The relay station was located just beyond the limits of Stanley Junction, and was practically the feeder through which ran all the railroad and commercial wires focussing at headquarters. It stood in a wide triangle formed by the tracks of the three divisions of the road, which here branched out north, south and west.
The station was the top of a sort of wareroom for all kinds of railroad junk. Stairs led up to it both inside and outside. Over the tower roof, reached by a trap door, was the great enclosed network of wires covering all the lines of the Great Northern.
Ralph had talked affairs over so closely with the superintendent and later with Glidden, that as he left the latter he knew just what he was expected to do and how he was to do it. His mission was one of great importance and of secrecy as well, for the relay station and the first switch tower on the southern branch less than a quarter of a mile beyond it, were suspected points in the train dispatching service just now.
Ralph left Glidden after a brief whispered conversation. He gained the immediate vicinity of the relay station through slow, cautious progress. He had visited the place the day previous and had studied his ground well. When he at length entered the open doorway, he felt sure that he had reached his goal without attracting the attention of the two occupants of the operating room whom he had made out as he approached.
Ralph did not go up the stairs outside or inside. About twelve feet aloft and gained by a ladder of cleats nailed across two supports was a platform. It abutted the operating room, and it seemed to be a catch-all for half reels of wire, insulators and other material used in the telegraphic line. Ralph reached this, and taking great care not to disturb anything that might make a racket, he crept directly up to a window looking into the operating room.
This window was used for ventilation in summer. Just now it was crusted with dust and cob-webbed so that while he could look beyond its grimy panes, there was little danger of his being seen from within. Better than that, he noted that a broken upper pane had one corner gone, and he could distinctly hear every sound made in the operating room.
There were two men in the place. One of them was the night operator. Against this fellow Ralph had been warned. He had a face that would naturally excite suspicion, and he was familiarly known as Grizzly. He was seated at the operating table ready for duty.
The man beside him had no business there, so far as Ralph could figure out. He looked like a rough workman, but his easy bearing showed that he was on an equality with the operator. His companion addressed him as Mason. This fellow, lounging lazily near the little stove that heated the place and smoking a short stump of a pipe, opened the conversation with the words:
“Cozy for the night, Grizzly.”
“Looks it. The split trick man gave his D. S. good night, and is gone.”
“Who is he?”
“New man.”
“Isn’t that suspicious--so many new men lately?”
“Oh, I’m posted and watching out for squalls. Think he’s a new one from another road. Works like a ham factory hand. When he turned out his first message I asked which foot he did it with. The way he looked at the time cards where the calls are printed and kept the key open, I knew he was an innocent greenhorn. Didn’t know what 30 meant when it came, got rattled when headquarters was on the quad, and stumbled over the pink almost scared to death.”
A week previous all this would have been Greek to Ralph. At present he quickly understood that 30 was the end of a long message, the quad was where they sent four messages at a time, and a pink was a rush telegram.
“Then you think you’re not being watched?” inquired Mason.
“Sure of it,” responded Grizzly with confidence.
“What’s the cross orders from our friends?”
“Nothing on the general mix up plan,” reported the operator. “They struck the right man when they hit me to help them. I’ve got a big hunch for the far west, and wouldn’t have cared if the Great Northern had let me out, since, with the chance to carry a big wad of money away with me, why of course I’m in trim for whatever blows along.”
“What’s special to-night?”
“A side trick, and that’s why I sent for you. We made a bad mix up two nights ago with cross orders and tappings. I think it aroused the suspicions of the superintendent, so we’re going slow on that tack for a few days. The gang working for the rival road, though, have let me in on some of their side games. One of them is due to-night.”
“What is it?”
“You’ll know when the time comes. Got your tools with you?”
Mason lazily touched a bag at his feet with his toe, and it jangled as he replied.
“All of them.”
“Good, enjoy yourself till about eleven o’clock. If anyone comes duck behind the box yonder, though I don’t think there’s any chance of a visit a night like this. The bosses are paying too much attention to the stock end of traffic deals to take a flight at a little disruption of the service. There’s a nine--Train orders, I’ve got to go at my routine.”
Ralph settled down as comfortably as he could in his secure hiding place. What he had just heard confirmed forever suspicions that crooked work was being done by crooked operators, and that this fellow Grizzly was one of them.
He listened to the monotonous grind out of the operator: “O.S. O.S. X.N. No. 21 a. 7:39, d. 7:41,” and knew that the Limited Mail had reached Tipton, and had gone on. The night schedule for the Mountain Division west ran the wires, then miscellaneous messages. All this was like reading a book to Ralph, while his mind formed a mental map, a picture of conditions all along the line.
It grew dreadfully monotonous by nine o’clock, however. Grizzly grumbled while getting a heap of work out of the way, Mason went to sleep and snored in his chair by the stove. A sudden diversion, however, aroused him. There was the sound of the lower outside door slamming shut. Ralph could look down at the stairway. Someone had appeared ascending it. Grizzly heard the footsteps, warning him of an intruder, and rushed at Mason shaking him vigorously with the sharp mandate:
“Bolt!”
A minute later, peering within the operating room, Ralph saw the intruder enter. Mason had got to cover and Grizzly back to his instrument. The intruder suggested some half tipsy ranchman, who staggered into the room shaking the snow from his garments.
“Hi, there, young man,” he hailed familiarly to Grizzly. “I want to send a message to Wayne.”
“Sorry, but it’s too late.”
“Too late for what?” growled the intruder, looking skeptical and ugly.
“All the instruments cut out that way and we won’t have Wayne till six o’clock in the morning.”
“Won’t, eh? Well, you’ve got to, that’s all,” observed the man, coming nearer to the operating table.
“Come around in the morning and some of the day force will send the message for you.”
“No. I’ve got twenty-six cars of cattle out here that are going there tomorrow, and I want to notify my agents.”
Grizzly shook his head and turned to his table. The stranger bolted up against him with a savage face.
“Say,” he said, “you send this message or there is going to be trouble.”
“Not much, I won’t send your confounded old message; get out of this office.”
There was a swift movement on the part of the ranchman, then an ominous click, and Grizzly was looking down the barrel of a revolver.
“Give me your blamed old message and I’ll send it for you,” growled the scared operator, though there was not a wire anywhere near Wayne at the time, but Grizzly had a scheme to stave the fellow off. He took the paper from the man, went over to the switchboard, fumbled at a local instrument, and, as Ralph discerned, went through the form of sending a message.
