'Firebrand' Trevison by Charles Alden Seltzer (ebook reader for manga .TXT) 📕

“Clay went away about nine o’clock.” The woman did not meet Rosalind’s direct gaze; she flushed under it and looked downward, twisting her fingers in her apron. Rosalind had noted a strangeness in the woman’s manner when she had entered the cabin, but she had ascribed it to the child’s illness, and had thought nothing more of it. But now it burst upon her with added force, and when she looked up again Rosalind saw there was an odd, strained light in her eyes—a fear, a dread—a sinister something that she shrank from. Rosalind remembered the killing of Marchmont, and had a quick divination of impending trouble.

“What is it, Mrs. Levins? What has happened?”

The woman gulped hard, and clenched her hands. Evidently, whatever her trouble, she had determined to bear it alone, but was now wavering.

“Tell me, Mrs. Levins; perhaps I can help you?”

“You can!” The words burst sobbingly from the woman. “Maybe you can prevent it. But, oh, Miss Rosalind, I wasn’t to say anything—Clay told me not to. But I’m so afraid! Clay’s so hot-headed, and Trevison is so daring! I’m afraid they won’t stop at anything!”

“But what is it?” demanded Rosalind, catching something of the woman’s excitement.

“It’s about the machinery at the butte—the mining machinery. My God, you’ll never say I told you—will you? But they’re going to blow it up tonight—Clay and Trevison; they’re going to dynamite it! I’m afraid there will be murder done!”

“Why didn’t you tell me before?” The girl stood rigid, white, breathless.

“Oh, I ought to,” moaned the woman. “But I was afraid you’d tell—Corrigan—somebody—and—and they’d get into trouble with the law!”

“I won’t tell—but I’ll stop it—if there’s time! For your sake. Trevison is the one to blame.”

She inquired about the location of the butte; the shortest trail, and then ran out to her horse. Once in the saddle she drew a deep breath and sent the animal scampering into the flood of moonlight.

Down toward the cut the two men ran, and when they reached a gully at a distance of several hundred feet from the dynamite shed they came upon their horses. Mounting, they rode rapidly down the track toward the butte where the mining machinery was being erected. They had taken the handkerchiefs off while they ran, and now Trevison laughed with the hearty abandon of a boy whose mischievous prank has succeeded.

“That was easy. I thought I heard a noise, though, when you backed against the door and shoved it open.”

“Nobody usually monkeys around a dynamite shed at night,” returned Levins. “Whew! There’s enough of that stuff there to blow Manti to Kingdom Come—wherever that is.”

They rode boldly across the level at the base of the butte, for they had reconnoitered after meeting on the plains just outside of town, and knew Corrigan had left no one on guard.

“It’s a cinch,” Levins declared as they dismounted from their horses in the shelter of a shoulder of the butte, about a hundred yards from where the corrugated iron building, nearly complete, loomed somberly on the level. “But if they’d ever get evidence that we done it—”

Trevison laughed lowly, with a grim humor that made Levins look sharply at him. “That abandoned pueblo on the creek near your shack is built like a fortress, Levins.”

“What in hell has this job got to do with that dobie pile?” questioned the other.

“Plenty. Oh, you’re curious, now. But I’m going to keep you guessing for a day or two.”

“You’ll go loco—give you time,” scoffed Levins.

“Somebody else will go crazy when this stuff lets go,” laughed Trevison, tapping his pockets.

Levins snickered. They trailed the reins over the heads of their horses, and walked swiftly toward the corrugated iron building. Halting in the shadow of it, they held a hurried conference, and then separated, Trevison going toward the engine, already set up, with its flimsy roof covering it, and working around it for a few minutes, then darting from it to a small building filled with tools and stores, and to a pile of machinery and supplies stacked against the wall of the butte. They worked rapidly, elusive as shadows in the deep gloom of the wall of the butte, and when their work was completed they met in the full glare of the moonlight near the corrugated iron building and whispered again.

Lashing her horse over a strange trail, Rosalind Benham came to a thicket of gnarled fir-balsam and scrub oak that barred her way completely. She had ridden hard and her horse breathed heavily during the short time she spent looking about her. Her own breath was coming sharply, sobbing in her throat, but it was more from excitement than from the hazard and labor of the ride, for she had paid little attention to the trail, beyond giving the horse direction, trusting to the animal’s wisdom, accepting the risks as a matter-of-course. It was the imminence of violence that had aroused her, the portent of a lawless deed that might result in tragedy. She had told Mrs. Levins that she was doing this thing for her sake, but she knew better. She did consider the woman, but she realized that her dominating passion was for the grim-faced young man who, discouraged, driven to desperation by the force of circumstances—just or not—was fighting for what he considered were his rights—the accumulated results of ten years of exile and work. She wanted to save him from this deed, from the results of it, even though there was nothing but condemnation in her heart for him because of it.

