Shadow on the Land (16 page)

“I thought it was desert.”

“Desert today, Dawes. A Garden of Eden tomorrow.”

“You reckon Eve got that apple off a clump of sagebrush, Jepson?”

The little man jabbed a slender finger at Lee. “We won't have sagebrush around Jepson City. We have a lake to turn into the desert, Dawes, and with an unlimited water supply, the desert will grow anything. Anything. If you're looking for an investment that will return you tenfold, don't pass up Jepson City.”

“Save your promotion talk for the boomers, Jepson,” Lee said.

“I have plenty for them.” Jepson drew a cigar from his pocket, round eyes on Lee. “I've liked you, Dawes, from the moment I first talked to you at Biggs. I'd like to see you come in on something that's good.”

“If you've liked me,” Lee said with biting irony, “you have a strange way of showing it.”

“What do you mean?”

Lee saw he had made a mistake. There was no way to prove what he suspected, and the only way to get the proof he needed was to let Jepson extend himself so far that he had to come into the open. So now Lee shrugged and said—“You haven't been very friendly to the Oregon Trunk, Jepson.”—and moved on to where Highpockets had taken his seat at a table.

“Opportunity don't knock more'n once, son,” Highpockets said, and winked. He whittled on his steak, and then added: “Oh, I forgot to tell you. I saw Jepson and that black-haired Haig filly in the parlor upstairs. They were sure talking a blue streak. I'll just bet she's fixing to slit Quinn's throat.”

Lee had not seen Deborah for weeks, but the fire that the first sight of her had lighted in him had not died. His thoughts turned to her, and he felt the poignant stab of desire as the image of her dark, exotic beauty filled his mind.

“You see that picture of a submarine called
Snapper
?” Highpockets asked. “In
Popular Mechanics
, I think it was.”

“No.”

“Dad-burned funny thing. Going under water. Going up in the air like them Wright brothers. Going on land in autos thirty, forty miles an hour. Sometimes it plumb scares me what'll happen next.”

“I know. I'm going to get me some earplugs.”

Highpockets sobered as Lee's meaning reached him. He said—“Oh.”—in a hurt tone, and lapsed into silence.

Lee asked at the desk for Deborah's room number, and tapped on her door. There was no answer, nor did he hear any sound in her room. She did not want to see him. Her actions had made that plain, but he did not understand it. He walked the streets for a time, had a drink, and, returning to the hotel, tried her door again. Still there was no answer, and he went along the hall to his room. He lay awake a long time staring into the darkness, while the raucous street rackets of the brawling boom town slowly died.

Lee and Highpockets took the train to Grass Valley the next morning, Lee going immediately to Porter Brothers' office, but, before he made the turn into the building, he heard Mike Quinn call: “Dawes!”

Waiting for Quinn to come up, Lee saw that the big Irishman was angry. Lee smiled a little, thinking that Quinn had been angry most of the time lately. “How are you coming with the Racine property, Mike?” he asked.

Quinn made no answer to the question. He cuffed back his hat, stopping a pace from Lee, his meaty shoulders hunched forward in the menacing posture that was characteristic of him when he was thoroughly angry. “Dawes, you've pulled some sneaky tricks, but this one is the lowest,” he said. “The Porters ought to put you to digging wells.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“You never heard of labor agitators, did you? You never sent 'em into our Horseshoe Bend camps, did you?”

“No!” Lee shouted indignantly. “That isn't our way any more than it is yours.”

“For all your cussedness, Dawes, you didn't used to be a liar.” Quinn's craggy face reflected the violence of his feelings. “You're sure lying now. Those fellows have raised hell. Got the men worked up about their grub. Told 'em we'll starve 'em, because you've blocked off our road. They keep harping about how dangerous the work is, and they aren't getting enough pay. Then somebody rolls some rocks down to make what the damned wobblies say look good.”

“We've had no hand in it, Mike,” Lee said. “That sort of business could kick back on us.”

Quinn shook a hard-knuckled fist under Lee's nose. “Then if you didn't have no hand in it, why are our men going over to your camp?”