The stranger watched him furtively, pistol in hand, swaying to and fro like a reed in the wind and grinning like a monkey.
“There, I hope you’re satisfied now,” muttered Grizzly.
“Of course I am,” chuckled the ranchman; “only I rushed a dodge on you, for the pistol isn’t loaded. You bit like a fish.”
It was the turn of Grizzly to chuckle, however. As the fellow disappeared Mason came into sight again, and the twain chuckled over the deluded ranchman whose message would not go over the wires for many hours to come.
Towards ten o’clock things quieted down. Few messages went over the wires. It was only occasionally that the clicking told off some important train report from big centers. Grizzly looked and acted uneasy. He arose and strode about the room, looking out at the stormy night, stopping dead short in reflective halts, and glancing frequently at the clock, as though he was expecting somebody or something.
“You act as if you was watching for something to happen,” suggested Mason, after a long spell of silence.
“I am,” replied the operator. “See here, Mason; you know those wires overhead, I’m thinking?”
“Like a book.”
“On the tap of eleven I send the man on the north branch home for a good stop.”
“Officially, eh?” grinned Mason.
“He’ll think so, and that answers.”
“And then?”
“Get aloft and cut out.”
Mason started and looked serious.
“See here, Grizzly,” he objected.
“Did you think I sent for you at twenty dollars a night for fun?”
“No, but----”
“It’s this serious: It’s a wreck, and a bad one, but if it goes through it’s a thousand dollars apiece for us.”
Ralph pressed closer to his loophole of observation at the amazing announcement of Grizzly, the traitorous train dispatcher.
“A wreck, you say?” observed Mason, in a dubious and faint-hearted tone of voice.
“Oh, nobody will get hurt,” declared Grizzly lightly. “What’s the matter with you? Haven’t you got any nerve? I said there was a thousand apiece in this, didn’t I?”
“I know you did.”
“So, don’t weaken about the knees when I give the word, but do just as I tell you. This affair to-night is a mere flyspeck to what’s coming along in a week.”
“Suppose--suppose we’re found out?” suggested Mason.
“We get out, isn’t that all? And we get out with good friends to take care of us, don’t we?”
“I suppose that’s so,” admitted Mason, but he shifted about in his seat as if he was a good deal disturbed.
Grizzly glanced again at the clock. Then he returned to his instrument. In a minute or two his fingers worked the key. Ralph watched and listened with all his might. What the operator did was to notify the dispatcher at Wellsville that he might go off duty, signing headquarters. Before he did this he spoke a few quick words that Ralph did not catch. Mason had selected some tools from his bag, and at once went nimbly aloft among the cable wires.
Ralph heard Mason fussing among the wires. He could only surmise what the two men were up to. The way he figured it out was that Mason had cut the wires running from the north branch through the relay into headquarters. He had thus completely blocked all messages from or to the north branch.
Mason came back to the operating room looking flustered and nervous.
“Nothing open north?” inquired Grizzly.
“Not on the Preston branch.”
“That’s right. We can splice ’em up again after two o’clock. Things will do their happening between now and then, and we leave no trace.”
“See here, Grizzly,” pleaded Mason in a spasmodic outburst of agitation; “what’s the deal?”
“What good will it do you to know?”
“Well, I want to.”
“All right; there’s to be a runaway. There’s an old junk engine down beyond Wellsville doing some dredging work, with a construction crew. She’s to be fired along.”
“What for?” inquired Mason, his eyes as big as saucers.
“For instance,” jeered Grizzly, with a disagreeable laugh.
“Where’s she to run to?”
The operator went to a map tacked to the wall. He ran his finger so rapidly over it that, the intent Mason standing between, Ralph could not clearly make out the route indicated.
“Nobody hurt, you see,” remarked Grizzly, in an offhanded way. “There isn’t another wheel running on that branch this side of Preston.”
“No, but the feeders and cut-ins? Along near Preston the Limited mail runs twenty miles since they’ve been bridging the main at Finley Gap.”
“She must take her chances, then,” observed Grizzly coolly. “Don’t get worried, son. The men working this deal know their business, and don’t want to get in jail.”
“What--what is there for me to do.” inquired Mason, acting like a man who had been persuaded to a course that had unnerved and distressed him.
“Set those wires back just as they were, when I give you the word.”
“Say, if you don’t mind, I’ll go somewhere and get a bracer. I’m feeling sort of squeamish.”
Grizzly regarded the speaker with a contemptuous look in his manifestation of weakness, but he made no remark, and Mason left the room. Ralph from his point of observation watched him descend the stairs and close the door after him as he went out into the storm, faced in the direction of the town.
The young railroader started down the cleat ladder, when Grizzly came out of the operating room. He looked thoughtful, as if he was uneasy at his comrade wandering off. As the lower door closed after him, Ralph decided that he was bent on joining Mason in his search for “a bracer,” and that now was his chance.
There flashed through the brain of Ralph the situation complete. A wreck was to happen, why and exactly where he could only guess. Clearly outlined in his mind, however, was the route ahead and beyond. By a rapid exertion of memory he could place every train on the road now making its way through the storm-laden night towards Stanley Junction. The Great Northern spread out in a quick mental picture like a map.
Ralph decided what to do, and he did not waste a second. He was down the cleat ladder and up the stairs and into the operating room in a jiffy. His thought was to give the double danger signal to headquarters and call for the immediate presence of the head operator or the chief dispatcher himself, if on duty.
It took him a minute or two to get the exact bearings of the instruments. At headquarters he was entirely familiar with the rheostat, wheat-stone bridge, polarized relays, pole changers and ground switches, but the station outfit was not so elaborate, the in table being provided only with the old relay key and sounder. His finger on the key, tapping the double danger challenge for attention, Ralph felt himself seized from behind.
With a whirl he was sent spinning across the room and came to a halt, his back against the out table, facing Grizzly. The latter had returned to the operating room suddenly and silently. His dark, scowling face was filled with suspicion.
“What’s this? Aha, I know you!” spoke the operator. “How did you come here?” and he advanced to seize the intruder. Ralph read that the fellow guessed that he was trapped. There was a dangerous gleam in his eyes, and the young railroader knew that he was in a dangerous fix.
One hand of Grizzly had gone to his side coat pocket, as if in search of a weapon. His shoulders egan to crouch. He was more than a match for Ralph in strength, and the latter did not know how soon his comrade Mason might return.
