Ballard was a man and a lover; and his first definition of love was unquestioning loyalty. He was prepared to doubt the evidence of his senses, if need be, but not the perfections of the ideal he had set up in the inner chamber of his heart, naming it Elsa Craigmiles.
These communings and queryings, leading always into the same metaphysical labyrinth, brought the young engineer far on the down-river trail; were still with him when the trail narrowed to a steep one-man path and began to climb the hogback, with one side b.u.t.tressed by a low cliff and the other falling sheer into the Boiling Water on the left. On this narrow ledge the dog went soberly ahead; and at one of the turns in the path Ballard came upon him standing solidly across the way and effectually blocking it.
"What is it, old boy?" was the man"s query; and the dog"s answer was a wag of the tail and a low whine. "Go on, old fellow," said Ballard; but the big St. Bernard merely braced himself and whined again. It was quite dark on the high ledge, a fringe of scrub pines on the upper side of the cutting blotting out a fair half of the starlight. Ballard struck a match and looked beyond the dog; looked and drew back with a startled exclamation. Where the continuation of the path should have been there was a gaping chasm pitching steeply down into the Boiling Water.
More lighted matches served to show the extent of the hazard and the trap-like peril of it. A considerable section of the path had slid away in a land- or rock-slide, and Ballard saw how he might easily have walked into the gulf if the dog had not stopped on the brink of it.
"I owe you one, good old boy," he said, stooping to pat the words out on the St. Bernard"s head. "I"ll pay it when I can; to you, to your mistress, or possibly even to your master. Come on, old fellow, and we"ll find another way with less risk in it," and he turned back to climb over the mesa hill under the stone quarries, approaching the headquarters camp from the rear.
When the hill was surmounted and the electric mast lights of the camp lay below, the great dog stopped, sniffing the air suspiciously.
"Don"t like the looks of it, do you?" said Ballard. "Well, I guess you"d better go back home. It isn"t a very comfortable place down there for little dogs--or big ones. Good-night, old fellow." And, quite as if he understood, the St. Bernard faced about and trotted away toward Castle "Cadia.
There was a light in the adobe shack when Ballard descended the hill, and he found Bromley sitting up for him. The first a.s.sistant engineer was killing time by working on the current estimate for the quarry subcontractor, and he looked up quizzically when his chief came in.
"Been bearding the lion in his den, have you?" he said, cheerfully.
"That"s right; there"s nothing like being neighbourly, even with our friend the enemy. Didn"t you find him all the things I said he was--and then some?"
"Yes," returned Ballard, gravely. Then, abruptly: "Loudon, who uses the path that goes up on our side of the canyon and over into the Castle "Cadia valley?"
"Who?--why, anybody having occasion to. It"s the easiest way to reach the wing dam that Sanderson built at the canyon inlet to turn the current against the right bank. Fitzpatrick sends a man over now and then to clear the driftwood from the dam."
"Anybody been over to-day?"
"No."
"How about the cow-puncher--Grigsby--who brought my horse over and got my bag?"
"He was riding, and he came and went by way of our bridge below the dam.
You couldn"t ride a horse over that hill path."
"You certainly could not," said Ballard grimly. "There is a chunk about the size of this shack gone out of it--dropped into the river, I suppose."
Bromley was frowning reflectively.
"More accidents?" he suggested.
"One more--apparently."
Bromley jumped up, sudden realization grappling him.
"Why, Breckenridge!--you"ve just come over that path--alone, and in the dark!"
"Part way over it, and in the dark, yes; but not alone, luckily. The Craigmiles"s dog--the big St. Bernard--was with me, and he stopped on the edge of the break. Otherwise I might have walked into it--most probably should have walked into it."
Bromley began to tramp the floor with his hands in his pockets.
"I can"t remember," he said; and again, "I can"t remember. I was over there yesterday, or the day before. It was all right then. It was a good trail. Why, Breckenridge"--with sudden emphasis--"it would have taken a charge of dynamite to blow it down!"
Ballard dropped lazily into a chair and locked his hands at the back of his head. "And you say that the hoodoo hasn"t got around to using high explosives yet, eh? By the way, have there been any more visitations since I went out on the line last Tuesday?"
