But Huck was not thinking of the wreck at that moment, nor of his own hairbreadth escapes from death. Moodily he stared straight ahead of him, his black brows drawn together. Finally he arose, stretched his arms above his head and shook himself like a great dog. “Mountain Indians, hell!” he growled under his breath. “Those hellions that gunned me back there were white men made up to look like Indians—or I’m a sheepherder! The Indians may be in on this shindig, all right, but they’re sure not alone!” Huck rode into town the following day and discovered that Jaggers Dunn had doubled his force of track walkers on the new line and had ordered them armed. He also learned that Cale Coleman had opened a mine twenty miles up the river from Esmeralda. “Yes, he’s got coal,” said Jaggers Dunn when Chuck dropped in to talk things over. “It’s nothing like stuff you are getting out—not much better than black lignite and with a high sulphur content—but it’s marketable in certain sections.