Ralph was standing with his back to the operating table. He put his hands behind him, quietly facing Grizzly, and let his right hand rest on the key. Carefully he opened the key and had clicked west twice when, quick as lightning, Grizzly jumped at him.
“Stop monkeying with that instrument!” he yelled. “You spy!”
There was a struggle, and Ralph did his best to beat off his powerful and determined opponent, but he tripped across a stool and went flat on his back on the floor. The operator was upon him in a moment. His strong hands pinned Ralph’s arms outspread.
“You keep quiet if you know what’s healthy for you,” warned Grizzly. “You’re Fairbanks?”
“Yes, that is my name,” acknowledged Ralph.
“And you’ve been watching us, and you was put up to it. Say, how much do you know and how many have you told about it?”
Ralph was silent. Just then there was a stamping up the stairs. Mason came blustering in.
“No lights ahead. I guess the stores are all shut up,” he began, and intercepted himself with a stare at Ralph and a vivid:
“Hello!”
“Don’t move!” ordered the telegraph operator in an irascible tone of voice. “We’re in it deep, it seems. Hand over that bunch of rope near the stove, Mason.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Cut for it. I know this fellow, and he isn’t here for nothing. Our game’s blown, or it will be. You needn’t squirm,” he directed at Ralph. “There’s two of us now.”
Ralph’s hands were tied in front of him and his feet secured, as well. It was only half-heartedly, however, that Mason assisted. He was pale and scared.
“Throw him across those blamed instruments, so they will keep quiet,” ordered Grizzly.
Ralph was roughly thrown upon the table, face downward, so that the relay was just under his waist. His weight against the armature stopped the clicking of the sounder. The two men grouped together in a corner, conversing rapidly and excitedly in undertones.
As luck would have it, Ralph’s left hand was in such a position that it just touched the key. He opened the key and pretended to be struggling quite a little.
Grizzly came over and gave him a push in the ribs.
“You keep quiet, or I’ll find a way to make you,” he said, with a fierce scowl.
Ralph became passive again. As the conspirators resumed their conversation, however, he began to telegraph softly on the west main line, which was clear. His objective point was Tipton.
It was here, within the next hour, that the Limited mail would arrive and, farther on, take the Preston cut-off for twenty miles, unless stopped. The relay being shut off by his weight, there was no noise from the sounder, and he sent so slowly that the key was noiseless. Ralph did not know on whom he was breaking in, but he kept on. He told the exact state of affairs, repeated the message twice, and trusted to luck. Then his last clickings went over the wire:
“T.B.I. T.I.S.--Hold the Limited Mail. Answer quick.”
The west wire was open, sure enough, and Ralph had accomplished his purpose. He knew it, and he felt a thrill of satisfaction as he heard the sharp tic-tac that announced the receipt of his message. He had raised up off the sounder.
“L. M. due at 11:53. Will hold--9,” and 9, Ralph well knew, meant train orders. He had stirred up a hornet’s nest for the conspirators, present and absent, and headquarters would soon get busy in running down the plot of the night.
“He’s done it!” almost shrieked Grizzly, as the return message conveyed to his expert ear the sure token that Ralph had shrewdly, secretly out-rivaled him. “Did you send a message?” he yelled, jumping at Ralph, both fists raised warningly, while his eyes glared with baffled fury.
“That is what I am here for,” replied the young railroader tranquilly. “You had better try and undo what you have already done.”
Bang! Seizing an iron bar, the maddened operator smashed into the open west wire, as if that did any good. Then he grabbed at Ralph and threw him brutally to the floor. His foot was raised, as if to wreak a cruel vengeance upon his defenseless victim, but his companion interposed.
“See here, Grizzly,” he shouted, snatching up the tool bag and making for the door, “I’m shy!”
The operator bent his head towards the instrument, now clicking away urgently and busily, growled out like a caged tiger, and ran to his desk and ripped open drawer after drawer.
Ralph watched him poke papers and other personal belongings into his pockets. With a final snarl at Ralph, he made after Mason.
“It’s a big jump, and a quick one,” Ralph heard him say to his hurrying companion, as they bolted down the stairs, “but a thousand dollars goes a long way.”
Their footsteps faded away. Ralph was now alone. He listened intently to the messages going over the wires. O.S. messages, consists, right of track orders began to fly in every direction, while ever and constantly from headquarters came the keen imperative hail:
“R.S.--R.S.--sine.”
“I’ve got no ‘sine’ and nothing to say,” replied Ralph, half humorously, despite his forlorn situation. “It’s wait for somebody now, and somebody will be along soon--sure enough!”
It was old Glidden who broke in upon the solitude first. He came up the outside stairs in big jumps and burst into the operating room breathless, his eyes agog.
“Hello! H’m! thought something wrong. Up with you, Fairbanks,” he shouted, pulling at Ralph and tearing him free from his bonds. “Now, then, out with it, quick! What’s up?”
“Foul play.”
“I guessed it. The double call enlightened me, and you’ve got headquarters and down lines wild. Out with it, I say!”
Ralph talked about as fast as he had ever done. There was need for urgency, he felt that. The old operator knew his business.
“I’ll mend up this mess,” he said promptly. “That smashup--get to the superintendent. Do something anyway. Be a live wire!”
Ralph ran down from the relay room. He could trust Glidden to get at work and straighten out the tangle left behind by the fugitive conspirators.
The north branch was cut out and the operator ordered off duty. Ralph trusted to it that Glidden would try some circuitous work to get word around to the other end of the branch.
“Anyhow, the Limited is safe,” ruminated Ralph, as he reached the ground.
His first thought was to get to headquarters. He looked for some stray freight or switch locomotive to help him on his way. He made out a live one on a side track. Ralph ran over to it.
“Hello, Roberts!” he hailed, recognizing the fireman, and a jolly-faced, indolent looking young fellow smiled a welcome. “Going to the Junction?”
“Exactly the other way.”
Ralph, his foot on the step of the tender, drew back disappointedly.
“Waiting for Bob Evers. He’s my engineer,” explained Roberts. “We’re to run to Acton, over the old dumping tracks--north branch.”
“What!” exclaimed Ralph eagerly. “Right away?”
“No, any time; so we report at 5 a. m. for a short haul on the north branch.”
“Look here, Roberts,” said the young railroader eagerly, “you think I understand my business?”
