181
CHAPTER XXIIITHE PICNIC TRAIN
Zeph Dallas had returned to work. His connection with the strikers had been fully explained to the railroad people by Ralph, and the farmer boy was readily taken back into the service of the company. Zeph boarded with Mrs. Fairbanks, and Limpy Joe did, too, when he was in Stanley Junction.
The enterprising Joe was winning his way famously. His advertising scheme was a grand success, and the nuts he gathered brought in a good many dollars. One day he came to town to announce that he was going to move his traps, thanking Mrs. Fairbanks for her great kindness to him in the past.
“Are you going to leave the Junction permanently, Joe?” asked Ralph.
“I think so,” answered the cripple. “You see, I have been up to the headquarters of the Short Line Railroad. They can use my horse and wagon. They offer me a good salary to cook for182them, and the concession of running a restaurant when their line is completed.”
“A good opportunity, that, Joe,” said Ralph, “although the main prospect you mention is far in the future, isn’t it?”
“Not at all,” declared Joe. “I guess you haven’t kept track of proceedings in The Barrens. Their telegraph line is clear through, both ways from headquarters now. The bonds are nearly all sold, and they expect to begin to lay the rails in earnest next week.”
“I noticed a good deal of activity at our end of the line,” said Ralph. “I think the scheme is going to be a success. I almost wish I was going to work with you fellows.”
It was now drawing on towards late fall. For several weeks the young fireman had not been disturbed by his enemies. Work had gone on smoothly. He was learning more and more every day, and his savings amounted to quite a pretentious sum.
The only outside issue that troubled Ralph was the fact that they had not yet recovered the twenty thousand dollars due his mother from old Gasper Farrington. That individual had disappeared. Ralph kept a sharp lookout, for upon finding the magnate and bringing him to terms depended the last chance of getting the money.183
There was the last picnic of the season one day, and Ralph had been assigned to duty to look after things generally. He was surprised when Forgan took him off the run of the Limited Mail.
“It will be a sort of vacation holiday for you, lad,” said the roundhouse foreman. “We want somebody reliable to look after the train, with so many women and children aboard. You will be boss over the engineer, fireman and the whole train crew for the day.”
“Quite an important commission,” said Ralph, “but what will the train crew say about it?”
“Oh, they will be glad to work with the responsibility on somebody else. Here is the schedule. Be careful of your running time, Fairbanks. I wouldn’t have anything happen to the picnic train for worlds.”
Ralph studied out the situation. When the train left Stanley Junction he took a position in the locomotive, attended to reports at all stations they passed, and the train reached the picnic grounds in safety and was run on the siding.
Ralph gave himself up to the enjoyment of a real holiday. He knew nearly everybody on the picnic grounds and nearly everybody there knew him. About the middle of the afternoon a boy living at the Junction came up to him.
“Say, Ralph,” he remarked, tendering the184young fireman a note. “A fellow out in the woods gave me this for you.”
Ralph took the missive, and, opening it, read its contents with mingled surprise and suspicion. The note ran:
“If R. F. wants to hear of something to his advantage, come to the old railroad bridge right away.”
There was no signature to the scrawl, but Ralph quite naturally thought of Ike Slump and his crowd. That did not, however, deter him from going to keep the appointment. He cut a stout cudgel and proceeded to the old railroad bridge named in the note.
The young fireman glanced keenly about him, but for some time did not get a view of anybody in the vicinity. Finally from a clump of bushes up the incline a handkerchief waved. Ralph climbed the embankment to find himself facing Ike Slump.
The latter was ragged and starved-looking. To Ralph it appeared that the ex-roundhouse boy had been having a decidedly hard time of it recently.
“You needn’t carry any stick around here,” said Slump, sullenly. “You needn’t be afraid of me.”
“Not at all,” answered Ralph, “although your185actions in the past would warrant my having a whole battery around me.”
“That’s done with,” asserted Slump, quite meekly. “Bemis is up there a little ways. You needn’t be afraid of him, either.”
“What are you getting at with all this talk, Ike?” inquired Ralph.
“Why, we want to be friends.”
“What for?”
“Because—because we’re tired of starving and being hunted and the like,” said Slump. “You have won out, we are beaten. We want to work together.”
