The Short Line War Part 26

As she settled herself among the robes and cushions she heard McNally's voice:--

"Can you find the right men to do it?"

The door slammed and the carriage clattered away with Katherine wondering what "it" was.

CHAPTER XVII

IN THE DARK

After leaving Brushingham, Harvey and his crew merely duplicated the enemy's performance of the afternoon. The C. & S.C. employees were thrown out before they had become thoroughly settled, and with each new capture messages flew back to Mattison at Manchester, giving him and Jim Weeks a detailed account of the progress of the train. The greatest care was exercised to keep news of the train from Truesdale. Wherever there was a possibility of the ejected men reaching a telephone, they were actually taken in custody and placed under guard. The operators were instructed to answer all messages from the Truesdale despatcher as intelligently as possible, in order to continue the deception.

It was a long, hard ride. Harvey was called upon constantly to exercise ingenuity in the handling of his forces, and though Mallory was of great a.s.sistance, the strain of responsibility rested upon Harvey. He was tired when he started, but as the night wore on toward morning, nothing but his sound nerves kept him on his feet. At two-thirty o'clock they were within twenty miles of Truesdale, and Harvey and Mallory were both in the engine, anxiously looking for obstructions. From Mattison's despatches they knew that reenforcements were flying down over an open road, but the collecting of a second force had taken time, and it was nearly midnight before the second train was on its way, a hundred and sixty-five miles from Harvey's present location.

Nearly all Harvey's men had been dropped along the line, and he was in no position for a conflict, particularly as he had no knowledge of the enemy's location or preparedness. Mallory was for pausing until the other train should reach them, probably about daylight. He argued that they had nothing to gain and everything to lose. Harvey, undecided, referred to his map, spreading it out on the fireman's bench while Mallory lighted matches and held them over the paper. Harvey ran his finger down the line to Sawyerville.

"Just north of the Sawyerville station," he said, "there is a curve and a deep cut. I am inclined to think that if they try to block the road they'll do it there. The quarries are right at hand, and all they need to do is to roll a few rocks down."

"Do you think they would try that?" asked Mallory. "It would block them worse than it would us."

"I don't know about that, but I'll feel a lot easier when we're through that cut with open country between us and Truesdale. Run slow, Donohue, and put out your headlight. Mallory, you see that the train is perfectly dark. We might as well try a little bluffing even if we do strike them.

They won't know but what we've got five hundred men aboard, and the others will reach us before they find it out."

Mallory clambered over the coal in the tender, while the fireman crawled out on the running board and extinguished the headlight. The night was very dark, and Jawn leaned out of the cab window, his left hand gripping the throttle lever. The fireman was badly in need of sleep, and showed a tendency to grumble in a half-incoherent way, but Jawn was as silent as at the start. To Harvey, who even in the excitement was afraid to sit down for fear of falling asleep, the engineer was a marvel in his machine-like self-control.

Slowly the line of empty cars rolled along. Jawn's eyes were glued to the track in front, which to Harvey seemed a constantly resolving confusion of shadows. The tall gray telegraph poles crept by with monotonous regularity until Harvey turned away and looked out at the dim meadows on the left, over which was spread a ghostly film of mist.

"There's the cut," said Jawn.

Harvey looked forward, but could see nothing. Jawn, however, gradually slackened speed until they were barely moving. Mallory appeared on the tender and came over the coal to the ap.r.o.n, where he stood leaning out with one arm around the cab door-post. The fireman heaped a shovel with coal, and staggering wearily into the cab he knocked open the door of the fire-box from which a dull glow tempered the darkness. Harvey seated himself on the fireman's seat, holding himself stiffly erect and trying to distinguish the track before. Jawn slowly brought the train to a stop.

"What is it?" asked Harvey. "See anything ahead?"

"No. We're about two hundred yards from the curve."

Harvey turned to Mallory.

"We'd better throw out a few men ahead, Mallory, to see that the track is clear."

"Haven't got many left, not more than half a dozen altogether."

Harvey stepped down and stretched his tired limbs.

"I'll go myself," he said. "Call one of your men up here."

Mallory climbed back on the tender and whistled. A man who had been sitting on the steps of the first car came forward.

"You wait here, Donohue," said Harvey. "If everything is all right, I'll come back." He struck a match and looked at his watch. "We've been taking time enough. It's three-fifteen now. I'll walk along the top of the cut on the left-hand side, and you "--to the detective--"you take the other side.

Keep within easy hail--" He paused abruptly. Through the crisp night air came the roll and snort of an engine. There was a long silence in the cab.

"She's running slow," said Jawn, at length.

Harvey stood breaking the match into bits. The noise of the other train came slowly nearer, but so slowly that all listened breathlessly. After a little they could hear the rumbling of an exhaust, and Jawn muttered, "She's stopped."

"We'd better wait," said Mallory. "It's more than likely that they have another gang ready for us. They probably will be coming this way before long."

