To The Front Part 2

"You saw Mr. McCrea, Geordie?"

"Yes, mother. He's going to Newburg to catch the Pacific express on the Central, and, mother--I'm going with him."

CHAPTER III

AWAY TO THE WEST

By the general regulations of the United States army there is granted three months' leave of absence to graduated cadets of the Military Academy, to be taken advantage of immediately after graduation. It is given to these young men after their four years of rigorous discipline and hard study, that they may have abundant time to visit home and friends, and to enjoy a period of rest before reporting for duty again to begin their careers as officers of the army.

For nearly two weeks since Graham's graduation day the mother had had him for her very own, busying herself in the choice of his modest outfit, and taking it not a little to heart that he declined to order his uniform and equipment until, as he said, he knew where he was going. She longed to see him in his "regimentals," yet shrank from it as a reminder that all too soon he would be taken from her side to wear it day after day with his comrades in arms. She could not think of that parting to come late in September. She would think only of the glory that was hers in having him here, having him now, with no bugle-call to tear him from her side. She was just beginning to realize her possession, her happiness, when that hateful telegram told of disaster at the mines, and urged her husband to have a representative at the spot. Within one hour of its receipt, George had come to say that he would be that representative, and within two hours, with at least his father's full consent, her dream was at an end and her boy was gone.

That night toward ten he and McCrea were spinning away up the west sh.o.r.e under the lofty, rock-ribbed scarp of Crow Nest and Storm King, to ferry over to Fishkill from Newburg, and there take the Pacific express, making its first stop out of New York City. Each had hurriedly packed such store of clothing as seemed most appropriate to the region and the business to which he was bound. There was no vestige of uniform or badge of rank and station. Geordie took with him his favorite rifle, and in his valise, to be exhumed when they reached the Rockies, was a revolver he knew, rather better than his cla.s.smates, how to use, for he had learned as a lad on the plains. Each had his ticket for Chicago, where they were to change for Denver. Each had a money belt and a modest sum in currency. Each had his hopes of rescuing something if not all of the imperilled property, and neither had even a vague idea of the peril, difficulty, and treachery he was destined to encounter.

Everything had promised well when Silver s.h.i.+eld was first exploited.

Its promoters and agents showed high-grade ore, and reports of expert mining engineers promised abundance of it. All that was needed was development. "Come in now, on the ground-floor, and you'll be coining money in a year's time," said Mr. Breifogle, and to the number of seven the commissioned force at Fort Reynolds had "come." So long as they remained close to the spot all seemed going well. But Graham had been ordered to the Point, and the regiment over in the Oklahoma country.

Then came trouble.

It seemed odd that stock held so high should so soon have to be a.s.sessed. But "some expensive machinery was necessary." Then came a second and larger demand. Silver s.h.i.+eld was so valuable that envious eyes had been directed to it, and fraudulent claims and claimants were constantly turning up. Threatened litigation would be long and expensive. It would be cheaper far to buy off the litigants. So Graham, with a sigh and sore premonition of trouble, obtained the necessary amount on his personal note. McCrea, with inward misgiving, borrowed and sent it. Officers at Reno sent up what they could, but it wasn't enough, and in May came a third appeal. The secretary wrote that litigation had begun, and there was reason to believe the courts were being "approached" by the enemy. It was absolutely essential that "these parties should be bought off," and quite a sum would be necessary. The First National Bank of Argenta (which had once been robbed of a great sum by road-agents, who were run down and captured by officers and men of the --th, and the money recovered) ought in all conscience to be grateful to its benefactors, yet when Graham, McCrea, and Major Lawrence wrote, begging advice in the premises, the bank was non-committal. Some of its customers were among the litigants, as was later discovered. And so it resulted that not until near the end of June did it dawn upon the officers involved that the whole matter was nothing more nor less than a well-conceived, but rascally, scheme to "milk them dry," as was the expression, secure their shares at a sacrifice, or drive them out entirely.

And they, the absentees, were only seven against seventy or more, who were experienced in all the crafts and devices by which mines have been dug at the expense of the many and then made to enrich the few.

It was late at night when the fellow-travellers reached Denver. McCrea was depressed and silent, Geordie eager to push ahead. The former had had time to think over the situation, and in Chicago, while waiting for the Pacific express to start, he had had a fifteen-minute talk with a relative, a Western business man, to whom mining and undermining were matters well understood, and what this expert said had filled him with dismay. "You've simply been bled until you could bleed no more," said he. "Now they've no further use for you. What they want is your stock at five cents on the dollar, to sell to some new gudgeon at fifty. Why on earth, Mac, when you were considering this, didn't you consult me?"

Why, indeed! Like many another man, Mac's eyes had been blinded, his ears deafened to everything but the wiles of the charmer. But with Geordie it was different. He had come because his father was bound to the wheel of duty and could not. Moreover, barring inexperience and youth, Geordie was better fitted to go and do than was his father, the doctor.