“I declare I don’t understand what you are driving at,” said Ralph. “Come, Ike Slump, play no more crafty games. It don’t pay. Be honest and straight. What did you bring me here for?”
“To make some money for both of us.”
“In what way?”
“You would give a good deal to find Gasper Farrington, wouldn’t you, now?”
“I certainly am anxious to locate that man, yes,” answered Ralph frankly.
“All right, we know where he is.”
“And you are willing to make amends, I suppose, for your past misconduct by telling me where Farrington is to be found, so that I can have him arrested.”186
“Well, I guess not!” cried Mort Bemis, coming upon the scene. “We want pay for what we do. We want a hundred dollars to begin with. A lot more when you get that money he owes you.”
“My friends,” said Ralph, promptly turning from the spot. “Not a cent. I don’t believe you know how to act square. You don’t show it by your present proposition. If you really want to be helped, and if you are sorry for your past wrong doing, come back to Stanley Junction, tell the truth, take your punishment like men, and I will be your good friend.”
“Well, you’re a bold one,” sneered Slump, getting very angry. “You won’t help us out, then?”
“With money—on your promise? No. I shall find Gasper Farrington finally without your aid, and, if you have nothing further to say, I shall return to the picnic grounds.”
“I don’t think you will,” said Bemis, roughly placing himself in Ralph’s path.
“Why not?” inquired the young fireman calmly, grasping his cudgel with a closer grip.
“Because—say, Ike, grab him, quick! If he won’t deal with us and we can get him a prisoner, Farrington will pay us. You know he always wanted to get rid of him.”
Ralph prepared to meet the enemy squarely.187Slump and Bemis rushed towards him. Before they could begin the fight, however, a man burst through the underbrush whom Ralph recognized as a Stanley Junction police officer detailed on picnic duty.
“Found you, my friends, have I?” he hailed the two fellows. “Grab one of them, Fairbanks, I’ve got the other. I was on the lookout for them. They stole a purse from the basket of an old lady in the picnic grounds a few hours ago. Slump? Bemis? Well, you are a fine pair, you are!”
The officer insisted on arresting them, the more so that upon recognizing them now he suddenly remembered that a reward had been offered for their apprehension by the railroad company. The crestfallen plotters were taken to the train and locked up in one end of the express car.
Ralph went to them after a spell and tried to learn something more from them, but they were now sullen and vengeful.
In due time the train was backed down to the main track, the engine detached made a run for water, and, returning, stood some little distance from the cars.
The fireman and engineer left the engine to help their families gather up their traps and take them aboard the train. Ralph was busy in the cab. He was looking over the gauges when a188sudden blow from behind stretched him insensible on the coal of the tender.
As he slowly opened his eyes Ralph saw Slump and Bemis in the cab. In some way they had escaped, had stolen the locomotive, and were speeding away to liberty.
“Just heard a whistle. It must be the Dover Accommodation,” Slump was remarking. “Get off and open the siding switch, Mort.”
This Bemis did, and the engine started up again. Ralph thrilled at the words Slump had spoken. He was weak and dizzy-headed, but he made a desperate effort, staggered to his feet and sprang from the cab.
Had the locomotive remained at the picnic grounds, the train would have been switched to the siding again until the Accommodation passed. As it was, unwarned, the Accommodation would crash into the train.
Ralph heard its whistle dangerously near. He looked up and down the tracks. Ahead, a bridge crossed the tracks, and near it was a framework with leather pendants to warn freight brakemen in the night time. Towards this Ralph ran swiftly. Weak as he was, he managed to scale the framework, gained its center, and sat there panting, poised for the most desperate action of his young career.189
The Accommodation train came into view. Ralph sat transfixed, knowing that he would soon face death, but unmindful of the fact in the hope that his action would save the lives of those aboard the picnic train.
The Accommodation neared him. The young fireman got ready to drop. He let go, crashed past the roof of the cab, and landed between the astonished engineer and fireman.
“The picnic train—on the main, stop your locomotive!” he panted, and fainted dead away.
190
CHAPTER XXIVIN “THE BARRENS”
Ralph Fairbanks had taken a terrible risk, and had met with his first serious accident since he had commenced his career as a young fireman. When he next opened his eyes he was lying in his own bed, a doctor and his mother bending solicitously over him.
