Chapter 5. Tom Doesn't Mind "Artillery"

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_ CHAPTER V. TOM DOESN'T MIND "ARTILLERY"

"I give it up," Reade replied.

"Well, it's dinner time," declared Rutter, displaying the face of his watch.

"Do we have to walk all the way back to camp?" queried Harry, who knew that no provisions had been brought with them.

"No; camp is going to be brought to us," smiled Rutter. "At least, a part of the camp will be brought here. Look up the trail there, at that highest rise. Do you see dust near there?"

"Yes," nodded Tom.

"A burro pack-train, conveying our food and that of the other surveying parties ahead of us," nodded Rutter. "You'll find the cook's helper, Bob, in charge of it."

"Is that the way the meals are brought out every day?" asked Hazelton.

"No; but now we're getting pretty far from camp, and it would waste a lot of our time to go back and forth. So our noon meals will come by burro route. Tomorrow or the day after the camp will be moved forward."

"How long before that train will be here?" Tom wanted to know.

"Probably ten minutes," guessed Rutter.

"Then I'm going to see if I can't find some little stream such as I've passed this morning," Tom went on. "I want to wash before I'm introduced to clean food."

"I'll go along presently," nodded Harry to his chum. "There's something about the spirit level on this transit of mine that I want to inspect."

So Tom Reade trudged off into the brush alone. After a few minutes he returned.

"That burro outfit in sight?" he called, as he neared the trail.

"No," answered Rutter. "But it's close. Once in a while I can hear a burro clicking his hoofs against stones."

Harry appeared two minutes later, just as the foremost burro, with Bob by its head, put in an appearance about fifty yards away.

"All ready for you, Bob," called Rutter good-humoredly.

"You gentlemen of the engineer corps are always ready," grunted the cook's helper.

A quick stop was made, Bob unloading tin plates, bowls and cups.

"Soup!" cried Rutter in high glee. "This is fine living for buck engineers, Bob!"

"There's even dessert," returned the cook's helper gravely, exposing an entire apple pie.

There was also meat, still fairly warm, as well as canned vegetables in addition to potatoes. A pot of hot coffee finished the repast that Bob unloaded at this point.

"Everything but napkins!" chuckled Rutter, as he and the boys quickly "set table" on the ground.

"No; something else is missing," answered Tom gravely. "Bob forgot the finger-bowls."

The helper, beginning to feel that he was being "guyed," took refuge in cold indifference.

"Just stack the things up at this point when you're through," directed Bob. "I'll pick 'em up when I come back on the trail."

Rutter, like a good chief, saw to it that his two assistants and the chainmen were started on their meal ere he himself began. In half an hour every morsel of food and the final drop of coffee had disappeared.

"Twenty minutes to loaf," advised Rutter, throwing himself on the ground and closing his eyes. "I'll take a nap. You'd better follow my example."

"Then who'll call us?" asked Tom.

"I will," gaped Rutter.

"Without a clock to ring an alarm?"

"Humph! Any real backwoods engineer can wake up in twenty minutes if he sets his mind on it," retorted Jack.

This was a fact, though it was the first that Tom or Harry had heard of it.

"See the time?" called Rutter, holding out his watch. "Twenty minutes of one. I'll call you at one o'clock---see if I don't."

In that fine air, with all the warmth of the noon hour, there was no difficulty in going to sleep. Truth to tell, Tom and Harry had tramped so far that forenoon that they were decidedly tired. Within sixty seconds both "cubs" were sound asleep.

"One o'clock!" called Rutter, sitting up and consulting his watch. "Fall to, slaves! There is a big batch of work awaiting us. Hazelton, you can go right on where you left off. Survey along carefully until you come upon a stake marked 'Reade.' Then come forward until you find us. Reade, I'll go along with you and show you where to break in."

Preceded by their chainmen, Rutter and Reade trudged along the trail for something like a mile.

"Halt," ordered Jack Rutter. "Reade, write your autograph on that stake and begin."

Tom stepped over to the transit, adjusting it carefully and setting the hanging plummet on dead centre with the nail head in the top of the short stake.

"Never set up a transit again," directed Rutter, "without making sure that your levels are absolutely true, and that your vernier arrangement is in order."

"I don't believe you'll ever catch me at that, Mr. Rutter," Tom answered, busying himself with the finer adjustments of the transit. "Mr. Price pounded that into me every time that he took me out in the field."