“Know it, Fairbanks,” nodded the fireman.
“When will Evers be here?”
“Any time within two hours.”
“Two hours?” retorted Ralph. “That won’t do at all. I’m going for a special order, and I want you to have steam up to the top notch by the time I get back.”
“That so,” drawled the fireman in his usual indolent fashion, but he arose from his lounging attitude instantly, and his great paw of a hand grasped the coal scoop with zest. “All right.”
“Good for you,” said Ralph, and he started back to the relay station.
“Mr. Glidden,” he spoke rapidly, as he came again into the operating room. “There is no time to lose. All we know is that a wild engine is to be sent down the north branch.”
“Yes, that’s all we know, and no way to stop it,” replied Glidden.
“There may be a way. Ninety-three is fired up for a fly down the dump to Acton.”
“Aha!” nodded the old operator, pricking up his ears with interest.
“I don’t say it, but it may be that we can get to the branch before the runaway does.”
“Suppose so?”
“We’ll set the switch and ditch her.”
“Good boy!”
“I have no orders, though.”
“I’ll give them to you--I’ll fix it up with headquarters. Fire away.”
Ralph was out of the relay station and down the tracks in a hurry. Roberts was bustling about and had fired up the old switch locomotive as if ordered for a mile-a-minute dash.
“What’s the programme?” he inquired simply.
“To reach the north branch just as quick as we can.”
“All right. You’ll run her?”
“Yes.”
“You know how.”
Ralph was delighted with his helper. Roberts made no delay, asked no questions. Ralph was all nerved up with the exploit in view.
Their destination was a good forty miles to the northwest. The dump tracks comprised practically an abandoned line, and, as Ralph knew, was free of either freight or passenger traffic at that hour. It was occasionally used as a cut-off in cases of emergency. The roadbed was somewhat neglected and uneven, but he had run over it twice within a few months, and as they started out Roberts announced that their special orders had shown clear tracks.
The route was a varied one, and there were some odd old-fashioned curves and a few hair-raising ten per cent. grades.
No. 93 buckled down to work right royally. There were two switches to unset, and then right again before they left the main line. At these points Roberts ran ahead and did emergency duty.
As they slid off onto the dump tracks, Ralph consulted the clock in the cab, estimated distance and set his running pace.
“She acts like a pet lamb,” he observed approvingly to Roberts after a five-mile spurt.
“Yes, she’ll chase to terminus all right if the coal holds out,” replied the fireman. “There’s a bunch of sharp curves and steep grades ahead.”
“Here’s one of them, see,” said Ralph, and he pushed back the throttle and let the locomotive move on its own momentum.
The sturdy little engine wheezed through cuts, grunted up grades and coughed down them.
“She’s only an old tub,” submitted Roberts, though fondly; “but how do you like her, anyway?”
“Famous!” declared Ralph, warming to his work.
The run for a good twenty miles was a series of jarring slides, the wheels pounding the rails and straining towards a half tip over a part of the time.
There was not a signal light along the old, abandoned reach of tracks, and only one or two scattered settlements to pass. At length they came in sight of the signals of the north branch. No. 93 paralleled it on a curving slant for nearly a mile.
They were barely two hundred rods from the point where they would slide out onto the rails of the branch, and Ralph had started to let down on speed, when his helper uttered a vivid shout.
“Fairbanks--something coming!”
Ralph cast his eyes to the other side of the cab. Something, indeed, was coming--coming like a flash, going like a flash. It whizzed even with them, and ahead, like some phantom of the rail. Its course was so swift that the cab lights were a flare, then a disappearing speck.
“We are too late,” said Ralph. “That is the runaway.”
“So?” questioned Roberts, who only half understood the situation.
“We ran here in the hopes of ditching that engine.”
“Did?”
“We’re too late.”
“Are?”
“Roberts,” added the young railroader determinedly, “we’ve got to catch that runaway.”
“Then it’s a race, is it?” asked Roberts, grasping the fire rake.
“Yes.”
“I’m with you to the finish,” announced the doughty fireman of No. 93.
“What’s the programme?” asked Roberts, after filling the fire box with coal.
“We must beat the speed of that runaway locomotive,” replied Ralph.
The wild engine was going at a terrific rate of progress. Ralph could only surmise where she had been started on her mad career. The motive, her intended destination, how long she would last out--all this he could only guess at.
A drift of cinders struck his face as he shot No. 93 across a switch and out upon the in track of the north branch. At the same time he bent his ear and listened critically to the chug-chug of the escape valves.
“Some one is aboard of that engine,” he told Roberts.
“Then it’s a chase instead of a race,” said the fireman. “All right. You boss and watch out ahead.”
Pursued and pursuer were now on parallel tracks. Ralph wondered if he could be mistaken, and the locomotive ahead a special or returning from duty.
To test this he gave a familiar challenge call. From ignorance or defiance there was no response. Ralph was sure that the locomotive was in charge of some one. Its movements, the cinder drift, the wheeze of the safety valve, told that the machinery was being manipulated.
Ralph cast up in his mind all the facts and probabilities of the hairbreadth exploit in which he was participating. He acted on the belief that the locomotive he was chasing was wild, or soon to be put in action as one. It would be run to some intended point, abandoned, and sent full speed ahead on its errand of destruction.
Ralph did not know what might be ahead on either track. The schedule, he remembered, showed no moving rolling stock this side of the north main. He urged his fireman to fire up to the limit and did some rapid calculating as to the chances for the next twenty miles.
The locomotive ahead was fully a mile away before Roberts got old 93 in the right trim, as he expressed it. He clucked audibly as his pet began to snort and quiver. Pieces of the machinery rattled warningly, but that only amused him.
“She’s loose-jointed,” he admitted to Ralph; “but she’ll hold together, I reckon, if you can only keep her to the rails. That fellow ahead is sprinting, but we’re catching up fast. What’s the ticket?”
“Our only hope is to beat the runaway and switch or bump her.”
“There’ll be some damage.”
“There will probably be worse damage if we don’t stop her.”
The paralleled tracks widened a few miles further on to get to the solid side of a boggy reach. It was here that No. 93 came fairly abreast of the runaway. It was here, too, that the furnace door of the runaway was opened to admit coal, and the back flare of the hissing embers outlined the figure of a man in the cab.
“She’s spurting,” observed Roberts, watching all this, as the runaway started on a prodigious dash.
