Chasing an Iron Horse Part 11

"Wait, George," shouted Andrews. He leaped from the cab, and taking a new piece of the cord, tied it around the lad's waist. "If I had the sense I was born with I might have done that first," he muttered.

George began his second ascent of the pole, and this time reached the top without hindrance or mishap. Andrews now fastened the axe to the cord, of which George had one end; in a few seconds the axe had been drawn up by the boy. Then, with his left hand holding on to the cross-bar, and his legs firmly wound around the pole, he took the axe in his right hand and hit the wire. Three times did he thus strike; at the third blow the wire snapped asunder, and the longer of the two pieces fell to the ground. He let the tool fall, and slid down the pole as the men cheered him l.u.s.tily.

Andrews now took the axe, cut the dangling wire in another place, and threw the piece thus secured into the tender.

"They can't connect that line in a hurry," he said, as he turned to George with the remark: "Well, my son, you're earning your salt!" George, blushing like a peony, felt a thrill of pride.

"And now, fellows," added Andrews, addressing the men in the baggage car, "it will be best to take up a rail, so that if we are pursued, by any chance, the enemy will have some trouble in getting on any further."

The occupants of the car, headed by Watson, sprang to the ground. Andrews handed him a smooth iron bar, about four feet in length. "We have no track-raising instruments," explained the leader, "but I guess this will answer." Watson managed to loosen some of the spikes on the track, in the rear of the train, by means of this bar; later several of his companions succeeded in placing a log under the rail and prying it up so that at last the piece of iron had been entirely separated from the track.

The perspiration was dripping from Watson's brow. "Great guns!" he growled, "we are acting as if we had a whole eternity of time before us."

"Don't worry about that," said Andrews, rea.s.suringly, as he leaped into the cab; "we have been running ahead of schedule time. But hurry up; there's lots of work before us!" In the next minute the Northerners were once more on their way.

After the train had run a distance of five miles, Andrews signaled to the engineer, and it was brought slowly to a stop. The chief jumped from the engine, walked along the track to the end car, and gazed intently to the southward.

"No sign of pursuit thus far," he said to himself. Then, turning back and speaking to the men in the baggage car who had once more opened the door, he cried: "There's time, boys, for another wrestle with the telegraph--only this time we will try a new plan." This time, indeed, a pole was chopped down, and placed (after the wire had been cut) upon the track directly behind the last baggage car.

"There," said Andrews, "that will have to be lifted off before our friends the enemy can steam by--even if they have an engine good for seventy miles an hour."

Walter Jenks came walking back to the cab. He looked pale and tired.

"What's the matter?" asked Andrews.

"I strained my back a bit in helping the fellows to put that pole on the track," was the answer.

"Go back into the car and take a rest," urged the leader. "George can take your place as fireman. Eh, George?"

The boy, coming up at that moment, and hearing the suggestion, smiled almost as broadly as the famous Cheshire cat. He longed to know that he was of some real use in the expedition. So Jenks retired to the baggage car, carrying with him, for a temporary companion, the struggling Waggie, who might be very much in George's way under the new arrangement of duties.

Off once more rattled "The General," and George, in his capacity of fireman, felt about three inches taller than he had five minutes before.

The spirits of Andrews seemed to be rising higher and higher. Thus far everything had gone so successfully that he began to believe that the happy ending of this piece of daring was already a.s.sured.

"Now, my boys, for a bit of diplomacy," he said, at last, as the occupants of the cab saw that they were approaching a small station flanked by half a dozen houses. "Stop 'The General' here, Brown, for I think there's a tank at the place."

As the train reached the platform and slowly stopped, the station-master, a rustic-looking individual with a white beard three feet long, shambled up to the cab.

"Ain't this Fuller's train?" he drawled, gazing curiously at the four Northerners, as he gave a hitch to his shabby trousers. He could not understand the presence of the strangers in the engine, nor the disappearance of the pa.s.senger cars.

Andrews leaned out of the cab window. He knew that Fuller was the conductor of the stolen train, whom they had left behind at Big Shanty.

"No," he said, in a tone of authority, "this is not Fuller's train. He'll be along later; we have the right of way all along the line. I'm running a special right through to General Beauregard at Corinth. He is badly in need of powder."

"Be the powder there?" asked the station-master, pointing to the three baggage cars.

