Shadow on the Land (12 page)

She smiled. “I heard about that cousin.”

“Maybe I'll change someday.”

“And maybe someday I'll forget myself.” She stood with the light from the hotel lobby cutting directly across her face, and Lee saw that her cheeks were bright with color. Then she shook her head, sobering. “I don't think people ever really change, Lee,” she said. “Good night.”

* * * * *

Lee left Bend the next day, spent some time in Madras buying right of way in the Agency Plains, then took the stage north to Shaniko when he received a letter from Stevens instructing him to get in touch with Johnson Porter at Grass Valley.

He had watched the newspapers for railroad news, and the pattern was shaping rapidly. Twohy Brothers was to build for Harriman's Deschutes Railroad. Six office rooms had been rented and field headquarters established in the town. A warehouse had been secured for a commissary, and was rapidly being filled with supplies for men and horses. And a large cellar for storing blasting powder had been built.

Lee grinned when he read an editorial in the
Madras Pioneer
inspired by this sudden mobilization of Harriman forces. The
Pioneer
offered an opinion that the Oregon Trunk now appeared to be a dead project, and Lee wondered what the editor would think when the Hill forces drew up, as they would now any day.

Reaching Shaniko, Lee saw in graphic swiftness what the railroads would do to central Oregon. He got the last room in the Columbia Southern Hotel; he had to wait in line for a chair in the dining room. Later in the evening he found the saloons so packed that he had to reach over a man's shoulder to lift his drink from the bar. He cruised along the sidewalk, noting the campfires around the town, the distant and plaintive cry of a baby, the shrill and nagging tone of a woman scolding her husband.

They were all here: freighters, railroad laborers and camp followers, sheepmen, cowboys, land locators and hungry-eyed, pinched faced farming families from Iowa, Illinois, the Dakotas, Minnesota, seeking their own land, bound for the high desert east of Bend or the Fort Rock and Silver Lake country farther east and south. This was the last big chance for free homes, 320 acres that the government said was wheat land. It was to be their own—to till and work, to fence and build upon. They were here to claim that heritage that had been an American farmer's from the early days of settlement.

Their land, Lee thought as he saw them talking in knots along the crowded streets, theirs to dream about and starve upon. Conscience stirred in him momentarily, for many of these people would not be here if the railroad companies had not advertised this homestead country and offered colonists' rates. Then he shrugged and went back to his hotel room, thinking that for an instant he had seen it from the eyes of Hanna Racine and wondering at this.

Lee got out the map Stevens had sent him and studied the lower end of the Deschutes cañon. It twisted northward to the Columbia, not more than five or six miles from Grass Valley, which was thirty miles or so below Shaniko. Harriman's Deschutes Railroad was located on the east side of the river, the Oregon Trunk on the west. The Harriman people would get their supplies from points like Moro and Grass Valley on the Columbia Southern without having to ferry the Deschutes, and their problem of transportation would be far simpler than Porter Brothers'.

It was while brooding over this advantage to the Harriman construction outfits that an idea began churning in Lee's mind, and the more he studied the situation, the more excited he became. The newspapers had reported that Twohy Brothers had gathered men and equipment to build a wagon road from Grass Valley into the cañon. It was generally believed that the Harriman men had decided to seize the strategic points without waiting for the courts to decide the conflicts at such locations.

Lying west of the little town of Grass Valley, Horseshoe Bend was such a point, a long, looping curve providing only one good roadbed. Already Lee had heard enough to believe that a Harriman camp was being established there with the hope of applying the principle of first construction and use it in the court struggle over the site. He remembered Stevens mentioning that an Oregon Trunk camp would be there, too, and Deborah had made a slip-tongue remark about Quinn heading this way, the night he had interrupted a nice little interlude. Lee folded the map, knowing that his idea was either a stroke of genius or nothing at all, depending on whether the Harriman people had carefully nailed down all the loose ends.

The train deposited Lee in Moro at 9:10 the following morning. He went directly to the clerk in the Sherman County Courthouse atop the hill. Half an hour later he hired a livery rig and returned to Grass Valley, elation running a swift stream through him. What he was doing would either offset his lack of progress with Hanna Racine or cost him his job.

