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Title: The Mountain Divide

Author: Frank H. Spearman

Illustrator: Armand Both

Release date: August 10, 2009 [eBook #29656]

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed
        Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MOUNTAIN DIVIDE ***




Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net





THE MOUNTAIN DIVIDE




BOOKS BY FRANK H. SPEARMAN

PUBLISHED BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

  ROBERT KIMBERLY. Illustrated by James
    Montgomery Flagg. 12mo                           Net $1.30

  WHISPERING SMITH. A Story of Rocky Mountain
    Life. Illustrated by N. C. Wyeth. 12mo               $1.50

  THE DAUGHTER OF A MAGNATE. Illustrated. 12mo           $1.50

  DOCTOR BRYSON. A Novel. 12mo                           $1.50

  THE MOUNTAIN DIVIDE. Illustrated. 12mo             Net $1.25

  THE STRATEGY OF GREAT RAILROADS.
    With Maps. 12mo                                  Net $1.50




[Illustration: AS BUCK'S STRAINING EYE FOLLOWED THE MOVEMENT, THE SECOND
INDIAN STRUCK THE CLUB DOWN.]




THE MOUNTAIN DIVIDE

BY

FRANK H. SPEARMAN

ILLUSTRATED BY

ARMAND BOTH

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

NEW YORK :: 1912




Copyright, 1912, by

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

Published September, 1912




THIS STORY WITHOUT LOVE,

IS NONE THE LESS LOVINGLY INSCRIBED

TO

MY YOUNGEST SON

ARTHUR DUNNING SPEARMAN




ILLUSTRATIONS

  As Buck's straining eye followed the movement, the
      second Indian struck the club down.               _Frontispiece_
  It was only after a moment that the lineman could be
      seen to gain.                                                 92
  "Let that gate alone or I'll brain you," he cried.               250
  For Scott to draw and fire was but one movement.                 300




THE MOUNTAIN DIVIDE


CHAPTER I


Night had fallen and a warm rain drifting down from the mountains hung
in a mist over the railroad yards and obscured the lights of Medicine
Bend. Two men dismounting from their drooping horses at the foot of
Front Street threw the reins to a man in waiting and made their way on
foot across the muddy square to the building which served the new
railroad as a station and as division head-quarters. In Medicine Bend,
the town, the railroad, everything was new; and the broad, low pine
building which they entered had not yet been painted.

The public waiting-room was large, roughly framed, and lighted with
hanging kerosene lamps. Within the room a door communicated with the
agent's office, and this was divided by a wooden railing into a
freight office and a ticket and telegraph office.

It could be seen, as the two men paused at the door of the inner room,
that the first wore a military fatigue-cap, and his alert carriage as
he threw open his cape-coat indicated the bearing of an American army
officer. He was of medium height, and his features and eyes implied
that the storms and winds of the plains and mountains were familiar
friends. This was Park Stanley, charged at that time with the
construction of the first transcontinental railroad.

The agent's office, which he and his companion now looked into, was
half-filled with a crowd of frontiersmen, smoking, talking, disputing,
asking questions, and crowding against the fence that railed off the
private end of the room; while at the operator's table next to the
platform window a tall, spindling boy was trying in the confusion
behind him to get a message off the wire.

Stanley, eying the lad, noticed how thin his face was and what a bony
frame spread out under the roundabout jacket that he appeared already
to have outgrown. And he concluded this must be the new operator,
Bucks, who for some days had been expected from the East.

The receiver clicked insistently and Bucks endeavored to follow the
message, but the babel of talking made it almost impossible. Stanley
heard the boy appeal more than once for less noise, but his appeals
were unheeded. He saw symptoms of fire in the operator's eyes as the
latter glared occasionally at the crowd behind him, but for what
followed even Stanley was unprepared. Bucks threw down his pen and
coming forward with angry impatience ordered the crowd out of the
room.

He pushed the foremost of the intruders back from the rail and
followed up his commands by opening the wicket gate and driving those
ahead of him toward the door of the waiting-room. "Get out where you
belong," he repeated, urging the crowd on. Stanley turned to the man
at his side. "I will go upstairs to write my message. This must be the
new boy, Bob," he added; "he acts as if he might make things go."

His companion, Bob Scott, smiled as he followed Stanley out upon the
platform and up the narrow stairway leading to the division offices.
But Bob Scott was conservative. He never spoke above an undertone and
naturally took the conservative side: "If he only doesn't make them go
too fast, Colonel," was his comment.

A tall young man, spare but almost gigantic in stature, standing back
in one corner of the agent's office as the men about him were hustled
along, likewise regarded Bucks with surprise as he saw him start
single-handed to expel the intruders. This was the mountain telegraph
lineman, Bill Dancing, as simple as he was strong, and ready at any
time to be surprised, but not often disconcerted. In this instance,
however, he was amazed, for almost before he realized it the energetic
operator was hustling him out with the others.

When Bucks thought the room cleared he turned to go back to his table,
but he saw that one man had been overlooked. This man was still
sitting on a stool in the farthest corner of the dimly lighted room.
The spindling operator without hesitation walked over to him and laid
his hand on the man's shoulder. Dancing, looking back through the
door, held his breath.

"Move out of here, please," said Bucks, "into the public waiting-room."
The man rose with the utmost politeness. "Sorry to be in your way,"
he returned mildly, though there was a note not quite pleasant in his
voice.

"Your place is outside," continued the operator. "I can't do anything
with a mob in here all talking at once."

"I haven't done my talking yet," suggested the man, with a shade of
significance. This, however, was lost on Bucks, who looked sharply at
the stool from which the man had risen.

"I think this stool is mine," said he, picking it up and examining it.
"It is mine," he added, after a moment's inspection. "Please move
on."

"Perhaps before I go," returned the man with the same unpleasant
irony, "you will tell me whether you have an express package here for
Harvey Levake."

"Of course I will, Harvey," responded the operator in a matter-of-fact
way. "Just wait a minute."

Levake's lips stretched into a ghost of a smile, and his white-lashed
gray eyes contracted with an effort at amiability.

The operator, going inside the railing, ran over the express way-bills
which, not yet entered up, lay on the freight desk.

"There is a package here for you," he announced a moment later, and
turning to a heap of parcels thrown under the desk he searched among
them until he found and produced the one he sought.

"Here it is--a box of cartridges."

"What are the charges?" asked the man.

"Four dollars and sixty cents."

The man laid down a twenty-dollar bank-bill. The operator hesitated:
"I haven't the change."

Levake showed no sympathy: "That is not my fault," he returned.

The operator looked at him: "Do you want the package to-night?"

"If I didn't, do you suppose I would waste an hour here waiting for
it?"

The boy considered a moment and made a decision, but it chanced to be
the wrong decision. "Take the package along. Bring me the charges in
the morning."

Levake made no response beyond a further glance at the boy somewhat
contemptuous; but he said nothing and picking up his package walked
out. No one opposed him. Indeed, had the operator been interested he
would have noticed with what marked alacrity every man, as he passed
through the waiting-room, got out of Levake's way. Dancing, standing
at the door and with his hair on end, awaited the close of the
incident. He now re-entered the inner office and shut the waiting-room
door behind him with an audible bang. Bucks, who had returned to his
table, looked around. "Well, who are you?" he demanded as he regarded
Dancing. "And what are you doing here?"

"Who are you?" retorted Dancing bluntly. "And what are you doing
here?"

"My name is Bucks and I am the new night operator."

"You look new. And you act all-fired new. My name is Bill Dancing and
I am the telegraph lineman."

"Why, you are the man I am looking for."

"So I thought, when you pushed me out of here with the rest of your
visitors."

"Why didn't you speak up, Bill?" demanded Bucks calmly.

A quizzical expression passed over Dancing's face. "I didn't want to
break the calm. When I see a man walking around a powder magazine I
hate to do anything that might set it off.

"So your name is Bucks," continued Dancing, as he walked through the
wicket and threw his wet hat among the way-bills on the freight desk.
"Well, Mr. Bucks, do you know what was most likely to happen to you
any minute before you got through with that crowd, just now?"

"No, I don't know. Why?" asked Bucks, busy with his messages.

"Have you ever seen a shooting mix-up in Medicine Bend?" demanded
Dancing in a tone of calculated indifference.

"No," answered Bucks in decided but off-hand manner, "I never saw a
shooting mix-up anywhere."

"Never got shot up just for fun?" persisted Dancing. "Do you know," he
continued without waiting for an answer, "who that polite man was,
the last one you shouldered out of here?" Dancing pointed as he
spoke to the corner from which Levake had risen, but the operator,
straightening out the papers before him, did not look around.

"No, Bill, I don't know anybody here. You see I am a stranger."

"I see you are a stranger," echoed Dancing. "Let me tell you
something, then, will you?"

"Tell it quick, Bill."

"There is no cemetery in this town."

"I have understood it is very healthy, Bill," returned the operator.

"Not for everybody." Bill Dancing paused to let the words sink in, as
his big eyes fixed upon the young operator's eyes. "Not for
everybody--sometimes not for strangers. Strangers have to get used to
it. There is a river here," added the lineman sententiously. "It's
pretty swift, too."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean you have got to be careful how you do things out in this
country."

"But, Bill," persisted the lad, "if there is going to be any business
done in this office we have got to have order, haven't we?" The
lineman snorted and the operator saw that his appeal had fallen flat.
"My batteries, Bill," he added, changing the subject, "are no good at
all. I sent for you because I want you to go over them now, to-night,
and start me right. What are you going to do?"

Dancing had begun to poke at the ashes in the stove. "Build a fire,"
he returned, looking about for material. He gathered up what waste
paper was at hand, pushed it into the stove, and catching up the
way-bills from the desk, threw them in on the paper and began to feel
in his wet pockets for matches.

"Hold on," cried Bucks. "What do you mean? You must be crazy!" he
exclaimed, running to the stove and pulling the way-bills out.

"Not half so crazy as you are," replied Dancing undisturbed. "I'm only
trying to show you how crazy you are. Burning up way-bills isn't a
circumstance to what you did just now. You are the looniest operator I
ever saw." As he looked at Bucks he extended his finger impressively.
"When you laid your hand on that man's shoulder to-night--the one
sitting on your stool--I wouldn't have given ten cents for your
life."

Bucks regarded him with astonishment. "Why so?"

"He's the meanest man between here and Fort Bridger," asserted
Dancing. "He'd think no more of shooting you than I would of
scratching a match." Bucks stared at the comparison. "He is the worst
scoundrel in this country and partners with Seagrue and John Rebstock
in everything that's going on, and even they are afraid of him."

Dancing stopped for breath. "Talk about my making a fire out of
way-bills! When I saw you lay your hand on that man, I stopped
breathing--can't breathe just right yet," he muttered, pulling at his
shirt collar. "Do you know why you didn't get killed?"

"Why, no, Bill, not exactly," confessed Bucks in embarrassment.

"Because Levake was out of cartridges. I heard him tell Rebstock so
when they walked past me."

"Thank you for posting me. How should I know he was Seagrue's partner,
or who Rebstock is? Let's make a bargain. I will be more careful in
clearing out the office, and you be more careful about building fires.
There's wood in the baggage-room. I couldn't get out to get it for
fear the crowd would steal the tickets."

"Well, you are 'out' four dollars and sixty cents charges on the
cartridges," continued Dancing, "and you had better say nothing about
it. If you ever ask Levake for the money he will kill you."

Bucks looked rebellious. "It's only right for him to pay the charges.
I shall ask him for them the next time I see him. And what is more he
will have to pay, I don't care whose partner he is."

Dancing now regarded the operator with unconcealed impatience. "I
suppose there are more where you came from," he muttered. "They will
need a lot of them here, if they carry on like that. How old are you?"
he demanded of Bucks abruptly.

"Seventeen."

"How long have you been in this country?"

Bucks looked at the clock. "About five hours, Bill."

"Reckon time close, don't you?"

"Have to, Bill, in the railroad business."

Dancing reflected a moment. "Five hours," he repeated. "If you don't
get killed within the next five you may live to be a useful citizen of
Medicine Bend. Where are you from, and how did you happen to come away
out here on the plains?"

"I am from Pittsburgh. I had to quit school and go to work."

"Where did you go to school?"

"Well, I didn't go----"

"Quit before you went, did you?"

"I mean, I was preparing for Van Dyne College. One of my brothers
teaches there. I couldn't start there after I lost my father--he was
killed in the Wilderness Campaign, Bill. But when I can earn money
enough, I am going back to Van Dyne and take an engineering course."

"Got it all figured out, have you?"

"Then I heard they were building the Union Pacific, and I knew
something about telegraphing--Jim Foster and I had a line from the
house to the barn."

"Had a line from the house to the barn, eh?" chuckled Dancing.

"So I bought a railroad ticket to Des Moines from Pittsburgh and
staged it to Omaha, and General Park gave me a job right away and sent
me out on the first train to take this office, nights. I didn't even
know where Medicine Bend was."

"Don't believe you know yet. Now that's right, I don't believe you
know yet. You're a good boy, but you talk too much."

"How old are you, Bill?"

"I am twenty."

"Twenty!" echoed Bucks, as if that were not very much, either.

"Twenty!" repeated the lineman. "But," he added, drawing himself up in
his tremendous stature, with dignity, "I have been on the plains
driving wagons and building telegraph lines for seven years----"

"Seven years!" echoed Bucks, now genuinely admiring his companion.

"My father was a Forty-niner. I was a line foreman when I was
seventeen, for Edward Creighton, and we put the first telegraph line
through from the Missouri River to the Pacific," continued Dancing,
ready to back his words with blows if necessary.

"You _are_ an old-timer," cried Bucks enviously. "Any good rabbit-shooting
around here, Bill?"

"Rabbit-shooting?" echoed Dancing in scorn. "The only rabbits they
shoot around here, young fellow, are Pittsburgh rabbits, that
don't keep their ears hid proper. When we go hunting, we go
antelope-hunting, buffalo-hunting, grizzly-bear hunting, elk-hunting.
Now I don't say I don't like you and I don't say you won't do. What I
say is, you talk too much. I'll tell you what I've learned. I've
learned not to say too much at a time. And when I say it, I don't
say it very loud. And if you don't get killed, in advance, you will
learn the same thing in the same way I learned it. Where are your
blamed batteries?"

"Bill, you are all right."

"I am, am I?"

"First help me enter these way-bills and check up the express packages
so I can deliver them to this mob."

"My business isn't checking up express; but I like you, young fellow,
so, go ahead. Only you talk too much."

"Just a moment!"

At these words coming from the other end of the office, the lineman
and the operator looked around. The military-looking man and his
companion had entered the room unobserved and stood at the
counter listening to the colloquy between the Eastern boy and the
plainsman--for neither of the two were more than boys. Dancing
saluted the new-comers. "It's Colonel Stanley and Bob Scott," he
exclaimed.

Bucks walked forward. Stanley handed him a message. "You are the night
operator? Here is a despatch for General Park. Get it out for me right
away, will you?"

Dancing came forward to the railing. "How are you, Bill?" said
Stanley, greeting the lineman as Bucks read the long message. "I am
going up into the mountains next week, and I am just asking General
Park for a cavalry detail."

"Going to need me, Colonel?"

"Better hold yourself ready. Can you read that, young man?" he asked,
speaking to Bucks.

"Yes, sir."

"Lose no time in getting it off."

With the words he turned on his heel and leaving the office went
upstairs to the despatcher's rooms. During the interval that the
message was being sent, Dancing worked at the express matter. While
the two were busy, Bob Scott, moving so quietly that he disturbed no
one, laid carefully upon the smouldering paper in the stove such chips
as he could pick from the wood-box, nursing and developing a little
blaze until, without noise or fuss, he soon had a good fire going. In
all of the mountain country there was but one kind of men who built
fires in that way and these were Indians.

Such was Bob Scott, who, wet to the skin from his ride down the hills
with Stanley, now stood slowly drying himself and watching Dancing and
the new operator.

Scott was a half-blood Chippewa Indian, silent as a mountain night and
as patient as time. He served Colonel Stanley as guide and scout
wherever the railroad man rode upon his surveys or reconnoissances.
Dancing, emerging presently from the batteries, greeted Scott again,
this time boisterously. The Indian only smiled, but his face reflected
the warmth of his friendship for the big lineman. And at this juncture
Dancing, slapping him on the shoulder, turned to introduce him to
Bucks. The three stood and talked a moment together, though, perhaps,
without realizing what they were almost at once to go through
together. The outgoing Eastern passenger train now pulled up to the
platform and Bucks was kept busy for some time selling tickets.

His buyers were all sorts and conditions of men. And one forlorn-looking
woman, with a babe in her arms and a little girl clinging to her
skirt, asked the price of a ticket to Omaha. When told, she turned away
to count her money. Among the men were traders and frontiersmen
going to Missouri River markets with buffalo robes; trappers from the
Big Horn country with furs; Mormon elders on their way from Utah to
their Eastern settlements; soldiers on furlough and men from the
railroad-construction camps on the front; adventurers, disgusted with
the hardships of frontier life, and gamblers and desperadoes,
restless and always moving.

Bucks needed his wits to watch the money that was pushed under his
little wicket and to make change without mistake. There was elbowing
and contention and bad language, but the troublesome crowd was
finally disposed of, and when the last of the line had left the ticket
window the waiting-room was pretty well cleared. There remained only a
black-bearded man half-asleep in a chair by the stove, and in one
corner on a bench the woman, who was trying to quiet the child she
held in her lap.




CHAPTER II


As Bucks looked through his embrasure to see if all had been served,
his eye fell on the group in the corner and he heard the woman
suppressing the sobbing of her little girl. He walked out into the
waiting-room to ask what the trouble was. He learned afterward that
she was the wife of a gambler, but she told him only that she had
followed her husband to Medicine Bend and was now trying to get back
with her two children to her parents in Iowa. When she had ascertained
the price of the railroad ticket she found that she lacked five
dollars of the sum needed to make up the fare. Bucks had just a little
money of his own, but he had counted on using that for his meals.
While he was debating what to do, the elder child tugging still at the
mother's dress asked for something to eat, and while the mother tried
to quiet it Bucks felt he could manage somehow without the price of
the ticket better than this woman could.

"Give me what money you have," he said. "I will get you a ticket."

"But isn't the train gone?"

"No."

The black-bearded man dozing near the stove had his ears open although
his eyes were closed. He had heard fragments of the talk and saw the
boy dig into his own pocket, as he would have expressed it, to start
the woman home. After Bucks had given her the ticket and she was
trying to thank him and to quiet again the tired child, the drowsy man
rose, picked up the woman's hand-bag and told her gruffly he would put
her on the train. As he started with her out into the drizzling rain,
he carried her little girl, and, stopping down the platform at a
sheltered lunch-counter, he bought a bag of doughnuts big enough to
sink a ship. He offered no money to the man at the counter, but his
credit seemed unquestioned. In the train the seats appeared all to be
taken, but the drowsy man again showed his authority by rolling a
tipsy fellow out of a seat and piling him up in a corner near the
stove--which fortunately had no fire in it.

During all this time he had not said a word. But at the last, having
placed the woman and the children in two seats and made them
comfortable, he asked the mother one question--her husband's name. She
told him, and, without any comment or good-bys, he left the car and
started through the rain uptown.

After the train pulled out, the wind shifted and the rain changed
into a snow which, driven from the mountains, thickened on the wet
window in front of the operator's table. A message came for the
night yardmaster, and the operator, seeing the head-light of the
switch-engine which was working close by, put on his cap and stepped
out to deliver the message. As he opened the waiting-room door, a man
confronted him--the bearded man who had taken the woman and children
to the train. Bucks saw under the visor of a cloth cap, a straight
white nose, a dark eye piercingly keen, and a rather long, glossy,
black beard. It was the passenger conductor, David Hawk. Without
speaking, Hawk held out his hand with a five-dollar bank note in it.

"What is this?" asked Bucks.

"The money you gave the woman."

Bucks, taking the bill, regarded his visitor with surprise. "Where did
you get this?"

"What's that to you?"

"But----"

"Don't ask questions," returned Hawk brusquely. "You've got your
money, haven't you?"

"Yes, but----"

"That's enough." And with Bucks staring at him, Hawk, without a word
or a smile, walked out of the station.

But Bill Dancing had seen the incident and was ready to answer Bucks's
question as he turned with the money in his hand. "That is Dave Hawk,"
explained Dancing. "Dave hates a sneak. The way he got the money from
the woman's husband was probably by telling him if he didn't pay for
his wife's ticket and add enough to feed her and her babies to the
river he would blow his head off. Dave doesn't explain things
especially."

Bucks put the money in his pocket and started on with his message. The
yards covered the wide flat along the river. Medicine Bend was then
the western operating point for the railroad and the distributing
point for all material used in the advancing construction through the
mountains.

Not until he left the shelter of the station building did he realize
the force of the storm that was now sweeping across the flat. The wind
had swung into the northwest and blew almost a gale and the snow stung
his face as he started across the dark yard. There were practically no
lights at all beyond the platform except those in the roundhouse, too
far away to be seen, but the operator saw the moving head-light of the
switch-engine and hastened across the slippery tracks toward it. The
crew were making up a material train to send west and the engine was
snorting and puffing among long strings of flat cars loaded with
rails, ties, stringers, and bridge timbers.

As Bucks neared the working engine it receded from him, and following
it up he soon found his feet slipping in the wet mud and the wind at
times taking his breath. Conscious of the folly of running farther, he
halted for a moment and turning his back to the storm resolved to wait
till the engine returned. He chose a spot under the lee of a box-car,
and was soon rewarded by hearing a new movement from the working
engine. By the increasing noise of the open cylinder cocks he
concluded it was backing toward him. He stepped across the nearest
track to reach a switch-stand, a car-length away, whence he thought he
could signal the engine with his lantern. He had nearly reached the
switch when his foot slipped from a rail into a frog that held him
fast. Holding his lantern down, he saw how he was caught and tried to
free his heel. It seemed as if it might easily be done, but the more
he worked the faster caught he found himself. For a moment he still
made sure he could loosen his foot. Even when he realized that this
was not easy, he felt no alarm until he heard the switch-engine
whistle. Through the driving snow he could see that it was coming
toward him, pushing ahead of it a lead of flat cars.

Bucks was no stranger to railroad yards even then, and the realization
of his peril flashed across his mind. He renewed his efforts to loosen
his imprisoned heel. They were useless. He stood caught in the iron
vice. A sweat of fear moistened his forehead. He hoped for an instant
that the moving cars were not coming on his track; but almost at once
he saw that they were being pushed toward the very switch he was
trying to reach. Even where he stood, struggling, he was not six feet
away from the switch-stand and safety. It seemed as if he could almost
reach it, as he writhed and twisted in his agony of apprehension.

He swung his lantern frantically, hoping to catch the eye of one of
the switching crew. But the only answer was the heavy pounding of the
loaded cars over the rail joints as they were pushed down upon the
helpless operator. Worst of all, while he was swinging his lantern
high in the air, the wind sucked the flame up into the globe and it
went out and left him helpless in the dark. Like the hare caught in
the steel teeth of a trap, the boy stood in the storm facing impending
death.

The bitterest feelings overwhelmed him. After coming hundreds of miles
and plunging into his work with the most complacent self-confidence,
he stood before the close of the first day about to be snuffed out of
existence as if he were no more than the flame of his useless lantern.
A cruel sense of pain oppressed his thoughts. Each second of
recollection seemed to cover the ground of years. The dull, heavy
jolting of the slow-coming cars shook the ground. He twisted and
writhed this way and that and cried out, knowing there were none to
hear him: the wind swept away his appeal upon its heedless wings; the
nearest car was almost upon him. Then a strange feeling of calm came
over him. He felt that death was knocking at his heart. Hope had gone,
and his lips were only moving in prayer, when a light flashed out of
the darkness at his very side and he felt himself seized as if by a
giant and wrenched away from where he stood and through the air.

He heard a quick exclamation, saw a lighted lantern fall to the
ground, felt a stinging pain in his right foot, and knew no more.

When he recovered consciousness, three lanterns shone in his eyes. He
was lying in the mud near the switch with the engine crew standing
over him. One of the men knelt at his side and he saw the thin, strong
features of a face he had seen among the railroad men, but one that he
knew then he was never to forget--the face of the yardmaster,
Callahan. Callahan knelt in the storm with a good-natured expression.
The men about the yardmaster were less kindly.

"Who are you, tar heels?" demanded the engineman angrily.

Resentment, which would have been quick in the operator a little
earlier, had died in the few moments in which he had faced death. He
answered only in the quietest way:

"I am the night operator."

"The deuce you are!" exclaimed the man bending over him.

"Who are you?" demanded the operator, in turn.

"I am Callahan, the night yardmaster."

"I have an order for you to send a car of spikes on No. 7, Callahan. I
was trying to find you when I got caught in the frog." The pain in his
foot overcame Bucks as he spoke. Another dread was in his mind and he
framed a question to which he dreaded to hear the answer. "Is my foot
gone?" he faltered.

The yardmaster hesitated a moment and turned to an older man at his
side wearing a heavy cap. "How about it, doctor?" he asked.

Doctor Arnold, the railway surgeon, a kindly but stern man, answered
briefly, "We won't take it off this time. But if he is that careless
again we will take his head off."

"How old are you, boy?" demanded Callahan.

"Seventeen."

"Well, your foot isn't hurt," he continued gruffly. "But it's only
God's mercy that I got here in time to pull you out of the frog."

The operator was already up. "I hope I shan't forget it," he said,
putting out his hand. "Will you remember the spikes?"

"I will," responded Callahan grimly. "And I guess----"

"Say it," said the operator gamely, as the yardmaster hesitated.

"I guess you will."




CHAPTER III


Bucks, after his eventful first night on duty, slept so heavily that
on the following afternoon he had only time to eat his supper, walk
haltingly up the main street of Medicine Bend and back to the square,
when it was time to relieve the day man at the station.

But the few minutes in the narrow business street filled him with
interest and at times with astonishment. Medicine Bend, still very
young, was a mushroom railroad town of frame store buildings hastily
thrown together, and houses, shanties, and tents. It was already
the largest and most important town between the mountains and the
Missouri River. The Union Pacific Railroad, now a double-tracked,
transcontinental highway, laid with ninety and one hundred pound
steel rails, and ballasted with disintegrated granite, a model of
railroad construction, equipment, and maintenance, was, after the
close of the Civil War, being pushed with light iron rails and heavy
gradients across what was then known to geographers as the Great
American Desert, and the project of a transcontinental railroad was
meant at that time to unite the chief port of the Pacific coast,
San Francisco, with the leading cities of the Atlantic seaboard.

A railroad in building across a country considers first the two
uttermost cities (its principal terminals), or those two portions of
the country which it seeks to connect for the interchange of traffic.

The Union Pacific and its companion road, the Central Pacific,
afforded, too, the first and last instance of the United States
Government's becoming responsible for the building of a railroad.
Although the project of aiding a railroad to be built somewhere
between and connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean ports had been
discussed by Congress for thirty years before the fall of Fort Sumter,
the extraordinary feeling caused by the Civil War alone made possible
so unusual an undertaking. President Lincoln himself had given the
subject careful thought, and when, after much controversy and
discouraging political intrigue, the Union and Central Pacific
Railroad bills were ready to pass Congress, Abraham Lincoln was
appealed to to decide a long-standing controversy concerning the
gauge, or width of track, for the new lines.

After painstaking consideration, he decided on a gauge of five feet,
but the promoters of the line then persuaded Congress to reduce the
figures to four feet eight and one-half inches, and that gauge is now
the standard gauge for all American railroads. It would have been
better if the railroad builders had followed Lincoln's suggestion,
since the traffic of American railroads has outgrown the possibilities
of their gauges. And within a few years one of the greatest of
present-day railroad builders has declared with emphasis that a
six-foot gauge must one day come to provide our railroads with the
necessary facilities for handling the enormous and constantly
expanding volume of American railroad traffic.

The young operator, who, in spite of his efforts to conceal his hurt,
now limped a little as he walked up the street of the new railroad
town might well look with curiosity and amazement on what he saw. The
street he walked in was no more than a long assemblage of saloons,
restaurants, boarding-houses, gambling-houses, dance-halls and shops.
Nearer the station and fronting on the open square, there were
barber-shops and so-called hotels. Up and down the side streets he saw
livery-stables and roughly built warehouses for contractors' supplies,
army supplies, and stage-line depots.

The main street was alive with strange-looking frontiersmen, trappers,
hunters, scouts, soldiers, settlers, railroad laborers, outlaws,
prospectors, and miners. Every face that Bucks looked into presented a
study. They were sometimes faces bronzed with the clear, dry sunshine
of the plains and mountains, rugged with adventure and keen with
dangers met and passed, but others were furrowed with dissipation and
seamed with vice, or merely vacant with the curiosity of the
wanderer.

Nearly every man carried a fire-arm of some sort. Indians were a
continual menace upon the frontier to the north and west and on the
front where the road was being built; and in the train-service and
construction work railroad men usually went armed. Moreover, when the
frontiersmen were not arming against the Indians they were arming
against one another; it being difficult at times to tell whether the
white men or the savages were the more dangerous to the peaceful
pursuit of happiness. As Bucks, returning down Front Street, neared
the square that opened before the station a group of army officers
were walking across it. They were the first regular officers he had
ever seen and he regarded them with interest. At the station the chief
despatcher, Baxter, met him at the door. "Bucks, I've been waiting for
you. Can you ride a horse?"

Bucks smiled.

"Colonel Stanley," continued Baxter, "is going to the front to-night.
He wants to take an operator with him. Giddings isn't well enough to
go, but he can take your key to-night; you can go with the colonel
instead. He will take Dancing and a detail of cavalrymen with Leon
Sublette and Bob Scott for guides."

The suddenness of the call was not unpleasant. It was such continual
excitement and new adventure that Bucks liked and he said he was
ready. The despatcher told him to hunt up Bill Dancing, who would give
him the details.

Within an hour the cavalry horses were being loaded into a box-car up
at the stock chute, and while Bucks and big Bill Dancing watched them
an engine and the chief engineer's car were backed down the yard to
make up the special train. At the same moment, the two saw Stanley
walking across the yard with two engineers who were going to the front
with him.

Bucks looked with admiration at the soldier-constructionist. He was
slight in figure, wore the precise-looking military cap, and was
dressed with extreme care. He stepped with a light briskness that
implied an abundance of native energy, and his manner as he greeted
the two railroad men was intimate and gracious, putting them at once
at their ease. His smooth-shaven face, bronzed with service, and his
brown eyes, were alive every moment. Whatever the enterprise, Stanley
could call forth the loyalty and the best in those under him, and in
Dancing and Scott he had two men that worked well together and had in
their chief the unquestioning faith that insures devotion.

To these two more experienced men was now to be added a third, Bucks.
The train started almost at once, and Oliver, the colonel's cook,
prepared supper in his box-like kitchen and chopped his potatoes, for
frying, in muffled ragtime, as the puffing engine slowly drew the
train up the long gorge into the mountains. Bucks sat down at table
with the engineers and Stanley asked him many questions. He wanted to
know where Bucks had gone to school, why he had quitted at fifteen,
and what had brought him away out on the Desert to begin railroading.

When it appeared that Stanley as well as he himself was from
Pittsburgh, and even that Bucks had been named after the distinguished
officer--John Stanley Bucks--Bucks was happier than at any time since
he had left home.

The talk went on till very late. Stanley and General Park, who also
had been a regular-army man, told stories of the Civil War, just then
ended, and the giant lineman, Dancing, entertained the company with
stories of adventure incurred in the mountains and on the plains in
building the first transcontinental telegraph line.

Bucks sat for hours in silence while the three men talked; but he had
good ears and was a close listener. All the adventure books of his
boyhood reading had been bound up with this very country and with
these rugged mountains through which they were riding. The tales of
the people all about him during his youth had been of the far and
mysterious West--of the overland trail and the gold seekers, of Pike's
Peak and California, of buffaloes and trappers and Indians, and of the
Mormons and the Great Salt Lake. These had been his day-dreams, and at
last he was breathing the very air of them and listening to men who
had actually lived them.

The sleeping-bunks in the car could hardly be called berths, but they
served to lessen the fatigues of the night, and when Bucks woke in the
morning he saw from his window a vast stretch of rough, desert country
bordered by distant mountain peaks, some black, some brown, some
snow-capped in the morning sun. The train stopped in a construction
camp, near the end of the rails, and after a hasty breakfast Bucks
walked with the engineers up the track to the head-quarters of the
rail-laying gang.