He would waste no time with agents. He would employ no lawyer--that was simply waste of both time and money. Of the former they had little and of the latter even less. But his brain was active and fertile. He had slept but little on their swift westward way until after crossing the Mississippi. His mother's grief at parting, and her speechless anxiety as to the dangers that might beset him, had affected him deeply, and at first his silence and preoccupation were due to that. But the fighting blood of the Graeme was in his veins, and against the abominable wrong these "sharks" would do his father and his scattered friends the young fellow was bent on giving valiant battle; and he thought he saw his way to strike and to strike hard.

McCrea had given him the names of most of the sergeants of the old regiment who, when their time expired, had taken their discharge and gone to the mines. Among them were three on whom he believed he could count to back him in a pinch. Among them was the veteran Nolan, on whom he _knew_ he could count.

McCrea had wired ahead to an old and trusted friend, a resident of Denver and a successful railway engineer. He was at the station waiting when the two alighted from their train. It was McCrea's plan to spend one day in Denver in consultation with certain officials, and then to spring a surprise on the "board" at Argenta two days later. He had wired to Fort Reno on the way, urging that one officer, at least, of those most interested should hasten to Denver and meet him, and in the hands of Mr. Warden, their engineer friend, was the reply: Captain Lee would be with them in the morning. To register at a prominent hotel would simply advertise their coming. Warden had seen to that and engaged quarters for them near his own. Thither they were to go at once, and, valises in hand, they followed Warden's lead, McCrea and their guide talking eagerly together, Geordie following, silent and observant. Toward the iron gateway they pressed, jostled and elbowed by hurrying pa.s.sengers.

"It's but a few blocks' walk," Warden was saying. "I've a cart to take your grips and we can chat as we go. I thought you'd be glad of a bite or a cup of tea or something before turning in. Mr. Ross, who wired Dr.

Graham, is here, and he'll meet us at the restaurant. He thinks they are following him--shadowing him."

"Who?" asked McCrea.

"Why, the crowd that are trying to get control there of Silver s.h.i.+eld.

Some of them live in Argenta, he says, and found out he had been in correspondence with the doctor, and that it was he who had given warning." Then, glancing over his shoulder as they neared the gate, and speaking to Geordie, he continued, "What is the name of the brewer up there who wanted your place at the Point for his son?"

"Breifogle."

"That's the man," answered Warden. "Ross says he's one of the leaders of the move. Most of his money has been made by freezing out other men."

And just at that moment, moving leisurely along in the rear of the train-load of belated pa.s.sengers, they reached the exit gate, and the instant they came under the broad, blue-white glare of the electric globe overhead there was a sudden stir in the little gathering along the iron fence. A burly young man darted swiftly away, and in his haste tripped backward over an empty baby carriage. In a second he was floundering on the floor, his bowler hat rolling one way, his stick flying another. A shrill voice began to berate him as he struggled to his feet, but he paused neither to explain nor listen. He swooped for his hat and shot for a dark pa.s.sage, but not before Geordie had caught a glimpse of his face.

"That was young Breifogle," said he.

CHAPTER IV

"I'M READY NOW"

There was no other train over the Transcontinental, westward, before 7.30 A.M. They had reached Denver by the Pacific express, and in five minutes the sleeper in which the two had journeyed from Chicago would be whirling swiftly away for "The Springs" before beginning the long, tortuous climb over the huge bulwark between them and the watershed of the great Colorado beyond. There had really been no reason why Graham should stop over at Denver. He knew none of the officials of the Silver s.h.i.+eld there resident. He did not wish to know them. They had doubtless conspired with their a.s.sociates at Argenta to "squeeze out" his father and friends. They hoped and expected to buy in for a song the valuable stock held by this scattered band of soldiers and some twenty or thirty prospective victims in the distant East. This would give them a controlling interest in the property. It would make them virtual owners of a valuable mine. It would make them richer by far than they were beforehand. This would impoverish, and it might ruin, many of the absent who had furnished the means by which Silver s.h.i.+eld was developed. It was robbery outright, but robbery of a kind so common in our country that people have become callous to it. It was by just such means and methods that many of the great fortunes of America have been won, and the winners ride to-day on the topmost wave of prosperity and popular acclaim, when, if the people but realized the truth, many an object of their adulation would be wearing convict stripes and prison pallor to the end of his dishonored days.

But Graham had journeyed with his long-time friend and senior officer--senior by seven years--and McCrea's plans, to a certain point, seemed to dominate those of the younger and less experienced man.

McCrea's idea was to "tackle" the local directors first and compel recognition of their rights. He, as post quartermaster, had had business dealings with bankers and merchants both in Denver and Chicago. He believed that, reinforced by the presence of Captain Lee from Reno, he could make a certain impression, or else certain threats, that would bring these magnates to time.

But Dr. Graham, an older head, thought otherwise, had so instructed Geordie and so endeavored to impress McCrea. The men, said he, had planned this out. "They stand to lose little in the market if the stocks are 'beared.' They have invested little; we have invested our all. If nothing was found they could quit. If good ore was found, then it was their game to conceal the fact, to demand more and more money for more and more development, force us out, get our shares, and own the property. Why, laddie, the man that warned me dared not sign his name, for every wire was watched; yet I'd stake six months' pay he's got the rights of it. There's ore there in plenty!"

