A private chivalry

It is conceivable that Henry Antrim clicked his “O. K.” at the close of the wire talk with Despatcher Disbrow with a lighter heart than he had carried for many a day. Truly, everything still hinged upon the capture of Gasset, but the blessed optimism of youth is always ready to make light of contingencies, and the chief clerk threw himself upon the night operator’s bunk to snatch a few hours’ rest, little thinking that the conclusion of the whole matter still hung in a balance whose beam would tip as his own energy and presence of mind might decide. And while he slept, the net spread so promptly by the whispering wires was already entangling the murderer.

With the criminal’s instinctive distrust of small towns to narrow his choice of a refuge, Gasset had put his fate into the keeping of chance by spinning a coin: heads, to lose himself in the untabulated crowds thronging the streets and byways of Leadville; tails, to drop from the train at some lonely station in the mountains, whence he could make his way on foot to one of the more isolated camps. The chance of the spun coin sent him to Leadville; and when, on the second morning of his sojourn in the carbonate camp, he learned from the newspapers that his bad aim had disposed of an inconvenient accomplice without materially marring his plan of vengeance on Brant, he exulted openly, and from that on went his way without concealment, believing that he had safely outrun his evil hour.

For this cause it came about that the Leadville reduplication of the telegram offering a reward for his arrest was scarcely an hour old when a police officer interrupted a quiet game of cards in a den in lower State Street, laid hands upon the winner, a big-boned man in an ill-fitting suit of dusty black, searched him, and took from him a big revolver with the name “J. Harding” scratched on the butt.

Gasset surrendered at discretion, not suspecting the nature of the charge against him, and, having a due regard for the possibilities of escape, made no resistance which should warrant the use of the handcuffs. So all went amicably until the officer, who was less discreet than his prisoner, told Gasset for what he was wanted. At the naming of the thing the ex-house-breaker caught his breath, set his teeth upon a fiercely growled oath, smote his captor skilfully upon the point of the jaw, and made a wild dash for liberty.

The policeman gave chase courageously, ignoring the broken jaw and firing ever and anon at the dodging fugitive. But Gasset made good his escape, threading the intricacies of alleys and streets in the lower town until, by the time the hue and cry was properly raised, he was free of the houses and skirting the slope of the mountain which overlooks California Gulch. Here he might have rested, but the terror of it was too new upon him. So he pushed on and always on over the bleak mountain side, doubling and twisting on his course, and cursing the snow which at day dawn would point a sure trail for his pursuers to follow. And thus running and stumbling and cursing, he came out finally in the stunted pine chapparal opposite the railway station at Malta.

From this point three ways were open to him. He might turn his face northward toward the new camps beyond Tennessee Pass, avoiding the railroad and trusting to the hospitality of the mountains for succour of bread and meat on the way. He might push westward over one of the passes to the sparsely settled gulches beyond the main range, but this was a still more precarious bread-and-meat hazard. Or, lastly, he might follow the railroad to the eastward, putting the chance of better speed and fewer privations against the greater risk of discovery and capture.

He knew well enough that either of the foot flights would be safer than the alternative; but it was late in the season, and the early snows promised hardships a-plenty. While he was yet weighing these hardships against the perils of the easier route, an east-bound freight train crawling slowly through the Malta yards turned the scale, and dashing swiftly across the tracks he climbed catlike into an empty box car what time the train was gathering headway for the rush down the valley.

At the moment of decision he had no plan more definite than the putting of as great a distance as possible between himself and the scene of his late encounter with the Leadville officer; but by the time the morning sun was gilding the snow-capped peaks of Princeton and Harvard he had hit upon a strategic series of moves which was not less ingenious than it was daring. Knowing that he could not hope to remain undiscovered in the box car after daybreak, he determined to leave the freight train at the first stop, to wait for and board the early east-bound passenger, to ride thereon openly until his identity and ostensible intention were discovered, and then to take the chance of out-witting everybody by doubling back to the westward from the meeting point of the two day trains.

It was a hazardous game to play, with the noose of the hangman at the end of it as a penalty for unsuccess; but he could think of no better. The chief hazards were two: If his identification should come too soon, he would be obliged to leave the east-bound train before it should reach the meeting point, and there would be the desperate risk of waiting at some small station until the west-bound train should arrive. And if it should be delayed until the moment of doubling, he would lose all upon the single throw. But, on the other hand, if the stratagem succeeded, if he should be lucky enough to send the hunt eastward on a false scent, much precious time would be gained and present safety would be fairly well assured.