The air was frosty. During the night snow had fallen, and as Bucks
followed his party the sun burst over the plain that they had crossed
in the night and lighted the busy camp with a flood of gold. It was a
camp such as few American boys had ever seen and of a type that no boy
will ever see again. Everywhere along the cuts and hillsides and in
sheltered spots the men had made temporary quarters by burrowing into
the clay or soft rock and making dugouts and canvas-roofed huts, with
earthen sides for walls.

But not all were so enterprising as this. Some laborers were camping
in old hogsheads. Even packing-boxes served others for shelter, but
were all so disposed within the cuts and among the ridges of the
railroad grade as to be safe from Indian forays. And along the
completed railroad, all the way from the Missouri River, material and
supply trains were moving to supply this noisy, helter-skelter camp,
which seemed to Bucks all confusion, yet was in reality all energy.

General Jack Casement, in charge, came forward to greet Stanley.

"And they tell me, general," said Stanley, "you are laying a mile a
day."

"If you would give us the ties, colonel," returned Casement,
short-bearded and energetic, "we should be laying two miles a day."

"I have turned the Missouri River country upside down for timber,"
returned Stanley. "The trouble is to get the material forward over a
single track so many hundred miles. However, we shall be getting ties
down the Spider Water within two weeks. I am on my way up there now to
see what the contractors are doing."

It was the first intimation Bucks had had as to the object of the
trip. Casement had a number of subjects to lay before his superior
while within consulting distance, and Bob Scott, an hour later,
announced that Stanley would not move on for two days. This left his
attendants free, and when Scott, low-voiced and good-natured, asked
Bucks if he wanted to go out on the Sweet Grass Plains with him after
an antelope, Bucks accepted eagerly. The two saddled horses and Bucks,
with a rifle borrowed from Sublette, followed Scott across a low-lying
range of hills broken by huge stone crags and studded with wind-blown
and stunted cedars, out upon the far-reaching expanse of an open
plain. The scene was inspiring, but impressions crowded so fast one
upon another that the boy from the Alleghanies could realize only that
he was filled with sensations of delight as his wiry buckskin
clattered furiously along the faint trail that carried him and his
guide to the north and west. The sun was high when Scott reined up
and, dismounting, tethered his horse in a glade hidden by a grove of
aspens and bade Bucks do the same.

"Getting hungry?" asked Scott, smiling at his companion. An answer
was written pretty plainly on Bucks's face.

"Didn't bring anything to eat, did you?" suggested Scott.

Bucks looked blank. "I never thought of it," he exclaimed. "Did you
bring anything?"

"Nothing but this," answered Scott, holding up a small buckskin sack
fitted with drawing strings.

"What is that, Bob?"

"It is what I carry wherever I ride. I carry nothing else. And it is
only a little bag of salt."

"A bag of salt!" cried Bucks. "Do you eat salt?"

"Wait and see," answered the scout. "Pull your belt up a notch. We've
got a little walking to do."

Scott, though of Chippewa blood, had been captured when a boy by the
Sioux and, adopted into the tribe, had lived with them for years. He
knew the mountains better than any man that served Stanley, and the
latter trusted him implicitly--nor was the confidence ever betrayed.

Walking rapidly over a low-lying divide beyond which lay a broad
valley marking the course of a shallow creek, Scott paused behind a
clump of cedars to scan the country. He expected to find antelope
along the creek, but could see none in any direction. Half a mile more
of scouting explained the absence of game, and Scott pointed out to
Bucks the trail of an Indian hunting party that had passed up the
valley in the morning. They were Cheyennes, Scott told his companion,
three warriors and two squaws--reading the information from signs that
were as plain to him as print--though Bucks understood nothing of it.
In the circumstances there was nothing for it but a fresh venture,
and, remounting, the Indian led the boy ten miles farther north to
where the plains stretched in a succession of magnificent plateaus,
toward the Sleepy Cat Mountains.

"We are in real Sioux country now," observed Scott, as he again
dismounted. "And we are as likely now to uncover a war party as a herd
of antelope."

"What should you do, Bob, if we met Sioux?"

"Run," smiled Bob, with Indian terseness. Yet somehow the boy felt
that Bob, in spite of what he said, would not run, and he realized for
a moment the apprehension of one but newly arrived on the frontier,
and still subject to tremors for his scalp. The scout took his stand
near a thicket of quaking asp and almost at once sighted a band of
antelope. Taking Bucks, he worked around the wind toward the band, and
directed him how and when to shoot if he got a chance. Bucks, highly
wrought up after the long crawl to get within range, did get a chance,
and with his heart beating like a trip-hammer, covered a buck and
fired. The scout shot immediately afterward, and the herd broke
swiftly for the timber along the creek. But Bucks, as well as his
experienced companion, had brought down an antelope.

Scott, as he joined his companion, looked at him with curiosity.
"Where did you learn to shoot?"

"I couldn't do it again, Bob," exclaimed Bucks frankly. "The only
shooting I've ever done is rabbit-shooting, or squirrel-shooting. I
was lucky for once, that's all."

"I hope your luck stays with us. If it does we may get back with all
of our hair," returned Scott. "The thing to do now is to lose no time
in leaving here. We are farther from camp than we ought to be. When I
get to running antelope I am apt to go as far as they do."

The two hunters got the carcasses across their horses, and acting on
Scott's admonition started to cover a good bit of the distance toward
camp before stopping.

The sun was already low in the west and Bucks realized that they had
been out all day. The hunters rode due southeast, to put every mile
possible between them and the Indian country before dark. They were
riding along in this manner at dusk, when Scott, leading, pointed to a
canyon that offered a hiding-place for the night, and directed his
horse into it. Scarcely had the two passed within the canyon walls
when Scott halted and, with a quick, low command to the boy, sprang
from his horse. Bucks lost no time in following suit: they had ridden
almost into an Indian camp, and when Bucks's feet touched the ground
Scott was covering with his rifle a Sioux brave who with two squaws
rose out of the darkness before him. Quick words passed between Scott
and the Indian in the Sioux tongue. Bucks's hair rose on end until the
confab quieted, and the scout's rifle came down. In an instant it was
all over, but in that instant the Easterner had lived years.

"It is all right," said Bob, turning to reassure his charge. "He is a
young chief--Iron Hand. I know his father. These three are alone.
Eight of them went out after buffalo five days ago. The second day
they fell in with Turkey Leg and a Cheyenne war party. Two of Iron
Hand's warriors were killed. The rest got separated and these three
lost their horses. Iron Hand," Scott nodded toward the silent Indian,
"was hit in the arm, and with his squaw and her sister has been trying
to get north, hiding by day and travelling by night. He can't shoot
his rifle; he thinks his arm is broken; and the squaws haven't been
able to kill anything. They are hungry, I guess."

"And did they tell you all this in those few words?" demanded Bucks
incredulously.

"It doesn't take many words to tell stories in this country. If a man
talked much he would be dead and buried before he got through."

"Bob, if they are hungry, give them some antelope."

Scott, who had meant to suggest the same thing, was pleased that the
offer should come from his companion, and so told the wounded Indian.
The latter drew himself up with dignity and spoke a few rapid words.
"He says he is glad," translated Bob, "that your heart is big. And
that it will be safer to go farther into the canyon. The Cheyennes are
hunting for them all around here, and if you are not afraid to camp
with the Sioux, we will stay with them here to-night. While the
Cheyennes are hunting them, they might find us. It will be about the
safest thing we can do."

"You know best," said his companion. "Can you trust this man?"

"Trust him?" echoed Bob mildly. "I wish I could trust the word of a
white man half as far as I can that of a Sioux. He understands
everything you say."

"Can he talk English?" asked Bucks in surprise.

"Better than I can."

It was with queer sensations that Bucks found himself in a hostile
country and with the deadliest enemies of the white man going into
camp for the night. Within a minute or two after Scott and the wounded
brave had picked a defended camp near a rivulet of water, the two
squaws had a fire going, and they set to work at once dressing an
antelope.

Savory morsels were cut from choice spots on the carcasses and these
were broiled by impaling them on long sticks over the fire. Bucks,
learning very fast with his eyes, saw how surprisingly small an affair
an Indian camp-fire is, and how much could be done with a few buffalo
chips, if one understood how to keep them renewed. Both safety and
convenience were served by the tiny blaze, and meat never tasted as
good to Bucks as it did on that clear, frosty night, broiled by the
two women and garnished from Bob Scott's provident salt bag.

After satisfying his ravenous hunger, which the Indians considered not
even a fair appetite, Bucks asked to look at the warrior's injured
arm, explaining that his father had been an army surgeon in the great
white man's war, as Bob Scott designated the Civil War in translating
for the Sioux. The arm, which was badly swollen, he found had indeed
been broken by a bullet near the wrist, but only one bone was
fractured, and, finding no trace of the bullet, the confident young
surgeon offered to set the fracture.

Iron Hand, nothing loath, accepted the offer, and after cleansing the
wound as well as it could be cleansed in running water hard by, Bucks
took the rough splints handily supplied by Scott's hunting-knife, and
pulling the bone into place with the scout's aid--though the brave
winced a little at the crude surgery--he soon had the forearm set and
was rewarded with a single guttural, "Wa-sha-ta-la!" from the stalwart
warrior, which, Bob explained, meant, "Heap good."

Sitting afterward by the camp-fire, Scott and Iron Hand, since the
young chief would not talk English, conversed in the Sioux tongue,
the scout translating freely for his younger companion, while the
squaws dressed the second antelope and cut it up for convenience in
carrying on the horses to Casement's camp. Scott reserved only the
hind-quarters of each animal for himself and Bucks, giving the rest to
their hosts.

When it was late, Scott showed the boy how to pillow his head on his
saddle and then stretched himself out to sleep. Bucks lay a long time
looking up at the stars. When he fell asleep, he woke again very soon.
His companion was sleeping peacefully beside him, and he saw Iron Hand
sitting by the fire. Bucks easily imagined his arm would keep him
awake. The squaws were still broiling pieces of antelope over the
little blaze, which was neither bigger nor smaller than before, and
together with the chief they were still eating. Bucks slumbered and
woke again and again during the night, but always to see the same
thing--the three Indians sitting about the fire, broiling and eating
the welcome and wholly unexpected venison.




CHAPTER IV


Before daybreak the scout roused his companion, and, after breakfast
with the three Sioux, who, according to Bob, were still eating supper,
the two hunters left their chance companions in the canyon, rode
rapidly south, and, with their antelope haunches as trophies, reached
Casement's camp about ten o'clock.

Stanley, who was conferring with Casement, came out of the tent
greatly amazed at his scout's venturing so far on a hunt as to expose
himself and his companion to danger.

"We were safe every minute, colonel," declared Scott.

"Safe?" echoed Stanley incredulously. "No man is safe, Bob, a mile
from the track-layers. The Sioux killed and scalped one of our
engineers not ten miles from here, when we were running this very line
last winter."

"This lad," nodded Scott, "is as good a shot as I am. He brought down
the first antelope. We get along with the Sioux all right, too, don't
we, Bucks?" he demanded, appealing to his fellow-hunter. "We ate
supper with them last night," he added to mystify his listeners, "and
camped with Iron Hand."

Even General Casement stared at this and waited to hear Scott tell
Stanley the story of their night's adventure. "However, colonel,"
concluded Scott, "there is a war party of Cheyennes near here. It is a
good time to be careful."

"All right, Bob," retorted Stanley, looking at his scout keenly,
though no one could be angry at Scott long. "You set the example."

The words were hardly out of his mouth when an operator came running
down the track from the telegraph tent with a message for General
Casement. It contained word from the operator at Peace River that
section men reported a war party of Indians, crossing the railroad
near Feather Creek, had attacked an emigrant party camped there.

In an instant the whole construction camp had the news and the work
was thrown into confusion. Feather Creek was twenty miles away. Orders
flew fast. A special train was made up, and Stanley taking command,
with Casement to aid, made ready instantly to leave for the scene of
the disaster.

The men running from the grade fell into line like veteran soldiers.
Indeed, most of them had seen service in the war just closed and the
smell of powder was no novelty. Bob Scott turned the venison over to
Oliver and loaded his horse in the car with those of the cavalrymen.
Under Stanley's orders he himself rode as pilot in the cab with the
engine crew. Bucks also reported to Stanley, and within twenty minutes
the relief train carrying two hundred men was plunging down the long
hill toward Feather Creek. Heads were craned out of the car windows,
and in rounding every curve Bucks, with the scout Leon Sublette,
sitting greatly wrought up behind Stanley and Casement, expected
momentarily to see Cheyenne war bonnets spring up out of the stunted
cedars that lined the hills along the right of way.

But not a sign could be seen of any living thing. The train reached
Feather Creek, and slowly crossed the bridge before Scott signalled
the engineman to stop. His eye had detected the scene of the fight,
and the ground beyond--a low cut--was favorable for getting the men
safely out of the cars.

As the engine slowed, a little scene of desolation beside the right of
way met Bucks's eye, and he caught sight of the ghastly battle-field.
A frightened section crew emerged from the wild-plum thickets along
the creek bottom, as the cavalrymen, followed by Casement's armed men,
poured out of the three cars. Stanley with his scouts led the way to
the emigrant camp, where the fight had taken place. The wagons had
been burned, the horses run off, and the three unfortunate men
butchered.

Bucks experienced a shock when Scott came upon the three dead men
whose mutilated bodies had been dragged from the scene by the section
men and who lay with covered faces side by side under a little
plum-tree, fragrant with blossoms and alive with the hum of bees. The
sunshine and the beauty of the spot contrasted strangely with the
revolting spectacle upon the grass.

Stanley gave the orders by which the bodies were conveyed to the train
and with the scouts and cavalrymen reconnoitering the surrounding
country, Casement's men lay on their arms in the shade of the cut.
Dancing rigged a pony instrument to the telegraph wires, which had not
been disturbed, and Bucks transmitted messages to Fort Kearney
advising the commanding officer of the murders and adding afterward
the report of Scott and Sublette as to the direction the marauders had
taken in flight.

"Who were the beasts, Bob, that could treat men like that?" demanded
Bucks in an angry undertone, when he had clicked the messages over the
wires.

"Bad Indians," answered Scott sententiously. "You have that kind of
white men, don't you? These fellows are probably Turkey Leg's thieving
Cheyennes. We shall hear more of them."

In the meantime the scouts and the cavalry detail rode out again
trying to unmask the Cheyennes, but without success. It was a week
before they were even heard of, and after an all-day attempt to do
something, the train backed up to camp and work was resumed as if
nothing had happened.

After waiting a few days, Stanley, always restive under idleness,
determined to push on across the Sweet Grass country with horses, to
learn how the timber cutters on the river were faring with their
slender military guard. The party, consisting of the detail of ten men
and the two scouts and Bucks, started one morning at sunrise and made
their way without molestation into the little-known mountain range
called then, as far south as Colorado, the Black Hills.

Stanley explained to Bucks during the morning how the chief
engineering difficulty of the whole transcontinental line confronted
the engineers right where they were now riding. Here the mountains
were thrown abruptly above the plain to a great height and the
locating engineers were still at their wits' ends to know how to
climb the tremendous ascent with practicable grades. Stanley became
so interested in studying the country during the day, as the
difficulties of the problem presented themselves afresh to him, that
the party made slow progress. Camp was pitched early in the afternoon
under a ridge that offered some natural features for defence. Here the
cavalrymen were left, and Stanley, taking Scott, started out after
some venison for supper. Bucks stood by, looking eager as the two made
ready for the hunt.

"Come along if you like," said Stanley at length. "You won't be happy,
Bucks, till you get lost somewhere in this country."

Sublette lent Bucks a rifle, and the three men set out together,
riding rapidly into the rough hills to the northwest. Scott covered
the ground fast, but he searched in vain for sign of antelope.
"Indians have been all over this divide," he announced after much hard
riding and a failure to find any game. "It doesn't look like venison
for supper to-night, colonel. Stop!" he added suddenly.

His companions, surprised by the tone of the last word, halted.
Leaning over his pony's neck the scout was reading the rocky soil. He
dismounted, and walking on, leading his horse, he inspected, very
carefully, the ground toward a dry creek bed opening to the east.

He was gone perhaps five minutes. "Colonel," he said, smiling
reassuringly, when he returned, "this is no place for us."

"Indians," said Stanley tersely.

"Cheyennes. Back to camp."

"Down the creek?" suggested Stanley.

"The bottom is alive with Indians."

"Up then, Bob?"

"Their camp is just above the bend. They have spotted our trail, too,
somehow. It may be they are riding easy to close in on us," smiled
Scott, while Bucks's hair began to pull. "Our way out is over this
divide." He indicated the rough country east of the creek as he
spoke.

"Divide!" exclaimed Stanley, looking up at the practically sheer walls
of rock that hedged the course of the creek. "We can't climb those
hills, if we never get out."

"They're not quite so bad as they look. Anyway, colonel, we've got
to."

"They can pick us off our horses like monkeys all the way up!"

"It's a chance for our scalps, colonel. And it will be as hard riding
for them as it is for us."

Stanley looked at Bucks with perplexity. "This boy!"

"I can make it, Colonel Stanley," exclaimed Bucks, who felt he must
say something.

Stanley still hesitated.

"We've no time to lose," smiled Scott significantly.

"Then go ahead, Bob."

They had half a mile of comparatively level ground to cross before
they began their climb, and this strip they rode very hard. When they
reached the hills, Scott headed for a forbidding-looking canyon and
urged his horse without ceasing through the rocky wash that strewed
its floor. Stanley, with an excellent mount, could have kept well up,
but he had put Bucks ahead of him in the safe place of the little
procession, and the boy had difficulty in keeping within call of
their active leader. The minute they were out of sight of the creek
bottoms, Scott, choosing an apparently unscalable ascent, urged his
horse up one of the canyon walls and the three were soon climbing in
order.

Happily, Bucks's scrub horse gave a better account of himself in
climbing than he had done in covering better ground. As their horses
stumbled hurriedly along the narrow ledges, they made noise enough to
wake the Indian dead and the loose rock tumbled with sinister echoes
down the canyon wall. But progress was made, and the white men felt
only anxious lest pursuit should catch them exposed on the uncovered
height up which they were fast clambering.

Secure in their escape, the three were nearing the coveted top when a
yell echoed through the canyon from below. There was no mistaking such
a yell. Bucks, who had never heard anything so ferocious, had no need
to be told what it was--it, so to say, introduced itself. And it was
answered by another yell, more formidable still, and again by a
chorus of yells. Then it seemed to Bucks's unaccustomed ears as if a
thousand lusty throats were opened, and scared rigid he looked behind
him and saw the canyon below alive with warriors.

They were riding helter-skelter to reach a range where they could pick
the fugitives off the crest of the canyon side. Within a minute,
almost, their rifles were cracking. Scott had already reached a point
of concealment, and above the heads of Bucks and Stanley fired his
rifle in answer. An Indian brave, riding furiously to a rock that
would have commanded Stanley and Bucks as they urged their horses on,
started in his saddle as Scott fired and clutched his side instantly
with his rifle hand. His pony bolted as the half-hitch of the rawhide
thong on its lower jaw was loosened and the rider, toppling, fell
heavily backward to the ground. The riderless horse dashed on. The
yelling Indians had had their blunt warning and now scurried for
cover. The interval, short as it was, gave Bucks and Stanley a
chance.

Spurring relentlessly and crouching low on their horses' necks, they
made a dash across the exposed wall of rock near the top, that lay
between them and safety. A renewed yell echoed the rage and chagrin of
their pursuers, and a quick fire of scattering shots followed their
rapid flight, but the Indians were confused, and Bucks, followed by
his soldier champion, flung himself from his saddle in the clump of
cedars behind which Scott, safely hidden, was reloading his rifle.
Choosing his opportunity carefully, Stanley fired at once at an
exposed brave and succeeded in disabling him. Bucks was forbidden to
shoot and told to hold his rifle, if it were needed, in readiness for
his companions. With the bullets cutting the twigs above their heads,
Stanley and Scott held a council of war. Scott insisted on remaining
behind to check their pursuers where they were, while the two with him
rode on to safety.

"I can hold this bunch, colonel," declared Scott briefly. "There may
not be a second chance as good. Get on with the boy before another
party cuts you off. They can cross below us and save two or three
miles. Get away."

"But how will you get away?" demanded Bucks.

Stanley laughed. "Never mind Bob. He could crawl through a Cheyenne
village with a camp-fire on his back. It's what to do with you, Bucks,
that bothers us."

"Just you get on, colonel," urged Bob. "I'll manage all right. Leave
your horse," he added, turning to Bucks, "and you take mine."

Bucks protested and refused to leave Scott with an inferior mount, but
his protests were of no avail. He was curtly directed by Stanley to do
as he was told, and unwillingly he turned his horse over to Scott and
took the scout's better steed. Scott added hurried and explicit
directions to Stanley as to the course to follow back to camp, and
without loss of time Stanley and Bucks crouching behind friendly rocks
led their horses up the inner canyon wall and, remounting at the top,
galloped hurriedly down a long ridge.

At intervals, shots from the Indians reached their ears, and
long-drawn yells, followed by the sharper crack of Scott's rifle,
echoed from the west as the scout held the wall against the enemy.
Bucks did not understand the real danger that the scout feared for
his party. It was that other parties of the marauding Cheyennes might,
by following the creek, gain the divide in time to cut off the
railroad men from their line of escape. The sounds of the stubborn
contest behind them died away as their straining horses gradually put
miles between them and the enemy. The fugitives had reached the summit
of the hills and with a feeling of safety were easing their pace when
Bucks discerned, almost directly ahead of them, dark objects moving
slowly along the foot of a wooded hill. The two men halted.




CHAPTER V


"Indians," announced Stanley after a brief moment of inspection.

"We are cut off," he added, looking alertly over the landscape about
them. "This way, Bucks. Ride as low as you can." Without further words
he made an abrupt turn to the right, striking south to get behind a
friendly butte that rose half a mile away.

"The question now is," said Stanley, as they held their horses up a
little after getting somewhat farther out of sight, "whether they have
likewise seen us."

The harried pair were not long in doubt. They had hardly changed their
course when there was immediate activity on the hill-side. The
railroad men spurred on; the distant horsemen, now on their flank,
dashed out upon the broad slope that lay between the two parties and
rode straight and hard after the fleeing men. Stanley steadied his
inexperienced companion as the latter urged his horse. "Not too hard
just now. Your pony will need all his wind. It's a question of getting
away with our scalps and we must be careful. Follow me."

Bucks's heart, as he looked back, crowded up into his throat. A long
skirmish line of warriors had spread across the unbroken plateau to
the east, and Stanley, with nothing but instinct for a guide, was
making at top speed to the south to get away from them.

As the two dashed on, they found to their consternation that the
country was growing smoother and affording fewer hiding-places from
the sharp eyes behind them. Stanley knew they must either ride through
the hills ahead or perish. He sought vainly for some break in the
great black wall of low-lying mountains toward which they were riding,
yet from what he knew of the country he hardly dared hope for one.

He had reconnoitred these hills time after time when running the
railroad lines and knew pretty well where he was. The pursuers, too,
apparently sure of their prey, rode hard, gradually lessening the
distance that separated them from the wary soldier and his companion.
The Indians had ceased yelling now. It was beyond that. But even in
his excitement and fear the inexperienced boy could not but admire the
composure and daring of his companion.

As Stanley glanced now and again back at his enraged enemies he was
every inch a soldier. And he watched the distance between the
Cheyennes and himself as coolly as if calculating a mere problem in
geometry. While saving every possible breath for his horses, he yet
managed to keep the Cheyennes at a distance. The Indians, bent on
overhauling the fleeing men before they could reach even the scant
protection of the scattered timber they were now approaching,
redoubled their efforts to cut off the escape.

Forced by the desperation of his circumstances, Stanley bent more and
more to the west of south, even though in doing so he seemed to be
getting into a more hopeless country. The veteran campaigner eyed
Bucks's horse carefully as he turned in his saddle, but Scott's wiry
beast appeared quite fresh, and Stanley, turning his eyes, again swept
the horizon for a friendly break in the black walls ahead. As he did
so he was startled to see, directly in front, Indians riding at full
speed out of the hills he was heading for. He reined his galloping
horse and turned straight into the west.

"Bucks," he exclaimed, looking with concern at the rider now by his
side, "it's a case of obey orders now. If I stop at any time, you ride
straight on--do you understand? You've got a revolver?" Bucks tapped
the big Colt at his side. "Don't let them take you alive. And hold
your last shot till a buck rides in for your scalp."

The straining horses seemed to understand the sharp words that passed
from saddle to saddle. The Indians were already within gunshot, but
too sure of their game to lose any time in shooting; nor was Stanley
willing to waste a shot upon them. As he dodged in between a broken
wall of granite and a scrubby clump of cedars, closely followed by
Bucks, their pursuers could have picked either man from his saddle.

Stanley had no longer any fixed purpose of escape. He meant merely to
dismount when he could ride no farther and sell his life as best he
could, while Bucks took such further chance of escape as his
companion's last stand might afford. The hard-driven fighter was even
looking for a well-placed rock to drop behind, when the horse plunging
under him lurched to one side of the cedars and a gulf in the walls
suddenly opened before his surprised rider.

A rotten ledge of burned granite seemed to head a mountain wash
directly in their path. There was a sheer drop of twenty feet to the
crumbling slope of disintegrated stone under the head of the draw
itself, but Stanley, without looking back, never hesitated. Urging his
panting horse, he made a flying leap down into space, and horse and
rider landed knee-deep in the soft, gravelly granite below them.

Bucks's mustang shied on the brink. He spurred him excitedly, and the
trembling beast, nerving himself, leaped far out over the ledge,
following Stanley so closely that he almost struck him with his hoofs
as he went flying over the engineer's head. Bucks rolled headlong as
his horse plunged into the loose débris. He scrambled to his feet and,
spitting the gravel from between his bruised lips, caught the bridle
of his horse as the latter righted himself.

No legs were broken and much was already gained.

"Quick!" cried Stanley. "Ride for your life!" he shouted as Bucks
regained his saddle. The two spurred at the same time and dashed down
the draw at breakneck speed just as the Indians yelling on the brink
of the ledge stopped to pour a volley after the desperate men. Unable
to land an effective shot, the Cheyennes, nothing daunted, and
hesitating only a moment, plunged over the precipice after their
quarry.

But they had lost their great advantage. The dry watercourse proved
unexpectedly good riding for the fleeing railroad men. It was a
downhill run, with their hopes rising every moment. Moreover, the draw
soon turned sharply to the south and put a big shoulder of granite
between the pursuers and the pursued. The horses of the latter were
now relieved, and the wary Stanley, riding with some reserve speed,
held his rifle ready for a stern shot should one become necessary. He
found himself riding between two almost perpendicular walls washed by
the same granite gravel into which they had plunged on the start, but
with the course again turning, to his surprise, to the east. Once,
Stanley checked the flight long enough to stop and listen, but the two
heard the active Indians clattering down the canyon after them, and
rode on and on.

As they could see by the lengthening shadow on the mountain-sides far
above them, the sun was setting.

"Cheer up," cried Stanley, who had put his companion ahead of him.
"We've got the best of them. All we need is open country."

He did not mention the chances of disaster, which were that they might
encounter an obstacle that would leave them at bay before their
tireless pursuers. Mile after mile they galloped without halting again
to see whether they were being chased. Indeed, no distance seemed too
considerable to put between them and the active war-paint in the
saddles behind.

A new turn in the canyon now revealed a wide valley opening between
the hills before them. Far below, golden in the light of the setting
sun, they saw the great eastern slope of the Black Hills spreading out
upon a beautiful plain.

Stanley swung his hat from his head with an exulting cry, and Bucks,
without quite understanding why, but assuming it the right thing to
do, yelled his loudest. On and on they rode, down a broad, spreading
ridge that led without a break from the tortuous hills behind them
into the open country far below. Stanley put full ten miles between
himself and the canyon they had ridden out of before he checked his
speed. The Indians had completely disappeared and, disappointed in
their venture, had no doubt ridden back to their fastnesses to wait
for other unwary white men. Stanley chose a little draw with good
water and grass, and night was just falling as they picketed their
exhausted horses and stretched themselves, utterly used up, on the
grass.

"We are safe until morning, anyway," announced Stanley as he threw
himself down. "And this Indian chase may be the luckiest thing that
has ever happened to me in the troublesome course of an unlucky life.

"You don't understand," continued the engineer, wiping the sweat and
dust from his tired face. Bucks admitted that he did not.

"No matter," returned his companion; "it isn't necessary now. You will
sometime. But I think I have done in the last hour something I have
been trying to do for years. Many others have likewise failed in the
same quest."

Bucks listened with growing interest.

"Yes, for years," Stanley went on, "incredible as it may sound, I have
been searching these mountains for just such a crevice as we have this
moment ridden down. You see how this range"--the exhausted engineer
stretched flat on his back, but, with burning eyes, pointed to the
formidable mountain wall that rose behind them in the dusk of the
western sky--"rises abruptly from the plains below. Our whole grade
climb for the continental divide is right here, packed into these few
miles. Neither I nor any one else has ever been able to find such a
pass as we need to get up into it. But if we have saved our scalps, my
boy, you will share with me the honor of finding the pass for the
Union Pacific Railroad over the Rocky Mountains."

They were supperless, but it was very exciting, and Bucks was
extremely happy. Stanley watched that night until twelve. When he woke
Bucks the moon was rising and the ghostly peaks in the west towered
sentinel-like above the plains flooded with silver. The two were to
move at one o'clock when the moon would be high enough to make riding
safe. It was cold, but fire was forbidden.

The horses were grazing quietly, and Bucks, examining his revolver,
which he had all the time felt he was wretchedly incompetent to shoot,
sat down beside Stanley, already fast asleep, to stand his watch. He
had lost Sublette's rifle in falling into the wash-out. At least he
had found no leisure to pick it up and save his hair in the same
instant, and he wondered now how much he should have to pay for the
rifle.

When the sun rose next morning the two horsemen were far out of the
foot-hills and bearing northeast toward camp--so far had their ride
for life taken them from their hunting ground. They scanned the
horizon at intervals, with some anxiety, for Indians, and again with
the hope of sighting their missing guide. Once they saw a distant herd
of buffalo, and Bucks experienced a shock until assured by Stanley
that the suspicious objects were neither Cheyennes nor Sioux.

By nine o'clock they had found the transcontinental telegraph line and
had a sure trail to follow until they discovered the grade stakes of
the railroad, and soon descried the advance-guard of the graders busy
with plough and shovel and scraper. As they rode into camp the very
first man to emerge from Casement's tent, with his habitual smile, was
Bob Scott.

Casement himself, who had heard Scott's story when the latter had come
in at daybreak, was awaiting Stanley's return with anxiety, but this
was all forgotten in the great news Stanley brought. Sublette and
Scott now returned to the hunting camp for the cavalry detail, and,
reinforced by these, the two heroes of the long flight rode back to
reconnoitre their escape from the mountains. Bucks rode close to Bob
Scott and learned how the scout had outwitted his assailants at the
canyon, and how after they had all ridden out of it, he had ridden
into it and retraced with safety in the night the path that the
hunters had followed in riding into the hill country.

The second ride through the long defile, which itself was now the
object of so much intense inspection, Bucks found much less exciting
than the first. The party even rode up to where the first flying leap
had been made, and to Bucks's joy found Sublette's rifle still in the
wash; it had been overlooked by the Indians.

What surprised Bucks most was to find how many hours it took to cover
the ground that Stanley and he had negotiated in seemingly as many
minutes.




CHAPTER VI


After a week in Casement's camp, Stanley and his cavalrymen,
accompanied by Dancing, Scott, and Bucks, struck north and east toward
the Spider Water River to find out why the ties were not coming down
faster. Rails had already been laid across the permanent Spider Water
Bridge--known afterward as the first bridge, for the big river
finished more than one structure before it was completely subdued--and
the rail-laying was hampered only by the lack of ties.

The straggling bands of Cheyennes had in the interval been driven out
of the foot-hills by troops sent against them, and Stanley and his
little escort met with no trouble on his rapid journey.

Toward evening of the second day a broad valley opened on the plain
before them, and in the sunset Bucks saw, winding like a silver thread
far up toward the mountains, the great stream about which he had
already heard so much. Camp was pitched on a high bluff that
commanded the valley in both directions for many miles, and after
supper Scott and Bucks rode down to the river.

In its low-water stage nothing could have looked more sluggish or more
sleepily deceptive than the mighty and treacherous stream. Scott and
his companions always gave the river the name the Sioux had long ago
given it because of its sudden, ravening floods and its deadly traps
laid for such unwary men or animals as trusted its peaceful promise
and slept within reach of its cruel power.

