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High Hander

<h2>XII</h2> 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. <hr class="tb" /> 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." <hr class="chap" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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