Harvey stepped up to the fireman's seat again, and fixed his eyes on the black cut ahead. It was still dark, but he could now distinguish the deep shadow which marked the spot where the track bent sharply to the left between its rock walls. For some time all were silent, listening to the noise of the other engine. Jawn sat on his bench, which he had not left for hours, ready either for going ahead or for backing, as the circ.u.mstances should dictate. Mallory moved to the step and swung out as before, watching and listening. The fireman swung his arms and shifted his feet in an effort to keep awake.

Occasionally they could hear men shouting, then there would be no sound save the subdued hiss of steam. After a long wait a bell rang, and Jawn's grasp tightened, but the other engine gave only a few coughs and stopped again. The ensuing silence was broken by Harvey stepping to the tender and beckoning to the detective, who had been sitting on the coal.

"All right," said Harvey. "We'll go ahead and see what they're up to. You take the right bank, and keep close to the edge where I can talk to you if necessary." He swung out of the cab and began laboriously to climb up the seamed sloping rock, which reached a man's height above the cab roof.

Excepting the occasional cracks and jagged projections there was no foothold, and it was at the expense of cut and sc.r.a.ped hands that he scrambled up the soft limestone and reached the top. He sat for a moment on the ground to recover his breath and to pull himself together. The detective was standing on the opposite bank and Harvey rose and stumbled forward. They crept along, climbing fences and tripping through underbrush. As they rounded the curve the ground began to slope away, and soon they could see the headlight of an engine. Behind it, at the Sawyerville platform, stretched a train of lighted cars.

Harvey and the detective had been talking across the cut, but now for the sake of caution they went on in silence. Harvey slipped around a farmyard that backed up to the track, and struck into the woods that lie north of Sawyerville almost up to the station and its lonely cl.u.s.ter of houses.

Stepping quietly along a bridle path he soon came within earshot of the station.

Little knots of men stood on the platform talking excitedly. The new station agent and operator was running about in his shirt sleeves with his hand full of papers. Within the cars were crowds of men; Harvey estimated that there were several hundred. Standing near the engine, the centre of a small group, was a large man whom Harvey thought was McNally, but he could not be certain at that distance and in the uncertain light of flickering station lamps.

Harvey's sporting blood was up, and with entire forgetfulness of his exhaustion he crept slowly forward, worming through the brush and long gra.s.s behind a snake fence. Slowly he progressed until only a muddy road intervened between him and the north end of the platform. Taking advantage of a noisy blow-off from the engine, he piled some brush up in front of him and stretched out at full length with his chin on his arm, viewing the scene through the opening between the two lowest rails of the fence. Now he could easily recognize McNally, and without being able to distinguish words could even hear him talking. Suddenly McNally stepped out from the group and called down the platform,--

"Blake, are Wilkins and the boys back yet?"

The reply was lost to Harvey, but McNally shouted,--

"If they aren't here in five minutes, go ahead."

That told Harvey just what he wanted to know, and slowly turning he began crawling back. But before he had gone very far, he heard a sound which suggested possibilities. It was the wheezing of his own engine at the other end of the curve. Now that he stopped to think, he realized that it must have been perfectly audible to McNally's party. From this it was naturally to be inferred that "the boys" had been sent out on a mission similar to his own. It occurred to him that he and they might have pa.s.sed, and that the repa.s.sing might not so easily be accomplished. He increased his efforts and soon was deep enough in the woods to get to his feet and run. When he drew near the farmhouse he took a detour and pa.s.sed it with fifty yards to spare. He could not afford to rouse any dogs. He was getting into the open when three or four men appeared directly in front of him, walking slowly from a strip of woods toward the track. Harvey dug his heel into the ground and dodged back, but the men saw him and without a word started in pursuit.

The chase was not a long one. Harvey was completely hemmed in, and exhausted as he was and spent with running, he was soon overhauled. He tried to call out, but one of the men gripped his mouth.

Mallory, as soon as Harvey was out of sight, settled down to await his return with more or less impatience. The fireman leaned against the forward end of the tender and promptly fell asleep, but Jawn waked him with a growl, whereupon the exhausted man stood erect, struggling to bring his rebellious nerves under control. As the minutes slipped by Jawn's eyes shifted from track to bank and back to the cut again. The clouds that lingered from the afternoon rain hid every star save one near the horizon, which struggled to announce the coming dawn.

Ten minutes pa.s.sed, and fifteen. Then came the warning bell of the other locomotive, followed by a quick succession of puffs as the big drivers gripped the rails. Jawn leaned far out the window and scanned the banks of the cut. No one was in sight. He ducked in and seized the throttle lever.

"Hold on," said Mallory. "Are they coming this way?"

"Yes."

Mallory seized his arm.

"Back up, then. We can't meet them."

Jawn jerked his elbow from Mallory's grasp and opened the throttle.