Slowly reason returned to him. He stared wonderingly about him and tried to arise. A terrible pain in his feet caused him to subside. Then Ralph realized that he had suffered some serious injury from his reckless drop into the locomotive cab near the picnic grounds.
“What is it, doctor?” he asked faintly.
“A bad hurt in one arm and some ugly bruises. It is a wonder you were not crippled for life, or killed outright.”
“The train—the picnic train!” cried Ralph, clearly remembering now the incidents of the stolen engine.191
“The Accommodation stopped in time to avert a disaster,” said Mrs. Fairbanks.
Ralph closed his eyes with a satisfied expression on his face. He soon sank into slumber. It was late in the day when he awoke. Gradually his strength came back to him, and he was able to sit up in bed.
The next day he improved still more, and within a week he was able to walk down to the roundhouse. Forgan and all his old friends greeted him royally.
“I suppose you have the nerve to think you are going to report for duty,” observed Forgan. “Well, you needn’t try. Orders are to sick list you for a month’s vacation.”
“I will be able to work in a week,” declared Ralph.
“Vacation on full pay,” continued the roundhouse foreman.
Ralph had to accept the situation. He told his mother the news, and they had a long talk over affairs in general. The doctor advised rest and a change of scene. The next day Van Sherwin called on his way back to The Barrens. That resulted in the young fireman joining him, and his mother urged him to remain with his friends and enjoy his vacation.
A recruit to the ranks of the workers of the192Short Cut Railroad presented himself as Ralph and Van left for the depot one morning to ride as far as Wilmer. This was Zeph Dallas.
“No use talking,” said the farmer boy. “I’m lonesome here at Stanley Junction and I’m going to join Joe.”
“All right,” assented Van, “if you think it wise to leave a steady job here.”
“Why, you’ll soon be able to give me a better one, won’t you?” insisted Zeph. “It just suits me, your layout down there in The Barrens. Take me along with you.”
When they reached Wilmer and left the train, Van pointed proudly to a train of freight cars on the Great Northern tracks loaded with rails and ties.
“That’s our plunder,” he said cheerily. “Mr. Trevor is hustling, I tell you. Why, Ralph, we expect to have this end of the route completed within thirty days.”
As they traversed the proposed railroad line, Ralph was more and more interested in the project. Little squads of men were busily employed here and there grading a roadbed, and the telegraph line was strung over the entire territory.
They reached the headquarters about noon. A new sign appeared on the house, which was the193center of the new railroad system. It was “Gibson.”
A week passed by filled with great pleasure for the young railroader. Evenings, Mr. Gibson and his young friends discussed the progress and prospects of the railroad. There were to be two terminal stations and a restaurant at the Springfield end of the route. There were only two settlements in The Barrens, and depots were to be erected there.
“We shall have quite some passenger service,” declared Mr. Gibson, “for we shorten the travel route for all transfer passengers as well as freight. The Great Northern people do not at all discourage the scheme, and the Midland Central has agreed to give us some freight contracts. Oh, we shall soon build up into a first-class, thriving, little railroad enterprise.”
One evening a storm prevented Ralph from returning to headquarters, so he camped in with some workmen engaged in grading an especially difficult part of the route. The evening was passed very pleasantly, but just before nine o’clock, when all had thought of retiring, a great outcry came from the tent of the cook.
“I’ve got him, I’ve caught the young thief,” shouted the cook, dragging into view a small boy who was sobbing and trembling with grief.194
“What’s the row?” inquired one of the workmen.
“Why, I’ve missed eatables for a week or more at odd times, and I just caught this young robber stealing a ham.”
“I didn’t steal it,” sobbed the detected youngster. “I just took it. You’d take it, too, if you was in our fix. We’re nearly starved.”
“Who is nearly starved?” asked Ralph, approaching the culprit.
“Me and dad. We were just driven to pick up food anywhere. You’ve got lots of it. You needn’t miss it. Please let me go, mister.”
“No, the jail for you,” threatened the cook direfully.
“Oh, don’t take me away from my father,” pleaded the affrighted youngster. “He couldn’t get along without me.”
“See here, cook, let me take this little fellow in hand,” suggested Ralph.
“All right,” assented the cook, adding in an undertone, “give him a good scare.”
