THE FOLLOWING MORNING, WHILE SHERIFF CARTWRIGHT was readying his mules, Slade and Mary Nellis stood on the veranda. Her eyes were downcast and she blushed beneath his regard.
“Well?” he said, his eyes laughing. Her color deepened still more, but she smiled.
“Well,” she answered, “I’m darn glad I didn’t marry Gordon Plant as Cousin Andy wanted me to.”
“Gordon Plant?”
“Uh-huh, he asked me to, a couple of times. He’s nice looking and has charming manners, but Hal Murdock disliked him from the start, and I put great faith in Hal’s judgment, so I said no.”
Walt Slade’s eyes were very thoughtful. “Does Plant know that, about Murdock, I mean?”
“I think he guessed it,” she replied. “Hal isn’t very good at hiding his feelings.”
And El Halcón suddenly saw the clue he’d been hunting!
“Find the motive and it will lead you to your man,” says the “book” of the Rangers. Slade came back to his immediate surroundings with a mental jerk: Mary was speaking.
“You’ll be back?”
“Of course, if it’s all right with Cousin Andy. How could I stay away?”
“Oh, you will, eventually,” she replied. “But don’t worry about Cousin Andy. He’s just as anxious to have you around as I am. Somehow you have done a great deal for him. I’ve never known him to be so cheerful and happy. Seems that all of a sudden he’s found something really worth living for.”
“For which I am heartily glad,” Slade said gravely. “He’s too fine a man to be eternally dwelling on the past and thereby embittering his life.”
Mary sighed and shook her bright head. “I don’t understand how you do it—bend people to your will as you do,” she said.
“Sometimes others bend mine,” be replied, smiling broadly.
“And that,” she declared, “has all the earmarks of a left-handed compliment. I didn’t!”
“Just complaisant?”
“Well—”
Old Andy coming out the door and the sheriff riding up ended the discussion before it got too intricate in detail.
“All set, Walt?” Cartwright asked. “Let’s go!”
“You’ll come back, won’t you, son?” Andy asked. “Your work ain’t so far off and I figure you can spare us a little time now and then.”
“I can and I will,” Slade promised, as he forked Shadow. “Be seeing you both.” He and the sheriff rode off side by side.
“He reminds me of Jack,” remarked Jorg. “He has a way of scoldin’ you, just like Jack had, that you’d never suspect at the time.”
The laughter that is so close to tears welled in the girl’s blue eyes.
“Did he scold you, Cousin Andy?” she asked.
“Guess he did,” Jorg replied. “And I guess it did me good.”
“I’m sure it did,” she said.
“Sorta like him, don’t you, honey?” he asked. The big eyes met his honestly.
“Yes, I do.”
For a while, Slade and the sheriff, lagging behind the cowboys and the mules, rode in silence, which Cartwright finally broke.
“Walt,” he asked, “what the devil’s going on down here, anyway?”
“Bert,” the Ranger replied, “frankly I don’t know for certain, although all of a sudden, I’m beginning to get an inkling.”
“Figure it’s just the usual row between those two blasted railroads?”
“At first I rather thought so, but of late I haven’t been sure. I’m less sure now. The M.K. is run by a rather ruthless and high handed bunch, but I don’t think they would go in for promiscuous drygulchings, especially of people who are not in any way connected with either road. And that, among other things is what happened. In the acts of sabotage against the C. & P. I can see the M.K. hand, but I can’t see any reason for the M.K. bunch taking a shot at Hal Murdock from ambush. Just doesn’t make sense. But as I said, I’m getting an inkling of what is back of that. Avarice is a common enough motive for criminal acts. But there are certain very perplexing angles that must be considered. For instance—”
He related, briefly, the defection of Potter Quigley relative to the misplaced bridge and his subsequent disappearance.
“That looked like a delaying tactic on the part of the M.K.,” he concluded. “There is no doubt in my mind but that Quigley was suborned, but if so it must have been through an intermediary, for exhaustive search failed to show even the most remote connection between Quigley and the M.K. For a while I thought that perhaps the acts of sabotage were spite work on the part of Andy Jorg, who resented the coming of the railroad, but after I contacted and studied Jorg, I realized that it was really beyond the realm of possibility that he should be mixed up in such skullduggery. He’s a stubborn old shorthorn, but one who can be shown the error of his ways. And I can’t see him going in for criminal depredations.”
“I can’t, either, and I’ve known him a long time,” said Cartwright. “But if not Jorg, who?”
“That’s a question, one to which I must find the answer,” Slade admitted. “I am convinced that the M.K. plans to build south by way of the short-cut through Cienaga Canyon, hoping to beat the C. & P. to Chihuahua City. The things that have been happening to the C. & P. are familiar enough delaying tactics on the part of an unscrupulous bunch. But they must have somebody out here who is thoroughly conversant with local conditions and who realizes that the bridge across the Rio Grande is the key factor so far as the C. & P. is concerned. Once Dunn is into Mexico he should have clear sailing. The governor of the State of Chihuahua thinks well of him and will further his interests so far as he is able; but if the completion of the bridge is delayed, the M.K. will forge ahead. And the bridge is dependent on an uninterrupted flow of materials and supplies. Which makes it imperative that the line from the north be shoved to Presidio in the least possible time.”
