RALPH ON THE MIDNIGHT FLYER




[Illustration: THE FIRE WAS SWEEPING CLOSER AND CLOSER.]




                     RALPH ON THE MIDNIGHT FLYER

                                  OR
                      THE WRECK AT SHADOW VALLEY

                                  BY
                            ALLEN CHAPMAN

          AUTHOR OF “RALPH OF THE ROUNDHOUSE,” “RALPH ON THE
            ARMY TRAIN,” “THE RADIO BOYS’ FIRST WIRELESS,”
               “THE RADIO BOYS TRAILING A VOICE,” ETC.

                             ILLUSTRATED

                               NEW YORK
                           GROSSET & DUNLAP
                              PUBLISHERS

                 Made in the United States of America




                            BOOKS FOR BOYS
                           BY ALLEN CHAPMAN

                      12mo. Cloth, Illustrated.

                         THE RAILROAD SERIES

            RALPH OF THE ROUNDHOUSE
            Or Bound to Become a Railroad Man

            RALPH IN THE SWITCH TOWER
            Or Clearing the Track

            RALPH ON THE ENGINE
            Or The Young Fireman of the Limited Mail

            RALPH ON THE OVERLAND EXPRESS
            Or The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer

            RALPH, THE TRAIN DISPATCHER
            Or The Mystery of the Pay Car

            RALPH ON THE ARMY TRAIN
            Or The Young Railroader’s Most Daring Exploit

            RALPH ON THE MIDNIGHT FLYER
            Or The Wreck at Shadow Valley


                        THE RADIO BOYS SERIES

                THE RADIO BOYS’ FIRST WIRELESS
                Or Winning the Ferberton Prize

                THE RADIO BOYS AT OCEAN POINT
                Or The Message that Saved the Ship

                THE RADIO BOYS AT THE SENDING STATION
                Or Making Good in the Wireless Room

                THE RADIO BOYS AT MOUNTAIN PASS
                Or The Midnight Call for Assistance

                THE RADIO BOYS TRAILING A VOICE
                Or Solving a Wireless Mystery

                THE RADIO BOYS WITH THE FOREST RANGERS
                Or The Great Fire on Spruce Mountain

                GROSSET & DUNLAP, Publishers, New York
                 COPYRIGHT, 1923, BY GROSSET & DUNLAP

                     Ralph on the Midnight Flyer




                               CONTENTS

                      I The Trouble-Maker
                     II Discipline
                    III A Good Deal to Think of
                     IV Zeph Fathers an Idea
                      V On the Heels of a Shadow
                     VI Touch and Go
                    VII Something Bad
                   VIII A Clash of Authority
                     IX It Happens Again
                      X The Night of the Strike
                     XI More Friction
                    XII Treachery
                   XIII News from Shadow Valley
                    XIV A Tragedy
                     XV Once More on the Rails
                    XVI Through Shadow Valley
                   XVII More Discipline
                  XVIII From Bad to Worse
                    XIX The Hold-Up in Shadow Valley
                     XX Strange Signals
                    XXI About Cherry
                   XXII The Threat Direct
                  XXIII What Lies Ahead?
                   XXIV Terrible News
                    XXV Through the Flaming Forest
                   XXVI The Wreck
                  XXVII Where Is Cherry?
                 XXVIII Ralph on the Trail
                   XXIX The Run Is Ended




RALPH ON THE MIDNIGHT FLYER

CHAPTER I—THE TROUBLE-MAKER


“What do you think, Ralph? Would any of our Great Northern employees
be foolish enough to join this wildcat strike?”

“Well, what do you think yourself?” asked Ralph Fairbanks, with some
impatience in his tone. “You know these roughnecks as well as I do.”

The general manager, in whose office at Rockton they were sitting,
threw up both hands and fairly snorted his disgust.

“I’ve been a long time at the railroad game,” he declared; “but I
never yet understood the psychology of a maintenance of way man. No,
sir. In some things they are as loyal to the road as I am myself. And
then they suddenly go off at a tangent because of something that, for
the life of me, I cannot see is important.”

“There lies the difficulty—the germ of the whole trouble,” Ralph
Fairbanks said thoughtfully.

He was a young fellow of attractive personality—good looking, too. The
girls had begun to notice the young railroader, and had he not been so
thoroughly devoted to his calling—and to the finest mother a fellow
ever had—Ralph might have been somewhat spoiled by the admiration
accorded him in certain quarters.

Just now, however, having been called in from the train dispatchers’
department where he worked, the young fellow’s attention was deeply
engaged in the subject the general manager had brought up. Ralph was
an extraordinary employee of the Great Northern. His superiors trusted
him thoroughly. And having worked his way up from the roundhouse,
switch tower, as fireman and engineer, to the train dispatcher’s
grade, he was often called upon by the railroad officials for special
duties.

The general manager stared at the young fellow after his last remark
for fully a minute before asking:

“What do you mean by that? What is the germ of the whole trouble?”

“The fact that the officials cannot see things just as the men see
them.”

“Oh!”

“No getting away from the fact that the laborer seldom looks at a
thing as his superior looks at it,” Ralph pursued earnestly. “A rule
promulgated by some officer of the road seems to him the simplest way
of getting at a needed result. But after it is spread on the board at
the roundhouse, for instance, it creates a riot.”

“So it does. And I am hanged if I have been able to understand in some
cases why the men go off half-cocked over some simple thing.”

“Not simple at all to them. It is often a rule that lops off some
cherished privilege. It may be something that looks as though it were
aimed at the laborer’s independence.”

“Bah!” ejaculated the general manager with more than a little disdain
in his tone.

“You see!” laughed Ralph. “You can’t see it in the same way that I
can, for instance. You make an order, say, changing the style of the
caps the men wear around the roundhouse and switch towers, and see
what a row you’ll have on your hands. Some ‘lawyer’ among ’em will see
a deliberate attempt for somebody to graft—or worse. Those caps they
get for a quarter and can buy in the little stores that crop up around
every railroad yard. The hogheads and firemen wear them. Everybody
wears them. You order that the cap hereafter worn shall be quite
different from the present cap, and you’ll start something that you’ll
never be able to stop save by buckling down to the boys.”

“But why?” demanded the official. “Tell me! What is the reason?
Another cap might not cost them a penny more——”

“Or might not cost them as much. That would make no difference. You
strike at his independence in changing the style of the cap. And his
independence is the most cherished possession of the railroader. You
should know that.”

“I know that they think they are independent,” growled the general
manager. “But like the rest of us, they are just about as independent
as the hog on the cake of ice.”

The young train dispatcher laughed again. He could really appreciate
the mental attitude of both the disgruntled railroad workers, at this
time stirred up all over the country from ocean to ocean, and the
higher officials of the road, who realized fully that unless all
branches of the railroad pulled together during the next few months
there would surely come financial wreckage to many systems.

The Great Northern was really in better circumstances than many trunk
lines at the time. But on the division the headquarters of which were
here in Rockton, friction had developed. The shopmen talked strike;
the yardmen were disgruntled; the section hands of the division talked
more than they worked. Altogether the situation was so serious that
the general manager himself found it necessary to look the field over.

And it was not strange that he should have called Ralph Fairbanks into
conference. Young as the latter was, he was a link between the
officials and the workmen at large.

“Look here, Ralph,” said the general manager suddenly, swinging about
in his chair with one leg over its arm and pointing his lighted cigar
at the young fellow, “I’m going to ask you a pointed question. What do
you think of Bart Hopkins?”

“Mr. Hopkins—the division super?” returned Ralph briskly and looking
straight into the general manager’s face. “I think that Mr. Hopkins
has a lovely daughter. As the boys say, she’s a peach!”

“No,” replied the general manager gloomily, “she’s a Cherry—a
different kind of fruit. But I am not asking your opinion of Cherry
Hopkins. How about Bart?”

“I guess I haven’t been thinking much about him,” confessed Ralph
slowly. “He has been here in charge for three months, and to tell the
truth I have not spoken to him half-a-dozen times. He has nothing to
do, of course, with the dispatchers’ department. Mr. Hopkins is a
pleasant-spoken man.”

“You know blamed well that I am not asking, either, about Bart
Hopkins’ social qualities,” said the exasperated general manager.
“What do you think of him as a railroad man? What is he doing here?”

A flash of feeling came into Ralph Fairbanks’ face and he looked
steadily at his old friend and superior.

“What did you expect him to do here?”

“Confound it all! I don’t want to be catechised. I want you to answer
me. I want to know what you think of the man’s work?”

“You want it straight, then, do you?” asked Ralph sharply.

“Yes, I do.”

“Then I think he will end in setting everybody by the ears and
bringing on a strike that may spread to every division of the Great
Northern. You have forced this answer from me. Remember, you must not
quote me.”

“I won’t snitch,” said the general manager, with a wry grin. “I
understand. Then you take the men’s view of Bart? You believe he is a
trouble-maker?”

“As sure as you are two feet high!” exclaimed Ralph, with conviction.

“Huh! He has already brought about changes that have saved the
division a mint of money.”

“The other changes he has made will cost the road a good deal more—if
there is a strike.”

“Actually, do you believe there will be a strike, Ralph?”

“If Andy McCarrey has his way, there will be. And Mr. Hopkins is
playing right into McCarrey’s hands.”

“I can’t believe that Bart would deliberately do anything to bring on
trouble.”

“No. But he’s been bitten by the efficiency bug. The swelling is a
terrible one,” said Ralph, smiling again. “Mr. Hopkins can’t seem to
see things at all from the men’s standpoint. As I said before, an
inability to see the effect of an order on the men’s minds is the germ
of most friction between the laborers and the railroad heads. McCarrey
is a bad man. He wants to lead a strike. Naturally a strike will put a
lot of money in McCarrey’s hands. These strike leaders do as they
please with strike funds—there is never any check on them.

“Besides, as I believe, he has a personal enmity for Mr. Hopkins.
Somewhere in the East, where Hopkins came from, McCarrey got a grudge
against him.”

“Yes, I understand Barton Hopkins was in the middle of some trouble on
the Eastern Shore Railroad. He is a stormy petrel. But he is making
good here. He has saved us money,” reiterated the general manager.

“Well, if money is more to the Great Northern than a loyal band of
employees,” said Ralph with some bitterness, as he got up from his
chair, “then you have got just what you want in Mr. Hopkins. I’m
telling you that I see trouble ahead. And it is coming soon.”

Ralph Fairbanks felt deeply regarding the situation which had arisen
in Rockton. When he walked down past the railroad shops a little later
on his way home and looked in at the open windows, he could not fail
to notice that the shopmen were talking together in groups instead of
being busy at their various jobs.

“Looks bad,” muttered Ralph. “I hated to knock the new super.
Especially when he has got such a pretty daughter,” and he smiled
reminiscently.

Suddenly he started and then quickened his steps. Ahead of him he saw
a trimly dressed figure crossing the railroad at Hammerby Street. He
could not mistake the girl. Not when she had been in his mind the
previous instant.

Miss Cherry Hopkins was a pronounced blonde. It was at the time when
bobbed hair was popular, and bobbed hair added to Cherry’s chic
appearance. She was slim, and of good figure. She wore a silk sweater,
a sport skirt, and a hat that was in keeping.

The girl crossed the tracks and reached the sidewalk on the other
side. There were no dwellings near; only warehouses. And save for a
group of roughly dressed men loitering behind the flagman’s shanty,
there were few people near the crossing.

Suddenly Ralph saw something that caused him to dart forward, shouting
angrily:

“Look out, Miss Cherry! Look out!”

The girl flashed a look behind her. Fortunately she dodged
involuntarily at Ralph Fairbanks’ cry, for the next instant a missile
flew over her shoulder and crashed against the end of the warehouse.
Had it struck the girl it would have hurt her seriously.




                              CHAPTER II

                              DISCIPLINE


An over-ripe cabbage may be a dangerous missile. This one exploded
almost like a bomb against the warehouse, spattering Cherry Hopkins
all over. She screamed and ran back toward Ralph Fairbanks. A harsh
voice shouted:

“Poor shot! Yer oughter smashed that Hopkins gal, Whitey.”

Ralph saw that the group of fellows behind the flagman’s shack had
scattered. One long-legged fellow was ahead and evidently in some fear
of apprehension.

“You wait right here, Miss Cherry!” the young dispatcher cried. “I’m
going to try to get that fellow.”

He dashed along the tracks and through an alley of which he knew. He
hoped to head off the fellow called “Whitey,” who he was quite sure
had thrown the cabbage.

But when he came out upon North Main Street he could not see any sign
of the hoodlum. He looked into several small stores and tenement house
halls, but the fellow had made good his escape.

When he returned by the way of Hammerby Street he saw Cherry Hopkins
trying to wipe the decayed vegetable matter off her sweater and skirt.
Her pretty hat was likewise stained. When Ralph came near enough he
saw that the girl had been crying.

No man or boy likes to see a girl weep.

Ralph hesitated, not knowing what to say to Cherry Hopkins. He had
never been more than casually acquainted with the supervisor’s
daughter; but he did admire her.

Ralph could not have failed to attract the young girl’s attention
during the three months she had spent in Rockton. In the first place,
almost everybody in the small but thriving city knew the young train
dispatcher.

In the first story about Ralph, “Ralph of the Roundhouse,” the young
fellow’s beginnings on the Great Northern were fully related. His
father had been one of the builders of the Great Northern, but through
unfortunate speculations he had died poor and left Ralph and his
mother to struggle along as best they could. In addition, Mr.
Fairbanks’ partner, Gaspar Farrington, had been dishonest, and had
Ralph and his widowed mother at his mercy.

How Ralph checkmated Farrington as well as the exciting incidents of
his career in the roundhouse is all narrated in that first volume of
the series.

In ensuing volumes the young fellow’s career as towerman, fireman,
engineer, and in the different grades of dispatcher, is told in full.
The sixth volume, “Ralph on the Army Train,” is the story of the
youth’s work in that great part which the railroaders took in the war.
By Ralph’s individual effort, a heavily loaded train of our boys bound
for the embarking port was taken through to safety in spite of a plot
to wreck the train.

He was now, some months later, back on his old job as chief dispatcher
of this division of the Great Northern. He might have had a good
position on the main line; but, in taking it, he would have had to
sacrifice some independence and, more than all, must have given up the
little home he and his mother owned in Rockton and removed the widow
from surroundings that she loved.

“My chance to get a good thing will come again,” Ralph had told Mrs.
Fairbanks. “And really, I am my own boss here. Even Barton Hopkins
can’t tell _me_ where to get off.”

For divisional supervisor Hopkins had soon become very much disliked.
He was a good railroader—no doubt of that. But he should have been a
drill-master in a military school rather than the head of a division
of a railroad at a time when almost every railroad employee felt that
he had been whipsawed between the Government and his employing
railroad.

Hopkins lacked tact; he saw nothing but the job and what he could make
of it. His god was discipline! He was upright and honest, but, as the
saying goes, he bent over backwards when he stood erect. And Ralph
Fairbanks was pretty thoroughly convinced that grave trouble was
brewing because of Mr. Hopkins’ methods.

Just at this moment, however, it was Cherry Hopkins in whose affairs
the young dispatcher was deeply interested. As she tried to wipe the
stains from her skirt and “sniffled” back her tears, Ralph approached
slowly.

“Now, Miss Cherry,” he begged, “don’t cry about it. If I could have
caught that fellow I would have handed him over to one of the road’s
policemen. It didn’t really hurt you——”

“I’m just as mad, Ralph Fairbanks, as I can be!” interrupted the girl,
with heat. “And it is always the way wherever we go. The railroad men
seem to hate us all.”

“Indeed?” rejoined Ralph thoughtfully. “Have you been troubled in
Rockton before this?”

“Of course I have. And mother, too. We have been followed on the
street, and booed and hissed. Father doesn’t mind——”

“I am quite sure he has not reported it to the chief detective of the
road, Mr. Bob Adair.”

“Father would not report such a thing. He considers it beneath
notice.”

“I’ll say that cabbage was not beneath notice!” cried Ralph. “If it
had hit you—well! Come along, Miss Cherry. Let me see you home.”

“Oh, I don’t want to trouble you, Mr. Fairbanks.”

“You know I live in your direction,” said Ralph, pleasantly. “We’ll
walk along together. And you tell me, Miss Cherry, who these fellows
are who have insulted your mother and you.”