He had noted it briefly as the train passed through earlier that morning, but aground now in Grass Valley he was astonished at the change that had come over the sleepy little town. Mainly it was the influx of people, but the freight yards were tightly crammed with flats and gondolas and boxcars packed tightly with construction equipment and materials, outfitting for the tremendous camps to be established and food supplies for men and animals. All along the fringes of the town, knocked-down wagons were being assembled to go into the staggering haul; horse teams and pack mules churned the dust into a choking haze. Still on the cars and scattered far and wide on vacant lots and in the fields were scrapers, work cars, lumber, camp ranges, tenting, steel, drilling machinery, and tremendous heaps of commissary stores.

Lee spent some time making inquiries in Grass Valley, called at the French and Downing store, and hired another rig to take him into the country between Grass Valley and the cañon. Here, too, there was a tremendous change. Hordes of workers, largely Italians, having come to Grass Valley on the train and finding no means of transportation, were moving on foot to the first construction camps. Dust boiled everywhere along the way from freshly cut roads, rising behind four- and six-horse freight wagons, behind hacks and buggies and occasional automobiles.

It was mid-afternoon before Lee returned to town. He went directly to Porter Brothers' office. He was told that Johnson Porter was busy with a reporter, and was asked to wait. When the reporter left, a tall man came to the doorway of the inner office. He looked at Lee, and asked: “Were you waiting to see me?” Then a smile broke across his face. “Why, how are you, Dawes?”

“How are you, Mister Porter?” Lee shook the tall man's hand and, when Porter stepped inside, went on into the office. There he stopped in surprise. John Stevens was sitting in the corner, a broad grin on his face.

“Glad to see you, Dawes,” Stevens said, and waved toward a chair.

Porter had closed the door behind Lee. Now he asked: “How's our miracle man?”

“Out of miracles right now,” Lee answered dryly, “but I have a proposition to make.”

“A red herring to make us forget a certain Hanna Racine,” Stevens murmured. “Go ahead.”

“We're a long way from laying steel across Hanna Racine's place,” Lee said, excitement running high in him. The next few minutes would make or break him with John Stevens. “It strikes me that our problem with Hanna will not press us for several months, but there is a ten thousand dollar wagon road the Twohys built that's important right now. You said once, Mister Stevens, we'd have a camp at Horseshoe Bend. I was wondering how you were planning to get supplies to that camp?”

Stevens and Porter exchanged glances. Then Stevens said soberly: “That's a question we haven't answered.”

“I suggest we use the road the Twohys built.”

“They'd like that,” Stevens snorted. “A practical suggestion, Dawes.”

“I think it is.” Lee grinned. “You see, the Twohys forgot to nail down everything.” He saw that he had aroused quick interest in both men, and he went on: “They got permission from the owners of the land to build their roads, and apparently they figured that was enough, but they failed to take deeds to a roadway or to sign an agreement as to the use of the land. The titles were still in the names of Fred Girt, French and Downing, and Roy J. Baker. Why don't we buy their places?”

There was a breathless moment while Stevens and Porter thought about this suggestion. Then Johnson Porter said softly: “Why don't we?”

“We can't close off their road forever,” Lee went on, “and we'll get some heads cracked. We'll probably wind up in court, but I'll guarantee one thing . . . the Twohys won't be building Mister Harriman's road as fast as they'd planned.”

“What if the owners won't sell?” Stevens asked.

“They will.” Lee drew some papers from his coat pocket and handed them to Stevens. “I've already closed the deal.”

Stevens stared at Lee in wide-eyed amazement. He looked at Porter, who had started to laugh, and back at Lee. Then he got up and walked across the room. Suddenly Stevens began to laugh, the loudest and longest laugh Lee had ever heard come from him. He wiped his eyes, and winked at Porter. “Maybe we have got a miracle man, Johnson. I was afraid he'd lost his touch.” He nodded at Lee. “I guess this buys you a little more time with the Racine girl.”

“I think a little time is the answer, Mister Stevens.”

“I hope you didn't bankrupt us buying those ranches.”

“These are contracts of sale, and the price was reasonable.” Lee smiled. “Later we can complete the purchase, or let them go back. Now I'll get over to Moro and file them with the county clerk.”

