CHAPTER XXIX
THE RUN IS ENDED
Ralph, with Mr. Hopkins, Adair, and several of the latter’s assistants, got aboard a dirt train going across to the Devil’s Den where the replaced pillar under the trestle was still in course of construction. Once there, they could easily walk up the grade to that point where the young engineer had seen fluttering from the bushes on the side of the cliff certain articles of apparel which he believed belonged to his friend, Zeph Dallas.
The ragged remains of the vest and shirt still clung there. The cap had probably been blown away. The forest fire had not run up the face of the crag, so the wearing apparel had not been destroyed.
“Now, it is a fact,” Ralph put forth, “that Zeph hasn’t been seen since the night the Flyer was pulled down here for that flaming scarecrow when the pillar at Devil’s Den was blown out. Nor has he been heard from, has he?”
“Not a sign of him,” agreed Adair.
“Then make up your mind he went up this cliff, and by that path. He probably followed the rascals who dynamited the pillar. He was so eager that he could not even wait to see if I got his fire signal and stopped the train.”
“That would be just like him,” admitted Bob Adair again.
“Zeph discarded his vest, and then his shirt and cap, to mark his trail. I believe it should have been followed before.”
“That sounds reasonable,” said Mr. Hopkins. “But that was some time ago. What do you suppose has happened to him since?”
“He was captured by the men he followed. That goes without saying. I don’t believe they would have killed the boy,” said the chief detective. “But they would hold him prisoner.”
“Just as they are holding my daughter,” groaned out Mr. Hopkins.
“Not for ransom, in Zeph’s case,” said Adair grimly. “They know nobody would give a dollar for him.”
“I’d give everything I’ve got for him!” cried Ralph, in some heat.
“Well, now, come to think of it,” said Adair, with twinkling eyes, “I don’t know but I’d give something myself to see Zeph clear of the rascals.”
“I guess you would!” exclaimed Ralph. “Zeph will try anything once, but he is something more than a nut. He is faithful and brave and a mighty good friend!”
However, they wasted little time in discussing the fine possibilities of the situation. Ralph knew the path up the crag pretty well, and he led the way. Two of the detective police were left below with rifles to watch for any person who might appear above to obstruct the climbers.
To climb that cliff at night must have been hard work. But by daylight Ralph and his companions did not find it particularly difficult. In half an hour they approached the summit of the ascent.
On the way Ralph had made sure that the rags of garments still hanging to the brush had actually belonged to Zeph Dallas. He even found the yellow brown cap that had fallen upon a shelf of rock. At any rate, Zeph had passed this way and must have left the articles for some good and sufficient reason.
“He expected to get into trouble, or he already was in trouble,” Ralph said to Mr. Adair. “Think of him shedding his clothes in this way!”
“I have got through wondering about Zeph,” admitted the chief detective. “He is always breaking out in a new spot.”
Ralph, however, could not feel so sure that his friend was all right. As he led the way “over the top” he almost feared to find Zeph’s dead body lying on the rocks.
But the first thing he found was somebody very much alive. As Ralph scrambled over the lip of the last shelf of rock a figure suddenly popped into view. The head and shoulders of a man appeared just above the young fellow. And to the latter’s surprise, those head and shoulders were shrouded in a flour sack on which the red and green lettering was faintly visible.
“Here he is!” yelled Ralph, and sprang up and grabbed the fellow. The latter had a club which he tried to use, but he had been so amazed by the appearance of the young engineer and his party that he was quickly overpowered.
In fact, Ralph was astride the fellow’s body and was tearing off the mask when Mr. Adair and Mr. Hopkins reached the ledge of rock. Ralph exposed the flaxen head and foolish face of Whitey Malone!
“We’ve got him, anyway, on the count of highway robbery,” said Mr. Adair, with satisfaction.
“What does he know about my daughter?” demanded the supervisor.
“He’d better tell at once,” said the chief detective, “or we may throw him over the cliff.”
This threat he made with a wink to Mr. Hopkins and Ralph; but Whitey did not see that wink! He was scared to the marrow of his bones, especially when he was dragged to the edge of the rock.
