The Young Railroaders Part 46

Reaching the spot at which he had seen the Italian, he went on more cautiously. A quarter-mile farther the ravine swung abruptly to the west.

As Alex arrived at the bend, subdued voices reached him. Continuing cautiously, and keeping to the deepest shadows, Alex reached a clump of willow bushes.

He glanced beyond, and in a patch of moonlight discovered Big Tony in conversation with an almost equally tall stranger, apparently a cowboy.

The latter's back was toward him.

The stranger turned, and Alex drew back with a start, and then a smile.

It was the second man of the two who on the previous Sunday had attempted to wreck the track-machine--the one who had made his escape.

As the man turned more fully, and he caught his words, Alex's jubilant smile vanished.

"... enough to blow the whole thing to matchwood, if you place it right,"

he was saying.

There was no doubt what this meant. They were planning to blow up the viaduct.

"Oh, I fixa it alla right, alla right," declared Big Tony confidently.

"No fear. I usa da dynamite all-aready. I blow up da beega da house once."

"A house and a big wooden bridge are quite different propositions. And a wooden bridge isn't to be blown up like a stone or iron affair, you know."

"Suppose you come, taka da look, see my plan all-aright, den," the Italian suggested. "No one on disa side da bridge, to see, disa time night."

The cowman hesitated. "Well, all right. It would be best to make sure.

"We don't want to carry this, though. Where'll we put it?"

As he spoke the man leaned over and picked up a good-sized parcel done up in brown paper. From the careful way he handled it there could be no doubt of its contents. It was the dynamite they proposed using.

"Here, I fin' da place."

Alex caught his breath at the display of carelessness with which the foreigner took the deadly package. Backing into a nearby clump of bushes, Big Tony stooped and placed the dynamite on the ground, well beneath the branches.

"Dere. No one see dat. Come!"

As the two conspirators strode toward him, Alex crept closer into the shadows of the willows. Pa.s.sing almost within touch of him, they continued up the gully, and soon were out of sight.

Before the footsteps of the two men had died away Alex was sitting upright, debating a suggestion that caused him to smile. With decision he arose, approached the bush under which the dynamite was concealed, and reaching beneath with both hands, very carefully brought the package forth and placed it on the ground in the moonlight. With great caution he then undid the twine securing the parcel, and opened it. On discovering a second wrapping of paper within, he uttered an exclamation of satisfaction. Lifting out the inner parcel intact, he glanced about, and choosing a group of bushes some distance away, carried the dynamite there and concealed it. Returning, he secured the piece of outer wrapping paper, and proceeded to carry out his idea.

Where the moonlight struck the western wall of the gully was a bed of cracked, sun-baked clay. Making his way thither, Alex found a fragment a little larger than the package of dynamite, and with his knife proceeded to trim it into a square. Carefully then he wrapped this in the brown paper, and wound it about with the cord just as the original parcel was secured. And with a smile Alex placed this under the bush from which he had taken the genuine package.

"Dynamite with that as much as you please, Mr. Tony," he laughed as he turned away.

When Alex had covered half the distance in returning to the viaduct he began keeping a sharp lookout ahead for the returning of the Italian and his companion. He was within a hundred yards of the great white structure when he discovered them. Turning aside, he concealed himself behind a small spruce.

With no apprehension of danger Alex waited, and the two men came opposite. Suddenly, without a motion of warning, the two turned and darted toward him, one on either side of the tree. Before Alex had recovered from his astonishment he found himself seized on either side, and threateningly ordered to be silent.

They dragged him on some distance, then into the moonlight. "Why, it's one of the fellows who captured Bucks on Sunday!" declared the cowboy.

"What are you doing here, boy?" he demanded angrily.

"I was out for a moonlight stroll," Alex responded, stifling his apprehension.

"Why did you hide behind that tree, then?"

"Well--perhaps I was afraid," said Alex vaguely. "There are some rough people here among the foreign laborers."

As he spoke Alex noted with new alarm that the Italian was regarding him sharply. He turned his back more fully to the moonlight. Immediately he chided himself for his stupidity. The move emphasized the struggling sense of recognition in the Italian's mind, he smartly turned Alex's face full to the moon, and uttered a cry in Italian.

"Now I know! I know!" he cried exultingly. "I know heem before! And he a spy! A boy spy!"

Rapidly he gave the stranger a distorted account of the strike at Bixton, and Alex's part in his final discomfiture.

The cowman listened closely. "Is that so, boy?" he demanded.

"Partly. But it was not a strike. It was a simple piece of murderous revenge against one man, the section-foreman. And I helped spoil it."

"Good. That's all I want to know," said the cowboy with decision. "Not that I care one way or the other about the affair itself. It shows you are a dangerous man to leave around loose. I'll just take you along with me. Come on!"

"Come? Where?" said Alex, holding back in alarm.

"Never mind! Just come!" Securing a new hold on Alex's arms, the speaker and the Italian dragged him with them back down the gorge.

As they neared the spot at which the dynamite was supposed to be safely hidden, the stranger halted abruptly, studied Alex intently a moment, then sent Big Tony on ahead, after a whispered word in his ear.

Alex knew the foreigner had gone to learn whether the dynamite had been touched. In suspense he awaited the result. Would the Italian be deceived? Would he notice the new footprints about the bush?

Big Tony returned. "All-aright," he announced. Alex breathed a sigh of relief, and continued forward with his captors.

They proceeded some distance in silence, and presently Alex had sufficiently plucked up courage to again ask what they proposed doing with him.

"I'm going to take you where you will be out of mischief, that's all,"

replied the unknown cowman. As he spoke he halted, looked about, and resigning Alex to the guardianship of the Italian, disappeared in the shadow of an over-hang of the ravine. A moment later there was a clatter of hoofs, and he reappeared leading a horse.

"Make heem rida too?" questioned Big Tony.

"Hardly," responded the cowman, at the same time freeing and swinging a lariat from the saddle-horn. "He's going to trot along behind me like the blame little coyote he is.

"Hold out your hands, kid!" he ordered. Seeing resistance was useless, Alex reluctantly complied. Running the noose of the la.s.soo about the boy's wrists, the cowman tightened it, and secured it with several knots.

Swinging into the saddle, he fixed the other end to the saddle-horn.

"You may go now, Tony," he said to the foreigner as he caught up the reins and headed the pony toward a path to the surface which Alex had not noticed.

"Gooda night, Meester Munson. And gooda-by, smart boy," said the Italian.

"Lucky for you I havanta my way. 'Scrugk!' That's what you get," he declared, drawing his hand across his throat.

"Munson, eh?" murmured Alex as the la.s.soo tightened, and he stumbled up the path behind the pony. "That's another good thing learned."

Arrived at the surface, his captor halted to look about, then set off across the plains due south, at a walk, Alex trailing after at the end of the rope.