Standing in the glow of the evening sky in this land where the clear,
bright light seemed to lift him high above the earth, Bucks looked at
the yellow flood long and thoughtfully--as well he might--for the best
of his life was to be spent within ken of its flow and to go in doing
battle with it himself, or in sending faithful men to its battling,
sometimes to perish within its merciless currents.

Next morning as the party, following a trail along the bluffs, rode up
in the direction of the contractors' camps they discerned out on the
river bottom a motley cluster of tents and shanties pitched under a
hill. A number of flatboats lay in the backwater behind the bend and a
quantity of ties corded along the bank indicated a loading-place, but
no one seemed to be doing any loading. The few men that could be seen
in the distance appeared to be loafing in the sunshine along the
straggling street-way that led to the river. Stanley checked his
horse.

"What place is that?" he demanded of Scott.

"That," returned the guide, "is Sellersville."

"Sellersville," echoed Stanley. "What is Sellersville?"

"Sellersville is where they bring most of the ties for the boats."

"Have they started a town down there on the bottoms?"

"They have started enough saloons and gambling dens to get the money
from the men that are chopping ties."

Stanley contemplated for a moment the ill-looking settlement. A mile
farther on they encountered a number of men following the trail up
the river.

A small dog barked furiously at the Stanley party as they came up, and
acted as if he were ready to fight every trooper in the detail. He
dashed back and forth, barking and threatening so fiercely that every
one's attention was drawn to him.

Stanley stopped the leader and found he was a tie-camp foreman from
up-river taking men to camp. "Is that your dog?" demanded Stanley,
indicating the belligerent animal who seemed set upon eating somebody
alive.

"Why, yes," admitted the foreman philosophically. "He sort o' claims
me, I guess."

"What do you keep a cur like that around for?"

"Can't get rid of him," returned the foreman. "He is no good, but the
boys like his impudence. Down, Scuffy!" he cried, looking for a stick
to throw at his pet.

Bucks surveyed the company of men. They were a sorry-looking lot. The
foreman explained that he had dragged them out of the dens at
Sellersville to go back to work. When remonstrated with for the poor
showing the contractors were making, the foreman pointed to the
plague-spot on the bottoms.

"There's the reason you are not getting any ties," said he lazily.
"We've got five hundred men at work up here; that is, they are
supposed to be at work. These whiskey dives and faro joints get them
the minute they are paid, and for ten days after pay-day we can't get
a hundred men back to camp."

The foreman as he spoke looked philosophically toward the canvas
shanties below. "I spend half my time chasing back and forth, but I
can't do much. They hold my men until they have robbed them, and then
if they show fight they chuck them into the river. It's the same with
the flatboat men." He turned, as he continued, to indicate two
particularly wretched specimens. "These fellows were drugged and
robbed of every dollar they brought here before they got to work at
all."

Stanley likewise gazed thoughtfully upon the cluster of tents and
shacks along the river landing. He turned after a moment to Scott.
"Bob," said he, looking back again toward the river, "what gang do you
suppose this is?"

Scott shook his head. "That I couldn't say, Colonel Stanley."

"Suppose," continued Stanley, still regarding the offending
settlement, "you and Dancing reconnoitre them a little and tell me who
they are. We will wait for you."

Scott and the lineman swung into their saddles and started down the
trail that led to the landing. Stanley spoke again to the foreman.
"Can those men use an axe?" he demanded, indicating the two men that
the foreman asserted had been robbed.

"They are both old choppers--but this gang at Sellersville stole even
their axes."

"Leave these two men here with me," directed Stanley as he watched
Scott and Dancing ride down toward Sellersville. "I may have something
for them to chop after a while."

The foreman assented. "I don't like the bunch," he murmured; "but
nobody at our camp wants to tackle them. What can we do?"

While the foreman continued to talk, Stanley again looked over the
human wrecks that he had rounded up and brought out of Sellersville.
"What can we do?" echoed Stanley, repeating the last question tartly.
"Well, I'll tell you one thing we can do. We can throw Sellersville
into the river."

Dancing and Scott were gone half an hour. The report, when they
returned, was not encouraging. "It is a bunch of cutthroats from
Medicine Bend, colonel," said Bob Scott.

"All friends of yours, I presume, Bob," returned Stanley.

The scout only smiled. "John Rebstock is there with his following. But
the boss, I think, is big George Seagrue. He is mean, you know. George
has got two or three men to his credit."

"Are we enough to clean them out, Bob?" inquired Stanley impatiently.

Scott looked around and his eye rested for a moment on Dancing. He
hitched his trousers. "There's about thirty men down there. I expect,"
he continued reflectively, "we can take care of them if we have to."

Stanley turned to the sergeant of his troopers. "Pitch a permanent
camp, sergeant. There will be nothing to take us any farther up the
river."

As Stanley gave the order Bucks noticed that Dancing winked at Scott.
And without the meaning glances exchanged by the lineman and the
scout, Bucks would have understood from Stanley's manner that he meant
strong measures. Stanley sent a further message to the contractor, and
the foreman, followed by his convoy of humanity, started on. The
soldiers, foreseeing a lively scene, stripped their pack-horses and
set at work pitching their tents.

Leaving four men in camp, the engineer, accompanied by his escort,
rode down the bluffs and, striking a lumber road, galloped rapidly
through the poplar bottom-lands toward the gamblers' camp. It was an
early tour for human wolves to be stirring, and the invaders clattered
into Sellersville before they attracted any attention.

A bugler, however, riding into the middle of the settlement, sounded a
trumpet call, and at the unwonted notes frowsy, ill-shaped heads
appeared at various shanty doors and tent-flaps to see what was
doing. Stanley sent one man from door to door to notify the inmates of
each shelter to pack up their effects and make ready to move without
delay.

Five troopers were detailed to guard three gambling tents that stood
together in the middle of the camp, each of these being flanked by
smaller dens. Word was then passed to the gamblers and saloon-keepers
to line up on the river front.

Stanley regarded the gathering crowd with a cold eye. Scott, who stood
near Bucks, pointed out a square-shouldered man with a deep scar
splitting one cheek. "Do you know that fellow, Bucks?" he asked in an
undertone.

"No; who is he?"

"That is a Medicine Bend confidence man, Perry. Do you remember the
woman you helped out with a ticket to Iowa? Perry is her husband--the
man that Dave Hawk made pay up."

Perry was a type of the Sellersville crowd now being evicted. There
was much talk as the soldiers urged and drove the gang out of one
haunt after another and a good deal of threatening as the leaders
marched out in front of Stanley.

"Who is running this camp?" demanded the officer curtly. The men
looked at one another. A fat, slow-moving man with small blue eyes and
a wheezy voice answered: "Why, no one in particular, colonel. We're
just a-camping in a bunch. What's a-matter? Seagrue here," he nodded
to a sharp-jawed companion, "and Perry," he added, jerking his thumb
toward the scarred-faced man, "and me own these two big tents in
partners."

"What's your name?"

"My name's Rebstock."

"Produce the axes stolen here from these two men," said Stanley,
indicating the choppers behind him. There was a jangle of talk between
Rebstock and his associates, and Perry, much against his inclination,
was despatched to hunt up the axes. It was only a moment before he
returned with them.

Rebstock, with a show of virtue, reprimanded Perry severely for
harboring the men that had stolen the axes. "Sorry it happened,
colonel," he grumbled, after he had abused the thieves roundly in a
general way, "and I'll see it doesn't happen again. We can't watch
everybody in a place like this. Tell your men," he continued,
expanding his chest, "to leave their axes with me when they come to
Sellersville--what?"

The assurances were lost on Stanley. "Rebstock," said he, in a tone
that Bucks had not heard before from him, "take your personal effects,
all of you--and nothing else--and load them on a flatboat. I will give
you one hour to get-out of here."

Rebstock almost fell over backward. He wheezed in amazement. There was
an outburst of indignant protests. A dozen men clamored at once. Perry
rushed forward to threaten Stanley; others cursed and defied him.

"Who are you, and what do you mean giving orders like that?" demanded
Seagrue, confronting him angrily.

"No matter who I am, you will obey the orders. And you can't take any
tents or gambling apparatus or liquors. Pack up your clothes and camp
stuff--nothing else--and get out."

If a bombshell had dropped into Sellersville, consternation could not
have been more complete. But it became quickly apparent that not all
of the gang would surrender without a fight. The leaders retreated for
a hurried consultation.

Rebstock walked back presently and confronted Stanley. "What's your
law for this?" he demanded, breathless with anger.

Stanley pointed to the ground under their feet.

"What's your title to this land, Rebstock? It belongs to the railroad
that those ties belong to. Where is your license from the United
States Government to sell whiskey here? You are trespassers and
outlaws, with no rights that any decent man ought to respect. You and
your gang are human parasites, and you are going to be stripped and
sent down the river as fast as these flatboats will carry you."

Without waiting for any rejoinder, Stanley turned on his heel and
walked away, leaving Rebstock speechless. The threats against the
intruders continued, but Stanley paid no attention to any of them.
Scott and the five troopers faced the gamblers. Stanley called to the
two wood-choppers, who stood near with their axes, and pointed to the
gambling tents.

"Chop up every wheel and table in there you can find," said he.

A cry went up from Perry when he heard the order, but the axemen,
nothing loath, sprang inside to their work, and the crashing of the
gambling furniture resounded through the alarmed camp. Stanley made no
delay of his peremptory purpose. The tent attacked belonged to
Seagrue, who, common report averred, feared nothing and nobody, while
the gambling implements were Perry's.

Seagrue rushed to his property, revolver in hand. Bill Dancing, who
stood at Stanley's side, stepped into his way.

"Hold on, Seagrue," he said. The gambler, fully as large a man as
Dancing, faced his opponent with his features fixed in rage. "Get
away," he shouted, "or I will knock your head off."

All eyes centred on the two men. Every one realized that open war was
on and that it needed only a spark to start the shooting. The
gamblers, rallying to Seagrue, backed him with oaths and threats.

"Seagrue, put down that pistol or I'll wring your neck," returned the
lineman, baring his right arm as he sauntered toward the outlaw.
Bucks, beside Stanley, stood transfixed as he watched Dancing. The
lineman's revolver was slung in the holster at his side.

Seagrue hesitated. He saw Bob Scott standing in the doorway of the
gambling tent with his rifle lying carelessly over his arm. He was
actually covering Seagrue where he stood--and Seagrue knew that Bob
Scott was deadly with a rifle. But Dancing was walking directly up to
him and Seagrue dared not be shamed before his own associates. He
jumped back to fire, but it was too late.

Dancing caught his wrist. Both were men of great strength, and their
muscles knotted as they grappled. It was only after a moment that the
lineman could be seen to gain. Then, as he bent the gambler's arm
back, he suddenly released it and struck the revolver out of his hand.
Seagrue, with a curse, sprang back, and drawing a knife rushed for the
second time at the lineman. Dancing jumped to one side. As he did so
he seized an axe from the hand of one of the choppers and turned again
on Seagrue. The gambler made a lunge at his throat, but as he threw
himself forward, Dancing, springing away, brought the axe around like
a flash and laid it flat across his assailant's forearm. The knife
flew twenty feet, and before the gambler could recover himself the
railroad man with one hand like a vice on his throat bore him to the
ground.

"Give me a piece of rope," muttered Dancing as Stanley ran up.

[Illustration: IT WAS ONLY AFTER A MOMENT THAT THE LINEMAN COULD BE SEEN
TO GAIN.]

Bob Scott slashed a tent guy and handed it to him. In another minute
Dancing, in spite of Seagrue's struggles, had lashed his prisoner hand
and foot. Picking him up bodily, he walked unopposed to the landing,
and to the astonishment of the spectators heaved Seagrue with scant
ceremony into a flatboat. There a trooper kept him quiet. Walking
back, the lineman brushed the dust of the encounter from his arms as
if to invite any further Sellersville champion to come forward. But
John Rebstock, the really responsible head of the place, showed no
desire to meet Dancing, and Perry, the sneak of the trio, only ranted
while Rebstock stood at a respectable distance wheezing his surprise
at the tremendous exhibition of strength. And the work of destruction
went forward.

Adjoining the Seagrue tent stood a saloon in which the men were now
ordered to demolish the stock. This renewed the excitement among
Rebstock's followers.

"Don't waste any time," was Stanley's order. "They may rush us. Knock
in the head of a keg of whiskey, pour it over the bar, and burn the
shanty."

The gamblers were, in fact, mustering for a charge on the invaders.
Before they could act the saloon was ablaze and the flames, rising
amid the yells and execrations of its owners, leaped to the big tent
adjoining. In front of this the soldiers in a skirmish line held back
the scurrying outlaws. Within a few moments Sellersville was ablaze
from end to end and its population, including Perry and Rebstock,
driven to the flatboats, were floating with threats and curses down
the muddy current of the Spider Water.




CHAPTER VII


Stanley's next camp was pitched down the river where the overland
telegraph line crossed the Spider Water, and Bucks, installed in a
smart army tent with a cracker-box for a stool and a packing-case for
an instrument table, was, through Dancing's efforts, put in
communication by wire with Medicine Bend and the west country as far
as Sleepy Cat, where the War Department was establishing an army
post.

Stanley, with Bob Scott, now spent a great deal of time in the saddle
between the bridge and the upper tie-camps, and his presence made
itself felt in the renewed energy everywhere apparent among the
contractors and their men. Bucks, chained to a wire, as he expressed
it, found the days dragging again and would much rather have been at
liberty to ride with Scott, who, when free, hunted in the foot-hills.

One day Bucks was sitting alone in his tent, looking for the
hundredth time over a worn copy of _Harper's Weekly_ that he had
picked up at Casement's camp, when a dog put his nose in the tent
door. A glance revealed merely a disconsolate, unpromising cur, yet
Bucks thought he had seen the dog before and was interested. He seemed
of an all-over alkali-brown hue, scant of hair, scant of tail, and
with only melancholy dewlap ears to suggest a strain of nobler blood
in an earlier ancestry. He looked in with the furtive eye of the
tramp, and as if expecting that a boot or a club would most probably
be his welcome.

But Bucks at the moment was lonely--as lonely as the dog himself--and
as the two fixed their eyes intently on each other, Bucks remembered
that this was the tie foreman's dog, Scuffy.

Scuffy had appeared at the psychological moment. Bucks regarded him in
silence, and the dog perceiving no immediate danger of assault stood,
in silence, returning Bucks's stare. Then watching the boy's eye
carefully, the dog cocked his head just the least bit to one side. It
was a mute appeal, but a moving one. Bucks continued, however, his
non-committal scrutiny, recalling that the foreman had said nothing
good of Scuffy, and the homeless cur stood in doubt as to his
reception. But realizing, perhaps, that he had nothing to lose and
everything to gain, the little vagabond played his last card--he
wagged his stubby tail.

A harder heart than Bucks's might have been touched. The operator held
out his hand. No more was needed; the melancholy tramp stepped
cautiously forward waving his alert flag of truce. He sniffed long and
carefully as he neared Bucks, looked solicitously into the boy's eyes,
and then smelt and licked the proffered hand. It was a token of
submission as plainly expressed as when Friday, kneeling, placed
Robinson Crusoe's foot on his head. Bucks reached into a paper bag
that Bill Dancing had left on the table and gave the dog a cracker.

Scuffy snapped up the offering like one starving. A second cracker and
a third disappeared at single gulps. For the length of the dog, the
size of his mouth appeared enormous. In a moment the cracker-bag was
emptied and Scuffy again licked the friendly hand. It did not take
Bucks long to decide what to do. In another moment he had resolved to
adopt his tramp visitor. The day happened to be Friday, and Bucks at
once renamed him Friday. When Dancing, who had been with Bob Scott
hunting, came in late that night he found Bucks asleep and Scuffy
lying in Dancing's own bed, from which he was ejected only after the
most vigorous language on his own part as well as on that of the
lineman. Even then, Scuffy retreated only as far as Bucks's feet,
where he slept for the rest of the night undisturbed.

"Where did he come from?" growled Dancing in the morning as he sat
with his pipe regarding the intruder, who acted quite at home, with a
critical eye.

Bucks explained that this was the tie foreman's runaway dog, Scuffy,
and beyond Scuffy's first appearance at the tent door he could tell
him nothing. Scuffy simply and promptly assumed a place in camp and
Bucks became, willy-nilly, his sponsor. But his effort to rename him
came to nothing. Scuffy gave no heed when called "Friday," but for
"Scuffy" he sprang to attention instantly.

Bill Dancing decided, off-hand, that "the pup" was worthless. Scott,
whose smile was kindly even when sceptical, only corrected Bill to the
extent of saying that Friday or Scuffy, whoever or whatever he might
be, was no pup; that he was a full-grown dog and in Bob's judgment he
would need no guardian.

One day, shortly after Scuffy had been put upon the pay-roll, Scott
came in from a trip after venison with word that there were black
bears in the hill canyons. The thought of bear's meat aroused every
one, and Stanley suggested a bear hunt. Scott had to send down to
Stanley's ranch at Medicine Bend for his dogs and some delay followed.
But when the three hounds arrived there was excitement enough to
compensate for it. One of the dogs was a big black fellow and his
companions were brown full-bloods. The hounds, one and all, set on
Scuffy the moment they reached camp, and it was only by the most
dexterous manoeuvres that the strange dog escaped being eaten alive.
Indeed, Bob Scott remarked at once that if Scuffy should survive the
greetings of his new comrades he would prove his right to live. The
hounds always set upon him at meal-times, usually chewed him at
bed-time, and harried him at all times.

To a less hopeful temperament than Scuffy's, life would not have
seemed worth living. It was only Bucks who insured him anything at all
to eat, and the enmity of the big, rangy hounds for the lean and
hungry tramp dog left him no peace save when they were fighting in
dreams. To accept life under such conditions indicated that Scuffy was
a philosopher, and he accepted the conditions cheerfully, filching
what he could of sustenance from the common pot and licking his
troublesome wounds at night after his truculent companions had gone to
sleep.

As soon as the tie-supply trouble had been lessened Stanley took
things more leisurely and the interval afforded the opportunity for
the delayed bear hunt. Bob Scott and Dancing were to go with Stanley,
and Bucks being freed for one day from his key was invited to be of
the party. All hands were in the saddle by daybreak, and Scott's
hounds were baying and tearing around camp wild with excitement.

At the last moment a complication arose. Scuffy, who until the moment
of starting had for prudential reasons--that is, to avoid being eaten
up--remained in obscurity, joined the hunters. Every one in turn tried
to drive him back, but long practice had made him expert in dodging
missiles and had rendered him insensible to reproach. The hounds were
too filled with the prospect of sport to pay any attention to Scuffy.
In vain, Bob Scott tried to set them on him and drive him back to
camp. On this occasion, when bullying would plainly have been
justified, no hound would assail Scuffy. Bucks drove him again and
again from the flank of the advance only to have the mortification of
seeing him reappear a mile or two farther along the trail, and it was
at last decided to leave him to his fate at the paw of a bear--which
no one made doubt he was certain to suffer. At that moment Bucks and
Bill Dancing, riding together, saw a deer frightened from a thicket
running toward the river. Bucks jumped from his horse and lifted his
rifle to take a shot, but by the time he was ready to fire the deer
had vanished.

Led by Scott, the hunters rode at once into the rough country to the
west, where in the mountain fastnesses the bears loved to feed. The
hounds gave tongue vigorously, and Scuffy, who had by this time not
only established himself but had impudently taken the lead and was
heading the pack, barked loudest and longest.

"Did anybody ever see conceit equal to that?" demanded Stanley. "Look
at that cur leading the hounds."

Bucks was mortified and expressed his regret.

"Don't mind him, Bucks," remarked Dancing consolingly. "That dog won't
bother long. The first time the hounds run in, the bear will finish
_him_."

Bucks did not know precisely what Bill meant by "running in," but he
was not to be long in doubt. The pack struck a fresh trail almost at
once and the hunters had a long ride along a mountain-side covered
with fallen timber and cut by innumerable wash-outs that made the
riding hard and dangerous. Scott found intervals to encourage Bucks,
whose youth and inexperience made his task of keeping up with the
others a difficult one. "Take it easy," said Scott encouragingly as
the operator tried to urge his mount.

"I am keeping you all back, Bob."

"Plenty of time. You are doing wonders for mountain-riding. When we
close in on the bear don't be too keen to get near him. You wouldn't
be safe for a minute on your horse if the dogs didn't keep the bear
busy. As long as the dogs worry the bear you are safe. A bear will
never chase a man as long as a dog keeps at him. It's only when the
dogs refuse to go in any longer that the danger begins. When that
happens, look out. Keep a respectful distance all the time and a road
open behind you. That's all there is to a bear fight."

As he spoke, the hounds yelped sharply and Scott spurred forward. The
hunters were threading a grove of quaking asp and the dogs had come
up with the bear on an opening of shale rock surrounded by down
timber. Throwing his reins and advancing cautiously on foot, Stanley,
followed by his companions, who spread themselves in a wide
semicircle, took his place, the others, as they best could, choosing
their own.

The bear, a full-grown male, met the onset of the hounds with grim
confidence. The dogs encircled him with a ring of ferocious teeth,
running in from behind whenever they could to nip the huge beast in
the haunches or on the flank. But the surprise of the encounter was
Scuffy.

"Look," cried Bill Dancing, under whose wing Bucks had taken his post.
"Look at him! Why, the pup is a world-beater!"

In truth, Scuffy was the liveliest and most impudent dog in the pack,
and when the fight was fully on, managed to worry the angry bear more
than the hounds did. Within a moment the black hound, over-bold,
imprudently rushed the bear in front. A paw darting from the huge
beast caught him like a trip-hammer and stretched him helpless. In
that moment the bear exposed himself to Stanley's rifle and a shot
rang across the mountain-side. Scott watched the result anxiously. But
the slug instead of dropping the bear served only to enrage him. For
an instant the two hounds lost their heads and the infuriated bear
charged Bucks and Bill Dancing.

The shale opening became a scene of confusion. Exposing himself
recklessly, Scott tried to urge the dogs forward, but they had lost
their nerve. It needed only this to upset everything. The hunters
closed in together, and the critical moment had come; deaf alike to
command and entreaty, the two hounds refused to go in, and Scuffy,
flying wildly about the bear, seemed unable to check him. Dancing
stopped long enough to take one shot, and ran--with Bucks, who had
found no chance to shoot, following. The bear gained fast on the
long-legged lineman and his boy companion. A wash-out, hidden by a
clump of bushes, lay directly in the path of flight. Dancing,
perceiving it, dashed to the left and escaped. He shouted a warning to
Bucks, who, not understanding, plunged straight over the declivity
and sprawled into the wash-out with the bear after him. Catching his
rifle, the boy scrambled to his feet with his pursuer less than twenty
feet away. Between the two there was only open ground, and the bear
was scrambling for Bucks when Scuffy sprang down the shale bank and
confronted the enemy.

It looked like certain death for Scuffy, but the tramp dog did not
hesitate. He rushed at the bear with a fury of snapping, though not
without a lively respect for the sweep of the brute's fore paws. The
little dog, freeing himself forever in that moment from the stigma of
cur, put up a fight that astonished the big brute.

Scuffy raced at him first on one side and then on the other, bounding
in and out like a rubber ball, dashing across his front and running
clear around the circling bear, nipping even an occasional mouthful of
hair from his haunches. He made noise enough for a pack of dogs and
simulated a fury that gave the bear the surprise of his life. Bucks
realized that only his four-legged friend stood between him and
destruction and that so unequal a contest could not endure long.
Skilful as the little fellow was, he was pitted against an antagonist
quite as quick and wary. The clumsiness of the bear was no more than
seeming, and any one of the terrific blows he dealt at Scuffy with his
huge paw would have stretched a man lifeless. Bucks, collecting his
disordered faculties, raised his rifle to help his champion with a
shot. His heart beat like a hammer in his throat, but he knew there
was only one thing to do, that was to get the rifle-sights carefully
lined in his eye and shoot when Scuffy gave him an opening.

It came in a moment when the bear turned to smash Scuffy on his flank.
Bucks fired. To his amazement, no result followed. The failure of the
bear to show any sign of being hit stunned him, and he drew his
revolver, never expecting to escape alive, when two shots rang across
the wash as close together as if fired by the same hand. The bear sank
like a falling tree. Yet he rallied and again rushed for Bucks,
despite Scuffy's stout opposition and the yells from above, and
finally halted only when Bob Scott, jumping into the wash-out,
confronted him with a knife. There was an instant of apprehension,
broken by a third shot from Dancing's rifle across the gully, and the
bear crumpled lifeless almost at Scott's feet.

The scout turned to Bucks as he stood dazed by his narrow escape.
Stanley, above, shouted. And Bill Dancing, carrying his empty rifle,
and with his face bleeding from the briers, made his way down the
opposite side of the wash. Scuffy, mounting the body of his dead foe,
barked furiously.

The little dog was the real hero of the encounter. He had paid
his keep and earned his way as a member of the family and as a
bear-fighter. When Bucks picked up his rifle he told Scott of his
bad miss in the critical moment of the fight. Bob took the gun from
his hands and examined the sights good-naturedly. Bucks had
neglected to change the elevation after he had aimed at the deer
an hour earlier.

"Next time you shoot at a bear twenty feet away, don't leave your
sights set for two hundred yards," was all Scott said.




CHAPTER VIII


The bruises that Bucks nursed were tender for some days, and Scott
tried out some bear's grease for an ointment.

Scuffy, who had come out of the fight without a scratch, took on new
airs in camp, and returned evil for evil by bullying the two wounded
hounds who were too surprised by his aggressiveness to make an
effective defence.

Bucks, when he was alone with the dog and time dragged heavily, turned
for diversion to the only book in the camp, a well-thumbed copy of
"The Last of the Mohicans." He had brought it with him to read coming
out from Pittsburgh, and had thrown it into his bag when leaving
Medicine Bend. In camp it proved a treasure, even the troopers, when
they were idle, casting lots to get hold of it.

One day, when Bucks was absorbed in the romance, Bob Scott asked him
what he was reading. Bucks tried to give him some idea of the story.
Scott showed little apparent interest in the résumé, but he listened
respectfully while cleaning his rifle. He made no comment until Bucks
had done.

"What kind of Indians did you say those were," he asked, contracting
his brows as he did when a subject perplexed him, "Uncas and
Chingachgook?"

"Delawares, Bob. Know anything about Delaware Indians?"

Scott shook his head. "Never heard of Delawares in our country. I saw
a Pottawottamie Indian once, but never any Delawares. Is this story
about Uncas a true story?"

"As true as any story. Listen here." Bucks read aloud to him for a
while, his companion at intervals asking questions and approving or
criticising the Indian classic.

"If you could only read, Bob, you ought to read the whole book," said
Bucks regretfully, as he put the volume aside.

"I can read a little," returned Scott, to Bucks's surprise. "All
except the long words," added the scout modestly. "A man down at
Medicine Bend tried to sell me a pair of spectacles once. They had
gold rims, and he told me that a man with those spectacles could read
any kind of a book. He thought I was a greenhorn," said the scout.

"Where did you learn to read?"

"A Blackrobe taught me."

Bucks held out the book. "Then read this, Bob, sure."

Scott looked at the worn volume, but shook his head doubtfully. "Looks
like a pretty big book for me. But if you can find out whether it's
true, I might try it sometime."

Stanley, after a few days, started up the river with Scott and
Dancing, leaving his men in camp. Bucks, who was still too stiff to
ride, likewise remained to receive any messages that might come.

There was an abundance of water-fowl in the sloughs and ponds up and
down the river, and Bucks, the morning after Stanley's departure,
leaving the troopers lounging in camp, started out with a shot-gun to
look for ducks. He passed the first bend up-stream, and working his
way toward a small pond thickly fringed with alders, where he had
often seen teal and mallards, attempted to crawl within gunshot of
it.

He was working his way in this fashion toward the edge of the water
when he heard a clatter of wings and the next moment a flock of
mallards rushed in swift flight over his head. He impulsively threw up
his gun to fire but some instinct checked him. He was in a country of
dangerous enemies and the thought of bears still loomed large in his
mind. An instant's reflection convinced him that it was not his
movement that had frightened the ducks, and he was enough of a hunter
to look further than that for the cause. As caution seemed, from the
soreness of his legs and arms, plainly indicated, he lay still to
await developments.

Soon he heard a movement of trampling feet, and, seemingly, across the
pond from him. Bucks thought of buffaloes. His heart beat fast at the
thought of getting a shot at one until he reflected that he had no
rifle. The next instant his heart stopped beating. Not ten feet from
where he lay in the thick willows, an Indian carrying a rifle, and in
war-paint, stole noiselessly along toward the camp. No sooner had he
disappeared than a second brave followed, and while Bucks was
digesting this fright a third warrior, creeping in the same stealthy
manner and almost without a sound, passed the staring boy; the
appearance of a fourth and a fifth raised the hair on Bucks's head
till he was almost stunned with fright, but he had still to count
three more in the party, one more ferocious-looking than another,
before all had passed.

What to do was the question that forced itself on him. He feared the
Indians would attack the troopers in camp, and this he felt would be a
massacre, since the men, not suspecting danger, would be taken wholly
unawares. Should he fire his gun as a signal? It would probably bring
the Indians back upon him, but the thought of allowing the troopers to
be butchered was insupportable. His hammers were cocked and his
finger was on one trigger when he considered how useless the alarm
would be. The troopers knew that he had gone duck hunting. They would
expect to hear him shoot and would pay no attention to it. To rush out
after the Indians would only invite his instant death.

There seemed nothing he could do and a cold sweat of apprehension
broke over him. But if he fired his gun he might, at least, surprise
the Indians. The report of a gun in their rear would alarm them--since
they knew nothing of his presence or his duck hunting and might take
fright. Without more ado he fired both barrels one after the other,
careful only to shoot low into the willows, hoping the smoke would not
rise so quickly as to betray him before he could make a dash for a new
hiding-place.

His ruse worked and he ran at top speed for twenty yards before he
threw himself into a clump of cotton-woods close to the camp trail and
began to reload. While he was doing so a shout came from the direction
of the railroad bridge. Not until then did Bucks understand what the
Indians were after. But had he not understood, he would have known a
moment later when he heard a sharp exchange of shots toward the camp,
heard the dogs barking furiously, and saw the Indians, now on their
ponies, running the troopers' horses past him at a breakneck gallop.
The Indians yelled lustily at the success of their raid, the stampeded
horses dashed panic-stricken before them, and the braves shouted back
in derision at the vain efforts of the troopers to stop them with
useless bullets. Bucks's own impulse was to empty a charge of birdshot
into the last of the fleeing warriors, but this he knew might cost him
his life, and he resisted the temptation. When he was sure all were
past he ran toward the bluffs, and gaining a little eminence saw the
fleeing Indians, a dozen in all, making their way jubilantly up the
river. At the camp the discomfited cavalrymen were preparing for a
siege, and in their excitement almost shot Bucks as he hove in sight.

Bucks gave a good description of the marauders, and, following him up
to the pond, six of the troopers attempted some pursuit. This, to
unmounted men, was useless, as they well knew. Indeed, they used
caution not to come unawares on any friends of the escaping braves
that might have lingered behind.

Colonel Stanley returned in the morning to hear that his escort had
been unhorsed. Bob Scott grinned at the cavalrymen as they told the
story. He assured them that they had got off lightly, and that if
Bucks's signals had not alarmed the little war-party they might have
carried away scalps as well as horses.

"We shall be in luck if we don't hear more of those fellows," said he
to Bucks afterward. There was now manifestly nothing to do but to go
in, and later in the day a freight train was flagged and the whole
party, with Scuffy and the hounds, returned to Casement's camp. Scott
sent his dogs thence to the ranch in Medicine Bend, and at Bucks's
urgent request Scuffy was sent with them to await his own return to
head-quarters.




CHAPTER IX


The foray of the Indians at the Spider Water Bridge proved, as Bob
Scott had feared, only a forerunner of active hostilities. Casement
had already taken all necessary measures of defence. His construction
camp was moved steadily westward, though sometimes inside the picket
lines of troops, despite the warring Indians and the difficulties of
his situation. Alarms, however, were continual and the graders, many
of whom were old soldiers, worked at all times with their muskets
stacked on the dump beside them. In the construction camp Bucks saw
also many negroes, and at night the camp-fires of their quarters were
alive with the singing and dancing of the old plantation life in the
South.

While waiting for Stanley's inspection of the grading and track-laying,
Bucks relieved at times the camp operator, whose principal business
was the rushing of emphatic demands to Omaha for material and
supplies.

During other intervals Bucks found a chance to study the system that
underlay the seemingly hopeless confusion of the construction work.
The engineers moving far in advance had located the line, and
following these came the graders and bridge- and culvert-builders,
cutting through the hills, levelling the fills, and spanning the
streams and water-ways with trestles and wooden bridges, miles in
advance of the main army. Behind these came Casement's own big camp
with the tiemen, the track-layers, and the ballast gangs.

