The Short Line War Part 29

"Hold on, though. It won't do for them to find him."

He glanced out of the window and then ran out on the platform.

"There's time enough, I guess," he muttered, turning and speaking into the car. "I'm goin' back with him."

He disappeared, and Jawn quietly a.s.sumed command of the defences. "Don't do any shooting," he said. "It won't help any in this mix-up. These are good to hit with," and he showed a coupling pin he held in his hand.

When the preparations were made for the defence, and all the bulky articles in the car had been placed where they would be most in the way of an attacking party, the men waited. They were stupid with fatigue, and even the prospect of an immediate attack failed to arouse them; but they were still game, and though they lay about the floor in att.i.tudes of utter exhaustion their sullen determination to hold the car was unmistakable.

At last a shower of stones came rattling about the car, and they heard the shouts of two hundred men who came charging down the banks into the cut.

Jawn and his men breathed more freely now that the waiting was over, and drew themselves up with a spark of their old alertness. One man began singing, drumming on the car floor with a stick,--

"There'll be a hot time--"

and another, springing to his feet, took to balancing his loaded club, shifting it from finger to finger, and then catching it in his hand he struck quick and hard through the air to see where the grip was best.

Then they heard the sound of feet on the north platform, and some one tried the door. "Guess they're in here," they heard him say.

"Guess you'll find that you're dead right about that," observed the man who had been singing.

Jawn said no word, but waited with blazing eyes beside the door. He meant to strike the first blow with his coupling pin. There were two ineffectual thuds against the door and then a crash. The hinges started and one panel splintered inward. Another, and this time the door fell and a giant of a man, jerked off his balance by the sledge he had swung, staggered into the car. Jawn struck; the man's collarbone crackled under the coupling pin and he fell forward with a yell. Then over him and over the fallen door came the rush. The handful of defenders chose their corners and fought in them, each in his own way; some in a sort of hysteria, screaming curses, some striking silently, and one, the singer, with a laugh on his lips. When the fireman was struck senseless, this man fought over him until forced back by press of numbers, so that he no longer had room to strike.

The defence of the baggage car was over, and the defenders, disabled and disarmed, were submitting to the handcuffs or to the bits of rope which were used in securing them, when there came a sound of cheering, which made their captors leave them hastily and clamber from the car. The relief had come.

It came on the run, with Mallory at the head. There was no order, no pretence at formation; simply a stream of eager, angry men, some running through the cut along the tracks, others stumbling through the woods above, all animated by the desire to reach the scene of action as quickly as possible. And waiting for them was another mob of men, the main body of McNally's army. They were crowded in the cut on both sides of the train they had just captured, with the knowledge rankling in their hearts that they had been held at bay by a handful of determined men. They were glad they had somebody to fight.

The moment the two bodies of men came together the confusion became indescribable. The men had no means of distinguishing between friend and foe. They were at too close quarters to make fighting possible, and if it had been, no one would have known whom to strike and whom to defend. The cut was densely packed with men who strained and swayed and struggled and swore, but who could not by any possibility fight. But slowly the increasing weight of the new arrivals began to tell, and slowly, almost imperceptibly, the ma.s.s began to move south. Eventually they would push out of the cut to the open, where they could discuss matters more satisfactorily.

In the excitement they did not hear the long train that came clanking up from the south and stopped just behind the C. & S.C. train. But a moment later the uproar ceased, as sounded high and clear the echoing bugles, "Forward, Fours left into line, March!" Looking, they saw six companies of the National Guard come swinging across the open, the horizontal rays of the rising sun gilding their fixed bayonets.

There was no need for shot or bayonet thrust, the mob was quiet. McNally, as he stood panting in the thickest of the crowd, knew what it meant. The time for violence was over; his army had outlived its usefulness. And he knew that however the fight for the M. & T. was to be won, this was the beginning of the end.