“I don't know.” Automatically Lee lifted his pipe from his pocket and filled it, his mind reaching back over the last few days. “Mike, some things have been happening to us that don't jibe with your kind of fighting, and I've held back till I found out who it was. Now suppose you do the same.”

Lee wheeled into the building, leaving Quinn staring after him.

Johnson Porter, watching the scene through the window, chuckled. “What's biting your Irish friend?”

Lee told him. Porter shrugged, and dismissed it with a wave of the hand.

“Any good come of your trip?”

“We've got the right of way through that Willow Creek property, but it doesn't look like we'll have any luck cornering the horse feed. Too much of it.”

“I've got a letter for you.” Porter moved back to his desk and, thumbing through some envelopes, found the right one and handed it to Lee.

Lee tore it open, and read the brief note.

Portland, Oregon
August 20, 1909

Dear Dawes:

You did a fine job with the Girt homestead, and Johnson's reports on your work are satisfactory. On the other hand, you have not yet secured the right of way across the Racine property. You've had the time you asked, and it should not be necessary to remind you that we will not build into Bend if we cannot bridge Crooked River.

Sincerely yours,
John F. Stevens

Lee raised his eyes to Porter, and grinned wryly. “Guess I'm not doing so well.”

“Woman trouble?” Porter asked.

Lee nodded. “I wish John Stevens would argue with Hanna Racine. Just once. Then he'd know why I haven't got the right of way.”

Chapter Thirteen

L
ate in August, the Oregon Trunk won the first round of the bitter legal battle that was being waged in the Portland federal courts—an injunction restraining the Deschutes Railroad Company from molesting the Oregon Trunk at any point where the two roads had been disputing for equal right on the upper sixty miles of the survey. This decision, handed down by Judge Bean, gave the Oregon Trunk undisputed right to that section of the cañon, and it was a bitter blow to the Harriman forces.

The immediate effect of Judge Bean's decision was to bring about a cutting down of the Harriman crews. Sixty-four men were laid off by the Twohys, and given free passage on the OR&N to Portland, so that the Porters would not hire them. Johnson Porter, hearing of the incident, contacted his Portland agent, and announced that the men would return to work for Porter Brothers.

“From the reports I've received since I returned here Tuesday night, the Harriman camps appear like a Quaker meeting on a Sunday morning, all quiet,” Johnson Porter told a representative of
The Dalles Chronicle
. “I am hiring all the men they discharge as fast as I can, and am getting as many more as can be obtained. We have a standing order in Portland for one hundred and fifty men to be sent out every day.”

Lee Dawes left Grass Valley for the Girt place the morning the news of Judge Bean's decision reached Porter Brothers' office. Leaning back in his seat, and puffing steadily on his pipe, he felt optimism boil to a new height in him. Highpockets watched him for a time. Then he said: “You're feeling so dad-burned good you're about to sprout wings and take off. Strikes me you're laughing a mite soon.”

“Hell, they can't build a railroad without a right of way.”

“Which they'll get, one way or the other. I heard about a Hill big gun saying that, if the Harriman bunch would stay on the east side of the river, they'd stay on the west side, and both of 'em could build all the road they wanted to.”

“That was said all right,” Lee admitted, “but even if we relocate on the other side here at Horseshoe Bend instead of tunneling, they'll run into trouble down there below U'Rens's ranch where we swing over to the east side. Looks to me like we've got 'em licked if they don't pull a rabbit out of their hat.”

“What are we coming out here for?”

“To see if Baldy's having any trouble at the gate.” Lee knocked his pipe against the side of the buggy. “I figured I'd go on down into the cañon just to see if they're getting ready to quit.”

Baldy had the gate open for them, and shook his head in answer to Lee's question. “No trouble here. I mean nothing that amounted to anything. A wagon rolled in last night about midnight, and somebody shot at me a couple of times. When I shot back, they vamoosed. Guess they wanted to play tag.”

“Didn't say anything?”

“Nary a word.”

“Cut any wire?”

“Nope. Pulled out soon as I squeezed trigger. I walked up and down the fence the rest of the night, but nothing else happened.”

Lee sat puzzling about it for a moment. Finally he said: “It's a damned poor thing to have to fight a shadow.”

“Nothing shadowy about them bullets,” Baldy said.