Ralph took the boy to one side. His name was Ned. His father, he said, was Amos Greenleaf, an old railroader, crippled in an accident some years before. He had become very poor, and they had settled in an old house in The Barrens a few195miles distant. Ralph made up a basket of food with the cook’s permission.
“Now then, Ned,” said Ralph, “you lead the way to your home.”
“You won’t have me arrested?”
“Not if you have been telling me the truth.”
“I haven’t,” declared the young lad. “It’s worse than I tell it. Dad is sick and has no medicine. We have nearly starved.”
It was an arduous tramp to the wretched hovel they at last reached. Ralph was shocked as he entered it. It was almost bare of furniture, and the poor old man who lay on a miserable cot was thin, pale and racked with pain.
“I am Ralph Fairbanks, a fireman on the Great Northern,” said the young railroader, “and I came with your boy to see what we can do for you.”
“A railroader?” said Greenleaf. “I am glad to see you. I was once in that line myself. Crippled in a wreck. Got poor, poorer, bad to worse, and here I am.”
“Too bad,” said Ralph sympathizingly. “Why have you not asked some of your old comrades to help you?”
“They are kind-hearted men, and did help me for a time, till I became ashamed to impose on their generosity.”196
“How were you injured, Mr. Greenleaf?” asked Ralph.
“In a wreck. It was at the river just below Big Rock. I was a brakeman. The train struck a broken switch and three cars went into the creek. I went with them and was crippled for life. One of them was a car of another road and not so high as the others, or I would have been crushed to death.”
“A car of another road?” repeated Ralph with a slight start.
“Yes.”
“You don’t know what road it belonged to?”
“No. They recovered the other two cars. I never heard what became of the foreign car. I guess it was all smashed up.”
“Gondola?”
“No, box car.”
Ralph was more and more interested.
“When did this occur, Mr. Greenleaf?” he asked.
“Five years ago.”
“Is it possible,” said Ralph to himself, “that I have at last found a clew to the missing car Zeph Dallas and that car finder are so anxious to locate?”
197
CHAPTER XXVTOO LATE
Two days later Ralph went down the line of the little railroad to where it met the tracks of the Great Northern. Mr. Gibson had sent him with some instructions to the men at work there, and at the request of the young fireman had assigned him to work at that point.
This consisted in checking up the construction supplies delivered by rail. Ralph had a motive in coming to this terminus of the Short Line Route. The information he had gained from the old, crippled railroader, Amos Greenleaf, had set him to thinking. He found Zeph Dallas working industriously, but said nothing about his plans until the next day.
At the noon hour he secured temporary leave of absence from work for Zeph and himself, and went to find his friend.
Zeph was a good deal surprised when Ralph told him that they were to have the afternoon for a ramble, but readily joined his comrade.198
“Saw some friends of yours hanging around here yesterday,” said the farmer boy.
“That so?” inquired Ralph.
“Yes, Slump and Bemis. Guess they were after work or food, and they sloped the minute they set eyes on me. Say, where are you bound for anyway, Ralph?”
“For Wilmer.”
“What for?”
“I want to look around the river near there. The truth is, Zeph, I fancy I have discovered a clew to that missing freight car.”
“What!” cried Zeph excitedly. “You don’t mean car No. 9176?”
“I mean just that,” assented Ralph. “Here, let us find a comfortable place to sit down, and I’ll tell you the whole story.”
Ralph selected a spot by a fence lining the railroad right of way. Then he narrated the details of his interview with Amos Greenleaf.
“Say,” exclaimed Zeph, “I believe there’s something to this. Every point seems to tally somehow to what information the car finder gave me, don’t you think so? Besides, in investigating the matter, I heard about this same wreck. And five years ago? Ralph, this is worth looking up, don’t you think so?”
Zeph was fairly incoherent amid his excitement.199He could not sit still, and arose to his feet and began walking around restlessly.
“You see, it is a long time since the car disappeared,” said Ralph, “and we may not be able to find any trace of it. The car finder, in his investigations, must have heard of this wreck. Still, as you say, it is worth following up the clew, and that is why I got a leave from work for the afternoon.”
“Hello,” said Zeph, looking in among the bushes abruptly, “some one in there? No, I don’t see anybody now, but there was a rustling there a minute or two ago.”
“Some bird or animal, probably,” said Ralph. “Come on, Zeph, we will go to the bridge and start on our investigations.”