Every Eastern market was drawn upon for materials, and when these
reached Omaha, trains loaded with them were constantly pushed to the
front. The chief spiker of the rail gang, taking a fancy to Bucks,
invited him to go out with the rail-layers one day, and Bucks took a
temporary commission as spike-dropper.

To do this, he followed Dancing up the track past a long construction
train in which the men lived. The big box-cars contained sleeping-bunks,
and those men who preferred more air and seclusion had swung
sleeping-hammocks under the cars; others had spread their beds on top
of the cars. Climbing a little embankment, Bucks watched the sturdy,
broad-shouldered pioneers. A light car drawn by a single, galloping
horse was rushed to the extreme end of the laid rails. Before it had
fairly stopped, two men waiting on either side seized the end of a rail
with their trap and started forward. Ten more men, following in twos, at
a run, lifted the two rails clear of the car and dropped them in place on
the ties. The foreman instantly gauged them, the horse moved ahead, and
thirty spikers armed with heavy mauls drove the spikes furiously and
regularly, three strokes to the spike, into the new-laid ties. The
bolters followed with the fish-plates, and while Bucks looked the
railroad was made before his eyes.

The excitement of the scene was unforgettable. In less than sixty
seconds four rails had gone down. The moment a horse-car was emptied
it was dumped off one side of the track, and a loaded car with its
horse galloping to the front had passed it. The next instant the
"empty" was lifted back on the rails, and at the end of a sixty-foot
rope the horse, ridden by a hustling boy, was being urged back to
where the rails were transferred from the regular flat cars. The clang
of the heavy iron, the continuous ring of the spike mauls, the
shouting of the orders, the throwing of each empty horse-car from the
track to make way for a loaded one, these things were all new and
stimulating to Bucks. The chief spiker laughed when the young operator
told him how fine it was. He asked Bucks to look at his watch and time
the work. In half an hour Bucks looked at his watch again. In the
interval the gang had laid eight hundred feet of track.

"I don't see how you can work so fast," declared Bucks.

"Do you know how many times," demanded the spiker, "those sledges have
to swing? There are eighteen ties and thirty-six spikes to every rail,
three hundred and fifty-two rails to every mile, and eighteen hundred
miles from Omaha to San Francisco--those sledges will swing
sixty-eight million times before the rails are full-spiked--they have
to go fast."

The words were hardly out of the chief spiker's mouth when a cry of
alarm rang from the front. Bucks, looking eagerly, saw in the west a
cloud of dust. At the same time he saw the tie gang running in dozens
for their lives from the divide where they were working toward the
camp. The men beyond them on the grade had scrambled into the wagons,
dumped any ties they might contain helter-skelter to the ground, and
were clinging to the wagon boxes. In these, the drivers standing up,
lashed their horses with whip and line for life, and death, while
everywhere beside and behind them other men on foot were racing back
to safety.

New clouds of dust rose along the grade from the flying wagon wheels,
the horses tore madly on, and as the heavy wagons jolted over the
loose stones, the fugitives, yelling with excitement and alarm and
clinging to one another as they bounced up and down, looked anxiously
behind.

There was no uncertainty as to the cause of the panic. "Indians!" was
the cry everywhere. Every man in camp had dropped his working
implement and was moving somewhere on the double-quick. Every one, it
seemed to Bucks, was shouting and running. But above the confusion of
the surprise and the babel of voices, Bucks heard the sharp tones of
Jack Casement giving orders.

The old soldiers in the working gang needed no further discipline. The
timid and the skulkers scurried for the box-cars and the dugouts. On
the other hand, the soldiers ran for the dumps where the arms were
stacked, and seizing their muskets hurried back and, trained for the
emergency, fell into line under their foremen.

Casement, musket in hand, taking the largest company of men as they
formed in fours behind him, started forward at the double-quick,
yelling now for the moral effect, to protect the retreat of the
wagons. The men, scattering as they reached the edge of the camp,
dropped into every spot of shelter, and at the same moment Stanley,
mounted and alive with the vim and fire of the soldier, led a smaller
body of men rapidly back to guard the rear of the camp, deploying his
little force about the box-cars and flat cars as they hastened on. In
an instant the construction camp had become a fortress defended by a
thousand men.

It was none too soon. Stirring the yellow plain with the fury of a
whirlwind, a band of Sioux warriors rode the fleeing railroaders
furiously down. They appeared phantom-like out of every slip and
canyon, and rode full-panoplied from behind every hill. The horizon
that had shown five minutes before only the burning sunshine and the
dull glare of the alkali sinks, danced now with the flying ponies of
the Indians, and the hills echoed with ominous cries.

Without a word of warning, the few fleeing men who had been working
too far from camp to reach it in safety were mercilessly cut down.
Their comrades under arms, with an answering cry of defiance poured a
volley of cartridge balls into the thin, black circle that rode ever
closer and closer to the muzzles of the muskets. Jack Casement and his
brother Dan recklessly urged their men to the most advanced posts of
defence, and from behind scrapers, wagons, flat cars, and friendly
hillocks the railroad men poured a galling fire into their active
foe.

The Indians, seeking with unerring instinct the weakest point in the
defence, converged in hundreds upon the long string of box-cars that
made up the construction train at the rear of the camp, where Stanley,
extending his few men in a resolute skirmish line, endeavored to
prevent the savages from scalping the non-combatant cooks and burning
the sleeping-cars. Bucks saw, conspicuous in the attack, a slender
Sioux chief riding a strong-limbed, fleet pony with a coat of
burnished gold and as much filled with the fire of the fight as his
master was. Riding hither and thither and swinging a long, heavy
musket like a marshal's baton, the Sioux warrior, almost everywhere at
once, urged his men to the fighting, and the fate of the few white men
they were able to cut down or scalp before Stanley could cover the
line of box-cars seemed to add vigor to their onslaught.

Stanley himself, attacked by ten braves for every man he could muster
at that point with a gun, dashed up and down the old wagon roads along
the right of way, a conspicuous target for the Indians. His hat, in
the mêlée, had disappeared, and, swinging a heavy Colt's revolver,
which the Indians shrank from with a healthy instinct of danger, he
pressed back the hungry red line again and again, supported only by
such musketry fire as the men crouching under, within, and between the
box-cars could offer.

Wherever he rode his wily foes retreated, but they closed in
constantly behind him, and one brave, more daring than his fellows,
succeeded in setting fire to a box-car. A shout of triumph rose from
the circling horsemen, but it was short-lived. Stanley, wheeling like
a flash, gave chase to the incendiary. The Sioux rode for his life,
but his pony's pace was no match for the springing strides of
Stanley's American horse.

For an instant the attention of the whole fight in the rear of the
camp was drawn upon the rash brave and his pursuer. Bucks, with
straining eyes and beating heart, awaited the result. He saw Stanley
steadily closing the gap that separated him from his fleeing enemy.
Then the revolver was thrown suddenly upward and forward, and smoke
flashed from the muzzle. The echo of the report had hardly reached
Bucks's ears when the revolver, swung high again to balance the rhythm
of the horse's flight, was fired again, and a third time, at the
doomed man.

The Indian, bending forward on his horse, caught convulsively at his
mane, then rising high in his seat plunged head-foremost to the
ground, and his riderless horse fled on. His pursuer, wheeling, threw
himself flat in his saddle to escape the fire bent upon him from
behind as he rode back. At that moment Dan Casement and his men
hurried up on the double-quick. With him came Bucks, who had secured a
rifle and fallen in. Some men of the welcome reinforcement were set at
putting out the fire. Others strengthened Stanley's scattered skirmish
line.

Convinced by the determined front now opposed to him of the
impossibility of rushing the camp, the Sioux chief gave the signal to
retire.

As if the earth had opened to swallow them up, the warriors melted
away, and as suddenly as the plain had borne them into life it now
concealed their disappearance. In twenty minutes they had come and
gone as completely as if they had never been. But in that short
interval they had left death and consternation in their wake.




CHAPTER X


Stirred by the increasing boldness of the Indians, Stanley returned
with his party to Medicine Bend to take further measures for the
defence of the railroad men.

Bucks, when he reported to Baxter, the train despatcher, found new
orders waiting for him. He was directed to take charge of the station
at Goose Creek. The train did not leave till night, and Bucks took
advantage of the interval to go uptown to make some necessary
purchases of linen and clothing. On his way back to the station,
with his package under his arm, he saw, on the edge of the broad
sidewalk, Harvey Levake. Levake was standing near a wooden-Indian
cigar-store sign, looking directly at Bucks as the latter walked
toward him. The operator, nodding as he came up, asked Levake,
without parley, whether he would give him the money for the
express charges on the cartridges.

If Bucks had exploded a keg of powder on the sidewalk there could not
have been a greater change in the outlaw's manner. He stared at Bucks
with contempt enough to pierce the feelings of the wooden Indian
beside which he stood.

"What's that?" he demanded, throwing his head menacingly forward.

Bucks repeated his request, but so mildly that Levake took additional
umbrage at his diffidence.

"See here," he muttered in a voice beginning like a distant roll of
thunder and gathering force and volume as he continued, "don't insult
me."

Bucks ventured to urge that he intended no insult.

"Don't insult me!" bellowed Levake in violent tones.

Again Bucks attempted to protest. It was useless. Levake insisted with
increasing wrath upon hugging the insult to himself, while Bucks
struggled manfully to get it away from him. And as Levake's loud words
did not attract as much attention up and down the street as he sought,
he stamped about on the sidewalk. Bucks's efforts to pacify him made
matters momentarily worse.

Meantime a crowd such as Levake desired had gathered and Bucks found
himself a target for the outlaw's continued abuse, with nobody to take
his part. Moreover, the expressions on the faces about him now made
him realize his peril quite as much as anything in Levake's words. It
was becoming painfully evident that the onlookers were merely waiting
to see Levake shoot him down.

"No man in Medicine Bend can insult me and live," cried Levake,
winding up a tirade of abuse. "I'm known from one end of this street
to the other. Nobody can spread lies in it about me."

He drew and flourished a revolver as he spoke. None in the crowd
interfered with so much as a word. But even before the outlaw had
finished what he was saying, a man of medium size and easy manner
elbowed his way quietly through the circle of spectators, and, taking
Bucks by the arm, drew him back and faced Levake himself. It was Bob
Scott.

"What's all this about, Levake?" demanded Scott gently.

Levake had no alternative but to turn his wrath upon the Indian scout.
Yet those who knew him perceived that it was done without much stomach
for the job. Instead of growing momentarily greater the violence of
his abuse now grew steadily less, and the thunder in his tones rolled
further and further from the subject.

Half-turning to Bucks, Scott laid his hand on his arm again. "Excuse
me," said he, deliberately and quietly, "but you are wanted quick at
the station. They are waiting for you. Go right along, will you?"

Only too glad to get away and comprehending Scott's ruse, Bucks
exclaimed, "Why, of course, certainly," and stepping quickly into the
crowd walked away.

Turning again to Levake, Scott made no effort to check the torrent of
his words. In consequence, the gambler found himself embarrassed by
the prospect of talking himself out. This would not have been so bad
except that his circle of admirers would, when he stopped talking,
expect him to do something and he was now at a loss to decide just
what to do. To shoot down Bucks was rather a different matter from a
pistol duel with Scott.

None of the street loafers about the two men knew Scott, nor did any
of them know that Levake had a prudent respect for Scott's trigger. As
for Scott himself, a smile of contempt gradually covered his face as
he listened to Levake's outbreak. He only waited patiently for the
moment, which he knew must come, when Levake should cease talking.

"Your tongue, Levake," returned Scott at last, "is longer than a
coyote's. Why do you stand here and bellow about being insulted? What
is all this noise about, anyway? These fellows," a contemptuous nod
indicated the men standing around, "all know, if you don't. You've
been talking loud so you could get a crowd together and advertise
yourself by shooting an unarmed boy, haven't you?"

The desperado broke out in fresh denials and curses, but he feared
the ridicule of the Indian would bring the laughter of his admirers
down on him. Nor was he keen to try a pistol duel. He remembered too
well the attack he had once headed on an emigrant train that Scott was
guarding, and from which the outlaws with Levake had carried away some
unexpected and unwelcome bullets.

Scott, now taunting Levake openly, stepped directly in front of him.
But the latter waved him away. "I'll settle my differences with you
when I'm ready," he muttered. "If that fellow," he added, indicating
Bucks, who was making record time across the square, "behaves himself,
I'll let this go. If he doesn't, I'll fill him full of lead."

"When you do," retorted Scott, "remember just one thing--that I'm
going to fill you full, Levake. Don't forget that."

Scott stepped backward. The crowd parted to let him through and Levake
walked sullenly toward the cigar store.

Bucks wiped the perspiration from his forehead when he reached the
station and drew a long breath. He waited until Scott crossed the
square and joined him. The Indian only laughed when Bucks tried to
thank him. "It is nothing," he said, "you are getting experience. Only
don't tackle that man again till you give me notice beforehand."

The next morning Bucks installed himself at Goose Creek.

Goose Creek was a mere operating point and besides the rough wooden
station, with an attic sleeping-room for the operator, boasted only a
house for the section crew--six men taken care of by a China boy cook.
East of the station stood an old road ranch belonging to Leon
Sublette. For this, freight was at times unloaded and an Indian trail
to the south led through the sand-hills as far as the Arickaree
country. North of the river greater sand-hills stretched as far as the
eye could reach. The long, marshy stretches of the Nebraska River lost
themselves on the eastern and the western horizon and at times clouds
of wild fowl obscured the sun in their flight across the sky.

Dancing came down to the new station to complete the instalment of the
instruments and this broke for a day or two the loneliness of the new
surroundings. Indeed, there was hardly time to be lonely. The constant
round of interest attending the arrival of trains with their long
halts, visits from trappers living at the ranch who were always ready
to talk, and occasional calls from friendly Pawnees from the south,
together with abundance of time for hunting the geese and ducks, made
the days go.

But one early summer morning Bucks woke to an adventure not upon his
daily programme. He walked downstairs after dressing, and as he
stepped out on the platform the sand-hills touched by the rising sun
shone in the northwest like mountains of gold. Looking at them he saw
to his surprise they were covered with black objects that appeared to
be moving.

Indians were first in his mind, and in his alarm he ran all the way to
the section-house where the foreman, after a hasty study of the hills,
explained that the suspicious-looking objects were buffaloes.

This information only added to Bucks's excitement. The China boy cook,
Lee Ong, at the section-house appeared equally stirred at the
situation and, after running in and out of the kitchen with much
fluttering of cue and clattering of wooden shoes, promised Bucks a
buffalo steak for dinner if he would bring in a hindquarter.

By the time Bucks had finished breakfast the whole country to the
north was black with buffaloes. For hours they poured over the divide
to the delight of the astonished boy, and after a time he wired Baxter
at Medicine Bend that a herd of at least one million buffaloes was
crossing the railroad at Goose Creek. As the grave despatcher seemed
not greatly excited by this intelligence, Bucks followed up the story
at intervals with vivid details. A wag on the wire in Medicine Bend
played upon his enthusiasm by demanding frequent bulletins, even going
so far as to ask the names of the leading buffaloes in the herd. When
he had got all the laughs possible for the office out of the youthful
operator, he wired Bucks that if the herd should linger too long on
the right-of-way he must notify them that they would be held as
trespassers.

This message had hardly reached Goose Creek when the China boy came
running into the telegraph office. His eyes were staring, and his face
was greenish-white with fright. "Indians!" he exclaimed, running to
Bucks's side and dashing back again to the west window.

Bucks sprang to his feet. "Where?"

Lee Ong pointed to the northern sand-hills. Riding the broad slopes
that led toward the river, Bucks saw a long string of braves,
evidently a hunting party. The cook, beside himself with fear, ran out
of the station before Bucks could stop him.

"Hi there, Lee," cried the operator, running after him. "Where are the
section men?"

"Gone," cried Lee Ong, not ceasing to run, "all gone!" He pointed,
with the words, to the east.

"Tell them to bring the hand-car down here!"

"Too much gone," shouted Ong. "Omaha!"

"Lee! Stop! Where are you going?"

Lee stopped only long enough to throw his right arm and forefinger
with an excited gesture toward the west.

"San Francisco, San Francisco!" he cried.

"Why, Lee," exclaimed Bucks running after him, "hold on! You are
crazy! San Francisco is fifteen hundred miles from here." This
information did not visibly move Ong. "Indian no good," he cried,
pausing, but only long enough to wave both hands wildly toward the
sand-hills. "San Francisco good. No some more cook here. Indian come
too quick"--Ong with his active finger girdled the crown of his head
in a lightning-like imitation of a scalping knife--"psst! No good for
Ong!"

It would have seemed funny to Bucks if he had not been already
frightened himself. But if the section men had fled with the hand-car
it meant he would have to face the Indians. Lee Ong, running like mad,
was already out of hearing, and in any event Bucks had no wish to
imperil the poor China boy's scalp with his own.

He turned an anxious eye toward the sand-hills. Then realizing that on
the platform he was exposing himself needlessly, he hastened inside to
his key and called up Medicine Bend. It was only a moment, but it
seemed to the frightened operator a lifetime before the despatcher
answered. Bucks reported the Indians and asked if there were any
freight trains coming that he could make his escape on.

The despatcher answered that No. 11, the local freight, was then due
at Goose Creek and would pick him up and carry him to Julesburg if he
felt in danger. Bucks turned with relief to the east window and saw
down the valley the smoke of the freight already in sight. Never had a
freight train looked so good to his eyes as it did at that moment. He
hailed its appearance with a shout and looked apprehensively back
toward the sand-hills.

The activity in that direction was not reassuring. The Indians, too,
apparently had noticed the smoke of No. 11 trailing on the horizon. A
conference followed, illustrated by frequent pointing and violent
gesticulating to indicate the coming train. Then with a sudden
resolve the whole party rode rapidly out of the hills and down toward
the railroad.

Bucks's heart misgave him as he watched. But the cotton-woods growing
along the river hid the Indians from his eyes and he could not surmise
what they were doing. The information all went to the despatcher,
however, who, more experienced, scented serious mischief when Bucks's
bulletins now came in.

"Watch close," he wired. "It looks as if they were going to attack the
train."

The operator's anxiety rose with the intimation. He ran out of doors
and down the track, but he could neither hear nor see a thing except
the slow-moving train with the smoke puffing from the awkward,
diamond-stack locomotive moving peacefully toward the cotton-woods
that fringed the eastern shore of Goose Creek. The very silence seemed
ominous. Bucks knew the Indians were hidden somewhere in the
cotton-woods and felt that they could mean nothing but mischief. He
ran back to his key and reported.

"They will surely attack No. 11," he wired. "I will run across the
bridge and warn them."

"Where are the Indians?" demanded the despatcher.

"In the timber across the creek. I am starting."

"Don't be an idiot," returned the despatcher, with an expression of
Western force and brevity. "They will lift your hair before you get
half-way to the train. Stick to your key as long as you can. If they
start to cross the creek, leg it for the ranch. Do you get me?"

Bucks, considerably flurried, answered that he did, and the despatcher
with renewed emphasis reiterated his sharp inquiry. "Do you
understand, young fellow? If they start to cross the creek, leg it for
the ranch or you'll lose your hair."

Bucks strained his eyes looking for a sign of movement across the
bridge. The cotton-woods swayed gently in the light breeze, but
revealed nothing of what they hid.

The freight train continued to crawl lazily along, its crews quite
unconscious of any impending fate. Bucks, smothering with excitement
and apprehension, saw the engine round the curve that led to the
trestle approach of the bridge. Then the trees hid the train from his
sight.

"What are they doing?" demanded the despatcher, growing apprehensive
himself. An appalling crash from the woods electrified Bucks, and the
key rattled fast.

"They have wrecked the train," he wired without an instant's
hesitation. "I can hear the crash of cars falling from the trestle."

Before he could finish his message he heard also the screech of an
engine whistle. The next instant the locomotive dashed out of the
woods upon the bridge at full speed and with cries of disappointment
and rage the savages rode out to the very bank of the creek and into
the water after it. Bucks saw the sudden engine and thought at first
that the train had escaped. The next moment he knew it had not. The
engine was light: evidently it had passed in safety the trap laid for
its destruction, but the cars following had left the rails.

If confirmation of this conclusion had been needed, it came when he
ran out upon the platform as the engine approached. Bucks waved
vigorous signals at it, but the ponderous machine came faster instead
of slower as it neared the station, and, with Bucks vainly trying to
attract the attention of the engineman or fireman, the locomotive
thundered past at forty miles an hour.

He caught one glimpse through the tender gangway as the engine dashed
by and saw both men in the cab crouching in front of the furnace door
to escape the fancied bullets of the savages. Bucks shouted, but knew
he had been neither seen nor heard, and, as the engine raced into the
west, his best chance of escape from an unpleasant situation had
disappeared almost before he realized it.

Each detail was faithfully reported to the despatcher, who answered at
once.

"Relief train," he wired, "now making up with a hundred men. Hold on
as long as you can, but take no chances. What are they doing? Can you
see or hear them?"

"They are yelling so you could hear them a mile."

"Scout around a little," directed the despatcher, "but don't get
caught."

Bucks scouted around the room a little, but did not venture this time
farther than the windows. He was growing very nervous. And the
Indians, unrestrained in their triumph, displayed themselves
everywhere without concealment. Helpless to aid, Bucks was compelled
to stand and see a fleeing white man, the brakeman of the doomed
train, running for his life, cut down by the pursuers and scalped
before his eyes.

The horror and savagery of it sank deeply into the boy's heart and
only the realization of his utter inability to help kept him quiet.
Tears of fury coursed down his cheeks as he saw in the distance the
murdered man lying motionless on the sand beside the track, and with
shaking fingers he reported the death to Medicine Bend.

"The relief train has started," answered the despatcher, "with
Stanley, Scott, Sublette, Dancing, and a hundred men."

As the message came, Bucks heard shooting farther up the creek and
this continued at intervals for some moments. It was sickening to
hear, for it meant, Bucks surmised, that another trainman was being
murdered.

Meantime the Indians that he could see were smashing into the wrecked
merchandise cars and dragging the loot out upon the open prairie.
Hats, clothing, tobacco, provisions, camp supplies of every sort, and
musical instruments, millinery, boots, and blankets were among the
plunder. The wearing apparel was tumbled out of the broken cases and,
arrayed in whatever they could seize, the Indians paraded on their
horses up and down the east bank of the creek in fantastic show.

Some wore women's hats, some crinoline hoop-skirts over their
shoulders; others brandished boots and shirts, and one glistening
brave swung a banjo at arm's-length over his flying horse's head.
Another party of the despoilers discovered a shipment of silks and
satins. These they dragged in bolts from the packing-cases and, tying
one end of a bolt of silk to their ponies' tails, they raced,
yelling, in circles around the prairie with the parti-colored silks
streaming behind, the bolts bobbing and jerking along the ground like
rioting garlands of a crazy May-pole dance. And, having exhausted
their ingenuity and robed themselves in this wise in all manner of
plunder, they set fire to the wrecked train, singing and dancing in
high glee as the flames rose crackling above the trees.

Bucks, with clenched hands, watched and prayed for the arrival of the
speeding relief train. The moments passed with leaden feet and the
train had many miles to come. The despatcher continued his encouraging
messages, but did not cease his words of caution, and, as the wreckage
burned, Bucks perceived the Indians were riding in great numbers up
the creek. Too late he realized what it meant. They were looking for
the ford and were about to cross to his side.




CHAPTER XI


He lost no time in sending a final word to the despatcher before he
started for safety, and his call was sounding when he ran back to the
key.

"Stanley's train has passed Chimney Butte," said the despatcher. "Soon
be with you."

Words over the wire never sounded better to the frightened boy than
those words.

"The Indians are crossing the creek," Bucks answered. "Am off for the
ranch."

He closed the circuit and ran out on the platform. The warriors had
found the ford and the horses of the head braves were already leading
a file across. Bucks threw one hurried look at them; then, summoning
his strength for an endurance run, he started, with the station
building between him and the enemy, for the ranch.

He had hardly got under way when, as he reached higher ground, he saw
to his consternation a party of Indians in the bottom land between him
and safety.

He was cut off. Hoping that he had not been seen, he threw himself
flat on the ground and, turning about, crawled, behind a slight ridge
that afforded concealment, stealthily back toward the station. The
Indians up the creek had crossed, but were riding away from the
station and toward the ranch, evidently bent on attacking it next. The
flames from the burning train rose high above the creek. There seemed
no place to escape to and Bucks, creeping through the sedge grass, got
back to his key and called the despatcher.

"Cut off from the ranch by a second party of Indians. Will wait here
for the train--where is it?"

A moment passed before the answer came. "Less than ten miles from you.
Passed Driftwood Station at ten-forty."

Bucks looked at his clock. Driftwood was ten miles west. The hands
stood at ten-forty-eight. Surely, he concluded, they will be here by
eleven o'clock. Could he hold the station for twelve minutes? Even a
show of force he knew would halt the Indians for an interval.

He hastily pushed such packages of freight as lay in the store-room up
to the various windows, as slight barricades behind which he could
hide to shoot, and with much effort got the largest packing-case
against the platform door so they could not rush him from the creek
side. For the twentieth time he looked over his revolver, placed a
little store of cartridges behind each shelter, and peered again out
of the windows. To his horror he perceived that the two parties had
joined and were riding in a great half-circle down on the station.
Evidently the Indians were coming after him before they attacked the
ranch. He reported to the despatcher, and an answer came instantly.
"Stanley should be within five miles. How close are they?"

"Less than half a mile."

"Have you got a gun?"

Bucks wired, "Yes."

"Can you use it?"

"Expect I'll have to."

"Shoot the minute they get within range. Never mind whether you hit
anybody, bang away. What are they doing?"

Bucks ran around the room to look. "Closing in," he answered briefly.

"Can't you see the train?"

Bucks fixed his eyes upon the western horizon. He never had tried so
hard in his life to see anything. Yet the sunshine reflected no sign
of a friendly smoke.

"Nothing in sight," he answered; "I can't hold out much longer."

Hastily closing his key he ran to the south window. A dozen Indians,
beating the alder bushes as they advanced, doubtless suspecting that
he lay concealed in them, were now closest. He realized that by his
very audacity in returning to the building he had gained a few
precious moments. But the nearest Indians had already reached open
ground, two hundred yards away, and through their short, yelping cries
and their halting on the edge of the brake, he understood they were
debating how he had escaped and wondering whether he had gone back
into the station. He lay behind some sacks of flour watching his foes
closely. Greatly to his surprise, his panic had passed and he felt
collected. He realized that he was fighting for his life and meant to
sell it as dearly as possible. And he had resolved to shoot the
instant they started toward him.

From the table he heard the despatcher's call, but he no longer dared
answer it. The Indians, with a war-whoop, urged their ponies ahead and
a revolver shot rang from the station window. It was followed almost
instantly by a second and a third. The Indians ducked low on their
horses' necks and, wheeling, made for the willows. In the quick dash
for cover one horse stumbled and threw his rider. The animal bolted
and the Indian, springing to his feet, ran like a deer after his
companions, but he did not escape unscathed. Two shots followed him
from the station, and the Indian, falling with a bullet in his thigh,
dragged himself wounded into hiding.

A chorus of cries from far and near heralded the opening of the
encounter. Enraged by the repulse, a larger number of Indians riding
in opened fire on the station and Bucks found himself target for a
fusillade of bullets. But protected by his barricades he was only
fearful of a charge, for when the Indians should start to rush the
station he felt all would be over.

While he lay casting up his chances, and discharging his revolver at
intervals to make a showing, the fire of the Indians slackened. This,
Bucks felt, boded no good, and reckless of his store of cartridges he
continued to blaze away whenever he could see a bush moving.

It was at this moment that he heard the despatcher calling him, and a
message followed. "If you are alive, answer me."

Bucks ran to the key. The situation was hopeless. No train was in
sight as he pressed his fingers on the button for the last time.

"Stopped their first advance and wounded one. They are going to
charge----"

He heard a sharp chorus outside and, feeling what it meant, sent his
last word: "Good-by." From three sides of the open ground around the
building the Indians were riding down upon him. Firing as fast as he
could with any accuracy, he darted from window to window, reaching the
west window last. As he looked out he saw up the valley the smoke of
the approaching train and understood from the fury of his enemies that
they, too, had seen it. But the sight of the train now completely
unnerved him. To lose his life with help a few moments away was an
added bitterness, and he saw that the relief train would be too late
to save him.

He fired the last cartridge in his hot revolver at the circling braves
and, as he reloaded, the Indians ran up on the platform and threw
themselves against the door. Fiendish faces peered through the
window-panes and one Indian smashed a sash in with a war club.

Bucks realized that his reloading was useless. The cartridges were, in
fact, slipping through his fingers, when, dropping his revolver, he
drew Bob Scott's knife and backed up against the inner office door,
just as a warrior brandishing a hatchet sprang at him.




CHAPTER XII


Before Bucks had time to think, a second Indian had sprung through the
open window. A feeling of helpless rage swept over him at being
cornered, defenceless; and, expecting every instant to be despatched
with no more consideration than if he had been a rat, he stood at bay,
determined not to be taken alive.

For an instant his mind worked clearly and with the rapidity of
lightning. His life swept before him as if he were a drowning man. In
that horrible moment he even heard his call clicking from the
despatcher. Of the two Indians confronting him, half-naked and shining
with war-paint, one appeared more ferocious than the other, and Bucks
only wondered which would attack first.

He had not long to wait. The first brave raised a war club to brain
him. As Bucks's straining eye followed the movement, the second Indian
struck the club down. Bucks understood nothing from the action. The
quick, guttural words that followed, the sharp dispute, the struggle
of the first savage to evade the second and brain the white boy in
spite of his antagonist--a lithe, active Indian of great strength who
held the enraged warrior back--all of this, Bucks, bewildered, could
understand nothing of. The utmost he could surmise was that the second
warrior, from his dress and manner of authority perhaps a chief, meant
to take him alive for torture. He watched the contest between the two
Indians until with force and threats the chief had driven the warrior
outside and turned again upon him.

It was then that Bucks, desperate, hurled himself knife in hand at the
chief to engage him in final combat. The Indian, though surprised, met
his onset skilfully and before Bucks could realize what had occurred
he had been disarmed and tossed like a child half-way across the
room.

Before he could move, the chief was standing over him. "Stop!" he
exclaimed, catching Bucks's arm in a grip of steel as the latter tried
to drag down his antagonist. "I am Iron Hand. Does a boy fight me?"
he demanded with contempt in every word. "See your knife." He pointed
to the floor. "When I was wounded by the Cheyennes you gave me
venison. You have forgotten; but the Sioux is not like the white
man--Iron Hand does not forget."

A fusillade of shots and a babel of yelling from outside interrupted
his words. The chief paid no attention to the uproar. "Your soldiers
are here. The building is on fire, but you are safe. I am Iron Hand."

So saying, and before Bucks could find his tongue, the chief strode to
the rear window, with one blow of his arm smashed out the whole sash,
and springing lightly through the crashing glass, disappeared.

Bucks, panting with confusion, sprang to his feet. Smoke already
poured in from the freight room, and the crackling of flames and the
sounds of the fighting outside reminded Bucks of Iron Hand's words. He
ran to the door.

The train had pulled up within a hundred feet of the station and the
railroad men in the coaches were pouring a fire upon the Indians,
under the cover of which scouts were unloading, down a hastily
improvised chute, their horses, together with those of such troopers
as had been gathered hurriedly.

Bucks ran back into the office and opening his wooden chest threw into
it what he could of his effects and tried to drag it from the burning
building out upon the platform. As he struggled with the unwieldy box,
two men ran up from the train toward him, staring at him as if he had
been a ghost. He recognized Stanley and Dancing.

"Are you hurt?" cried Stanley hastening to his side.

"No," exclaimed Bucks, his head still swimming, "but everything will
be burned."

"How in the name of God, boy, have you escaped?" demanded Stanley, as
he clenched Bucks's shoulder in his hand. Dancing seized the
cumbersome chest and dragged it out of danger. The Indians, jeering,
as they retreated, at the railroad men, made no attempt to continue
the attack, but rode away content with the destruction of the train
and the station.

Stanley, assured of Bucks's safety, though he wasted no time in
waiting for an explanation of it, directed the men to save what they
could out of the station--it was too late to save the building--and
hurried away to see to the unloading of the horses.

Bill Dancing succeeded in rescuing the telegraph instruments and with
Bucks's help he got the wires rigged upon a cracker-box outside where
the operator could report the story to the now desperate despatcher.
The scouts and troopers were already in the saddle and, leading the
way for the men, gave chase across the bottoms to the Indians.

