Page:McClure's Magazine volume 10.djvu/292

"ONE OF THEM DUDES FROM COLUMBUS."

the least objection. He lighted a cigar after supper, and in the gathering dusk walked leisurely towards the furnace. He heard the whir of wheels. He stepped aside, and a light buckboard rattled past. The bell of the furnace was lowered at the moment, and by the light of the burning gas from the tall tower Ottenhausen saw that the occupants of the wagon were Mrs. Hunt and her charges. The wife of the superintendent had gone to the little station to meet some of her guests who had arrived by train. Ottenhausen had stepped back in the shadow of a rail fence, and the young women did not recognize him.

"Did you ever see anything so ridiculous?" said one of the girls.

"I don't care," came another voice, and it had the same silvery tone as that of the girl who had asked about the young chemist's welfare that afternoon. "I suppose he'll think that I'm awful, but I couldn't help laughing. He's rather handsome, too, isn't he?"

Ottenhausen, walking towards the furnace, saw in his mind's eye a girl clinging to a sapling; her laughing face was framed in dark hair.

"It was ludicrous," he mused; "I didn't think it was very funny at the time. I begin to wish that I had stuck it out and gone to the party, anyway."

His reverie was suddenly cut short. He heard a whizzing sound close to his ear; something hard struck the ground within a few inches of his feet, and sent bits of cinder flying. He stopped, looked down, and saw a piece of iron ore as big as his fist. He glanced around him. The night gang had just come on.

"According to the theory of projectiles," remarked Ottenhausen, "that missile must have come from some considerable height."

He heard the top-filler on the tunnel-head pouring a new charge into the furnace. Three minutes later the man felt a hand upon his shoulder.

"What do you mean?" demanded Ottenhausen. "Trying to kill me, were you? If I were certain that you threw that iron ore, I'd break every bone in your body."

"I didn't go to do it," protested the top-filler. "It fell off."

Ottenhausen glared at the man for a moment, and then turned on his heel. "It won't be healthy for you if anything of the kind happens again," remarked the young chemist as he went away.

The top-filler grinned as he saw the head of Ottenhausen disappear. "It won't be very healthy for you, either, my pretty, before you get through with to-night," he muttered.

"GRASPED A SAPLING, AND LAUGHED."

Ottenhausen went to the office, and entered his little bedroom. He took from his trunk two revolvers. They had served him well in Texas. They were not weapons of the silver-plated and pearl-handled variety. The barrels were bluish black, and the caliber was forty-four. The chemist slipped a revolver into each pocket of his serge coat, lighted another cigar, and returned to the cast-house with the air of a man who was taking an afternoon walk in Fifth Avenue. He surveyed the furnace from top to bottom. The fillers were breaking up ore and lime-stone and pitching it into barrows. The pig-bed men had just finished imprinting the form of wooden models into the sand. Everything was ready for the cast. Ottenhausen's eye fell upon a mass of dark cinder lying in the sand hole, bubbling and sputtering.