The river near Wilmer was a broad stream. It was quite deep and had a swift current. The boys started down one bank, conversing and watching out. Ralph laughed humorously after a while.
“I fancy this is a kind of a blind hunt, Zeph,” he said. “We certainly cannot expect to find that car lying around loose.”
“Well, hardly, but we might find out where it went to if we go far enough,” declared Zeph. “I tell you, I shall never give it up now if I have to go clear to the end of this river.”200
They kept on until quite late in the afternoon, but made no discoveries. They passed a little settlement and went some distance beyond it. Then Ralph decided to return to the railroad camp.
“All right,” said Zeph, “only I quit work to-morrow.”
“What for?”
“To find that car. I say, I’m thirsty. Let us get a drink of water at that old farm house yonder.”
They went to the place in question and were drinking from the well bucket when the apparent owner of the place approached them.
“Won’t you have a cup or a glass, my lads?” he inquired kindly.
“Oh, no, this is all right,” said Ralph.
“On a tramp, are you?” continued the farmer, evidently glad to have someone to talk to.
“In a way, yes,” answered Ralph, and then, a sudden idea struck him, he added: “By the way, you are an old resident here, I suppose?”
“Forty years or more.”
“Do you happen to remember anything of a wreck at the bridge at Wilmer about five years ago?”
“Let me see,” mused the man. “That was the time of the big freshet. Yes, I do remember it201faintly. It’s the freshet I remember most though. Enough timber floated by here to build a barn. See that old shed yonder?” and he pointed to a low structure. “Well, I built that out of timber I fished ashore. Lumber yard beyond Wilmer floated into the creek, and all of us along here got some of it.”
“What do you know about the wreck?” asked Ralph.
“Heard about it at the time, that’s all. Sort of connect the freshet with it. That was a great washout,” continued the farmer. “Even sheds and chicken coops floated by. And say, a box car, too.”
“Oh,” cried Zeph, with a start as if he was shot.
“Indeed?” said Ralph, with a suppressed quiver of excitement in his tone.
“Yes. It went whirling by, big and heavy as it was.”
“Say, Mister, you don’t know where that car went to, do you?” inquired Zeph anxiously.
“Yes, I do. I know right where it is now.”
“You do?”
“Yes, old Jabez Kane, ten miles down the creek, got it. He is using it now for a tool shed.”
“Oh!” again cried Zeph, trembling with suspense and hope.202
Ralph nudged him to be quiet. He asked a few more questions of the farmer and they left the place.
“Ralph,” cried Zeph wildly, “we’ve found it!”
“Maybe not,” answered the young fireman. “It may not be the same car.”
“But you’re going to find out?”
“It’s pretty late. We had better make a day of it to-morrow.”
“All right, if we can’t attend to it to-day,” said Zeph disappointedly; and then both returned to camp.
Next morning early both started for the creek again. By proceeding across the country diagonally, they saved some distance.
It was about noon when they approached a rickety, old farmhouse which a man had told them belonged to Jabez Kane.
“There it is, there it is,” cried Zeph, as they neared it.
“Yes, there is an old box car in the yard near the creek, sure enough,” said Ralph.
They entered the farm yard. The box of the car they looked at sat flat on the ground. It had been whitewashed several times, it appeared, so they could trace no markings on it. They approached it and stood looking it over when a man came out of the house near by.203
“Hey,” he hailed, advancing upon them. “What you trespassing for?”
“Are we?” inquired Ralph, with a pleasant smile. “We mean no harm.”
“Dunno about that,” said the farmer suspiciously. “Was you here last night?”
“Oh, no,” answered Ralph.
“Well, what do you want?”
“I was sort of interested in this old car,” announced Ralph.
“Why so?” demanded Kane.
“Well, we are looking for a car that floated down the creek here about five years ago.”
“For the railroad?” asked the farmer.
“In a way, yes, in a way, no.”
“Does the railroad want to take it away from me?”
“Certainly not. They would like to know, though, if it’s a car of the Southern Air Line and numbered 9176.”
“You’ve got it, lad. This was just that car. What’s the amazing interest in it all of a sudden? Look here,” and he took them around to the other side of the car. “Last night two boys came here; my son saw them hanging around here. Then they disappeared. This morning I found the car that way.”
