The Sagebrusher, Emerson Hough [best love novels of all time txt] 📗
- Author: Emerson Hough
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"Who's there?" he called out. No answer came. It seemed to him that he heard some sort of movement in the little rock house.
"Halt! Who goes there?" he called out in a formula he had learned.
He got no answer, but he heard a thud as of a body dropping out of the window of the further side of the house, against the slope of the dam which lay above it.
He ran around the corner of the little building, rifle at the ready, only to see a scrambling figure, bent over, endeavoring to reach the top of the dam, where the smooth roadway ran from side to side of the great gorge. That way lay no escape. The sentry was across yonder, and would soon return. This way, toward the east, a fugitive must go if he would seek any point of emergence from these surroundings.
"Halt! Halt there! Halt, or I'll fire!" cried Gage. "Halt!" He called it out again, once, twice, three times. But the figure, whoever or whatever it was, ran on. It now had reached the top of the dam, and could be seen with more or less distinctness, sky-lined against the starlight and the gray sky behind it.
Sim Gage, old-time hunter, used all his life to firearms, was used also to firing at running game. He drew down now deep into the rear sight of his Springfield, allowing for the faint light, and held at the front edge of the running figure as nearly as he could tell. He fired once, twice and three times—rap!—rap!—rap!—the echo came from the concrete—at the figure as it crouched and stumbled on. Then it stopped. There came a scrambling and a sliding of the object, which fell at the top of the dam. It slipped off the dam top and rolled and slid almost at his feet. He dragged it down into the edge of the beams of the searchlight itself.
Up to this time he had not known or suspected who the man might be. At first he now thought it was a woman. In reality it was a Chinaman, the cook and body-servant of Waldhorn, engineer at the power operations! He was dead.
Sim stood looking down at what he had done, trying in his slow fashion of mind to puzzle out what this man had been doing here, and why he had come. He heard the sound of running feet above him, heard challenges, shouts, every way. Others had heard the shot. "This way, fellers—— Come along!" he heard Wid Gardner call out, high and clear; for that night Wid also was of the upper guard.
But they were not running in his direction. They seemed to be back on the street. All at once Sim Gage solved his little problem. This Chinaman had been sent to do this work—sent by the owner of that house yonder, the engineer, Waldhorn. That prisoner must not escape now. He knew! It was he who had given the searchlight signal! Waldhorn—and Dorenwald! He coupled both names now again.
Sim Gage himself, having a shorter distance to go than his comrades, left his dead Chinaman, and started after the man higher up. He reached the Waldhorn quarters slightly before the others.
He heard the screen door of the log house slam, saw a stout and burly man step out, satchel in hand. The man walked hurriedly toward a car which Sim Gage had not noticed, since there was so much unused machinery about, wheel scrapers, wagons, plows and the like. Now he saw that it was Waldhorn and Waldhorn's car. He was taking advantage of this confusion to make his own escape.
This hurrying figure halted for a half instant in the dim light, for he heard footsteps on each side of him. He knew the guard was coming.
Sim Gage's summons rang high and clear. Yonder was the man—he was going to escape. He must not escape. All these things came to Sim Gage's mind as he half raised his weapon to his shoulder, challenging again, "Halt! Who goes there? Halt!" The bolt of his Springfield clinked home once more.
The man turned away, toward the sound of the greater number of his enemies, weapon in hand. The patrol was closing in. But before he turned he both gave and received death in the last act he might offer in treachery to this country, which had been generous and kind to him.
Sim Gage fired with close, sure aim, and cut his man through with the blow of the Spitzer bullet of the Springfield piece. But even as he did so Waldhorn himself had fired with the heavy automatic pistol which he carried. The bullet caught Sim Gage high in the chest, and passed through, missing the spine by but little. He sprawled forward.
Waldhorn's body was no better than a sieve, for he received the fire of the entire squad of riflemen who had approached from the other side, and so many bullets struck him, again and again, that they actually held him up from falling for an instant.
Now the entire street filled. Foreign or half-foreign laboring folk came out, soldiers and sailor boys came, jabbering in a score of tongues. None knew the plot of the drama which had been finished now. All they knew was that the chief engineer had been killed by the guard. Very well, but who had shot Scout Gage?
Sim Gage, looking up at the sky, felt the great arm of Flaherty, the foreman, under his head.
"Easy now, lad," said the big man. "Easy. Lay down a bit, till I have a look. Where's the Docther, boys?—Get him quick."
"What's the matter?" said Sim Gage. "Lemme up. I fell down—Who hit me?"
He felt something at his chest, raised a hand, and in turn passed it before his face in wonderment.
"Well, look at that!" said he. "Did that feller shoot me? Say, did I get him?"