“I see she is,” nodded Ralph, grimly trying to hold No. 93 over, yet aware that she was already set at her highest possible point of tension.
“And we’re getting near.”
“Yes, there are the station lights ahead.”
About four hundred yards to the left the runaway dashed past a deserted station. Ralph never let up on speed. The chase had now led to the cut-off, a stretch of about twenty miles. Where this ran into the main again there was an important station. This point Ralph was sure had been advised of the situation from headquarters if Glidden had done his duty, and the young railroader felt sure that he had.
“Hello; now it is a chase!” exclaimed Roberts.
In circling into the cut-off No. 93 had passed a series of switches, finally sending her down the same rails taken by the runaway.
“It’s now or never, and pretty quick at that,” said Ralph to his fireman. “Crowd her, Roberts.”
“She’s doing pretty nigh her best as it is,” replied the fireman. “I don’t know as she’ll stand much more crowding.”
“That’s better,” said Ralph in a satisfied tone, as, fired up to the limit, the old rattletrap made a few more pounds of steam.
“Going to scare or bump the fellow ahead?” grinned Roberts, his grimed face dripping with perspiration. “We’re after her close now. It’s our chance to gain. They don’t dare to coal up for fear of losing speed.”
A score of desperate ideas as to overtaking, crippling, wrecking or getting aboard of the runaway thronged the mind of the young railroader. They were gaining now in leaps and bounds.
It was at a risk, however, Ralph realized fully. No. 93 was shaking and wobbling, at times her clattering arose to a grinding squeal of the wheels, as though she resented the terrific strain put upon her powers of speed and endurance.
“Whew! there was a tilt,” whistled Roberts, as No. 93 scurried a curve where she threatened to dip clear over sideways into a swampy stretch which had undermined the solid roadbed.
Ralph gave a sudden gasp. He had watched every movement of the machinery. To his expert, careful ear every sound and quiver had conveyed a certain intelligent meaning.
Now, however, No. 93 was emitting strange noises--there was a new sound, and it boded trouble.
It came from the driving rod. Roberts caught the grinding, snapping sound, stared hard from his window, craning his neck, his eyes goggling, and then drew back towards the tender with a shout:
“Go easy, Fairbanks; something’s tearing loose--look out!”
The warning came none too soon. Ralph slipped from his seat and dropped backwards into the tender just in time.
A giant steel arm had shot through the front of the cab. It was the right driving rod. It came aloft and then down, tearing a great hole in the floor. It shattered the cab to pieces with half a dozen giant strokes. It smashed against the driving wheels with a force that threatened to wreck them.
Then it tried to pound off the cylinder. The flying arms next took the roof supports, snapping them like pipe stems, and buried the fireman in a heap of debris.
“Jump!” gasped Roberts.
“I stay,” breathed Ralph.
And, stripped of everything except her cylinder, No. 93 dashed on--a wreck.
The battered locomotive continued its course for nearly half a mile, with engineer and fireman crouching back on the coal of the tender. There was a diversion of the circling driving rod as the pace slackened.
Then a violent hissing sound told of a leak somewhere in the machinery. The great steel locomotive slowed down like a crippled giant.
“She’s dead,” said Roberts, choking a queer sound way down in his throat. “Old 93!”
Ralph jumped to the ground and the fireman after him. The latter went all around the stalled locomotive, shaking his head mournfully.
Ralph hastened ahead out of the glare of the headlight and peered down the rails. For nearly two minutes he stood, shading his eyes with one hand to bring the disappearing runaway within focus. The wild engine had sped on its way untrammeled. He made out that she had slowed up. In the distance he fancied he saw a brisk form spring from the cab. Ralph figured it out that a switch had been set.
Then the runaway started again. He fancied that some one jumped from the cab after the engine had got in motion. He could catch the sharp clack-clack of the flying wheels ringing in the distance.
“She is running wild now,” murmured the intent young railroader, and then started with a shock.
A horrid clamor extended out. It must have been a mile away, but the air was death-like, it was so still, and the merest sound seemed to vibrate clearly.
Crash, crash, crash! It sounded as if a building had collapsed against other tottering structures, tumbling them all into a mass of ruins.
“They’ve done it, whatever it is,” said Ralph, and ran back speedily to No. 93 and Roberts. The latter stood with his ear bent in the direction of the runaway, and his usually jolly face was serious.
“What’s up, Fairbanks?” he asked at once.
“A smashup, I judge,” answered Ralph. “Can you dig out any lanterns?”
“Red?”
“Yes.”
“Those two on the end of the tender are all right. There’s another under my seat, if it hasn’t got smashed.”
“Run back with the two and signal both tracks,” ordered Ralph. “I’m going ahead to see what has happened.”
Ralph fished among the litter in the dismantled cab and found and lit the lantern referred to by Roberts. Then he started ahead down the tracks.
When he arrived at the switch he could trace that it had recently been set for a siding. A little farther on footsteps in the snow showed where some one had jumped from the runaway locomotive. Ralph paused at this spot for only a moment. He went down the siding, which curved in and out among a series of bluffs and gullies.
As he remembered it, the siding was not of great length, and ended at the side of a granite pit. A last turn brought him in full view of this. Ralph paused, a good deal wonderstruck.
Thirty feet down at the bottom of the gully lay a tangled wreckage of wood and iron. There had apparently stood two cars where the runaway had struck.
One of them held a derrick outfit, the other some heavy excavating machine. The two cars had been forced headlong into the abyss. The runaway engine piling down upon them had completed the work of ruin.
“I can’t understand it,” spoke Ralph, after a long spell of inspection and thought. “What possible object could any one have in view in smashing up that machinery?”
Then it occurred to him that his pursuit of the runaway might have frightened its operator from his original purpose, and he had changed his plans and abandoned the locomotive to its later course.
“A pretty bill for the Great Northern to settle, all the same,” reflected Ralph, as he started back the way he had come.
At the switch he turned the target to open main, and made his way forward till he reached No. 93. Roberts had set the danger signals behind them, and he stood on the side of the embankment dismally surveying the wreck of his pet locomotive. Ralph told him of the situation ahead.
“I can’t understand it,” confessed the puzzled fireman.
“No more can I,” said Ralph. “I wish we could have caught the man who got away, though.”
“What are we going to do?”
“Wait for instructions, of course. There is nothing due out or in for some time to come, unless the Limited comes on. The out track is clear for her, if she does. We must get word to Preston, some way.”
