time," said Thorne in a low voice as MacDonald went out ahead of them. "Always like that--happy as a boy most of the time, loved by the men, but the very devil himself when he's riled. Don't know what this camp would do without him." This same thought occurred to Howland a dozen times during the next two hours. MacDonald seemed to be the life and law of the camp, and he wondered more and more at Thorne's demeanor. The camp chiefs and gang foremen whom they met seemed to stand in a certain awe of the senior engineer, but it was at the little red-headed Scotchman's cheery words that their eyes lighted with enthusiasm. This was not like the old Thorne, who had been the eye, the ear and the tongue of the company's greatest engineering works for a decade past, and whose boundless enthusiasm and love of work had been the largest factors in the winning of fame that was more than national. He began to note that there was a strange nervousness about Thorne when they were among the men, an uneasy alertness in his eyes, as though he were looking for some particular face among those they encountered. MacDonald's shrewd eyes observed his perplexity, and once he took an opportunity to whisper: "I guess it's about time for Thorne to get back into civilization. There's something bad in his system. Weston told me yesterday that his injuries are coming along finely. I don't understand it." A little later they returned with Thorne to his room. "I want Howland to see this south coyote go up," said MacDonald. "Can you spare him? We'll be back before noon." "Certainly. Come and take dinner with me at twelve. That will give me time to make memoranda of things I may have forgotten." Howland fancied that there was a certain tone of relief in the senior's voice, but he made no mention of it to the superintendent as they walked swiftly to the scene of the "blow-out." The coyote was ready for firing when they arrived. The coyote itself--a tunnel of fifty feet dug into the solid rock of the mountain and terminating in a chamber packed with explosives--was closed by masses of broken rock, rammed tight, and MacDonald showed his companion where the electric wire passed to the fuse within. "It's a confounded mystery to me why Thorne doesn't care to see this ridge blown up!" he exclaimed after they had finished the inspection. "We've been at work for three months drilling this coyote, and the bigger one to the north. There are four thousand square yards of rock to come out of there, and six thousand out of the other. You don't see shots like those three times in a lifetime, and there'll not be another for us between here and the bay. What's the matter with Thorne?" Without waiting for a reply MacDonald walked swiftly in the direction of a ridge to the right. Already guards had been thrown out on all sides of the mountain and their thrilling warnings of "Fire--Fire--Fire," shouted through megaphones of birch-bark, echoed with ominous meaning through the still wilderness, where for the time all work had ceased. On the top of the ridge half a hundred of the workmen had already assembled, and as Howland and the superintendent came among them they fell back from around a big, flat boulder on which was stationed the electric battery. MacDonald's face was flushed and his eyes snapped like dragonflies as he pointed to a tiny button. "God, but I can't understand why Thorne doesn't care to see this," he said again. "Think of it, man--seven thousand five hundred pounds of powder and two hundred of dynamite! A touch of this button, a flash along the wire, and the fuse is struck. Then, four or five minutes, and up goes a mountain that has stood here since the world began. Isn't it glorious?" He straightened himself and took off his hat. "Mr. Howland, will you press the button?" With a strange thrill Howland bent over the battery, his eyes turned to the mass of rock looming sullen and black half a mile away, as if bidding defiance in the face of impending fate. Tremblingly his finger pressed on the little white knob, and a silence like that of death fell on those who watched. One minute--two--three--five passed, while in the bowels of the mountain the fuse was sizzling to its end. Then there came a puff, something like a cloud of dust rising skyward, but without sound; and before its upward belching had ceased a tongue of flame spurted out of its crest--and after that, perhaps two seconds later, came the explosion. There was a rumbling and a jarring, as if the earth were convulsed under foot; volumes of dense black smoke shot upward, shutting the mountain in an impenetrable pall of gloom; and in an instant these rolling, twisting volumes of black became lurid, and an explosion like that of a thousand great guns rent the air. As fast as the eye could follow, sheets of flame shot out of the sea of smoke, climbing higher and higher, in lightning flashes, until the lurid tongues licked the air a quarter of a mile above the startled wilderness. Explosion followed explosion, some of them coming in hollow, reverberating booms, others sounding as if in mid-air. The heavens were filled with hurtling rocks; solid masses of granite ten feet square were thrown a hundred feet away; rocks weighing a ton were hurled still farther, as if they were no more than stones flung by the hand of a giant; chunks that would have crashed from the roof to the basement of a sky-scraper dropped a third and nearly a half a mile away. For three minutes the frightful convulsions continued. Then the lurid lights died out of the pall of smoke, and the pall itself began to settle. Howland felt a grip on his arm. Dumbly he turned and looked into the white, staring face of the superintendent. His ears tingled, every fiber in him seemed unstrung. MacDonald's voice came to him strange and weird. "What do you think of that, Howland?" The two men gripped hands, and when they looked again they saw dimly through dust and smoke only torn and shattered masses of rock where had been the giant ridge that barred the path of the new road to the bay. Howland talked but little on their way back to camp. The scene that he had just witnessed affected him strangely; it stirred once more within him all of his old ambition, all of his old enthusiasm, and yet neither found voice in words. He was glad when the dinner was over at Thorne's, and with the going of the mail sledge and the senior engineer there came over him a still deeper sense of joy. Now _he_ was in charge, it was _his_ road from that hour on. He crushed MacDonald's hand in a grip that meant more than words when they parted. In his own cabin he threw off his coat and hat, lighted his pipe, and tried to realize just what this all meant for him. He was in charge--in charge of the greatest railroad building job on earth--_he_, Jack Howland, who less than twenty years ago was a barefooted, half-starved urchin peddling papers in the streets where he was now famous! And now what was this black thing that had come up to threaten his chances just as he had about won his great fight? He clenched his hands as he thought again of what had already happened--the cowardly attempt on his life, the warnings, and his blood boiled to fever heat. That night--after he had seen Meleese--he would know what to do. But he would not be driven away, as Gregson and Thorne had been driven. He was determined on that. The gloom of night falls early in the great northern mid-winter, and it was already growing dusk when there came the sound of a voice outside, followed a moment later by a loud knock at the door. At Howland's invitation the door opened and the head and shoulders of a man appeared. "Something has gone wrong out at the north coyote, sir, and Mr. MacDonald wants you just as fast as you can get out there," he said. "He sent me down for you with a sledge." "MacDonald told me the thing was ready for firing," said Howland, putting on his hat and coat. "What's the matter?" "Bad packing, I guess. Heard him swearing about it. He's in a terrible sweat to see you." Half an hour later the sledge drew up close to the place where Howland had seen a score of men packing bags of powder and dynamite earlier in the day. Half a dozen lanterns were burning among the rocks, but there was no sign of movement or life. The engineer's companion gave a sudden sharp crack of his long whip and in response to it there came a muffled halloo from out of the gloom. "That's MacDonald, sir. You'll find him right up there near that second light, where the coyote opens up. He's grilling the life out of half a dozen men in the chamber, where he found the dynamite on top of the powder instead of under it." "All right!" called back Howland, starting up among the rocks. Hardly had he taken a dozen steps when a dark object shot out behind him and, fell with crushing force on his head. With, a groaning cry he fell forward on his face. For a few moments he was conscious of voices about him; he knew that he was being lifted in the arms of men, and that after a time they were carrying him so that his feet dragged on the ground. After that he seemed to be sinking down--down--down--until he lost all sense of existence in a chaos of inky blackness. _ |
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