Part 5

Tesno lingered over eggs and coffee at a restaurant counter, then he went to his room and stretched out on the bed. He wanted to be alone an hour or so; after that, he wanted to see Persia. Her company would dull the shock and ugliness of the accident, he told himself, and he would be able to think clearly.

XI

Persia sat primly at the secretary which stood in a corner of her parlor. She frowned, checked her addition. It was nice to have bank accounts in three different towns, but she wished that just once they would total as much as she had expected. The town was busier than it had ever been and on paper she was making a good deal of money; but it was all going to pay off Mr. Jay.

She shifted her chair to face Sam as he came into the room. He regarded her as placidly as ever through his lenses, but she knew him so well that she could sense a mild urgency about him.

"Mr. Jay is in my office," he said shortly.

"Oh?" Mr. Jay never visited the townhouse unless his business was very urgent indeed. "Sam, is anything wrong?"

Sam moved his head negatively. "He has some instructions he wants to give you personally. It's a simple matter, but he wants it done just right."

They went at once to the office. Mr. Jay sprang up to take Persia's hand in both of his. "Charming! More charming than ever!" he said, throwing his head back to look her over. His alert little eyes danced and his beard framed a smile as he devoted a second or two to looking charmed. He led her to a chair as Sam slid into another. Mr. Jay stood between them, hands clasped behind his back. He glanced from one to the other and drew in his breath noisily.

"There are two men upstairs in Sam's rooms that I don't want seen around town. They have been riding all night and are hungry. Now--" Mr. Jay paused to smile crisply at Persia--"I want you to feed them. Have your maid throw together a meal; soup, ham and eggs, left-overs--anything that can be prepared quickly. You might say that Sam has some old friends visiting him, something like that. Then you or Sam take the food up to them--not the maid. In the meantime, Pinky Bronklin will bring a bag of supplies here. These two men will take it and leave. Their horses are tied out back."

Persia smiled faintly. "Aren't you going to tell me what nefarious connivance I'm a party to?"

"Oh, it's underhanded," Mr. Jay said, "completely underhanded. If I were suspected of being connected with it, my career would be finished. But you'll guess it anyway, in the light of future developments; so you might as well know now. Ben Vickers' big boiler reached Ellensburg yesterday. He had a crew and a huge wagon waiting for it, so I expect that by this time it's on the road. I--well, there's going to be an accident."

"I wish now I hadn't asked," Persia said. "No one will be hurt, I hope."

"I certainly hope not."

"I don't like this, Mr. Jay."

"Of course not. I don't like it either."

"Does Vickers know the boiler's arrived?" Sam asked.

"Not yet, I think," Mr. Jay said. "My information is that his messenger was delayed. I dare say that he will get word, though, before the day is out. And I dare say he will send Mr. Tesno down there at once."

* * * * *

Finding no comfort in the solitude of his room, Tesno left the hotel and strolled aimlessly up the street. His big Raymond watch showed only a little after eleven. He would wait till noon, he decided, before dropping in on Persia.

He stopped at the new tobacco store and bought a handful of cigars. Lighting one, he sauntered past the livery barn and up the slope behind it. Most of the timber had been logged off here, and brush and ferns were already claiming the ground. Finding a degree of solace in the faint warmth of the sun, he pulled himself up on a stump and found he had a view that drew him out of himself.

It was a cloudless day, and the range jutted its ragged vertebrae into a sky as blue as a mountain lake. Below him, the town seemed a naked, ugly fungus sprung newly from the earth. The camp, almost hidden by pines, was less intrusive. Beyond the gulch, above it, the crisp black arch of the tunnel scarred Runaway Mountain.

_Here it all is_, he thought, _spread out in front of me. I've either got to become a part of it or get the hell out._ He tried to plan what he would say to Persia. He would tell her flatly that the time had come for the gamblers to go, he guessed. He would ask her to have Madrid clear them out, all of them. If she stalled or refused--well, he would do it himself. Or resign.

