233CHAPTER XXVIIIA RACE AGAINST TIME
There was a thrill and fervor to the present situation that appealed to Ralph mightily. The brisk, animated procedure of the president of the Great Northern had been one of excitement and interest, and at its climax the young engineer found himself stirred up strongly.
Mr. Grant smiled slightly at Ralph’s valiant declaration. He drew the division superintendent aside in confidential discourse, and Ralph went to the bulletin board and began studying the routeing of the Shelby division. Then he hurried out into the roundhouse.
No. 999 was steamed up quickly. Ralph put the cab in rapid order for a hard run. The foreman hurried back to his office and telephoned to the yards. When No. 999 ran out on the turntable it was the foreman himself who opened the ponderous outside doors.
“It’s some weather,” observed Fogg, as the234giant locomotive swung out into the heart of a driving tempest.
The foreman directed their movements to a track where a plug engine had just backed in with a light caboose car. There was no air brake attachment and the coupling was done quickly.
“All ready,” reported Ralph, as Mr. Grant came up with the division superintendent.
The railroad president stepped to the platform of the caboose, spoke a few words to his recent companion in parting, and waved his hand signal-like for the start.
Fogg had been over the Shelby division several times, only once, however, on duty. He knew its “bad spots,” and he tried to tell his engineer about them as they steamed off the main track.
“There’s just three stations the whole stretch,” he reported, “and the tracks are clear—that’s one good point.”
“Yes, it is only obstruction and breakdowns we have to look out for,” said Ralph. “Give us plenty of steam, Mr. Fogg.”
“There’s heaps of fuel—a good six tons,” spoke the fireman. “My! but the stack pulls like a blast furnace.”
The cab curtains were closely fastened. It was a terrible night. The snow came in sheets like birdshot, a half-sleet that stung like hail as it cut235the face. The rails were crusted with ice and the sounds and shocks at curves and splits were ominous. At times when they breasted the wind full front it seemed as if a tornado was tugging at the forlorn messenger of the night, to blow the little train from the rails.
Fogg stoked the fire continuously, giving a superabundant power that made the exhaust pop off in a deafening hiss. They ran the first ten miles in twelve minutes and a half. Then as they rounded to the first station on the run, they were surprised to receive the stop signal.
“That’s bad,” muttered the fireman, as they slowed down. “Orders were for no stops, so this must mean some kind of trouble ahead.”
“What’s this?” spoke Mr. Grant sharply, appearing on the platform from the lighted caboose. He held his watch in his hand, and his pale face showed his anxiety and how he was evidently counting the minutes.
An operator ran out from the station and handed a tissue sheet to Ralph. The latter read it by the light of the cab lantern. Mr. Grant stepped down from the platform of the caboose.
“What is it, Fairbanks?” he asked somewhat impatiently.
“There’s a great jam at the dam near Westbrook,” reported Ralph. “Driftwood has crossed236the tracks near there, and the operator beyond says it will be a blockade if the dam breaks.”
“Are you willing to risk it?” inquired the official.
“That’s what we are here for,” asserted Ralph.
“Then don’t delay.”
“It’s getting worse and worse!” exclaimed Fogg, after a half-hour’s further running.
Ralph never forgot that vital hour in his young railroad experience. They were facing peril, they were grazing death, and both knew it. The wind was a hurricane. The snow came in great sheets that at times enveloped them in a whirling cloud. The wheels crunched and slid, and the pilot threw up ice and snow in a regular cascade.
There was a sickening slew to the great locomotive as they neared Westbrook. The track dropped here to take the bridge grade, and as they struck the trestle Fogg uttered a sharp yell and peered ahead.
“We can’t stop now!” he shouted; “put on every pound of steam, Fairbanks.”
Ralph was cool and collected. He gripped the lever, his nerves set like iron, but an awed look came into his eyes as they swept the expanse that the valley opened up.
The trestle was fully half a foot under water already, and the volume was increasing every237moment. Fogg piled on the coal, which seemed to burn like tinder. Twice a great jar sent him sprawling back among the coal of the tender. The shocks were caused by great cakes of ice or stray timbers shooting down stream with the gathering flood, and sliding the rails.
“She’s broke!” he panted in a hushed, hoarse whisper, as they caught sight of the dam. There was a hole in its center, and through this came pouring a vast towering mass fully fifteen feet high, crashing down on the bridge side of the obstruction, shooting mammoth bergs of ice into the air. As the sides of the dam gave way, they were fairly half-way over the trestle. It seemed that the roaring, swooping mass would overtake them before they could clear the bridge.
The light caboose was swinging after its groaning pilot like the tail of a kite. A whiplash sway and quiver caused Ralph to turn his head.
The door of the caboose was open, and the light streaming from within showed the railroad president clinging to the platform railing, swaying from side to side. He evidently realized the peril of the moment, and stood ready to jump if a crash came.
