Shadow on the Land (19 page)

Lee came to minutes later with somebody sloshing water over him, and with Highpockets shouting in a high, strained voice: “If I ever get my hands on that dad-burned Bull, I'll fix him so his own mama would throw him to the hogs!”

It made no sense to Lee. Not for a time. He got to his knees, the men before him turning as if they were on a red-streaked merry-go-round. He slashed out with a fist.

“Take it easy, son,” Highpockets said. “Ain't nobody around here you want to fight. Quinn and Bull are both gone.”

Lee came to his feet and lurched to the bar. He poured a drink, and, as he drank it, memory came crowding back into his aching head. Running a hand over his bruised face, he looked at the blood, and wiped it against his pants. “What about Bull?” he asked.

“He tripped you,” the locator said. “You had Quinn damned near out, and you were going after him when Bull tripped you. You just fell into Quinn's fist.”

“I've been fighting him most of my life,” Lee muttered, “and he never knocked me out before.”

“No credit to him,” Highpockets said angrily.

“He didn't look very proud of himself,” the locator said. “He told Bull plenty.”

Lee felt gingerly of the back of his head. “Is it all on?”

“All there,” Highpockets said.

“Guess I'd better go to bed.” Lee took another drink, and reeled back to the hotel.

* * * * *

Lee's head still held a steady, dull ache when he stepped down from the train at Grass Valley the next morning. His left eye was blue and puffy and nearly closed, one corner of his mouth was swollen, and a gash ran along his right cheek. But when he saw Quinn on the street, he managed a grin. The Irishman's face was in worse condition than his own.

“Go on over to the office,” Lee told Highpockets.

Lee moved slowly along the street until he met Quinn, sourness at the method of his defeat still rankling in him. He said sharply: “I figured you'd duck when you saw me, Mike. Took two of you to lick me last night.”

“For which I'm apologizing,” Quinn said with quick sincerity. “You were crowding me, and I had that punch on the way when you started to fall. Damn it, Lee, I just couldn't stop it.”

This was the nearest thing to an apology Lee had ever heard Quinn give any man. He said shortly: “It's all right, Mike. Guess we'll have to get off by ourselves and finish it in our own way.”

“Now that's over, I've got something else I want to say. We've got about all we can stomach, Dawes. If you keep up these sneak tricks, there's going to be the damnedest fight in the cañon you ever saw.”

“What's biting you now?” Lee demanded.

Quinn shoved his hands far into his pockets. “I kicked the other day about somebody stirring our men up. Now it's rattlesnakes. Somebody got a hundred or more and dropped 'em in our camps. Scared hell out of them Italian boys, and a lot of 'em quit.”

“We didn't have anything to do with it, Mike. I tell you it's somebody else who wants us to tangle with each other.”

“Somebody else?” Quinn sneered. “And who would it be but you?”

Lee hesitated, knowing Quinn would not believe him but thinking the other should know. He said: “It's Jepson, but he's been too slick so far to get anything nailed onto him.”

“That banty rooster?” Quinn laughed sourly. “You're getting hard up for goats to lay it onto, Dawes. I can't hold my men back much longer.” He paused, his one good eye bright with anger. “And I'm not sure I want to.”

Quinn stomped away and went on into the Twohy Brothers' office. Lee waited until he disappeared, and then turned into the Porters' office. Johnson Porter was there.

He whistled shortly when he saw Lee's face. “Grizzly bear?”

“Quinn bear.”

Porter smiled. “You boys going to fight all your lives?”

“Looks like it.” Lee told Porter about the rattlesnakes, and added: “One of these days this thing's going to explode, and we've got enough trouble without having a general war on our hands. I didn't find out much in Shaniko, and neither did Highpockets, but I thought I'd spend a few days between the Girt place and Shaniko. I might be able to follow those wagon tracks for a ways. Or there might be a camp those fellows made. Maybe I'll pick up something.

“I was going to send you back to Crooked River,” Porter said. “We've got to buy up all the hay and grain we'll need through the winter, and we might as well be doing it now. I thought I'd put you to buying horses, too.” He nodded at Highpockets. “You know horses, don't you, Magoon?”