In pursuance of this plan he dropped from the freight train while it was slowing into Buena Vista, and was so far successful as to find a hiding place in which he could watch and wait unobserved for the east-bound passenger. When that came, and he had taken a seat in the smoking car, the perils began. The conductor eyed him suspiciously, took his fare to Denver, and a little later came back to sit down for a friendly chat which soon developed by insensible degrees into a cross-examination. Gasset answered as best he might, writhing and swearing under his breath. It was what he had expected and provided for, but it had come too soon. The conductor desisted finally and went about his business, but Gasset drew fresh breath of alarm when he saw the brakeman lounge forward to take his seat on one of the newsboy’s boxes. And when the brakeman kept his place doggedly past station after station, ignoring his duties, Gasset argued that he was already under surveillance and began to nerve himself for whatever desperate struggle was in store for him.

The fugitive’s surmise was entirely correct. Since early morning the wires had been buzzing with the news of the night; and inasmuch as the railway afforded the most obvious line of escape, every trainman was on the watch for the man whose description had been sown broadcast by the telltale wires. For this cause, and knowing both the fact of the reward and the figure of it, Conductor Harker thought himself in luck. Voltamo was the first station ahead where a constable could be found; and to Voltamo the conductor wired at the first opportunity.

Antrim was at his post in the telegraph office, filling the place of the invalided branch despatcher, when the conductor’s message arrived, and he took it upon himself to make sure that the town marshal and two deputies were at the station to meet the train. That done, he waited in a fever of impatience for the event to mature, and when the suspense indoors became unbearable, he gave his place to the day operator and went out to be in at the death.

He had not long to wait. The whistle of the coming train was echoing in the upper cañon, and the little knot of loungers which had gathered about the marshal and his deputies broke apart and fell back to give the officers free play. There was a west-bound freight in the upper yard, waiting, with a man at the switch, to pull out after the passenger train should arrive; and the rear trucks of the latter were no more than fairly over the movable rail before it was set for the siding, and the freight began to worm its way out around the double curve.

The incoming passenger train slid down the grade to the station with brake shoes smoking, and Conductor Harker swung off and caught himself with a quick little run.

“I’ve got him!—alive and kicking. He’s in the forward end of the smoker,” he cried; and in a flash the marshal darted into one end of the car while his deputies cut off the retreat at the other.

Something to the surprise of all three, they met in the middle of the car without their quarry. There were not more than a dozen passengers in the seats, and no one of them remotely answered the requirements of the Gasset description. The marshal threw up a window and yelled to the conductor:

“Come in here and show us your man!”

Harker was with them at the word, but there was blank astoundment in his face. “Suffering Moses! you’ve let him get away!” he gasped. “He was right there in that second seat not more than a minute ago when we pulled down over the switch!”

“Well, you can see for yourself he isn’t here now,” quoth the marshal. “You hold the train a minute while we look through the other cars.”

The detention was not called for. Voltamo is a locomotive division station, and before the engines were changed the marshal and his aids had searched every possible hiding place in the train. Antrim knew that they had done their duty faithfully, but he was exasperated at the conductor’s apparent neglect.

“It is all your fault, Harker!” he said hotly. “You ought to have had sense enough to keep your eyes or your hands on him!”

“I ain’t saying a word,” said Harker. “But what can I do now?”

“Do? Why, take your train and go on. There isn’t anything to stop for now that he’s gone.”

The conductor obeyed, glad enough to be out of it, and Antrim turned to the marshal. “I’m sorry I got you out on a wild-goose chase,” he said. “What do you suppose became of him? Or did Harker only imagine he had him?”

“Oh, he was there, right enough. I asked some of the passengers in the smoker and they all saw him. By gravy! look at that, will you?—fell plum from the top o’ the car and never turned a hair!”

Antrim looked, and saw much more than did the marshal. The west-bound freight had stalled on the double curve, and during the detention of the passenger train had been backing and filling to get headway. Just as the marshal spoke a drawbar pulled out, and the sudden jerk of the forward section flung a man who was clinging to the roof-hold of a box car far out into the ditch. He was on his feet again in a twinkling, making a quick run for a hand car which stood blocked on a siding.

Antrim yelled as he saw him kick the block from beneath the wheel and scramble upon the deck of the car.

“That’s your man! Wing him as he goes by or he’ll get away yet! There’s a safety switch at the lower end, and the car will jump it and keep the track!”

The man threw himself fiercely upon the driving lever of the hand car, and the light gear truck came spinning down the grade under his vigorous strokes. The marshal and his two aids coolly drew their weapons and waited. The fugitive would have to pass within thirty feet of the platform, and the marksmen could afford to wait until the flying target was at short range. At the critical instant the three pistols cracked as one, and the toiling figure at the lever dropped behind the gear casing as the car shot past with ever-increasing momentum.

“Heavens and earth, I hope you haven’t killed him!” panted Antrim, while they were running down the track after the retreating hand car. “He’s got to talk some before he dies.”

“He’ll never do that,” said the marshal confidently. “He’ll never wag his jaw any more this side of the range. I don’t miss—By gravy! do you see that?”