A sudden shock sent the fireman reeling back, and Ralph was nearly thrown from his seat. The locomotive was bumping over a floating piece of238timber of unusual size, and toppling dangerously. Then there came a snap. The monster engine made a leap as if freed from some incubus.
“The caboose!” screamed Fogg, and Ralph felt a shudder cross his frame. He could only risk a flashing glance backward—the caboose was gone! It had broken couplings, and had made a dive down through the flood rack clear to the bottom of the river, out of sight. Then No. 999 struck the edge of the up grade in safety, past the danger line, gliding along on clear tracks now.
Fogg stood panting for breath, clinging to his seat, a wild horror in his eyes. Ralph uttered a groan. His hand gripped to pull to stop, a sharp shout thrilled through every nerve a message of gladness and joy.
“Good for you—we’ve made it!”
The railroad president came sliding down the diminished coal heap at the rear of the tender. He had grasped its rear end, and had climbed over it just as the caboose went hurtling to destruction. The glad delight and relief in the eyes of the young engineer revealed to the official fully his loyal friendship. Fogg, catching sight of him, helped him to his feet with a wild hurrah. The fireman’s face shone with new life as he swung to his work at the coal heap.239
“If we can only make it—oh, we’ve got to make it now!” he shouted at Ralph.
There was a sharp run of nearly an hour. It was along the lee side of a series of cuts, and the snow was mainly massed on the opposite set of rails. Ralph glanced at the clock.
“We’re ahead of calculations,” he spoke to Fogg.
“We’re in for another struggle, though,” announced the fireman. “When we strike the lowlands just beyond Lisle, we’ll catch it harder than ever.”
Ralph was reeking with perspiration, his eyes cinder-filled and glazed with the strain of continually watching ahead. There had not been a single minute of relief from duty all the way from Westbrook. They struck the lowlands. It was a ten-mile run. First it was a great snowdrift, then a dive across a trembling culvert. At one point the water and slush pounded up clear across the floor of the cab and nearly put out the fire. As No. 999 rounded to higher grade, a tree half blown down from the top of an embankment grazed the locomotive, smashing the headlight and cutting off half the smokestack clean as a knife stroke.
Ralph made no stop for either inspection or240repairs. A few minutes later an incident occurred which made the occasion fairly bristle with new animation and excitement.
Mr. Grant had sat quietly in the fireman’s seat. Now he leaned over towards Ralph, pointing eagerly through the side window.
“I see,” said Ralph above the deafening roar of the wind and the grinding wheels, “the Night Express.”
They could see the lights of the train ever and anon across an open space where, about a mile distant, the tracks of the Midland Central paralleled those of the Shelby division of the Great Northern. The young engineer again glanced at the clock. His eye brightened, into his face came the most extravagant soul of hope. It was dashed somewhat as Fogg, feeding the furnace and closing the door, leaned towards him with the words:
“The last shovel full.”
“You don’t mean it!” exclaimed Ralph.
The fireman swept his hand towards the empty tender.
“Eight miles,” said Ralph in an anxious tone. “With full steam we could have reached the Junction ten minutes ahead of the Express. Will the fire last out?”
“I’ll mend it some,” declared the fireman.241“Fairbanks, we might lighten the load,” he added.
“You mean––”
“The tender.”
“Yes,” said Ralph, “cut it loose,” and a minute later the railroad president uttered a sudden cry as the tender shot into the distance, uncoupled. Then he understood, and smiled excitedly. And then, as Fogg reached under his seat, pulled out a great bundle of waste and two oil cans, and flung them into the furnace, he realized the desperate straits at which they had arrived and their forlorn plight.
Conserving every ounce of steam, all of his nerves on edge, the young engineer drove No. 999 forward like some trained steed. As they rounded a hill just outside of Shelby Junction, they could see the Night Express steaming down its tracks, one mile away.
“We’ve made it!” declared Ralph, as they came within whistling distance of the tower at the interlocking rails where the two lines crossed.
“Say,” yelled Fogg suddenly, “they’ve given the Express the right of way.”
This was true. Out flashed the stop signal for No. 999, and the white gave the “come on” to the Night Express. There was no time to get to the tower and try to influence the towerman to242cancel system at the behest of a railroad president.
“You must stop that train!” rang out the tones of the official sharply.
“I’m going to,” replied Fairbanks grimly.
He never eased up on No. 999. Past the tower she slid. Then a glowing let up, and then, disregarding the lowered gates, she crashed straight through them, reducing them to kindling wood.
Squarely across the tracks of the incoming train the giant engine, battered, ice-coated, the semblance of a brave wreck, was halted. There she stood, a barrier to the oncoming Express.
Ralph jumped from his seat, reached under it, pulled out a whole bunch of red fuses, lit them, and leaning out from the cab flared them towards the oncoming train, Roman-candle fashion.
The astonished towerman quickly changed the semaphore signals. Her nose almost touching No. 999, the Express locomotive panted down to a halt.