Bob Scott, riding past Bucks reined up for a moment. "Got pretty warm
for you, Bucks--eh? How did you get through?"

Bucks jumped toward him. "Bob!" he exclaimed, grasping his arm. "It
was Iron Hand."

"Iron Hand!" echoed Bob, lifting his eyebrows. "Brulés, then. It will
be a long chase. What did he say?"

"Why, we talked pretty fast," stammered Bucks. "He spoke about the
venison but never said a blamed word about my fixing his arm."

Bob laughed as he struck his horse and galloped on to pass the news to
Stanley. A detail was left to clear the cotton-woods across the creek
and guard the railroad men against possible attack while clearing the
wreck. The body of the unfortunate brakeman was brought across the
bridge and laid in the baggage car and a tent was pitched to serve as
a temporary station for Bucks.

While this was being done, Bob Scott, who had ridden farthest up the
creek, appeared leading his horse and talking to a white man who was
walking beside him. He had found the conductor of the wrecked train,
Pat Francis, who, young though he was, had escaped the Indians long
enough to reach a cave in the creek bank and whose rifle shots Bucks
had heard, while Francis was holding the Sioux at bay during the
fight. The plucky conductor, who was covered with dust, was greeted
with acclamations.

"He claims," volunteered Scott, speaking to Stanley, "he could have
stood them off all day."

Francis's eyes fell regretfully on the dead brakeman. "If that boy had
minded what I said and come with me he would have been alive now."

The wrecking train, with a gang of men from Medicine Bend, arrived
late in the afternoon, and at supper-time a courier rode in from
Stanley's scouting party with despatches for General Park. Stanley
reported the chase futile. As Bob Scott had predicted, the Brulés had
burned the ranch and craftily scattered the moment they reached the
sand-hills. Instead of a single trail to follow, Stanley found fifty.
Only his determination to give the Indians a punishment that they
would remember held the pursuing party together, and three days
afterward he fought a battle with the wily raiders, surprised in a
canyon on the Frenchman River, which, though indecisive, gave Iron
Hand's band a wholesome respect for the stubborn engineer.

The train service under the attacks of the Indians thus repeated, fell
into serious demoralization, and an armed guard of regular soldiers
rode all trains for months after the Goose Creek attack. Bucks was
given a guard for his own lonely and exposed position in the person of
Bob Scott, the man of all men the young operator would have wished
for. And at intervals he read from his favorite novel to the scout,
who still questioned whether it was a true story.




CHAPTER XIII


With Bob Scott to lead an occasional hunting trip, Bucks found the
time go fast at Goose Creek and no excitement came again until later
in the summer.

Where Goose Creek breaks through the sand-hills the country is flat,
and, when swollen with spring rains, the stream itself has the force
and fury of a mountain river. Then summer comes; the rain clouds hang
no longer over the Black Hills, continuing sunshine parches the face
of the great plains, and the rushing and turbulent Goose Creek
ignominiously evaporates--either ascending to the skies in vapor or
burrowing obscurely under the sprawling sands that lie within its
course. Only stagnant pools and feeble rivulets running in widely
separated channels--hiding under osiers or lurking within shady
stretches of a friendly bank--remain to show where in April the noisy
Goose engulfs everything within reach of its foaming wings. The creek
bed becomes in midsummer a mere sandy ford that may be crossed by a
child--a dry map that prints the running feet of snipe and plover, the
creeping tread of the mink and the muskrat, and the slouching trail of
the coyote and the wolf.

Yet there is treachery in the Goose even in its apparent repose, and
the unwary emigrant sometimes comes to grief upon its treacherous bed.
The sands of the Goose have swallowed up more than one heedless
buffalo, and the Indian knows them too well to trust them at all.

When the railroad bridge was put across the creek, the difficulties of
securing it were very considerable and Brodie, the chief engineer, was
in the end forced to rely upon temporary foundations. Trainmen and
engineers for months carried "slow" orders for Goose Creek bridge, and
Bucks grew weary with warnings from the despatchers to careless
enginemen about crossing it.

Among the worst offenders in running his engine too fast over Goose
Creek bridge was Dan Baggs, who, breathing fire through his bristling
red whiskers and flashing it from his watery blue eyes, feared nobody
but Indians, and obeyed reluctantly everybody connected with the
railroad. Moreover, he never hesitated to announce that when "they
didn't like the way he ran his engine they could get somebody else to
run it."

Baggs's great failing was that, while he often ran his train too fast,
he wasted so much time at stations that he was always late. And it was
said of him that the only instance in which he ever reached the end of
his division on time was the day he ran away from Iron Hand's band of
Sioux at Goose Creek--on that occasion he had made, without a doubt, a
record run.

But when, one hot afternoon in August, Baggs left Medicine Bend with a
light engine for Fort Park, where he was to pick up a train-load of
ties, he had no thought of making further pioneer railroad history.
His engine had been behaving so well that his usual charges of
inefficiency against it had not for a long time been registered with
the roundhouse foreman, and Dan Baggs, dreaming in the heat and
sunshine of nothing worse than losing his scalp to the Indians or
winning a fortune at cards--gambling was another of his failings--was
pounding lightly along over the rails when he reached, without heeding
it, Goose Creek bridge.

There were those who averred that after his experience with Iron Hand
he always ran faster across the forbidden bridge than anywhere else.
On this occasion Baggs bowled merrily along the trestle and was
getting toward the middle of the river when the pony trucks jumped the
rail and the drivers dropped on the ties. Dan Baggs yelled to his
fireman.

It was unnecessary. Delaroo, the fireman, a quiet but prudent fellow,
was already standing in the gangway prepared for an emergency. He
sprang, not a minute too soon, from the engine and lighted in the
sand. But Dan Baggs's fixed habit of being behind time chained him to
his seat an instant too long. The bulky engine, with its tremendous
impetus, shot from the trestle and plunged like a leviathan clear of
the bridge and down into the wet sand of the creek-bed.

The fireman scrambled to his feet and ran forward, expecting to find
his engineman hurt or killed. What was his surprise to behold Baggs,
uninjured, on his feet and releasing the safety-valve of his fallen
locomotive to prevent an explosion. The engine lay on its side. The
crash of the breaking timbers, followed by a deafening blast of
escaping steam, startled Bucks and, with Bob Scott, he ran out of the
station. As he saw the spectacle in the river, he caught his breath.
He lived to see other wrecks--some appalling ones--but this was his
first, and the shock of seeing Dan Baggs's engine lying prone in the
river, trumpeting forth a cloud of steam, instead of thundering across
the bridge as he normally saw it every day, was an extraordinary one.

Filled with alarm, he ran toward the bridge expecting that the worst
had happened to the engineman and fireman. But his amazement grew
rather than lessened when he saw Delaroo and Baggs running for their
lives toward him. He awaited them uneasily.

"What's the matter?" demanded Bucks, as Baggs, well in the lead, came
within hailing distance.

"Matter!" panted Baggs, not slackening his pace. "Matter! Look at my
engine! Indians!"

"Indians, your grandmother!" retorted Bob Scott mildly. "There's not
an Indian within forty miles--what's the matter with you?"

"They wrecked us, Bob," declared Baggs, pointing to his roaring
engine; "see for yourself, man. Them cotton-woods are full of Indians
right now."

"Full of rabbits!" snorted Bob Scott. "You wrecked yourself by running
too fast."

"Delaroo," demanded Dan Baggs, pointing dramatically at his taciturn
fireman, who had now overtaken him, "how fast was I running?"

Peter Delaroo, an Indian half-blood himself, returned a disconcerting
answer. "As fast as you could, I reckon." He understood at once that
Baggs had raised a false alarm to protect himself from blame for the
accident, and resented being called upon to support an absurd story.

Baggs stood his ground. "If you don't find an Indian has done this,"
he asserted, addressing Bob Scott with indignation, "you can have my
pay check."

"Yes," returned Bob, meditatively. "I reckon an Indian did it, but you
are the Indian."

"Come, stop your gabble, you boys!" blustered the doughty engineman,
speaking to everybody and with a show of authority. "Bucks, notify the
despatcher I'm in the river."

"Get back to your engine, then," said Scott. "Don't ask Bucks to send
in a false report. And afterward," suggested Scott, "you and I, Dan,
can go over and clean the Indians out of the cotton-woods."

Baggs took umbrage at the suggestion, and no amount of chaffing from
Scott disconcerted him, but after Bucks reported the catastrophe to
Medicine Bend the wires grew warm. Baxter was very angry. A crew was
got together at Medicine Bend, and a wrecking-train made up with a
gang of bridge and track men and despatched to the scene of the
disaster. The operating department was so ill equipped to cope with
any kind of a wreck that it was after midnight before the train got
under way.

The sun had hardly risen next morning, when Bob Scott, without any
words of explanation, ran into Bucks's room, woke him hurriedly, and,
bidding him dress quickly, ran out. It took only a minute for Bucks to
spring from his cot and get into his clothes and he hastened out of
doors to learn what the excitement was about. Scott was walking fast
down toward the bridge. Bucks joined him.

"What is it, Bob?" he asked hastily. "Indians?"

"Indians?" echoed Bob scornfully. "I guess not this time. I've heard
of Indians stealing pretty nearly everything on earth--but not this.
No Indian in this country, not even Turkey Leg, ever stole a
locomotive."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean Dan Baggs's engine is gone."

Bucks's face turned blank with amazement. "Gone?" he echoed
incredulously. He looked at Scott with reproach. "You are joking
me."

"See if you can find it," returned Scott tersely.

As they hastened on, Bucks looked to the spot where the engine had
lain the night before. It was no longer there.

He was too stunned to ask further questions. The two strode along the
ties in silence. Eagerly Bucks ran to the creek bank and scanned more
closely the sandy bed. It was there that the wrecked engine and tender
had lain the night before. The sand showed no disturbance whatever. It
was as smooth as a table. But nothing was to be seen of the engine or
tender. These had disappeared as completely as if an Aladdin's slave,
at his master's bidding, had picked them from their resting place and
set them on top of some distant sand-hill.

"Bob," demanded Bucks, breathless, "what does it mean?"

"It means the company is out one brand-new locomotive."

"But what has happened?" asked Bucks, rubbing his eyes to make sure he
was not dreaming. "Where is the engine?"

Scott pointed to the spot where the engine had lain. "It is in that
quicksand," said he.

The engine, during the night, had, in fact, sunk completely into the
sand. No trace was left of it or of its tender. Not a wheel or cab
corner remained to explain; all had mysteriously and completely
disappeared.

"Great Heavens, Bob!" exclaimed Bucks. "How will they _ever_ get it
out?"

"The only way they'll ever get it out, I reckon, is by keeping Dan
Baggs digging there till he digs it out."

"Dan Baggs never could dig that out--how long would it take him?"

"About a hundred and seventy-five years."

As Scott spoke, the two heard footsteps behind them. Baggs and
Delaroo, who had slept at the section-house, were coming down the
track. "Baggs," said Scott ironically, as the sleepy-looking
engineman approached, "you were right about the Indians being in the
cotton-woods last night."

"I knew I was right," exclaimed Baggs, nodding rapidly and brusquely.
"Next time you'll take a railroad man's word, I guess. Where are
they?" he added, looking apprehensively around. "What have they
done?"

"They have stolen your engine," answered Scott calmly. He pointed to
the river bed. Baggs stared; then running along the bank he looked
up-stream and down and came back sputtering.

"Why--what--how--what in time! Where's the engine?"

"Indians," remarked Scott sententiously, looking wisely down upon the
sphinx-like quicksand. "Indians, Dan. They must have loaded the engine
on their ponies during the night--did you hear anything?" he demanded,
turning to Bucks. Bucks shook his head. "I thought I did," continued
Scott. "Thought I heard something--what's that?"

Baggs jumped. All were ready to be startled at anything--for even
Scott, in spite of his irony, had been as much astounded as any one at
the first sight of the empty bed of sand. It was enough to make any
one feel queerish. The noise they heard was the distant rumble of the
wrecking-train.

In the east the sun was bursting over the sand-hills into a clear sky.
Bucks ran to the station to report the train and the disappearance of
the engine. When he had done this he ran back to the bridge. The
wrecking-train had pulled up near at hand and the greater part of the
men, congregated in curious groups on the bridge, were talking
excitedly and watching several men down on the sand, who with spades
were digging vigorously about the spot which Baggs and Delaroo
indicated as the place where the engine had fallen. Others from time
to time joined them, as they scraped out wells and trenches in the
moist sand. These filled with water almost as rapidly as they were
opened.

Urged by their foreman, a dozen additional men joined the toilers.
They dug in lines and in circles, singly and in squads, broadening
their field of prospecting as the laughter and jeers of their
companions watching from the bridge spurred them to further toil. But
not the most diligent of their efforts brought to light a single
trace of the missing engine.

The wrecking crew was mystified. Many refused to believe the engine
had ever fallen off the bridge. But there was the broken track! They
could not escape the evidence of their eyes, even if they did scoff at
the united testimony of the two men that had been on the engine when
it leaped from the bridge and the two that had afterward seen it lying
in the sand.

The track and bridge men without more ado set to work to repair the
damage done the track and bridge. A volley of messages came from
head-quarters. At noon a special car, with Colonel Stanley and the
division heads arrived to investigate.

The digging was planned and directed on a larger scale and resumed
with renewed vigor. Sheet piling was attempted. Every expedient was
resorted to that Stanley's scientific training could suggest to bring
to light the buried treasure--for an engine in those days, and so far
from locomotive works, was very literally a treasure to the railroad
company. Stanley himself was greatly upset. He paced the ties above
where the men were digging, directing and encouraging them doggedly,
but very red in the face and contemplating the situation with
increasing vexation. He stuck persistently to the work till darkness
set in. Meantime, the track had been opened and the wrecking-train
crossed the bridge and took the passing track. The moon rose full over
the broad valley and the silent plains. Men still moved with lanterns
under the bridge. Bucks, after a hard day's work at the key, was
invited for supper to Stanley's car, where the foremen had assembled
to lay new plans for the morrow. But Bob Scott, when Bucks told him,
shook his head.

"They are wasting their work," he murmured. "The company is 'out.'
That engine is half-way to China by this time."

It might, at least, as well have been, as far as the railroad company
was concerned. The digging and sounding and scraping proved equally
useless. The men dug down almost as deep as the piling that supported
the bridge itself--it was in vain. In the morning the sun smiled at
their efforts and again at night the moon rose mysteriously upon them,
and in the distant sand-hills a thousand coyotes yelped a requiem for
the lost locomotive. But no human eye ever saw so much as a bolt of
the great machine again.




CHAPTER XIV


The loss of the engine at Goose Creek brought an unexpected relief to
Bucks. His good work in the emergency earned for him a promotion. He
was ordered to report to Medicine Bend for assignment, and within a
week a new man appeared at Goose Creek to relieve him.

There was little checking up to do. Less than thirty minutes gave
Bucks time to answer all of his successor's questions and pack his
trunk. He might have slept till morning and taken a passenger train to
Medicine Bend, but the prospect of getting away from Goose Creek at
once was too tempting to dismiss. A freight train of bridge timbers
pulled across the bridge just as Bucks was ready to start. Pat
Francis, the doughty conductor, who, single-handed, had held Iron
Hand's braves at bay, was in charge of the train. He offered Bucks a
bench and blanket in the caboose for the night, and promised to have
him in Medicine Bend in the morning; Bucks, nothing loath, accepted.
His trunk was slung aboard and the train pulled out for Medicine
Bend.

The night proved unseasonably cold. Francis built a blazing fire in
the caboose stove and afterward shared his hearty supper with his
guest. As the train thundered and rumbled slowly over the rough track,
the conductor, while Bucks stretched out on the cushions, entertained
him with stories of his experiences on the railroad frontier--not
suspecting that before morning he should furnish for his listener one
of the strangest of them.

Bucks curled up in his blanket late, but, in spite of unaccustomed
surroundings and the pitch and lurch of the caboose, which was hardly
less than the tossing of a ship in a gale, Bucks dozed while his
companion and the brakeman watched. The latter, a large, heavy fellow,
was a busy man, as the calls for brakes--and only hand-brakes were
then known--were continual. There were no other passengers, and except
for the frequent blasts of the engine whistle the night passed quietly
enough.

Bucks dreamed of fighting bears with Scuffy, and found himself
repeatedly rolling down precipitous mountains without landing
successfully anywhere. Then he quieted into a heavy, unbroken sleep
and found himself among the hills of Alleghany, hunting rabbits that
were constantly changing into antelope and escaping him. Fatigued with
his unceasing efforts, he woke.

A gray light, half dusk, revealed the outlines of the cab interior, as
he opened his eyes, and a thundering, rumbling sound that rang in his
ears and seemed everywhere about him cleared his mind and brought him
back to his situation.

It was cold, and he looked at the stove. The fire was out. On the
opposite side of the cab the brakeman lay on the cushions fast asleep.
Outside, the thundering noises came continuously from everywhere at
once. It did not occur to Bucks that the caboose was standing still.
It trembled and vibrated more or less, but he noticed there was no
longer any lurching and thought they had reached remarkably smooth
track. They were certainly not standing still, he assured himself, as
he rubbed his eyes to wake up. But perhaps they might be in the yards
at Medicine Bend, with other trains rolling past them.

Somewhat confused he raised the curtain of the window near him. The
sky was overcast and day was breaking. He rose higher on his elbow to
look more carefully. Everywhere that his eye could reach toward the
horizon the earth seemed in motion, rising and falling in great waves.
Was it an earthquake? He rubbed his eyes. It seemed as if everywhere
thousands of heads were tossing, and from this continual tossing and
trampling came the thunder and vibration. Moreover, the caboose was
not moving; of this he felt sure. Amazed, and only half-awake, he
concluded that the train must have left the track and dropped into a
river. The uncertainty of his vision was due, he now saw, to a storm
that had swept the plains. It was blowing, with a little snow, and in
the midst of the snow the mysterious waves were everywhere rising and
falling.

Bucks put the curtain completely aside. The sound of his feet striking
the floor aroused the conductor, who rose from his cushion with a
start. "I've been asleep," he exclaimed, rubbing his eyes. "Where are
we, Bucks?"

"That is what I am trying to figure out."

"Where is the brakeman?" demanded Francis. As he asked the question he
saw the big fellow asleep in the corner. Francis shook him roughly.
"That comes of depending on some one else," he muttered to Bucks. "I
went to sleep on his promise to watch for an hour--he knew I had been
up all last night and told me to take a nap. You see what happened.
The moment I went to sleep, he went to sleep," exclaimed Francis in
disgust. "Wake up!" he continued brusquely to the drowsy brakeman.
"Where are we? What have we stopped for? What's all this noise?"
Though he asked the questions fast, he expected no answer to any of
them from the confused trainman and waited for none. Instead, he threw
up a curtain and looked out. "Thunder and guns! Buffaloes!" he cried,
and seizing his lantern ran out of the caboose door and climbed the
roof-ladder. Bucks was fast upon his heels.

The freight train stood upon a wide plain and in the midst of
thousands of buffaloes travelling south. As far as their eyes could
reach in all directions, the astonished railroad men beheld a sea of
moving buffaloes. Without further delay Francis, followed by Bucks,
started along the running boards for the head end of the train.

The conductor found his train intact; but when he reached the head end
he could find neither engine, tender, nor crew. All had disappeared.
Running down the ladder of the head box-car, the conductor examined
the draw-bar for evidence of an accident. The coupling was apparently
uninjured but the tender and engine were gone. Francis, more upset
than Bucks had ever seen him, or ever afterward saw him, walked
moodily back to the caboose. What humiliated him more than the strange
predicament in which he found himself was that he had trusted to a
subordinate and gone to sleep in his caboose while on duty.

"Serves me right," he muttered, knitting his brows. "Brakeman," he
added sternly, "take your lantern and flags and get out behind. The
minute the buffaloes get across the track, go back two hundred yards
and protect us. I will watch the head end. While these buffaloes are
crossing they will be protection enough. Soon as it is daylight we
will find out where we are."

The snow continued falling and the buffaloes drifted south with the
storm, which was squally. Every moment, as the sky and landscape
lightened, Francis, whom Bucks had followed forward, expected to see
the last of the moving herd. But an hour passed and a second hour
without showing any gaps in the enormous fields. And the brighter the
daylight grew, the more buffaloes they could see.

Francis stormed at the situation, but he could do nothing. Finally,
and as hope was deserting him, he heard the distant tooting of an
engine whistle. It grew louder and louder until Bucks could hear the
ringing of a bell and the hissing of the open cylinder cocks of a
slow-moving locomotive. Gaps could now be discerned in the great herds
of buffaloes, and through the blowing snow the uncertain outlines of
the backing engine could dimly be seen. Francis angrily watched the
approaching engine, and, as soon as it had cleared the last of the
stumbling buffaloes on the track, he walked forward to meet it and
greeted the engineman roughly.

"What do you mean by setting my train out here on the main track in
the middle of the night?" he demanded ferociously, and those that knew
Pat Francis never wanted to add to his anger when it was aroused.

"Don't get excited," returned Dan Baggs calmly, for it was the
redoubtable Baggs who held the throttle. "I found I was getting short
of water. We are just coming to Blackwood Hill and I knew I could
never make Blackwood Siding with the train. So I uncoupled and ran to
the Blackwood tank for water. We are all right now. Couple us up. If I
hadn't got water, we should have been hung up here till we got another
engine."

"Even so," retorted Francis, "you needn't have been all night about
it."

"But when we started back there were about ten million buffaloes on
the track. If I had been heading into them with the cow-catcher I
shouldn't have been afraid. But I had to back into them, and if I had
crippled one it would have upset the tender."

"Back her up," commanded Francis curtly, "and pull us out of here."

Meantime there was much excitement at the despatchers' office in
Medicine Bend over the lost train. It had been reported out of White
Horse Station on time, and had not reported at Blackwood. For hours
the despatcher waited vainly for some word from the bridge timbers.
When the train reported at Blackwood Station, the message of Francis
explaining the cause of the tie-up seemed like a voice from the tombs.
But the strain was relieved and the train made fast time from
Blackwood in. About nine o'clock in the morning it whistled for the
Medicine Bend yards and a few moments later Bucks ran upstairs in the
station building to report for assignment.




CHAPTER XV


He found Baxter needing a man in the office, and Bucks was asked to
substitute until Collins, the despatcher who was ill, could take his
trick again. This brought Bucks where he was glad to be, directly
under Stanley's eye, but it brought also new responsibilities, and
opened his mind to the difficulties of operating a new and already
over-taxed line in the far West, where reliable men and available
equipment were constantly at a premium.

The problem of getting and keeping good men was the hardest that
confronted the operating department, and the demoralization of the
railroad men from the life in Medicine Bend grew steadily worse as the
new town attracted additional parasites. When Bucks, after his return,
took his first walk after supper up Front Street, he was not surprised
at this. Medicine Bend was more than ten times as noisy, and if it
were possible to add any vice to its viciousness this, too, it would
seem, had been done.

As was his custom, he walked to the extreme end of Front Street and
turning started back for the station, when he encountered Baxter, the
chief despatcher. Baxter saw Bucks first and spoke.

"I thought you were taking your sleep at this time," returned Bucks,
greeting him.

"So I should be," he replied, "but we are in trouble. Dan Baggs is to
take out the passenger train to-night, and no one can find him. He is
somewhere up here in one of these dives and has forgotten all about
his engine. It is enough to set a man crazy to have to run trains with
such cattle. Bucks, suppose you take one side of the street while I
take the other, and help me hunt him up."

"What shall we do?"

"Look in every door all the way down-street till we find him. If we
don't get the fellow on his engine, there will be no train out till
midnight. Say nothing to anybody and answer no questions; just find
him."

Baxter started down the right-hand side of the long street and Bucks
took the left-hand side. It was queer business for Bucks, and the
sights that met him at every turn were enough to startle one stouter
than he. He controlled his disgust and ignored the questions sometimes
hurled at him by drunken men and women, intent only on getting his eye
on the irresponsible Baggs.

Half-way down toward the square he reached a dance hall. The doors
were spread wide open and from within came a din of bad music,
singing, and noise of every kind.

Bucks entered the place with some trepidation. In the rear of the
large room was a raised platform extending the entire width of it. At
one end of the platform stood a piano which a man pounded incessantly
and fiercely. Other performers were singing and dancing to entertain a
motley and disorderly audience seated in a still more disorderly array
before them.

At the right of the room a long bar stretched from the street back as
far as the stage, and standing in front of this, boisterous groups of
men were smoking and drinking, or wrangling in tipsy fashion. The
opposite side of the big room was given over to gambling devices of
every sort, and this space was filled with men sitting about small
tables and others sitting and standing along one side of long tables,
at each of which one man was dealing cards, singly, out of a metal
case held in his hand. Other men clustered about revolving wheels
where, oblivious of everything going on around them, they watched with
feverish anxiety a ball thrown periodically into the disc by the man
operating the wheel.

Bucks walked slowly down the room the full length of the bar, scanning
each group of men as he passed. He crossed the room behind the chairs
where the audience of the singers and dancers sat. He noticed, when he
reached this, the difference in the faces he was scrutinizing. At the
gambling tables the men saw and heard nothing of what went on about
them. He walked patiently on his quest from group to group, unobserved
by those about him, but without catching a sight of the elusive
engineman. As he reached the end of the gambling-room, he hesitated
for a moment and had finished his quest when, drawn by curiosity, he
stopped for an instant to watch the scene about the roulette wheels.

Almost instantly he heard a sharp voice behind him. "What are you
doing here?"

Bucks, surprised, turned to find himself confronted by the black-bearded
passenger conductor, David Hawk. Baxter's admonition to say nothing
of what he was doing confused Bucks for an instant, and he stammered
some evasive answer.

Hawk, blunt and stern in word and manner, followed the evasion up
sharply: "Don't you know this is no place for you?" and before Bucks
could answer, Hawk had fixed him with his piercing eyes.

"You want to hang around a gambling-table, do you? You want to watch
how it is done and try it yourself sometime? You want to see how much
smarter you can play the game than these sheep-heads you are
watching?

"Don't talk to me," he exclaimed sternly as Bucks tried to explain.
"I've seen boys in these places before. I know where they end. If I
ever catch you in a gambling-den again I'll throw you neck and heels
into the river."

The words fell upon Bucks like a cloud-burst. Before he could return a
word or catch his breath Hawk strode away.

As Bucks stood collecting his wits, Baggs, the man for whom he was
looking, passed directly before his eyes. Bucks sprang forward, caught
Baggs by the arm, and led him toward the door, as he gave him Baxter's
message. Baggs, listening somewhat sheepishly, made no objection to
going down to take his train and walked through the front door with
Bucks out into the street.

As they did this, a red-faced man who was standing on the doorstep
seized Bucks's sleeve and attempted to jerk him across the sidewalk.
Bucks shook himself free and turned on his assailant. He needed no
introduction to the hard cheeks, one of which was split by a deep
scar. It was Perry, Rebstock's crony, whom Stanley had driven out of
Sellersville on the Spider Water.

"What are you doing around here interfering with my business?" he
demanded of Bucks harshly. "I've watched you spying around. The next
time I catch you trying to pull a customer out of my place, I'll knock
your head off."

Bucks eyed the bully with gathering wrath. He was already upset
mentally, and taken so suddenly and unawares lost his temper and his
caution. "If you do, it will be the last head you knock off in
Medicine Bend," he retorted. "When I find trainmen in your joint that
are needed on their runs, I'll pull them out every time. The safest
thing you can do is to keep quiet. If the railroad men ever get
started after you, you red-faced bully, they'll run you and your whole
tribe into the river again."

It was a foolish defiance and might have cost him his life, though
Bucks knew he was well within the truth in what he said. Among the
railroad men the feeling against the gamblers was constantly growing
in bitterness. Perry instantly attempted to draw a revolver, when a
man who had been watching the scene unobserved stepped close enough
between him and Bucks to catch Perry's eye. It was Dave Hawk again.
What he had just heard had explained things to him and he stood now
grimly laughing at the enraged gambler.

"Good for the boy," he exclaimed. "Want to get strung up, do you,
Perry? Fire that gun just once and the vigilantes will have a rope
around your neck in five minutes."

Perry, though furious, realized the truth of what Hawk said. He poured
a torrent of abuse upon Bucks, but made no further effort to use his
gun. The dreaded word "vigilantes" had struck terror to the heart of a
man who had once been in their hands and escaped only by an accident.

"You know what he said is so, don't you?" laughed Hawk savagely.
"What? You don't?" he demanded, as Perry tried to face him down.
"You'll be lucky, when that time comes, if you don't get your heels
tangled up with a telegraph pole before you reach the river,"
concluded Hawk tauntingly.

"Let him keep away from me if he doesn't want trouble," snarled the
discomfited gambler, eying Bucks threateningly. But he was plainly
out-faced, and retreated, grumbling, toward the dance-hall steps.

Dan Baggs, at the first sign of hostilities, had fled. Bucks, afraid
of losing him, now followed, leaving Hawk still abusing the gambler,
but when he overtook the engineman he found he was going, as he had
promised, straight to the roundhouse.

It was almost time for the night trick. Bucks hastened upstairs to the
despatchers' office and reported to Baxter, who had returned ahead of
him and was elated at Bucks's success. Before the young substitute
took up his train-sheet, he told the chief despatcher of how strangely
the conductor, Dave Hawk, had talked to him.

"He has a reason for it," responded Baxter briefly.

"What reason?"

"There is as good a railroad man as ever lived," said Baxter,
referring to the black-bearded conductor. "He is the master of us all
in the handling of trains. He could be anything anybody is on this
line to-day that he might want to be but for one thing. If he hadn't
ruined his own life, Dave Hawk could be superintendent here. He knows
whereof he speaks, Bucks."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean he is a gambler. Did you hear the shooting after I left
you?"

"No, what was it?"

"It must have been while you were in Perry's. Not five minutes after
we parted, a saloon-keeper shot a woman down right in front of me; I
was standing less than ten feet from her when she fell," said the
despatcher, recounting the incident. "But I was too late to protect
her; and I should probably have been shot myself if I had tried to."

"Was the brute arrested?"

"Arrested! Who arrests anybody in this town?"

"How long is this sort of thing going on?" asked Bucks, sitting down
and signing a transfer.

"How long!" echoed the despatcher, taking up his hat to go to his
room. "I don't know how long. But when their time comes--God help that
crowd up Front Street!"




CHAPTER XVI


Following Collins's return to duty, Bucks was assigned to a new
western station, Point of Rocks. It was in the mountains and where
Casement, now laying five and even six miles of track a day, had just
turned over a hundred and eighty miles to the operating department.
Bucks, the first operator ever sent to the lonely place afterward
famous in railroad story, put his trunk aboard a freight train the
next morning and started for his destination.

The ride through the mountains was an inspiration. A party of army
officers and their wives, preferring to take the day run for the
scenery, were bound for one of the mountain posts, Fort Bridger, and
they helped to make the long day journey in the cabin car, with its
frequent stops and its laborious engine-puffing over the mountain
grades, a pleasant one. The women made coffee on a cabin stove and
Bucks, the only other passenger, was invited to lunch with them.

When the train stopped at Point of Rocks and Bucks got off, the sun
was setting, and though the thin, clear air brought the distant
mountains very close, the prospect was not a cheerful one. In every
direction mountain ranges, some brown and others snow-capped, rose
upon the horizon. Where the railroad line made a tortuous way among
the barren buttes that dotted the uneven plain all about, there was
not a spear of grass nor a living thing except the stunted sage-brush
of the alkali plain. In the midst of this desert a great upheaval of
granite rock thrown squarely across the direct path of the railroad
opposed its straight course and made a long reverse curve necessary.
This was Point of Rocks.

"You," said Stanley once to Bucks, "may live to see this railroad
built across these mountains as it should be built. There will be no
sharp curves then, no heavy grades such as these our little engines
have to climb now. Great compound locomotives will pull trains of a
hundred cars up grades of less than one per cent and around two and
three degree curves. These high wooden bridges will all be replaced
by big rock and earth fills. Tunnels will pierce the heights that
cannot be scaled by easy grades, and electric power supplied by these
mountain streams themselves will take the place of steam made by coal
and hauled hundreds of miles to give us costly motive power. You may
live, Bucks, to see all of this; I shall not. When it comes, think of
me."

But there was no thought now in Bucks's mind of what the future might
bring to that forbidding desert. He saw only a rude station building,
just put up, and as the train disappeared, he dragged into this his
trunk and hand-bag, and in that act a new outpost of civilization was
established in the great West.

