Munsey’s Magazine, March, 1908
The Running of Silver River
by C. F. Bourke
HEN a young and ambitious the deed—cataclysms of nature and professional man like Harlow, C.
dispensations of Providence to the contrary
W E., is informed by a briefly brutal notwithstanding.
telegram that his first important piece of work The latter was the course selected by
has been wiped out by a stroke of misfortune Engineer Harlow, who, representing his
that offers no remedy, he is likely to do one of patron, the president of the Western Reducing two things, according to his nature and Company, had recently completed the instinct.
construction of the reducing-plant at Silverton, He will either sit down with a cold
the first child of his technical training.
feeling in the region of his stomach and
When the plant first went into
passively accept the probable ruin of his operation, Harlow looked upon his work and professional career, or square his jaw and get found it good. The great ore-crushers and
into action as fast as railroad facilities and the distributers roared and wheezed like twelve-operation of the human brain can encompass
inch turret-guns in action; canvas-coated, red-
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2
ore-splashed men washed out the last manager’s words, Harlow turned to the remnants of metal, and the main artery of the window commanding a view of the little city
plant, the Silver River, swirled athwart the of Silverton, below them. Sharply back from
mountainside to continue on its way a turbid, the side of the ore-plant he saw the
red-stained stream, useless for further melancholy dry bed of the Silver River.
purposes of cleanliness.
A week ago the stream was singing out
“The work is good, the plant the best,
of the bowels of the mountain, furnishing life-and the ever-flowing creek will keep her going blood to the big ore-plant on the hillside.
till we’ve washed up all the pay-rock on this That was all that had happened in his
slope of the Rockies!”
absence. The rest was the same—the morning
So said Engineer Harlow to Houghton,
sun tipping the backbone of the continent; the the manager. Surly, taciturn, and pessimistic, heathery hillside; the little town flooded in the manager grunted a non-committal reply,
golden sun-glare. The silent works shed a
and the engineer betook himself plainsward on grotesque black shadow down toward the
the overland railroad.
town, where idle men prowled in the streets—
A few days later, while Harlow was
for the ore-plant was the life-blood of the little resting in Denver, he got a telegram from
city, as the Silver River had been the life-
Manager Houghton, announcing the coming
blood of the ore-plant.
of disaster and the permanent destruction of
“Picturesque
view, ain’t it?” Houghton
all the company’s hopes—all within the growled. “Nice place to go fishin’, eh?”
economical limits of an unsatisfactory ten
In the brief moment of silence Harlow
words.
realized what the last few days must have
The morning overland train deposited
meant to the big manager, lacking intuition, Harlow at Silverton, and twenty minutes later but full of pessimistic imagination.
the engineer flung himself from a smoking
“It is rather discouraging,” the
buckskin pony into the presence of the tiger-engineer said. “I suppose it’s been a pretty bad snarling Houghton, who awaited his arrival in grind?”
the spacious office of the Western Reducing
“Grind!” Houghton’s fat fist
plant. There were no polite preliminary punctuated the exclamation like the fall of a greetings.
rock-crusher. “Grind! It’s been ashes to ashes,
“What the devil’s the matter with that
all right, all right! A month after we start the qualified Silver River you boomed in your
plant, the bottom drops out. Black Friday, too!
report? Gone dry almost overnight—stopped
Then Graveyard Saturday and Tombstone
running like a piker—quit dead as a cut hose!”
Sunday. Dribble, dribble, dribble; that’s the
“I know that from your telegram,” way the creek went out; and all of us staring Harlow replied curtly. “By the way, I presume like bull-calves. Pretty soon she was shut off you forgot the office has a telegraph-code?”
dead, with blind fishes from inside the
The sarcastic flingback missed its mountain wrigglin’ on the gravel. Then, to cap mark.
it, Western Reducing stock was thrown on the
“Don’t you bother about my telegrams,
market in N’York, an’ wouldn’t sell for scrap-son,” the manager growled. “The cat jumped
iron. Oh, my Aunt Maria! Them Raynor
the bag in New York before the crick got
brothers did us up plenty and frequent when
through drying up. Wall Street had advance
they unloaded this barn, half-finished, for fifty information on that job.”
thousand dollars!”