The men hiding in one of them had received their instructions; they were as silent as the grave, and their doors were closed. The brakemen sat mute on top of the cars.

"Yes, there's enough powder in there to blow up the whole State of Georgia," returned Andrews.

"Wall, I'd give my shirt and my shoes to Beauregard if he wanted 'em,"

said the man of the long beard. "He's the best General we have in the Confederate service;--yes, better even than Robert Lee."

"Well, then help Beauregard by helping me. I want more water--I see you have a tank here--and more wood."

"You can have all you can hold," cried the station-master, enthusiastically. He was only too glad to be of use.

Thus it happened that ten minutes later "The General" was speeding away from the station with a fresh supply of water and a huge pile of wood in the tender.

"That yarn worked admirably, didn't it?" asked Andrews. The engineer and his a.s.sistant laughed. George shut the heavy door of the furnace, into which he had been throwing wood, and stood up, very red in the face, albeit smiling.

"But even if the story was true," he suggested, "you couldn't get through to Corinth."

"Exactly," laughed the leader, "but our goat-bearded friend at the station didn't think of that fact. Corinth is away off in the state of Mississippi, near its northern border, nearly three hundred miles away from here; besides, if I were a Southerner, I couldn't possibly reach there without running afoul of General Mitch.e.l.l and his forces, either around Huntsville, or Chattanooga. However, I knew more about Mitch.e.l.l's movements than the station man did--and that's where I had the advantage."

"We may not have such plain sailing at Kingston," said the engineer, as "The General" just grazed an inquisitive cow which showed signs of loitering on the track.

"We'll have more people to deal with there," admitted Andrews, "and we must be all the more on our guard."

Both the men spoke wisely. It was just two hours after leaving Big Shanty, and about thirty miles had been covered, when the alleged powder-train rolled into the station at the town of Kingston.

"I hope we meet that irregular freight train here," muttered Andrews.

There were certainly plenty of cars in evidence on the sidings; indeed, the station, which was the junction for a branch line running to Rome, Georgia, presented a bustling appearance.

No sooner was "The General" motionless than a train-dispatcher emerged from a gathering of idlers on the platform and walked up to the locomotive. He held in his hand a telegraphic blank. As he saw Andrews, who was leaning out of the cab with an air of impatience that was partly real and partly a.s.sumed, the dispatcher drew back in surprise. He recognized "The General," but there were strange men in the cab.

"I thought this was Fuller's train," he said. "It's Fuller's engine."

"Yes, it is Fuller's engine, but he's to follow me with his regular train and another engine. This is a special carrying ammunition for General Beauregard, and I must have the right of way clear along the line!"

The dispatcher scanned the train. He saw nothing to excite his suspicions.

The baggage cars were closed, and might easily be filled with powder and shot; the men in the engine, and the two brakemen on the top of one car had a perfectly natural appearance.

"Well, you can't move on yet," he announced. "Here's a telegram saying a local freight from the north will soon be here, and you must wait till she comes up."

Andrews bit his lip in sheer vexation. He had reasoned that this irregular freight train would already be at Kingston on his arrival, and he hated the idea of a delay. The loiterers on the platform were listening eagerly to the conversation; he felt that he was attracting too much attention.

But there was no help for it. He could not go forward on this single-track railroad until the exasperating freight had reached the station.

"All right," he answered, endeavoring to look unconcerned, "shunt us off."

Within three minutes the train had been shifted from the main track to a side track, and a curious crowd had gathered around "The General."

It was a critical situation. The idlers began to ply the occupants of the cab with a hundred questions which must be answered in some shape unless suspicion was to be aroused--and suspicion, under such circ.u.mstances, would mean the holding back of the train, and the failure of the expedition.

"Where did you come from?" "How much powder have you got on board?" "Why did you take Fuller's engine?" "Why is Beauregard in such a hurry for ammunition?" were among the queries hurled at the defenceless heads of the four conspirators.

George, as he gazed out upon the Kingstonians, began to feel rather nervous. He realized that one contradictory answer, one slip of the tongue, might spoil everything. And in this case to spoil was a verb meaning imprisonment and ultimate death.

A dapper young man, with small, piercing eyes and a head that suggested a large b.u.mp of self-conceit, called out: "You chaps can't reach Beauregard.

You'll run right into the Yankee forces."