“You shall hear from me, my men,” spoke the railroad president simply, but with a great quiver in his voice, as he leaped from the cab, ran to the first car of the halted express and climbed to its platform.
Ralph drove No. 999 across the switches. The Express started on its way again. In what was243the proudest moment of his young life, the loyal engineer of staunch, faithful No. 999 saw the president of the Great Northern take off his hat and wave it towards himself and Fogg, as if with an enthusiastic cheer.
244CHAPTER XXIXZEPH DALLAS AGAIN
“Say—Engineer Ralph—Mr. Fairbanks!”
A spluttering, breathless voice halted Ralph on his way from the depot to the roundhouse. It was the call boy, Torchy, the young engineer ascertained, as he waited till the excited juvenile came up to him.
“What’s the trouble, Torchy?” he inquired.
Torchy caught his breath, but the excited flare in his eyes did not diminish.
“Say!” he spluttered out; “I was looking for you. That car, the one they use out west in Calfrancisco, Francifornia, no, I mean Calfris—rot! out west, anyway—tourist car.”
“I know, yes,” nodded Ralph.
“Well, you remember the queer old fossil’s special to Fordham spur? That fellow Zeph Dallas was on it.”
“I remember distinctly; go ahead.”
“There’s another car just like that one in the yards now, right this minute.”245
“You don’t say so? I didn’t suppose that more than one antiquated relic of that kind was in existence,” said Ralph.
“Come on and see,” invited Torchy. “This last car must have come from the north this morning, just like the other one did. It’s bunched up with a lot more of the blockade runners, delayed freight, you know, and they’ve made up a train of it and others for the Mountain Division.”
Besides being intensely interested, Ralph had time to spare. It was nearly a week after the Shelby Junction incident. The great storm had crippled some of the lines of the great Northern to a fairly alarming extent. The Mountain Division had felt the full force of the blizzard and had suffered the most extensively. There were parts of the division where it took several days to repair culverts, strengthen trestles and replace weakened patches of track. The Overland Express missed several runs, but had got back on fair schedule two days before. A new storm had set in that very morning, and as Ralph followed Torchy there were places where the drifts were up to their knees.
“There you are,” announced his companion, pausing and pointing over at a train on a siding. “Isn’t that last car the very picture of the one that Dallas was on?”246
“Remarkably so,” assented Ralph.
“I’ve got to get to the roundhouse,” explained the little fellow, turning back in his tracks. “Thought you’d want to know about that car, though.”
“I do, most emphatically,” declared Ralph, “and greatly obliged to you for thinking of it.”
Ralph approached the train on the siding. It was one of the queerest he had ever seen. There was a motley gathering of every class of freight cars on the line. As he passed along he noted the destination of some of the cars. No two were marked for the same point of delivery. It was easy to surmise that they were victims of the recent blockade.
Ralph came up to the rear car of the incongruous train with a good deal of curiosity. It was not the car that had made that mysterious run to Fordham Spur with Zeph Dallas, although it looked exactly like it. The present car was newer and more staunch. A fresh discovery made Ralph think hard. The car was classified as “fast freight,” and across one end was chalked its presumable destination.
“Fordham Spur,” read the young engineer. “Queer—the same as the other car. I wonder what’s aboard?”
Just like the other car, the curtains were closely247drawn in this one. There was no sign of life about the present car, however. Smoke curled from a pipe coming up through its roof. No one was visible in the immediate vicinity except a flagman and some loiterers about a near switch shanty. Ralph stepped to the rear platform of the car. He placed his hand on the door knob, turned it, and to his surprise and satisfaction the door opened unresistingly.
He stepped inside, to find himself in a queer situation. Ralph stood in the rear partitioned-off end of the car. It resembled a homelike kitchen. An oil stove stood on a stand, and around two sides of the car were shelves full of canisters, boxes and cans, a goodly array of convenient eatables. Lying asleep across a bench was a young colored man, who wore the cap and apron of a dining-car cook.
Ralph felt that he was intruding, but his curiosity overcame him. He stepped to the door of the partition. Near its top was a small pane of glass, and through this Ralph peered.
“I declare!” he exclaimed under his breath, and with a great start.
A strange, vivid picture greeted the astonished vision of the young railroader. If the rear part of the tourist car had suggested a modern kitchen, the front portion was a well-appointed living248room. It had a stove in its center, and surrounding this were all the comforts of a home. There was a bed, several couches, easy chairs, two illuminated lamps suspended from side brackets, and the floor was covered with soft, heavy rugs.
Upon one of the couches lay a second colored man, apparently a special car porter, and he, like the cook, was fast asleep. All that Ralph had so far seen, however, was nothing to what greeted his sight as his eyes rested on the extreme front of the car.
There, lying back in a great luxurious armchair, was a preternaturally thin and sallow-faced man. His pose and appearance suggested the invalid or the convalescent. He lay as if half dozing, and from his lips ran a heavy tube, connected with a great glass tank at his side.