Ralph and Zeph stared in astonishment. A four-foot204space of the boards on the outside of the car had been torn away. At one point there was a jagged break in the inside sheathing. In a flash the same idea occurred to both of them.
“Too late!” groaned poor Zeph. “Some one has been here and the diamonds are gone.”
Ralph was stupefied. He remembered the rustling in the bushes when they were discussing their plans the day previous. He believed that their conversation had been overheard by some one.
Ralph asked the man to send for his son, which he did, and Ralph interrogated him closely. The result was a sure conviction that Ike Slump and Mort Bemis had secured the diamonds hidden in the box car about five years previous.
205
CHAPTER XXVITHE MAD ENGINEER
“Well, good-bye, Zeph.”
“Good-bye, Ralph. Another of my wild dreams of wealth gone.”
“Don’t fret about it, Zeph.”
“How can I help it?”
Ralph had decided to return home. He was now fully recuperated, and his vacation period would expire in a few days.
It was the evening of the day when they had discovered the missing box car only to find that others had discovered it before them. Ralph had arranged to flag a freight at the terminus of the Short Line Route and was down at the tracks awaiting its coming.
The freight arrived, Ralph clambered to the cab, waved his hand in adieu to Zeph, and was warmly welcomed by his friends on the engine.
They had proceeded only a short distance when a boy came running down an embankment. So206rapid and reckless was his progress that Ralph feared he would land under the locomotive. The lad, however, grasped the step of the cab, and was dragged dangerously near to the wheels. Ralph seized him just in time and pulled him up into the cab.
“Well!” commented the engineer, “it’s a good thing we were going slow. Here, land out as you landed in, kid.”
“Please don’t,” cried the boy, gazing back with tear-filled eyes and trembling all over. “Please let me ride with you.”
“Against the rules.”
“See, there they are!” almost shrieked the boy, pointing to two men who came rushing down the embankment. “Oh, don’t let them get me.”
“Give him a show till I learn his story,” said Ralph to the engineer, so the latter put on steam and the two men were outdistanced.
“Oh, thank you, thank you!” panted the boy, clinging close to Ralph.
“Come up on the water tank,” said Ralph, “and I’ll have a talk with you.”
The lad, whom the young fireman had befriended, was a forlorn-looking being. He wore no shoes, was hatless, and had on a coat many sizes too large for him.
“Now then, what’s the trouble?” inquired207Ralph, when they were both seated on the water tank.
“Those men were pursuing me,” said the lad.
“What for?”
“I was running away from them. They are my uncles, and they have been very wicked and cruel to me. They want to send me to a reform school to get rid of me, and locked me up. I ran away this morning, but they got trace of me again.”
“What is your name?”
“Earl Danvers. My father died and left them my guardians. They are after the property, I guess.”
“What do you propose to do?”
“Oh, anything to get away from them.”
Ralph talked for quite a while with the boy and learned his entire history. Then he said:
“This is a case for a lawyer. Would you like to come to Stanley Junction with me and have a lawyer look into the matter for you?”
“No. I only want to escape from those bad men.”
“That will follow. You come with me. I will interest myself in your case and see that you are protected.”
“How kind you are—you are the only friend I208ever knew,” cried the boy, bursting into tears of gratitude.
Ralph took Earl Danvers home with him when they reached Stanley Junction. His kind-hearted mother was at once interested in the forlorn refugee. They managed to fit him out with some comfortable clothing, and Ralph told him to take a rest of a few days, when he would have him see their lawyer and tell him his story.
Two days later the young fireman reported at the roundhouse for duty, and the ensuing morning started on a new term of service as fireman of the Limited Mail.
The first trip out Griscom was engineer. Ralph noticed that he looked pale and worried. The run to the city was made in a way quite unusual with the brisk and lively veteran railroader. Ralph waited until they were on their way home from the roundhouse that evening. Then he said:
“Mr. Griscom, you have not been your usual self to-day.”
“That’s true, lad,” nodded the engineer gravely.
“Anything the matter especially?”
“Oh, a little extra care on my mind and under the weather a bit besides,” sighed Griscom.
“Can I help you in any way?” inquired Ralph.
“No, lad—we must all bear our own troubles.”209
The next day Griscom did not report for duty at train time. A man named Lyle was put on extra duty. Ralph did not know him very well nor did he like him much. He understood that he was a fine engineer but that he had been warned several times for drinking.