“Oh, dear me, how do I know who they are?” cried the girl,
despairingly. “They are low fellows, of course. And many of them are
just boys—loafers. They do not even work for the Great Northern.”

“But their fathers and brothers do, I suppose?” ruminated Ralph.

“I suppose so. You see, we have to cross the railroad to do our
shopping. When we come into this district, if there is a group of
idlers hanging around they are almost sure to call after us. It is not
pleasant.”

“It should be reported. But, of course, it is your father’s business,”
said Ralph thoughtfully. “I might speak to Mr. Adair. He is a friend
of mine. But unless Mr. Hopkins sanctioned any move against the
rowdies, I am afraid——”

“I wish you would come in and talk to father about it,” Cherry cried
eagerly. “He might listen to _you_.”

“Is he at home at this hour?” asked the young dispatcher doubtfully.
“I don’t know about saying anything to him regarding a private
matter.”

“I want him to know how you drove those fellows away,” she said. “Do
come in. You know my father, don’t you?”

“Slightly. We do not come in contact much,” Ralph said slowly.

“You will like him, Mr. Fairbanks,” said the girl earnestly. “He is
really a wonderful man. Wherever he has held a position the company
has been glad of his services. He is marvelously efficient. And he is
forever planning improvements and scheming out ways of saving money
for the road. Oh, yes, they all admire him.”

“The men, too?” Ralph asked shrewdly.

“Oh! The laborers? I don’t know about that.”

“Quite an important point, I assure you,” said Ralph grimly. “No
matter how much money an official saves the road, if he doesn’t hold
the confidence and liking of the general run of railroad workers, he
is distinctly not a success.”

“Oh! Do you believe that?” she cried.

“I know it. Railroad workers are the most clannish men in the world.
If they have worked long for a particular road they are as loyal to
that road as though they owned it. And they resent any meddling with
the usual routine of affairs. You have got to handle them with gloves.
I fancy, Miss Cherry,” added Ralph somewhat grimly, “that your father
has thrown away his gloves.”

They just then came to the Hopkins house. It was one of the best
houses in the section of Rockton in which Ralph and his mother lived.
It was rather far from the railroad and the railroad tenements; so
supervisor Hopkins’ employees were not likely to be seen often.

“Come in—do,” urged Cherry, opening the gate. “There’s father at the
library window.”

The young dispatcher saw Barton Hopkins looking through the pane. He
was a man with a very high forehead, colorless complexion, a
high-arched nose upon which were set astride a pair of shell-rimmed
eyeglasses, which masked pale blue eyes. One could warm up to a chunk
of ice about as readily as one could to Mr. Barton Hopkins.

And yet, Ralph was sure, there was not a thing the matter with the
supervisor save that he was not human! He was a machine. His mental
powers were not lubricated with either charity or an interest in the
personal affairs of his fellow men.

He stared without a semblance of emotion at Ralph Fairbanks as Cherry
urged the latter into the library and introduced the young fellow.

“Oh, yes. I know Mr. Fairbanks,” said Mr. Hopkins, and looked the
visitor over as though he questioned if he might not in some way show
Ralph how to be more efficient in his job.

When Cherry explained volubly how she had been attacked by the rowdies
at the railroad crossing and Ralph had come to her assistance, Mr.
Hopkins rose and shook hands with the visitor again. But his second
handshake was exactly like the first one. Ralph thought of grasping a
dead fish!

“There are too many unemployed men hanging about the yards,” said the
supervisor in his decisive way, after Cherry had excused herself in
order to change to a clean dress. “I am about to point that out to our
police department. They should either be given a sentence to the farm
or be run out of town.”

“A good many of those idlers have been employees of the road. Their
homes are here. It is not exactly their fault that they have been
thrown out of work. And they do not understand why they should be
idle.”

“What is that to the Great Northern?” demanded the supervisor with
some hauteur. “A railroad is a corporation doing business for gain. It
is not a charitable organization.”

“It should be both,” declared Ralph earnestly. He felt that he could
oppose this man safely. Hopkins could not touch his department. “The
way the Great Northern—and this division particularly—has kept
together a loyal bunch of workmen is by caring for those workmen and
their families through dull seasons. I understand that a man has been
lopped off each section gang of late. In three cases I know that the
man discharged owned, or was paying for, his own little home. They are
up against it, for other work is not easily obtained now.”

“I have had that brought to my attention before,” answered Mr.
Hopkins, with a gesture of finality. “I repeat, it does not interest
me—or the Great Northern.”

“It is going to interest you, I fear,” said Ralph warmly.

“I do not understand you, Mr. Fairbanks.”

“The men are getting down on you,” said the young fellow bluntly. “As
you see they insult and threaten Miss Cherry and your wife. There will
be some outbreak——”

“Do you think that if I knew that to be true it would influence me in
the least?” asked Mr. Hopkins sternly.

“It would better. Your wife and daughter are likely to suffer. Of
course, the discharged men will probably not have anything to do with
it; but they cannot control their sympathizers. There is talk of a
strike. If a strike comes——”

“Suppose you let such matters be handled by your superiors, Mr.
Fairbanks,” said the supervisor coldly. “It is not in the province of
a train dispatcher.”

“Quite true,” Ralph said, rising abruptly.

Cherry had not come back into the room. He felt that he really was not
welcome here. And he feared he might be tempted to say something even
more unwise to the stiff-necked supervisor.

“You will excuse me, Mr. Hopkins. I really think your daughter and
wife are in some danger if they go downtown. Pardon me for saying so.”

“Thank you,” said Barton Hopkins without an ounce of expression in
either his voice or his countenance. “Good-day, Mr. Fairbanks.”

“Humph!” thought Ralph, as he fumbled for the knob of the front door.
“I reckon I know where I get off with Mr. Hopkins. Oh, yes!”




                             CHAPTER III

                       A GOOD DEAL TO THINK OF


It was growing dusk as Ralph Fairbanks left the bungalow occupied by
the divisional supervisor and his family. The young fellow felt some
little disappointment at not seeing Cherry again. He believed that the
girl’s mother had deliberately kept her from coming back into the
library where the dispatcher had been talking with Barton Hopkins.

“Not that I wanted to talk with the super,” considered Ralph, as he
found his way out of the house and closed the door behind him. “I
would much rather have not done so. He’s got an eye as cold as ice. I
wonder if he wasn’t hatching something in his keen brain right then to
make our department more efficient,” and Ralph chuckled grimly.

“Oh, well, I guess I am out of his line, come to think of it. But he
is certainly going to come a cropper before he gets through in
Rockton. When the Brotherhoods begin to take notice of him, the Great
Northern will lose its——Hullo! What’s this?”

As he came out through the gateway he saw several shadowy figures
across the street. The street lamps were not yet lighted in this block
and it was just dark enough for those figures Ralph saw to seem
uncertain.

Of course, he had no expectation of being followed. He had no quarrel
with any branch of the union men. In fact, most of the employees on
the division were Ralph Fairbanks’ personal friends.

But he looked twice at the shadowy group as he turned toward his
mother’s cottage. Again he looked back.

“There he goes!” suddenly shouted a voice. “One of Hopkins’ tools.
Yah! A lickspittle of the super. Yah!”

It is a fact that “sticks and stones can break your bones, but names
will never hurt you”; just the same, that old saw does not salve over
the sting of unfair vituperations. Ralph was red hot on the instant.

To be dignified, too, is all very well. But Ralph knew these hoodlums
quite well enough to be sure that only one course with them would make
the proper impression. He possessed as much brute courage as any
healthy young fellow. And he did not purpose to allow these loafers to
blackguard him on the public street.

The dispatcher turned swiftly and started across the street. The
several men and boys in the group yelled again. Some missile hurtled
through the dusk and fairly fanned Ralph’s cheek!

“Who are you rascals?” demanded Ralph angrily. “I’ll show you a thing
or two!”

He dashed at the group. None of them was very courageous, for the
crowd broke and fled before him. Some woman, looking out of the window
of a neighboring house, screamed. Ralph caught one fellow and pulled
him back, throwing him heavily to the walk.

“I’ll find out who _you_ are!” declared the young train dispatcher.
“What do you mean by interfering with me?”

The other fellows had fled noisily. The street lights suddenly flashed
up and Ralph was able to distinguish the features of the man he had
captured.

“Whitey Malone! I thought you were in jail,” the young dispatcher said
in surprise. “The judge gave you long enough there——”

“I got me fine paid,” blubbered the fellow.

Ralph smelled liquor on his breath. He knew Whitey Malone as a good
deal of a disgrace to the community. He had never been a real railroad
man. He was merely a hanger-on at the shops, sometimes doing odd jobs,
or being taken on the shop payroll for a few weeks.

“It is too bad anybody was foolish enough to pay your fine,” declared
Ralph sternly.

“Oh, I’ve got good friends in spite of Bart Hopkins and his new rules
that turned me out of me job,” snarled Whitey.

“And a good friend paid your fine?” remarked Ralph curiously. “Could
the friend be Andy McCarrey, for instance?”

“You want to know too much, Fairbanks,” said Whitey sullenly.

“I’m a good guesser,” rejoined the young dispatcher, dragging the
fellow to his feet. “Now, listen to me, Whitey. This time I’ll let you
go. I won’t turn you over to the police as you deserve.”

“You wouldn’t dare!” cried Whitey.

“You tempt me too far and I’ll show you right now what I dare to do.
You keep away from Supervisor Hopkins’ house.”

“Yah! You’re one of his tools, you are!” exclaimed Whitey.

“Listen!” commanded Ralph, shaking him.

“Ow! Ow! Ouch!”

“Listen! You keep away from this street! And further, don’t you
trouble Mr. Hopkins’ wife or daughter. Remember, I’ve got your number.
If you throw another cabbage or annoy the Hopkins’ family in any way,
you’ll go to the farm.”

He threw the ill-smelling fellow from him and turned sharply to walk
away. Whitey could not resist another word. He yelled:

“Hopkins’ tool! You wait a while, Ralph Fairbanks. You’ll see what’s
going to happen.” Then he ran off at top speed.

Ralph did not attempt to follow the fellow. To punish the half-drunken
Whitey Malone would be as useless as fencing with a windmill. If
anything was to be done to avert trouble and put fear of the law into
the bad element around the railroad yards and shops, those higher up
must feel the weight of authority. Whitey and his ilk were quite
irresponsible.

Ralph told his mother the tale at the supper table, relating the
entire incident from the moment he had seen Cherry Hopkins attacked by
the rowdies.

“Just the same, there is trouble brewing,” he added. “It will center
about Mr. Bart Hopkins. And yet, I can’t blame the G. M. for backing
the super up. Mr. Hopkins is a wonderfully able man. But discipline
means more to him than the contentment and happiness of his
employees.”

“I am sorry if there is going to be more trouble on the road, Ralph,”
the widow said, with a sigh.

“Oh, it won’t affect me any,” he said cheerfully. “I have nothing to
do with the shopmen or the maintenance of way men.”

“I thought you were safely out of trouble when you got in the train
dispatchers’ department,” said Mrs. Fairbanks reflectively. “But just
see what happened in war time. Your peril on that army train——”

“Shucks! Nothing like that is likely to happen again, Mother,” he
interrupted. “I’m a regular stick-in-the-mud now. Youngest chief
dispatcher of any division of the Great Northern system. Why! I’m an
old man.”

“You are just as likely as ever to be tempted to do a reckless thing,”
she said, but she smiled at him. “An old man! You are just a baby to
me, Ralph, after all.”

He laughed; but he blushed, too.

“Don’t baby me too much, Mother,” he said. “The girls don’t think I am
a baby.”

“Indeed?” she asked. “Are there more girls? I don’t know but you are
in more danger off the road, than on.”

“A new one,” said Ralph frankly. He and his mother were the very best
of friends. “Didn’t I tell you the new super has a daughter? And she’s
a peach! No! I mean she is a Cherry.”

“Cherry?”

“Cherry Hopkins. She is the girl I saw home just now.”

“Is she as pretty as her name?” asked Mrs. Fairbanks curiously.

“You bet she is! I’d like to have you see her. I don’t see how such a
cold and severe proposition as Mr. Hopkins ever came by such a
daughter.”

“So you think well of her, do you?” asked the widow rather wistfully.

“I surely do. But I don’t know what she thinks of me. You know how
these girls are. They keep everything close. A fellow doesn’t have a
chance to learn their opinion of him. They treat ’em all alike.”

“Quite right,” returned the widow. “The reticent girl keeps out of
danger.”

“Humph! I don’t know how much danger she keeps out of,” said Ralph.
“But believe me, if something is not done pretty soon to appease the
shopmen it will not be safe for either Cherry or her mother to walk on
the streets.”

“Well, my dear boy,” begged the widow, “I hope you will keep out of
any part in the trouble. You surely cannot help Mr. Hopkins.”

“He wouldn’t let me help him if I could do so,” answered Ralph.

“All the better,” his mother said with satisfaction. “If you cannot be
drawn into the trouble by either side in the controversy, very well. I
shall feel safe, at least.”

“I guess I am out of it, for once,” admitted her son. “It gives a
fellow a lot to think of. I hate to see trouble come to the division.
That Andy McCarrey ought to be jailed. But, on the other hand, I feel
that Barton Hopkins is quite as much at fault. By gracious! If I were
the G. M.——”

At that his mother burst into laughter. “Oh! You are looking forward
to what you would do if you were running the Great Northern,” she
jeered.

“I don’t care,” cried her son. “I can see as far into a brick wall as
the next one. And when I know things are going wrong——”

“You think you could fix them all up, Ralph?”

“I know I could keep things straighter than Hopkins does. Maybe I
would not be so popular with the directors and stockholders; but I’d
run this division without having so much friction. You can bet on
that, Mother.”

“I never bet,” she replied soberly, but her eyes dancing.

She enjoyed hearing Ralph become enthusiastic over railroad matters.
Having been a railroader’s wife and having joined with her husband in
all his hopes and intentions, she could appreciate Ralph’s enthusiasm.

“Well, if you were betting, I could give you a tip,” laughed Ralph at
last. “One of two things is going to happen. Either Mr. Hopkins will
be transferred to some other sphere of usefulness, or the division is
due to suffer the worst strike it has ever had. I am confident of
this, Mother—I am confident.”




                              CHAPTER IV

                         ZEPH FATHERS AN IDEA


Under the present arrangement of his duties as chief dispatcher for
the division, Ralph Fairbanks seldom took the “graveyard trick,” as it
is called. Yet occasionally he went downtown and looked in at the
office in the late evening.

Especially when he knew that a particular schedule was being put
through. Just now the division was handling extra wheat trains, and
although he had O.K.’d his assistant’s schedule for that night, Ralph
somehow felt that he should see if all was going smoothly on this
particular evening.

The trouble over Mr. Hopkins and his daughter had perhaps gotten on
the young chief dispatcher’s nerves—if he really possessed such
things. He tried to read an exciting book of travel and adventure
after supper while his mother did some darning; but exciting things
which had happened in his own career came to Ralph’s mind so
insistently that he lost the thread of the writer’s story. With
several friends, including Mr. Bob Adair, chief of the Great
Northern’s detective force, Ralph had fought many an enemy of the road
to a standstill. There was another person, too, who was sure to turn
up in the vicinity of any railroad trouble.

Ralph suddenly started out of his chair. “There!” he exclaimed, as his
mother looked at him wonderingly. “I had forgotten something. Do you
know who I thought I saw to-day downtown?”

“I have no idea, Ralph.”

“I believe Zeph is in Rockton. I saw a fellow who looked very much
like him passing along the street. But it was when I was in conference
with the G. M. and I could not hail him. Afterward—being mixed up in
Miss Hopkins’ trouble, and all—I forgot Zeph.”

“Zeph Dallas?” repeated Mrs. Fairbanks. “I would dearly love to see
the boy again. He is so unsettled.”

“He is a bird on the wing, I guess,” said Ralph. “Never know where he
will perch next. But while he is in Rockton I think I know where to
find him,” and he reached his hat down from its peg.

“Will you go downtown to look him up, Ralph?” asked the widow
placidly.

“Yes, ma’am. I’d like to see Zeph.”

“So would I. Bring him home with you, Ralph. You know we have a spare
bed, and Zeph Dallas is just as welcome to it as though he were your
brother.”

