To The Front Part 4

"I'll trouble you for the card," said he. "I may meet _other_ conductors."

Slowly Cullin fumbled for it, twiddled it between his fingers, and finally, half reluctant, restored it. At that instant, faint, distant, but distinct, came the sound of the whistle of the belated No. 4.

"That's for Spearman's now," thought Geordie, but so tense had been the scene that for a moment no man spoke.

Then Toomey gave tongue.

"She'll go by here kiting," said he. "Ten miles down-grade and a two-mile straightaway from Cimarron Bend, out yonder." Again the whistle, and nearer. "That's for the crossing at the creek. By gad, she's just jumping! Hang onto your hair when you see her head-light and scramble for the cab."

Another whistle, two short blasts and a long. Nearer still, yet still out of sight; and then presently there shot into view, over a mile away to the west, even though the gray light of the summer's dawn now overspread the landscape, the glare of a head-light. It was No. 4 coming full tilt.

And then--surprise! From steam-drum and 'scape-valve jetted clouds of flat-driven steam. No. 4 had suddenly "shut off," and was now coasting downhill like a huge toboggan.

Another blast came from the whistle. "By Jove, she's going to stop!"

said Cullin. "What on earth's the meaning of that?"

With prodigious shriek and roar of steam, with clinching, crunching air-brakes on the glistening tires, with sparks flying from the whirring wheels and signal-lanterns swinging at the side, No. 4 came rushing in. As the baggage-car shot by, a little group of men stood by the doorway about a rec.u.mbent figure, and the conductor whisked up his lantern and started after it. When nearly opposite the caboose the big train settled to a stop. Four pairs of strong arms lifted the prostrate figure from one car to the other. There were brief, hurried words. A lantern waved; the whistle sounded two quick blasts; No. 4 slowly started, quickly gained speed, and, almost as quickly as it came, was steaming away for Buffalo b.u.t.te, its pale lamps gleaming dimly in the gathering light. The conductor came running forward.

"Pull out for Argenta, Ben!" he shouted. "Say, young feller, drop shovelling and come back. I've got n.o.body to help me, and here No. 4's loaded me with a half-dead man to be taken home. There's a row at the mines. Every man is out from Silver Shield!"

CHAPTER VI

FIRST AID TO THE WOUNDED

Slowly, jerkily, the Time Freight began to gather headway as the big Mogul pulled, hissing loudly, from the siding to the main track, the ugly brown cars winding grudgingly after. This was before the days of mile-long freight-trains with air-brakes and patent couplers. Over the grades of the Transcontinental no engine yet had pulled more than twenty "empties." There was ever the danger of breaking in two. In the dim interior of the caboose the conductor, with Geordie Graham by his side, was bending over a battered and dishevelled form. As the rear trucks went clicking over the switch-points, the former sprang to the open doorway to see that his brakeman reset and locked the switch, and with a swift run overtook the caboose and swung himself aboard.

"I'll be up in a minute, Andy," cried Cullin to his aid, already scrambling up the iron ladder for his station on the roof. "This poor devil's battered into pulp and I can't leave him." And again he was by Graham's side--Graham who, kneeling now and sponging with cold water the bruised, hacked, disfigured face of the senseless victim, had made a startling discovery.

Here, with his clothing ripped, torn, and covered with dirt and blood, with one arm obviously broken and his head beaten, kicked, and cruelly gashed--here, beyond a doubt, lay the man who nearly five years earlier had been the one obstacle between him and the goal of his ambition, the cadetship at West Point; here lay the son of the man probably most prominent in the conspiracy against the absent shareholders of Silver Shield; here, in fine, lay the almost lifeless body of the youth he had seen spying upon their arrival at Denver--young Breifogle himself.

By this time the Mogul was grinding her way up the track, in determined effort to land the Time Freight in the yards at Argenta before the whistle blew for seven o'clock. It was a twelve-mile pull up-grade, every inch of the way--twisting, turning, and tunnelling, as has been said--and the caboose reeled and swayed from side to side as it rounded the reverse curves and swung at the tail of the train. Cullin, lantern in hand, had climbed to his seat in the lookout.

"I've got to be up here," he explained, "till we are through the tunnels. Do what you can. I suppose sponging is all we _can_ do."