He called up Medicine Bend, reported, lighted a fire in the little
stove, and the spot in the desert known now to men as Point of Rocks
for the first time in the story of the world became a part of it--was
linked to the world itself.

But the place was lonely beyond words, and Bucks had a hard time to
keep it from being too much so for him. He walked at different times
over the country in every direction, and one night after a crudely
prepared supper he strolled out on the platform, desperate for
something to do. Desolation marked the landscape everywhere. He
wandered aimlessly across the track and seeing nothing better to
interest him began climbing Point of Rocks.

The higher he climbed the more absorbed he became. Youth and strength
lent ardor to the ascent, and Bucks, soon forgetting everything below,
was scaling the granite pile that towered above him. For thirty
minutes, without a halt, he continued to climb, and reaching after a
while what seemed the highest ledge of the rocky spur, he walked out
upon it to the very edge and was rewarded for his labor with a
magnificent panorama of the mountain divide.

In the west the sky was still golden and, though clouds appeared to be
banking heavily in the north, the view of the distant peaks was
unobstructed. From where he sat he could almost have thrown a stone
into one tiny mountain stream that cut a silver path toward the
setting sun, and another, a hundred yards away, that flowed gently
toward the rising sun. And he knew--for Bill Dancing had told
him--that the one rill emptied at last into the Pacific Ocean, and the
other into the Atlantic Ocean. Alongside these tiny streams he could
plainly trace the overland trail of the emigrant wagons, and, cutting
in straighter lines, but following the same general direction, lay the
right-of-way of the new transcontinental railroad.

Beyond, in every direction, stretched great plateaus, and above these
rugged mountain chains, lying in what seemed the eternal solitude of
the vast desert. He was alone with the sunset, and stood for some
moments silenced by the scene before him. When a sound did at length
reach his ear as he sat spellbound, it brought him back to himself
with the suddenness of a shock.

At first he heard only distant echoes of a short, muffled blow,
irregularly repeated and seeming familiar to the ear. As he speculated
upon what the sound might be, it grew gradually plainer and came
seemingly nearer. He bent his eyes down the valley to the west and
scanned the wagon-trail and the railroad track as far as he could in
the dusk, but could see nothing. Then the muffle of the sound was at
once lifted. It came from the other direction, and, turning his eyes,
he saw emerging from a small canyon that hid the trail to the east, a
covered emigrant wagon, drawn by a large team of horses and driven by
a man sitting in front of the hood, making its way slowly up the road
toward the station.

The heavy play of the wheel-hubs on the axles echoed now very plainly
upon his ears, and he sat watching the outfit and wondering whether
the travellers would camp for the night near him and give him what he
craved most of all, a little human society. The horses passed the
station, and as they did so, the driver peered intently at the new
building, looking back around the side of the canvas cover, and
straining his neck to see all he could see, while the horses moved
along.

This would have seemed to Bucks mere idle curiosity had he not noticed
that some one within the wagon parted the canvas flaps at the rear as
it went by and likewise inspected the building with close attention.
Even this was no especial incident for wonderment, nor was Bucks
surprised when the emigrants, after pursuing their way until they were
well out of sight of the station itself, guided their wagon from the
trail into a little depression along the creek as if to make camp for
the night. The driver, a tall, thin man, wearing a slouch hat, got
down from the front of the wagon and walked with a shambling gait to
the head of his horses and loosened their bridles. While the horses
were drinking, a second man, carrying a rifle, climbed down from the
rear of the wagon. He was of a shorter and stockier build, and on one
side the brim of his soft hat had been torn away so that it hung
loosely over one ear, the other ear being covered only by a shock of
dusty hair.

A third man emerged from under the canvas cover, dropping down almost
behind the second--a fat man who looked about him with suspicion as he
slowly drew a rifle out of the wagon. The driver joined his companions
for a brief conference, and when it was finished the three men,
examining their rifles, walked back up the road toward the station. As
they neared it, two of them loitered back and presently took their
places behind convenient rocks where, without being seen, they could
see everything. The third man, the driver, carrying his rifle on his
arm, walked ahead, crossed the road, and, proceeding with some care,
stepped up on the platform and pushed open the door of the station
building.

Bucks, perched high on the rocky spur above the scene, looked on, not
knowing just what to make of it all. As he saw the two men conceal
themselves, he wondered what sort of a call the third man intended
making on the new agent, and why he should leave two armed men close
at hand in ambush when calling on one lone telegraph operator. Bucks
began to feel a bit creepy and watched the scene unfolding below with
keen attention. The driver of the wagon getting no response as he
opened the door, walked inside, and for a moment was not seen. He soon
reappeared, and, stepping to the side of the building signalled his
companions to come up. Bucks saw them emerge from their hiding-places
and join the driver at the station door.

A second conference followed. It was briefer than the first, but
there seemed some difference of opinion among the three men, and
the talk terminated abruptly by the driver's clubbing his rifle and
deliberately smashing in the sash of the window before which he
was standing.

Whatever had held Bucks spellbound thus far released him suddenly for
action when he saw the rifle-stock raised and heard the crash of the
glass. He jumped up, and running to the edge of the ledge nearest the
station yelled at the marauder and shook his finger at him vigorously.
The attack on his habitation was too much for Bucks's composure, and,
although he knew his words could not be heard from where he stood, he
felt he could frighten the intruders.

This was his second mistake. No sooner had his visitors sighted him
than two guns were turned on him and instantly fired. He jumped back
before the fat man, who, slower than his companions, had some
difficulty in shooting so high above his head, could get his gun up.
Afterward, Bucks learned how providential this was, inasmuch as the
big fellow was the deadliest shot of the three.

But at the moment, danger was the last thing the operator thought of.
The unprovoked and murderous attack infuriated him, and again
forgetting his caution he drew his own revolver without hesitation,
and, running to a more protected spot, leaned over the ledge and fired
point-blank into the group, as they looked up to see what had become
of him.

If it had been his intention to hit any one of them with his bullets,
his shooting was a failure and some experience in after years among
men practised in gunnery convinced him that to aim at three men is not
the right way to hit one.

But if he had meant only to create a sensation his move was successful
beyond his greatest expectation. Had a bomb been exploded on the
platform the marauders could not have scattered more quickly. Bucks
never in his life had seen three men move so fast. The fat man,
indeed, had given Bucks the impression of being heavy and slow in his
movements. He now made a surprising exhibition of agility, and Bucks
to his astonishment, saw him distancing his leaner companions and
sprinting for the shelter at a pace that would have made a jack-rabbit
take notice.

Bucks, somewhat keyed up, fired twice again at the fleeing men, but
with no more effect than to kick up the dust once behind and once
ahead of them as they ran. The instant they reached the rocks where
they found shelter Bucks drew back out of sight, and none too soon,
for as he pulled himself away from the ledge, a rifle cracked
viciously from below and the slug threw a chunk of granite almost up
into his face; the fat man was evidently having his innings.

Bucks, out of immediate danger, lay perfectly still for a few moments
casting up the strange situation he found himself in. Why the men
should have acted as they had, was all a mystery, but thieves or
outlaws they evidently were, and outlaws in this country he already
well knew were men who would stop at nothing.

He realized, likewise, that he was in grave danger. The night was
before him. No train would be through before morning. He could not
reach his key by which he might have summoned aid instantly. For a
moment he lay thinking. Then taking off his hat he stuck his head
carefully forward; it was greeted at once by a bullet. The lesson was
obvious and next time he wanted to reconnoitre he stuck his hat
forward first on the muzzle of his gun, as he had often read of
frontiersmen doing, and, having drawn a shot, stuck his head out
afterward for a quick look. All that remained in the open was the team
and wagon, but this left the outlaws at a disadvantage, for if they
wanted to get their outfit and go on their way they must expose
themselves to Bucks's fire. While they might feel that one operator,
armed with a revolver he hardly knew how to use, was not a dangerous
foe, a Colt's, even in the hands of a boy who had thus far fired first
and aimed afterward, was not wholly to be despised. An accident might
happen even under such conditions, and the three men, knowing that
darkness would soon leave them free, waited in absolute silence.

Night fell very soon and the light of the stars, though leaving
objects visible upon the high ledge, left the earth in impenetrable
darkness. Strain his eyes as he would, Bucks could perceive nothing
below. He could hear, however, and one of the first sounds audible was
that of the wagon moving quietly away. It was a welcome sound, even
though he dared not hope his troublesome visitors would withdraw
without further mischief. His chief concern at this juncture was to
get safely, if he could, down the rocks and into the station to give
the alarm to the despatcher; for he made no doubt that the outlaws, on
their wagon trip west, would damage in any way they might be able
railroad supplies and property along their way.

Before Bucks had climbed down very far and after he had made one or
two startling missteps, he began to consider that it was one thing to
get up a rough arête in daylight and quite another to get down one in
the darkness. The heavy clouds moving down from the north had massed
above Point of Rocks, and he heard once in a while an ominous roll of
thunder, as he slipped and slid along and bruised his hands and feet
upon the rocks.

He had with great care got about half-way down, when the pitch
darkness below him was pierced by a small flame which he took at first
for the blaze of a camp fire. In another moment he was undeceived. The
station was on fire. It was evidently the last effort of the outlaws
to wreak vengeance as they left. Bucks clambered over the rocks in
great alarm. He thought he might reach the building in time to save
it, and, forgetting the danger of being shot should his enemies remain
lying in wait, he made his way rapidly down the Point. The flames now
burst from the east window of the station, and he despaired of saving
it, but he hurried on until he heard the crack of a rifle, felt his
cap snatched from his head and fell backward against the face of the
rock. As he lost consciousness he slipped and rolled headlong down the
steep ledge.




CHAPTER XVII


How long Bucks lay in the darkness he did not know, but he woke to
consciousness with thunder crashing in his ears and a flood of rain
beating on his upturned face. When he opened his eyes he was blinded
by sheets of lightning trembling across the sky, and he turned his
face from the pelting rain until he could collect himself.

While he lay insensible from the shock of the bullet, which
providentially had only grazed his scalp, the storm had burst over the
mountains drowning everything before it. Water fell in torrents, and
the desert below him was one wide river. Water danced and swam down
the rocks and ran in broad, shallow waves over the sand, and the scene
was light as day. Thunder peals crashed one upon another like salvoes
of artillery, deafening and alarming the confused boy, and the rain
poured without ceasing. Continuing waves of lightning revealed the
railroad and station building before him and he realized that he had
fallen the rest of the way down from where he had been fired at on the
face of the Point.

He took quick stock of his condition and, rising to his feet, found
himself only sore and bruised. He pressed his way through the flood to
the track, gained the platform, and, judging rightly that his
assailants had abandoned their fight, entered the half-burned building
unafraid. Rain poured in one corner where the roof had burned away
before the storm had put out the fire.

Stumbling through the débris that covered the floor, Bucks made his
way to the operator's table and put his hand up to cut in the
lightning arrester. He was too late. The fire had taken everything
ahead of him, and his hope of getting into communication with the
despatchers was next dashed by the discovery that his instruments were
wrecked.

He sat down--his chair was intact--much disheartened. But without
delay he opened the drawer of the table and feeling for his box of
cartridges found that the thieves had overlooked it. This he slipped
into his pocket with a feeling of relief, and, as he sat, rain-soaked
and with the water dripping from his hair, he reloaded his revolver
and made such preparations as he could to barricade the inner door and
wait for the passing of the storm.

From time to time, awed by the fury of the elements, he looked into
the night. It seemed as if the valley as far as he could see was a
vast lake that rippled and danced over the rocks. Bucks had never
conceived of a thunderstorm like this. Until it abated there was
nothing he could do, and he sat in wretched discomfort, hour after
hour, waiting for the night to pass and listening to the mighty roar
of the waters as they swept broadside down the divide carrying
everything ahead of them. Before daylight the violence of the storm
wore itself away, but the creek in the little canyon south of the
right-of-way, dashing its swollen bulk against the granite walls,
pounded and roared with the fury of a cataract.

When day broke, ragged masses of gray cloud scudded low across the
sky. The rain had ceased, and in the operator's room Bucks, aided by
the first rays of daylight, was struggling to get the telegraph wires
disentangled to send a message. His hopes, as the light increased and
he saw the ruin caused by the fire, were very slender, but he kept
busily at the wreckage and getting, at length, two severed strands of
the wires to show a current, began sending his call, followed by a
message for help to Medicine Bend. He worked at this for thirty
minutes unceasingly, then, looking around on every side of the
building, he satisfied himself that he was alone and, dropping down at
his table, leaned upon it with his elbows, and, tired, wet, and
begrimed, fell fast asleep.

He was roused by the distant whistle of a locomotive. Opening his
eyes, he saw the sun streaming through the east side of the building
where the window casement had burned away. Shaking off the heaviness
of his slumber he hastened out to see an engine and box-car coming
from the east. From the open door of the car men were waving their
hats. Bucks answered by swinging his arm.

The engine stopped before the station and Bob Scott, followed by
Dancing, Dave Hawk, and the train crew sprang from the caboose steps
and surrounded him. They had brought two horses and Bucks saw that all
the men were armed. It took only a minute to tell the story, and the
party scattered to view the destruction and look for clues to the
perpetrators.

Scott and Dancing were especially keen in their search, but they found
nothing to suggest who the vandals were. They listened again to Bucks,
as he repeated his story with more detail, and held a hurried
conference in which Dave Hawk took charge. Meantime the men were
tearing up planks from the platform to make a chute for unloading the
horses.

Bucks's excitement increased as he saw the businesslike preparations
for the chase. "Have you any idea you can catch them, Bob?" he asked
feverishly.

Bob Scott's smile was not a complete answer. "How can you catch
anybody in _this_ country?" continued Bucks, regarding the scout
sceptically. But Scott looked across the interminable waste of
sage-brush and rock as if he felt at home with it.

"If they stick to the wagon," he explained leisurely, "we will have
them in an hour or two, Bucks. A man might as well travel around here
with a brass band as to try to get away with a wagon track behind him.
If they stick to the wagon, we are bound to have them in two or three
hours at most. You are sure they didn't have a led horse?"

"They had nothing but the team," said Bucks.

"In that case if they give up the wagon, three of them will have to
ride two horses. They can't go fast in that way. We will get some of
them, Bucks, sure--somehow, sometime, somewhere. We have got to get
them. How could I hold my job if I didn't get them?"

That which had seemed impossible to Bucks looked more hopeful after
Bob had smiled again. Dancing was busy installing the new telegraph
outfit. While this was going on, Scott saddled the horses and, when he
and Dave Hawk had mounted, the two rode rapidly down the emigrant
trail toward Bitter Creek. The train was held until Dancing could get
the instruments working again; then, at Hawk's request, it was sent
down the Bitter Creek grade after himself and Scott; the trail
followed the railroad for miles. Dancing remained with Bucks to guard
against further attack.

The two railroad men rode carefully along the heavy ruts of the
emigrant trail, from which all recent tracks had been obliterated by
the flood, knowing that they would strike no sign of the wagon until
it had been started after the storm. They had covered in this manner
less than two miles when, rounding a little bend, they saw a covered
emigrant wagon standing in the road not half a mile from the railroad
track.

Scott led quickly toward concealment and from behind a shoulder of
rock to which the two rode they could see that the wagon had been
halted and the horses, strangely entangled in the harness, were lying
in front of it. Scott and Hawk dismounted and, crawling up the
shoulder where they could see without being seen, waited impatiently
for some sign of life from the suspicious outfit. The description
Bucks had given fitted the wagon very well, and the two lay for a
time waiting for something to happen, and exchanging speculations as
to what the situation might mean. They were hoping that the thieves
might, if they had gone away, return, and with this thought restrained
their impatience.

"It may be a trick to get us up to shooting distance, Bob," suggested
Hawk when Scott proposed they should close in.

"But that wouldn't explain why the horses are lying there in that way,
Dave. Something else has happened. Those horses are dead; they haven't
moved. Suppose I circle the outfit," suggested Scott benevolently.

"Take care they don't get a shot at you."

"If they can get a shot at me before I can at them they are welcome,"
returned Scott as he picked up his bridle rein. "From what Bucks told
me I don't think a great deal of their shooting. He is a level-headed
boy, that long-legged operator." And Scott, with some quiet grimaces,
recounted Bucks's story of his descent of Point of Rocks the night
before, under the fire of the three desperadoes.

That he himself was now taking his own life in his hands as he started
on a perilous reconnoissance, cost him no thought. Such a situation he
was quite used to. But for a green boy from the East to put up so
unequal a fight seemed to the experienced scout a most humorous
proceeding.

He mounted his horse and directing Hawk what to do if he should be
hit, set out to ride completely around the suspected wagon. The canvas
cover was the uncertain element in the situation. It might conceal
nobody, and yet it might conceal three rifles waiting for an
indiscreet pursuer to come within range. Scott, taking advantage of
the uneven country, rode circumspectly to the south, keeping the
object of his caution well in view, and at times, under cover of
friendly rocks, getting up quite close to it.

Before he had completed half his ride he had satisfied himself as to
the actual state of affairs. Yet his habitual caution led him to
follow out his original purpose quite as carefully as if he had
reached no conclusion. When he crossed the trail west of the wagon, he
looked closely for fresh tracks, but there were none. He then circled
to the north and was soon able, by dismounting, to crawl under cover
within a hundred yards of the heads of the horses. When he got up to
where he could see without being seen he perceived clearly that his
surmise had been correct.

Both horses lay dead in the harness. From the front seat of the wagon
a boot protruded; nothing more could be seen. Scott now, by signals,
summoned Dave Hawk from where he lay, and when the swarthy conductor
reached the scout, Scott called out loudly at the wagon.

There was no answer, no movement, no sound. Things began to seem
queer; in the bright blaze of sunshine, and with the parched desert
glistening after the welcome rain, there in the midst of the vast
amphitheatre of mountains lay the dead horses before the mysterious
wagon. But nowhere about was any sign of life, and the wagon might
hold within its white walls death for whoever should unwarily approach
it.

Bob Scott had no idea, however, of sacrificing himself to any scheme
that might have occurred to the enemy to lure him within danger. He
called out again at the top of his voice and demanded a surrender. No
sound gave any response, and raising his rifle he sent a bullet
through the extreme top of the canvas cover midway back from the
driver's seat.

The echoes of the report crashed back to the rocks, but brought
nothing from the silence of the emigrant wagon. A second shot
followed, tearing through the side board of the wagon-box itself; yet
there was no answer. Scott, taking his horse, while Hawk remained in
hiding and covered the scene with his own rifle, led the horse so that
it served as a shelter and walked directly toward the wagon itself. As
he neared it he approached from the front, pausing at times to survey
what he saw. Hawk watched him lead his unwilling horse, trembling with
fear, up to the dead team as they lay in the bright sunlight, and saw
Scott take hold of the protruding boot, peer above it into the wagon
itself and, without turning his head, beckon Hawk to come up.

Under the canvas, the driver of the wagon lay dead with the lines
clutched in his stiffened fingers, just as he had fallen when death
struck his horses. The two frontiersmen needed no explanation of what
they saw in the scarred and blackened face of the outlaw. A bolt of
lightning had killed him and stricken both horses in the same instant.
Bob crawled into the wagon and with Hawk's help dragged the dead man
forward into the sunlight. Both recognized him. It was Bucks's
assailant and enemy, the Medicine Bend and Spider Water gambler,
Perry.




CHAPTER XVIII


The two men, aided by the crew of the train that now came down the
Bitter Creek grade, got the dead body of the outlaw back to Point of
Rocks just as a mixed train from the east reached there, with Stanley
and a detail of cavalry aboard. Stanley walked straight to Bucks,
caught him by the shoulders, and shook him as if to make sure he was
all right.

"Gave you a warm reception, did they, Bucks?"

"Moderately warm, colonel."

Stanley shook his head. "It is all wrong. They never should have sent
you out here alone," he declared brusquely. "These superintendents
seem to think they are railroading in Ohio instead of the Rocky
Mountains. Dave," he continued, turning to Hawk as the latter came up,
"I hear you have just brought in Perry dead. What have we got here,
anyway?"

"Some of the Medicine Bend gang," returned Hawk tersely.

"What are they doing?"

"Evening up old scores, I guess."

Stanley looked at the dead man as they laid him out on the platform:
"And hastening their own day of reckoning," he said. "There shall be
no more of this if we have to drive every man of the gang out of the
country. Who do you think was with Perry, Bob?" he demanded,
questioning Scott.

"There is nothing to show that till we get them--and we ought to be
after them now," returned the scout. "But," he added softly as he
hitched his trousers, "I think one of the two might be young John
Rebstock."

"You need lose no time, Bob. Here are ten men with fresh horses at
your orders." Stanley pointed to the troopers who were unloading their
mounts.

"Give Dave and me three of the best of these men," said Scott. "I will
follow the west trail. Put a sergeant with the others on the trail
east to make sure they haven't doubled back on us--but I don't think
they have."

"Why?"

"They must have stolen that team and wagon, that is certain. More than
likely they murdered the man they took it from. The trail is probably
alive with men looking for them. These fellows were trying to get to
Casement's camp for gambling, and probably they are heading that way
fast now. We will pick those fellows up, colonel, somewhere between
here and Bridger's Gap."

The three troopers that Scott selected were told off and, after a few
rapid arrangements for sending back information, the five men of the
west-trail party, headed by Scott and Dave Hawk, rode down Bitter
Creek and, scattering in a wide skirmish line wherever the formation
of the country permitted, scanned the ground for signs of the
fugitives.

"We shan't find anything till we get to where they were when the rain
stopped," Scott told the trooper near whom he was riding. It was, in
fact, nearly ten miles from Point of Rocks before they picked up the
footprints of two men travelling apart from each other, but headed
north and west. These they followed on a long détour away from the
regular wagon road until the two trails turned and entered, from the
southwest, a camp made the night before by a big trading outfit on the
regular overland trail.

Here, of course, all trace of the men disappeared. It was now drawing
toward evening. Scott resolved to follow the trading outfit, but the
party still rode slowly to make sure the men they wanted did not sneak
away from the wagons of their new-found friends. The pursuers rode
steadily on, and as the sun went down they perceived in a small canyon
ahead of them the wagons of the outfit they were trailing, parked in a
camp for the night.

Scott gave the troopers directions as to where to post themselves, at
some distance east and west of the canyon, to provide against a sortie
of the fugitives and, riding with Hawk directly into the camp, asked
for the boss. He appeared after some delay and proved to be a French
trader with supplies for Salt Lake.

Hawk, whose long visage and keen eyes gave him a particularly
stern air--and David Hawk was never very communicative or very
warm-mannered--asked the questions. The Frenchman was civil, but
denied having any men with him except those he had brought from
the Missouri River. However, he offered to line up his men for the
railroad party to look over. To this Hawk agreed, and, when the
word had been passed, the entire force of the trader were assembled
in front of the head wagon.

Scott rode slowly up the line scrutinizing each face, and, turning
again, rode down the line. Once he stopped and questioned a
suspicious-looking teamster wearing a hat that answered Bucks's
description, but the man's answers were satisfactory.

When Scott had finished his inspection the men started to disband.
Hawk stopped them. "Stay where you are," he called out curtly. Turning
to the Frenchman, he added: "We will have to search your wagons."

Again the trader made no objection, though some of his men did.

The three troopers were signalled in, and posted so there could be no
dodging from one wagon to another, and Hawk gave them orders, loud
enough for all to hear, to shoot on sight any one leaving the wagons.
And while he himself kept command of the whole situation, Scott
dismounted and accompanied by the trader began the search. The hunt
was tedious and the teamsters murmured at the delay to their camp
work. But the search went forward unrelentingly. Not a corner capable
of concealing a dog was overlooked by the painstaking Indian and not
until he had reached the last wagon was his hope exhausted.

This wagon stood at the extreme end of a wash-out in the side of the
canyon itself. It was filled with bales of coarse red blankets, but no
man was to be found among them.

Scott did find something, however, in a sort of a nest fashioned among
the bales near the middle of the wagon. What would have escaped an eye
less trained to look for trifles attracted his at once. It was a dingy
metal tag. Scott picked it up. It bore the name of a Medicine Bend
saloon and the heads of three horses, from the design of which the
saloon itself took a widely known and ill name. He laid his hand on
the blanket from which he had picked the tag. The wool was still
warm.

Scott only smiled to himself. Both ends of the little canyon were
guarded. From where he was searching the scout peered carefully out at
the canyon walls. There were hiding-places, but they were hardly large
enough to conceal a man. It was somewhere in the rocks close at hand
that the fugitives had found a temporary refuge; but they could not
now escape--nor could they be far from the wagon.

Without losing sight of the surroundings, Scott, disclosing nothing of
his discovery to the trader, announced that he was satisfied and that
the men he wanted did not appear to be there. He added, however, that
if the Frenchman had no objection his party would pitch camp close by
and ride with him in the morning. The Frenchman maintained his
courtesy by inviting the party to take supper with him, and Scott,
agreeing to return, rode away with Hawk and the three troopers.

They had not ridden far, when Bob dismounted the party and leaving
the horses with one trooper set two as pickets and posted himself in
hiding on one side the canyon, with Hawk on the other, to watch the
camp. What he saw or whether his patience was in any degree rewarded
no one could have told from his inscrutable face as he walked into the
camp at dusk and sat down with the trader to supper. The moon was just
rising and down at the creek, a little way from where Scott sat, some
belated teamsters were washing their hands and faces and preparing
their own supper. Scott ate slowly and with his back to the fire kept
his eye on the group of men down at the creek. When he had finished,
he walked down to the stream himself. A large man in the group fitted,
in his hat and dress, Bucks's exact description. Scott had already
spotted him an hour before, and stepped up to him now to arrest young
John Rebstock.

He laid his hand on the man's shoulder and the man turned. But to
Scott's surprise he was not the man wanted at all. He wore Rebstock's
clothes and fitted Rebstock's description, but he was not Rebstock.
The scout understood instantly how he had been tricked, but gave no
sign.

Within the preceding thirty minutes the real Rebstock, whom Scott had
already marked from his hiding-place in the canyon, had traded clothes
with this man and, no doubt, made good his escape.

If Bob was chagrined, he made no sign.

"You must have made a good trade," he said, smiling at the teamster.
"These clothes are a little big, but you will grow to them. How much
boot did you get?"

Scott looked so slight and inoffensive that the teamster attempted
insolence, and not only refused to answer questions, but threatened
violence if the scout persisted in asking them. His companions
crowding up encouraged him.

But numbers were not allowed for an instant to dominate the situation.
Scott whipped a revolver from his belt, cocked it, and pressed it
against the teamster's side. Dave Hawk loomed up in the moonlight and,
catching by the collar one after another of the men crowding around
Scott, Hawk, with his right hand or his left, whirled them spinning
out of his way. If a man resisted the rough treatment, Hawk
unceremoniously knocked him down and, drawing his own revolver, took
his stand beside his threatened companion.

Other men came running up, the trader among them. A few words
explained everything and the recalcitrant teamster concluded to speak.
Scott, indeed, had but little to ask: he already knew the whole story.
And when the teamster, threatened with search, pulled from his pocket
a roll of bank-notes which he acknowledged had been given him for
concealing the two fugitives and providing them with clothes, Scott
released him--only notifying the trader incidentally that the man was
robbing him and had loot, taken from the ammunition wagon, concealed
under his blanket bales just searched. This information led to new
excitement in the camp, and the Frenchman danced up and down in his
wrath as he ordered the blanket wagon searched again. But his
excitement did not greatly interest Scott and his party. They went
their way and camped at some distance down the creek from their
stirred-up neighbors.

Hawk and Bob Scott sat in the moonlight after the troopers had gone to
sleep.

"They can't fool us very much longer," muttered Scott, satisfied with
the day's work and taking the final disappointment philosophically,
"until they can get horses they are chained to the ground in this
country. There is only one place I know of where there are any horses
hereabouts and that is Jack Casement's camp."

Hawk stretched himself out on the ground to sleep. "I'll tell you,
Dave," continued Scott, "it is only about twenty miles from here to
Casement's, anyway. Suppose I ride over there to-night and wire
Stanley we've got track of the fellows. By the time you pick up the
trail in the morning I will be back--or I may pick it up myself
between here and the railroad. You keep on as far as Brushwood Creek
and I'll join you there to-morrow by sundown."

It was so arranged. The night was clear and with a good moon the ride
was not difficult, though to a man less acquainted with the mountains
it would have been a hardship. Mile after mile Scott's hardy pony
covered with no apparent effort. Bob did not urge him, and before
midnight the white tents of the construction camp were visible in the
moonlight. Scott went directly to the telegraph office, and after
sending his message hunted up food and quarters for his beast and a
sleeping-bunk for himself.

At daylight he was astir and sought breakfast before making inquiries
and riding back to his party. On the edge of the camp stood a sort of
restaurant, made up of a kitchen tent with a dismantled box-car body
as an annex.

In this annex the food was served. It was entered from one side door,
while the food was brought from the kitchen through the other side
doorway of the car.

Into this crowded den Bob elbowed an unobtrusive way and seated
himself in a retired corner. He faced the blind end of the car, and
before him on the wall was tacked a fragment of a mirror in which he
could see what was going on behind him. And without paying any
apparent attention to anything that went on, nothing escaped him.

Next to where he sat, a breakfast of coffee and ham and eggs had been
already served for somebody, apparently on an order previously given.
At the opposite end of the car a small space was curtained off as a
wash-room. Scott ordered his own breakfast and was slowly eating it
when he noticed through the little mirror, and above and beyond the
heads of the busy breakfasters along the serving-counter, a large man
in the wash-room scrubbing his face vigorously with a towel.

Each time Scott looked up from his breakfast into the mirror the man
redoubled his efforts to do a good job with the towel, hiding his face
meantime well within its folds. The scout's curiosity was mildly
enough aroused to impel him to watch the diligent rubbing with some
interest. He saw, too, presently that the man was stealing glances out
of his towel at him and yet between times intently rubbing his face.

This seemed odd, and Scott, now eying the man more carefully, noted
his nervousness and wondered at it. However, he continued to enjoy his
own meal. The waiter who had served him, hurried and impatient, also
noticed the waiting breakfast untouched and called sharply to the man
in the wash-room that his ham was served and, with scant regard for
fine words, bade him come eat it.

This urgent invitation only added to the ill-concealed embarrassment
of the stalling guest; but it interested the scout even more in the
developing situation. Scott finished his breakfast and gave himself
entirely over to watching in a lazy way the man who was making so
elaborate a toilet.

There was no escape from either end of the car. That could be managed
only through the side doors, which were too close to Scott to be
available, and the scout, now fairly well enlightened and prepared,
merely awaited developments. He wanted to see the man come to his
breakfast, and the man in the wash-room, combing his hair with vigor
and peering anxiously through his own scrap of a mirror at Bob Scott,
wanted to see the scout finish his coffee and leave the car. Scott,
however, pounding ostentatiously on the table, called for a second cup
of coffee and sipped it with apparent satisfaction. It was a game of
cat and mouse--with the mouse, in this instance, bigger than the cat,
but as shy and reluctant to move as any mouse could be in a cat's
presence. Scott waited until he thought the embarrassed man would have
brushed the hair all out of his head, and at last, in spite of
himself, laughed. As he did so, he turned half-way around on his stool
and lifted his finger.

"Come, Rebstock," he smiled, calling to the fugitive. "Your breakfast
is getting cold."

The man, turning as red as a beet, looked over the heads of those that
sat between him and his tantalizing captor. But putting the best face
he could on the dilemma and eying Scott nervously he walked over and,
with evident reluctance, made ready to sit down beside him.

"Take your time," suggested Scott pleasantly. Then, as Rebstock, quite
crestfallen, seated himself, he added: "Hadn't I better order a hot
cup of coffee for you?" He took hold of the cup as he spoke, and
looked hard at the gambler while making the suggestion.

"No, no," responded Rebstock, equally polite and equally insistent, as
he held his hand over the cup and begged Scott not to mind. "This is
all right."

"How was the walking last night?" asked Scott, passing the fugitive a
big plate of bread. Rebstock lifted his eyes from his plate for the
briefest kind of a moment.

"The--eh--walking? I don't know what you mean, captain. I slept here
last night."

Scott looked under the table at his victim's boots. "John," he asked
without a smile, "do you ever walk in your sleep?"

Rebstock threw down his knife and fork. "Look here, stranger," he
demanded with indignation. "What do you want? Can't a man eat his
breakfast in this place? I ask you," he demanded, raising his right
hand with his knife in it as he appealed to the waiter, "can't a man
eat his breakfast in this place without interruption?"

The waiter, standing with folded arms, regarded the two men without
changing his stolid expression. "A man can eat his breakfast in this
place without anything on earth except money. If you let your ham get
cold because you were going to beat me out of the price, and you try
to do it, I'll drag you out of here by the heels."