The townhouse lay off to his left, and he found himself staring at it, thinking that she was in there somewhere, wondering what she did with her mornings. He watched two men come out of the back of the far part of the building, each carrying a small bundle. At this distance he could tell little about them except that they must have come up from the cattle country east of the mountains. One wore woolly chaps. Both wore Stetsons and walked with the peculiar swagger of men in high-heeled boots. They disappeared behind one of the outbuildings, and when they came into sight again, they were mounted on horses. He watched them ride eastward out of the gulch. He supposed they had come to sell beef or hay, or on some such business, and he quickly forgot them.

When his watch read almost noon, he started downhill, avoiding the street and heading for the townhouse. Persia answered his knock, smiling when she saw him. It wasn't the polite and pretty company smile now but a special one, personal and tender, an eager doorway closed quickly behind him as she came into his arms.

"I'm glad you came," she said. She drew him into the parlor.

"It's been a bad morning."

"I heard about the accident," she said. She detached herself from him and sat down on the sofa, crossing her long legs and smoothing her skirt over them. "Is there anything anyone can do?"

"Not for the dead men."

Her eyes touched him warily. She said, "For you then? You ought to get your mind off it."

"No," he said. "I ought to think about it. I ought to think a great deal about it."

She nodded slowly, frowning. He seized the back of a chair and leaned over it moodily. After a moment, she said, "I've been wishing all morning you'd drop by. Jack, it's such a beautiful day. Could we--I suppose it isn't a good idea, but couldn't we pack a lunch and have a picnic? I know a spot where there's a creek and a little waterfall. We'd be a million miles away from everything."

"It sounds fine," he said.

"We'll have to sort of sneak away," she said. "I wouldn't want Sam to know. He'd want to come, too, I'm afraid."

* * * * *

It was after sunset when they came back into the gulch along a forgotten skid road. They reached the kitchen door of the townhouse at a remarkable moment when the entire sky was aglow, burning scarlet beyond the bleak western peaks and cooling down to a grayish pink in the east as night seeped into it. The buildings of the town, the trees, the earth itself were suspended in a pinkish haze. Persia caught Tesno's hand and halted him.

"It's almost frightening!" she said. "It gives you the feeling something strange is about to happen."

He knew what she meant, but he grinned and said artlessly, "It will be a clear day tomorrow."

Stella was at the back door then, saying dinner was ready and going stale. Sam Lester met them in the kitchen. He gave Persia a questioning look and turned to Tesno.

"Vickers is in there," Sam said, jerking his head toward the parlor. "He's been combing the town for you. He finally learned from Stella that you'd gone off somewhere with a basket of food--she didn't know where. He's been camped in there ever since."

Tesno found Ben dozing in a chair. He leaped to his feet wild-eyed when he heard his name.

"The boiler's on it's way up here!" Ben said. "It will move fast enough until the road hits the mountains, and I expect it's damn near to Cle Elum by now. If you ride all night, you can be there by dawn. Where in the merry hell have you been?"

"Picnic," Tesno said.

"You could leave word where I could find you."

"I've been trying to think things out, Ben. I've decided to quit."

Ben clapped a hand to his forehead. "Not now! Not with that boiler down there!"

"You could send somebody else."

"This job might need special talent, Jack. It just might be a dirty one." Ben fell silent as Persia and Sam came into the room. He nodded curtly at Persia. Suddenly he gestured violently and continued. "The thing arrived yesterday. I had a crew standing by to unload it and start it up here. A man left at once to bring me the news--should have been here before daylight this morning. But he was overtaken by a pair of toughs who beat him up, tied him to a tree, shot his horse. He worked loose and walked eight miles in the middle of the night to a ragcamp, where he borrowed another horse. He didn't get here till well after noon."

"You think they did this just to delay the news?"

"Seems like it. And when you remember that phoney telegram--well, that boiler needs you down there alongside of it, night and day, a gun in your hands."

"All right," Tesno said. "I'll chaperone the boiler for you. After that...."

"We'll see, we'll see," Ben said quickly. "Once I get that thing up here and the compressors working, life ought to be a little easier for everybody. I've got your blue roan saddled and waiting outside. You can start right now."

"Not till he's had something to eat!" Persia said. She stepped up and grasped Tesno's arm possessively.