“And you’re here to further that project,” observed the sheriff.
“As a side issue,” Slade corrected. “I’m here primarily as a Texas Ranger to prevent criminal acts so far as I am able, and to bring justice to those responsible for such acts.”
“I’ve a notion you made a start night before last,” Cartwright commented dryly.
“Possibly, although I have no proof to that effect,” Slade conceded. “But as I said before, somebody managed to get to Quigley, the bridge engineer, and slide him into the C. & P. setup. Who? So far I haven’t been able, so far as I know, to contact anybody who would appear to fill the bill.
“I’ll admit,” he added, “that I’m getting a bit jumpy over the situation as it stands. As yet, nobody has been killed, although it was pure luck that a man didn’t die when that dynamite explosion was set off.”
“Most folks don’t seem inclined to attribute it to luck,” the sheriff observed. “I heard about what you did, of course. I figure that wasn’t luck but cold nerve.
“And a strong back,” he added with a chuckle. Slade smiled and refrained from comment.
“Yes, fortunately so far nobody has been killed,” he repeated. “But such things can’t continue indefinitely without a fatality sooner or later. As I said, I can’t see the M.K. bunch going in for murder—which is just what it would be—but the dubious characters hired for such chores sometimes get out of hand, as certain big cowmen learned to their cost when they signed on professional gun-slingers to protect and further their interests. Could easily turn out to be the case here. So I’m not only interested in giving Dunn a hand but also in trying to save the lives of Texas citizens.” The sheriff nodded sober understanding.
A little later they pulled up on the Chihuahua Trail, where Slade turned Shadow’s head.
“I’m riding north,” he told Cartwright. “Hal and the boys will guide you to the bodies. Your transportation will be ready when you reach the camp. Be seeing you.”
Slade arrived at the camp very shortly, for he rode at a fast pace, and found a laconic message from Jaggers Dunn awaiting him. It read,
M. K. HAS STARTED BUILDING
So the race was on!
A couple of hours later the sheriff and his grisly cavalcade rolled in from the south. His and the deputy’s horses, along with the mules and their burdens, were loaded into the stock car, while the men made themselves comfortable in the caboose. Slade wrote a note and gave it to Murdock.
“That will get you passage back here on any material train,” he said. “Your horses will be taken care of. Have a good time in town.”
“We will,” big Hal chuckled. “We’re packing along the dinero we glommed off those carcasses; pure gravy!”
Slade watched the short train steam north, then hunted up Casey.
“Everything been going along okay,” the foreman said.
“And you’ve been making good progress,” Slade complimented him. The old foreman flushed with pleasure.
“Yep, everything plumb quiet and peaceful. Kept my eyes skun for anybody pulling something off-color but haven’t spotted a thing. At this rate we’ll be booming into Presidio before you know it. Got another wagon train of stone and materials all set to roll south in the morning.”
After a thorough inspection of the operation, Slade was well satisfied with what he found; but he experienced an uneasy premonition that things were too darn quiet and peaceful, a condition he feared would not remain indefinitely.
Oh, well, take it as it comes. He repaired to the caboose which was his sleeping quarters to find that the old Mexican assigned by Jaggers Dunn to look after him already had a bountiful meal prepared.
After eating, he went out on another tour of inspection. Slowly but steadily the twin steel ribbons were flowing southward. Already a work train had been pressed into service to carry the men to and from the camp. Carloads of rails, ties, fish plates and spikes rumbled down from the north in a steady stream. The sweating toilers cursed the heat and the dust and made the dirt fly. Slade was passing around the word that they were in a race with the M.K. and the workers reacted enthusiastically.
And gazing eastward over the soaring mountain crests, Slade could in his imagination hear the booming of exhausts, the thudding of mauls, the rhythmic crash of steel on steel and the thunder of dynamite as another army of workers pitted their courage, strength, and skill against the dumb, imponderable forces of nature, and the opposition of their fellow men. The race was on! And very likely, before all was done, the raw stench of spilled blood would mingle with the smell of sweat and smoke, creosote and hot oil.
Empire builders! With ambition taking its deadly toll. As it always had been, was, and always would be. But life lived to the full, quickening the heart beat, sparkling the eye and deepening the breath. Man forever striving, forever seeking to glut his lust for conquest. It couldn’t be done, but we did it!
And El Halcón felt that the Master Builder Himself must look with a kindly eye upon this irresistible urge that furthered His inscrutable aims, in the end suborning the evil to the good.
It was with a feeling of deep humility that he turned back his gaze to the humble toilers who had been given under his hand. They were the true “men of destiny,” theirs the real triumph, who before all was done might well walk with gods and juggle with the stars.