Part 15 (1/2)
Bucks shook himself free and turned on his a.s.sailant. He needed no introduction to the hard cheeks, one of which was split by a deep scar. It was Perry, Rebstock's crony, whom Stanley had driven out of Sellersville on the Spider Water.
”What are you doing around here interfering with my business?” he demanded of Bucks harshly. ”I've watched you spying around. The next time I catch you trying to pull a customer out of my place, I'll knock your head off.”
Bucks eyed the bully with gathering wrath. He was already upset mentally, and taken so suddenly and unawares lost his temper and his caution. ”If you do, it will be the last head you knock off in Medicine Bend,” he retorted. ”When I find trainmen in your joint that are needed on their runs, I'll pull them out every time. The safest thing you can do is to keep quiet. If the railroad men ever get started after you, you red-faced bully, they'll run you and your whole tribe into the river again.”
It was a foolish defiance and might have cost him his life, though Bucks knew he was well within the truth in what he said. Among the railroad men the feeling against the gamblers was constantly growing in bitterness. Perry instantly attempted to draw a revolver, when a man who had been watching the scene un.o.bserved stepped close enough between him and Bucks to catch Perry's eye. It was Dave Hawk again.
What he had just heard had explained things to him and he stood now grimly laughing at the enraged gambler.
”Good for the boy,” he exclaimed. ”Want to get strung up, do you, Perry? Fire that gun just once and the vigilantes will have a rope around your neck in five minutes.”
Perry, though furious, realized the truth of what Hawk said. He poured a torrent of abuse upon Bucks, but made no further effort to use his gun. The dreaded word ”vigilantes” had struck terror to the heart of a man who had once been in their hands and escaped only by an accident.
”You know what he said is so, don't you?” laughed Hawk savagely.
”What? You don't?” he demanded, as Perry tried to face him down.
”You'll be lucky, when that time comes, if you don't get your heels tangled up with a telegraph pole before you reach the river,”
concluded Hawk tauntingly.
”Let him keep away from me if he doesn't want trouble,” snarled the discomfited gambler, eying Bucks threateningly. But he was plainly out-faced, and retreated, grumbling, toward the dance-hall steps.
Dan Baggs, at the first sign of hostilities, had fled. Bucks, afraid of losing him, now followed, leaving Hawk still abusing the gambler, but when he overtook the engineman he found he was going, as he had promised, straight to the roundhouse.
It was almost time for the night trick. Bucks hastened upstairs to the despatchers' office and reported to Baxter, who had returned ahead of him and was elated at Bucks's success. Before the young subst.i.tute took up his train-sheet, he told the chief despatcher of how strangely the conductor, Dave Hawk, had talked to him.
”He has a reason for it,” responded Baxter briefly.
”What reason?”
”There is as good a railroad man as ever lived,” said Baxter, referring to the black-bearded conductor. ”He is the master of us all in the handling of trains. He could be anything anybody is on this line to-day that he might want to be but for one thing. If he hadn't ruined his own life, Dave Hawk could be superintendent here. He knows whereof he speaks, Bucks.”
”What do you mean?”
”I mean he is a gambler. Did you hear the shooting after I left you?”
”No, what was it?”
”It must have been while you were in Perry's. Not five minutes after we parted, a saloon-keeper shot a woman down right in front of me; I was standing less than ten feet from her when she fell,” said the despatcher, recounting the incident. ”But I was too late to protect her; and I should probably have been shot myself if I had tried to.”
”Was the brute arrested?”
”Arrested! Who arrests anybody in this town?”
”How long is this sort of thing going on?” asked Bucks, sitting down and signing a transfer.
”How long!” echoed the despatcher, taking up his hat to go to his room. ”I don't know how long. But when their time comes--G.o.d help that crowd up Front Street!”
CHAPTER XVI
Following Collins's return to duty, Bucks was a.s.signed to a new western station, Point of Rocks. It was in the mountains and where Cas.e.m.e.nt, now laying five and even six miles of track a day, had just turned over a hundred and eighty miles to the operating department.