Gunsight Pass by William MacLeod Raine

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Throughout the day he continued to drink. This gave him no refuge from
himself. He still brooded in the inferno of his own thought-circle. It is
possible that a touch of madness had begun to affect his brain. Certainly
his subsequent actions would seem to bear out this theory.

Revenge! The thought of it spurred him every waking hour, roweling his
wounded pride cruelly. There was a way within reach of his hand, one
suggested by Steelman's whisperings, though never openly advocated by
the sheepman. The jealousy of the man urged him to it, and his consuming
vanity persuaded him that out of evil might come good. He could make the
girl love him. So her punishment would bring her joy in the end. As for
Crawford and Sanders, his success would be such bitter medicine to them
that time would never wear away the taste of it.

At dusk he rose and resaddled. Under the stars he rode back to Malapi. He
knew exactly what he meant to do and how he meant to do it.

CHAPTER XXXIX

THE TUNNEL

Dave knew no rest that night. He patrolled his line from San Jacinto to
Cattle and back again, stopping always to lend a hand where the attack
was most furious. The men of his crew were weary to exhaustion, but the
pressure of the fire was so great that they dared not leave the front.
As soon as one blaze was beaten out, another started. A shower of sparks
close to Cattle Canon swept over the ridge and set the thick grass afire.
This was smothered with saddle blankets and with sand and dirt thrown
from shovels.

Nearer to San Jacinto Canon the danger was more acute. Dave did not dare
back-fire on account of the wind. He dynamited the timber to make a
trail-break against the howling, roaring wall of fire plunging forward.

As soon as the flames seized the timber the heat grew more intense. The
sound of falling trees as they crashed down marked the progress of the
fire. The men retreated, staggering with exhaustion, hands and faces
flayed, eyes inflamed and blinded by the black smoke that rolled over
them.

A stiff wind was blowing, but it was no longer a steady one. Sometimes it
bore from the northeast; again in a cross-current almost directly from
the east. The smoke poured in, swirling round them till they scarce knew
one direction from another.

The dense cloud lifted for a moment, swept away by an air current. To the
fire-fighters that glimpse of the landscape told an appalling fact. The
demon had escaped below from San Jacinto Canon and been swept westward by
a slant of wind with the speed of an express train. They were trapped by
the back-fire in a labyrinth from which there appeared no escape. Every
path of exit was blocked. The flames had leaped from hilltop to hilltop.

The men gathered together to consult. Many of them were on the verge of
panic.

Dave spoke quietly. "We've got a chance if we keep our heads. There's an
old mining tunnel hereabouts. Follow me, and stay together."

He plunged into the heavy smoke that had fallen about them again, working
his way by instinct rather than by sight. Twice he stopped, to make sure
that his men were all at heel. Several times he left them, diving into
the smoke to determine which way they must go.

The dry, salt crackle of a dead pine close at hand would have told him,
even if the oppressive heat had not, that the fire would presently sweep
over the ground where they stood. He drew the men steadily toward Cattle
Canon.

In that furious, murk-filled world he could not be sure he was moving in
the right direction, though the slope of the ground led him to think so.
Falling trees crashed about them. The men staggered on in the uncanny
light which tinged even the smoke.

Dave stopped and gave sharp, crisp orders. His voice was even and steady.
"Must be close to it now. Lie back of these down trees with your faces
close to the ground. I'll be back in a minute. Shorty, you're boss of the
crew while I'm away."

"You're gonna leave us to roast," a man accused, in a voice that was half
a scream.

Sanders did not stop to answer him, but Shorty took the hysterical man in
hand. "Git down by that log pronto or I'll bore a hole in you. Ain't you
got sense enough to see he'll save us if there's a chance?"

The man fell trembling to the ground.

"Two men behind each log," ordered Shorty. "If yore clothes git afire,
help each other put it out."

They lay down and waited while the fire swept above and around them.
Fortunately the woods here were not dense. Men prayed or cursed or wept,
according to their natures. The logs in front of some of them caught
fire and spread to their clothing. Shorty's voice encouraged them.

"Stick it out, boys. He'll be back if he's alive."

It could have been only minutes, but it seemed hours before the voice of
Sanders rang out above the fury of the blast.

"All up! I've found the tunnel! Step lively now!"

They staggered after their leader, Shorty bringing up the rear to see
that none collapsed by the way. The line moved drunkenly forward. Now and
again a man went down, overcome by the smoke and heat. With brutal kicks
Shorty drove him to his feet again.