“I know 'em backwards and forwards,” Highpockets said. “I'd be pleased to buy for you.”

“He's spent most of his life at the back end of 'em,” Lee said dryly. He reached for his pipe and moved toward the window, not wanting to go to Crooked River now, because he wouldn't get back for his date with Deborah. And in this moment his date with Deborah seemed the most important thing in the world.

“Magoon can work alone,” Porter said. “You go on south as soon as you get done here, Lee. I don't look for any more trouble at Horseshoe Bend.”

“Not unless it's stirred up,” Lee said. “Did you hear anything about the horses and wagon that had the dynamite?”

“The outfit was stolen several days ago from one of our men who was freighting out of Shaniko.”

Lee threw up his hands. “
Aw
, hell, I guess we're up against somebody who's pretty damned smart.”

* * * * *

The days Lee spent searching the rim of the cañon south of the Girt place were wasted. He traced the wagon tracks to a road, and from there they could have gone anywhere. Moving south toward Shaniko, he rode back and forth across the road in constantly widening arcs, and returned to Grass Valley with mingled elation and depression; elated because this was the night he was to meet Deborah again, depressed because the long-sought evidence was as far from him as ever.

Lee had a shave and bath, and returned to his room in the Vinton Hotel. He dressed quickly, knowing that Deborah would be in Moro now. Even by hiring a rig, he would be late getting there. He hurried across the lobby and into the street, and stopped, not wanting to believe what he saw.

Mike Quinn's automobile had rolled to a stop in front of the Twohy Brothers' office. Quinn was behind the wheel, and Deborah, wearing a linen duster, sat beside him, a veil keeping her hat in place.

A crowd had gathered around the car, and, as Lee came into the street, someone yelled: “Where's the cigars, Quinn?”

“A box of 'em in the office!” Quinn yelled back.

“What's the fuss about?” Lee asked a man in front of the hotel.

“Ain't you heard? Why, Quinn just got married to the best-looking woman in the state. Drove in from Moro just now. We're fixing to give 'em the damnedest shivaree in the history of Sherman County. You'll be around, won't you, Dawes?”

“No,” Lee said hoarsely. “I don't guess I will.”

Chapter Fifteen

B
y early September the battle was joined, not only at Horseshoe Bend, but along the entire length of the Deschutes cañon. It was a strange race, not mile by mile and rail by rail across the continent, as was the historic Union Pacific-Central Pacific contest, but rather an explosion of energy on both sides of the Deschutes.

Always there was the problem of supply. The Great Southern ran to Dufur on the west side of the Deschutes; the Columbia Southern reached Shaniko on the east side of the river. Here in central Oregon, where the last remnant of the old frontier was being shoved aside by the encroaching forces of civilization, these short feeder lines were used to their utmost capacity, but aside from them, the weapons of transportation were those of a former century.

The rivalry between men of the two lines was keen and constant. When the Deschutes was between the competitive crews, nothing more dangerous than words was hurled by one side at the other, these to be lost in the growl of the river. At other times, grading crews worked side-by-side, and often the battle of words turned into a long-range rock-throwing contest. Or fists and pick handles became weapons, and the fight was close and bitter and bloody.

It was like a calling of the nations, these men who fought and transported supplies and hewed a place for the rails from solid rock and laid the steel: Swedish powder men, Austrians, Slavic muck stickers, Italian track layers, Greeks, American muleskinners. Behind them were the men who planned and dreamed and drove: John F. Stevens, Porter Brothers, Engineer George Kyle for the Oregon Trunk; George W. Boschke, who topped the Harriman organization, and the staff of engineers headed by H. A. Brandon. Over and above these two armies, marshaled for the invasion of central Oregon, were the great captains of the rails, James J. Hill and Edward H. Harriman.

It was a restless land, this central Oregon in the late summer of 1909, stirred as if it were a great ocean whipped into movement by a gigantic paddle wielded in some mysterious hand. Regardless of the subtle and far-reaching plans that were hidden in the minds of James J. Hill and Edward Harriman as they reached for empire, the people were on the move.