Ben grunted. "Just so he's at Cle Elum by daylight." He located his hat, clamped it on his head, and headed for the door. Sam Lester went with him.

"Actually," Persia said, "I think that man is mad. Sit down and have a drink, Jack. I'll have Stella get dinner on the table. Sam has already eaten."

"I'll have to hurry," Tesno said. "Maybe...."

"Nonsense. Sam has work to do, and I refuse to be left alone. Not tonight, Jack."

XII

The first dozen miles lay in relatively flat sagebrush country. The twelve-man, thirty-horse boiler-hauling outfit covered them the first day, reaching the first real grade at dusk and halting there to spend the night and give the boss time to figure out what he was going to do in the morning.

He was a glary-eyed man named Rejack, who treated his horses with a kindness rare among teamsters and was consequently considered a simpleton by his crew. His problem was to get his huge wagon over a bridge almost exactly as wide as its wheel spread and then up a road with hairpins in it so sharp and steep that the top-heavy load was almost sure to overturn. He finally decided that it couldn't be done. The only chance was to ford the creek and pull the wagon straight up the hillside with block and tackle.

Shortly after sun-up, the crew dragged it across the creek without too much trouble. Rejack then anchored his pulley block on a big cedar, put six men on the wagon tongue to steer, and had ten span of horses hitched to pull down-grade as the wagon moved up. He inspected the teams, the rope, the lashings on the boiler and finally gave the order to start. The wagon moved along nicely for the first hundred feet. Then a man walked out of a clump of trees with a shotgun, aimed at the rope from four feet away, and fired both barrels.

The wagon reversed its direction so suddenly that the man walking near the rear of it with a wheel block had time only to toss it and jump. The wheel missed it. The wagon hurtled down the hillside, skidded sideways, made one complete roll, stopped abruptly in the creek, and collapsed under its load like a berry box.

In the confusion, the man with the shotgun had disappeared into the pines. Some of the crew considered going after him but were promptly discouraged when a rifle cut loose from somewhere above, its bullets ricocheting through the brush between them and the trees. It was plain to everybody that the saboteur had a partner up there covering him.

Rejack took off his hat, scratched his head, and reacted to catastrophe with casual acceptance that the crew later recounted with hilarity.

"If that isn't one hell of a way to cut a rope!" he grumbled. "Did any of the buckshot hit the horses?"

The rifleman fired three rapid shots, obviously not trying to hit anybody, and called it a day. Rejack jounced down the slope to inspect the damage, followed by most of the crew. As far as anybody could tell, the boiler, for a wonder, wasn't even scratched. The wagon was beyond repair. Rejack sat down on the creek bank to figure out what to do next.

* * * * *

It was midmorning and Tesno was five miles above Cle Elum when he met the rider on his way to report the disaster to Vickers. Tesno would have passed with a nod and greeting, but the other recognized him and stopped to pour out the story.

"The boiler isn't damaged?" Tesno demanded.

"Sound as a dollar," the hard-faced little teamster said. "The boss started back to Ellensburg to try and scare up another wagon big enough to haul the damn thing. In the meantime it's setting in a crick about a mile and a half below Cle Elum."

"Somebody's guarding it?"

"Well, yes. The boss ordered a four-man guard on it, but there didn't seem much sense in that since there was only one gun in the whole outfit. So one man's there now. The rest went on up to Cle Elum."

"All right," Tesno said. "Now the first thing you tell Ben is that the boiler is in good shape. That might save him from apoplexy. Then tell him I said not to worry. I'll get the thing up to him."

Guilt welled up in him as he jogged on down the road. If he had left Tunneltown when Ben wanted him to--or even immediately after dinner--he would have been on the scene when calamity struck. With a little luck, he might have prevented it. At least, he would have bagged the hooligan who severed the rope.

Cle Elum consisted of a sawmill, a pond full of logs, and one of the temporary camps Ben Vickers had set up here and there along his supply line. Tesno passed without stopping and rode on to the scene of the wreck. Here he found the guard sitting against a tree sound asleep--a sixteen-year-old kid armed with an ancient revolver with two shells in it. He jerked the boy to his feet and shoved him toward the boiler.

