“That’s a fire, MacLeod. I take no man’s say-so as to what and why. That may be Pulaski Britt smoking a cigar. It may be Jule Skeet’s new spring bonnet on fire. I don’t care what it is. It’s a fire, and it’s going to be reported. Stand out of range.”
His code-card was in the top of his hat. He waved the headgear impatiently at MacLeod, his right hand still on the handle of the screen.
MacLeod knew what the orders of Pulaski D. Britt meant. Britt had not hesitated to rely upon the loyalty of “Ladder” Lane, for Britt, when State senator, had caused Lane to be appointed to the post on Jerusalem. MacLeod reflected, with fury rising like flame from the steady glow of his contemptuous resentment at this old recalcitrant, that Pulaski Britt would never make allowance for failure under these circumstances. To be sure, that fire yonder didn’t look like a carefully conducted incineration of the dwellings of Misery Gore, and it was a little ahead of time—that time being set for the calm of early evening. But orders from Britt were—to his men—orders from the supreme tribunal.
“Britt put you here!” stuttered MacLeod.
“I’m working for the State, not Pulaski D. Britt,” replied the old man.
“And I’m working for Britt, and, by —— he runs the State in these parts! Him and you and the State can settle it between you later, but just now”—he swung to one side, leaned back, and drove his foot with all the venom of his repressed rage against the apparatus—“that fire report don’t go!”
“Ladder” Lane, serene in his proud conjuration, “The State,” had expected no such enormity. The heliograph skated on its spider legs, went over the edge of the roof, and, after a hushed moment of drop, crashed upon the ledge with shiver and tinkle of flying glass.
The boss of “Britt’s Busters” turned and darted through the scuttle and down the stairs, excusing this flight to himself on the ground of his out-of-commission arm.
He leaped out into the sunshine and clattered away over the ledges, the spikes in his shoes striking sparks.
He had made half a dozen rods when he heard the old man scream “Halt!” MacLeod kept on, with a taunting wave of his well hand above his head. The next moment a rifle barked, and the bullet chipped the ledge in front of him.