And so every indication said at the start. It wasn't until many Eastern people had been induced to invest (Dr. Graham's New York friends, the Fraziers, among them) that managers and directors began to tell dismal tales and ask for more and more. It was then that Dr. Graham bethought him of a brother Scot who dwelt near Argenta, a man once so poor that when his bairns were down with diphtheria he could not coax Argenta doctors out across the five-mile stretch of storm-swept, frozen prairie. It was the burly post surgeon from the fort who rode eight miles to and eight miles back in any kind of weather, night or day, until he s.n.a.t.c.hed those babies back from death, and gave them, weak and gasping, yet alive, to the arms of their weeping and imploring and at last rejoicing mother. Oh, those are deeds that women remember so long as life remains to them, and that but few men forget, and the clansman, who couldn't begin to pay in cash for what "the Graeme" had done for him and his, could reward in fealty now. It was Donald Ross to whom the doctor had written, and Ross who made investigation and reply.

And yet, though he had taken precaution to send his letter from a village post-office, and his message from a railway station ten miles east of Argenta, the spies of Silver s.h.i.+eld had heard of one or both, and now their watcher knew that two at least of the enemy were in their camp. For what else was young Breifogle there? For what but to give warning had he so suddenly vanished?

It was of all this that Geordie was thinking, as silently he strode along by the side of the two elders, hearing yet scarcely heeding their eager talk. He had plans and projects of his own. Father was not the only one who had a friend or two in Yampah and up the range. Veteran troopers of the old regiment were scouting there for gold and silver, where ten years earlier they had scouted for the red warriors of Colorow and Yampah Jack. If he could but get in touch with Nolan, with Feeny, with almost any one of those now mining who once rode in "E"

Troop! If he could only reach some of the men he guided over the Divide to the successful capture of the gang that looted the First National! Oh, the shame of Breifogle's ingrat.i.tude! As one of the bank's directors at that time, he had pledged everlasting grat.i.tude to the officers and troopers who had restored their treasure.

Suddenly Warden turned a corner, pushed back a swinging door, led the way into a clean, brightly lighted little "dairy" restaurant, pa.s.sed on through to the less public tables part.i.tioned off in alcoves of their own, and here, behind an outspread newspaper, sat, lonely and expectant, a broad-shouldered ranchman whose weather-beaten face beamed joyously at sight of the three, and whose big hands were on young Graham's squared shoulders before they had fairly shaken greeting to any one. "Geordie, mon, but it's glad I am to see ye!" was the whispered welcome. "Softly, now, there's--others here."

Quickly they were served with steaks, scrambled eggs, toast, tea or coffee, as they chose, and two at least were hungry, yet Geordie, brimful of eagerness to put his plan into execution, could hardly spare time to eat. Yes, Ross knew Nolan and Feeny of old. Many's the time they'd dropped in at the ranch when antelope-stalking down the foot-hills. Nolan had prospered. He and Feeny, both, when last heard of were somewhere up among the mines. Burns was in Collins's Camp on Lance Creek. Toomey and Scully had got "cleaned out" and were firing on the Transcontinental.

"Where?" demanded Geordie, his eyes dilating.

"Mountain Division, both of 'em. Toomey on the Mogul that pulls the Time Freight over the range--" And here Geordie stopped him.

"Hear this, Mr. McCrea," said he. "Toomey, of 'E' Troop, fireman on the big freight-engine! He'll surely know where the others are. Now, _you_ know the railway people. You say you've got to stay here a day or two.

Get _me_ permission to ride on any freight-engine, Mountain Division, for the next three days, and I'm off for the mines before we're half a day older, and no man here or there the wiser."

"They'd spot you as you went through Argenta," said McCrea. "Breifogle will be watching every train."

"Every _car_ of every train, perhaps; but I'll be firing by the time we get there, black with soot and coal-dust, and they wouldn't know me if they saw me. If the division superintendent doesn't give it away--and you--who's to know I've turned fireman on a freight? There's my chance, McCrea, and you know it!"

"By Jove, Geordie, but I believe you're right," was McCrea's answer, rising to his feet and facing the eager young fellow across the table.

"You're a 'dandy,' as was said of you on graduation day, only it was meant in a different sense. Who's in charge at the station now, Warden?" he asked, with sudden resolution. "I knew most of their traffic men when I was quartermaster."

Warden whipped out a railway folder. "Colorado Transcontinental," he read, and began skimming down a long list of official t.i.tles and names.

Traffic managers, freight and pa.s.senger agents, superintendents, division superintendents, and then, "Here we are, Mountain Division: W.B. Anthony."

"Know him well," cried McCrea. "He brought the first pa.s.sengers up to Argenta in eighty-seven. He was freight conductor on the U.P. when I was a boy at Cheyenne. We'll nab him first thing in the morning."

"Can't we nab him to-night?" asked Geordie.

McCrea laughed. "You're keen as your father, Pops," said he. "Niver put off till t'-morrow what can be done the day."