“I’ll show you! I’ll tell!” he cried. “But Andy will kill me.”
“You tell the truth,” Mr. Adair promised, “and you will be out of jail a good many years before Andy McCarrey gets through paying the penalty for his crimes.”
It was a point that even Whitey Malone could appreciate. Much as he feared McCarrey and Griffin Falk, the weak-minded fellow knew that he could save himself much trouble by telling all he knew to the representatives of the law.
Back from the verge of this cliff in a thick wood was an old charcoal burner’s cabin. Zeph Dallas, in attempting to follow McCarrey’s ruffians who had dynamited the trestle pillar (Whitey had not been in that crime) was captured, as Ralph believed, and was held prisoner in the charcoal burner’s shack.
At the time of the wreck of Number 33 in Shadow Valley, some of these same employees of McCarrey, lurking in the bushes, had recognized Cherry Hopkins and had seized her during the confusion. Binding her and muffling her cries, the rascals had taken her by a roundabout way to the same shack in which Zeph was held prisoner.
With this information wrenched from the reluctant Whitey, Ralph, Supervisor Hopkins, Adair and his men, went on to the cabin. They approached it with much care, for a large band of the outlaws were on guard.
Ralph and Mr. Adair, who were well informed regarding the identity of the striking shopmen, saw no ex-railroad employee in the clearing where the shack stood. But McCarrey and his chief henchman, Falk, were there.
Without doubt, although McCarrey had wormed himself into the confidence of the dissatisfied shopmen and other employees of the division, he had done so merely for his own personal aggrandizement. He hated the supervisor of the division and he had worked merely to control the strike fund of the ill-advised railroaders and to hurt Mr. Barton Hopkins.
Chance, it seemed, had put Cherry into the power of this scoundrel. When he heard that she had been captured he left Rockton immediately and took up his personal fight against the supervisor. He knew Hopkins had some money and he was determined to make him ransom his daughter.
With this knowledge in their possession, Ralph and his companions attacked the gang at the charcoal burner’s shack with considerable determination. Although they had firearms, they did not have to use them. Advancing under the chief detective’s direction on the clearing from all sides, the rescuers clubbed their men down, frightening them as much as they injured them.
While the men were fighting, Ralph ran to the door of the shack. He had already heard Zeph’s hoarse voice shouting. Ralph burst in the door with a stone, shattering the lock.
As he did so a man hurled himself upon the young railroader. Although the attack was sudden and from the rear, the young fellow knew that his antagonist was Andy McCarrey.
“I’ve got you, anyway!” growled out the chief of the band of scoundrels. “You got into that house one night. I remember you! And I bet you gave us away.”
He was much stronger than Ralph, and having jumped on him from behind, he bore the youth to the ground. He was astride Ralph in an instant, and seized upon the very dornick with which his captive had broken the lock of the door.
In a moment the young railroader might have been seriously hurt—even killed! But rescue in the shape of Mr. Barton Hopkins himself arrived in season. Reaching the spot with a clubbed rifle in his hands, the supervisor landed the stock of the weapon on the side of McCarrey’s head with such force that the villain toppled over, quite hors de combat for the time being.
Before Ralph could rise the supervisor had sprung to the door of the shack and thrown it open. The afternoon sunlight flooded into the interior of the place and Barton Hopkins saw his daughter, bound to a rude chair and gagged with a cloth tied across her face.
The anxious father was the first to reach the girl. He swiftly cut her bonds and tore off the bandage while Ralph staggered to an inner door, that of a closet where Zeph Dallas was confined.
“Great Jupiter and little fishes!” gasped Zeph hoarsely, when he saw Ralph’s face. “You’ve been a long time coming. And they’ve got a girl in prison here, too.”
“They haven’t got anybody in prison now,” said Mr. Adair’s cheerful voice from the doorway. “We’ve got them—and a fine bunch they are. That was a nice swipe you gave Andy, Mr. Hopkins. It ought to be some satisfaction to you to know that he will have to have some new teeth if he ever wants to chew his victuals on that side of his jaw.”