Such a picture the mystified Ralph had never seen before. He could not take in its full meaning all in a minute. His puzzled mind went groping for some reasonable solution of the enigma. Before he could think things out, however, there was a sound at the rear door of the car. Some one on the platform outside had turned the knob and held the door about an inch ajar, and Ralph glided towards it. Through the crack he could see three persons plainly. Ralph viewed them with wonderment.249
He had half anticipated running across Zeph Dallas somewhere about the train, but never this trio—Ike Slump, Jim Evans and the man he had known as Lord Montague. The two latter were standing in the snow. Ike was on the platform. He was asking a question of the man who had posed as a member of the English nobility:
“Be quick, Morris; what am I to do?”
Lord Montague,aliasMorris, with a keen glance about him, drew a heavy coupling pin from under his coat.
“Take it,” he said hastily, “and get inside that car.”
“Suppose there’s somebody hinders me?”
“Didn’t I tell you they were all asleep?” demanded Morris. “You’ll find a man near a big glass tank.”
“See here,” demurred Ike; “I don’t want to get into any more trouble. When it comes to striking a man with that murderous weapon––”
“Murderous fiddlesticks!” interrupted Morris. “You are to hurt nobody. Smash the tank, that’s all—run out, join us, and it’s a hundred dollars cash on the spot, and a thousand when I get my fortune.”
“Here goes, then,” announced Ike Slump, pushing open the door, “but what you want to go to all250this risk and trouble for to smash an old glass tank, I can’t imagine.”
“You’ll know later,” muttered Morris grimly.
Ralph did not know what the three rascals were up to, but he realized that it must be something bad. Putting two and two together, thinking back a bit of all that had occurred concerning Zeph, the Clark boy, and the Slump crowd, he began to fancy that tourist cars played a big part in the programme, whatever that programme was. The smashing of the glass tank, Morris had announced, was worth a hundred dollars to Ike—might lead to a fortune, he had intimated.
“There’s some wicked plot afoot,” decided Ralph, “so—back you go, Ike Slump!”
As Ike stepped across the threshold of the car the young engineer acted. He had grabbed the coupling pin from Ike’s hand, dropped it, grasped Ike next with both hands and pressed him backwards to the platform. Ike struggled and himself got a grip on Ralph. The latter kept forcing his opponent backwards. Ike slipped and went through the break in the platform railing where the guard chain was unset, and both toppled to the ground submerged in three feet of snow.
Ralph had landed on top of Ike and he held him down, but the cries of his adversary had brought Evans and Morris to his rescue. The former was251pouncing down upon Ralph with vicious design in his evil face, when a new actor appeared on the scene.
It was Zeph Dallas. He came running to the spot with his arms full of packages, apparently some supplies for the tourist car which he had just purchased of some store on Railroad Street. These he dropped and his hand went to his coat pocket. The amateur detective was quite as practical and businesslike as did he appear heroic, as he drew out a weapon.
“Leave that fellow alone, stand still, or you’re goners, both of you,” panted Zeph. “Hi! hello! stop those men! They’re conspirers, they’re villains!”
Zeph’s fierce shouts rang out like clarion notes. They attracted the attention of the crowd around the switch shanty, and as Evans and Morris started on a run three or four of the railroad loiterers started to check their flight. As Zeph helped Ralph yank Ike Slump to his feet and drag him along, the young engineer observed that Evans and Morris were in the custody of the switch shanty crowd.
Two men coming down the track hastened over to the crowd. Ralph was glad to recognize them as Bob Adair, the road detective, and one of the yards watchmen.252
“What’s the trouble here, Fairbanks?” inquired Adair, with whom the young engineer was a prime favorite and an old-time friend.
“Dallas will tell you,” intimated Ralph.
“Yes,” burst out Zeph excitedly; “I want these three fellows arrested, Mr. Adair. They must be locked up safe and sound, or they’ll do great harm.”
“Ah—Evans? Slump?” observed Adair, recognizing the twain who had caused the Great Northern a great deal of trouble in the past. “They’ll do on general principles. Who’s this other fellow?”
“He’s the worst of the lot, the leader. He’s an awful criminal,” declared Zeph with bolting eyes and intense earnestness. “Mr. Adair, if you let that crowd go free, you’ll do an awful wrong.”
“But what’s the charge?”
“Conspiracy. They’re trying to––”
“Well, come up to the police station and give me something tangible to go on, and I’ll see that they get what’s coming to them,” promised the road detective.
“I can’t—say, see! my train. I’ve got to go with that train, Ralph,” cried Zeph in frantic agitation. “Try and explain, don’t let those fellows get loose for a few hours—vast fortune—Marvin Clark—Fred Porter—Fordham Cut—big plot!”253
In a whirl of incoherency, Zeph dashed down the tracks, for the train with the tourist car had started up. He had just time enough to gather up his scattered bundles and reach the platform of the last car, as the mixed train moved out on the main line and out of sight, leaving his astonished auditors in a vast maze of mystery.