These unsympathetic words attracted the attention of every one and the
breakfasters now looked on curiously but no one offered to interfere.
Quarrels and disputes were too frequent in that country to make it
prudent or desirable ever to intervene in one. A man considered
himself lucky not to be embroiled in unpleasantness in spite of his
best efforts to keep out. Rebstock turned again on his pursuer. "What
do you want, anyhow, stranger?" he demanded fiercely. "A fight, I
reckon."

"Not a bit of it. I want you, Rebstock," explained Scott without in
the least raising his voice.

Rebstock's throaty tones seemed to contract into a wheeze. "What do
you want me for?" he asked, looking nervously toward the other end of
the car. As he did so, a man wearing a shirt and new overalls rose and
started for the door. The instinct of Scott's suspicion fastened
itself on the man trying to leave the place as being Rebstock's wanted
companion.

Rising like a flash, he covered the second man with his pistol. "Hold
on!" he exclaimed, pointing at him with his left hand. "Come over
here!"

The man in overalls turned a calm face that showed nothing more than
conscious innocence. But Scott was looking at his feet. His worn shoes
were crusted heavily with alkali mud. "What do you want with me?"
snarled the man halted at the door.

"I want you," said Scott, "for burning Point of Rocks station night
before last. Here, partner," he continued, speaking to the waiter.
"I'll pay for these two breakfasts; search that man for me," he
continued, pointing to the man in the overalls.

"Search him yourself," returned the waiter stolidly. Scott turned like
a wolf.

"What's that?" Another expression stole over his good-natured face.
Holding his revolver to cover any one that resisted, he turned his
accusing finger upon the insolent waiter. "You will talk to me, will
you?" he demanded sharply. "Do as I tell you instantly, or I'll drive
you out of camp and burn your shack to the ground. When I talk to you,
General Jack Casement talks, and this railroad company talks. Search
that man!"

Before the last word had passed his lips the waiter jumped over the
counter and began turning the pockets of the man in the new overalls
inside out. The fellow kept a good face even after a bunch of stolen
railroad tickets were discovered in one pocket. "A man gave them to me
last night to keep for him," he answered evenly.

"Never mind," returned Scott with indifference, "I will take care of
them for him."

The news of the capture spread over the camp, and when Scott with his
two prisoners walked across to General Casement's tent a crowd
followed. Stanley had just arrived from Point of Rocks by train and
was conferring with Casement when Scott came to the tent door. He
greeted Bob and surveyed the captured fugitives.

"How did you get them?" he demanded.

Scott smiled and hung his head as he shook it, to anticipate
compliments. "They just walked into my arms. Dave Hawk and the
troopers are looking for these fellows now away down on Bitter Creek.
They wandered into camp here last night to save us the trouble of
bringing them. Isn't that it, Rebstock?"

Rebstock disavowed, but not pleasantly. He was not in amiable mood.

"What show has a fat man got to get away from anybody?" he growled.




CHAPTER XIX


When Hawk saw Bob Scott, two hours later, riding into his camp on the
Brushwood with the two prisoners, he was taciturn but very much
surprised.

Scott was disposed to make light of the lucky chance, as he termed it,
that had thrown the two men into his way. Hawk, on the other hand,
declared in his arbitrary manner that it was not wholly a lucky
chance. He understood the Indian's dogged tenacity too well to think
for a moment that the fugitives could have escaped him, even had he
not ridden into Casement's camp as he so fortuitously had done.

The scout, Hawk knew, had the characteristic intuition of the
frontiersman; the mental attributes that combine with keen observation
and unusually good judgment as aids to success when circumstances are
seemingly hopeless. Such men may be at fault in details, and
frequently are, but they are not often wholly wrong in conclusions.
And in their pursuit of a criminal they are like trained hounds, which
may frequently lose their trail for a moment, but, before they have
gone very far astray, come unerringly back to it.

"If they ever give you a chance, Bob, you will make a great
thief-catcher," exclaimed Hawk with his naturally prodigal generosity
of appreciation.

"I certainly never expected to catch Rebstock and this fellow Seagrue
as easily as that," smiled Scott, as the troopers took charge of his
men.

"If you hadn't caught them there you would have trailed them there. It
would only have meant a longer chase."

"A whole lot longer."

"When you come to think of it, Bob, the railroad was their only hope,
anyway. They did right in striking for it. Without horses, the big
camp and the trains for Medicine Bend every day were their one chance
to get away."

Scott assented. "The trouble with us," he smiled, "was that we didn't
think until after it was all over. Sometime a man will come to these
mountains who thinks things out before they happen instead of after.
Then we will have a man fit to run the secret service on this
railroad. But we are losing time," he added, tightening up his saddle
girths.

"What are you going to do now? And why," demanded Hawk without waiting
for an answer, "did you drag these men away down here instead of
leaving them for Casement to lock up until we were ready to take them
to Medicine Bend?"

"I am going to drag them farther yet," announced Scott. "I am going to
ride after the French trader and fit these two fellows out in their
own clothes again to make it easier for Bucks to indentify them."

"Don't say 'indentify,' Bob, say 'identify,'" returned Hawk testily.

Bob Scott usually turned away a sharp word with silence, and although
he felt confident Hawk was wrong, he argued no further with him, but
stuck just the same to his own construction of the troublesome word.

"You've got the right idea, Bob, if you have got the wrong word,"
muttered Hawk. "Why didn't you think of that sooner?"

They broke camp and started promptly. About noon they overtook the
trading outfit and after some threatening forced the tricky teamster
to rig the two gamblers out in their own apparel. Having done this,
they started on a long ride for Casement's camp, reaching it again
with their prisoners, and all very dusty and fatigued, long after
dark.

The hard work voluntarily undertaken by the scout to aid the boy, as
he termed Bucks, in identifying his graceless assailants was
vindicated when, the next morning, the party with their prisoners
arrived on a special train at Point of Rocks, and Bucks immediately
pointed to Seagrue as the man who had first fired at him.

There were a few pretty hot moments on the platform when Bucks, among
a group of five camp malefactors on their way to Medicine Bend,
confronted the two men who had tried to kill him, and unhesitatingly
pointed them out. Seagrue, tall and surly, denied vehemently ever
having been at Point of Rocks and ever having seen Bucks. He declared
the whole affair was "framed up" to send him to the penitentiary. He
threatened if he were "sent up" to come back and kill Bucks if it was
twenty years later--and did, in that respect, try to keep his word.

But his threats availed him nothing, and John Rebstock who, though
still young, was a sly fox in crooked ways, contented himself with a
philosophical denial of everything alleged against him, adding only in
an injured tone that nobody would believe a fat man anyway.

It was he, however, rather than the less clever Seagrue, who had begun
to excite sympathy for what he called his luckless plight and that of
his companion, before they had left the railroad camp. Among the five
evil-doers who had been rounded-up and deported for the jail at
Medicine Bend, and now accompanied the two gamblers, Rebstock spread
every story he could think of to arouse his friends at Medicine Bend
to a demonstration in his behalf.

The very first efforts at putting civil law and order into effect
were just then being tried in the new and lawless frontier railroad
town and the contest between the two elements of decency and of
license had reached an acute pass when Rebstock and Seagrue were
thrown into jail at Medicine Bend. A case of sympathy for them was not
hard to work up among men of their own kind and threats were heard up
and down Front Street that if the railroading of two innocent men to
the penitentiary were attempted something would happen.

Railroad men themselves, hearing the mutterings, brought word of them
to head-quarters, but Stanley was in no wise disturbed. He had wanted
to make an example for the benefit of the criminals who swarmed to the
town, and now welcomed the chance to put the law's rigor on the men
that had tried to assassinate his favorite operator. Bucks, lest he
might be made the victim of a more successful attack, was brought down
from Point of Rocks the first moment he could be relieved. A plot to
put him out of the way, as the sole witness against the accused
gamblers, was uncovered by Scott almost as soon as Bucks had returned
to the big town and, warned by his careful friend, he rarely went up
street except with a companion--most frequently with Scott himself.

As the day set for Rebstock's trial drew near, rumors were heard of a
jail delivery. The jail itself was a flimsy wooden affair, and so
crude in its appointments that any civilized man would have been
justified in breaking out of it.

Nor was Brush, the sheriff, much more formidable than the jail itself.
This official sought to curry favor with the townspeople--and that
meant, pretty nearly, with the desperadoes--as well as to stand well
with the railroad men; and in his effort to do both he succeeded in
doing neither.

Bucks was given a night trick on his old wire in the local station,
and in spite of the round of excitement about him settled down to the
routine of regular work. The constant westbound movement of
construction material made his duties heavier than before, but he
seemed able to do whatever work he was assigned to and gained the
reputation of being dependable, wherever put.

He had risen one night from his key, after despatching a batch of
messages, to stir the fire--the night was frosty--when he heard
an altercation outside on the platform. In another moment the
waiting-room door was thrown open and Bucks turned from the
stove, poker in hand, to see a man in the extremity of fear rush
into his lonely office.

The man, hatless and coatless and evidently trying to escape from some
one, was so panic-stricken that his eyes bulged from their sockets,
and his beard was so awry that it was a moment before Bucks recognized
his old acquaintance Dan Baggs.

"They are after me, Bucks," cried Baggs, closing the door in
desperation. "They will kill me--hide me or they'll kill me."

Before the operator could ask a question in explanation, almost before
the words were out of the frightened engineman's mouth, and with Bucks
pointing with his poker to the door, trying to tell Baggs to lock it,
the door again flew open and Bucks saw the face of a Front Street
confidence man bursting through it.

Bucks sprang forward to secure the door behind the intruder, but he
was too late even for that. Half a dozen more men crowded into the
room. To ask questions was useless; every one began talking at once.
Baggs, paralyzed with fear, cowered behind the stove and the
confidence man, catching sight of him, tried to crowd through the
wicket gate. As he sprang toward it, Bucks confronted him with his
poker.

"Let that gate alone or I'll brain you," he cried, hardly realizing
what he was saying, but well resolved what to do.

The gambler, infuriated, pointed to Baggs. "Throw that cur out here,"
he yelled.

Baggs, now less exposed to his enemies, summoned the small remnant of
his own courage and began to abuse his pursuer.

[Illustration: "LET THAT GATE ALONE OR I'LL BRAIN YOU," HE CRIED.]

Bucks, between the two men with his poker, tried to stop the din long
enough to get information. He drew the enraged gambler into a
controversy of words and used the interval to step to his key. As he
did so, Baggs, catching up a monkey-wrench that Bucks ordinarily used
on his letter-press, again defied his enemy.

It was only a momentary burst of courage, but it saved the situation.
Taking advantage of the instant, Bucks slipped the fingers of his left
hand over the telegraph key and wired the despatchers upstairs for
help. It was none too soon. The men, leaning against the railing,
pushed it harder all along the line. It swayed with an ominous crack
and the fastening gave way. Baggs cowered. His pursuers yelled, and
with one more push the railing crashed forward and the confidence man
sprang for the engineer. Baggs ran back to where Bucks stood before
his table, and the latter, clutching his revolver, warned Baggs's
pursuers not to lay a hand on him.

Defying the single-handed defender, the gambler whipped out his own
pistol to put an end to the fight. It was the signal for his
followers, and in another minute half a dozen guns covered Bucks and
his companion.

Seconds meant minutes then. Bucks understood that only one shot was
needed as the signal for his own destruction. What he did not quite
realize was that the gambler confronting him and his victim read
something in Bucks's eye that caused him to hesitate. He felt that if
a shot were fired, whatever else happened, it would mean his own death
at Bucks's hand. It was this that restrained him, and the instant
saved the operator's life.

He heard the clattering of feet down the outside stairway, and the
next moment through the open door on the run dashed Bill Dancing,
swinging a piece of iron pipe as big as a crowbar. The yardmaster,
Callahan, was at his heels, and the two, tearing their way through the
room, struck without mercy.

The thugs crowded to the door. The narrow opening choked with men
trying to dodge the blows rained upon them by Dancing and Callahan.
Before Baggs could rub his eyes the room was cleared, and half a dozen
trainmen hastily summoned and led by a despatcher were engaged out
upon the platform in a free fight with the Front Street ruffians.

Within the office, the despatcher found Bucks talking to Callahan,
while Baggs was trying to explain to Bill Dancing how the confidence
men had tried to inveigle him into a "shell" game and, when they found
they could not rob him of his month's pay in any other way, had
knocked him down to pick his pockets.

Callahan, who knew the trouble-making element better than any of the
railroad men, went up town to estimate the feeling after the fight,
which was now being discussed by crowds everywhere along Front Street.
For every bruised and sore head marked by the punishment given by
Dancing in the defence of Baggs a new enemy and an active one had been
made.

Stanley came in late from the west and heard the story of the fight.
His comment was brief but significant. "It will soon be getting so
they won't wait for the railroad men to draw their pay. They will come
down here," said he ironically, "to draw it for them."




CHAPTER XX


A second and more serious disturbance followed close on the fight at
the railroad station. A passenger alighting in the evening from a
westbound train was set upon, robbed, and beaten into insensibility
within ten feet of the train platform. A dozen other passengers
hastened to his assistance. They joined in repulsing his assailants
and were beating them off when other thugs, reinforcing their fellows,
attacked the passengers and those railroad men that had hurried up to
drive off the miscreants.

In the mêlée, a brakeman was shot through the head and a second
passenger wounded. But the railroad men rallied and, returning the
pistol fire, drove off the outlaws.

The train was hurried out of town and measures were taken at once to
defend the railroad property for the night. Guards were set in the
yards, and a patrol established about the roundhouse, the railroad
hotel and the eating-house and freight-houses.

Stanley, with his car attached to the night passenger train, was on
his way to Casement's camp when the fight occurred, and had taken
Bucks with him. The despatch detailing the disturbance reached him at
a small station east of Point of Rocks, where he was awakened and the
message was read to him advising the manager of the murder of the
brakeman.

A freight-train, eastbound, stood on the passing track. Stanley roused
Bucks and, notifying the despatchers, ordered the engine cut off from
the freight-train, swung up into the cab, and started for Medicine
Bend. As they pulled out, light, Stanley asked for every notch of
speed the lumbering engine could stand, and Oliver Sollers, the
engineman, urged the big machine to its limit.

The new track, laid hastily and only freshly ballasted, was as rough
as corduroy, and the lurching of the big diamond stack made the cab
topple at every rail joint. But Sollers was not the runner to lose
nerve under difficulties and did not lessen the pressure on the
pistons. If Stanley, determined and silent, his lips set and hanging
on for dear life as the cab jumped and swung under him, felt any
qualms at the dangerous pace he had asked for, he betrayed none. With
Bucks, open-eyed with surprise, hanging on in front of him, Stanley
gave no heed to the bouncing, and the freight-engine pounded through
the mountains like a steam-roller with a touch of crushed-stone
delirium. Hour after hour the wild pace was kept up through the Sleepy
Cat Mountains and across the Sweet Grass Plains. There was no easing
up until the frantic machine struck the gorge of the Medicine River
and whistled for the long yards above the roundhouse.

Things had so quieted down by the time Stanley, springing up the
stairs two steps at a time, reached the despatchers' office, that they
were sorry they had sent in such haste for him. Stanley himself had no
regrets. He knew better than those about him the temper of the crowd
he had to deal with and felt that he needed every minute to prepare
for what he had to do. Bucks was sent to bring in Dancing, Bob Scott,
and the more resolute among the railroad men. A brief consultation was
held, and the attitude of the gamblers carefully discussed.

Scott, who had been up town since the murder, had collected sufficient
proof that the chief outlaw, Levake, had done the shooting, and
Stanley now sent Scott to Brush, the sheriff, with a verbal message
demanding Levake's arrest.

Every man that heard the order given knew what it meant. Every one
that listened realized it was the beginning of a fight in which there
could be no retreat for Stanley; that it would be a fight to a finish,
and that no man could say where it would end.

Bob Scott hitched his trousers at the word from his sandy-haired
chief. For Bob, orders meant orders and the terror of Levake's name in
Medicine Bend had no effect on him.

"You might as well ask a jack-rabbit to tackle a mountain lion as to
try to get Brush to arrest Levake," declared Dave Hawk cynically.

But Stanley's hand struck the table like a hammer: "We are going to
have a show-down here. We will go through the forms; this is the
beginning--and I am going to follow it to the end. Either Levake has
got to quit the town or I have."

Dave Hawk looked around with a new idea. He bent his eyes on Bob:
"Better get Brush to deputize _you_ to make the arrest."

"That is it!" exclaimed Stanley. "Get him to deputize you, Bob, and we
will clean up this town as it hasn't been cleaned since the flood."

Scott shook his head: "I don't believe Brush has the sand for that. We
will see."

Up Front Street, through the various groups of men still discussing
the events of the evening, Scott, followed only by Bill Dancing, made
his way, nodding and patiently or pleasantly grinning as the greetings
or ridicule of the crowd were thrown at him. He went to the rooms of
the sheriff only to find them locked, and made his way down town again
looking through the resorts in a search for Brush.

After much trouble, he found him at a gaming-table, inclined to appear
sceptical as to the story that Levake had killed an unoffending
brakeman. When Scott repeated Stanley's demand that Levake be
arrested, the sheriff slammed down his cards and declared he would not
be made a cat's-paw for any man; that the brakeman, according to
accounts reaching him, had been killed in a fair fight and he would
hear no more of it. Then, as if his game had been unreasonably
interfered with and his peace of mind injured, he rose from the table
to relieve his annoyance.

Meantime Bill Dancing slipped into his vacated seat, picked up the
discarded hand of cards and announced it was too good to throw away.
"Will anybody," Bill asked dryly, "play the hand with me while Brush
is arresting Levake?" The laugh of Brush's own companions at this
proposal stung him as an imputation of his cowardice, and he made an
additional display of rage to counteract the unconcealed contempt in
which his cronies held him.

He turned on Scott angrily. "Go arrest the man yourself, if you want
him," he thundered.

Scott snapped up the suggestion. He pointed a lean finger at the
shifty peace officer. "Deputize me to do it, if you dare, Brush!" he
softly exclaimed, fixing his brown eyes on the flushed face of the
coward.

Not a man in the room moved or spoke. Brush saw himself trapped.
Scott's finger called for an answer and the sheriff found no escape.
"I knew you hadn't the nerve to give me a deputy's badge," laughed
Scott, to spur the man's lagging courage; "you are too afraid of
Levake."

The taunt had its effect. Brush raved about his courage, and Bill
Dancing, slapping him ferociously on the back, convinced him that he
really was a brave man. Taken volubly in tow by the two railroad
emissaries, who were far from being as simple as they seemed, Brush
returned to his lodgings at the jail to issue the coveted paper
authorizing Scott to serve any warrants in his stead.

Before the ink was dry on the certificate the word had gone down Front
Street, and the town knew that Levake's arrest was in prospect. As
Dancing and Scott left the jail and walked down to the station, they
were surrounded by a curious throng of men watching for further
developments in the approaching crisis of the struggle with outlawry
in the railroad town.

The night was far advanced, but a third element was now to make itself
felt in the situation. The decent business men had already seen the
approach of the storm and resolved on protecting their own interests,
which they realized were on the side of law and order. Word had been
passed from one to another of a proposed meeting. It was held toward
daybreak in a secret place. One and all present were pledged to act
together under a leadership then and there agreed upon, and after so
organizing, with a resolute merchant named Atkinson at their head, and
with a quiet that foreboded no good to the gamblers and outlaws, the
men who had gone to the rendezvous as business men left it as
vigilantes, banded together to defend their rights and property
against the lawless element that had terrorized legitimate business.

In the morning secret word was brought by Atkinson to Stanley of the
resolve of the new allies to stand by him in his efforts to rid
the town of its undesirables for good and all. It was welcome
intelligence, and the railroad chief assured the plucky merchant
of his hearty cooperation in the designs of the newly constituted
law-and-order committee.

"When the machinery of the law has miserably failed to protect our
lives and property," he said concisely, "we have nothing left for it
but to protect them ourselves." Arms had been telegraphed for and
every effort made to secure troops in the emergency. But the Indian
uprising had taken every available infantryman and trooper into the
north and there was not now sufficient time to get them together for
action. The railroad men, Stanley knew, must depend on themselves and
upon such assistance as the decent element in the town could render.

Meantime the outlaws were not idle. They spent the day whipping the
gamblers and their hangers-on into line, upon the prediction that if
they themselves were dispersed scant quarter would be shown their
disorderly associates.

Scott spent the day leisurely. Stanley had asked him not to move
until his own arrangements for a defensive fight were completed. That
the outlaws had secret sources of information even in the railroad
circles, came out startlingly. A special train--an express car pulled
by an engine--entered the railroad yard at dusk that evening, when a
party of men running out from the cover of the freight warehouse
attempted to rush it for arms and ammunition.

They were met at the car doors by six of the best men that could be
picked up along the line during the day run of the special across the
plains. Stanley had wired instructions to head-quarters to send him
six men that feared neither smoke nor powder, and six stalwarts taken
on at Grand Island, North Platte, and Julesburg guarded the car and
tumbled like cats out of a bag upon the surprised raiders.

The encounter was spirited, but it took only a moment to convince the
assaulting party that they had made a mistake. Clubbing their heavy
revolvers, the guards, any one of whom in close quarters could account
for two ordinary men, threw themselves from the car step directly
into the crowd and struck right and left. There was no regard for
persons, and in the half-dark the Medicine Bend ruffians, surprised
and confused, were soon fighting one another.

But one-sided as the contest was, it did not go fast enough to suit
the guards, who, seizing the clubs thrown away by the rabble, charged
them in a line and drove them up the street. Railroad men who came
running from the station to help were too late. The flurry was over
and they found nothing to do but to cheer their new aids.

Nor were the gamblers asleep. Word had gone out both east and west of
the approaching crisis between the disorderly and the law-and-order
elements, and every passenger train into Medicine Bend brought
mysterious men from towns and railroad camps who were openly or
secretly allied in one or another vicious calling to the classes that
were now making a stand for the rule or ruin of the railroad town.

A mob of sympathizers gathered in Front Street to protect from
further punishment the party that had tried to capture the express
car. But the railroad men had no idea of pursuing the raiders beyond
the yard limits, and indeed were restrained by strict orders from
doing so. Stanley sent word immediately to the sheriff, demanding the
arrest of the new peace-disturbers, but the sheriff no longer made a
pretence of arresting law-breakers. In Front Street, the mob,
emboldened by their apparent control of the situation and increasing
in clamor and numbers, were now in a humor for anything that promised
pillage or vengeance. There were still among them a few cool-headed
criminals who counselled caution, but these were hooted down by men
who had never tasted the rigor of vigilante rule.

Out of a dozen wild schemes broached by as many wild heads of the
excited crowd, in which were now lined up for any lawlessness all the
idlers, floaters, the improvident, and the reckless elements of a
frontier gambling town, one caught the popular fancy. Some one
proposed a jail delivery to release Rebstock and Seagrue, persecuted
by the railroad company. The idea spread like wildfire, and a score of
men, reinforced by more at every door as they proceeded up Front
Street, made their way to the jail.

Fast as they came, time was given for word to the sheriff, who
conveniently got out of the way, and, led by half a dozen men with
crowbars and spike-mauls, the outlaws surrounded and overran the jail
yard and without a show of resistance from any one began smashing in
the entrance and battering down the cell doors.

The first suggestion included only the delivery of the two men. But
this was effected so easily that more was undertaken. The jail at
Medicine Bend, being the only one within many miles in any direction,
harbored the criminals of the whole mountain region, and these now
cried to friendly ears for their own freedom. Cell after cell was
battered open and the released criminals, snatching tools from the
mob, led in the fight to free their fellows. In less than half an hour
every cell had been emptied and a score of hardened malefactors had
been added to the mob, which now proposed to celebrate the success of
its undertaking by setting fire to the jail itself.

The vigilantes down town, though taking the alarm, had moved too
slowly. A jail delivery meant, they knew, that their stores would be
looted, and, under the leadership of Atkinson, they attempted to avert
the mischief impending.

Gathering twenty-five determined men, they started with a shout for
the hill, only to see the sky already lighting with the flames of the
burning building. The mob, not understanding at first, welcomed the
new-comers with a roar of approval.

But they were soon undeceived. The vigilantes began to try to save the
jail and their efforts brought about the first clash of a night
destined long to be remembered in Medicine Bend. The brawlers in the
crowd stayed to fight the vigilantes. The thieves and night-birds fell
away in the darkness, and like black cats scurried down town to
pillage the stores and warehouses of the fire-fighters on the hill.

The few clerks and watchmen defending the stores, these knaves made
short work of. Dancing and Scott, with Stanley, Bucks, and a party of
railroad men, uneasy at the reports from the jail and now able to see
the sky reddening with the flames, moved in and out of the gloom of
side streets to keep track of the alarming situation and were the
earliest to discover the looting movement.

A convenient general store at Front and Hill Streets was the first to
be pillaged. Dancing wanted to lead a party against the looters, but
Stanley pointed out the folly of half a dozen men trying to police the
whole street.

"We can do nothing here, Bill. Those vigilantes have no business on
the hill. Get word to them, if you can, that the stores are being
robbed. They can't save the jail; they ought to come back and save
their own property. I can't bring men up from the roundhouse. We've
got to protect our own property first. If we could get word to
them--but a man never could get through that mob to the jail."

"I reckon I can, colonel," said Bill Dancing, throwing off his coat.

"They will kill you, Bill," predicted Stanley.

"No," growled the lineman, rolling up his shirt sleeves. "Not me. I
wouldn't stand for it."




CHAPTER XXI


Slipping away behind the long warehouses in Front Street and moving
swiftly in and out of friendly shadows on his long journey up the
hill, Dancing started for the jail. He was hardly more than well under
way when he was aware of one following him and, turning to fell him
with his fist, he started as he found it was Bucks.

The latter confronted him coolly: "Go ahead, Bill; I am going with
you."

"Who said you could go?" exclaimed the lineman. "You can't. Go back!"

Bucks stood his ground.

"Do you want to get killed?" thundered Dancing hotly.

"Two are better than one on a job like this," returned Bucks, without
giving way. "Go on, will you?"

With a volley of grumbling objections, Dancing at length directed
Bucks to stick close to him, whatever happened, and to fight the best
he could in case they were cornered.

Ahead of them the glare of the conflagration lighted the sky and the
air was filled with the shouts of the mob surrounding the fighting
vigilantes. Only half a block away, men were hurrying up and down
Front Street, while the two clambered along the obscure and
half-opened street leading to the jail and parallel to the main
thoroughfare.

Dancing, to whom every foot of the rocky way was familiar and who
could get over obstructions in the dark as well as if it were day, led
the way with a celerity that kept his companion breathing fast. Both
had long legs, but Dancing in some mysterious way planted his feet
with marvellous certainty of effect, while Bucks slipped and
floundered over rocks and brush piles and across gullies until they
took a short cut through a residence yard and found themselves on the
heels of the mob surrounding the burning jail and in the glare of the
fire in upper Front Street.

"Stick close, sonny," muttered the lineman, "we must push through
these fellows before they reco'nize us."

He stooped as he spoke and picked up a piece of hickory--the broken
handle of a spike-maul. "Railroad property anyway," he muttered. "It
might come handy. But gum shoes for us now till we are forced. Perhaps
we can sneak all the way through."

Without further ado Dancing, with Bucks on his heels, elbowed his way
into the crowd. The outer fringe of this he knew was not dangerous,
being made up chiefly of onlookers. But in another minute the two were
in the midst of a yelling, swaying mix-up between the aggressive mob
and a thin fringe of vigilantes, who, hard-pressed, had abandoned the
jail to its fate and were trying to fight their way down town.

Dancing, like a war-horse made suddenly mad by smoke of battle,
throwing caution and strategy to the winds, suddenly released a yell
and began to lay about him. His appearance in the fray was like that
of a bombshell timed to explode in its midst. The slugging gamblers
turned in astonishment on the new fighting man, but they were not
long left in doubt as to which cause he espoused. In the next instant
they were actively dodging his flashing club, and the vigilantes
encouraged as if by an angel fought with fresh vigor.

Bucks was stunned by the suddenness of Bill's change of tactics. It
was evident that he had completely forgotten his mission and now meant
to enjoy himself in the unequal fray that he had burst in upon. The
vigilantes cried a welcome to their new ally. But one cry rose above
every other and that was from Dancing's own throat as he laid about
with his club.

Consternation seized the rioters and they were thrown for a moment
into confusion. They then recognized Dancing and a shout went up.

"Railroad men!" cried a dozen of the mob at once.

And above these cries came one wheezing but stentorian voice: "You've
got 'em now; finish 'em!"

Bucks knew that voice. It was Rebstock.

The crowd took up the cry, but the lineman, swinging right and left
with terrific strength and swiftness, opened a way ahead of him while
Bucks kept close by till Dancing had cut through to the vigilantes.
Then, turning with them as they raised their own cry of triumph,
Dancing helped to drive the discomfited rioters back.

It was only for a moment that the vigilantes held their advantage.
Outnumbering the little band, the rioters closed in on their flanks
and showered stones upon them. Bill Dancing was the centre of the
fight. A piece of rock laid open his scalp, but, though the mob was
sure of getting him, he fought like a whirlwind. They redoubled their
efforts to bring him down. One active rioter with the seam of some
other fight slashed across his forehead struck down a vigilante and
ran in on Dancing. It was Seagrue. The lineman, warned by Bucks,
turned too late to escape a blow on the head that would have dazed a
bullock. But Dancing realized the instant he received the blow that
Seagrue had delivered it.

He whirled like a wounded bear and sprang at Seagrue, taking upon his
shoulder a second blow hardly less terrific than the first. Before
Seagrue could strike again, Dancing was upon him. Tearing at each
other's throats the two men struggled, each trying to free his right
arm. Seagrue was borne steadily backward. Then the lineman's big arm
shot upward and down like a trip-hammer and Seagrue sunk limp to the
ground.

The vigilantes themselves, profiting by the momentary diversion, got
away. Bucks had seen the peril of being separated from their friends,
but he was powerless to avert it. As Dancing struck Seagrue down, his
enemies closed in behind the moving vigilantes. Bucks fought his way
to the lineman's side and in another instant the two were beset.
Dancing, hard-pressed, made a dash to break through the circle to
liberty. Half a dozen men sprang at him, and trampling Bucks
completely under foot aimed their blows at his defender.

Dancing saw Bucks fall and, clubbing his way to his side, caught Bucks
from the ground by the coat collar, and dragging him with his left
hand, swung with his right hand his deadly club. Nothing less would
have saved them. The fight, moving every instant after Dancing,
reached the broad wooden steps leading from the jail yard to the
street. Down these the lineman, stubborn and bleeding, drove a
desperate way. And Bucks, able again to handle himself, was putting up
a good fight when, to his horror, Dancing, fighting down the flight of
steps, stumbled and fell.

Half a dozen men, with a yell, jumped for him. Bucks thought the
finish had come. He sprang into the fight and, armed only with a wagon
spoke, cracked right and left wherever he could reach a head. Dancing
he had given over for dead, when to his astonishment the lineman rose
out of the heap about him, shaking off his enemies like rats.

Flames shooting up from the burning jail lighted the scene. Dancing,
bare-headed, and with only a part of his shirt hanging in ribbons from
his left arm, his hair matted in blood across his forehead and his
eyes blazing, was a formidable sight. He had lost his club but he was
at no loss for a weapon. It was said of Bill Dancing in later days
that he could lift a thirty-foot steel rail. Bucks saw him now catch
up a man scrambling in front of him and swing him by the legs like a
battering ram. With this victim, he mowed down men like corks, and,
flinging the man at last bodily into the faces of his friends, he
started like a deer up Cliff Street with Bucks at his heels.

Sure that they now had him, the rioters followed in a swarm. Cliff
Street, only a block long and only half-opened, terminated then at the
cliffs above the gorge of the Medicine River. But darkness under the
brow of the hill helped the fleeing railroad men. Dancing dodged in
and out of the undergrowth that fringed the street line and eluding
his pursuers reached the brow of the cliff unseen. The rioters,
knowing that no escape lay in that direction, beat the bushes that
fringed the half-opened street, confident that the fugitives were in
hiding among them.

For an ordinary man, indeed, there was no escape toward the river. A
wall of rock fell a hundred feet to the water's edge. The crowd,
growing every moment as the word passed that Dancing was whipped,
left the hunted man and his companion little time for decision.
Dancing, in truth, needed but little. His purpose was fixed the
instant he saw himself cut off from every other chance. He halted only
on the brink of the precipice itself. Catching Bucks's arm, he told
him hurriedly what they must do and cautioned him. "It's the last
chance, sonny," he murmured, as his iron fingers gripped the boy's
arm. "We can make it--if you do exactly as I tell you."