The four pursuers stopped in speechless astoundment. The hand car had reached the safety switch, clearing it at a bound and alighting fairly upon the rails of the main line, and at the same instant the prone figure behind the gear casing straightened up and flung itself once more upon the rocking lever. Two pistols crashed simultaneously, and then the car with its labouring burden dodged out of sight and range around an elbow in the lower cañon.

“G-g-great Scott! M-m-missed him all the t-time!” stammered one of the deputies, whose speech failed him at a crisis; and the big marshal flung his weapon down and ground it into the ballast under his heel in a fine frenzy of impotent wrath.

Antrim was the first to recover presence of mind, or some semblance of it. “Come back with me and we’ll catch him yet!” he shouted, leading the race up the yard toward the relieved passenger engine, which the engineer was about to back under the coal chute. A breathless minute later they were clambering aboard, and the engineer recognised the chief clerk.

“Catch that hand car for us, Tom!” gasped Antrim, fighting for breath and coherence. “There’s a—there’s a man’s life depending on it. Turn her loose!”

The engineer nodded and dropped the reversing lever forward with a crash. One of the yard men saw them coming and ran to set the switch, and in a gathering tempest of clamour the engine shot out on the main line and the chase began afresh.

Two miles down the cañon they came in sight of the hand car darting around the curves ahead of them. Gasset had abandoned the lever when the increasing speed of the car made it dangerous to try to keep up with the quick strokes of it, and was crouching on the deck, screening himself as well as he could behind the driving mechanism. Seeing this, the marshal borrowed the stuttering deputy’s revolver and watched his chances for another shot. Antrim saw, and shook his head, shouting to make himself heard above the din and clamour of the flying locomotive:

“Don’t kill him; we must take him alive, if we can.”

The marshal lowered the weapon, and the engineer signed to Antrim to come closer. “We can’t make it,” he protested, giving the spinning wheels a taste of the air brake. “He’s got the hill with him, and that light car will keep the track when we can’t. See?”

Antrim nodded. “Keep him in sight, if you can,” he shouted back. “If you can hold your own till we come to that let-up in the grade at Berg Siding, maybe we can run him down.”

But the end of the chase was nearer, though it need not have been if Gasset could have had the courage of his despair. Before the “let-up” came in sight there was a series of blood-chilling curves around which the hand car lurched with increasing velocity. Gasset’s hand sought the brake lever. The fusillade of pistol shots, the swift down-rush between the echoing walls of the cañon, the hopelessness of any escape from the shrieking monster in the rear, all went to the unnerving of him, and he applied the brake before he fully realized what would follow any sudden checking of speed in that tortuous pathway.

What did follow brought the chase to a calamitous end. The flying wheels of the light car answered promptly to the pressure of the brake, and the car plunged sullenly through a cutting, promising to come to a full stop on the curve beyond. The hunted one sprang to his feet and kicked savagely at the brake lever. It was jammed, and he was too late. The pursuing locomotive dashed through the cutting and was fairly upon him before he could jump and save himself.

Antrim saw the doomed one kicking at the jammed lever and heard his scream of terror and the crash of the collision in the same pulse beat. What came after seemed like the awakening from a hideous dream, though the realities asserted themselves once more when they were lifting him from the wreck of the shattered hand car. “There is life in him yet; handle him gently, boys,” he said. “If he dies before he can talk an innocent man will hang for it.”

They made a rude bed for him with their coats in the empty coal pit on the engine, and so got the crushed body of him back to Voltamo and to a bunk in the freight shed at the station. Antrim could not neglect his duties, but the physician’s verdict cheered him a little.

“He is a dead man,” so ran the verdict, “and that probably within twenty-four hours. But there is a chance that he will revive a little toward the last.”

“A chance that he will be able to tell us what we have to know?” asked Antrim.

“Yes. Have your lawyer here, and the witnesses. When the man begins to find himself, call me, and I’ll try to keep him alive till you get what you need—that is, if he will give it to you.”

“He has got to give it to us,” returned Antrim desperately; and when he had made all the preparations suggested by the physician he telegraphed the facts to Forsyth, and settled down to work his way through the grimmest day of waiting that has ever been marked off in any calendar of suspense.

The end came in the dusk of the evening when the shadows were beginning to fill the deeper clefts in the mighty cañon. Gasset opened his eyes, stirred feebly, and asked for liquor; and Antrim called the lawyer and the witnesses, and sent out in hot haste for the physician.

As it fell out, there was time and to spare; time for a halting confession from the dying murderer, in which he told no more lies than he could help; time, needless time, after that for the slow and reluctant passing of a hopeless soul from a maimed and tortured body. Antrim drew breath of blessed relief when it was all over, but it was a full hour afterward before he could compose himself sufficiently to send a second telegram to Forsyth.