The Highgrader

The clock at the new Verinder Building showed ten minutes past eleven as Jack Kilmeny took the Utah Junction road out of Goldbanks with his loaded ore wagon. It was a night of scudding clouds, through which gleamed occasionally a fugitive moon. The mountain road was steep and narrow, but both the driver and the mules were used to its every turn and curve. In early days the highgrader had driven a stage along it many a night when he could not have seen the ears of the bronchos.

His destination was the Jack Pot, a mine three miles from town, where intermittently for months he had been raising worthless rock in the hope of striking the extension of the Mollie Gibson vein. It was not quite true, as Bleyer had intimated, that his lease was merely a blind to cover ore thefts, though undoubtedly he used it for that purpose incidentally.

Bleyer had guessed shrewdly that Kilmeny would drive out to the Jack Pot, put up in the deserted bunk-house till morning, and then haul the ore down to the junction to ship to the smelter on the presumption that it had been taken from the leased property. This was exactly what Jack had intended to do. Apparently his purpose was unchanged. He wound steadily up the hill trail, keeping the animals at a steady pull, except for breathing spells. The miner had been a mule skinner in his time, just as he had tried his hand at a dozen other occupations. In the still night the crack of his whip sounded clear as a shot when it hissed above the flanks of the leaders without touching them.

He ran into the expected ambush a half mile from the mine, at a point where the road dipped down a wooded slope to a sandy wash.

"Hands up!" ordered a sharp voice.

A horseman loomed up in the darkness beside the wagon. A second appeared from the brush. Other figures emerged dimly from the void.

Jack gave his mules the whip and the heavy wagon plowed into the deep sand. Before the wheels had made two revolutions the leaders were stopped. Other men swarmed up the side of the wagon, dragged the driver from his seat, and flung him to the ground.

Even though his face was buried in the sand and two men were spread over his body, the captive was enjoying himself.

"This is no way to treat a man's anatomy--most unladylike conduct I ever saw," he protested.

He was sharply advised to shut up.

After the pressure on his neck was a little relieved, Jack twisted round enough to see that his captors were all masked.