The tunnel was a shallow one in a hillside. Dave stood aside and counted
the men as they passed in. Two were missing. He ran along the back trail,
dense with smoke from the approaching flames, and stumbled into a man. It
was Shorty. He was dragging with him the body of a man who had fainted.
Sanders seized an arm and together they managed to get the unconscious
victim to the tunnel.

Dave was the last man in. He learned from the men in the rear that the
tunnel had no drift. The floor was moist and there was a small seepage
spring in it near the entrance.

Some of the men protested at staying.

"The fire'll lick in and burn us out like rats," one man urged. "This
ain't no protection. We've just walked into a trap. I'll take my chance
outside."

Dave reached forward and lifted one of Shorty's guns from its holster.
"You'll stay right here, Dillon. We didn't make it one minute too soon.
The whole hill out there's roaring."

"I'll take my chance out there. That's my lookout," said the man, moving
toward the entrance.

"No. You'll stay here." Dave's hard, chill gaze swept over his crew.
Several of them were backing Dillon and others were wavering. "It's your
only chance, and I'm here to see you take it. Don't take another step."

Dillon took one, and went crumpling to the granite floor before
Dave could move. Shorty had knocked him down with the butt of his
nine-inch-barrel revolver.

Already smoke was filling the cave. The fire had raced to its mouth and
was licking in with long, red, hungry tongues. The tunnel timbers were
smouldering.

"Lie down and breathe the air close to the ground," ordered Dave, just as
though a mutiny had not been quelled a moment before. "Stay down there.
Don't get up."

He found an old tomato can and used it to throw water from the
seep-spring upon the burning wood. Shorty and one or two of the other men
helped him. The heat near the mouth was so intense they could not stand
it. All but Sanders collapsed and staggered back to sink down to the
fresher air below.

Their place of refuge packed with smoke. A tree crashed down at the mouth
and presently a second one. These, blazing, sent more heat in to cook the
tortured men inside. In that bakehouse of hell men showed again their
nature, cursing, praying, storming, or weeping as they lay.

The prospect hole became a madhouse. A big Hungarian, crazed by the
torment he was enduring, leaped to his feet and made for the blazing hill
outside.

"Back there!" Dave shouted hoarsely.

The big fellow rushed him. His leader flung him back against the rock
wall. He rushed again, screaming in crazed anger. Sanders struck him down
with the long barrel of the forty-five. The Hungarian lay where he fell
for a few minutes, then crawled back from the mouth of the pit.

At intervals others tried to break out and were driven back.

Dave's eyebrows crisped away. He could scarcely draw a breath through his
inflamed throat. His eyes were swollen and almost blinded with smoke. His
lungs ached. Whenever he took a step he staggered. But he stuck to his
job hardily. The tomato can moved more jerkily. It carried less water.
But it still continued to drench the blazing timbers at the mouth of the
tunnel.

So Dave held the tunnel entrance against the fire and against his own
racked and tortured men. Occasionally he lay down to breathe the air
close to the floor. There was no circulation, for the tunnel ended in a
wall face. But the smoke was not so heavy close to the ground.

Man after man succumbed to the stupor of unconsciousness. Men choked,
strangled, and even died while their leader, his hair burnt and his eyes
almost sightless, face and body raw with agonizing wounds, crept feebly
about his business of saving their lives.

Fire-crisped and exhausted, he dropped down at last into forgetfulness of
pain. And the flames, which had fought with such savage fury to blot out
the little group of men, fell back sullenly in defeat. They had spent
themselves and could do no more.

The line of fire had passed over them. It left charred trees still
burning, a hillside black and smoking, desolation and ruin in its path.

Out of the prospect hole a man crawled over Dave's prostrate body. He
drew a breath of sweet, delicious air. A cool wind lifted the hair from
his forehead. He tried to give a cowpuncher's yell of joy. From out of
his throat came only a cracked and raucous rumble. The man was Shorty.

He crept back into the tunnel and whispered hoarsely the good news. Men
came out on all fours over the bodies of those who could not move. Shorty
dragged Dave into the open. He was a sorry sight. The shirt had been
almost literally burned from his body.

In the fresh air the men revived quickly. They went back into the cavern
and dragged out those of their companions not yet able to help
themselves. Three out of the twenty-nine would never help themselves
again. They had perished in the tunnel.