“That isn’t far away,” suggested Roberts.
“Too far to cover in any reasonable time. I want to get at your tool box, Roberts.”
“All right.”
Ralph secured a pair of pliers from the box in the cab, and went up the embankment to where the telegraph wires ran. He selected a rough pole, ascended it nimbly, and soon sat astride of the crosstrees.
The young railroader located the main service wire and began to pry it apart where there had been a splice on the insulator. When he had it separated he knew from the contact that it was in live use. Putting end to end, he began to tap off what he wanted to say.
Ralph did not know what business he might be breaking in upon. He was pretty sure that his message would be taken notice of somewhere along the line. When he had completed and repeated his message he put the end of one wire to his tongue. The vibrations were vague, but sensitive, and he knew that he had stirred up the service, and operators on the line towards headquarters were getting busy. He readjusted the wires and descended to the ground.
“Doing some stunts, aren’t you?” observed Roberts, with a commending smile.
“I’m trying to get things in order,” replied Ralph.
“It’s you for it, every time,” declared the friendly fireman. “Wish I had brains.”
“Some one will be sure to come to your relief before long,” said Ralph. “I have done all I can to open up the line, but I think I had better get to Preston and in direct communication with headquarters.”
“It’s a long trip,” suggested Roberts.
“That can’t be helped. I will set my red lantern half a mile ahead on the in track, for fear they don’t quite understand the situation at Preston.”
“So long; you’re a good one,” nodded Roberts approvingly.
Ralph started on his way, set the lantern and accomplished a mile without meeting with any further adventures. It was when he was about two miles on his course when that whistling in the rear caused him to halt and watch and wait.
In about five minutes the Limited whisked by, making up time. Ralph was pretty thoughtful as he followed in her trail after she had passed on.
There were a good many angles to the exploit of the night to figure out. His independent course in trying to stop the runaway might result in some censure, though he fancied not.
The identity of the wrecker and his motive were what puzzled the young railroader.
Ralph trudged on, thinking of all this, when, crossing a bridge, he peered closely over to where a light was flashed and then a second. Some one was igniting matches, apparently to light a pipe. He made out one, then two vague forms a short distance down the shore of the creek.
It was a pretty early hour of the morning for any one to be tramping around for fun. As Ralph thought of the man who had abandoned the runaway locomotive, he determined on an investigation.
He descended to the near shore, lined it, and, sharply turning a snow-laden brush heap, almost stumbled on two persons on its other side. Ralph caught his breath and drew back just in time to escape discovery.
Peering cautiously, he made out a man seated on the ground. He was groaning with pain and rubbing one limb tenderly. In front of him was a boy.
“You see, I sprained my foot crossing a broken culvert,” the man said.
“Yes, yes, I see,” responded his companion, and the voice thrilled Ralph, for he recognized the accents as those of a tried and true boy friend of old--Zeph Dallas.
Ralph had known the time when a good many of the boys and railroad men at the Junction had considered Zeph Dallas a joke. He himself, however, had tried to take Zeph as seriously as he could, and now his erratic young friend rose still higher in his estimation.
In every live town there are generally one or more lads with the detective fever. Zeph had wandered to Stanley Junction all on fire with it. He had liked railroading, but he disdained its humdrum phases. Step by step he had kept on the trail of “detecting something,” until he had unraveled a real mystery, had been of signal aid to the road detective of the Great Northern, and had practically become a hired and loyal helper to that experienced officer.
Ralph recalled the flying visit of Zeph to his mother at Stanley Junction less than ten days previous. On that occasion Zeph had dropped some mysterious and significant hints to Mrs. Fairbanks that he was “working on a big case.” He had even asked her to warn Ralph “to look out for dispatching trouble.”
There was no doubt in the mind of Ralph that Zeph was on the present spot on duty pure and simple. Inside of a very few minutes he was aware of the real situation of affairs. The crippled man in whose company he had found Zeph was the man who had operated the runaway engine. As Ralph peered closer he believed him to be one of the men with whom he had seen the grandfather of Glen Palmer, and whom he had later encountered in the railroad tunnel the night of the burglary of the paymaster’s house.
Ralph listened attentively as the man seated on the ground began to dolefully recite a lying story of how he had got hurt. How much of this Zeph took in Ralph could not guess, for Zeph was playing a part. The man pretended to be a member of a construction gang, with friends at a little settlement a few miles distant. Acting to perfection a simple country bumpkin, Zeph pulled the wool completely over the eyes of the fellow.
“You’ve helped me this far,” the man said, “and that makeshift crutch is a big help, but I don’t think I can navigate ahead alone.”
“That’s all right,” declared Zeph ingenuously. “If it isn’t too far, I’ll stay with you till you reach your friends, mister.”
“Say, you’re mighty obliging. I’ll make it worth your while, too. I’ll pay you well.”
“Oh, I don’t care so much for that,” said Zeph. “What I’d like to do is to get settled down to some steady job.”
“H’m,” murmured the man reflectively, looking Zeph over in a speculative way, “I don’t know but I might steer you right up against a good thing.”
“I’m willing, I tell you,” declared Zeph, with a rural drawl that caused Ralph to smile. “What doing, mister?”
“Just hanging around with a pleasant crowd and running some errands once in a while. There’s jumps in the business pretty lively, but no real work.”
“Why, I thought you was with a construction gang?”
“Um,” observed the man in an embarrassed way--“yes, yes, just so. Changing my job, that’s it. On my way to join certain friends on a new deal when that confounded locomotive went too fast for me, and--”
“Eh,” projected Zeph. “You didn’t say anything about a locomotive before, mister.”
“Say, you’re pretty keen, you are,” chuckled the man. “And I guess you’ll do. I was going to say till a locomotive loosened a log across a culvert and I stumbled over it.”
“Oh, that explains it,” said Zeph with a frank relief that was most fetching. “All right. You get me a job with your friends and you’ll find me a good worker.”
“Don’t doubt it. Let’s make a start.”
The man winced and groaned as Zeph helped him to his feet. The latter had rigged up a forked stick so that it answered for a crutch on one side. Zeph got on the other side of the man who, leaning on his shoulder with his hand, was able to hobble along.
Ralph could foresee no particular purpose gained in keeping on the trail. He felt certain that Zeph knew his business. He had probably been watching or waiting for the conspirators right in this locality.