"Nevertheless," went on Rutter, "I have known older engineers than you, Reade, who became careless, and their carelessness cost their employers a lot of wasted time and money. Now, you-----"

At this juncture Jack Rutter suddenly crouched behind a low ledge at the right.

"Get behind here, quickly, Reade!" called Rutter. "Bad Pete is up the hillside, about two hundred yards from you-----"

"I haven't time to bother with him, now," Tom broke in composedly.

"Duck fast, boy! Pete has an ugly grin on his face, and he's reaching for his pistol. He's got it out---he's going to shoot!" whispered Rutter, drawing his head down where it would be safe from flying bullets.

The chainmen, lounging nearby, had wasted no time in getting safely to cover.

"Going to shoot, is he?" murmured Tom, without glancing away from the instrument. "Does Peter really know how to shoot,"

"You'll find out! Jump---like a flash, boy!"

Tom went calmly on tinkering with the mechanism of his instrument.

Bang! sounded up the trail. Tom's fingers didn't falter as he adjusted a small, brass screw.

Bang! came the second shot. Tom betrayed no more annoyance than before. Bad Pete was aiming to drive bullets into the ground close to the young engineer's feet, making him skip about. The sixth shot Pete was saving for clipping Reade's hat from his head.

The shots continued to ring out. Tom, though he appeared to be absorbed in his instrument, counted. When he had counted the sixth shot Reade dropped suddenly, picked up a stone that lay at his feet, and whirled about.

Tom Reade hadn't devoted years to ball-playing without knowing how to throw straight. The stone left his hand, arching upward, and flew straight toward Bad Pete, who had advanced steadily as he fired.

Whiff! Though Pete tried, too late, to dodge the stone, it landed against his sombrero, carrying that away without injuring the owner.

"Kindly clear out!" called Tom coolly. "You and your noise annoy me when I'm trying to do a big afternoon's work."

Snatching up his sombrero, Bad Pete vanished into a clump of brush.

Jack Rutter leaped up from his haven of safety, advancing swiftly to his cub assistant.

"Reade," he exclaimed, with ungrudging admiration, "you're the coolest young fellow I ever met, without exception. But you're foolhardy, boy. Bad Pete is a real shot. One of these days, when you're just as cool, he'll fill you full of lead!"

"If he does?" retorted Tom, again bending over his transit, "and if I notice it, I'll throw a bigger stone at him than I did that time, and it'll land on him a few inches lower down."

"But, boy, don't you understand that the days of David and Goliath are gone by," remonstrated Rutter. "It's true you're turned the laugh on Pete, but that fellow won't forgive you. He may open on you again within two minutes."

"I don't believe he will," replied Tom, with his quiet smile. "At the same time, I'll be prepared for him."

Bending to the ground, and rummaging about a bit, Reade selected three stones that would throw well. These he dropped into one of his pockets.

"Now, let the bad man trot himself on, if he has to," added the cub engineer, waving a signal to the rodman, who had just halted at the next stake.

"Well, of all the cool ones!" grunted Rutter, under his breath. "But, then, Reade's a tenderfoot. He doesn't understand just how dangerous a fellow like Pete can be."

The chainman started away to measure the distance. From up the hillside came sounds of smothered but very bad language.

"There's our friend Peter again," Tom chuckled to Rutter.

"Yes, and the ruffian may open on you again at any moment," warned Jack, keeping an anxious glance turned in the direction whence came the disturbing voice of Bad Pete.

"Oh, I don't think he will," drawled Tom, making a hand signal to the leading chainman to step a little more to the left. "I hope not, anyway, for the noise of revolver shots takes my thoughts away from my work."

Jack Rutter said no more after that, though through the rest of the afternoon he kept an alert lookout for signs of Pete. There were none, however. Rather earlier than usual, on account of the distance back to camp, Rutter knocked off work for the entire party and the start on the return to camp was made.

Harry Hazelton was considerably excited when he heard the news of the firing on his chum. Reade, however, appeared to be but little interested in the subject.

Pete was not in camp that evening.

Rutter went at once to the tent of the chief, to tell him how well the "cubs" had done during the day. Nor did Jack forget to relate the encounter with Bad Pete.

Just as the underlings of the staff were seating themselves around the table in their mess, Mr. Thurston thrust his head in at the doorway.