“To the left of the thicket is a slope,” Mrs. Levins had told her. She stopped only long enough to get her bearings, and at her panting, “Go!” the horse leaped. They were at the crest of the slope quickly, facing the bottom, yawning, deep, dark. She shut her eyes as the horse took it, leaning back to keep from falling over the animal’s head, holding tightly to the pommel of the saddle. They got down, someway, and when she felt the level under them she lashed the horse again, and urged him around a shoulder of the precipitous wall that loomed above her, frowning and somber.

She heard a horse whinny as she flashed past the shoulder, her own beast tearing over the level with great catlike leaps, but she did not look back, straining her eyes to peer into the darkness along the wall of the butte for sight of the buildings and machinery.

She saw them soon after passing the shoulder, and exclaimed her thanks sharply.

“All set,” said one of the shadowy figures near the corrugated iron building. A match flared, was applied to a stick of punk in the hands of each man, and again they separated, each running, applying the glowing wand here and there.

Trevison’s work took him longest, and when he leaped from the side of a mound of supplies Levins was already running back toward the shoulder where they had left their horses. They joined, then split apart, their weapons leaping into their hands, for they heard the rapid drumming of horse’s hoofs.

“They’re coming!” panted Trevison, his jaws setting as he plunged on toward the shoulder of the butte. “Run low and duck at the flash of their guns!” he warned Levins.

A wide swoop brought the oncoming horse around the shoulder of the butte into full view. As the moonlight shone, momentarily, on the rider, Trevison cried out, hoarsely:

“God, it’s a woman!”

He leaped, at the words, out of the shadow of the butte into the moonlight of the level, straight into the path of the running horse, which at sight of him slid, reared and came to a halt, snorting and trembling. Trevison had recognized the girl; he flung himself at the horse, muttering: “Dynamite!” seized the beast by the bridle, forced its head around despite the girl’s objections and incoherent pleadings—some phrases of which sank home, but were disregarded.

“Don’t!” she cried, fiercely, as he struck the animal with his fist to accelerate its movements. She was still crying to him, wildly, hysterically, as he got the animal’s head around and slapped it sharply on the hip, his pistol crashing at its heels.

The frightened animal clattered over the back trail, Trevison running after it. He reached Nigger, flung himself into the saddle, and raced after Levins, who was already far down the level, following Rosalind’s horse. At a turn in the butte he came upon them both, their horses halted, the girl berating Levins, the man laughing lowly at her.

“Don’t!” she cried to Trevison as he rode up. “Please, Trevison—don’t let that happen! It’s criminal; it’s outlawry!”

“Too late,” he said grimly, and rode close to her to grasp the bridle of her horse. Standing thus, they waited—an age, to the girl, in reality only a few seconds. Then the deep, solemn silence of the night was split by a hollow roar, which echoed and re-echoed as though a thousand thunder storms had centered over their heads. A vivid flash, extended, effulgent, lit the sky, the earth rocked, the canyon walls towering above them seemed to sway and reel drunkenly. The girl covered her face with her hands. Another blast smote the night, reverberating on the heels of the other; there followed another and another, so quickly that they blended; then another, with a distinct interval between. Then a breathless, unreal calm, through which distant echoes rumbled; then a dead silence, shattered at last by a heavy, distant clatter, as though myriad big hailstones were falling on a pavement. And then another silence—the period of reeling calm after an earthquake.

“O God!” wailed the girl; “it is horrible!”

“You’ve got to get out of here—the whole of Manti will be here in a few minutes! Come on!”

He urged Nigger farther down the canyon, and up a rocky slope that brought them to the mesa. The girl was trembling, her breath coming gaspingly. He faced her as they came to a halt, pityingly, with a certain dogged resignation in his eyes.

“What brought you here? Who told you we were here?” he asked, gruffly.

“It doesn’t matter!” She faced him defiantly. “You have outraged the laws of your country tonight! I hope you are punished for it!”

He laughed, derisively. “Well, you’ve seen; you know. Go and inform your friends. What I have done I did after long deliberation in which I considered fully the consequences to myself. Levins wasn’t concerned in it, so you don’t need to mention his name. Your ranch is in that direction, Miss Benham.” He pointed southeastward, Nigger lunged, caught his stride in two or three jumps, and fled toward the southwest. His rider did not hear the girl’s voice; it was drowned in clatter of hoofs as he and Levins rode.