CHAPTER XL

A MESSAGE

The women of Malapi responded generously to the call Joyce made upon them
to back their men in the fight against the fire in the chaparral. They
were simple folk of a generation not far removed from the pioneer one
which had settled the country. Some of them had come across the plains in
white-topped movers' wagons. Others had lain awake in anxiety on account
of raiding Indians on the war-path. All had lived lives of frugal
usefulness. It is characteristic of the frontier that its inhabitants
help each other without stint when the need for service arises. Now they
cooked and baked cheerfully to supply the wants of the fire-fighters.

Joyce was in command of the commissary department. She ordered and issued
supplies, checked up the cooked food, and arranged for its transportation
to the field of battle. The first shipment went out about the middle of
the afternoon of the first day of the fire. A second one left town just
after midnight. A third was being packed during the forenoon of the
second day.

Though Joyce had been up most of the night, she showed no signs of
fatigue. In spite of her slenderness, the girl was possessed of a fine
animal vigor. There was vitality in her crisp tread. She was a decisive
young woman who got results competently.

A bustling old lady with the glow of winter apples in her wrinkled cheeks
remonstrated with her.

"You can't do it all, dearie. If I was you I'd go home and rest now. Take
a nice long nap and you'll feel real fresh," she said.

"I'm not tired," replied Joyce. "Not a bit. Think of those poor men out
there fighting the fire day and night. I'd be ashamed to quit."

The old lady's eyes admired the clean, fragrant girl packing sandwiches.
She sighed, regretfully. Not long since--as her memory measured time--she
too had boasted a clear white skin that flushed to a becoming pink on her
smooth cheeks when occasion called.

"A--well a--well, dearie, you'll never be young but once. Make ye the
most of it," she said, a dream in her faded eyes.

Out of the heart of the girl a full-throated laugh welled. "I'll do just
that, Auntie. Then I'll grow some day into a nice old lady like you."
Joyce recurred to business in a matter-of-fact voice. "How many more
of the ham sandwiches are there, Mrs. Kent?"

About sunset Joyce went home to see that Keith was behaving properly and
snatched two hours' sleep while she could. Another shipment of food had
to be sent out that night and she did not expect to get to bed till well
into the small hours.

Keith was on hand when she awakened to beg for permission to go out to
the fire.

"I'll carry water, Joy, to the men. Some one's got to carry it, ain't
they, 'n' if I don't mebbe a man'll haf to."

The young mother shook her head decisively. "No, Keithie, you're too
little. Grow real fast and you'll be a big boy soon."

"You don't ever lemme have any fun," he pouted. "I gotta go to bed an'
sleep an' sleep an' sleep."

She had no time to stay and comfort him. He pulled away sulkily from her
good-night kiss and refused to be placated. As she moved away into the
darkness, it gave Joyce a tug of the heart to see his small figure on
the porch. For she knew that as soon as she was out of sight he would
break down and wail.

He did. Keith was of that temperament which wants what it wants when it
wants it. After a time his sobs subsided. There wasn't much use crying
when nobody was around to pay any attention to him.

He went to bed and to sleep. It was hours later that the voice of some
one calling penetrated his dreams. Keith woke up, heard the sound of a
knocking on the door, and went to the window. The cook was deaf as
a post and would never hear. His sister was away. Perhaps it was a
message from his father.

A man stepped out from the house and looked up at him. "Mees Crawford,
ees she at home maybeso?" he asked. The man was a Mexican.

"Wait a jiffy. I'll get up," the youngster called back.

He hustled into his clothes, went down, and opened the door.

"The senorita. Ees she at home?" the man asked again.

"She's down to the Boston Emporium cuttin' sandwiches an' packin' 'em,"
Keith said. "Who wants her?"

"I have a note for her from Senor Sanders."

Master Keith seized his opportunity promptly. "I'll take you down there."

The man brought his horse from the hitching-rack across the road. Side by
side they walked downtown, the youngster talking excitedly about the
fire, the Mexican either keeping silence or answering with a brief "Si,
muchacho."

Into the Boston Emporium Keith raced ahead of the messenger. "Joy, Joy, a
man wants to see you! From Dave!" he shouted.

Joyce flushed. Perhaps she would have preferred not to have her private
business shouted out before a roomful of women. But she put a good face
on it.

"A letter, senorita," the man said, presenting her with a note which he
took from his pocket.

The note read:

MISS JOYCE:

Your father has been hurt in the fire. This man will take you to him.

