There was no demonstration at the point where the abandoned gasoline car had been demolished, though David had the train stopped and got off with his pick-handle squad to beat the covers. The straight piece of track was on the river bank, with a wooded hill on the left from which a few determined snipers might have wrought havoc with the beaters, but no man was found and no shot was fired.
Plegg spoke of the probabilities as the train proceeded up the valley.
“We are through with them for to-night,” was his prediction. “It is eight miles to Powder Can or the Gap, and only four to Agorda. They’ll go east instead of west.”
“Yes,” David agreed; “now that they know they can’t bluff us. That is what I meant to do; turn the bluff the other way around. I guess we did it.”
The first assistant, isolated in his seat on the fireman’s box, held his peace until the train came to the end of its run in the headquarters yard. But on the way over to the bunk car with his chief, he had a word to add, and added it.
“Now that Crawford has dumped the wheel-barrow and spilled all the garden truck, I can speak of a thing we’ve all known since the story of your manhandling of Lushing drifted into camp. Lushing is peacock-vain; no stage-door johnnie was ever more so. Even when he was here on the work he kept his mustaches curled, his beard trimmed to a hair, and his clothes looking as if he had just stepped out of a tailor’s shop. You’ve spoiled his beauty for all time, and he’d draw and quarter you for it if he could.”
“As a matter of fact, I hit him only once; it was all the chance I had before his gun went off. But I don’t care what I’ve done to his face, Plegg. As I remarked to Crawford, I’m only sorry I didn’t break his neck.”
“Perhaps it would have been safer if you had,” was the quiet suggestion. “As it is, he’ll never forgive you, and he won’t be satisfied with any light revenge. Which brings on more talk. I have a notion that this ‘arrest’ business to-night was pure bunk. I don’t doubt that Lushing had gone through all the forms and had sworn out the warrants. Doubtless, he was going to make a bluff at serving them. But, Vallory, I’ll bet a little round gold dollar with a hole in it that the real play was to make you put up a fight so that you might righteously be killed in resisting an officer of the law.”
Again David said, “I don’t care,” and Plegg went on calmly. “If that is the play, we’ll have to take measures accordingly. You mustn’t run around on the job unless I’m with you. If you will pardon me for saying it, you are not quite quick enough on the draw, as yet; and you haven’t learned to hold the other fellow’s eye while you’re doing it. That is about all the difference there is between living and dying when it comes to a show-down, you know.”
They had boarded the bunk car and were preparing to turn in. David looked up from the boot-unlacing and his eyes were bloodshot.