“We're going on down, but we'll stay here tonight. If something's in the wind, I want to be here.”

“And I'll sure feel better if you are here,” Baldy said with evident relief.

They wheeled on across the Girt place, through the lower gate, and down the steep, twisting road to the bottom of the cañon. There had been a slow breeze on the plateau; there was none here. The sun, directly overhead, loosed its rays into the cañon, making a fierce, stagnant heat that brought a burst of sweat out of a man's body and seared his lungs as he breathed.

Highpockets ran a sleeve across his forehead, jerked a thumb at the river, and muttered: “I'll bet the dad-burned thing's a-boiling.”

They had their midday meal at the Hill camp. “They've got seven miles that ain't touched by injunction,” a foreman told Lee. “They're pushing for all they're worth on them seven miles.”

“Then they've got something else up their sleeves.”

“They sure ain't quitting. When the gate was open, they ran enough supplies through to last 'em a hell of a long time. They've had some labor trouble, and some of their boys have come over to us, but I never did see no reason for it.”

“They haven't laid off any of their men?”

“Not here.”

Lee spent the afternoon in the cañon. Several Harriman crews were working along the river, the earth-trembling reports of blasts coming often. Construction rails were down; dump cars filled with rock
clattered
by Lee. There was a city of tents at Horseshoe Bend, crews of men working at both ends of the tunnel.

Lee was treated with cool courtesy. He was told that the tunnel would be eight hundred feet long with a ten-degree curve. Eighty men were being fed at one camp. Another and larger camp had been established two miles above the bend. Here Lee found the biggest commissary he had seen anywhere along the river: cases of canned goods stacked high, huge piles of potatoes, sugar, flour, beans, and other food supplies. Lee, returning to the buggy, had the feeling that the Deschutes Railroad Company was determined to lay steel over as much of the right of way as it could, and that Judge Bean's decision had not lessened that determination.

“Funny some of them fellers didn't bend a pick handle over your head,” Highpockets said as they started up the grade. “Or didn't they know you?”

“They knew me all right,” Lee said thoughtfully, “but maybe they're playing smart. They don't want us to think they're pulling out yet. Not from this spot anyhow.”

They came up out of the cañon, broke over the rim, and spun on across the plateau to Baldy's camp. The sun had dropped low to the Cascades, and a soft west wind from the mountains touched them and gave a pleasant relief after the closeness of the cañon.

“I wouldn't work down there for a million dollars,” Highpockets said feelingly.

Lee said little while they ate. His thoughts were busy with the events of the previous evening. It was almost dark now, the last of twilight fading into night, and somewhere along the rim a coyote gave voice to his weird call. Lee rose, and knocked his pipe against his heel. “Baldy, there didn't seem to be any sense to that business last night, and that's why I'm thinking it's some kind of a trick we haven't seen through. Chances are they'll come again tonight.”

“Who is this ‘they'?” Baldy asked.

“Jepson, of course, and Boston Bull. Some of these freighters are just plain stubborn. I've seen some of 'em who were fool enough to think they could smash a railroad. They'd make a try just because railroads bust up their business.”

“And Boston Bull would sure like to stop your clock,” Highpockets murmured.

“No doubt of that. Baldy, you stay here at the gate. I'll take the south corner, and, Highpockets, you take the north. Keep moving and listening. If you hear anything out of the way, start shooting.”

Lee moved away from the camp, keeping inside the fence. Presently the campfire was lost behind a ridge, and there was only the pit-black night with the far vault of the sky above and the wide earth around him. He reached the corner, and stood there for a long time, feeling the need for his pipe and knowing that he dared not smoke. He came part way back to the gate, and returned to the corner again, standing there while slow minutes plodded by in their march to eternity.

The distant
clatter
of a wagon broke into the stillness. Tensing, Lee searched the eastern blackness and caught no hint of movement. He stood very still, breathing softly, sorting the night sounds that came to him and making a pattern of them. The wagon he had heard was coming directly toward him, but another outfit had veered northward and apparently was heading toward the gate. This puzzled him for a time, and then he saw the trick. The rig headed for the gate was a decoy to take Baldy's mind off the one they meant to slip through.