“It looks that way,” murmured Ralph. “Anyhow, Zeph must be keeping Bob Adair advised; is perhaps acting under his direct orders. Now he is figuring for a chance to get right in with the gang. I’ll follow a little further, though, as it doesn’t take me much out of my course to Preston.”
After a bit of progress the train wrecker and Zeph halted again. The former was getting pretty tired. Zeph cleared away some snow from a heap of old ties. The man removed his overcoat and made a pillow of it. He rested for nearly half an hour. Then he resumed his coat and they trudged along.
“Hello,” exclaimed Ralph--“and good!”
He spoke the words with animation, as following up the pursuit he came to the heap of ties where the train wrecker had rested. A memorandum book lay on the snow where it had fallen from the pocket of the man’s overcoat. The night light was not sufficiently strong to enable Ralph to inspect its contents. He observed, however, that it contained letters and other documents.
“I fancy it will tell something interesting when I have time to look it over,” decided the young railroader.
The train wrecker and his escort finally arrived at a stretch of single rails and here they paused. This was a cut off from the main track with which Ralph was not familiar. He had an idea, however, that it connected with some coal pit or quarry in the neighborhood of Preston. In less than ten minutes after their arrival at this spot Ralph heard a rattle on the rails. A handcar propelled by two men came into view. There was quite a lengthy talk. They seemed discussing about Zeph, for Ralph saw the latter retire to a little distance. Then he was beckoned back to the three men. The crippled one was helped aboard of the handcar, Zeph joined them, and the handcar sped away.
Ralph realized that it was futile to think of following and keeping close track of them. Zeph was in their midst, accepted as a new recruit, and the young railroader felt sanguine that he would accomplish some practical results. Ralph proceeded on his way to Preston. It must have been three o’clock in the morning when he found himself not on the north branch of the road, but on a spur considerably to the east.
The light of a little station showed, and Ralph was glad to think of rest and warmth. He reached a short platform and noticed the station agent seated between the two signal windows on duty.
The man greeted the intruder with chary suspiciousness as Ralph entered the waiting room, kicking the snow off his feet. When Ralph had introduced himself, however, he stirred himself amiably, roused up the fire in the old stove, and placed a chair for him.
“I’ve had a bad two hours,” explained the man, “and was ready for train wreckers, smash ups, or what not. A tramp routed me out of bed at home telling me the old instrument here was raising mischief. Knew something about telegraphing himself, he said, and scented trouble. I’ve been lively up to a few minutes ago, getting all kinds of mixed instructions about wild locomotives and trouble generally on the north cut off.”
“I can tell you something about that,” said Ralph, and explained a good deal that interested his companion. “Can you get me Preston?”
“Sure--want to wire?”
“It will save me a long pull through the snow.”
The operator led Ralph into his little office. As he did so Ralph noticed that a piece of bagging was tacked over one of the upper sashes and the floor covered with splintered glass. He had already observed that the operator wore a bandage over one eye, but he did not just then connect affairs in his urgency to get in communication with Preston.
This he soon did. He found the operator there aware of conditions. The crude message Ralph had sent astride the telegraph pole formed the basis for advising headquarters of what was going on. The Limited was safely on her way, and a special from the Junction was now starting to take No. 93 in tow and investigate the wreck.
Ralph sent a message to Glidden, more explicitly explaining affairs. He announced that he would return to the Junction on the first train he could catch.
He was pretty well satisfied with his work of the night, for he had done his level best and he felt sure there would be some further outcome when Bob Adair’s assistant reported.
“You seem to have had some trouble here,” observed Ralph, with a glance at the shattered window as he left the instrument.
“Yes, and this too,” said the operator, indicating his bandaged eye. “Nearly blinded.”
“How is that?” inquired Ralph.
“The west freight, about an hour ago. She passes on her usual whiz. About the middle of the train some one let fly a board--a box cover. It slashed through the window, took me in the face and keeled me clear over.”
“That is strange,” commented Ralph. “Are you sure it was thrown?”
“What could it blow off from?”
“That’s so.”
“There’s the identical timber,” continued the operator, touching with his foot a piece of wood as they came out to the stove again. “I used half of it to mend the fire.”
Ralph picked up the piece of wood out of curiosity. As he did so he made a discovery.
Its smooth side, though blurred, bore some faint black marks like letters and words. It looked as if scratched with a blunt cinder on the ends of burned matches.
In breaking the wood to mend the fire the operator had split the piece transversely removing a part of a written line, but to his amazement Ralph could make out these words:
“Send word to Ralph Fairbanks, Stanley Junction, that Glen Palmer is--”
The remainder of this queer message was missing--ashes in the depot stove. What had been the writing complete, and what did it mean?
“Wake up, Ralph.”
The young dispatcher of Stanley Junction jumped out of bed in a bound. He felt that he could have slept half a dozen hours longer, but to every railroad man the call “wake up” means duty waits, no delay, and Ralph responded to the urgent call without hesitation.
The echo of a series of light tappings on the door and of his mother’s voice mingled with her departing footsteps. He called out:
“What is it, mother?”
“A telephone message from the superintendent.”
“Good--something is stirring,” reflected Ralph, and hurried his dressing. “Well, enough has happened since yesterday to interest the president of the road himself,” he went on, musing. “They wanted some house cleaning done, and it has begun in a vigorous way.”
It was early in the afternoon. Just after daybreak that morning Ralph had reached Stanley Junction on top of a freight car. He had found Glidden in charge of the situation at the relay station.
“You’ve hit the mark, Fairbanks,” were his first commendatory words. “The assistant superintendent was here for an hour with me after we got that rough and tumble message from you down the line.”
“It was a cross tree experiment. Wasn’t it a jumble?” inquired Ralph.
“We pieced it out, got our bearings, and they’re spreading the net to catch some pretty big fish.”
“What of Grizzly and that fellow with him?”
“Sloped. Adair is after them, though. See here, you get right home and into your cozy.”
“But I have something of possible importance to tell the superintendent.”
“He’s gone down the line hot-footed. It will all keep till he calls you up. Left instructions to that effect--‘30,’ now, and be quick about it!”
“30” it was, perforce. Ralph had gone through a rough night of it. He was pretty well tired out and glad to get to bed. He went there, however, with some exciting thoughts in his mind.
There had been no solution to the enigma of the piece of broken box cover flung from the passing freight train through the window of the little station. All Ralph could do about that incident was to conjecture blindly.