Graham nodded. He had stripped the leather-covered cushion from the conductor's chair, and with this and a rolled coat made a support for the senseless head. He had a fire-bucket of cold water, and even as he plied the wet sponge and sought to stanch the trickling blood, his wits were at work. The men on No. 4 had only time to say that four miles out from Argenta, down the Run beyond Narrow Gauge Junction, their whistle suddenly shrieked, the air-brakes were set with a clamp that jolted the whole train, and they slowed down just enough not to knock into flinders a hand-car that was sailing ahead of them, down-grade. "The pilot hit it a lick that tossed it into the ditch," No. 4's crew had explained, and beside it they had found--this.

And "this" it was now Geordie's task and duty to keep alive until they could turn it over to competent hands at Argenta. "This," which others failed to know, he had recognized. "This" it was for him to make known, yet in so doing he might betray himself and the purpose of his coming, and so undo every hope and plan he had made. There was no Toomey to help him now--no devoted ex-trooper and friend to back him. Engineer, fireman, conductor, and brakemen, every man of the crew had to be at his post as the freight panted away up the winding mountain road. The crew of No. 4 had searched the pockets in vain for a clew as to the injured man's ident.i.ty. Everything was gone. His a.s.sailants had seen to that. Not a sc.r.a.p had been found that could account for him. Even the shirt "tab" bore no initials; the watch-pocket of the trousers bore no name. The garments had been purchased ready-made and gave no sign.

Then there was another matter to be considered. Badly as he was battered and bruised, the man was not dying. Graham knew how to test the pulse, and its strength told him not to fear. The chances were that his patient would return to consciousness before very long. Then recognition of his grimy attendant would probably follow. Breifogle was no fool, as Graham remembered, and a fireman's black cap and sooty shirt and overalls would be but scant disguise.

And to carry out his plan it was essential that he should pa.s.s through Argenta, reach Hatch's Cove and eventually the Silver Shield mine, and reach this latter unknown and unsuspected. Toomey and he had hit on a plan--once Toomey could succeed in getting word to Nolan. But that, reasoned Geordie, might be impossible now in view of this new complication--serious trouble at the mines, and "every man out at Silver Shield."

If only he could see Toomey again for a moment! That was impossible.

Toomey's every muscle was needed to keep that fiery and insatiable monster fed with fuel every rod of the way to Argenta. There was no intermediate stop. There could be no signals--no sending of a message.

Half the distance had they gone, panting and straining, barely fifteen miles to the hour. Broad daylight, and then the rejoicing sunshine, had come to cheer and gladden and revive, and Cullin shouted inquiry, as he bent down from his perch, and Graham nodded or shook his head by way of reply. Swiftly and scientifically he kept up the play of the sponges; shook his head to Cullin's suggestion of a little more whiskey--the frontier's "first aid" for every kind of mishap. The pulse said there was no further need of it, at the moment at least. And then, as they rumbled over some resounding bridge-work and crossed the swift and foaming Run, the train crept under the shadow of the cliff and stretched away over a bit of open, undulating gra.s.sland, and then the racket ceased for a while and it was possible, by bending down, to catch the patient's breathing.

And it gave Geordie an idea.

The poor, bruised head was turning in restless pain; the puffed and swollen lips were moving; the still unconscious man was muttering. Not a word could Geordie distinguish. It was all guesswork. But, glancing up at Cullin, he called: "He's trying to talk. Perhaps I can get his name," and again inclined his ear and bent down over the luckless fellow's face. "Yes," he said, loudly, so that Cullin could hear--"yes, I understand.... Don't worry.... You're with friends.... Tell us your name and home.... What? Try once again.... Bry--what? Oh, Breifogle?...

Yes. Argenta? That's just where we're going. We'll be there very soon.

Don't try to talk more now." And again the sponge was busily plied, and then the grimy nurse glanced upward at Cullin, now shinning down from his perch in the skylight. "His home's right ahead at Argenta.

Breifogle's the name."

"Breifogle!" shouted Cullin, aghast. "Why, that's the big brewer, banker, mine-owner, and Lord knows what all--that owns half of Yampah County and wants to own the rest. Could he tell who slugged him? Does he know anything about it? Ask him."

Obediently Geordie put the question, but no answer came. "Seems to have wandered off," he said. "Perhaps we'd be wise to worry him with no more questions. If he's what you say, they'll be looking everywhere for him.

When did the men at Silver Shield go out?"

"Yesterday morning at ten o'clock, so they said on No. 4. There was a pack of 'em come down to Argenta to get to the owners, they said. By gad, they seem to have got _at_ one of 'em!"