As he came into the cab, Ralph noticed that his eyes were dull and shifty, his hands trembled and he bore all the appearance of a man who had been recently indulging in liquor to excess.
As soon as they were out on the road, Lyle began to drink frequently from a bottle he took out of his coat. He became more steady in his movements, and, watching him, Ralph saw that he understood his business thoroughly and was duly attentive to it.
After the wait at the city, however, Lyle came aboard of the locomotive in quite a muddled condition. He was talkative and boastful now. He began to tell of the many famous special runs he had made, of the big salaries he had earned, and of his general proficiency as a first-class engineer.
He ordered full steam on, and by the time they were twenty miles from the city he kept the locomotive going at top notch speed. There was a tremendous head on the cylinders and they ran like a racer. Frogs and target rods were passed at a momentum that fairly frightened Ralph, and210it was a wonder to him the way the wheels ground and bounded that they always lit on the steel.
Lyle took frequent drinks from the bottle, which had been replenished. His eyes were wild, his manner reckless, almost maniacal. As they passed signals he would utter a fierce, ringing yell. Ralph crowded over to him.
“Mr. Lyle,” he shouted, “we are ahead of time.”
“Good,” roared the mad engineer, “I’m going to make the record run of the century.”
“If any other train is off schedule, that is dangerous.”
“Let ’em look out for themselves,” chuckled Lyle. “Whoop! pile in the black diamonds.”
“Stop!” almost shrieked Ralph.
Of a sudden he made a fearful discovery. A signal had called for a danger stop where the Great Northern crossed the tracks of the Midland Central. Unheeding the signal, Lyle had run directly onto a siding of the latter railroad and was traversing it at full speed.
“Stop, stop, I say—there’s a car ahead,” cried Ralph.
Lyle gave the young fireman a violent push backwards and forged ahead.
Chug! bang! A frightful sound filled the air.211The locomotive had struck a light gondola car squarely, lifting it from the track and throwing it to one side a mass of wreckage. Then on, on sped the engine. It struck the main of the Midland Central.
Ralph grabbed up a shovel.
“Lower speed,” he cried, “or I will strike you.”
“Get back,” yelled Lyle, pulling a revolver from his pocket. “Back, I say, or I’ll shoot. Whoop! this is going.”
Ralph climbed to the top of the tender. He was powerless alone to combat the engineer in his mad fury. A plan came into his mind. The first car attached to the tender was a blind baggage. Ralph sprang to its roof. Then he ran back fast as he could.
The young fireman lost no time, dropping from the roof between platforms. As he reached the first passenger coach he ran inside the car.
Passengers were on their feet, amazed and alarmed at the reckless flight of the train. The conductor and train hands were pale and frightened.
“What’s the trouble?” demanded the conductor, as Ralph rushed up to him.
“A maniac is in charge of the train. He is crazed with drink, and armed. Who of you will join me in trying to overpower him?”212
None of the train hands shrank from duty. They followed Ralph to the platform and thence to the top of the forward coach. At that moment new warnings came.
213
CHAPTER XXVIIA NEW MYSTERY
“Danger,” shouted Ralph. “Quick, men. Do you see ahead there?”
Down the rails a red signal fuse was spluttering. It was quite a distance away, but they would reach it in less than sixty seconds if the present fearful speed of the train was kept up.
“Hear that?” roared the conductor in a hoarse, frightened tone.
Under the wheels there rang out a sharp crack, audible even above the roar of the rushing train—a track torpedo.
Ralph ran across the top of the forward car. As he reached its front end, Lyle turning discovered him.
He set up a wild yell, reached into the tender, seized a big sledgehammer lying there and braced back.
The young fireman was amazed and fairly terrified at his movements, for Lyle began raining214blows on lever, throttle and everything in the way of machinery inside of the cab.
Past the red light, blotting it out, sped the train, turning a curve. Ralph anticipated a waiting or a coming train, but, to his relief, the rails were clear. Ahead, however, there was a great glow, and he now understood what the warnings meant.
The road at this point for two miles ran through a marshy forest, and this was all on fire. Ralph gained the tender.
“Back, back!” roared Lyle, facing him, weapon in hand. “She’s fixed to go, can’t stop her now. Whoop!”