“I don’t know,” laughed Ralph, going to the door. “Zeph is a born
vagabond. Nothing keeps him long in one place but some intrigue in
which he can have a part. He says he is preparing himself to wear Bob
Adair’s shoes.”

“Mr. Adair is a very fine man,” said Mrs. Fairbanks. “But his calling
is hazardous. I should not like to bring up a son to be a detective.”

“Zeph never had any bringing up,” declared Ralph, as he went out, and
the echoes of his mother’s last remark, “Poor fellow!” rang in his
ears as he started downtown.

Like most railroad terminal towns, Rockton had a poor section,
inhabited by railroad laborers and those hanging to their skirts, and
also a much better group of dwellings. Ralph passed through the better
part of town without, of course, apprehending any trouble.

Nor was he accosted when he crossed the tracks and approached the
station, over which the dispatchers’ offices were situated. For his
first thought was, after all, of the night’s schedule. One cannot have
the responsibility that Ralph Fairbanks shouldered without having
one’s work uppermost in one’s mind all of the time.

The two men on duty welcomed their young chief cheerfully. There
really was not an employee of the road about the Rockton terminal who
had not some reason for liking Ralph. They might not all agree with
him on railroad matters; but they had to respect his independence.

“Fellow in here to see you a while back, Chief,” said one of the men
on duty.

“Who was it?”

“Nobody I ever saw before,” was the reply. “Kind of an odd stick.”
Ralph described his friend, Zeph Dallas, and the operator nodded.
“That’s the fellow. Can’t be any mistake.”

“Didn’t he say where he could be found?” asked Ralph.

“No, Chief. A close-mouthed duck, if you ask me. He slipped in and
slid out again like an eel through a sewer pipe.”

Ralph laughed. “Some metaphor, I’ll say, Johnny. Well, the sched.’s
all right, I guess?”

“Things are going sweet,” he was told. “But when they come to double
up those wheat trains next week, how we going to get the new Midnight
Flyer into the clear between here and Oxford? That is what is
bothering me, Chief.”

“If you want to know,” admitted Ralph, as he opened the door to
depart, “that little thing is bothering me, too.”

He was not, however, bothering his mind over railroad affairs when he
descended the stairs to the yard. He was thinking of Zeph. That
peculiar and vagabondish fellow must be around Rockton for some
pertinent design. And it was evident that he wanted to see his old
chum, Ralph Fairbanks.

The latter walked down the yard and looked in at the open windows of
one of the lighted shops. The night crew was at work on one of the big
freight haulers. Like a row of giant elephants a number of other
locomotives stood in the gloomy end of the shop. Repairs were away
behind schedule. He heard the hoarse voice of McGuire, one of the
oldest and most faithful shop foremen, bawling his crew out for their
clumsiness.

“It’s touch and go, sure enough,” considered Ralph. “I wonder just how
much power that Andy McCarrey has over the men employed by the Great
Northern? Of course, he has no standing with any of the Brotherhoods;
but these roughnecks—Hullo! Who goes there?”

He had passed the shop and had turned toward a small gate in the
stockade which he believed would be unlocked. A shadowy figure flashed
into a deeper covert of shadow beside one of the tool houses.

“And only one of two classes try to hide around a railroad yard—a
crook or a yard detective. Humph!” muttered Ralph.

He walked on toward the gate. But just as he got to the end of the
shed he jumped sidewise and dived into the deeper shadow with arms
outstretched. He grabbed somebody almost instantly.

“Stand still!” he commanded. “Who are you? What are you doing here?”

Instantly the struggling person he had seized stood still. He no
longer offered to fight for his liberty. Ralph made out that he was
tall—taller than himself—roughly dressed, and that he had lost his
hat.

Then, as the young dispatcher passed his hand over the mop of hair the
fellow wore and his palm traversed the other’s face, he marked a big
and high-arched nose and high cheekbones. He had a wide mouth.

“By George!” exclaimed Ralph, “I believe you are the fellow I am
looking for.”

“Just so,” chuckled his prisoner.

“Zeph!”

“Same to you, Ralph!”

The two shook hands warmly, and then Zeph picked up his cap and stuck
it sideways upon his thatch of hair.

“How’s the boy?” asked Zeph, and Ralph knew he was grinning.

“I’ll tell you,” chuckled Ralph. “I’m gravely disturbed over a friend
of mine——”

“Is his name Andy McCarrey?” whispered Zeph, with his lips close to
his friend’s ear.

“Goodness!” gasped the dispatcher. “What do you mean? I’ve been
troubled about a fellow named Dallas. But what do you know about
McCarrey?”

“I know enough to believe it is not best to take his name in vain
around these yards,” muttered Zeph. “Come on out of here. I’ll give it
up for to-night. It was you I wanted to talk to, anyway, Ralph.”

“I don’t understand you at all, Zeph,” complained the young
dispatcher, as they walked toward the gate in the yard fence.

“Come on over to the Owl Lunch, and I’ll give you an earful,” said
Zeph. “The missus all right?”

“She is fine, and was asking after you. When you come to town, Zeph,
you should come to our house.”

“Can’t do it. No knowing who or what may be trailing me,” declared the
vagabond.

“Nonsense!”

“That’s the truth. Right now I got the tail end of something that I
want to look up. This McCarrey——”

“Is the leader of the men who are trying to engineer the wildcat
strike,” explained Ralph.

“Uh-huh? He’s more than that.”

“What do you mean?” Ralph asked curiously.

They stepped into the narrow space in the owl car and climbed on two
stools.

“Milk and mince pie,” said Zeph.

“What a stomach!” exclaimed Ralph, smiling. “Don’t you ever have
indigestion?”

“That is what I’m ordering it for. I have to stay awake all night.
Can’t sleep much with cold milk and ‘graveyard pie’ fighting for
possession of the digestive tract.”

“You are as bad as ever,” sighed Ralph.

“Worse,” admitted Zeph, taking his first bite of the pie. Then, out of
the corner of his mouth he mumbled: “Know where I just came from?”

“I have no idea. Haven’t heard from you for weeks. You can’t write, I
suppose?”

“Never write letters. Have to explain ’em afterward, perhaps. Besides,
a letter has often traced a man. ‘Leave no trace’ is my motto.”

“Talk sense,” urged Ralph.

“Am.”

“It doesn’t sound like it. Tell me what makes you so mysterious?”

“I am as mysterious as this ‘graveyard pie,’ ain’t I?” suddenly
chuckled Zeph Dallas, holding up the wedge of pie to look at it.
“Hullo! Here’s a splinter,” and he picked out the bit of wood. “The
beef they ground up for this mince meat must have had a wooden leg.
Anyhow, listen.”

“Shoot!” exclaimed Ralph anxiously, sipping his coffee. “Where did you
come from?”

“Down the road. I was working for a few days with Section Twenty.”

“A section gang hand! Believe me, that’s some job,” said Ralph, in
wonder.

“Somebody has been doing some reefing down there, and Mr. Adair put me
wise to it. Eh? You don’t know what ‘reefing’ is?”

“No,” admitted the dispatcher.

“It’s when fellows get a chance to open cases and crates in transit,
remove the goods, fill ’em up with rocks and rubbish, and send ’em on
to the consignees. It was a pretty job, too. I didn’t find out who did
it.”

“What? A failure to your account?” laughed Ralph, knowing how Zeph
prided himself upon carrying through every little job the chief
detective gave him to handle.

“Not a failure yet,” mumbled Zeph. “’Tain’t finished.”

“Then it brought you back here to Rockton?”

“Nothing like that. There was an accident on our section and we got
over-time work last night. We had just got the tracks clear when this
new Midnight Flyer came through. Say! who’s handling the throttle on
that big engine?”

“Old Byron Marks.”

“Wow! That antediluvian pill?”

“Seniority does it,” said Ralph briefly. “It’s the men’s own fault if
the dead ones get the best runs.”

“Well, believe me,” muttered Zeph, “if old By Marks heard what I heard
last night you couldn’t hoist him into the cabin of that locomotive
with a derrick.”

“What do you mean, Zeph?” and now Ralph Fairbanks was immensely
interested in what his peculiar friend had to say.

“I tell you what, Ralph, I’ve got an idea. It’s my own idea, and it is
worth somebody’s attention.”

“Let us have it,” said the dispatcher. “You have always been original,
if nothing more, Zeph.”

“Many thanks, dear boy! Well, listen! This Andy McCarrey.” He stared
all about, noting that the man running the lunch wagon had stepped
out. “Take note I’ve heard a deal about that fellow up and down the
road.”

“You’ve heard nothing good of him, I warrant,” grumbled Ralph.

“According to which side your bread is buttered on,” was the reply.
“Most of these roughnecks swear by him.”

“But not the officials,” said Ralph.

“Right-o. Now, last night, as we section men stood beside the tracks
down there waiting for the Midnight Flyer to pass, I heard one fellow
say: ‘Andy McCarrey says “Thumbs up!”’ And his mate said right back:
‘Ye-as. And suppose Andy says “Thumbs down!” How about it?’

“Now, you know, and I know, Ralph, the old game of ‘thumbs up and
thumbs down.’ And then, in the times of the old Roman gladiators, the
populace condemned the fallen gladiator to death or reprieved him by a
turn of the thumb. Get me?”

“I can’t say I do wholly,” admitted Ralph.

“That Midnight Flyer whizzed by. Those two fellows looked at it and at
old man Marks’s head sticking out of the cab window—if that’s who it
was. They were speaking of that new fast train, the crack train of
this division. Eh?”

“It would seem so,” confessed Ralph, in a worried tone.

“And it is in Andy McCarrey’s hands whether that train goes through
safely or not,” whispered Zeph, his lips close to Ralph’s ear again.
“That is my idea, my boy. And it is that idea that has brought me to
Rockton to-day.”




                              CHAPTER V

                       ON THE HEELS OF A SHADOW


Ralph reflected upon the hint Zeph had secured from two section men
far down the division. The name of Andy McCarrey was one to conjure
with among a large part of the maintenance of way men employed by the
Great Northern. “Thumbs up” or “Thumbs down” might mean exactly what
Zeph suggested.

And the Midnight Flyer—so called, because it left Rockton terminal on
the jot of midnight—was causing the divisional officials enough
trouble and anxiety in any event. The new train should run on a
schedule that called for the finest kind of human attention. The
engineer in charge should be as good a man as there was on the
division. The two firemen should be highly trained specialists in the
handling of a locomotive’s fuel and water.

There were but four stops for this flyer between Rockton and
Hammerfest—a four-hour run at top speed. The locomotive pulling the
train, and returning the next day with another fast express, was quite
equal to the schedule. It was a new eight-driver, and had come out of
the Baldwin works keyed up to seventy miles an hour on a level track.
Of course, it was not expected that any engineer could hold the
Midnight Flyer to that speed for the entire length of the run; but
even the concessions made because of the heavy freight traffic over
the division at night were not sufficient to make the run an easy one.

Byron Marks, one of the grizzled engineers on the Great Northern list,
was in line for the new locomotive and the new run. If the railroads
had proper pension lists, the old man should have been weeding his
garden and drawing pension money for the rest of his life.

However, he was vigorous, keen-sighted, and a thoroughly active man.
He stood well in the Brotherhood and with the officials of the Great
Northern. When the choice came for engineer of the swift express,
Marks’ name headed the list. He stepped into the job.

But Ralph had helped to make over the night schedule, necessary to
squeeze in the varnished train. There were stretches of twenty and
thirty miles that called for perfect running, and at a mile a minute,
for the Midnight Flyer. A stop signal, even for half a minute, might
make the train fall behind. Any little accident was likely to put her
off her speed.

As a matter of fact, since Byron Marks had wheeled her out of the
Rockton station a week and more before, not once had the Midnight
Flyer made Hammerfest on time. There was a connection to be made there
with the Boise City & Western that called for the flyer’s being on
time. If the Great Northern express could not keep to its schedule,
the train might as well be taken off altogether.

“After what you say, Zeph,” Ralph said soberly, as the two friends
came out of the Owl Lunch wagon, “I am afraid there will not be any
hoghead envious of By Marks’ run.”

“You said something,” agreed Zeph. “This McCarrey fellow——”

“Sh! Speak easy of him. Don’t know who may be listening.”

“Just as I thought. He’s the Big Noise around here?”

“He is with the men who are anxious to strike. He has no standing with
the Brotherhoods, of course. But you know the general feeling among
railroaders just now. If the corporations get the dirty end of the
stick there are not many employees going to weep about it.”

“You said something,” repeated Zeph Dallas. “Well, has this man whose
name we will not mention really got all the influence that I thought
he had?”

“Among the disgruntled, I am afraid he has,” admitted Ralph.

“Then he’d better be reckoned up—and watched.”

“You might suggest that to Mr. Adair,” said Ralph, in a low voice.

“That is what I was thinking of doing. But you see,” said the eager
Zeph, “I wanted to be sure that I really had something on the man.
Even what I heard down the line is mighty little evidence.”

“We’ll admit that. But taken with what I know——”

Ralph proceeded to give his friend a full account of the incidents of
this very day, when Whitey Malone had attacked both the supervisor’s
daughter and Ralph himself.

“That fellow is egged on by McCarrey. I know that to be a fact. Mac is
addressing meetings in Beeman’s Hall, and circulating a lot of
literature that ought to be suppressed, and getting ready to deal the
road a dirty blow through the dissatisfied element. But what can be
proved against him?”

“He ought to be run out of the place.”

“You are suggesting fighting fire with fire,” Ralph rejoined, shaking
his head. “But I know what Mr. Adair will say. He will declare for
peace at any price until the enemy makes the first move.”

“Hey!” muttered Zeph in Ralph’s ear. “Do you know that fellow?”

They had been walking along the dark street, arm in arm. There were
few pedestrians in sight. This was a busy part of the town in
daylight, but there was little activity now.

Ralph stared after the long, shadowy figure crossing the cobbled
street. There was a pale glow of lamplight just where the stranger
stepped upon the curb. For an instant his flaxen hair and red neck
were visible.

“By gracious! I believe that is the fellow I told you about,” Ralph
exclaimed.

“Not Mac——?”

“No! Malone! And I believe he’s drunk. He had been drinking this
afternoon.”

“Where could he get liquor around here?”

“I’m sure I don’t know. But I’d say he got it, law or no law.”

“So that fellow is a friend of the Big Noise?”

“A tool, anyway, of McCarrey’s.”

“Wonder where he’s going?” ruminated Zeph. “Drunk or sober, he acts as
though he had something on his mind.”

“There is another gate in the yard fence in that direction,” whispered
Ralph.

“Come on!” urged Zeph Dallas. “I’ve another idea, Ralph.”

“Aren’t you the little wonder?” chuckled the dispatcher. “What now?”

“A drunken man often tells the truth when a sober man won’t. He
likewise is not to be trusted with a secret. Alcohol loosens the
tongue. Let’s get after this Whitey Malone and see if we can’t make
him tell something about McCarrey and his plans.”

“Go to it, boy,” said Ralph doubtfully. “I’ll stay in the background.
Whitey has it in for me.”

“Keep in sight just the same,” commanded Zeph, taking the lead with
promptness.

He darted across the street and was soon close on the heels of the
shadowy Malone. Ralph looked searchingly about the block before he
ventured to follow the two. It seemed that Malone was quite alone. And
he staggered on without looking back. He did not fear being followed.

The young dispatcher allowed Zeph and Malone to get well ahead of him.
As long as he could keep Dallas in sight he was satisfied. The trail
led directly past the gateway in the yard fence. They went up into the
town, crossing the railroad at Hammerby Street where Ralph had had his
adventure with Cherry Hopkins that afternoon.

Beyond the warehouse that stood here was a dark and narrow lane. Under
the dim radiance of a single street lamp Ralph saw Zeph turn into this
alley. Of course, Whitey Malone must be in advance.

Ralph looked around for some weapon before he ventured into the lane.
Drunk as Whitey Malone was, the fellow might have apprehended that he
was being followed, and might be prepared for an attack.

“Zeph is as reckless as he can be,” thought the young dispatcher.
“I’ve seen him get into some messes before this. Ah! What’s this?”

It was a spoke of a wheel lying in the gutter—a tough piece of ash as
effective in a strong hand as a policeman’s nightstick. Ralph weighted
it, spat on his palm to tighten his grip on the club, and then
ventured into the dark alley.