The situation had been a serious one, nevertheless, for it was later proved that several of the men McCarrey had in his band had prison records and were desperate criminals. The threat to injure the girl if her father did not pay for her release might not have been an empty one.
“However,” said Mr. Adair, as the friends and the supervisor and Cherry made their way to Rockton on an evening train, “this not only cleans up the McCarrey band, but it is the end of the wildcat strike. I don’t know that you had been so informed, Mr. Hopkins, but a committee of the striking shopmen, and from the old union, will wait on you to-morrow, and if you handle the situation wisely everything will be going smoothly very soon.”
“Perhaps I have been too stringent in my rules,” the supervisor said slowly. “At least, I will consider what the men have to offer.”
Cherry, hearing her father say this, nodded brightly to Ralph and squeezed his hand for a moment. “I believe you did something to help convince father that he was wrong about the railroad workers,” she whispered to her friend.
“As for the strikers themselves,” went on Mr. Adair, “the union will get rid of Jim Perrin and those that helped him betray the union members to McCarrey. I was able to prove to the union heads their treachery through the written list Ralph got from Malone that night and the warning Perrin slipped into Ralph’s engine the night Thirty-three was wrecked. Undoubtedly Perrin believed McCarrey meant to try again to wreck the Flyer.”
“How did he come to consider Ralph at all?” asked Mr. Hopkins. “Is Perrin such a close friend of yours?” and he asked the question directly of the young man.
“I’ll tell you,” confessed the other. “Some time ago Perrin’s crippled daughter—a sweet little girl—needed to be treated at one of the big Eastern hospitals. Mother and I—more mother than me,” added Ralph, “were able to assist in sending the child there. She has come back cured and I expect, Perrin was grateful.”
It was evident that Mr. Hopkins’ estimation of Ralph Fairbanks increased by leaps and bounds during that run to Rockton. When it was ended the supervisor shook hands warmly with the young fellow before he hastened his daughter away in a taxicab to the hospital, to see her mother.
“I see I have a good deal to thank you for, Fairbanks,” the supervisor said. “Believe me, I shall not forget it.”
However, it was a month before Ralph saw much more of the Hopkins family, even of Cherry. During that time he continued to drive Number 202, and the troubles of all kinds on the division gradually cleared up.
Then another engineer was found to relieve Ralph, and he went back to his desk as chief dispatcher for the division. It was the evening of this day that he kept his first dinner engagement at the Hopkins’ bungalow and met the recovered wife and mother at her own table.
Beside Ralph, too, there sat Mrs. Fairbanks. They found that Barton Hopkins, when he wished to be, could be a very charming host. And Mrs. Fairbanks, as they walked homeward after dinner, repeated to her son something she had already said about Cherry:
“That girl is well worth knowing, Ralph.”
“I’ll tell the world!” agreed the young train dispatcher.
These spirited tales, convey in a realistic way, the wonderful advances in land and sea locomotion. Stories like these are impressed upon the memory and their reading is productive only of good.
The outdoor chums are four wide-awake lads, sons of wealthy men of a small city located on a lake. The boys love outdoor life, and are greatly interested in hunting, fishing, and picture taking. They have motor cycles, motor boats, canoes, etc., and during their vacations go everywhere and have all sorts of thrilling adventures. The stories give full directions for camping out, how to fish, how to hunt wild animals and prepare the skins for stuffing, how to manage a canoe, how to swim, etc. Full of the spirit of outdoor life.
Copyright publications which cannot be obtained elsewhere. Books that charm the hearts of the little ones, and of which they never tire.
These stories by the author of the “Bobbsey Twins” Books are eagerly welcomed by the little folks from about five to ten years of age. Their eyes fairly dance with delight at the lively doings of inquisitive little Bunny Brown and his cunning, trustful sister Sue.
Bunny was a lively little boy, very inquisitive. When he did anything, Sue followed his leadership. They had many adventures, some comical in the extreme.