DAVE SANDERS

Joyce went white to the lips and caught at the table to steady herself.
"Is--is he badly hurt?" she asked.

The man took refuge in ignorance, as Mexicans do when they do not want to
talk. He did not understand English, he said, and when the girl spoke in
Spanish he replied sulkily that he did not know what was in the letter.
He had been told to deliver it and bring the lady back. That was all.

Keith burst into tears. He wanted to go to his father too, he sobbed.

The girl, badly shaken herself in soul, could not refuse him. If his
father was hurt he had a right to be with him.

"You may ride along with me," she said, her lip trembling.

The women gathered round the boy and his sister, expressing sympathy
after the universal fashion of their sex. They were kinder and more
tender than usual, pressing on them offers of supplies and service. Joyce
thanked them, a lump in her throat, but it was plain that the only way in
which they could help was to expedite her setting out.

Soon they were on the road, Keith riding behind his sister and clinging
to her waist. Joyce had slipped a belt around the boy and fastened it to
herself so that he would not fall from the saddle in case he slept. The
Mexican rode in complete silence.

For an hour they jogged along the dusty road which led to the new oil
field, then swung to the right into the low foothills among which the
mountains were rooted.

Joyce was a bit surprised. She asked questions, and again received for
answers shrugs and voluble Spanish irrelevant to the matter. The young
woman knew that the battle was being fought among the canons leading
to the plains. This trail must be a short cut to one of them. She gave up
trying to get information from her guide. He was either stupid or sulky;
perhaps a little of each.

The hill trail went up and down. It dipped into valleys and meandered
round hills. It climbed a mountain spur, slipped through a notch, and
plumped sharply into a small mountain park. At the notch the Mexican
drew up and pointed a finger. In the dim pre-dawn grayness Joyce could
see nothing but a gulf of mist.

"Over there, Senorita, he waits."

"Where?"

"In the arroyo. Come."

They descended, letting the horses pick their way down cautiously through
the loose rubble of the steep pitch. The heart of the girl beat fast with
anxiety about her father, with the probability that David Sanders would
soon come to meet her out of the silence, with some vague prescience of
unknown evil clutching at her bosom. There had been growing in Joyce a
feeling that something was wrong, something sinister was at work which
she did not understand.

A mountain corral took form in the gloom. The Mexican slipped the bars of
the gate to let the horses in.

"Is he here?" asked Joyce breathlessly.

The man pointed to a one-room shack huddled on the hillside.

Keith had fallen sound asleep, his head against the girl's back. "Don't
wake him when you lift him down," she told the man. "I'll just let him
sleep if he will."

The Mexican carried Keith to a pile of sheepskins under a shed and
lowered him to them gently. The boy stirred, turned over, but did not
awaken.

Joyce ran toward the shack. There was no light in it, no sign of life
about the place. She could not understand this. Surely someone must be
looking after her father. Whoever this was must have heard her coming.
Why had he not appeared at the door? Dave, of course, might be away
fighting fire, but someone....

Her heart lost a beat. The shadow of some horrible thing was creeping
over her life. Was her father dead? What shock was awaiting her in the
cabin?

At the door she raised her voice in a faint, ineffective call. Her knees
gave way. She felt her body shaking as with an ague. But she clenched her
teeth on the weakness and moved into the room.

It was dark--darker than outdoors. But as her eyes grew accustomed to the
absence of light she made out a table, a chair, a stove. From the far
side of the room came a gurgle that was half a snore.

"Father," she whispered, and moved forward.

Her outstretched hand groped for the bed and fell on clothing warm with
heat transmitted from a human body. At the same time she subconsciously
classified a strong odor that permeated the atmosphere. It was whiskey.

The sleeper stirred uneasily beneath her touch. She felt stifled, wanted
to shout out her fears in a scream. Far beyond the need of proof she knew
now that something was very wrong, though she still could not guess
at what the dreadful menace was.

But Joyce had courage. She was what the wind and the sun and a long line
of sturdy ancestors had made her. She leaned forward toward the awakening
man just as he turned in the bunk.

A hand fell on her wrist and closed, the fingers like bands of iron.
Joyce screamed wildly, her nerve swept away in a reaction of terror. She
fought like a wildcat, twisting and writhing with all her supple strength
to break the grip on her arm.

For she knew now what the evil was that had been tolling a bell of
warning in her heart.