He had not gone ten steps when he heard the creak of hinges. A door
was being opened somewhere ahead of him. But he came to a sharp corner
in the dark alleyway before he spied the opening. A faint radiance
shone into the lane.

Between him and this open door was a dark figure—a stooping figure. He
made sure it was Zeph. He heard the latter “hist!” in a low tone. He
crept forward.

Somebody stumbled inside the hall to which the open door gave
entrance. A harsh voice called:

“That you?”

“Yes, it’s me,” grumbled another voice, which Ralph recognized as
belonging to Malone.

“What are you trying to do—knock the house down?” snarled the first
speaker.

“Why don’t you have some more light? ’Most broke my shins down here.
Ouch!”

“Shut up!” commanded the other person, evidently standing at the head
of a flight of stairs. “Come up here.”

Zeph had crept forward. Ralph saw the outlines of his figure at the
edge of the doorframe. Ralph had to take his tip from Zeph.

“Hey!” exclaimed the fault-finding voice again. “You’ve left that door
open, Malone.”

Malone’s stumbling footsteps returned down the few treads of the
stairs he had already mounted. The lamplight faded. Ralph realized
that the man at the top of the stairs was retreating with the lamp in
his hand.

The next moment he realized, too, that Zeph had inaugurated one of his
perfectly crazy ventures. Instead of cowering back out of sight as
Whitey Malone came to the open door, Zeph huddled close to the
opening. When the door began to be pushed into place, the young fellow
leaped to his feet, darted forward, and encircled the half-drunken
Malone with his arms just below the knees!

“Squawk!” vented the surprised Malone. He crashed down the low,
outside steps and landed on the flagstones with sufficient force to
drive the breath from his body.

“Grab him, Ralph!” hissed Zeph, springing to his feet again, and
seeing his friend at his back. “I’m going up there in his place. If a
row starts, call the cops.”

The next instant Zeph was inside the building and had softly closed
the door.




                              CHAPTER VI

                             TOUCH AND GO


Whitey Malone was on his face, and before he could raise his head and
shriek his objection to the treatment accorded him by Zeph Dallas,
Ralph sprang astride him and held him down. As Whitey struggled the
young dispatcher grabbed his cap from the ground and thrust it into
the fellow’s mouth. Then he twisted his hands behind him and held the
muffled rascal secure.

Ralph was about to use his own handkerchief to bind Whitey’s wrists
when he remembered that it was monogrammed and might offer a clue to
his identity when the affair was over. Therefore he thrust his hand
into the side pocket of his captive’s coat.

There was a bandanna there. When Ralph pulled it out of the pocket
something else came with it—something white that lay on the flagstone
while Ralph lashed Whitey’s wrists. When this job was done neatly and
to his satisfaction the young dispatcher picked up the fallen article
and rose to his feet.

Whitey Malone was groaning and struggling. His cap completely muffled
his voice. He managed to roll over on his back, but he could not spit
out the cap.

Ralph looked scrutinizingly at the thing he had drawn from the man’s
pocket. It was a soiled envelope, sealed. It was not bulky and there
was no address upon it as far as Ralph could see. He thrust it into an
inner pocket and then turned toward the door of the house into which
Zeph Dallas had so recklessly plunged.

Zeph had instructed his friend to call the police if a row was started
upstairs. But Ralph did not want to draw the police into any
investigation of this affair. He did not know yet whether this was
railroad business or not. And, in any event, he was sure that
publicity would do no good.

But he feared for Zeph’s safety. The fellow was so reckless! With
another glance at the prostrate Whitey, the dispatcher sprang up the
steps and opened the unlocked door. There was but a faint glimmer of
light in the hall and that from the floor above.

Where was Zeph? Ralph dared not utter a sound. He closed the door
behind him carefully and made sure that it was tightly shut. Then he
began to grope about the lower hall of the house.

He had brought the spoke of a wheel with him, and the grip of it gave
him confidence. But he did not want to pitch upon his friend by
mistake. He found no trace of Zeph, however. He believed the fellow
must have ventured immediately up the stairs.

Above, Ralph heard the murmur of voices. He started up the flight,
stepping close to the wall so that the stair steps would not squeak.
This was an old and ramshackle building and every beam in it cracked
when the wind blew.

Clinging to the wall, Ralph finally came so near the head of the
flight that he could see across the small hall at the top and into a
big room, the door of which was more than ajar. This loft seemed to be
poorly furnished and it certainly was poorly lighted.

When the man had come to the top of the stairs with the hand lamp, he
had brought the only lamp in the place. Now it stood upon a rickety
table near one wall and he and another man were seated beside it.

Surely the second person was not Zeph Dallas! And yet Ralph could not
see any sign of Zeph. He stepped up on the landing with great care,
and looked into the room. There was absolutely nobody there but the
pair at the table.

Suddenly one of these moved his chair—scraped it back harshly. He
turned to look at the open door.

“What’s the matter with you, Whitey?” he growled out. “Why don’t you
come up here? Did you get what I sent you for?”

Ralph held his breath and remained perfectly still. He had no thought
of answering for Whitey Malone.

But startlingly, though in muffled tone, a gruff voice said just above
him: “What’s that you want? I dunno wot you sent me for. Where’d you
send me?”

The fellow at the table jumped up with an ejaculation more forceful
than polite. “That drunken bum! What’s he been doing, do you suppose,
Grif?”

“You should not have trusted him, Andy,” returned the second man. “I
told you what he was.”

The first speaker strode heavily toward the door. Ralph realized that
he was about to be discovered. And he knew something else, too: That
was, that his reckless friend, Zeph Dallas, was on the next flight
above, and had sought to imitate Whitey Malone’s voice.

“Nice mess I’m in,” thought the young train dispatcher.

He crouched, but gripping the spoke, his only weapon. If it came to a
fight, he purposed to have the best of the argument—and have it quick.
He was sure he knew who this fellow approaching the door was. The
other man did not have to repeat his name.

“Whitey! what the dickens is the matter with you?” called the man.
“You know what I sent you for. Didn’t you see Perrin?”

Ralph started. Perrin was a name he knew well. Jim Perrin was an
officer of the shopmen’s union. The union had an agreement with the
Great Northern which ran well into the next year. That was one reason
why the better element of union labor on the road would not discuss a
strike at this time.

But, to Ralph’s mind, Jim Perrin was a sly and unfaithful fellow. He
had a bad reputation in the neighborhood where he lived. He drank and
gambled and had other habits that were inexcusable.

If there was a secret association between Jim Perrin and these
men—especially with this fellow approaching the door——

Ralph was thinking of this; but involuntarily his arm went up—the arm,
the hand of which gripped the spoke of the wheel. He poised the club.
And just then, as the man’s head was thrust out of the doorway like a
turtle’s out of its shell, that crazy Zeph yelled from above:

“Hit him, boy! Hit him!”

It startled Ralph so that he made a fumble of it. While he hesitated
the man drew back his head with a cry of rage, and the next moment he
produced a pistol and thrust it into the hall!

He could not have aimed at either of the young fellows; but both of
them were startled. It was touch and go—the bullet might find its
billet in either of their bodies if the man fired.

“Who’s there?” he yelled.

Ralph sprang half way down the stairs. He heard Zeph going up the
other flight on the jump. The man yelled again for his comrade to aid
him in the chase.

Before Ralph reached the lower door he heard a window smashed above
and knew that Zeph Dallas had found a fire escape. He tore open the
outer door of the house and bounded through. The faint lamplight from
above must have revealed his figure, for Zeph shouted:

“Out of the way, below! Stand aside!”

He had come down the fire escape ladder on the run. There was no
ladder to the ground, of course, and he swung from the lower platform
to drop.

Ralph, hearing the men coming down the lower flight of stairs, turned
and banged to the outer door and held it. The men tried to turn the
knob, but the young train dispatcher had a grip of iron.

“All right, boy!” shrilled Zeph, as he dropped. “Where’s that chap I
overturned?”

“He’s thrashing on his back there,” said Ralph coolly. “Let him alone.
Be ready to run.”

“That’s the thing I’m most ready for,” admitted Zeph. “Come on!”

Ralph leaped away from the door and followed his friend up the alley.
They were a block away in two minutes, and were not followed. Ralph
overtook Zeph and dragged him down to a walk.

“Gee!” exclaimed Dallas, “that was a close call——”

“And a silly one,” declared the train dispatcher. “Another of the
times when you jumped without looking. You had no business in that
house.”

“Yes, I had. Wasn’t that Andy McCarrey?”

“It was.”

“Well, I’ll know him again then. I never saw him before.”

“If that is all you wanted,” said Ralph with some scorn, “I could have
pointed him out to you a dozen times a day. He doesn’t hide himself.”

“Huh! He was hiding away to-night, I guess.”

“Perhaps. But it did you no good to let him know that his actions were
observed and his private messenger followed.”

“Oh! You mean that Whitey?”

“That is whom I mean.”

“I bet he had something on him we ought to have got hold of,” said
Zeph, with sudden excitement. “Did you hear what McCarrey said? And
was that Jim Perrin he meant, do you suppose?”

“Like enough,” said Ralph soberly. “I am afraid Jim is into this
strike scheme with both feet.”

“The union ought to bounce him.”

“He has a lot of friends. But perhaps if it could be proved that he
had a secret agreement, or understanding, with McCarrey——”

“Wish we’d searched that Whitey,” growled out Zeph, shaking his head
mournfully.

“If you didn’t always jump into a thing without first looking!”
exclaimed Ralph. “Well, where are you stopping?”

“I’ve got a room on Pearl Street. You know the place? But I didn’t
think of sleeping to-night.”

“And you won’t, after that milk and mince pie and the acrobatic
activities you have just indulged in,” said Ralph, chuckling. “I’ll go
over to the room with you. We can talk there. I’ve got something to
show you.”

“Huh?” questioned Zeph, curiously.

In five minutes they reached the poorly furnished rooming-house in
which Zeph was usually sheltered when he came to Rockton. It seemed as
though he had a horror of living in good quarters, or as ordinarily
respectable people lived.

“You surely are foolish, Zeph,” declared Ralph. “There’s a good bed
and room at your disposal at our house. Mother was only speaking of it
this evening. And yet you prefer a ranch like this.”

“As I told you, I never know what sort of a mess I may be getting
into. Don’t want to make your mother trouble. Couldn’t think of doing
more than coming to Sunday dinner and eating chicken.”

“That’s a promise,” agreed Ralph, smiling. “I’ll order a pair of
chickens from the butcher in the morning.”

“Now, what’s the big idea?” asked Zeph, softly, closing his room door
after having pulled the electric light chain to illuminate the place.

Ralph looked at him grimly. “Yes,” he said, “Whitey had been on an
errand for McCarrey, and probably to Jim Perrin’s house. He was
bringing some message, or the like, from Jim.”

“You’re guessing,” said Zeph. “We ought to have searched Whitey, as I
said.”

Ralph drew out the sealed envelope that he had taken from Whitey
Malone’s pocket with his bandanna. He held it out to Zeph.

“I guess this is what Whitey carried,” he said quietly.

“Gee, you did search him!” exclaimed the other happily. “You smart
kid!”

“The luck of fools,” rejoined Ralph, with some disdain. “If it is
anything of importance I can’t accept praise any more than you can.”

But Zeph was already tearing open the envelope.




                             CHAPTER VII

                            SOMETHING BAD


Ralph Fairbanks sat down on the edge of the narrow bed and watched
Zeph open the envelope. He had all the curiosity that his friend had
about the contents of it, but he displayed more placidity. Zeph was
always as eager as a bird dog on the scent.

“What do you suppose this is?” he murmured, drawing out a folded piece
of paper.

“A doctor’s prescription?” suggested Ralph grimly.

Zeph gave a look, then uttered a disappointed ejaculation.

“Shucks! Why, it’s only a list of names. Not another thing. Four
names. Shucks!”

Ralph held out his hand for the paper and Zeph gave it up, his face
screwed into an expression of disappointment.

“It’s a roast for us,” he muttered.

But Ralph made no comment—at first. He read aloud the column of names.

“Lyons, Bertholdt, Mike Ranny, Peters.”

“Do you know ’em?” asked Zeph, with some curiosity.

“Perhaps. I know Mike Ranny. He has a brother Bob. Bob takes out
Number Eighty-two. He is a good engineer. But Mike is a shopman. Yes,
I guess I can identify him.”

“And those others?” asked Zeph.

“Perhaps. But that isn’t the first thing to do. Here is a list of
names that Whitey was carrying to Andy McCarrey. Very secret about it.
And we are led to believe the list was coming from Jim Perrin.”

“All right! All right!” returned Zeph impatiently. “What’s the
answer?”

“I can find out if Perrin really wrote these names down. I’ll do so
to-morrow first thing. Then we may identify the four persons named.
Just why Lyons, Bertholdt, Peters and Mike Ranny are named here to
Andy McCarrey, we can only surmise. But we may believe that the four
men belong to the shopmen’s union and Perrin has selected them for
some certain matter which McCarrey wishes put over.”

Zeph merely nodded his head and humped his shoulders forward, staring
in Ralph’s face.

“But remember, we are only supposing these things. Got to identify the
writing of the names and the men owning them,” the young dispatcher
continued.

“Huh!” exclaimed Zeph. “And even then we won’t know anything. Got to
wait till something happens. Gee!”

“You come to me to-morrow noon and I’ll know something,” said Ralph,
rising and putting away the paper in his wallet. “And then, I think,
we’d better get in touch with Mr. Adair.”

“I’d like to have something to show him,” murmured Zeph. “Something
good.”

“You are more likely to have something bad to show him,” returned
Ralph seriously. “I believe, Zeph, that this Andy McCarrey, with Jim
Perrin to help him, could swing more than half of the shopmen in
Rockton.”

“It’s a queer proposition. How does it come this McCarrey butts in
here? And him not a union man, nor even an employee of the Great
Northern?”

“I give it to you straight, Zeph,” sighed Ralph, buttoning his coat
over the wallet. “I believe McCarrey followed the new supervisor
here.”

“What!”

“No ‘what’ about it. Mr. Hopkins—the G. M. admitted it to me—got into
trouble on an eastern railroad. This McCarrey had a run-in with Barton
Hopkins there. As soon as Mr. Hopkins took hold here at Rockton as
supervisor of the division, McCarrey appeared.”

“And then the trouble started?” demanded Zeph.

“You said it. It looks like a personal fight, more than anything else,
between McCarrey and the super.”

“But why do our men lend themselves so easily to the leadership of an
outsider like McCarrey?”

“He’s got their number, I guess,” grumbled Ralph. “He knows how Mr.
Hopkins starts friction with the men. ‘Discipline!’ Humph!”

“He’s a regular red flannel shirt, is he?” grumbled Zeph Dallas. “I
heard he had everybody scratching. Has he jumped you yet, Ralph?”

“Not much. And I don’t suppose he’ll try to. We get our orders from
Mr. Glidden at main headquarters.”

“Well,” remarked Zeph wisely, “I never saw one of these wiseacres who
try to tell everybody their business, who didn’t butt in more or less
on things that didn’t concern ’em. But, of course, Mr. Hopkins can
talk turkey to the men in all other branches of the service on this
division.”

“He can and does. And he has got the men so sore that they are willing
to be led by anybody who promises to help them get square with the
super. McCarrey needs only to sit back and wait, and things will come
his way.”

“That club you had just now ought to have come his way,” sighed Zeph.
“Going? Well, good-night, Ralph.”

“Good-night. Better go to bed—if the mince pie and milk will let you
sleep. And don’t fail to show up at the offices to-morrow noon.”

Ralph went home in a very serious frame of mind. His mother was
serious, too, the next morning, when she found the coat he had worn
the evening before had a great rent in it and two buttons torn off.

“I never knew it to fail, Ralph,” she said, rather sharply for her,
“that when Zeph Dallas comes around you get into trouble. You have
been in a fight. Look at that scratch on your cheek. What did you do
last night?”

“You are a wonderfully close observer, Mother,” said Ralph, laughing.
“How is it you always see so much?”

“Indeed?” and she smiled ruefully at him. “Why shouldn’t I observe
every little thing about my son? At least, until some other woman has
a better right to him.”

