The Mission of Janice Day Part 47

"Hi tunket!" he said to Janice who followed. "If that don't sound like a steamboat----"

"Or a steam train?"

"But those rails were torn up outside San Cristoval."

"They could be spiked to the sleepers again," the girl said quickly.

"Cricky! who's coming, then?" the excited boy demanded. "Friends or foes?"

"Oh, dear me!" sighed Janice. "Everybody seems to be fighting everybody else down here. Suppose we are in the middle of a great battle, Marty Day?"

"Hi tunket! It'll be something to tell about when we get back to Polktown."

"_If_ we get back," she shuddered.

"Shucks! of course we will. Though I'd like to stay here and get that mine to working again. I wonder if Uncle Brocky would let me?"

"Marty Day! You're the most awful-talking boy I ever heard. Oh!"

Another volley of rifle shots drowned her voice. They crouched together by the open door of the car and heard the bullets sing past.

"What shall we do if there are really more of the enemy coming?"

murmured Janice, after the immediate shower of lead was over.

"Holler _'Viva Mejico!_' and let it go at that," grinned Marty. "That goes big with all of 'em."

It was no laughing matter nevertheless, and Marty did not feel half so cheerful as he appeared. But the boy felt it inc.u.mbent upon him to keep up the spirits of his cousin.

The sun was coming up, yet the shadows still lay deep upon the mesa.

Peering out of the doorway of the car Janice and Marty could see the shifting ranks of the government troops. They retired after each volley.

How near, or how many the bandits numbered, the anxious spectators had no means of judging.

That most of the rifle b.a.l.l.s went high was, however, a fact. They pattered on the sides of the cars, some of them above the windows; and there seemed to be few casualties.

"It gets _me_!" murmured Marty.

Then the whistle sounded again--unmistakably that of a locomotive. It was approaching steadily. There was a steep grade up the front of the mesa and they could distinguish the panting of the locomotive exhaust as it essayed this rise.

"It's coming!" Janice gasped.

n.o.body seemed to notice the approach of the strange locomotive but themselves. The desultory firing about them went on. The officers commanding the government troops seemed to know but one order--that to "fire by platoons and fall back." It was true that the woods covered the position of the enemy and hid their number as well.

On this side of the plateau there was no place for the maneuvering of horses. The ground was too rough. But why the general did not sweep the wood with his machine guns, or sh.e.l.l it with his howitzers, seemed a mystery. It was not until afterward that the Americans learned there had been other treachery besides that of Tom Hotchkiss. Every big gun had been put out of commission before Dario Gomez's attack.

In the growing light there was now to be distinguished the flash of rifles at the edge of the wood. Word was pa.s.sed that the bandits were about to charge.

At this flank of the line the officer in command thought more of his own safety and that of his men than aught else. At his order the troops suddenly shifted _to the other side of the car_!

"Hi tunket!" yelled Marty. "This is where we get off! Lie down, Janice, for we are going to be between two fires."

The sun's jolly red face appeared over the hills and suddenly revealed the battle picture clearly. The morning mists and rifle smoke were dissipated, and at almost the same moment the forefront of the whistling locomotive poked out of the forest. There were several slat cars attached to the great engine. Marty stood up again in the doorway of the Pullman and yelled. He saw that the cattle cars bristled with rifles and were gay with red and green uniforms.

"Oh! who are they?" cried Janice, directly behind her cousin.

"They're government troops, all right all right! Reinforcements for Miz'

Madam, I declare. No other soldiers in Mexico could afford real uniforms," Marty shouted.

They beheld the uniformed soldiery pile out of the cars and heard them cheer. One figure in civilian dress was running ahead and came to the observation platform of the Pullman first.

"_Viva Mejico!_" yelled Marty, glaring at this individual as though he saw an apparition.

"You young whipper-snapper!" exclaimed the apparition. "Where's Janice?"

"_Nelson!_"

"Oh, then," grumbled Marty, "_you_ see the same thing I do, do you?"

Janice darted past her cousin and stretched her arms out to the schoolmaster. As he leaped up the steps to meet her the troops reinforcing General De Soto Palo began to deploy across the mesa and the firing of the bandits from the wood suddenly ceased.

"Do tell!" murmured Marty, staring at the schoolmaster and his cousin.

"Gone to a clinch, have they? Huh! I guess it's time to go home."

It was some moments before Janice realized that her father was standing by, a smoking revolver in his left hand and a rather grim smile upon his lips.

"You might introduce me, my dear," he said mildly. "This, I presume, is Nelson?"

"Mr. Day!" cried the schoolmaster, who seemed much brisker and more a.s.sertive than had been his wont at home, "I am delighted to see you looking so well. I feared----"

"Evidently," Mr. Day said dryly. "Was it _fear_ that brought you down here into Mexico, Mr. Haley?"

"Yes, sir. Fear for Janice's safety," the young man replied with a direct look. "It was for her I came."

"Ah? Well, we'll talk of that later," Broxton Day returned.

There was no time then for further personalities. Madam appeared, still in _dishabille_, to meet the schoolmaster, and the general, too, strutted forward.

The bandits had made off; these reinforcements had been sent to obey his, General De Soto Palo's, orders; his campaign must now be successful against all the rebels in this part of Chihuahua. But he would beg his good friend, Senor B-Day, and the young Senor Haley, to add to their party in retreat to the Border the so-br-r-rave wife of his bosom, Senora Palo! There was, too, a certain locked chest----

It was decided before breakfast, the frightened cook having returned, that the Pullman car should be coupled to the second locomotive and be pulled back to San Cristoval. There it might be attached to some train going to El Paso, for the railroad was open again to the Border, the government troops patrolling all that part of Chihuahua.

It was at breakfast that Nelson related in sequence his own adventures, after hearing of all that had happened to Janice and Marty. And Nelson boldly held Janice's hand--under the table--neglecting to eat while he told his moving tale.

He had had no means of learning when and where Janice and Marty crossed the Rio Grande, if at all, until he reached El Paso. Then a long telegram reached him from Frank Bowman, repeating Marty's message sent to Jason Day from Fort Hanc.o.c.k, and including the information of the presence of Tom Hotchkiss at the Border.

At El Paso Nelson had learned the railroad was open once more and that a government force was a.s.signed to join General Palo's division at the mines beyond San Cristoval. Therefore, believing to get to Mr. Broxton Day and rescue him from further peril was the more important, Nelson had postponed looking for Janice and Marty, but had used such influence as he could muster to obtain permission to join the reinforcements going up into the hills.

"I did not know where this dear girl was--in the body," said Nelson, with a proud look at Janice; "but I knew where her heart was. It would be with her father up here in the hills and I knew I could do nothing to win her grat.i.tude more surely than by coming immediately to the Alderdice Mine."