Hardly catching the sense of the
“The Silver River was flowing out of
The Running of Silver River
3
the side of the mountain, five miles from here, carried with him food and candles, and—the
fifty years before the Raynors staked out this last thing Houghton, relenting in his surliness, property,” Harlow returned. “It was a had suggested—a heavy Remington navy subterranean stream, coming out of the big
revolver and a well-filled cartridge-belt.
divide, before Fremont crossed to the coast.”
“Well, it ain’t running any more,”
Houghton replied doggedly. “And them
Raynors have gone off with our fifty thousand to irrigate the Yuma Valley, somewhere
t’other side of the divide. Them chaps know
where to find water!” He put up his big hand, as Harlow picked up his hat with a sudden
It was twilight when he reached the
gleam in his eye and moved toward the door.
spur of rock shelving above a yawning cavern
“It’s up to you to do some hustling. The
whence, formerly, the Silver River had sprung N’York gang’s ready to sell this plant for old from its unknown source in the heart of the
junk—they got an offer through some real-
hills. He had searched the creek’s rocky sides, estate shark—only they want your report first.
but had found no indications of former
Sing your swan song, so’s I can get out of here drought. So far as the rocks told him, the
and hunt another job!”
stream had simply lost its way, or had
Harlow had already passed the door
forgotten to flow along its accustomed route.
and flung himself on the buckskin bronco.
He had drawn out a match to light a
“I’ll take a week to sing my song,” he
candle when the sound of horses’ hoofs and
said grimly. “I’ll go over that mountain, or men’s voices on the mountain trail caused him through it, first. That’s what none of you seem
instinctively to draw the bronco within the
to have thought of!”
shelter of the cavern’s mouth. When the
twilight riders stopped just above him, he
II
stood breathlessly with his hand clapped on
the bronco’s muzzle.
THE young engineer realized that he faced a
“Aw, come on!” a voice said. “What’s
problem for which the text-books offered no
the use hanging round that hole in the mud?”
solution. He rapidly rehearsed the details of The response came, accompanied by a
disaster—the purchase of the reducing-plant, chuckling laugh.
with its seemingly time-defying water-supply;
“I was just wondering what that kid
the inexplicable cutting off of the subterranean Harlow said when he saw that dry stream.
stream, the artery of its life; the raid on the Lordy, we didn’t wipe his eye or nothing, did company’s stock, and the proffered purchase
of the plant for junk. There were others, Reducing gang would think if they was real apparently, who knew as well as Harlow and
wise to the job?”
Houghton the importance of the part played by
“They’d get after our scalp four ways
the Silver River in the operation of the to once, if they was,” the other man growled.
Western Reducing Company’s ore-works.
“Just the same, it will be time for us to whinny The sun was still high in the heavens
when we get the transfer-papers signed,
when he turned the buckskin bronco’s head
sealed, and delivered. Then they can squeal all out of Silverton, following the bed of the dried they want, and so can the ranchers over in
stream into the recesses of the mountain. He
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4
Yuma. Come on, Bob!”
could hear the laughter and shouting of the
Harlow drew his first full breath men. He dismounted from the pony, dropping simultaneously with the sound of the men’s
the reins over the bronco’s head to hold him in departure. Bill and Bob Raynor! So they were his place, and entered the face of the
the mysterious bidders for the ore-company’s mountain, bending his head to follow the
plant—the very men who had sold the works
narrow pass that skirted the rushing water. He to the company a year before. Chance had sent was beginning to understand what Manager
to him the very men who had been in his mind Houghton said about the Raynors’ “irrigating”
all the afternoon, as connected in some way
Yuma Valley.
with the failure of the stream.
“They’ve tapped the subterranean
What he had heard swept from his
stream here, and they’re checking against our mind all thought of exploring, single-handed, bank-deposit!”
the bed of the lost river. His way lay now after Under the shadow of the cliff he
the Raynors. He left the shelter of the cavern, lighted a candle, and drew back as his foot
following their trail cautiously as an Indian on touched the margin of a wide, shining body of the slot of an enemy. Over the tortuous turns water. From the base of the ledge, as far back of the mountain path he had no trouble in
as he could see, the water shone and rippled keeping the two brothers in sight, silhouetted toward the outlet into the valley. But
against a starlit sky, as they toiled upward something to the right diverted his eyes and toward the backbone of the range.
drew a savage oath from his lips. Across a
Under the clear stars he watched them
gloomy arch a wall of rock rose above the
gain and cross the plateau that topped the
surface of the water, stopping its course into range, doubling sharply to the right before
the depths of the mountain, whither it had
they dipped behind the ridge on the other side.