“Goodness me!” complained Ralph, with twinkling eyes. “You talk as
though I was in danger of being kidnapped.”

“How do I know? There was the young lady you were talking of at
supper.”

“And I believe she and her family are going to be in more trouble
before it is all said and done,” muttered Ralph.

But he got out of explaining in detail about his adventure with Zeph
Dallas the previous evening. He knew, however, his mother was merely
in fun about Cherry Hopkins. Secretly, whenever Ralph thought of the
pretty blonde girl, he felt anxiety for her safety. Such rascals as
Whitey Malone and the other fellows who would do Andy McCarrey’s
bidding might really do Cherry serious harm.

He went to the dispatchers’ offices early, saw that the day-trick men
were getting on all right, and then went in search of a timekeeper
who, he knew, was to be trusted. This gray-haired employee of the
Great Northern was one of those loyal men who considered any blow at
the road a blow at their own livelihood and future prospects.

“Think you could recognize Jim Perrin’s writing wherever you saw it,
John?” the young chief dispatcher asked.

“Jim Perrin, is it? A bad egg. It is too bad he leads so many around
by the nose. I know his handwriting well. I ought to. He has been
signing for his pay check for ten years here.”

“Look at this,” said Ralph, thrusting the list of four names in front
of the timekeeper. “What do you think?”

The man studied the names through his spectacles. Then he nodded.

“I know them, too,” he said. “They are all in the shops here. Billy
Lyons, Abe Bertholdt, Micky Ranny, brother of Bob, the hoghead, and
Sam Peters. Yes, I know ’em all.”

“That is not just what I asked you,” Ralph explained. “Who do you
think wrote those names on that paper?”

“Oh! Oh!” cried the timekeeper. “That’s the idea, is it?” He squinted
at the four brief lines of writing. “Who wrote ’em down for you, is
it? What is this, Mr. Fairbanks? One of the new super’s efficiency
tricks, I dunno?”

“Now, John!” exclaimed Ralph, laughing, “do you think I would lend
myself to any of his nonsense?”

He turned around while the timekeeper was chuckling and saw Mr. Barton
Hopkins standing behind them in the doorway of the little office. The
supervisor stared at the young train dispatcher with a very grim
visage indeed. Without doubt he had heard enough to understand the
meaning of Ralph’s reply to the timekeeper.

When the supervisor had turned on his heel and disappeared, Ralph said
to the timekeeper, with no shadow of change in his voice:

“Well? How about it?”

The man fumbled the leaves of a ledger and finally compared the
writing on the sheet of paper with something in the ledger. He
beckoned Ralph closer.

“Look there, now, Mr. Fairbanks. D’you see where he has signed for his
check last week? And I could show you a hundred other signatures.
There’s the P in Peters and the same letter in Perrin. They’re like
two peas in a pod, ain’t they, now?”

“I believe you!”

“The little r’s in Perrin are like the little r in Bertholdt and in
Peters. D’you see?”

“I see.”

“That’s your answer. Jim Perrin wrote them four names with his own
fist. I’d swear to it.”

“Thank you, John,” Ralph replied soberly. “I may have more to say to
you about this later. Keep it to yourself.”

“Sure, sir, I’ve the tight lip on me,” said the timekeeper.

Ralph wished, as he went back to his office, that he had had “the
tight lip” as well. He had allowed his tongue to get him in bad with
Mr. Barton Hopkins. The supervisor was the kind of man that would not
easily forget a slight.

“He’ll easily forget that I saved his daughter from that gang
yesterday,” thought Ralph. “But he will remember that I spoke
slightingly of him to another employee.

“I told Zeph something bad was likely to be the word he sent Mr.
Adair. Guess the ‘something bad’ may be connected with my peace of
mind. I’m going to be on the lookout from now on for Mr. Barton
Hopkins to get his gaff into me.”

It came sooner than Ralph really expected.




                             CHAPTER VIII

                         A CLASH OF AUTHORITY


When Zeph Dallas showed himself in Ralph’s office about noon the
latter had several points which he could lay before the enthusiastic
amateur sleuth.

“But you musn’t go it alone any longer, Zeph,” the young train
dispatcher said. “There’s something going to break soon, and Mr. Adair
will want to know all you get wise to, and as fast as you discover it.
What do you suppose he sends you roosters out along the line for, your
health?”

Zeph grinned. “I know he is combing every division for information
regarding a possible strike. The Great Northern doesn’t want to bring
in a private detective agency with their guards if it can be helped. I
know.”

“All right—you know so much! Listen to this,” and Ralph told him of
his discovery through the aid of the old timekeeper. “And now here is
this man who was with Andy McCarrey last night.”

“Who’s that? Whitey Malone? I just saw him, sobered up, but with two
beautiful black eyes.”

“We never gave him those,” declared Ralph. “I bet McCarrey pitched
into him for losing the list Perrin sent by him. Well, that other man
I heard McCarrey call ‘Grif’ must be Griffin Falk, and he acts as
McCarrey’s secretary, or right-hand man. Mac is no literary character.
He can talk, but the words have to be put into his mouth. They say
Grif writes his speeches and handles all his correspondence.”

“Then we know quite some to tell Mr. Bob Adair,” said Zeph, with
satisfaction.

“You are right we do. Here is this list. I have written beside
Perrin’s writing the full names of the four men and what they do in
the shops and how they stand in the union. They will have to be
watched from now on. Well, it is nothing in my young life. I am going
to tend to my knitting and keep out of any trouble, that’s all.”

Zeph fairly giggled. “I hear you,” he said. “But you won’t be able to
sit up in this conning tower of yours and calmly watch a ruction down
below without getting into it, and getting in with both feet.”

“No, no! Nothing like that,” declared Ralph, smiling and shaking his
head as his friend departed.

The young train dispatcher really meant what he said. He hated to see
things going wrong for the division—for the whole Great Northern
system, in fact. But he had his job, and his place in the railroad
system, and he did not mean to step aside.

He considered himself quite invulnerable where he sat. He was
independent of everybody save his good friend, Glidden, at main
headquarters. As long as he managed to drive through his schedules
with some kind of regularity, Ralph felt that nobody could actually
hurt him with the company.

But not long after luncheon one of the callboys came to the door of
his little private office and said:

“Mist’ Hopkins wants you, Mist’ Fairbanks. Just told me. Right now.”

“Wants me?” queried Ralph, in more surprise than apprehension. “The
super?”

“Yep. Bet you he’s got some new way for you to run the trains. Two on
the same track, mebbe, to save wear on the iron,” and the saucy
youngster went away, chuckling.

That is the way the entire force was considering the supervisor. Not
even the callboys had proper respect for the bothersome official.

Ralph hesitated a little before responding to the request of Mr.
Hopkins. Hopkins had absolutely no authority over the train
dispatcher’s department. In fact, the divisional officers took orders,
to a degree, from the train dispatchers. For that department “lapped
over” onto the main and other divisions of the Great Northern. Ralph
had to handle trains to and from the other divisions of the system.

So he hesitated about answering the call to Mr. Hopkins’ office. Any
other man in Hopkins’ place would have come to Ralph’s room and said
his little say, whatever it was. The day when a supervisor could call
a train dispatcher to account was long since past in railroading.

Ralph looked over what was being done in his outer office before
descending the flight to the supervisor’s room. It was at the busiest
time of the day and the young chief dispatcher kept his eye constantly
on what was going on during every afternoon. He had his best men on
duty at night.

Hopkins was drumming impatiently on his desk with a pencil when Ralph
entered. The latter secretly wished to tell him that that drumming was
“waste energy.” But the supervisor’s face did not encourage any
expression of humor.

“I have been waiting for you, Mr. Fairbanks,” he said sharply.

Ralph wanted to tell him the nearest way to get to his office, but he
hit it back, and waited.

“I want to put a proposition before you,” said the supervisor. “I have
turned my thought considerably to the train dispatching on this
division. It might be greatly improved.”

At that Ralph straightened up and his lips became a grim line.

“I can refer you to Mr. Glidden at main headquarters,” he said
bluntly. “He will undoubtedly be glad to take up any matter of the
kind with you. I have no jurisdiction.”

“Yes, yes! I understand all that,” said the supervisor, with a wave of
his hand. “But you know I have practically a free hand here——”

“I have not been so informed. I still take all my orders from Mr.
Glidden,” and Ralph spoke doggedly.

“Listen, young man! You are in no position to war with me. In my
opinion you are quite too young for your responsible position,
anyway.”

“That can be taken up with the general manager if you choose,” said
Ralph, with a sigh, turning away. “He gave me the job.”

“Wait!” exclaimed Hopkins coldly. “You are a very smart young man; but
you do not know everything—not even about your job.”

“I admit the truth of your last statement, anyway,” said Ralph,
grinning slightly. “In my line there is always something to learn.”

“Listen to me, then. I can tell you something.”

“Very well, Mr. Hopkins,” said Ralph. “If you really have something of
importance to say, I am here to listen.”

Ralph was not soothing in his speech. But he had heretofore been
obliged to assert himself over older men in some authority in order to
hold his position. Supervisor Hopkins was intruding, and Ralph felt
that the matter had to be stopped right here and now.

“You understand, Fairbanks,” said the supervisor, “that I have not
called you down here for any picayune matter.”

“I don’t know what you called me away from my duties for,” said Ralph
brusquely. “It must be important. I am listening.”

“I do not attempt to order you to do anything.”

“You seem to expect me to obey your call in the very busiest part of
the day.”

“That is along the line of which I wish to speak,” said Hopkins
composedly. “I think you should be much more closely connected with
your work in the daytime. You have three men in your office between
seven in the morning and seven at night. Now, if you handled the early
short watch and the late short watch yourself——”

“You mean the dog-watches?” demanded Ralph, in surprise.

“Yes. I mean that you could easily arrange your hours so that you
could handle the train traffic between seven and nine a. m. and five
and seven p. m. I mean——”

“What’s this?” demanded Ralph, not only in astonishment, but with
anger. “You want me to come down as early as seven and go away as late
as seven at night? What sort of hours are those?”

“Remember, I am only suggesting,” said Hopkins coldly. “I take it that
you have the interest of the Great Northern at heart.”

“And a little of the interest of Ralph Fairbanks at heart,” returned
the young fellow angrily. “Why, what chance would I have for any
freedom? I come down at nine now and go away at five. Why should I go
back to the key during the dog watches?”

“If you will do so I can show you how you may get rid of one
operator.”

“I don’t wish to get rid of one operator. I ought really to have
another. Let me remind you, Mr. Hopkins, the strain on a train
dispatcher and his assistants, especially under the schedules we have
to make on this division just now, is something fierce! You don’t know
what you are talking about, Mr. Hopkins.”

“I know exactly what I am talking about, young man,” said the
supervisor grimly, and those eyeglasses of his seemed fairly to
sparkle. “I am pointing out to you a way in which you can save the
road one man’s salary——”

“Tell that to the stockholders—don’t tell it to me!” cried Ralph
angrily. “If I can find some way of making them see at headquarters
that I need another man, I am going to do so. I know what is needed in
my department. You don’t. Keep your hands off!”

Hopkins spoke again before the train dispatcher reached the door.

“You would better consider my offer of advice, Fairbanks,” and his
voice was like ice. “I give you a chance, first.”

“To whom will you give the second chance?” demanded Ralph, looking
back at him.

“I shall place my advice before the proper authorities. They have
hired me to make this division efficient in every way. I do not like
to go over your head——”

“Don’t let that bother you,” answered Ralph. “I shall not hold it
against you, Mr. Hopkins, if you manage to take your ideas before a
special meeting of the board. Nobody save John Glidden is going to
give me my orders. You may as well understand that right now.
Good-day!”

He swung out of the room, closing the door with an emphatic bang. He
felt a decided warmth of satisfaction because of this throwing of his
glove at Mr. Hopkins’ feet. Yet he thought, too:

“Well, that does settle me with Miss Cherry. I am persona non grata
there for the rest of the chapter. Humph! What cheek—what cold, brass,
gall—that man has!”




                              CHAPTER IX

                           IT HAPPENS AGAIN


As soon as he got back to the train dispatchers’ department Ralph put
in a call for main headquarters and Mr. John Glidden. After a time the
switchboard operator called him and Ralph went into the booth.

“How do the schedules go, Ralph?” asked Mr. Glidden, after briefly
greeting his young friend. “I hear you are having trouble.”

“Trouble enough. That Midnight Flyer is the worst thing on our hands
just now, however.”

“Number Two-o-two?”

“Yes, sir. Two hundred and two. Believe me! It’s like crowding a fat
man through a Pullman ventilator.”

“Well, what else is the trouble?”

“As I have told you a dozen times, Mr. Glidden, we are short-handed.”

“I know! I know, boy! But this system is having an economical streak
and I am afraid I cannot squeeze you through another assistant, Ralph.
Not just now.”

“It better be now, or it will be too late,” declared Ralph. “This
efficiency expert that is running things at this terminal is going to
get to the board and show ’em that I can run this office with a
cripple and a fifteen year old boy, I shouldn’t wonder.”

“You mean the super?” exclaimed Mr. Glidden.

“I see you are a good guesser.”

“Barton Hopkins is the limit!” exclaimed the chief dispatcher of the
Great Northern. “I had no idea he would have the impudence to
interfere in our affairs.”

“I’m telling you. He has just now told me how I can work two shifts a
day myself and so save one man’s salary.”

“Don’t pay the least attention to him, Ralph!” said Mr. Glidden
earnestly.

“Just the same I have an idea that you are going to hear from him. And
he’ll go higher up. He is as persistent as a red ant.”

“And just about as useful,” growled out Glidden over the wire. “And I
never did see that ants were of much use in spite of all the
philosophers. They are just a nuisance when they get into the sugar.”

This made Ralph laugh, and when he hung up the telephone receiver he
felt better. He knew he had a friend at headquarters who would do his
best to look out for his interests.

That afternoon, however, he had the sample of Mr. Hopkins’ dislike for
him that he had expected. When he left the railroad building and
walked down South Main Street to do an errand for his mother, he saw a
little electric runabout take the crossing at Hammerby Street and turn
toward one of the big department stores. He knew the car at a glance,
for he had seen Cherry Hopkins and her mother driving it many times.

The women entered the store and Ralph went on about his business. Half
an hour later he was returning when he spied several young men walking
ahead of him toward the department store into which Mrs. Hopkins and
Cherry had disappeared. One of these fellows the train dispatcher
identified as Whitey Malone.

As the gang lurched along the sidewalk, taking up more than their
share of the way, Ralph fell to a slower pace and watched them.
Opposite the Hopkins car the gang halted. Whitey stooped and seemed to
be examining the wheels on that side. Ralph quickened his pace, for he
had a feeling that Whitey Malone would do almost any mean trick which
might hurt any of the Hopkins family.

In a moment Malone got to his feet and started after his friends. A
small boy walking near Ralph began to giggle.

“What’s all the joy, kid?” the young dispatcher asked curiously.

“Didn’t you see that?” demanded the youngster.

“I didn’t see anything, I guess,” rejoined the puzzled Ralph.

“That white-headed feller turned a cute trick then. Say, they are all
doing it! I seen a car last night—”

At that moment Mrs. Hopkins and Cherry came out of the store. A clerk
followed them with bundles. The girl jumped in first and started the
motor. In half a minute her mother and the bundles were likewise
stowed away and the door of the car slammed.

Ralph had halted. He did not want to pass them again. The boy,
giggling still, went along to stand and watch the car. Cherry started
and turned it, heading for the Hammerby Street crossing. Ralph noticed
that the flagman was just coming out of his shack.

The young dispatcher slipped his watch into his palm and looked at it.
Number 43 was about due—was even now wheeling into the mouth of the
yard half a mile away. The run-about would have plenty of time to
cross the track.

Then with a sudden intake of breath, the young fellow started. He had
seen something—evidently the thing the youngster was laughing his head
off about. The tires on the near side of the Hopkins’ car were being
deflated.

“That scoundrel!” exclaimed Ralph.

He knew instantly what Whitey Malone had done. The fellow had loosened
the air valves and gradually, as the weight of the car pressed on the
tires, the inflated rubber flattened. Before the car reached the
crossing it was bumping on that side, and Ralph saw Cherry slowing
down and looking out to see what the matter was.