It was a queer happening, a suggestive one. Ralph had a fertile imagination. There was a coincidence about the discovery of the queer message, and things hinged together in a way. Contiguous to that section the chicken farm was located, and Glen Palmer, at least his grandfather, had seemingly linked up with the conspirators against the welfare of the Great Northern road once or twice before. Ralph could not conceive why that message had been written. It was a new mystery, but it had come so secretly upon the heels of a bigger and more important one, that there was neither time nor opportunity to explore it just at present.
Mrs. Fairbanks, like the true anxious mother that she was, greeted Ralph on his arrival at home. She had not gone to bed all night, and she now insisted on his eating an early breakfast and taking a needed rest. Tired out as he was, however, once alone in his own room Ralph took this, the first quiet opportunity, to look over the memorandum book that had fallen from the coat pocket of the train wrecker.
Ralph’s eyes expanded and he uttered one or two subdued whistles of astonishment as he delved among the contents of his find. Some penciled notes and a letter in the memorandum book told a great deal--in fact, so much and so clearly and unmistakably, that Ralph could hardly go to sleep thinking over the importance of his discoveries.
They had to wait, however, till he could again see the superintendent. Now, as Ralph was roused up out of sleep by a telephone call from that very official, his active mind was again filled with the theme of the memorandum book and what it had revealed to him.
When he got down stairs Ralph found that word had come for him to report to the office of the road as promptly as possible. His mother had an appetizing lunch spread on the dining room table, and the lad did full justice to it.
He was thoughtful and busy formulating in his mind just what he would report at headquarters, and had proceeded less than half a dozen squares from home when passing an alley his name was called. Looking beyond the street Ralph recognized Ike Slump. He wore a very mysterious face and he was urgently beckoning to Ralph. The latter was about to proceed on his way with a gesture of annoyance, when Slump shouted out:
“You’ll be sorry if you don’t see me for a minute or two.”
“Well, what is it?” inquired Ralph, moving a few feet towards his challenger.
“I need five dollars.”
“Oh, you do?”
“Yes, bad. I want you to give it to me.”
“That’s cool.”
“I’ve got to get out of town. You’d better let me go.”
“I don’t see how I am preventing you,” said Ralph.
“You will, when I explain.”
“Then be quick about it. I have no time to waste.”
“Neither have I,” remarked Slump, with an uneasy glance towards the street. “To be short and sweet, I know Glen Palmer.”
Ralph started a trifle at this. Slump spoke the name with a knowing look in his eyes and a sidelong leer that was sinister.
“Well, what of it?” demanded Ralph.
“I thought I’d seen him before the day I met him up at the yards. I racked my brain to recall him. This morning it all came to me.”
“What do you suppose I care about your knowing him?” inquired Ralph.
“Just this: he’s a friend of yours, a sort of pet. I understand you started him in the chicken farming business, so you must have some interest in him. All right, I can snip him out of his position of glory double quick,” asserted Ike, in a malevolent and threatening way.
“Go ahead, what are you driving at?” asked Ralph as calmly as he could.
“Five dollars--that’s what it will cost you to keep your friend from being exposed. Five dollars, and I bury the secret fathoms deep.”
“In other words,” said Ralph, trying hard to suppress his feelings, “you want to blackmail me?”
“Oh, no,” assented Slump, “I simply want to sell this photograph,” and he drew a card from his pocket. “I went to heaps of trouble to get it. It shows that I did see Glen Palmer before. It was where we were both locked up in jail,” shamelessly confessed Slump.
Ralph was a good deal taken aback. The words of Slump and the photograph he extended rather took the young railroader’s breath away. The portrait was that of a boy dressed in a convict suit, a number on his cap, and the background showed the surroundings of a prison room.
“It’s too bad,” spoke Ralph involuntarily. He was thinking of his misplaced trust in the Palmer boy. All his dark suspicions concerning the old grandfather and the conspirators were instantly revived in the mind of Ralph.
“Ain’t it, though?” smirked Slump. “Is it worth the price?”
“No!” suddenly shouted Ralph, in a tone so stern and ringing that the discomfited Slump fell back several feet. “You miserable jail bird and swindler, I wouldn’t help you on your wretched career of crime for five cents let alone five dollars. Furthermore, Glen Palmer may have been in jail, but I won’t believe he belonged there till I have the proofs.”
“Oh, won’t you?” sneered Ike. “All right. Don’t want to reform him, eh? Won’t give the downtrodden and oppressed a chance. You’re a heavy philanthropist, you are, Mr. Ralph--let go!”
Slump took a sudden whirl. From behind a fence there suddenly pounced down upon him a towering form. Ralph was as much surprised as Slump to recognize Bob Adair, the road detective.
The diligent officer gave Slump one or two more whirls, holding on to his coat collar, that made him shriek with affright. Then he threw him reeling ten feet away.
“I gave you two hours to get out of town this morning,” he observed. “Now then it’s two minutes to head straight for the limits, or I’ll lock you up as a vagrant.”
Ike picked up his fallen cap on the run. He darted down the alley in a flash.
“I don’t know but what I would have liked to find out something more from him,” remarked Ralph.
“Oh, I overheard the subject of your conversation,” said Adair--“about that missing boy, Glen Palmer, I suppose you mean?”
“Missing--is he missing, Mr. Adair?”
“Since the day after you told me about him, and his grandfather and the queer company he kept,” replied Adair. “I went down to the chicken farm to find that young Palmer had sold it out to a neighbor for a song and had vanished.”
“Why, that is queer,” commented Ralph. “I fancied he had got a new lease of life when I started him in business.”
“Decidedly mysterious, the whole affair,” added the road detective. “That will all come out when we see the superintendent. We’re both due at his office.”
“I was just going there,” said Ralph.
“And I was on my way to meet you,” explained Adair.
They walked on together for a short distance. Suddenly Adair drew out a bulky pocket book well stuffed with papers. He selected a folded yellow sheet.
“Here’s something that belongs to you,” he said. “There’s a good deal to go over, so get that off our minds. Glidden handed it to me this noon.”
“What is it?” asked Ralph.
“A telegram.”
“So it is. Why--”
Ralph paused there. If he had been astonished at the discovery of the board message back at the little station, the present scrap of paper doubly mystified him.
It was the mere fragment of a telegram, no heading, no date, and it read:
“Advise Ralph Fairbanks, Stanley Junction. Look out for the pacer.”