"Sure, boy!" said Flaherty. "You got him. And so did a dozen more of the fellies. He's deader'n hell this minute, so don't you worry none over that. Don't worry over nothing," he added gently, folding his coat to put under Sim's head. He had seen gun shot wounds before in his life on the rough jobs, and he knew.
"Get a board, or something, boys," he said. So presently they brought a plank, and eased Sim Gage gently to it, men at each end lifting him, others steadying him as he was carried. They took him into the house which Waldhorn had just now left.
It was the turn of dawn now. The soft light of day was filtering through the air from somewhere up above, somewhere beyond the edge of the canyon.
"Better tell those women to stay away," said Flaherty to the young lieutenant. The latter met Annie Squires at the door of her house, ejaculating, demanding, questioning, weeping, all at once. It was with difficulty that she was induced to obey the general orders of getting inside and keeping quiet.
Other men came now, telling of the discovery of the dead Chinaman near the lighting station. The bits of information were pieced together hurriedly, this and that to the other.
Doctor Barnes had seen the light's play on the sky, had heard echoes in the mountains. He now reached the scene, coming at top speed up the canyon trail in his car. He met answers already formed for his questions.
"They got Sim," said Wid Gardner. "Waldhorn——"
He hurried into the room where they had carried the wounded man. "Why, of course," said Sim Gage dully, "I'll be all right. After breakfast I'll be out again all right. I've got to go over and see—I've got to go over to her house and see——" But he never told what he planned.
Doctor Barnes shook his head to Flaherty after a time, when the latter turned to him in the outer room. The big foreman compressed his lips.
"He's done good work, the lad!" said Flaherty; and Wid Gardner, still standing by, nodded his head.
"Mighty good. It was him got the Chink all right—hit him twict out of three, and creased him onct; and like enough this Dutchman first, too. Tell me, Doc, ain't he got a chanct to come through? Can't you make it out that way for pore old Sim?"
"I'm afraid not," said Doctor Barnes. "The shot's close to an artery, and like enough he's bleeding internally, because he's coughing. His pulse is jumpy. It's too bad—too damn bad. He was—a good man, Sim Gage!"
"What was it, Annie?" asked Mary Gage, over in their house. "There was shooting. Was anybody hurt?"
"Some of the hands got to mixing it, like enough," said Annie, herself pale and shaking. "I don't know."
"Was anybody hurt?"
"I haven't had time to find out. Oh, my God! Sis, I wish't we'd never come out here to this country at all. I want my mother, that's what I want! I'm sick with all this." She began to cry, sobbing openly. Mary Gage, now the stronger, drew the girl's head down into her own arms.
"You mustn't cry," said she. "Annie, we've got to pull together."
"I guess so," said Annie, sobbing, "both of us. But I'm so lonesome—I'm so awful scared."
The morning came slowly, at length fully, cool and softly luminous. The friends of Sim Gage, all men, stood near his bedside. His eyes opened sometimes, looking with curious languor around him, as though some problem were troubling him. At length he turned toward Wid, who stood close to him.
"Hit!" said he.—"I know, now."
No one said anything to this. After a time he reached out a hand and touched almost timidly the arm of his friend. His voice was laboring and not strong.
"Where's—where's my hat?" he whispered at length.
"Your hat?" said Wid. "Your hat?—Now, why—I reckon it's hanging around somewheres here. What makes you want it?"
But some one had heard the request and came through the little hallway with Sim Gage's hat, brave green cord and all.
The wounded man looked at it and smiled, as sweet a smile as may come to a man's face—the smile of a boy. Indeed, he had lived a life that had left him scarce more than a boy, all these years alone on outskirts of the world.
He motioned to them to put the hat on the bed side him. "I want it here," he said after a time, moving restlessly when they undertook to take it from him.
He touched it with his hand. At length he reached out and dropped it on the chair at the head of his bed, now and again turning and looking at it the best he might, laboring as he did with his torn lungs; looking at it with some strange sort of reverence in his gaze, some tremendous significance.
"Ain't she fine?" he asked of his friend, again with his astonishingly winsome smile; a smile they found hard to look upon.
A half hour later some man down the road said to another that the sagebrusher had croaked too.
That is to say, Sim Gage, gentleman, soldier and patriot, had passed on to the place where men find reward for doing the very best they know with what God has seen fit to give them as their own.
Doctor Allen Barnes turned slowly toward the house where the wife of Sim Gage still lay. His heart was heavy with the hardest duty he had ever known in all his life.
But as he reached a point half way between the two houses he suddenly stopped. At that moment every man on the little street stopped also.
The routine of the patrol had been relaxed in the excitement of these late events. Indeed, it seemed tacitly agreed that the climax had come, so that there was no need now for further guardianship of the property. It was not so.
The sound was a short, heavy moan, as nearly as it may be described, and not a sharp rending note; a
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