Unfortunately the girl did not stop immediately. While she was puzzled
about the hobbling car, she ran on. She was half way across the
tracks—exactly straddling the inbound rails, in fact—when the motor
stalled!

The flagman, who was waiting to drop the gates when the supervisor’s
car got over, immediately lost his head. He screamed and ran toward
the car, waving his flag. The thunder of the oncoming train grew
rapidly, vibrating on the air. Ralph leaped away after the automobile.

The flagman, seeing the car stop dead, rushed back and dropped the
gates! If the girl could have got the runabout started again, she was
shut off from escape.

“And right on the inbound rails!” gasped Ralph.

He saw the car could not be moved. He did not even speak to Cherry as
he ran. But he grabbed the red flag out of the crossing-man’s hand and
started up the track, waving it madly.

It was a straight way for several rods. He knew the engineer would
soon see him. Yet he almost held his breath until he heard the shriek
of the locomotive whistle as it called for “brakes” and knew that the
driver had set the compressed air as he called the brakemen to their
unexpected duty.

The high front of the big machine plowed toward him, looking as though
it could not be stopped at all! Ralph stepped out from between the
rails when the pilot was almost upon him. He saw the fireman hanging
out of the window on his side of the cabin, staring earnestly ahead.
The runabout seemed doomed. And the two occupants of the car had not
attempted to get out!

“Great heavens, if she hits it!” murmured the young train dispatcher.

He started on a staggering run back to the crossing. He was aware that
a crowd was gathering, seemingly by magic, on both sides of the
crossing. From the south appeared a tall figure that burst through the
narrow opening at the end of the gate and started for the endangered
automobile.

Fire flew from the brakeshoes of the train and the grind and hiss of
the iron threatened flat tires on more than one wheel. Ralph, the
breath sobbing in his throat, continued to stumble on over the cinder
path.

The tall figure he knew was that of Mr. Barton Hopkins. The supervisor
had chanced to come along just in season to see the danger of his wife
and daughter.

But Ralph knew well enough that the man—no more than Ralph
himself—could do nothing to aid the victims of this threatened
disaster.




                              CHAPTER X

                       THE NIGHT OF THE STRIKE


The locomotive stopped—and there was no crash such as Ralph had
expected. He was only a few yards behind the high step of the great
machine down which the fireman swung himself.

“What’s the matter with those boobs?” demanded the latter. “Blocking
the road like this—huh! Wait till the super gets wise to it. He’s got
just what it costs to stop a train figgered out into cents and mills.”

Ralph grabbed him by the shoulder and shot into his ear: “Muffle down,
Haney! That’s the super himself there, and it is his wife and girl in
the car.”

“Great Glory and Jerusalem!” gasped the fireman. “Thanks, Fairbanks.
He’ll be as sore as a boil over this. And it’s a wonder that we didn’t
smash the thing to splinters, for our brakes don’t work any too well.
The old mill ought to be in the shops right now.”

The fireman slipped back to warn the engineer. Ralph went on to the
crossing. Mrs. Hopkins and Cherry had now got out of the runabout. The
girl was actually keeping the woman from falling, the latter was so
much overcome. But Cherry flashed Ralph an illuminating look. Her eyes
were like stars.

The supervisor knew exactly what to do in the emergency. Already he
had ordered the gate raised and had beckoned to some idlers to come
and lift the car. He did not take hold himself, but he ordered them
what to do. In fact, Ralph helped lift the runabout over the tracks
and out onto Hammerby Street.

“That will do, men. Thanks,” said Mr. Hopkins coldly. He turned to his
daughter. “How did it happen? Your wheels are deflated.”

“I don’t know. I did not understand what had happened until we were on
the crossing, Papa,” Cherry replied.

“Somebody must have done it when the car was standing before the
store,” said Mrs. Hopkins.

“Thank you, Ralph Fairbanks!” whispered Cherry, suddenly seizing the
young fellow’s hand.

Hopkins wheeled and stared coldly at Ralph. “Just what has Mr.
Fairbanks done to be thanked for, Cherry?” the supervisor asked.

“He stopped the train, Papa,” declared the girl firmly.

“Humph! The engineer stopped the train, to be exact,” said her father
and then turned to haul the pump out from under the car seat.

Ralph tipped his hat to the ladies and walked away.

“In my opinion, Barton Hopkins is a pretty small man,” the train
dispatcher thought. “In any case, I may as well make up my mind to one
fact: If he can ‘get’ me he will. He is as cold-blooded as a snake.
And I guess I would better keep away from Miss Cherry, or she will get
into trouble.

“Just the same,” he concluded, “she’s a fine girl. She could not bear
to see the little thing I did for them ignored. But, goodness me, how
the rank and file of the men hate her father!”

He did not tell his mother this time of the happening. He had learned
it was better not to give the widow details of any possible danger
that he stepped into. She only worried the more about him when he was
out from under her eye.

The newspapers had begun to talk of the wildcat strike extending to
this division of the Great Northern, and Mrs. Fairbanks read enough
about it in her favorite evening sheet. Ralph might have told her a
deal more—and much more to the purpose—had he chosen to.

The feeling in the shops was a matter for grave discussion among the
officials. The older employees, and the men in the stronger
Brotherhoods, thought of and talked of little else. If the shopmen and
maintenance of way men went out there was bound to be trouble.

Most railroad systems keep only one jump ahead of disaster in the busy
season. Locomotives and all other rolling stock have to be watched and
inspected just as closely and carefully as a good family doctor
watches his patients. A turn in the shops for the great moguls and
eight-wheelers comes more frequently than the public suspects. This
averts accidents more surely than block-signal systems or perfect
train dispatching.

Of late the shopmen had been lax in their work, just as the section
men had been lax in their department. Disgruntled employees of any
corporation are dangerous. In the railroad business they are
frightfully so.

Every evening when the shifts changed in the shops and yard, groups of
men stood around and talked. Sometimes some “soap-box orator” made a
speech just outside the railroad property. The railway police could
not disturb these meetings, but they worked with the city police and
soon had them stopped.

At once Andy McCarrey and others got up in Beeman Hall and shouted
about the wrongs of the workingman and how the police were governed by
the corporation.

“Hot air! Hot air!” said John, the old timekeeper, to Ralph. “Just the
same, Jim Perrin is doing his dirtiest in the union, too. Mark my
word, Mr. Fairbanks; there’s something going to break—and soon.”

Ralph, however, went on the even tenor of his way and fully believed
that whatever happened, it would not affect him. He would have liked
to see Zeph Dallas again or hear from Bob Adair.

But Zeph had disappeared right after Ralph’s last interview with him
and, day or night, the train dispatcher had seen no sign of the
fellow. He was so troubled over the night schedules, however, that
every evening he went downtown again after supper.

“I never knew you to be so particular about your dispatching, Ralph,”
his mother complained. “Do you really expect trouble?”

“I’ll tell you, Mother,” he said, trying to smile. “When we have to
crowd the trains so close I naturally feel anxiety. I’ve got good men
on the job. But some night I expect that Midnight Flyer or some other
important train to stall and ball up the entire schedule.

“These wheat trains clutter up the east-bound tracks all night long.
We have had two breakdowns within forty-eight hours this week. The
yard was not cleared of west-bound freight this morning until nine
o’clock. We’re in a mess!”

“But they cannot hold you responsible for any of the trouble,” his
mother declared loyally.

“I don’t know. The way the super looks at me when we meet—— Humph! But
of course, Mother, I feel responsibility. I want the trains to get in
and out on time. The reports going back to main headquarters aren’t
encouraging. Although Mr. Glidden is mighty nice about it.”

“He would be,” declared Mrs. Fairbanks. “He understands.”

Just the same, her confidence did not greatly encourage Ralph. The day
schedule did not much trouble him, but at night it grew worse and
worse. As he had feared, with the increased number of wheat trains
trying to get through, there being a big movement of grain to Europe
at this time, most other freight was side-tracked. The passenger
trains, too, were displaced.

Two mornings in succession the Midnight Flyer got to Hammerfest so
late that the Boise City connection was lost. Passengers had to wait
two hours. Yet the train could not be started earlier than midnight
from Rockton because the connection from the east could not be made.

“Old Byron Marks is a has-been,” the master mechanic said to Ralph on
one occasion. “But what can _I_ do? It is out of my hands. The old man
can’t make the time, and he knows it. But he doesn’t want to fall down
on the run, either. You know what that would mean.”

“It would give the super a chance to demand his withdrawal,” said
Ralph.

“You bet. And Bart Hopkins is only waiting for that. If he had his
way, and if it wasn’t for the Brotherhoods, he’d scrap every man with
gray hair on the division.”

“Can’t anybody talk with Byron and show him how to get out
gracefully?”

“He’s as touchy as a hen with a brood of chicks. I’d like to send him
back to a switch engine. We need on that Flyer somebody like you,
Ralph. Yes, sir, it’s a run that calls for young blood!”

But Ralph raised both hands and gestured him away from his desk. “No,
no! Tempt me not!” he cried. “Haven’t I trouble enough of my own right
here and now?”

“But if I have to take Byron off for incompetency, and that certainly
will kill the old man, whom shall I put in his place? Every good man
is needed. This blamed new eight hour rule—well, it’s good in some
ways, of course; but it makes us short-handed.”

The official went away grumbling. He, too, had his troubles. He had to
take his orders from the supervisor and some of them were not to his
taste.

It is said that only the weight of the last straw broke the camel’s
back. It needed some particular event to start the conflagration that
promised to overwhelm the division, if not the whole Great Northern
system. It was as small a thing as the idea of the change in the style
of the men’s working caps that Ralph had put before the general
manager some weeks before.

A new order was pasted on the shop board one evening—an order
promulgated by the supervisor and from his office. It was a notice to
the effect that the call boys, or others, were not to be sent out to
the lunch places near the shops to purchase lunches for the men who
wanted them, save in the men’s own time.

That meant that nobody could send for anything to eat and drink until
the whistle blew for recess. As the lunch places and delicatessen
stores were sure to be crowded at those particular hours, either all
the workmen would have to bring cans, or those that did not must wait
half or three-quarters of an hour before they ate.

The boys who did these errands for the shop-men were paid so meagerly
that their time cost the company but little. It was certainly a
picayune piece of business. But probably Mr. Hopkins had figured it
out to his own satisfaction that several dollars a year might be saved
to the Great Northern.

Somebody read the inconspicuous notice on the board soon after the
night crew started working in the shops. Ralph chanced to be in the
train dispatchers’ offices when he heard the roar of the machinery in
the nearest shop subside and finally cease entirely. He went to the
window and looked out.

“What’s happened, Chief?” asked his assistant, sitting at the
telegraph instrument.

“I can’t make it out. Why! there goes Benson, the stationary engineer.
He’s shut down the power! Why, Johnny, they are crowding out of the
shop!”

“Strike!” ejaculated the operator, and opened his key.

“Wait! Let me be sure,” cried Ralph, and darted to the door and down
the stairs to the yard.

It was only a few rods to the first shop. He saw the men, angry and
blusterous, crowding out of the doors like disturbed ants. He found
one coherent man whom he knew, and got the story of the supervisor’s
latest order.

“Hold on! What are you fellows going to do?” Ralph demanded of this
man.

“We’re going to hold a meeting. Beeman’s Hall. We’ll stand no more of
this blamed foolishness. Anyhow, we won’t stand for that cut in wages
they say is coming. I tell you, Fairbanks; the whole road is going to
the dogs.”

“And you propose to help it go there, do you?” Ralph demanded.

But he knew it was useless to argue the matter. The men were red hot.
They were discarding the advice and the orders of their own union
officials. Andy McCarrey was about to see his cherished plans come to
fruition.




                              CHAPTER XI

                            MORE FRICTION


Ralph Fairbanks disliked to do it. But it seemed that he was the first
responsible person about the railroad building to mark the beginning
of the wildcat strike of the shopmen. Somebody had to tell Barton
Hopkins, and it seemed the duty devolved upon him.

“The old man will be mighty sore,” said Johnny, the operator. “I’d
better shoot the news to main headquarters, hadn’t I?”

“Yes,” replied Ralph, going into the telephone booth.

He asked the operator for Mr. Hopkins’ house number. It was not very
late in the evening and he knew Mr. Hopkins could not have gone to
bed. But it was several minutes during which he heard the indicator
buzzing again and again, before he received any answer.

Then it was not the supervisor’s sharp voice that said: “Mr. Hopkins’
residence. What is wanted?”

“Oh, my gracious, Miss Cherry! Is that you?” asked the young train
dispatcher, anxiously.

“Ralph Fairbanks! What has happened?”

In spite of his excitement Ralph noted—and was glad!—that the girl
recognized his voice so quickly.

“I am at headquarters, Miss Cherry! Something has happened that your
father should know about.”

“He has gone out. We expect him back any moment. Tell me what it is,
Mr. Fairbanks!”

“The men have struck!”

“What—what made them?”

“Oh, it was coming. It could not be helped,” Ralph hastily assured
her. “I don’t know how far it will spread. Tell your father as soon as
you see him, will you, please? I will stay here till he comes. Don’t
know: Maybe the yardmen will go out. If they do——”

He hung up without finishing his sentence. Through the glass door of
the cabinet he had seen one of the call boys rush into the outer
office.

“Hey! Where’s Fairbanks?” the boy demanded. “Hey, Mist’ Fairbanks!
Dooley wants you down the yard.”

“Dooley? At the switch shanty? What for?”

“The feller driving the kettle has flew the coop!” answered the
excited boy. “They are all striking!”

“Not one of the engineers?” gasped Ralph.

“Aw, that feller’s a new one. He wasn’t long on the job. Been talking
strike ever since he started to work here,” explained the call boy,
keeping alongside of Ralph as the latter started down the wide stairs.
“He is a no-good, take it from me. Dooley’s near ’bout crazy. He
started to chase the feller back on the kettle with a switchbar, but
the man could run too fast. Somebody’s got to take the throttle on
that kettle or there won’t be no more switchin’ done in this yard
to-night.”

“Why haven’t you been sent for a substitute?” the train dispatcher
asked the voluble youth.

“Ain’t one on the list that ain’t done his eight-hour shift and four
overtime. All but the crews for the regular runs. You wouldn’t expect
me to go after old By Marks, would you, to drive that yard kettle?”

Ralph laughed shortly. He was very well aware how short the division
was of engineers and firemen. The twelve-hour rule, while it was a
good thing and a needed improvement, had disorganized the entire Great
Northern crew system. The system had never got properly into step with
the new idea.

Just why Dooley should have called him, Ralph did not guess at first.
Save that he might be the only person in authority about the
headquarters at this hour. Dooley never had shown much initiative as
yardmaster. But he was a good worker.

He came at the young train dispatcher, swinging his arms and yelling
at the top of his voice:

“What do you know about this? These—these puppy-dogs! That fried egg
that run the switcher—Aw! What’s the use talkin’? He’s took it on the
run. He’d better. I’d have knocked his head off if he hadn’t run twice
as fast as I could with my game leg.”

“What’s the answer, Dooley? What do you suppose I can do for you?”

“You can handle that kettle. You’ve got to——”

“What, _me_?” gasped Ralph. “I’m not an engineer any more. You want to
ruin my reputation, Dooley?”

“Stop blitterin’,” scolded the old yardmaster. “I know you, Ralph
Fairbanks. You are workin’ for the Great Northern just as I am. Look
at the fireboy there, Jimmy. He stuck. But he ain’t allowed by the
rules to handle the throttle that his superior deserted.”

“And you expect me to break the rules?”

“You still have your Brotherhood card. I know it. You are in good
standing. We have got to show these mutts that real men don’t throw
the road down—and cut off their own food supply—to run after that
crazy Andy McCarrey.”

“All right. I’m with you, as far as that goes,” said Ralph quickly.
“But I don’t know about this thing you ask me to do. My own job——”

“You are not on the job now. That I know full well,” said the anxious
yardmaster. “Do, for the love of Mike, Ralph, get aboard that dirty
little kettle and kick together the cars for west-bound Eighty-seven.
She’s scheduled to leave the yard, as you well know, in twenty-five
minutes,” and he snapped his big watch back into his pocket.

“What will the super say?” asked Ralph weakly.