A moan from the sufferer was the only answer. Graham shook his head.

"How soon can you make it?" he asked. "The sooner this man's in expert hands the better 'twill be."

"Twelve minutes," said Cullin, with a snap of his silver watch-lid.

"_You_ seem no slouch of a handler yourself. Where'd you learn?"

"I lived with a doctor awhile," was the quiet answer. "He had to patch men up occasionally." And Geordie could barely suppress the grin that twitched the corners of his mouth. How strangely already his adventure was faring! "I suppose after hammering him senseless they set him adrift on that hand-car, hoping it would finish him and hide their crime," he hazarded.

"Looks like it," was Cullin's short answer as once more he climbed to his station.

Ten minutes later they were slowly trundling in among a maze of tracks and sidings, with long trains of gondolas, coal-cars, and dingy-brown freight-boxes on both sides. Cullin was shouting to invisible switchmen, and presently the train came b.u.mping to a stand. Another minute and two or three early birds among the yardmen were climbing aboard and curiously, excitedly, peering over Geordie's head. He never looked up. Calmly he continued his sponging. Then Cullin's voice was heard again. A stretcher was thrust in at the rear door. Three or four men, roughly dressed, but with sorrow and sympathy in their careworn faces, bent over the prostrate body. They seemed to look to Graham for instructions.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "BIG BEN WAS BUSY WITH HIS OIL-CAN"]

"You know where to take him?" he asked. "All right, then, I'll leave him with you." And before the station-master or other official could come, Graham had seen his patient transferred to the stretcher, borne forth into the sunshine and away to the pa.s.senger-room. Then, slipping from the left rear steps, with the train between him and the building, Geordie sauntered, softly whistling, up to the front again, and in five minutes was helping Toomey at the cab.

It was not yet seven. Big Ben was busy with his oil-can. Three cars had been cut out from the train and run to a platform close at hand. It was high time they were off again, but the conductor was held in the office, whither he had gone for orders, as well as to report concerning their unsought pa.s.senger. Toomey was still angered against Cullin, between whom and himself there was ever more or less friction, but Geordie had begun to take a fancy to him. Cullin would never have said what he did had he known the ident.i.ty of Toomey's pupil, and Geordie argued that Cullin's gruff and insolent greeting was in reality a tribute to his powers--a recognition of the fact that he looked the part he was trying to play.

With so very much at stake depending on Graham's remaining unrecognized, with old Fort Reynolds only six miles ahead, and Silver Shield only twenty-six farther, it would be foolish to become involved in a squabble. But Toomey had been nursing his wrath. Big Ben was not too fond of Cullin, and Geordie found that they were quite bent on making trouble at first opportunity. In spite of the early hour an air of excitement pervaded the station. Many men were idling about the pa.s.senger platform, and here and there little groups could be seen in muttered conversation. There was no laughter, no light-hearted chaff.

It was noted by both men in the cab, before Geordie rejoined them, that as the injured man was borne on his stretcher across the yard into the pa.s.senger station, these groups seemed rather to edge away instead of crowding about in morbid curiosity.

No need to ask who or what they were. The pallor of the faces, so startling in contrast to the healthy tan of the ranch folk or the swarthy grime of the railway men--the mud-splashed boots and trousers told their tale. They were miners to a man, and miners in ugly mood.

"The town's been full of 'em since noon yesterday," said a yardman to Ben, in answer to his question. "They are here to see the Silver Shield officers, and have been told they'd be up from Denver on No. 3. They chased old Breifogle out of his office yesterday afternoon, and he's been hiding ever since. Young Breifogle has been missing ever since yesterday noon."

"That's him on the stretcher," said Big Ben, gloomily, for the news was already flying round. "Cullin says he's about done for. This young feller in here took care of him all the way up from Buffalo b.u.t.te. No.

4 picked him up down the gulch and put him aboard us there."

A long whistle was the only comment. At the first words spoken by the yardman, a quick glance pa.s.sed between the two young men on the opposite, the fireman's, side of the cab. They could not see the speaker, but they knew the voice. It was that of a former trooper of the --th, another soldier who had sought to treble his savings at the mines and had lost them all; then, too proud to return and "take on"

again, had found starvation-wages at Argenta.

"Stay here," whispered Toomey, "and keep sittin'." Then, wiping his hands on a wad of waste, and with an affable grin on his face, he swung over behind Ben and leaned out of the cab.

"Hullo, Scotty! Any of our fellers in that outfit?"