With deep concern the young fireman noted the disabled machinery.
Half-way between centers, the big steel bar on the engineer’s side of the locomotive had snapped in two and was tearing through the cab like a flail, at every revolution of the driver to which it was attached.
Just as Ralph jumped down from the tender, the locomotive entered the fire belt—in a minute more the train was in the midst of a great sweeping mass of fire. The train crew, blinded and singed, retreated. Ralph trembled at a sense of the terrible peril that menaced.
Lyle had drawn back from the lever or he would have been annihilated. Then as the fire215swept into his face, he uttered a last frightful yell, gave a spring and landed somewhere along the side of the track.
The young fireman was fairly appalled. Such a situation he had never confronted before. The cab was ablaze in a dozen different places. The tops of the cars behind had also ignited. Ralph did not know what to do. Even if he could have stopped the train, it would be destruction to do so now.
Suddenly the locomotive dove through the last fire stretch. Ahead somewhere Ralph caught the fierce blast of a locomotive shrieking for orders. For life or death the train must be stopped.
He flew towards the throttle but could not reach it safely. The great bar threatened death. Twice he tried to reach the throttle and drew back in time to escape the descending bar. At a third effort he managed to slip the latch of the throttle, but received a fearful graze of one hand. Then, exhausted from exertion and excitement, the young fireman saw the locomotive slow down not a hundred yards from a stalled train.
The passenger coaches were soon vacated by the passengers, while the train crew beat out the flames where the cars were on fire.
The Limited Mail made no return trip to Stanley Junction that night. The following morning,216however, when the swamp fire had subsided, the train was taken back to the Great Northern and then to terminus.
Lyle, the engineer, was found badly burned and delirious in the swamp, where he would have perished only for the water in which he landed when he jumped from the locomotive cab. He was taken to a hospital.
There was a great deal of talk about the latest exploit of the young fireman of the Limited Mail, and Ralph did not suffer any in the estimation of the railroad people and his many friends.
One evening he came home from an interview with a local lawyer concerning the interests of his young friend, Earl Danvers.
Ralph felt quite sanguine that he could obtain redress for Earl from his heartless relations, and was thinking about it when he discovered his mother pacing up and down the front walk of the house in an agitated, anxious way.
“Why, mother,” said Ralph, “you look very much distressed.”
“I am so, truly,” replied Mrs. Fairbanks. “Ralph, we have met with a great loss.”
“What do you mean, mother?”
“The house has been burglarized.”
“When?”
“Some time during the past three hours. I was217on a visit to a sick neighbor, and returned to discover the rear door open. I went inside, and all the papers in the cabinet and some money we had there were gone.”
“The papers?” exclaimed Ralph.
“Yes, every document concerning our claim against Gasper Farrington is missing.”
“But what of Earl Danvers?” inquired Ralph. “Was he away from home?”
“He was when I left, but he must have returned during my absence.”
“How do you know that?” asked Ralph.
“The cap he wore when he went away I found near the cabinet.”
Ralph looked serious and troubled.
“I hope we have not been mistaken in believing Earl to be an honest boy,” he said, and his mother only sighed.
Then Ralph began investigating. The rear door, he found, had been forced open. All the rooms and closets had been ransacked.
“This is pretty serious, mother,” he remarked.
Earl Danvers did not return that day. This troubled and puzzled Ralph. He could not believe the boy to be an accomplice of Farrington, nor could he believe that he was the thief.
Next morning Ralph reported the loss to the town marshal. When he went down the road, he218threw off a note where the men were working on the Short Line Route at its junction with the Great Northern. It was directed to Zeph Dallas, and in the note Ralph asked his friend to look up the two uncles of Earl Danvers and learn all he could about the latter.
It was two nights later when Mrs. Fairbanks announced to Ralph quite an important discovery. In cleaning house she had noticed some words penciled on the wall near the cabinet. They comprised a mere scrawl, as if written under difficulty, and ran:
“Earl prisoner. Two boys stealing things in house. Get the old coat I wore.”
“Why, what can this mean?” said Ralph. “Earl certainly wrote this. A prisoner? two boys? the thieves? Get the old coat? He means the one he wore when he came here. What can that have to do with this business? Mother, where is the coat?”
“Why, Ralph,” replied Mrs. Fairbanks, “I sold it to a rag man last week.”