The idea was taking hold of him. After all, the blood in his veins was
the blood of the engine-driver! Once an engineer, always an engineer.
Ralph could not get away from the fact that his fingers thrilled—and
always would thrill—to the touch of the throttle and the Johnson bar.

Dooley wildly said his say about the supervisor while he grabbed
Ralph’s arm and half dragged him over to the steaming switch engine.
Jimmy, the faithful fireman, stood on the little deck.

“You know Mist’ Fairbanks, Jimmy,” said the yardmaster. “He’ll help us
out. The saints will be good to you, boy, for sticking to the
fireshovel and bar. Now, git busy. Here’s the list for Eighty-seven,
Ralph. I’ve kept the crew together. Nagle is captain. Go to it!”

He hurried away as Ralph slowly climbed aboard. The young fellow had
no more right on the little switcher than an outsider. But the
situation demanded drastic action. And if Mr. Hopkins did not appear
to interfere, Ralph might help out the old yardmaster in this
emergency.

In a way, too, he was helping himself. If Eighty-seven did not get out
of the yard somewhere near on time, the train would ball up the train
dispatcher’s schedule.

Ralph grabbed the suit of overalls the fireman threw him and struggled
into them. The steam was up and there was plenty of coal in the
bunker. He tried the water-gauge himself, then felt out the various
levers and cocks under his hand. A lantern was giving him the “high
sign” down the yard. He opened her up carefully and trundled the
little engine out on the cluttered track.

Under the radiance of the fixed bull’s-eye beside him, Ralph
scrutinized the numbers of the cars in the string he was expected to
pick up. Here were four gondolas loaded with pig-iron first on the
list. Really, in making up a well-balanced freight, these four cars
should come about the middle of the train, to “stiffen her back.” So
much weight next the locomotive made hard switching and, when the
regular engine crew took the train for the western pull, they
certainly would blame the yard crew for making it up so clumsily.

But Ralph saw that the four gondolas fairly “blanked” the remainder of
the train—like a broken cork in the neck of a bottle. Had there been
full and plenty of time, he would have shunted the heavy cars upon a
siding and picked them up after laying out about half the cars that
were on the list the yardmaster had given him.

Nagle, the conductor of Eighty-seven, ran along and boarded the
switcher as Ralph dropped her down to couple on to the gondolas.
Nagle’s eyes popped open like a scared cat’s when he saw who was
handling the switcher’s throttle.

“Jerusalem! is the G. M. himself going to take a hand in this strike,
too, I dunno?” he demanded.

“I shouldn’t wonder. I have seen him take to the deck of a mountain
hog himself on occasion, Nagle,” admitted Ralph.

“It’s right you are. And more than me is remembering that same, Ralph,
when these crazy loons ask us to go out with them against the orders
of our Brotherhood chiefs. We’ve worked hand in hand with the old G.
M. and many another of the brass-collared crew on this road. These
poor simps that are following McCarrey will be sorry enough in the
end.”

“I am glad to hear one man talking sense, Nagle,” said Ralph. “Now,
how do these cars stand?”

“Of course, you know, these four you’ve grappled are the worst of the
lot?”

“It looks so. And whoever drove them in here must have known he was
going to make the yard crew trouble.”

“Like enough. There are more soreheads on this division at the present
time than you can shake a stick at! And no wonder. That super——”

“Old stuff! Old stuff, Nagle!” advised Ralph, in haste. “Time is
flying.”

“What will you do with these four gondolas?”

“I am going to throw them onto number four switch. They can’t stay
there but five minutes, of course, for Number Twenty-eight is due
then. But if we work smartly we may get half-a-dozen boxes tacked on
ahead of the gondolas.”

“Good boy!” and the conductor swung down to the cinder path.

“Put a couple of huskies on those gondolas. They must brake at the
right time,” warned Ralph.

The conductor waved his hand. A moment later, as Ralph eased the heavy
quartette of cars into motion, he saw two brakemen climb aboard—one at
the head and one at the tail of the four. He knew that, properly
governed by the hand brakes, those two brakemen could place the
gondolas just right on number four siding.

It was a short piece of track. It opened at the lower end right out
onto the eastbound main track. The switcher dragged the heavy cars up
and out into the clear and then “kicked” them off onto the short
siding.

The coupling pin was tripped and the switcher came to a stop. Ralph
leaned far out to watch the rolling stock slow down.

“Looks to me as though that far brakie is taking his time winding up,”
the fireman shouted.

“Who is that fellow? Hi! Make the switch on the fly, Jimmy, and we’ll
run down——”

“Here comes Twenty-eight, sir!” said Jimmy quickly. “If that fellow
hasn’t stopped her in the clear——”

They just then got the high sign from down the yard. The long freight
then due was steaming in. Ralph had a feeling that all was not right
with those heavy gondolas. They had been stopped, and of course were
braked. Yet the fellow on the tail-end seemed to have been very slow
about the work. He was the only person who knew whether or not the
four cars of pigiron were too near the main track.

The switcher had to answer the far signal. Ralph ran her ahead and
then backed onto the cross-over and so upon the long siding where he
was to pick up the next batch of cars. The whistle of Twenty-eight’s
locomotive suddenly emitted a signal.

“Something’s the matter, boss!” yelled Jimmy, swinging himself up to
the deck again.

And on the heels of what he said, and before the switcher carried them
within sight of the tail-end of the four gondolas, there sounded a
ripping crash that awoke the echoes over half of Rockton! On the
instant the head-end of Twenty-eight, save her locomotive, was
scattered over both main tracks. The yard was blocked!




                             CHAPTER XII

                              TREACHERY


The heavy freight train broke in two. The locomotive plowed on for a
few rods, and stopped. The switcher which Ralph Fairbanks was driving
stopped just opposite the wreck.

One glance was all that was necessary to show Ralph the cause of the
disaster. The four heavily laden gondolas had been allowed to run a
few feet too far. The corner of the gondola at the end stuck out over
the curve of the switch and the first box car on Number Twenty-eight
had caught upon its steel corner.

This corner had ripped the sides of two box cars open; then the ruined
cars had crashed over onto the other main track. Two following cars
had jumped the rails and——

“A four hour job for the wrecking crew, aside from the damage done,”
declared Ralph to Nagle, when he came running up with Dooley, the
yardmaster. “Where is the brakie you sent to guard that tail-end,
Nagle?”

“The rascal!” yelled the conductor. “He’s taken it on the run. We
haven’t had him on the line but a few weeks. It is my opinion there
are a lot of wabblies got jobs on this division just for the chance of
hurting the road.”

“I’ll fix ’em if I catch ’em!” yelled Dooley, almost frothing at the
mouth he was so wild.

The whistle was blowing the signal for the wrecking crew. All that
Ralph could do was to go on with his task. As it happened, the wreck
would not interfere with getting Number Eighty-seven out of the yard.

He picked up one bunch after another of the cars numbered on his list,
while the derrick was being brought up to clear the tracks and jack
the unhorsed cars upon the rails again. Ralph knew that his assistant
would be much troubled by this break in the schedule; but there were
certain routine things to do about it, and that was all. Trains would
have to be held outside in both directions until the main tracks in
the yard were cleared.

Not more than twenty minutes late the young fellow saw the big mogul
backed down to the long string of cars and coupled on. The switcher
was steaming on a side track, waiting for the next job. Eighty-seven
pulled out of the yard safely and soon its parting hoot-too-hoot!
could be heard beyond the hill.

“Now what?” asked Ralph, as Dooley came along with another clip of
papers in his hand.

So much had been going on during the last few minutes that he had
quite forgotten his own schedule. The excited Dooley was about to pass
him up his list for the next freight when a tall figure came striding
across the tracks from the vicinity of the wreck.

“Cheese it!” gasped the fireman. “Here comes the Great-I-Am.”

Mr. Barton Hopkins showed in his face about as much expression as
Ralph had ever seen him display. And that expression was one of anger.

“What is going on here, Yardmaster?” he demanded harshly. “Are you
ready with your report on that accident yonder?”

“I don’t know much about it,” said the boss doubtfully. “I didn’t see
it. Mebbe Mr. Fairbanks, here——”

This was shifting the responsibility in good truth. At another time
Ralph might have been angry at Dooley. But he knew that the old man
was much perturbed. Mr. Hopkins turned his scowling visage on the
young train dispatcher.

“What is Mr. Fairbanks doing on that switch engine?” asked the
supervisor. “I understand that he was at fault in this accident. He
kicked the pig-iron cars too far over the switch.”

“Look here, Mr. Hopkins!” exclaimed Ralph, leaning from the window of
the little cabin in sudden heat. “Who told you any such thing as
that?”

“I am so informed. My informant will doubtless appear at the proper
time—when the case is thrashed out in my office.”

“I’ll have some testimony to bring in, too, at that,” said Ralph
hotly. “Only I doubt right here and now, Mr. Hopkins, your power to
take me into your office. I am train dispatcher of this division——”

“Stick to your job, then,” put in Mr. Hopkins sharply. “I ask you:
What are you doing on that switch engine?”

Ralph came down from the deck on the run. He tore off the overalls.
His face blazed. He had to wait a moment to control his voice he was
so angry.

“If you think I have stepped in here where I have no business, believe
me, I can get out,” he said. “I had no idea of turning in a time card
for what I was doing. I helped out because I wanted to see things
move. Dooley——”

“Mr. Dooley much overstepped his authority when he allowed you to
drive that switcher. He knew it—and knows it, now.”

“What in thunder would I have done, Mr. Hopkins?” broke in the excited
yardmaster. “Not a man on the list could I call——”

“It was a matter to put up to your superior.”

“Well, now!” roared the angry old man, “where was _you_ when I needed
to start things going after that danged striker hopped his job? Should
I sit down and let the yard go stale and all this freight hang fire
while I waited to consult you, Mr. Hopkins?”

“That is exactly what you should have done,” declared the supervisor
in the same decisive way.

“Great Grief and Jumping Dromedaries!” yelled Dooley, and he literally
went up into the air. “It is no wonder the men are striking. I don’t
blame ’em! I am on strike myself from this moment——”

He threw the clip of papers into the air, and it went hurtling over
the nearest line of boxcars. His cap he snatched from his head and
flung it yards away in the other direction. The man was for the moment
mad!

“I’m on strike! I’m on strike meself!” he bawled. “Me, that’s never
gone out with the boys no matter what happened, for the last thutty
years. I’m on strike!”

“You are mistaken, Dooley,” cut in the icy voice of the supervisor.
“You have not struck. You are discharged. Hand in your time and go.
You are discharged for insubordination and inefficiency. I’ll take
your keys.”

                  *       *       *       *       *

“Well,” said Ralph, talking it over later with his assistant operator
as they were trying to untangle the trains in the yard and those
waiting on the near-by blocks, “we must hand it to supervisor Barton
Hopkins. He is personally efficient. He found a day man to take poor
Dooley’s place, he got a man for the switcher, and he dressed down the
whole yard crew and set them to work again in an hour.”

“But how long are they going to work?” grumbled the operator. “They
all act like whipped dogs. That isn’t the way to run a division.”

“It is his way of running it. And the G.M. says he is suiting the
stockholders and directors right down to the ground. Oh, the railroad
business is on the toboggan!”

“Ha ha!” croaked the operator. “You sound like these other old
stagers. I haven’t been in the game so long as you have, Fairbanks,
although I am older than you. The pay is good and the hours not bad.
Believe me! I’ve had worse jobs than train dispatching.”

“Oh, so have I. But I feel at a time like this that I’d like to be
into the game right, instead of sitting up here overlooking a railroad
yard and making pin-pricks on a road map.”

“Going back to the locomotive lever?”

“Do you know,” said Ralph earnestly and softly, “while I was fiddling
down there on that little old yard engine, I felt _right_. I wouldn’t
want my mother to know it, for she always worried when I had a run,
but I believe I was born for the throttle. I’m an engineer, and I
always will be.”

                  *       *       *       *       *

The morning paper was full of the strike of the shopmen, and the
threat was made by McCarrey that the yardmen and switchers would be
out within twenty-four hours.

“We’re going to stop every wheel from turning on this division of the
Great Northern,” the strike leader told the reporters. “And before we
are through, we’ll plug both ends of the system so tight that the
officials will have to come to our terms.”

“How about the Brotherhoods?” he was asked.

“That is bunk,” McCarrey declared. “The Brotherhood members are
practically all with us. They don’t have to strike. We are going to
strike for them. The roads can’t run trains if they have no shop
workers or maintenance of way men. The engineers and firemen won’t
take out trains after a while when they can’t get repairs made or road
work kept up or switching done. No, sir, we’ve got ’em where we want
’em. Watch us.”

“I guess they ought to be watched, all right,” Ralph told his mother
at his late breakfast. “I wonder what Zeph is doing? I wonder where
Mr. Adair is?”

“I should think you wouldn’t worry about them,” said the widow. “They
have their own work. You have yours, Ralph. Please don’t get mixed up
in this ugly business.”

“I guess you are quite right, Mother,” he said gravely. “I am glad to
be in the train dispatching department. Of course, we are going to
have a great deal of trouble putting any schedule through. But I do
not believe the telegraphers will go on strike. My men, at least, are
faithful.”

“Faithful to you or to the road?” asked his mother.

“To both, I firmly believe,” said Ralph confidently. “Why, I can’t
understand any responsible employee going out for so little cause.
Hopkins has made them all sore, it is true. But they can’t give that
as a good reason. And the cut in wages was only threatened. The
Brotherhoods took their cut months ago, even if it was a bitter pill
to swallow. It is mainly such men as McCarrey who really are not even
railroad men. Why, he never had a job on the Great Northern, as I
understand.”

“Do you actually believe that he followed Mr. Hopkins here to make
trouble?”

“I bet he did. But it is Hopkins’ own fault if he gives McCarrey a
chance to make trouble.” Mrs. Fairbanks sighed. “I am sorry for his
family. You say his daughter is an attractive girl, Ralph?”

“That’s the surest thing you know, Mother,” declared Ralph, smiling
reflectively. “I had her on the wire last evening when I sent word to
her father that the shopmen had gone out. She has a sweet voice.”

His mother looked at him again in some doubt.

“I never knew you to be so greatly interested in a girl before,
Ralph.”

“I never knew a girl before who was so worth while,” he replied. “And
there’s no nonsense about her. You’ll like her when you know her,
Mother.”




                             CHAPTER XIII

                       NEWS FROM SHADOW VALLEY


This was a day to be remembered in Rockton. Ralph passed a parade of
the wildcat strikers and their sympathizers on his way to the office.
A good many of the marchers were drunk. That was bad, for it showed
that somebody was furnishing a supply of liquor forbidden under the
prohibition régime.

“I’ve an idea,” Ralph thought to himself, “that McCarrey and Grif Falk
have a secret place to store liquor in, in that old house where Zeph
and I had our run-in with them the other night. Wish Zeph would show
up. I’d like to know what he told Mr. Adair about it.”

He saw uniformed police at the yard gates and standing at the railroad
crossing when he got downtown. But he observed none of the men in
plain clothes he knew who belonged to the railroad police. Mr. Adair
did not believe in making a show of force at a time of trouble like
this, if it could be avoided.

Extras of the evening papers soon began to appear on the street. Wild
rumors were rife. It was said that the maintenance of way men on other
divisions of the Great Northern were about to walk out.

The day shifts of men in the Rockton shops had not even come to work.
The yard crews, who were more closely affiliated with the big
Brotherhoods, were remaining at work. And yet, as Ralph could easily
sense, nothing was going right in the yard or around the offices.

The clerks in the freight offices had some kind of association with
McCarrey’s new union, and when Ralph had occasion to go down the
platform he saw these clerks buzzing like mad bees.

“If the super comes this way these fellows will get something in their
ears they won’t want to hear,” Ralph remarked to one of the platform
men. “How do you stand, Mandell?”

“I stand for my bread and butter. I’ve always got my wages regularly
and been treated decently by the road; at least, until this Hopkins
came. I’ve been here fifteen years and have seen five or six supers
come and go. I may be here fifteen more and see as many supers in
charge. If this Hopkins tells me I can’t spit on the platform, well,
then, I’ll go spit over the side. Ha! Them shopmen last night boiling
out of the shop because of a simple order like that! They’re a bunch
of dumb-bells.”

All the employees did not feel the same way, however; and that Ralph
right well knew. He believed it would not take much more to cause the
yard workers, the switchmen, the freight clerks, and other employees,
to desert their jobs.