CHAPTER XIX

KATHERINE DECIDES

It was some hours before definite information was to be had concerning the present condition of affairs. No one knew whether his side had won or lost, whether the M. & T. was a Weeks road or a Porter road, though in the excitement each claimed control and made immediate efforts to enforce orders relating to its conduct. Messages flew back and forth along the singing wires, and wrecking trains started almost simultaneously from Manchester and from Truesdale, with instructions to clear up the muss at Sawyerville, in order that the regular train service be resumed.

But before matters were more than fairly under way, there came a sudden suspension of action. The Weeks wreckers paused at Brushingham, and contented themselves with pulling Harvey's first capture back on the rails. That done, the conductor stuffed a bundle of somewhat contradictory but imperative orders into his pocket, and stretched himself on the little red bench on the Brushingham station platform; the engineer, after a shouted order, settled down to the nearest approach to rest known to an engineer on duty; the division car repairer and the roadmaster curled up in the caboose, for they had been routed out at an unseemly hour; the station agent amused himself reading the messages that rattled through to the South and back, telling of a muddle at headquarters. When a wrecking train is held for orders, it is safe to a.s.sume that something has happened.

Down the line there was a similar occurrence. The Truesdale repair crew was caught at Sawyerville and ordered back. But before the astonished conductor had read the message through, another came ordering him on, subject no longer to the Superintendent's orders, but to those of Colonel Wray, 3d N.G.

The Governor of the State, in the conduct of routine matters, was usually content to follow precedent, which means that the State House clerical force was let more or less severely alone to govern the community, while the executive directed the politics of his party with a view to coming elections. At times an emergency occurred, miners struck, excited citizens lynched a negro, henchmen of the other party strained the voting laws, munic.i.p.al corporations endeavored to steal State privileges--in any of which cases he delayed definite action until public sentiment bayed at his heels, then he acted with shrewdness and despatch. At the time of the fight, this same noisy public was keen on the scent of the railroads.

Certain street railway corporations had called out abuse by methods which were excusable only for their success, and the ma.s.s saw no reason to believe that one corporation was better than another. Discriminating freight tariffs, which had seemed to favor a neighboring State, had thoroughly antagonized the country districts--and the country districts'

vote. From even the solid communities had come rumors of restlessness and discontent. Ward bosses were worried, county magnates were dodging reform committees instigated by the traditionally conscientious minority, and the Governor knew that certain bills which awaited his signature were not likely to increase his following.

So it was that the great man was watching, watching and waiting, for the opportunity to strike a blow which should swing public sentiment around in his favor. Up to the present the whole State had been quiet. The miners were as orderly as the Sunday-school over which he presided when in his native town. The great labor organizations he was so eager to conciliate perversely gave him no opportunity.

And so it was that when messages came pouring in upon him from bosses and chairmen and advisers urging immediate interference in the M. & T. fight, when the sheriff of Malden County sent in an hysterical report, all instigated by the pungent advices from mad and muddy Senator Sporty Jones--the Governor inclined his ear. He was a shrewd man, and he knew that in order to make a distinct impression on The Public his blow must be sudden and spectacular. The longer he thought on it, the more the opportunity pleased him, and before the evening was far advanced Colonel Wray was speeding to Truesdale.

The Third was not a city regiment. It was made up of men from the middle sections of the State, a company to every few counties with battalion headquarters in three of the smaller cities, Truesdale for one. In the city regiments was a blue-stocking element which did not fit the Governor's present needs.

As soon as Colonel Wray reached Truesdale, he established himself in the inhospitable warehouse which in reports was called an armory. Before midnight the local company was collected, uniformed, and in order. Later special trains arrived, and squads and companies marched through the echoing streets, to sit dozing about the armory. At three-thirty a train came in from the southern counties bringing the second battalion, three hundred husky farm lads who glowed with responsibility as they stacked arms and awaited orders.

Then came a telephone message that McNally's relief train had left for the North. Colonel Wray waited no longer but marched over to the station, seized the telegraph office and the telephone, placed guards at each entrance and about the train shed, ordered the yard master to make up another train, levied on the station restaurant for six hundred cups of coffee, and tore fly-leaves from the news-stand books to write special orders for the waiting adjutant.