Moro, Grass Valley, Shaniko, Madras—tiny farming or frontier communities yesterday—were having their moment of glory today. Overnight, they had burst into throbbing boom towns, sprawling over the land in strange, unplanned fashion. Tents were pitched; old shacks long deserted were repaired and mopped and pressed into use; new houses were built, unpainted lumber bright in the summer sun.

Always it was this way as a flood of people followed a battle of the giants, all looking for their own small profit, for their share of the cream to be skimmed from this pool of human restlessness.

Then, on September 9th, word came that Edward Harriman had died at his country home, and Oregon was shocked, as was all the nation and the entire railroad world. He had not been in good health for some time, yet his going was unexpected, and it left a vacant place and brought its doubts to those who looked for the Harriman system to lay steel the length and width of eastern Oregon.

On September 14th, the Portland
Oregonian
carried a story stating that ex-Judge Robert S. Lovett, chief counsel for the Union Pacific, had been elected chairman of the executive committee of the company, thereby becoming the successor of Edward Harriman in the control of the vast railroad and steamship systems that the financier had built up. This, the
Oregonian
contended, proved that the Harriman organization was to be perpetuated in just the form in which it had been created.

Lee Dawes had left Grass Valley the day of Quinn's and Deborah's marriage, and had joined Highpockets on Crooked River. He was in Prineville when the news of Harriman's death reached him.

“Funny thing,” Lee said thoughtfully. “We've been fighting Harriman's outfit like hell and we'll keep on fighting, but I don't think there's a man with the Oregon Trunk who isn't sorry to hear of his death.”

“Even Jim Hill,” Highpockets added.

“That's right. For all their scrapping, they held a lot of respect for each other.”

* * * * *

Leaving Prineville the next morning, Lee and Highpockets swung up Crooked River to buy horses, and it was late September before they drove their band into Madras. Lee had welcomed the long hours in the saddle, the dreamless sleep under the stars. He tried to put Deborah out of his mind, tried to cut her out of the grip of his memory as completely as a surgeon would cut away an offending member of the body. He told himself over and over that he had not really loved her. She was just another woman that had been his for a moment, and was gone from his life. He should hate her for what she'd done to him, for the promise she had broken. Yet he knew he did not hate her. But when the frozen numbness in his heart began to thaw, he found his thoughts turning more and more to Hanna Racine.

Lee met Deborah on the street the day after he and Highpockets had delivered the horses to a Porter Brothers' camp. Highpockets had remained in the stable to take care of the saddle horses, the liveryman having told Lee that Johnson Porter was at the hotel and waiting to see him. Hurrying toward the hotel, Lee found himself face to face with Deborah as she stepped out of a store.

“It's nice to see you again, Lee,” she said gravely.

Lee lifted his hat, hungry eyes sweeping her tall, slender figure, her dark eyes alive and inviting, and anger stirred in him. He said quite casually: “Good evening, Missus Quinn.”

For a moment her eyes were fixed on his lean face, utterly sober as if she was stirred by the same memories that were in Lee. Then she said: “We're living in that little white house at the edge of town.” She nodded toward it. “I hope you'll visit us sometime.”

“I don't think your husband would welcome my visit,” Lee said, and, moving around her, went on to the hotel.

Johnson Porter was eating in the hotel dining room when Lee came in. He waved Lee into a vacant chair. “How did you make out?”

“Highpockets says they're good horses.”

“No sign of Jepson or Boston Bull?”

“No, but there will be. Any news I've missed?”

“You know about Harriman's death?”

“Yes.”

“It won't make any difference as far as our railroading goes. They'll battle us just as hard as they have been, but I think we hold a bigger edge than we did. Secretary Ballinger rejected their application for a right of way from Madras down to Sherars Bridge, so we're sitting in the driver's seat as far as the contested ground is concerned. Ballinger held that the Interior Department didn't have jurisdiction to grant their application because it had already approved ours.” Porter whittled on his steak. “Of course, there's always that chance of them coming up with a trick we haven't seen. I won't breathe easy until we lay steel into Madras. It's like waiting for lightning to strike. You just can't outguess it.”