doubtless flowed for ages before the barricade A second later the buckskin bronco was was erected.
speeding across the open plateau. It stopped at That the work of diverting the stream
the top of a steep slope, and far below Harlow was not yet completed was evidenced by the
saw the twinkling lights of a ranch-house. The loose blocks of stone, the crowbars, and the night riders had disappeared, but he followed pickaxes strewn about the path.
down into the hollow. There he pulled up
Picking up a handful of clay from the
sharply, checking a cry of surprise.
margin of the underground lake, Harlow
A sound of swirling water came from
plastered his candle against the wall of the the right—water, where he had found only a
cavern. Then his quick ear caught a faint
dried-up hillside the summer before! He sound, as of a man’s voice outside. He turned the bronco toward the sound. One snatched up a crowbar that lay handy.
hundred—two hundred yards, and the pony’s
“Before they get me I’ll leave my
feet paddled in water pouring swiftly mark,” he muttered grimly.
downward. Directly over him projected the
He set the crowbar into the interstices
frowning front of a huge precipice, and from of the stones, exerting all his strength to lever the base of the cliff the water was spouting the top blocks off. Then he heard the crack of forth in a cataract. Then he saw something
a rifle outside the cavern, followed by the
else—a passageway and a hand-rail leading
shrill whinny of the buckskin bronco.
inward on the side of the torrent, the pathway He ran along the narrow path, tossing
the candle into the water as he reached the
The ranch-house was so close that he
overhanging cliff, and sprang upon the
The Running of Silver River
5
bronco’s back. The buckskin slipped on the
He fell into a chair and turned down
damp rock, recovering himself with a snort.
the lamp, but not before Houghton had jerked As he headed for the trail up the mountain he two rifles out of a locker and spilled a box of saw a bunch of horsemen coming from the
cartridges upon the table.
ranch-house, and bullets began to whistle
“Who are we goin’ to shoot up?” he
about him.
asked laconically. “Hoss-thieves?”
“After him, boys! Corral him before he
“The Raynors—or one of ’em. I got
gits up top! He’s been, in to the lake!”
Bob Raynor. I found the river. They’ll get me, With the yelling voices behind him
if they have to burn down the plant!”
and the bullets whistling past his ears, Harlow The pursuers must have come up
lay down on the gallant little buckskin’s back quietly. There was a slight scuffling before the to ride as he had never ridden before in his office; then a voice rang out sharply:
life.
“You Houghton, hand Harlow out
“He’s seen the dam. Take him, boys! Don’t let here, or it’ll be worse for both of you! You him get over the range alive!”
hear?”
Harlow knew the trail. Besides, he was riding for his life; and he was carrying with him the secret of the Silver River.
At the top of the slope he gave the
bronco his head across the plateau, unbuckling the holster-flap of his Remington navy
revolver as he sped for the other side. A slow rage was growing in him at the treachery of
the Raynors, who, not content with ruining
him, were now eager to take his life.
Half-way across the plateau a
horseman was only a few yards behind him.
The riders were not ten yards apart when
Harlow wheeled the bronco. He felt a stinging burn in his shoulder; then the big Remington spoke, and in the flash he saw Bob Raynor
plunge headlong from his saddle. When he
The big manager slid up the window
swung the buckskin again into its course, the softly.
others were yelling after him like wolves.
“Ain’t receiving callers to-night,” he
said. “Come t’morrow, Bill.”
III
An oath and a shot answered him,
chipping the window-ledge. The manager
AN hour later, Houghton, of the Western dropped to the floor, shoving the barrel of his Reducing Company, sprang to his feet at the
Winchester across the sill. A scream followed sound of a galloping horse sliding and the report, and then from both sides of the slithering on the gravel before the door. house came a shower of bullets, shattering the Harlow, revolver in hand, stumbled into the
window-panes and knocking the mortar from
room.
the ceiling of the room.
“There’s no time to talk—get the
“Confound ’em,” Houghton growled,
Winchesters!” Harlow gasped.
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6
“they’ve got behind the powder-house! I can’t growled, “except two of the brutes that’s gone shoot over there!”
up under the trestles. What’s it going to be, The besiegers had gathered about a
son—blow up, or run for it? What’s that?”
small structure on the far side of the road, It seemed to Harlow that he had been
facing the office-building. Behind them the