"You keep your eye on that thing every minute," he snapped.

After questioning the kid about what had happened, he made a quick scout through the pines and found where the vandal had tied his horse. Following the hoofprints upgrade, he soon came to a place where they were joined by another set. The two riders had headed straight into the timbered hills without so much as a deer trail to guide them. Apparently, they were men who knew the country well.

He rode back to Cle Elum then, where he found the boiler crew lounging around the mess tent, sipping coffee and playing poker.

"Holiday's over," he announced. "We'll go down there and get the boiler ready to load when the wagon arrives. We'll need about twenty horses to drag it out of the creek."

"Morning will be time enough," a bull-necked, bullet-headed freighter growled, clutching his poker hand close to his stomach. "You were sent down here to guard that damn teakettle, not to give orders. Rejack left me in charge, and I say you can go hang yourself. Where in the black damnation were you when those rascals surprised us, anyhow?"

Tesno remarked that he was in no mood to quibble. Placing the sole of his boot against the edge of the table, he kicked it into the man's stomach, got an armlock on him, and pitched him out of the tent on his face. The crew laughed uneasily and drifted off toward the corral to get harness on the horses.

After several hours of preparatory work, they maneuvered the boiler out of the creek on logs that had been peeled and greased. When they had skidded it onto two logs set along the bank like rails, they dug a cut under one end of these for the wagon to back into when it arrived. It was dark when they finished.

In the meantime, Tesno borrowed a Winchester from the camp 'general' at Cle Elum and another from the mill owner. He also found a Klickitat mill hand who knew the country and whom he set off on horseback to trail the saboteurs.

When the digging was finished and the boiler ready to load, Tesno announced that they would camp on the spot. He divided the men into pairs and assigned them to watches.

"Just don't get jumpy and shoot each other," he said, handing the rifles to the men on the first watch. "If you see or hear anything unusual, let me know. I'll be within calling distance all night."

Supper consisted of stew made of bacon, jerky, onions, and potatoes, chased by black coffee. When he had wolfed his down, he settled himself at one end of the boiler with a blanket over his shoulder and his own rifle beside him. From time to time, he rose to check on the guards, but mostly he sat and smoked, dozing very little.

He was restless and uncomfortable, his supper heavy in his stomach, and his thoughts were like a windblown deck of cards he tried to sort out and put in order. He looked back at his life, at the callousness of it, the probing out of human weakness that could be turned to his advantage, the careful building of a reputation among the contractors. What had he been seeking all these years? Money? A stake that would buy and stock a ranch? Of course. But there had been more to it than that. There had been the satisfaction of seeing steel push into the wilderness. Even if he sometimes had doubts about the true importance of the railroad, it had been something a man could give his life to. It was the giving that had been important.

And now it was not important. Not since that long-ago night in May when he had interrupted Persia Parker's dinner. Gray-green eyes, a soft voice, an eager smile, a lithe body--these were Persia. But what else was she? And in this black and lonely time with his back against the cold bulge of a boiler that was a key piece in a wild game of steel and gold, he dared to doubt the thing he wanted most. To doubt in order to prove. He had to know.

There had been a nervousness in her last night, he thought. She had smiled even more often than usual, had touched him at every opportunity, as she had stubbornly insisted that he stay with her. She had known about the boiler, of course; she had been there when Ben told him of its arrival. But could she have known earlier--before the picnic? _No_, he told himself, _it wasn't like that. It couldn't have been...._

A voice rang out in the blackness, a challenge, and another answered bluntly. Tesno was on his feet, working the lever of his rifle. Two figures up in the liquid forest night--one of the guards with his gun on the Klickitat mill hand.

"It's all right," Tesno said to the guard. "Go back to your post."

The Indian, who answered to the name of Muckamuck Charlie, gave his report in a mixture of reservation English and Chinook jargon.

"Them son-of-a-gun _cooley_ over mountain. Split up. One come back to _hooihut_. _Nika till._ You got whisky?"

"One of them circled back to the road?" Tesno said, trying to get it straight.