CHAPTER XLI

HANK BRINGS BAD NEWS

The change in the wind had cost three lives, but it had saved the Jackpot
property and the feed on the range. After the fire in San Jacinto Canon
had broken through Hart's defense by its furious and persistent attack,
nothing could have prevented it from spreading over the plains on a wild
rampage except a cloudburst or a decided shift of wind. This last had
come and had driven the flames back on territory already burnt over.

The fire did not immediately die out, but it soon began to dwindle. Only
here and there did it leap forward with its old savage fury. Presently
these sporadic plunges wore themselves out for lack of fuel. The
devastated area became a smouldering, smoking char showing a few isolated
blazes in the barren ruin. There were still possibilities of harm in them
if the wind should shift again, but for the present they were subdued to
a shadow of their former strength. It remained the business of the
fire-fighters to keep a close watch on the red-hot embers to prevent them
from being flung far by the breeze.

Fortunately the wind died down soon, reducing the danger to a minimum.

Dave handed back to Shorty the revolver he had borrowed so peremptorily
from his holster.

"Much obliged. I won't need this any more."

The cowpuncher spoke grimly. "I'm liable to."

"Mexico is a good country for a cattleman," Sanders said, looking
straight at him.

Shorty met him eye to eye. "So I've been told."

"Good range and water-holes. Stock fatten well."

"Yes."

"A man might do worse than go there if he's worn out this country."

"Stage-robbers and rustlers right welcome, are they?" asked Shorty
hardily.

"No questions asked about a man's past if his present is O.K."

"Listens good. If I meet anybody lookin' to make a change I'll tell him
you recommended Mexico." The eyes of the two men still clashed. In each
man's was a deep respect for the other's gameness. They had been tried by
fire and come through clean. Shorty voiced this defiantly. "I don't like
a hair of yore head. Never did. You're too damned interferin' to suit me.
But I'll say this. You'll do to ride the river with, Sanders."

"I'll interfere again this far, Shorty. You're too good a man to go bad."

"Oh, hell!" The outlaw turned away; then thought better of it and came
back. "I'll name no names, but I'll say this. Far as I'm concerned Tim
Harrigan might be alive to-day."

Dave, with a nod, accepted this as true. "I guessed as much. You've been
running with a mighty bad pardner."

"Have I?" asked the rustler blandly. "Did I say anything about a
pardner?"

His eye fell on the three still figures lying on the hillside in a row.
Not a twitching muscle in his face showed what he was thinking, that they
might have been full of splendid life and vigor if Dug Doble had not put
a match to the chaparral back of Bear Canon. The man had murdered them
just as surely as though he had shot them down with a rifle. For weeks
Shorty had been getting his affairs in order to leave the country, but
before he went he intended to have an accounting with one man.

Dillon came up to Sanders and spoke in an awed voice. "What do you aim to
do with ... these, Sanders?" His hand indicated the bodies lying near.

"Send horses up for them," Dave said. "You can take all the men back to
camp with you except three to help me watch the fire. Tell Mr. Crawford
how things are."

The men crept down the hill like veterans a hundred years old. Ragged,
smoke-blackened, and grimy, they moved like automatons. So great was
their exhaustion that one or two dropped out of line and lay down on
the charred ground to sleep. The desire for it was so overmastering that
they could not drive their weighted legs forward.

A man on horseback appeared and rode up to Dave and Shorty. The man was
Bob Hart. The red eyes in his blackened face were sunken and his coat
hung on him in crisped shreds. He looked down at the bodies lying side by
side. His face worked, but he made no verbal comment.

"We piled into a cave. Some of the boys couldn't stand it," Dave
explained.

Bob's gaze took in his friend. The upper half of his body was almost
naked. Both face and torso were raw with angry burns. Eyebrows had
disappeared and eyes were so swollen as to be almost closed. He was
gaunt, ragged, unshaven, and bleeding. Shorty, too, appeared to have gone
through the wars.

"You boys oughtta have the doc see you," Hart said gently. "He's down at
camp now. One of Em's men had an arm busted by a limb of a tree fallin'
on him. I've got a coupla casualties in my gang. Two or three of 'em
runnin' a high fever. Looks like they may have pneumonia, doc says. Lungs
all inflamed from swallowin' smoke.... You take my hawss and ride down to
camp, Dave. I'll stick around here till the old man sends a relief."

"No, you go down and report to him, Bob. If Crawford has any fresh men
I'd like mine relieved. They've been on steady for 'most two days and
nights. Four or five can hold the fire here. All they need do is watch
it."

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