Johnson Porter was still laughing. “I'd like to see Judge Twohy's face when he hears about this. Nobody ever gets as mad as the judge. Nobody ever gets as mad as an Irishman, anyhow, and Judge Twohy is all Irish.” He looked at Stevens. “How about letting me keep this man? There'll be plenty of spots where I can use him.”

“You can have him,” Stevens agreed, “as long as he can keep working on the two assignments I gave him. I may have other chores later, but right now he'd better handle this hornet's nest he just kicked over.” He was sober now, eyes pinned on Lee. “You'll have hornets buzzing in all directions, son.”

“I'll duck 'em.” Lee's grin was a quick break across his lean face. He swung to face Porter. “I'll need a few men. We'll get a couple of gates across Mister Harriman's ten thousand dollar road, and I'll want padlocks. Big ones.”

“You'll get them,” Johnson Porter promised.

“One more thing.” Lee swung back to face Stevens. “I'd like to put a man named Highpockets Magoon on the payroll. He's done me a lot of good already, and he knows everybody from Shaniko to Bend. Besides, he's an old friend of Hanna Racine.”

“Write your own ticket, Lee.” Stevens glanced at his watch. “I've got to get back to The Dalles. You'd better tend to filing those sales contracts, Johnson, and let Lee get out on the job.” The line head grinned, an eye closing momentarily in a wink. “And, Lee, don't play too rough.”

Chapter Ten

I
f Nature could have foreseen the clash of brains and brawn that soon was to grip the attention of all of Oregon and the railroad world, she could not have better prepared the Girt homestead for the purpose Lee intended using it. It lay on the plateau at the very rim of the vast and awesome Deschutes cañon, which dropped two thousand feet to the river. Here two smaller lateral cañons angled nearly together on either side of the great bluff down which Twohy Brothers' new road twisted in a two mile, twenty percent grade to water level, so narrow that only in three places could wagons pass. There was no route by which a wagon road could connect the rail point of Grass Valley with this road except by crossing the Girt homestead, which set athwart the apex of the angle formed by the cañons, in stubborn perversity.

Horseshoe Bend was a huge curve in the Deschutes, one and a half miles around, a tongue of land running the length of the curve that was one thousand feet across at the base. The natural approach to the engineering problem at this point was a tunnel across the base, by which some eight thousand feet of difficult rock excavation could be avoided—and there was room for only one.

Twohy Brothers had reached the site first, and had established camps on the brink of the bluff. It had taken two hundred men twenty days to build the access road, and, when it was finished, the camps on the bluff had been moved into the cañon. Three hundred men now were preparing to begin work on either end of the tunnel. With the seizure of the Girt homestead they were cut off from equipment, materials, and supplies.

It was dark when Lee reached the Girt place with Johnson Porter, who had decided to come with him, and a handful of men. They could hear the dim growl of the river, and stars made a sharp brightness across the sky. They swung to the ground, and stretched their legs.

Quickly Lee put his crew to work. They found the Girt homestead fenced with barbed wire, the road entering the upper side of the place through a wire gate and leaving by a board gate just before it tipped into the cañon. The men pitched a tent fifty feet from the wire gate, left supplies and two Winchesters, then chained and padlocked both gates.

There was no retreating now, and Lee, watching Johnson Porter as they stood beside a fire the men had built, sensed that the tall man was aware of that fact.

“Just one point in twenty-nine miles of the cañon that's in conflict,” Porter said, and chuckled softly. “We have prior claim, but it won't be so good if the Twohys get in first construction. You've eased a big worry for me, Lee. They'll be ready to start digging their tunnel right away, while we're only now getting our heavy equipment into The Dalles, and there's a lot of rough country to cross. Now we can establish our own camp down there at once, and we'll have a road to haul our stuff over.”

Filling his pipe, Lee nodded. “They can get some food and horse feed down by pack train, using Max or Sixteen Cañon, but they'll have a tough time getting heavy stuff like scrapers and work cars down on pack mules.” He brought a match to life and sucked the flame into the bowl. “One thing worries me. I know Mike Quinn. He's got a way of coming up with a Sunday punch when you aren't looking.”