254CHAPTER XXXSNOWBOUND
Chug!
“A snowslide!” exclaimed Ralph, in dismay.
“An avalanche!” declared Fogg. “Dodge—something’s coming!”
With a crash both cab windows were splintered to fragments. The young engineer of No. 999 was nearly swept from his seat as there poured in through the gap a volume of snow.
They had struck an immense snowdrift obliquely, but the fireman’s side caught the brunt. As the powerful locomotive dove into the drift, the snow packed through the denuded window-frame at the fireman’s seat like grain into a bin. A solid block of snow was formed under the terrific pressure of the compact. It lodged against the coal of the tender with a power that would probably have crushed the life out of a person standing in the way.
“Whew!” shouted Fogg. “Lucky I ducked.”
Ralph stopped the engine, which had been going255slower and slower each minute of the past hour. They had gotten about half the distance to Rockton. Long since, however, both engineer and fireman had fully decided that they would never make terminus that night.
They had left Stanley Junction under difficulties. The snow was deep and heavy, and there was a further fall as they cleared the limits. There was no wind, but the snow came down with blinding steadiness and volume, and at Vernon they got the stop signal.
The operator stated that the line ahead leading past Fordham Cut was impassable. The passenger was stalled ten miles away, and orders from Rockton were to the effect that the Overland Express should take the cut-off. This diverged into the foothills, where there were no such deep cuts as on the direct route, and where it was hoped the drifts would not be so heavy.
Neither Ralph nor Fogg was familiar with their new routing. For an hour they made fair progress. Then they began to encounter trouble. They did not run a yard that the pilot wheels were not sunk to the rims in snow. Landmarks were blotted out. As they found themselves blindly trusting to the power of the giant locomotive to forge ahead despite obstacles, they were practically a lost train.256
It was now, as they dove bodily into a great drift choking up an embankment cut, that they realized that they had reached a definite angle in their experience of the run, and were halted for good.
No. 999 barely pushed her nose far enough out of the enveloping drift, to enable Ralph by the aid of the glaring headlight to discern other drifts further ahead.
“We’re stalled, that’s dead sure,” declared Fogg. “Signal the conductor and see what the programme is.”
It was some time after the tooting signal that the conductor put in an appearance. He did not come along the side track. That was fairly impossible, for it would have been sheer burrow progress. He came over the top of the next car to the tender, a blind baggage, and as he climbed over the coal in the tender his lantern smashed and he presented a pale and anxious face to the view of the cab crew.
“What’s the prospects?” he inquired in a discouraged tone.
“It looks like an all-night lay-over,” reported Ralph.
“There’s nothing ahead, of course,” said the conductor calculatingly. “There’s a freight due on the in track. Behind us a freight was to come,257provided No. 11 put out from Stanley Junction to-night.”
“Which I doubt,” said Fogg.
“If we could back to Vernon we’d be in better touch with something civilized,” went on the conductor. “The wires are all down here.”
“I can try it,” replied Ralph, “but without a pilot the rear car will soon come to a bump.”
“Give her a show, anyway,” suggested the conductor.
Two minutes’ effort resulted in a dead stop. The young engineer knew his business well enough to understand that they were in danger of running the train off the track.
“I’ll send a signal back, if a man can get back,” decided the conductor.
The backing-up had left a clear brief space before the train. Ralph took a lantern and left his fireman in charge of the locomotive. He was gone about ten minutes, and came back panting and loaded down with the heavy, clinging snow.
“May as well bunk in right here,” ventured Fogg.
“That’s it,” answered Ralph definitely. “It’s drift after drift ahead. No use disabling the locomotive, and we simply can’t hope to dig our way out.”
The conductor came forward again looking miserable.258A red lantern had been planted as far down the tracks as the brakeman dared to go. The conductor and Ralph held a conversation. Fogg, a veteran in the service, was appealed to for a final decision.
“You’ve hit it,” said the fireman sagely and with emphasis. “It’s a permanent blockage, and our only chance is for the Great Northern to find us out or for us to wait until the snow melts.”
“If this snow keeps up we’ll be buried under,” said the conductor.
“Well, we’ve got to make the best of it,” advised Fogg. “If we can make it, build a big fire ahead there as a warning or signal, although I don’t believe there’s much stirring at either end. Then it’s just a question of food and warmth.”
“Food!” repeated the conductor, who was fat and hearty and looked as if he never willingly missed his meals; “where in the world are we to get food? They cut the diner off at the Junction, and there probably isn’t a farmhouse or station along this dreary waste for miles.”
“Well, I fancy we’ll have to stand the hunger,” said Ralph. “As to the heat, that’s an essential we mustn’t neglect. We had better shut off the steam pipes, keeping only a little fire in the furnace and starting the stoves in the coaches.”259
“Yes, we might last out on that plan,” nodded the conductor, glancing over the tender.