Meanwhile Porter was feverish. He tried to bulldoze the sergeant in the telegraph office only to be hustled off by a corporal's guard. He finally reached the Colonel's ear, but was heard in courteous silence. He made an effort to call up the Oakwood Club to send a message to McNally, but the sunburned young fellow in the 'phone box leaned on his rifle and shook his head. The same thing happened when he tried to get out of the building--"Sorry, sir. Captain's orders"--and the baffled magnate paced up and down the waiting room between long files of light-hearted boys in blue. It was humiliating to consider that he had subscribed heavily toward fitting up the Truesdale armory, that half the officers knew him and feared his influence.

While he was racking his brain sudden orders were shouted through the building. The lounging groups came up with a jerk, there was a rattle of arms, and in ten seconds the farm boys had resolved into a machine, a set of rigid blue lines that reached the length of the waiting room. There was another order, and one after another the companies broke into columns of twos and swung through the gla.s.s doors, which were held open by a couple of scared but admiring waiters.

Porter followed the last company and stood in the doorway behind two crossed rifles watching the troops climb into the cars. The Colonel stood at the track gate as the men marched through, talking with his aids.

Porter thought for a moment of calling to him, but realized the futility of it after the treatment he had just received. Besides, even a railroad president could hardly keep his dignity with those ridiculous guns under his nose. So he turned and walked slowly to his temporary headquarters in the station agent's office, but to find that the young captain left in command by Colonel Wray had made himself at home and was issuing orders to a snub-nosed lieutenant.

Porter took a chair and looked out of the window. For a moment he was too weary to be aggressive. Worry and loss of sleep had lined his face, and the absence of news from McNally kept his nerves strung. As he sat there gripping the arms of the chair, face a little flushed, hair disarranged, collar dusty, he looked ten years past his age. It was a critical moment in the fight, and he knew it, but cornered as he was, absolutely uninformed as to his position in the struggle, or the meaning of the military display, a sense of helplessness almost unnerved him. Heretofore his fights had been largely conducted through deferential employees. He was accustomed to bows and sc.r.a.pes, to men who feared him, who watched his every move in awe, and to find himself utterly at the mercy of these tin soldiers was disgusting. It was twenty-four hours since he had had a wink of sleep and eighteen since he had eaten a full meal--facts which in no small measure lessened the stability of his mental poise. And there he sat waiting through the darkness and the dawn.

The reds and golds in the eastern sky spread and paled. The little green-clad city stretched down the gentle hill, now indistinct in the haze. An early electric car whirred and jangled past the station, and Porter was half conscious of the noise. He got up, straightened his stiff joints, and went to the lunch counter, where he had to jostle between two gawky privates before he could order a cup of smoky cereal coffee and a sandwich. After getting a place he could not eat, so he returned to the office. Now that some sort of routine was established, the Captain showed a willingness to meet him civilly.

"See here," said Porter, after a few commonplaces had been exchanged, "how long is this going to keep up? There is no sense in holding me here."

"Sorry, sir. I have no desire to inconvenience you, but my orders are to let no one out and no one in. And you know what orders are for."

"Oh, that's all right,"--Porter leaned back in his chair and looked out the window,--"but there's such a thing as going to extremes. Sometimes common sense supersedes orders."

"You forget, Mr. Porter, that you are here for the purpose of conducting a raid, and we are here to stop that raid. Under the circ.u.mstances it is my duty to hold you and every one connected with the affair until I am otherwise ordered."

"But I am not a thief, man."

"No, perhaps not." The Captain turned to some papers on the desk, and Porter continued to look out, wearily, with a sudden dull ache above his eyes.

A corporal appeared in the doorway, saluting.

"There's a young lady, sir, says she's got to see Mr. Porter."

"Who is she?"

"Don't know, but she sticks to it."

"It's my daughter," said Porter, with an effort to rise. "Where is she?"

"Wait," the Captain said; "I'll speak to her," and he followed the soldier.

Porter sat still. After a little he heard voices in the waiting room, and Katherine entered the office. At the sight of his worn, haggard face her annoyed expression vanished, and she drew the Captain's chair beside her father's and laid her hand upon his forehead.

"You are sick," she said gently.