"Reade," called the chief engineer, "I have heard about your trouble with Pete today."

"There wasn't any real trouble, sir," Tom answered.

"Fortunately for you, Reade, Pete didn't intend to hit you. If he had meant to do so, he'd have done it. I've seen him shoot all the spots out of a ten of clubs. Don't provoke the fellow, Reade, or he'll shoot you full of fancy holes. Of course it showed both grit and coolness on your part in keeping steadily on with your work all the time the fellow was firing at you. Still, it was unwise to expose yourself needlessly to danger."

"I didn't consider Bad Pete particularly dangerous," Tom rejoined.

"A lawless man with a loaded revolver is hardly a safe person to trifle with," retorted Mr. Thurston dryly.

"I see that I shall have to make a confession," smiled Tom. "It was this way, sir. When Hazelton and I were on our way west Harry insisted that we were coming into a dangerous country and that we'd need firearms. So Harry bought two forty-five six-shooters and several boxes of cartridges, too. I was provoked when I heard about it, for we hadn't any too much money, and Harry had bought the revolvers out of our joint treasury."

"I felt sure we'd need the pistols," interrupted Hazelton. "Today's affair shows that I was right. Tom, you'll have to carry one of the revolvers after this."

"I'm no gun-packer," retorted Tom scornfully. "Young men have no business carting firearms about unless they're hunting or going to war. Any fellow who carries a pistol as he would a lead pencil is either a coward or a lunatic."

"I'm glad to hear you say that, Reade," nodded Mr. Thurston approvingly. "Two of my staff carry pistols, but they do so under my orders. In the first place they're grown men, not boys. In the second place, they're working over a stretch of ground where rattlesnakes are thick. Your coolness today served you better than a pistol would have done. If you had had a revolver, and had drawn it, Pete would have drilled you through the head."

"Drilled me through the head---with what?" asked Tom, smiling.

"With a bullet, of course, young man," retorted Mr. Thurston.

"I don't believe he would have gone as far as that," laughed Tom. "You see, sir, it was like this: When I found Harry so set on carrying a pistol, I went down deep in my own pocket and bought two boxes of blank cartridges to fit the forty-fives. I thought if Harry were going to do some shooting, it would be the part of friendship to fix him so that he could do it in safety to himself and others."

Harry's face turned decidedly red. He was beginning to feel foolish.

"Now, this morning," Tom continued, "when I got the khaki out of my dunnage, I ran across the blanks. I don't know what made me do it, but I dropped the box of blanks into one of my pockets. This noon, when I went off to find a stream where I could wash up, I almost stepped on our friend Peter, asleep under a bush. For greater comfort he had taken off his belt and holster. Somehow, I didn't like the idea of his being there. As softly as I could I crept close. I emptied his revolver and fitted in blanks from my own box. Then I took about twenty cartridges out of Peter's belt and replaced them with blanks."

"Do you mean to tell me," broke in Rutter, "that Bad Pete, when he turned his revolver loose on you, was shooting nothing but blanks?"

"That was all he had to shoot," Tom returned coolly. "And blanks were all he had in his belt to reload with. Don't you remember when we heard him making a noise up the hillside, and talking in dots and dashes!"

"I do," nodded Rutter, looking half dazed.

"That," grinned Reade, "was when he started in to reload? and discovered that he had nothing on hand but temperance cartridges. Here-----" Tom began to unload one of his pockets upon the wooden table before the astonished eyes of the others. There was a mixture of his own blank cartridges with the real ammunition that he had stealthily abstracted from Bad Pete's revolver and belt.

Such a whoop of glee ascended that the head chainman came running from the other nearby mess tent to see what was up.

"Just a little joke among our youngsters, my man," explained Mr. Thurston. "The young gentlemen are going to keep the joke to themselves for the present, though."

So the mystified and disappointed chainman returned to his own crowd.

"Let me see, Reade," continued Mr. Thurston, turning once more to Tom, "what is your salary?"

"I was taken on, sir, at forty dollars a month, as a starter," Tom replied.

"A young man with your size of head is worth more than that to the company. We'll call it fifty a month, Reade, and keep our eyes on you for signs of further improvement," said the chief engineer, as he turned to go back to his own waiting dinner. _

Read next: Chapter 6. The Bite From The Bush

Read previous: Chapter 4. "Trying Out" The Gridley Boys

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