Ralph pulled to a spot about two hundred feet ahead, where the advance and retreat of the train had cleared a space alongside the rails, and the conductor went back to the coaches.
Ralph adjusted the steam pipes so they would not freeze, and Fogg banked the fire. Then they got to the ground with rake and shovel, and skirmished around to see what investigation might develop.
Despite the terrible weather and the insecurity of their situation, the train crew were soon cheerily gathering wood up beyond the embankment. They had to dig deep for old logs, and they broke down tree branches. Then they cleared a space at the side of the track and started a great roaring fire that flared high and far.
“Nobody will run into that,” observed Fogg with a satisfied chuckle.
“And it may lead a rescue party,” suggested Ralph.
Some of the men passengers strolled up to the fire. Fear and anxiety had given way to a sense of the novelty of the situation. Ralph assured them that their comfort and safety would be looked after. He promised a foraging party at daylight in search of food supplies.260
“They’re talking about you back there in the coaches, Fairbanks,” reported the conductor a little later. “They know about your arrangements for their comfort, and they’re chatting and laughing, and taking it all in like a regular picnic.”
“I suppose you’ve been giving me undue credit, you modest old hero!” laughed Ralph.
“Hello!” suddenly exclaimed Fogg; “now, what is that?”
All hands stared far to the west. A dim red flame lit the sky. Then it appeared in a new spot, still far away. This was duplicated until there were vague red pencils of light piercing the sky from various points of the compass.
“It’s queer,” commented the conductor. “Something’s in action, but what, and how?”
“There!” exclaimed Fogg, as suddenly seemingly just beyond the heavy drift immediately in front of the train the same glare was seen.
“Yes, and here, too!” shouted out the conductor, jumping back.
Almost at his feet something dropped from midair like a rocket, a bomb. It instantly burst out in a vivid red flame. Ralph investigated, and while thus engaged two more of the colored messengers, projectiles, fireworks, whatever they were, rained down, one about half-way down the train, the other beyond it.261
The young engineer was puzzled at first, but he soon made out all that theory and logic could suggest. There was no doubt but that some one at a distance had fired the queer little spheres, which were made of the same material as the regular train fuse, only these burned twice as long as those used as railroad signals, or fully twenty minutes.
“I make it out,” explained Ralph to the conductor, “that somebody with a new-fangled device like a Roman candle is sending out these bombs as signals.”
“Then we’re not alone in our misery,” remarked Fogg.
“First they went west, then they came this way,” continued Ralph. “I should say that it looks as if the signal is on a train stalled like us about a mile away. I’ll soon know.”
Ralph got into the cab. In a minute or two No. 999 began a series of challenge whistles that echoed far and wide.
“Hark!” ordered Fogg, as they waited for a reply.
“A mere peep,” reported the conductor, as a faint whistle reached their strained hearing above the noise of the tempest.
“Yes,” nodded Fogg, “I figure it out. There’s262a train somewhere near with the locomotive nigh dead.”
“If it should be the east freight stalled,” suggested Ralph to the conductor, “you needn’t worry about those hungry children in the coaches, and that baby you told about wanting milk.”
“No, the east freight is a regular provision train,” put in the fireman. “If we could reach her, we’d have our pick of eatables.”
It was two hours later, and things had quieted down about the snowed-in train, when a series of shouts greeted Ralph, Fogg and the conductor, seated on a broken log around the fire at the side of the tracks.
“What’s this new windfall!” exclaimed Fogg.
“More signals,” echoed the conductor, staring vaguely.
“Human signals, then,” supplemented Ralph. “Well, here’s a queer arrival.”
Five persons came toppling down the side of the embankment, in a string. They were tied together at intervals along a rope. All in a mix-up, they landed helter-skelter in the snow of the cut. They resembled Alpine tourists, arrived on a landslide.
“Why, it’s Burton, fireman of the east freight!” shouted the conductor, recognizing the first of the five who picked himself up from the snow.
“That’s who!” answered the man addressed,263panting hard. “We’re stalled about a mile down the cut. Coal given out, no steam. Saw your fire, didn’t want to freeze to death quite, so––”
“We guessed that you were the Overland,” piped in a fresh, boyish voice. “Packed up some eatables, and here we are. How do you like my new railroad rocket signals, Engineer Fairbanks?” and Archie Graham, the young inventor, picked himself up from the snow.
264CHAPTER XXXICONCLUSION
One hour after daybreak the vicinity of the snowbound Overland Express resembled a picture, rather than a forlorn blockade.
The lone adventurers who had made the trip from the stalled freight had been a relief party indeed. The engineer was a railroader of long experience, and he had thought out the dilemma of the refugees. He and his companions had broken open a freight car and had brought each a good load. There was coffee, sugar, crackers, canned meats, a ham, and, what was most welcome to anxious mothers and their babes, a whole crate of condensed milk.