The gathering cries closed in behind them while they were taking off
their shoes. Creeping on his hands and knees along the brow of the
cliff, Dancing felt out his location with his fingers. And with that
sixth sense of instinct which rises to a faculty when dangers thicken
about a resolute man, the lineman found what he sought.

He caught at the root of a rock-bound cedar, swung himself over the
cliff, and called to Bucks to follow. Bucks acted wholly on faith. The
blackness below was impenetrable, and perhaps better so, since he
could not see what he was undertaking. Only the roar of the river
came up from the depths. It sounded a little ominous as Bucks,
grasping the cedar root, swung over and after an agonizing instant
felt a support for his feet. He stood on a ledge of rock so narrow
that it gave only a footing even in daylight, but Bucks was called on
to descend it in the middle of the night.

For any man to have attempted the feat seemed to him, the next
morning, sheer insanity. Dancing, however, knew the treacherous face
of the river wall. To his gigantic size and strength he united the
sureness of a cat in climbing up or down a mountain arête. Often he
had crept with a telegraph wire, unaided, where his best men hung back
even in harness. There was, in fact, no time now for halting. The
rioters, eager on the trail, were calling for torches, and, if
discovered before they reached the water, the lives of the two men
would be snuffed out by dropping rocks on their heads.

Flattening himself as he had been bidden to do and with his cheek laid
to the face of the sheer rock, clasping from time to time with his
outstretched left hand such slight uneven surfaces as he could feel,
Bucks moved to the right after Dancing, who gripped his extended right
hand and led him foot by foot down the perilous way. Not a word was
spoken, hardly a breath drawn, as the lineman felt for his slippery
foothold with the deftness of a gorilla, and, pressing Bucks's hand as
the signal to take a follow step, he made a slow but steady descent.

The roar of the river already sounded in Bucks's ears like a cataract,
but the shock of extreme danger had numbed his apprehension. Chips of
the sharp granite cut his feet like knives, and he knew that the
sticky feeling upon his bare soles was blood oozing through the broken
skin. He had already given up expectation of ever leaving the gorge
alive and merely responded to his companion's will. The one thought
that came to his mind was curiosity as to what Dancing ever expected
to do if they reached the bottom without accident.

Suddenly above the roar of the river he heard the muffled crack of
fire-arms coming as if out of another world. He wondered whether they
themselves were already being fired at, but experienced nothing more
than curiosity in the thought. Only the pressure of the big hand that
gripped his own impressed itself powerfully upon his consciousness,
and at each squeeze he put his foot forward mechanically, intent on a
dull resolve to obey orders.

He presently felt a new signal from the long fingers that wound around
his own. He tried to answer by stepping, but Dancing whose face was
turned away, restrained him. Then it flashed on Bucks that the lineman
was signalling Morse to him, and that the dot-and-dash squeezes meant:
"Half-way down. Half-way down."

Bucks answered with one word: "Hurrah!" But he squeezed it along the
nerves and muscles like lightning.

He could hear the labored breathing of his companion as he strained at
intervals every particle of his strength to reach a new footing of
safety. Every vine and scrubby bush down the cliff wall was tested for
its strength and root, and Dancing held Bucks's hand so that he could
instantly release it if he himself should plunge to death.

Bucks had already been told that if this happened he must hang as long
as he could without moving and if he could hold on till daylight he
would be rescued by railroad men. All this was going through his head
when, responding to a signal to step down, and, unable to catch some
word that Dancing whispered, he stretched his leg so far that he lost
his balance. He struggled to recover. Dancing called again sharply to
him, but he was too wrought up to understand. Dizziness seized him,
and resigning himself, with an exclamation, to death, he felt himself
dropping into space.

In the next instant he was caught in Dancing's arms:

"Gosh darn it, why didn't you jump, as I told you?" exclaimed the
lineman, setting him up on his feet. "You pretty near clean upset us
both."

"Where are we, Bill?" muttered Bucks, swallowing his shock.

"Right here at the water, and them fellows up there beating the bush
for us. There's shooting down town, too. Some new deviltry. How good a
swimmer are you, Bucks? By gum, I forgot to ask you before you
started."

"I can swim better than I can climb, Bill."

"We've only a quarter of a mile and downstream at that. And the
current here would float a keg of nails."

"How about rocks, Bill?" asked Bucks, peering dubiously toward the
roar of the rushing river.

"All up-stream from here," returned Dancing, edging down the shelving
table toward the water. "Lock arms with me so I don't lose you, sonny.
What in Sam Hill is that?"

Far down the river the two saw a tongue of flame leaping into the sky.
They watched it for a moment. Dancing was the first to locate the
conflagration, which grew now, even as they looked, by leaps and
bounds. The two stood ready to plunge into the river when a fire of
musketry echoed up the gorge. The lineman clutched Bucks's arm.

"There's fighting going on down there now. What's that smokestack? By
Jing, the roundhouse is on fire!"




CHAPTER XXII


They plunged together into the river. The water, icy cold, was a
shock, but Dancing had made no mistake. They were below the rocks and
needed only to steady themselves as the resistless current swept them
down toward the railroad yards.

Bucks demonstrated that he could swim and the two seemed hardly in the
water before they could fully see the burning roundhouse. A moment
later, chilled to the bone but with his mind cleared by the sharp
plunge, Bucks felt his companion's arm drawing him toward the farther
shore where, in the slack water of an elbow of the stream, Dancing led
the way across a shoal of gravel and Bucks waded after him up the
riverbank.

They hastened together across the dark railroad yard. The sound of
firing came again from the square in front of the railroad station
and thither they directed their fleeing feet. To the right they heard
the shouts of the men who were fighting the fire at the roundhouse and
the hot crackling of the flames. They reached the station together and
entered the waiting-room by a rear door.

Men were running everywhere in and out of the building and the
waiting-room was barricaded for war. Bill Dancing caught a passing
trainman by the arm.

"What's going on here?"

The man looked at the lineman and his companion in surprise: "The
gamblers are driving the vigilantes, Bill. They've got all Front
Street. What's the matter with you?"

Dancing caught sight of Bob Scott coming down the rear stairway with
an armful of rifles, and, without answering the question, called to
him.

"Hello!" exclaimed Scott halting. He started as he saw Bucks. "Were
_you_ with him? And I've been scouring the town for you! Stanley will
have a word to say to you, youngster. They thought the gamblers had
you, Bill," he added, turning to the lineman.

Dancing, a sight from the pounding he had taken, his clothing in
tatters, and with the blood-stains now streaked by the water dripping
from his hair, drew himself up. "I hope you didn't think so, Bob? Did
they reckon a handful of blacklegs would get me?"

Scott grinned inscrutably. "They've got the best part of your shirt,
Bill. How did you get off?"

"Swam for it," muttered Dancing, shaking himself. "Where's Stanley?"

"Out behind the flat cars. He is arming the vigilantes. We've fenced
off the yards with loaded freight-cars. They've fired the roundhouse
on us, but the rifles and ammunition that came to-night are upstairs
here. Take some of these guns, Bill, and hand them around in front.
Bucks can follow you with a box of ammunition."

Scott spoke hurriedly and ran out of the door facing Front Street
Square. A string of flat cars had been run along the house-track in
front of the station, and behind these the hard-pressed vigilantes,
reinforced now by the railroad men, were taking up a new line of
defence. Driven through the town in a running battle, they were in
straits when they reached Stanley's barricade.

Following a resolve already well defined, the railroad chief conferred
with the vigilante leaders for a brief moment. He called them to his
office and denounced the folly of half-way measures.

"You see," said Stanley, pointing to two dead men whom the discomfited
business men had brought off with them, "what temporizing has done.
There is only one way to treat with these people." He was interrupted
by firing from across the square. "In an hour they will have every
store in Front Street looted."

The deliberation for a few moments was a stormy one, but Stanley held
his ground. "Desperate diseases, gentlemen," he said, addressing
Atkinson and his companions, "require desperate remedies, and you must
sometime come to what I propose."

"What you propose," returned Atkinson gloomily, "will ruin us."

Stanley answered with composure: "You are ruined now. What you should
consider is whether, if you don't cut this cancer of gambling,
outlawry, and murder out while you have a chance, it won't remain to
plague you as long as you do business in Medicine Bend, and remain to
ruin you periodically. This is always going to be a town and a big
one. As long as this railroad is operated, this ground where we stand
is and must be the chief operating point for the whole mountain
division. You and I may be wiped out of existence and the railroad
will go on as before. But it is for you to accept or reject what I
propose as the riddance of this curse to your community.

"The railroad has been drawn into this fight by assault upon its men.
It can meet violence with violence and protect itself, or it can
temporarily abandon a town where protection is not afforded its lives
and property. In an emergency, trains could be run through Medicine
Bend without stopping. The right of way could be manned with
soldiers. But the railroad can't supply men enough to preserve in your
town the law and order which you yourselves ought to preserve. And if
we were compelled to build division facilities, temporarily,
elsewhere, while they would ultimately come back here, it might be
years before they did so. What else but your ruin would this mean?"

He had hardly ceased speaking when the conference was broken in upon.
Bob Scott ushered in two men sent under a flag of truce from the
rioters. The offer they brought was that Rebstock and Seagrue should
be surrendered, provided Stanley would give his personal pledge that
the two should not be shot but sent out of town until peace was
restored, and that they should be accorded a fair trial when brought
back.

Stanley listened carefully to all that was said:

"Who sent you?" he demanded.

"The committee up street," returned the envoys evasively.

"You mean Levake sent you," retorted Stanley. He sat at his desk and
eyed the two ruffians, as they faced him somewhat nervously. They at
length admitted that they had come from Levake, and gave Stanley his
chance for an answer.

"Tell Levake for me there will be no peace for him or his until he
comes down here with his hands behind his back. When I want Rebstock
and Seagrue I will let him know. I want him first," said Stanley,
dismissing the messengers without more ado.




CHAPTER XXIII


He had resolved that Levake was to be punished, but it was not a
unanimous voice that backed the railroad leader in his determination.
Weak-kneed men in the conference wanted to compromise and end the
fight where it stood. Even Atkinson was disposed to make terms, as the
party returned to the barricade.

"No," repeated Stanley. "Levake is the head and front of this whole
disorder. As long as he can shoot down unarmed men in the streets of
Medicine Bend there will be no law and order here. While men see him
walking these streets unpunished they will take their cue from him and
rob and shoot whom they please--Levake and his ilk must go. A
railroad, on the start, brings a lawless element with it--this is
true. But it also brings law and order and that element has come to
Medicine Bend to stay. If the machinery of the law is too weak to
support it, so much worse for the machinery. I don't want to see
blood shed or property destroyed, but the responsibility for this
rests with the outlaws that are terrorizing this town. And I will
spend every ounce of ammunition I have and fight them to the last man,
rather than compromise with a bunch of cutthroats.

"If any man here feels differently about this, he may step out of the
barricade now," continued Stanley, addressing those of the townsmen
that listened. "There will be no hard feeling. But this is the time to
do it. Worse is ahead of us before we can clean the town up as it will
have to be cleaned sometime. The longer you leave the job undone, the
harder it will be when you tackle it."

A movement across the square interrupted his words, and a messenger
waving a white handkerchief came over to the barricade to ask for a
surgeon for a wounded man. There were some who opposed sending any
relief to men that had forfeited all claim to humane consideration.
Doctor Arnold, however, was summoned, and Stanley finally determined
that the matter should be left to the surgeon himself--he could go if
he wished. Arnold did not hesitate in his decision. "It is my duty to
go," he decided briefly.

"I don't quite see that," muttered Atkinson.

The white-haired surgeon turned to the leader of the vigilantes. "It
is not a matter of personal inclination, Atkinson. When I took my
degree for the practice of medicine, I took an oath to respond to
every call of suffering and I have no right to refuse this one."

Leaving his own injured with his assistant, the surgeon told the
messenger to proceed and the two walked across the square and up Front
Street to the Three Horses. Arriving there, Arnold was asked to dress
the wound of a man that had been shot through the breast in the fight
along Fort Street. While he was working over his patient, who lay on a
table surrounded by a motley crowd of onlookers, Levake walked in. He
nodded to the surgeon and drawing a pocket knife, while Arnold was
cleansing the wound, sat down beside him to whittle a stick.

"I hear your man, Stanley, wants me," began Levake after an interval.

"I guess you hear right," returned Arnold dryly.

"Tell him for me to come get me, will you?" suggested Levake.

"If he ever comes after you, Levake, he will get you," returned
Arnold, looking the outlaw straight in the eye. "There isn't any doubt
about that," he added, resuming his task.

Levake whittled but made no reply. He watched the surgeon's work
closely, and when Arnold had finished and given directions for the
wounded man's care he walked out of the place with him.

"Tell Stanley what I said, will you?" repeated Levake, as the railroad
surgeon left the door and started down street.

Arnold made no answer and Levake, taunting him to send all the men the
railroad had after him, followed Arnold toward the square.

The surgeon understood that it was Levake's purpose to engage him in a
dispute and kill him if he could. Arnold, moreover, was hot-tempered
and made no concealment of his feelings toward any man. For this
reason, despite his realization of danger, he was an easy prey.

To the final taunt of the outlaw the surgeon made rather a sharp
answer and quickened his pace, to walk away from his unpleasant
companion. But Levake would not be shaken off, and as the two were
passing a deserted restaurant he ordered the surgeon to halt. Arnold
turned without shrinking. Levake had already drawn his pistol and his
victim concluded he was to be killed then and there, but he resolved
to tell the outlaw what he thought of him.

"I understand your game perfectly, Levake," he said after he had raked
him terrifically. "Now, if you are going to shoot, do it. You haven't
long to live yourself--make sure of that."

"No man can threaten me and live," retorted Levake harshly.

"I came up here, an unarmed man, on an errand of mercy."

"I didn't send for you."

"You would kill me just as quick if you had, Levake. What are you
hesitating about? If you are going to shoot, shoot."

Throwing back his right arm, and fingering the trigger of his revolver
as a panther lashes his tail before springing, Levake stepped back and
to one side. As he did so, with the fearless surgeon still facing him,
a man stepped from behind the screen door of the deserted restaurant.
It was Bob Scott.

The old and deadly feud between the Indian and the outlaw brought them
now, for the first time in months, face to face. In spite of his iron
nerve Levake started. Scott, slightly stooped and wearing the familiar
slouch hat and shabby coat in which he was always seen, regarded his
enemy with a smile.

So sudden was his appearance that Levake could not for an instant
control himself. If there was a man in the whole mountain country that
Levake could be said to be afraid of, it was the mild-mannered,
mild-spoken Indian scout. Where Scott had come from, how he had got
through the pickets posted by Levake himself--these questions, for
which he could find no answer, disquieted the murderer.

Arnold, reprieved from death as by a miracle, stood like a statue.
Levake, with his hand on his pistol, had halted, petrified, at the
sight of Scott.

The latter, eying the murderer with an expression that might have been
mistaken for friendly, had not Levake known there could be no
friendship among decent men for him, broke the silence: "Levake, I
have a warrant for you."

The words seemed to shake the spell from the outlaw's nerves. He
answered with his usual coolness: "You've waited a good while to serve
it."

"I've been a little busy for a few days, Levake," returned Scott, with
the same even tone. "I kind of lost track of you." But his words again
disconcerted Levake. The few men who now watched the scene and knew
what was coming stood breathless.

Levake, moistening his dry lips, spoke carefully: "I don't want any
trouble with you here," he said. "When this town fight is over, bring
your warrant around and I'll talk to you."

"No," returned Scott, undisturbed, "I might lose track of you again.
You can come right along with me, Levake."

With incredible quickness the outlaw, half-turning to cover Scott,
fired. The cat-like agility of the Indian answered the move in the
instant it was made. Scott was, in fact, the first scout from whom
mountain men learned to fire a revolver without aiming it and it was
not without reason that Levake sought no encounter with him. For Scott
to draw and fire was but one movement, and hating Levake as a monster,
the Indian had long been ready to meet him as he met him now, when he
should be forced to face him fairly.

A fusillade of shots rang down the street. The air between the two
men, feinting like boxers in their deadly duel, filled with whitish
smoke. Arnold, stunned by the suddenness of the encounter, jumped out
of range. In the next moment he saw Levake sink to the sidewalk.
Scott, springing upon him like a cat, knelt with one hand already on
his throat; with the other he wrung a second revolver from Levake's
hand. The surgeon ran to the two men.

Levake, panting, lay desperately wounded, as Scott slowly released his
grip upon him. The Indian rose as the surgeon approached, but Levake,
his eyes wide open, lay still.

"You are wounded, Bob," cried Arnold, tearing the stained sleeve of
Scott's coat from his shoulder. The scout shook his head.

"We're in danger here," he replied, glancing hurriedly up the street.
"We must get this fellow away."

The two picked the wounded man from the ground and started quickly
down street with him. The shooting, now so frequent all over the town,
had attracted little attention outside the few that had witnessed the
swift duel, and the two railroad men made good progress with their
burden before the alarm was spread. But the surgeon saw that the
strain was telling on Scott, whose shoulder was bleeding freely. He
had even ordered his companion to drop his burden and run, when he
heard a shout and saw Bill Dancing running across from the barricade
to their aid.

[Illustration: FOR SCOTT TO DRAW AND FIRE WAS BUT ONE MOVEMENT.]

Half a dozen of the rioters, shouting threats and imprecations, were
hastening down Front Street after Levake and his captors to rescue
their prisoner. Scott, reloading his revolver as Dancing relieved him
of his end of the burden, stood free to cover the retreat. He fired a
warning shot at the nearest of their pursuers. A scattering pistol
fire at long range followed. But the railroad men crossed the square
in safety, and the big lineman, with Levake in his arms, carried him
single-handed into the barricade.

The surgeon and Bob Scott followed close. Bucks was first to meet the
wounded scout, and the railroad men, jubilant at Levake's capture, ran
to Scott and bore him down with rough welcome. Levake was laid upon a
bench in the station and Scott followed to his side. Arnold, joining
the scout, made ready to dress the wound in his shoulder.

"See to Levake first, doctor," said Scott, "he needs it the most."

As he spoke, Dancing hurried into the room. "Bob, the car shops are on
fire."

Scott ran to the east window. It was true. The rioters, supplied with
oil and torches, had made their way in the darkness through
Callahan's picket line near the river and set fire to the shops.

Stanley was eating a hasty supper in the despatchers' office.

Within a few minutes the blaze could be seen from all the east windows
of the station. Almost at the same moment, through the north windows
fire was seen breaking out in one of the big stores in Front Street.
As Stanley rose from his midnight meal, Atkinson ran in with word that
a band of rioters, well armed, had attacked a train of boarding-cars
defended by the roundhouse men.

The sky, bright again with the flame of conflagration, made a huge
dome of red, lighting the railroad yards across which men were now
hurrying to make fresh dispositions for the emergency.

The vigilante leaders saw impending, in the Front Street fire, the
ruin of their business property. There were no longer men enough
left to fight the flames and guard the fire-fighters. A point had
been reached in which life and property were no longer taken into
account, and efforts to restore law and order were facing complete
failure. It was then that the most radical of all measures, the
last resort of organized society in its resolve to defend itself,
was discussed. The vigilantes, as well as the railroad men, now
realized that but one measure remained for saving Medicine Bend and
that was the extermination of the outlaws themselves.




CHAPTER XXIV


The men in the barricade were lined up for orders. Ammunition was
passed and volunteers were called to form a charging party. The
vigilantes formed in the glare of the burning shops.

From the head-quarters of the rioters in Front Street came scattering
shots and cries as a huge volume of sparks shot up into the black sky.
Ten men under Hawk and ten under Dancing made the supporting party for
the vigilantes, who asked only that a line of retreat be kept
open. This Stanley had undertaken to provide. Atkinson, making a
wide détour back of the station, led his men down the railroad
tracks and, reaching a point where concealment was no longer
possible, double-quicked up Fort Street and charged with his party
across the little park.

They had already been seen. A line of men, posted behind the places
that line Front Street at that point, opened fire. It was the worst
possible answer to make to men in the temper of the scattered line
that swept up the street in the glare of the burning buildings.
Wounded men dropped out of the charge, but those that went on carried
with them a more implacable determination. Re-forming their line under
cover of the cedars at the corner of Fort Street, they directed an
effective fire into the dance halls adjoining, and the rioters hiding
within scurried from them like rats.

But the vigilantes were intent first of all on capturing and burning
the hall known as the Three Horses, and the rioters rallied to its
defence. As the place was assailed, the doors were barred and a sharp
fire was poured through the windows. The assailants were driven back.
Bill Dancing, heated and stubborn, refused to retreat and, picking up
a sledge dropped by a fleeing vigilante, attacked the barred doors
single-handed.

The street, swept by the bullets of the fray, rang with the splitting
blows of the heavy hammer, as the lineman, his long hair flying from
his forehead, swung at the thick panels. Within, the gamblers tried to
shoot him from the windows, but he stood close and his friends kept
up a constant supporting fire that drove the defenders back.

From above they hurled chairs and tables down on Dancing, but his head
seemed furniture-proof, and scorning to waste time in dodging he
hammered away, undaunted, until he splintered the panels and the stout
lock-stiles gave. The vigilantes, running up, tore through the door
chains with crowbars and rushed the building.

The fight in the big room lasted only a moment. The rioters crowded
toward the rear and escaped as best they could. Vigilantes with
torches made short work of the rest of it. Dancing stove in a cask of
alcohol, and as the attacking party ran out of the front door a torch
was flung back into the spreading pool.

A great burst of fire lighted the street. The next moment the long
building was in flames.

Emboldened by this success and driving the outlaws from their further
retreats, the vigilantes fired one after another of the gaudy places
that lined the upper street. Met by close shooting at every turn, the
rioters were driven up the hill and fighting desperately were pursued
to cover by men now as savage as themselves. The scattered clashes
were brief and deadly. The whole upper town was on fire. Men fleeing
for their lives skulked in the shadows of the side streets and the
constant scattering report of fire-arms added to the terrors of the
night.

Hour after hour the conflagration raged and day broke at last on the
smoking ruins of the town of Medicine Bend. The work of the
vigilantes had been mercilessly thorough. Along the railroad track
stiffened bodies hanging from the cross-bars of telegraph poles in
the gloom of the breaking day told a ghastly story of justice
summarily administered to the worst of the offenders. In the gloom
of the smoking streets stragglers roamed unmolested among the
ruins; for of the outlaws, killed or hunted out of the town, none
were now left to oppose the free passage of any one from end to end of
Medicine Bend.




CHAPTER XXV


The victory was dear, but none murmured at its cost. Medicine Bend for
once had been purged of its parasites.

At the railroad head-quarters Stanley, before daylight, was directing
the resumption of operations so interrupted by the three days of
anarchism on the mountain division. New men were added every hour to
the pay-roll, and the smaller tradesmen of the town, ruined by the
riots, were given positions to keep them until the town could be
rebuilt.

The pressure on the operating department increased twofold with the
resumption of traffic. Winter was now upon the mountains, but
construction could not be stopped for winter. The enormous prizes for
extending the line through the Rockies to meet the rival railroad
heading east from California, spurred the builders to every effort to
lengthen their mileage, and something unheard of was attempted,
namely, mountain railroad-building in midwinter.

Levake, the leader among the mountain outlaws, was nursed back to life
by the surgeon he had so nearly murdered. But his respite was a brief
one. When new officers of the law were elected in Medicine Bend, the
murderer was tried for one of his many crimes and paid on the scaffold
the penalty of his cold-blooded cruelty. Rebstock, the fox, and his
companion Seagrue escaped the exterminating raid of the vigilantes but
fought shy of Medicine Bend for long afterward.

A few days after the riots Stanley sent for Bucks, who was holding a
key among the operators downstairs, to come to his office.

"How long have you been a telegraph operator, Bucks?" he asked.

Bucks laughed in some embarrassment. "Since I was about twelve years
old, sir."

"Twelve years old!" echoed Stanley in amazement. "Where did you learn
to telegraph at twelve?"

Bucks hesitated again. "I never learned, sir!"

"What do you mean?"

"I used to sit in the telegraph office of the road when my uncle
was superintendent, and I got used to hearing the sound of the
instruments. I just woke up one morning and found I could telegraph.
I couldn't the night before. That's the only way I ever learned,
sir."

Stanley regarded the boy with interest. "How old are you now?"

"Seventeen."

"Very well. When you went to bed last night you were not a train
despatcher: this morning you are." Bucks started. "If any one ever
asks you," continued Stanley dryly, "how you learned to be a train
despatcher, tell them just that."

"I don't want you to think you are old enough to be a despatcher,"
continued Stanley, as Bucks stammered his thanks, "for you are not.
And I don't want you to think I like to make you one. I don't. Neither
for your sake nor mine. I don't like to impose the responsibilities of
a man on a boy. But I can't help it. We haven't the men, and we can't
get them--and we must all, men and boys, pull together and just do
the best we can--do you understand?"

"I understand everything, Colonel Stanley."

"I need not say much about what is before you. You have been sending
despatchers' orders for years yourself. You know how many lives are
held every minute in the despatchers' hand. Don't overrate your
responsibility and grow nervous over it; and don't ever underestimate
it. As long as you keep yourself fit for your work, and do the best
you can, you may sleep with a clear conscience. Report to Mr. Baxter.
Remember you are working with green trainmen and don't expect too much
of them."

When Bucks signed a transfer and took his train-sheet that night at
twelve o'clock, his chief anxiety was to keep the material trains
going to Casement and everything eastbound was laid out in an effort
to send the ties and rails west. Bucks set himself to keep pace with
the good work done by the despatcher in the evening trick and for two
hours kept his sheet pretty clean.

A heavy train of rails which he had been helping all the way west
after midnight was then at Castle Springs, and Bucks gave its crew an
order to meet the eastbound passenger train at Point of Rocks. It was
three o'clock when a message came from the operator at Point of Rocks,
saying the rail train had passed westbound. Bucks seized a key and
silencing the wires asked for the passenger train. Nothing had been
seen of it. He called up Bitter Creek, the first telegraph point west
of Point of Rocks with an order to hold the passenger train. But the
train had already gone.

The new dispatcher sprang up from the table frantic. Then, racing
again to the key, he made the operator at Castle Springs repeat the
order and assure him it had been delivered. Of this there could be no
question. The freight crew had ignored or forgotten it, and were now
past Point of Rocks running head-on against the passenger train. If
the heavens had fallen the situation would have seemed better to
Bucks. A head-on collision on the first night of his promotion meant,
he felt, his ruin. As he sat overwhelmed with despair, trying to
collect his wits and to determine what to do, the door opened and Bob
Scott appeared.

The scout, with his unfailing and kindly smile, advanced and held out
his hand. "Just dropped in to extend my congratulations."

Bucks looked at him in horror, his face rigid and his eyes set. Scott
paused and regarded his aspect with surprise. "Something has
happened," he said, waiting for the despatcher to speak.

"Bob!" exclaimed the boy in desperation, "No. 9 has run past her
meeting order at Point of Rocks with No. 2. They will meet head-on and
kill everybody. My God! what can I do?"

In the dim light of the shaded oil lamp, Bucks, looking at the scout,
stood the picture of despair. Scott picked up the poker and began to
stir the fire and asked only a few questions and said little. However,
when Bucks told him he was going to wake Stanley, whose sleeping-room
adjoined his office at the end of the hall, Scott counselled no.

"He could do nothing," said Scott reflecting. "Let us wait a while
before we do anything like that," he added, coupling himself with the
despatcher in the latter's overwhelming anxiety. "The first news of
the collision will come from Bitter Creek. It will be time enough then
to call Stanley. Give your orders for a wrecking crew, get a train
ready, and get word to Doctor Arnold to go with it."

Bucks, steadying himself under the kindly common-sense of his older
friend, followed each suggestion promptly. Scott, who ordinarily would
himself have been running around on the job, made no move to leave the
room, thinking he could be of more service in remaining with the
unfortunate despatcher. The yard became a scene of instant activity.
And although no organization to meet emergencies of this kind had been
as yet effected on the new division, the men responded intelligently
and promptly with the necessary arrangements.

Everyone summoned tried to get into the dispatchers' room to hear the
story repeated. Scott took it upon himself to prevent this, and
standing in the anteroom made all explanations himself. He rejoined
Bucks after getting rid of the crowd, and the moment the relief train
reported ready the despatcher sent it out, that help might reach the
scene of disaster at the earliest possible moment. Bucks, calmed
somewhat but suffering intensely, paced the floor or threw himself
into his chair, while Scott picked up the despatcher's old copy of
"The Last of the Mohicans," and smoking silently sat immovable,
waiting with his customary stoicism for the call that should announce
the dreaded wreck.

The moments loaded with anxiety went with leaden feet while the two
men sat. It seemed as if the first hour never would pass. Then the
long silence of the little receiver was broken by a call for the
dispatcher. Bucks sprang to answer it.

Scott watched his face as he sent his "Ay, ay." Without understanding
what the instruments clicked, he read the expressions that followed
one after the other across Bucks's countenance, as he would have read
a desert trail. He noted the perplexity on the despatcher's face when
the latter tried to get the sender of the call.

"Some one is cutting in on the line," exclaimed Bucks, mystified, as
the sounder clicked. "Bob, it is Bill Dancing."

A pause followed. "What can it mean, his sending a message to me? He
is between Bitter Creek and Castle Springs. Wait a moment!"

The receiver clicked sharp and fast. Scarcely able to control his
voice in his anxiety, Bucks turned to the now excited scout: "The
trains met between Bitter Creek and Castle Springs. There was no
collision!"

Almost collapsing with the passing of the strain, Bucks faltered in
his taking. Asking Dancing again for the story, Bucks took it more
coolly and repeated it to his eager listener, as it came.

"Dancing was out with two men on the line to-day, repairing between
Bitter Creek and Castle Springs. He didn't get done and camped beside
the track for the night, to finish in the morning."

"Go on," exclaimed Scott.

"They shot a jack-rabbit----"

"Hang the jack-rabbit," cried Scott. "What about the trains?"

"You can't hurry Bill Dancing, Bob," pleaded Bucks. "You know that.
Faster, Bill, faster," he telegraphed urgently.

"You will get it faster," returned the distant lineman far out in the
mountains under the stars, as he talked calmly with the despatcher,
"if you will go slower."

Bucks strangled his impatience. Dancing resumed, and the despatcher
again translated for Scott.

"They cooked the jack-rabbit for supper----"

Scott flung his book violently across the room. "It tasted good,"
continued Dancing exasperatingly. "But the night was awfully cold, so
they built a big camp-fire near the curve. The freight engineer saw
the fire and thought it was a locomotive head-light. Then he
remembered he had run past his meeting point. He stopped his train to
find out what the fire was. When he told Bill what had happened they
grabbed up the burning logs, carried them down the track, and built a
signal fire for No. 2. And it came along inside five minutes----"

"And there they are!" concluded Bucks, wiping the dampness from his
forehead.

The receiver continued to click. "Bill thought I would be worried and
he cut in on the line right away to tell me what had happened."

"Now give your orders to No. 2 to back up to Castle Springs and let
the rail train get by. Recall your relief train," added Scott. "And
bring that freight engineer in here in the morning and let Stanley
talk to him for just about five minutes." The key rattled for a
moment. Scott, going to the farthest corner of the room, picked up
"The Last of the Mohicans." "Bucks," he murmured insinuatingly, as he
sat down to look into the book again, "I want to ask you now, once for
all, whether this is a true story?"

"Bob, put that book where it belongs and stop talking about it."

Scott hitched one shoulder a bit and returned to the fire, but he was
not silenced.

"That reminds me, Bucks," he resumed after a pause, "there is another
friend of yours here at the door, waiting to congratulate you. Shall
I let him in?"

"I don't want any congratulations, Bob."

"I'll promise he doesn't say a single word, Bucks." As he spoke, Scott
opened the hall door and whistled into the darkness. For an instant
there was no response. Then a small and vague object outlined itself
in the gloom, but halted questioningly on the threshold. Wagging his
abbreviated tail very gently and carrying his drooping ears very low,
Scuffy at length walked slowly into the room. Bucks hailed him with
delight, and Scuffy bounding forward crouched at his feet.

"I can't do a thing with him over at the ranch," complained Scott,
eying the dog with a secret admiration. "He is eating the hounds up;
doesn't give them a chance to pick a bone even after he's done with
it."

"I'm afraid there is nothing to do with Scuffy, but to make a
despatcher of him," returned Bucks, picking him up by the forepaws. "I
can see very plainly it's going to be a dog's life most of the time."






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