Scott Burton on the Range

by Edward G. Cheyney

Scott dreamed that he was lying on the battlefield with other wounded and dying men groaning all around him. The ambulance corps picked him up and carried him far back of the lines to a peaceful little French village surrounded by high mountains and put him in a little cabin beside a lake. He could hear the babbling of many small streams and the gentle lapping of tiny waves on a pebbly shore. They were soothing, lulling sounds but woven through them he could still hear the groans of the dying. The cabin was becoming unbearably warm and oppressive. He writhed about on his burning couch until the discomfort awoke him.

The groaning continued and Scott sat up suddenly to find that Dawson had regained consciousness. His jaw was badly broken, and it was his moaning that Scott had heard in his dreams. The sun was shining directly on them both with a blistering heat unusual for that time of the year. Scott did not know how long he had been asleep but it must have been a long time. The sun had shifted to the western half of the sky, a warm breeze was ruffling the surface of the reservoir, and black clouds were peeping over the horizon. Dawson was half delirious from suffering and lack of water in the blazing sun. He was moaning constantly and talking incoherently. He did not seem to recognize Scott or to know where he was.

Scott picked up the suffering man as carefully as he could and carried him into the cabin. All his feeling against Dawson was gone now and he saw only a human being in agony. He reproached himself for going to sleep and leaving him in such a condition. He realized now how panic-stricken he must have been to bind the wrists of a crippled man when he himself was armed with the cripple’s revolver. He removed the belt from Dawson’s wrists and ran out to get some water from the reservoir. He poured some of it on the parched lips and the injured man swallowed eagerly though every movement of his mouth seemed to cause new agony. Scott bathed his fevered brow, gave him a little more water to drink and then bound up his jaw with his handkerchief. He wondered how he could get him home. There were two horses there now, but Jed was not well enough trained to be trusted with one end of a stretcher. A trailing pole stretcher on Dawson’s horse would be too rough. He decided that his best move would be to ’phone down to Baxter or Benny for help.

His anxiety to aid the suffering man had so completely occupied Scott’s attention that he had not noticed what was going on outside. A sudden gust of wind forced his attention. He ran to the door. The little black clouds which were just peeping over the horizon a short time before had spread over half the sky. The heat was oppressive and a warm, sultry wind which was blowing half a gale seemed only to accentuate it. Angry little waves were beating on the shore now and the growing streams on the other side of the reservoir were beginning to roar ominously.

Scott ran down to the edge of the reservoir to look at the mark he had set on the dam the day before. The water had already risen a foot since he had noticed it that morning and he knew from the rush of waters in the cañons that it was rising now at an alarming rate. He glanced at his watch. It was five o’clock. Ordinarily the cool of the approaching evening had begun to tie up the springs of ice and snow in the hidden cañons before that time and the streams would be drying up, but to-day that hot wind was searching its way into every cranny of the rocks and melting the winter’s store of ice at a tremendous rate. Nor would they cease to melt even with the setting of the sun as long as that wind continued. A warm rain on top of that was almost sure to be disastrous.

Even while Scott looked the last patch of blue was blotted from the sky and the little basin was thrown into semi-darkness. The swiftness of the onrushing storm was bewildering. He would ’phone Baxter for help to get Dawson out of there and then open the sluice gates without waiting for the level of the reservoir to reach the danger point. He feared that it would reach it all too quickly even with the sluice gates open.

Scott rushed up the bank to the little camp and grabbed the telephone. He gave Baxter’s ring and waited what seemed an age. He tried three times without getting any answer. Baxter must be either out on the range or out of hearing of the ’phone. He tried Benny. Benny was always there.

“Hello,” came the prompt answer.

“That you, Benny? This is—”

He was interrupted by a blinding flash followed instantly by a deafening explosion. The receiver was apparently wrenched from his hand and he stood dazed while the reverberations of the mighty report were hurled crashing from peak to peak. The storm was on them. He grasped the ’phone again desperately but the fuses were burned out and the line was dead.