There never was a more jolly breakfast than that aboard the snowbound coaches. There was plenty to eat and to spare all around, and plenty more at the stalled freight, everybody knew. In front of the engine many a merry jest went the rounds, as the train crews and some of the passengers265broiled pieces of succulent ham on the end of pointed twigs.
“You see, it was this way,” Archie Graham explained to the young engineer of No. 999. “I was just watching a chance for washouts or snowstorms to get on a train diving into the danger. Those red bombs are my invention. I shoot them from a gun. I can send them a mile or gauge them to go fifty feet. They ignite when they drop, and by sending out a lot of them they are bound to land somewhere near the train you aim at. The engineer is bound to take notice, just as you did, of the glare, and that’s where they beat the fusees and save the running back of a brakeman.”
“Archie,” said Ralph honestly, “I believe you’re going to hit some real invention some time.”
“I helped out some with my patent rocket signals this time,” declared Archie.
“You did, my lad,” observed Fogg with enthusiasm, “and the passengers know all about it, and they’ve mentioned you in a letter they’re getting up to the company saying how they appreciate the intelligence—that’s Fairbanks—the courage, ahem! that’s me, and the good-heartedness, that’s all of us, of the two train crews.”
By the middle of the afternoon a snow plow opened up the line from Rockton to the stalled train. It was not until two mornings later,266however, that the main line was open and Ralph and Fogg got back to Stanley Junction.
Archie came on the same train. Ralph asked him up to the house, but the young inventor said he wanted the quiet of his hotel room to work on his signal rocket idea, which he declared would amount to something yet.
The young engineer had scarcely got in the house after the warm, cheerful greeting of his anxious mother, when Zeph Dallas put in an appearance.
Zeph was looking exceedingly prosperous. He wore a new, nicely-fitting suit of clothes, a modest watch and chain, and was quite dignified and subdued, for him.
“When you’ve had your breakfast, Ralph,” he said, “I’ve got something to tell you.”
“Yes,” nodded Ralph, “I’m expecting to hear a pretty long story from you, Zeph.”
The young engineer hurried his breakfast and soon joined Zeph in the sitting-room.
“Say, Ralph,” at once observed his friend, “you’ve done some big things in your time, but the biggest thing you ever did was when you saw to it that Jim Evans and Ike Slump, and most of all, that fellow, Morris, were held as prisoners by Adair, the road detective.”267
“I fancied they deserved locking up,” remarked Ralph.
“There would have been a murder if you hadn’t seen to it,” declared Zeph. “I’ve a story to tell that would make your hair stand on end, but it would take a book to tell it all.”
“I’m here to listen, Zeph,” intimated Ralph.
“Yes, but I’m due to meet Mr. Adair at the jail. He’s sent Evans and Slump back to the prison they escaped from. I hurried on here from the Fordham cut purposely to tell him what I wanted done with Morris.”
“I say, Zeph,” rallied the young railroader, “you seem to have a big say in such things for a small boy.”
“That’s all right,” declared Zeph good-naturedly; “I’m all here, just the same, and I’m here for a big purpose. In a word, not to mystify you, Ralph, for you know only half of the story, I was hired by Marvin Clark, the son of the Middletown & Western Railroad president, to do all I’ve done, and I have been royally paid for it.”
“Then you must have done something effective,” observed Ralph.
“Clark thought so, anyway. I’ll try and be brief and to the point, so that you’ll understand in a nutshell. You know Marvin Clark and Fred Porter and the two Canaries?”268
The young engineer nodded assentingly.
“Well, as I say, I ran across Clark accidentally in my stray wanderings. He and a sickly boy named Ernest Gregg were living in a fixed-over building at Fordham Spur. I seemed to be just the person Clark was waiting for. He hired me to do some work for him. He was planning to get the poor boy, Gregg, his rights.”
“Yes, I know about that,” observed Ralph.
“Then if you do, I can hurry over things. It seems that when he began to look up Gregg’s affairs, he found out that Ernest had a strange hermit of a grandfather, named Abijah Gregg. Ernest’s father was an only son. About five years ago the old man discovered a terrible forgery in which he was robbed of over ten thousand dollars. He had reason to believe that Ernest’s father and a man named Howard were responsible for it. He disowned his son and all his family, and a month later Ernest’s father died, leaving his son a disowned and homeless outcast.”
“And what became of Howard?” inquired the interested Ralph.
“He disappeared. Old Gregg became soured at all humanity after that,” narrated Zeph; “the more so because he had a profligate nephew who turned out bad. This was the man in jail here now.”269
“Lord Lionel Montague—Morris?”