Bromley was shaking his head in the negative when the door opened with a jerk and Bessinger, the telegraph operator whose wire was in the railroad yard office, tumbled in, white faced.
"Hoskins and the Two!" he gasped. "They"re piled up under a material train three miles down the track! Fitzpatrick is turning out a wrecking crew from the bunk shanties, and he sent me up to call you!"
Bromley"s quick glance aside for Ballard was acutely significant.
"I guess I"d better change that "No" of mine to a qualified "Yes,"" he corrected. "The visitation seems to have come." Then to Bessinger: "Get your breath, Billy, and then chase back to Fitzpatrick. Tell him we"ll be with him as soon as Mr. Ballard can change his clothes."
X
HOSKINS"S GHOST
The wreck in the rocky hills west of the Elbow Canyon railroad yard proved to be less calamitous than Bessinger"s report, handed on from the excited alarm brought in by a demoralized train flagman, had pictured it. When Ballard and Bromley, hastening to the rescue on Fitzpatrick"s relief train, reached the scene of the accident, they found Hoskins"s engine and fifteen cars in the ditch, and the second flagman with a broken arm; but Hoskins himself was unhurt, as were the remaining members of the train crew.
Turning the work of track clearing over to Bromley and the relief crew, Ballard began at once to pry irritably into causes; irritably since wrecks meant delays, and President Pelham"s letters were already cracking the whip for greater expedition.
It was a singular derailment, and at first none of the trainmen seemed to be able to account for it. The point of disaster was on a sharp curve where the narrow-gauge track bent like a strained bow around one of the rocky hills. As the debris lay, the train seemed to have broken in two on the knuckle of the curve, and here the singularity was emphasised.
The overturned cars were not merely derailed; they were locked and crushed together, and heaped up and strewn abroad, in a fashion to indicate a collision rather than a simple jumping of the track.
Ballard used Galliford, the train conductor, for the first heel of his pry.
"I guess you and Hoskins both need about thirty days," was the way he opened upon Galliford. "How long had your train been broken in two before the two sections came in collision?"
"If we was broke in two, n.o.body knew it. I was in the caboose "lookout"
myself, and I saw the Two"s gauge-light track around the curve. Next I knew, I was smashin" the gla.s.s in the "lookout" with my head, and the train was chasin" out on the prairie. I"ll take the thirty days, all right, and I won"t sue the company for the cuts on my head. But I"ll be danged if I"ll take the blame, Mr. Ballard." The conductor spoke as a man.
"Somebody"s got to take it," snapped the chief. "If you didn"t break in two, what did happen?"
"Now you"ve got me guessing, and I hain"t got any more guesses left. At first I thought Hoskins had hit something "round on the far side o" the curve. That"s what it felt like. Then, for a second or two, I could have sworn he had the Two in the reverse, backing his end of the train up against my end and out into the sage-brush."
"What does Hoskins say? Where is he?" demanded Ballard; and together they picked their way around to the other end of the wreck, looking for the engineman.
Hoskins, however, was not to be found. Fitzpatrick had seen him groping about in the cab of his overturned engine; and Bromley, when the inquiry reached him, explained that he had sent Hoskins up to camp on a hand-car which was going back for tools.
"He was pretty badly shaken up, and I told him he"d better hunt the bunk shanty and rest his nerves awhile. We didn"t need him," said the a.s.sistant, accounting for the engine-man"s disappearance.
Ballard let the investigation rest for the moment, but later, when Bromley was working the contractor"s gang on the track obstructions farther along, he lighted a flare torch at the fire some of the men had made out of the wreck kindling wood, and began a critical examination of the derailed and debris-covered locomotive.
It was a Baldwin ten-wheel type, with the boiler extending rather more than half-way through the cab, and since it had rolled over on the right-hand side, the controlling levers were under the crushed wreckage of the cab. None the less, Ballard saw what he was looking for; afterward making a.s.surance doubly sure by prying at the engine"s brake-shoes and thrusting the pinch-bar of inquiry into various mechanisms under the trucks and driving-wheels.
It was an hour past midnight when Bromley reported the track clear, and asked if the volunteer wrecking crew should go on and try to pick up the cripples.
"Not to-night," was Ballard"s decision. "We"ll get Williams and his track-layers in from the front to-morrow and let them tackle it.