"Damn right. Maybe go by here, take look. _Halo nika_ money. You pay now?"

"Where did the other one go?"

"_Halo chako._ Him wait. By and by come together. Go to _tenas_ house _ipsoot_ in woods." Charlie made a gesture toward the southwest. "Four-five mile."

As near as Tesno could make it out, one of the men--no doubt the one who had shown himself--had waited while the other rode up the road like any honest traveler, passing the boiler to see how much damage had been done. This could have happened soon after the smash-up, likely as not while that sleepy kid was on guard. Then the pair had joined up again and ridden to a cabin hidden in the woods four or five miles away.

"They're at the cabin, _tenas house_, now?"

"I listen," Charlie said. "They make sleep noises. I smell whisky."

"Can you take me there? Right now?"

Charlie grunted. "You pay now. Two dollar. We go _tenas house_, you pay more."

Tesno drew two silver dollars from his pocket and passed them over. "Two more when you take me to the cabin."

Charlie studied the coins in his palm. "_Nika till._ I sleep now. Eat. Drink some whisky. Pretty soon daylight. We go then."

"We go right now," Tesno said.

As it turned out, they were delayed by the arrival of Rejack, who came rumbling up the road with a new freight wagon as Tesno was saddling his horse. He inspected the boiler and then backed the wagon into the cut by lantern light before he unhitched the team.

"We'll be loaded and moving by sun-up," he said, looking pleased.

"No," Tesno said. "Load, but don't start the boiler up that grade till I get back. Those rascals know it wasn't damaged, and if I should happen to miss them, they might try the same stunt all over again."

XIII

Dawn crept into the world drearily and then lavishly as they made a slow and sinuous ride through tangled gulches and trailless forest, up horse-crippling grades and down shale-slippery slopes. After a good hour of this roundabout traveling, Muckamuck Charlie halted at the foot of a rounded, thickly timbered hill. He sniffed the air and announced that the _tenas house_, the cabin, was on the far side of this.

"Them son-of-a-gun wake up," he said, sniffing again. "Cook breakfast. When we gonna eat?"

As they wound up through the trees, Tesno, too, could smell smoke. When they were over the crest, had tied the horses and were proceeding on foot, it was visible, lying in motionless layers among the pines.

"Fire out now," Charlie said.

They were within a few yards of the cabin before Tesno saw it through the foliage, a ten-by-twelve log shack set into the hillside. It was weathered and saggy-roofed, built by some trapper or prospector heaven knew how many years ago.

Charlie drew Tesno behind a tree, pointed a finger at the ground as an indication that he was to wait, and angled off on a scout. After a few minutes he walked around the end of the cabin, eating a biscuit with a piece of raw bacon draped over it.

"Them son-of-a-gun wake up early. Go 'way," he said.

The air in the dark interior of the cabin was still warm from a fire in the crumbling clay fireplace. It had been doused with water but was still smoking faintly. The occupants couldn't have left more than a few minutes earlier. Gear and supplies piled along the walls indicated that they expected to be back.

Charlie led the way down the hillside to a little open place where they had picketed their horses. After circling around and studying several old sets of tracks, he announced that he had found the fresh one.

As he and Charlie strode upgrade toward their own horses, Tesno grew increasingly anxious. This pair of hooligans knew that the boiler wasn't damaged. It stood to reason that they would make another try at it. He said as much to Charlie.

"You keep on their trail, Charlie. Try to get a look at 'em. I'll be with the boiler. If they come anywhere near it, you let me know. You got all that?"

"Two dollar," Charlie said.

"Five dollar, Charlie. Five dollar, you stay with 'em till I catch 'em."

* * * * *

Rejack had the tackle rigged, the teams hitched, and was impatient to begin the haul. Tesno had him wait till he had scouted out the pine clusters that dotted the lower part of the hillside, then told him to go ahead. The wagon groaned and inched upward. Two men walked behind it now, swinging a squared timber on ropes between them. They held this close behind the wheels so that they had only to drop it to block them. Rifle in hand, Tesno took a position where he could cover the rope on both sides of the tackle blocks.