“Yes, Morris robbed the old man, who became afraid of him. The old man tried to hide away from everybody. In his wanderings he picked up the two Canaries and settled down at the lonely place at Fordham Cut. He was very rich, partly paralyzed, and intended to leave his fortune to the state, rather than have any relative benefit by it. Well, Marvin Clark, the splendid, unselfish fellow, got a clew to all this. He located old Abijah Gregg. He spent just loads of money following down points, until he discovered that the man Howard was a broken-down invalid in New Mexico. Clark was sick himself for a month, and that was why Fred Porter did not hear from him.”
“And later?” asked Ralph.
“I ran across Porter and brought him to the Spur about a month ago. He is there now. Well, Clark found out positively that Ernest’s father never had a thing to do with forgery. It had been really committed by Howard and this villain, Morris. He got in touch with Howard in New Mexico, who was a dying man. He found him anxious to make what reparation he could for a wicked deed. Old Gregg would not go to New Mexico. Howard could only live where the air was just right for him. The physicians said that270if he ever went to any other climate, the change of atmosphere would kill him. With plenty of money at his command, Clark arranged it all. The New Mexico doctors got a tank that held an artificial air, and Clark arranged so that Howard could come east in a special car.”
“And the first tourist car that you ran empty to the Spur?” inquired Ralph.
“Why, we knew that Morris was trying every way to locate and annoy his uncle. We thought that maybe he had got onto our plans about Howard. We ran the dummy car to see if we were being watched. Don’t you see, that if Morris had succeeded in smashing the glass air tank, Howard would have died before he could tell his story to old Mr. Gregg.”
“And now?” said Ralph.
“The story has been told. Old Mr. Gregg is convinced that his son was innocent of forgery. He will take care of his grandson and make him his heir, and young Clark, as you see, has done a grand thing.”
“Yes, indeed,” assented Ralph.
“Howard will return to New Mexico with a relieved conscience. I am going to the jail here now to see Morris. If he will agree to leave the country and never annoy his uncle again, I will give him a certain large sum of money, as directed271by his uncle. If he doesn’t, he will be prosecuted for the forgery.”
“Zeph,” observed the young railroader enthusiastically, “you have proven yourself not only a real detective, but a splendid lawyer, as well.”
“Thank you,” returned Zeph, and blushed modestly; “most everybody that gets in with you does some kind of good in the world.”
It was two hours later when a messenger came to the Fairbanks home with a letter for Ralph.
The young engineer flushed with pleasure as he read a brief communication from the master mechanic, advising him that Mr. Robert Grant, president of the Great Northern, was at Stanley Junction, and wished to see him for a few minutes at the Waverly Hotel.
Ralph told his mother of the incident, and her eyes followed him fondly and proudly as, arrayed in his best, Ralph started out to keep his appointment.
It was a warm welcome that the young railroader received from the great railroad magnate. Mr. Grant went over their mutual experiences the night of the wild dash of the special from Rockton to Shelby Junction.
“You did a most important service for the road that night, Fairbanks,” said the railroad president; “how much, is a secret in the archives of the company,272but I can say to you confidentially that the Mountain Division would have passed to another line if we had not acted in time.”
“I am very glad,” said Ralph modestly.
“I want to acknowledge that service. I am only the president of the road,” said Mr. Grant, smiling, and Ralph smiled, too, “so being a servant of the road, I must act under orders. I learned that, like all thrifty young men, you had a savings account at the bank here. I have deposited there the company’s check for one thousand dollars to your account.”
“Oh, Mr. Grant––” began Ralph, but the railroad president held up his hand to check the interruption.
“As to Fogg,” went on Mr. Grant, “the road has closed up the subscription in his behalf, by giving him sufficient to rebuild his burned-down house.”
Ralph’s face was aglow with pride, pleasure and happiness.
“So, good-by for the present, Fairbanks,” concluded the railroad president, grasping Ralph’s hand warmly. “There are higher places for ambitious young men in the service of the road, as you know. I shall not try to influence your plans, for I know that sheer merit will put you forward273when you decide to advance. As to my personal influence, that, you know, is yours to command. For the present, however, we should regret to see the Overland Express in other hands than those of the youngest and the best engineer on the Great Northern.”
What Mr. Grant had to say about Ralph’s advancement came true a little later, and those who care to follow our hero’s future career may do so in the next story of this series, to be called, “Ralph, the Train Dispatcher; or, The Mystery of the Pay Car.” In that volume we shall meet many of our old friends once more, and see what our hero did when new difficulties confronted him.
One day Ralph was surprised to receive a visit from Marvin Clark and Fred Porter. He received them both warmly, and soon learned that Clark had fixed up his trouble over railroad work, and with his parent, and had secured a good position for Fred, so that the latter would no longer need to lead a roving life.
“But I must have one more ride with you, Fairbanks,” said Fred.
“And I’ll go along,” said the son of the railroad president.
“With pleasure!” cried Ralph. “Come on!”274And he led the way to where No. 999 stood ready for the next run.
The trip was a grand success. And here we will, for the present, at least, say good-by to Ralph of the Overland Express.
THE END