He had very little time to give thought to this or other general
matters. That wreck in the yard the night before had balled the
service up badly.

The Midnight Flyer had got out ten minutes late and Byron Marks had
been unable to make up even that small handicap in the four hours’ run
to Hammerfest. There was a protest from the general manager about
this. It did not touch Ralph’s department, of course; but it was sent
to him in duplicate. He knew that the supervisor would be red hot.

When Marks brought his train back that day he had managed to make
time. Ralph himself had kept the tracks clear for him, and the old
fellow should have been thankful. But Mr. Hopkins met the express on
the platform as it steamed to a stop.

In that cold voice of his, and with a careful selection of words that
bit like acid on a man’s soul, the supervisor reprimanded the old
engineer before his crew and all the idlers who had gathered around.
It was an unkind thing to do; and yet, there was good reason for the
supervisor’s anger.

Ralph stood by and listened. The locomotive that drew the flyer and
this return train was practically new. It was the latest thing in a
coal-burning, Class-A locomotive. Marks had every chance, it would
seem, to make the schedule, close as it was. Another driver could have
done it, Ralph was sure.

The old engineer swung down from the cab and allowed one of his
firemen to take the machine out to the roundhouse. He had his
lunch-can and coat with him. He stood like a whipped dog and took the
tongue-lashing the supervisor gave to him. Ralph had to go away from
there. He could not listen to it. Byron Marks did not possess a proper
sense of his own position.

The young train dispatcher hoped that the old man would ask for a
substitute for the next run. But he appeared at night in season to
take the big locomotive out of the roundhouse. He had one virtue, at
least. Stubbornness.

That day had been an anxious one around divisional headquarters. Ralph
had gone home for supper as usual; but he had come right downtown
again. The strikers were holding a continuous meeting in Beeman Hall
and the police were in attendance to keep the speakers from going too
far. It was told Ralph that many yardmen, switchmen and section men
had attended the meeting and that the small unions of railroad workers
were all but disorganized.

One shop was running with a crippled crew. The supervisor certainly
was efficient himself. He could report that the wheels in that shop
were turning. Ralph saw that Mr. Hopkins was on the job this evening.
Plainclothes men, belonging to the railroad squad, were on duty about
the terminal, roundhouse, and yard.

Every hour or so some part of the planned schedule for the trains on
the division had to be scrapped. Ralph was glad he was on hand this
evening when these changes had to be made. Johnny was a good man, but
he was beginning to get rattled. And a train dispatcher who loses his
head endangers everything.

It was along in the evening and the traffic was easing up for a while
in the terminal yards when a message addressed to “Chief Dispatcher,
Rockton” came over the wire, and Johnny took it off.

“Shadow Valley,” he said. “That is where the Midnight Flyer always
loses time. What kind of country is that?”

“A wild place. The Shadow Valley Station is at this end; Oxford is at
the far end. Some fifty miles long. The Midnight Flyer stops at both
stations. Little but timber towns in between. Great tourist country in
the summer. Hullo! What’s this?”

“It’s in code, I reckon,” said Johnny, seeing Ralph’s puzzled face.
“Haven’t you got the key? It is aimed at you, all right.”

Ralph repeated the message aloud:

    “What is Whitey M. doing in Shadow Valley? Wake up B.
    A.—X. Y. Z.”

“That is as mysterious as a hobo Mulligan,” remarked Johnny, grinning.

“What do you know about that!” muttered Ralph, and without explaining
to his assistant he went to the telephone booth with the telegram in
his hand.

He was so well acquainted with the vagaries of Zeph Dallas’ mind that
he knew at once this was his signature. Zeph had just that twist to
his mind that, if he were sent for a pail of milk, he would try to
disguise both himself and the milk.

“There must be something doing over there at Shadow Valley,” muttered
Ralph. “And ‘Whitey M.’ means just one person, and one only. I haven’t
seen that fellow since we had the run-in with him that night in the
alley. Humph!”

He called down to the supervisor’s office. If Bob Adair was in
Rockton, Ralph believed the supervisor would know how to reach him.
Ralph knew that Mr. Hopkins was in the building. But he was surprised
to hear his voice almost immediately answer the telephone call.

The young fellow would have been even more surprised could he have
seen who was with the supervisor at this hour. A man in a long dark
coat and slouch hat had come into the supervisor’s office unannounced
not many minutes before. Mr. Hopkins had evidently been expecting him.

“Well, what do you find?” asked Hopkins, pushing his cigar box toward
the visitor and lighting a cigar himself. Somehow the supervisor did
not consider the use of tobacco an inefficient thing.

“Nothing to put our finger on as yet, Mr. Hopkins,” was the reply. “Of
course we might arrest McCarrey and his right-hand man, Falk. But we
should have to let them go again for lack of holding evidence. There
was a time—during the war—when we could have stopped them. But not
now. Now a man can fire off his mouth about as much as he likes
without getting into trouble. These fellows aim their talk at the
railroad, not at the Government.”

“You should be able to get them on some count,” declared Hopkins,
smoking energetically. “McCarrey is stirring up the strikers to make
trouble. I have had a written threat that the express passenger trains
will be stopped. You know what that would mean.”

“All bull,” said the other shortly.

“Perhaps. And perhaps not. I was hooted at by a gang as I came
downtown to-night. They will soon begin to throw missiles and break
windows.”

“Then we will have them, individually,” said the visitor, with some
satisfaction.

“Ha!” grumbled Mr. Hopkins. “Somebody lights a fire and you retrieve
the burned match. But you don’t stop the fire. The fellows you arrest
for throwing stones—or cabbages—will not be the dangerous ones.
McCarrey and Falk and those others go scot-free.”

“They are too sharp to really break the law—unless it is with their
mouths,” the other admitted.

“You should be able to round up the whole gang of trouble-instigators
and put them in jail.”

“You expect the impossible.”

“I do not know that. You have only just now come to Rockton——”

“I have had my men here. One of my helpers spotted that hide-out I
tell you about—with the help of young Ralph Fairbanks.”

“Ha! _That_ fellow?”

“The smartest boy working for the Great Northern,” declared the
visitor promptly. “That old ranch McCarrey and his men hang out in is
a storehouse for liquors, I believe—and perhaps worse. I am having the
place watched. But one of McCarrey’s closest friends has disappeared.
Would certainly like to know what has become of Whitey Malone.”

It was just at this moment that the supervisor’s telephone rang. At
this hour there were no clerks to answer the call. Mr. Hopkins excused
himself and went into the booth and closed the door.

When he came out he was red with anger and his pale blue eyes flashed.
His visitor appeared to overlook the supervisor’s disturbance. He
said:

“This Whitey Malone has been McCarrey’s messenger and dirt-carrier.
From the moment the shopmen struck, Whitey disappeared, so they tell
me. I am going to send out a general order to apprehend the fellow
wherever he is found. We will risk a little something. I understand he
is really on probation and the magistrate might send him to jail if he
appears not to be working.”

The supervisor evidently had his own matters to think of. He did not
even grunt.

“I wonder if Ralph Fairbanks knows anything about Whitey,” considered
Hopkins’ visitor aloud, and slyly watching the supervisor.

The question finally brought the latter to life. He flushed up to his
bald brow.

“_That_ fellow? He is perfectly useless. I will put a flea into the
directors’ ears about him,” Hopkins snarled, with unusual show of his
feelings.

The other got up, lazily stretched himself and nodded. “Just so.
Matter of opinion, Mr. Hopkins,” he said. “Some of us think quite well
of Ralph. You see, we have known him since he was a kid-hostler about
the roundhouse. Good-night.”

“Good-night,” returned Barton Hopkins shortly.




                             CHAPTER XIV

                              A TRAGEDY


There was a fight down by one of the stockade gates not long after
Ralph telephoned to Mr. Hopkins to learn if the supervisor knew
anything about Bob Adair. It might as well be said that the young
train dispatcher got no satisfaction from Barton Hopkins.

“I am not giving information of railroad affairs to anybody,
Fairbanks, and you should know that,” the supervisor had said shortly.
“If the chief detective wishes to interview you, he doubtless will
know how to find you.”

“But I’ve got some information for him!” ejaculated Ralph.

Mr. Hopkins hung up without further reply. He evidently considered it
sheer impudence for the train dispatcher to have called him. It was
within the next ten minutes that the row started at the yard gate.

Ralph grabbed his cap and ran down to see what it was all about. The
time was verging toward midnight. Freight trains had been made up as
usual and sent out. But outside the railroad property a crowd had been
gathering, and the yard crews were hooted and threatened.

The train dispatcher was too late to take any part in the fight. But
he learned that the attack had been made upon several of the members
of the night train crews that were coming in by this gate because it
was nearest to the roundhouse.

The police had charged and aided the railroad men in driving back the
strike sympathizers. Missiles had been thrown and one of the men
attacked had had his coat torn off. When Ralph got close to this man
he saw that it was old Byron Marks, engineer of the fast express.

“For pity’s sake, By!” he demanded, as he aided the old engineer away
from the center of the mêlée, “why didn’t you come around the other
way?”

“I didn’t want to see that blamed supervisor again,” gasped the
engineer, wiping the blood from his scratched face. Then he held a
hand tightly upon his heart as though to still it. He was very pale,
save for crimson spots beneath his cheekbones. “I’d rather fight these
rats than talk to Hopkins.”

“Be a man!” exclaimed Ralph. “Don’t let that man scare you.”

“He’s no easy man to meet,” returned the old engineer. “He can put the
gaff into you, if he likes.”

“The Brotherhood is behind you. Tell him where he gets off. The road
is short of engineers. He won’t dare tie the can to you. You know
that.”

“Don’t talk! Don’t talk, Ralph!” whispered the engineer. “I know what
is threatening me better than you do. I’m growing old. And I can’t
afford to drop out on a pittance.”

“Why, you must have something, Byron,” said the train dispatcher.
“After all these years at a good wage——”

“Nothing. Just a little home. And that mortgaged. Sickness in the
family and an invalid child has taken all I could make. Death in a
wreck, or the like, is the only good thing that could come to me.”

“My gracious! Don’t talk like that.”

“It is true. I carry a big accident policy. If I’m killed my family is
well fixed. If I get canned, we’ll starve. That’s about the size of
it,” and the old man walked away, leaving Ralph with a lump in his
throat.

“And I’ve been blaming this old fellow for not pulling out and letting
some younger man have his run,” thought the young train dispatcher
bitterly. “We never know! Old Byron deserves pity, not blame. A long
life gone, and nothing much to show for it. Well!”

The rabble was driven back and broken up by the police. Two or three
rioters were arrested. And that, as Ralph knew, did more harm than
good. Every strike sympathizer that was arrested made a whole family
sore at the railroad. The strikers themselves were sharp enough to
keep away from the scene of trouble.

The big eight-wheeler was being rolled out of the roundhouse as Ralph
turned back toward the brick station. He saw By Marks, his face washed
of blood, and now in a clean overall suit, sitting on the bench in the
driver’s side of the cabin, as the huge locomotive wheeled across the
turntable.

“Good luck to you, old man!” cried Ralph, and waved his hand to the
grave-faced engineer.

Afterward Ralph was glad he had given Byron this hail. The long train
of varnished cars had been standing under the train shed for half an
hour. The train on the other road rolled in at the far end of the
station and the passengers piled out and joined those already
occupying their staterooms or berths in the coaches of the Midnight
Flyer.

Suddenly Ralph was halted. A hand had fallen heavily on his shoulder
and he turned swiftly to look at the person who had touched him. It
was the tall man in the long black coat who had been sitting in the
office of the supervisor. Ralph cried out with satisfaction.

“Mr. Adair! I certainly am glad to see you!”

“I was looking for you, Ralph. But I supposed you were at home at this
hour and I hated to disturb your mother,” said the chief detective of
the Great Northern system.

“Oh, no. I am around the offices now, every night. Until this Midnight
Flyer pulls out, at least.”

“I don’t suppose the supervisor knows that, does he?” asked Adair
dryly.

“He knows it to-night, anyway,” said Ralph, grimly. “I was just asking
him for you—or if he knew where you were.”

“Indeed? And he said he didn’t know?”

“He gave me to understand that he was not giving out information to
underlings,” and Ralph laughed shortly. “Oh, well! let that pass. I
had something to show you, and here it is.”

He hauled out the strange message that he believed had come from Zeph
Dallas. Mr. Adair read it swiftly.

“That’s just the thing I wanted to know!” he exclaimed. “Hang that
Hopkins, anyway! He takes himself as altogether too important. Why,
Malone is the man I am after!”

“You don’t really think that poor, half-witted fellow can be of real
importance in any conspiracy against the road?” asked Ralph,
wonderingly.

“He has got wit enough to give evidence in court. And he is the sort
to turn state’s evidence if he is cornered. The use of such fellows as
Malone by men of the calibre of McCarrey is our main chance in
bringing the latter to book.

“McCarrey has to engage Whitey Malone and others like him to do his
dirty work. He has some plan against the division that Malone is to
help put through. If the latter is down there at Shadow Valley, as
Zeph intimates, I am going to make that neighborhood the main point of
my investigation.”

“But the strikers are here in Rockton!” cried Ralph.

“Foolish as these shopmen and the other strikers are, I would not
accuse any of them of being angry enough to commit an overt act
against the road. Especially of the nature of train wrecking.”

“I should hope not!” gasped Ralph.

“Yet we have received written threats to that effect,” said Adair
gloomily. “This very train,” and he nodded toward the long line of
Pullmans standing beside the platform waiting for the locomotive to
back down, “is on the list of those that somebody has threatened to
stop.”

“The Midnight Flyer?”

“Yes. Here comes the old mill. Wait. By Marks is not the fellow for
this job, Ralph,” and the detective shook his head.

“He’s all right!” exclaimed the young train dispatcher hastily. He was
determined to commend the aged engineer after this, not criticize him.
“I know that nobody could take that express through to Hammerfest much
better than he does. And I am the fellow who makes the schedule.”

“Indeed?” rejoined his friend, with a curious look at Ralph. “Suppose
you were pulling this train?”

“Humph! Think I would be any better than an experienced old engineer
like By? What nonsense, Mr. Adair!”

But the latter only laughed. They were at the head of the train. There
was a little group of station employees and others on the platform.
Ralph was watching the slowly backing locomotive. He saw the pallid
face of Marks thrust out of the window as the great machine backed
against the head coach. The red spots in Mark’s cheeks, Ralph thought,
were slowly fading out.

The couplings came together with a crunch of steel. The locomotive was
stopped on the instant—a pretty connection. Nobody but a skilled
operative could have done it.

“He’s all right, old as he is!” muttered Ralph, as the two firemen
leaped down to make the air-hose and water-hose connections on either
side of the tender.

The train dispatcher walked forward on the engineer’s side of the cab.
He looked up again at the old man in the window. Then he cried out and
leaped up the steps to the locomotive’s deck.

Byron Marks’ head had fallen upon the window sill. His eyes were still
staring, wide open. But the color had now entirely receded from his
cheeks. When Ralph put a tentative hand upon the old man’s shoulder
the torso of his body wabbled dreadfully.

The hand on the throttle relaxed and fell. At the instant the engineer
had made the nicely balanced coupling, he had lost consciousness!




                              CHAPTER XV

                        ONCE MORE ON THE RAILS


The doctor, who had been brought from just across the street from the
station, pronounced it “heart.” Either over-excitement or over-work.
It was no accident; just a death from natural causes.

Then, thought Ralph, how about the big accident policy Byron Marks had
carried and paid on all these years?

But at just this moment there were other matters of importance to
think of. Supervisor Hopkins had at once bustled out to see what had
happened. In five minutes the Midnight Flyer was scheduled to pull out
of the Rockton terminal.

“Here, boy!” he said, grabbing one of the youngsters who called the
crews from their boarding houses. “Let’s see your list. What! Nothing
but freight crews?”

“And there ain’t one of ’em but has put in twelve hours and has got to
take his eight hours’ sleep,” said the boy. “They’d half kill me if I
tried to pry ’em out of the hay.”

“Wait until your advice is called for, boy,” responded Mr. Hopkins
shortly.

The boy winked behind the supervisor’s back and some of the bystanders
chuckled. The supervisor pored over the list.

“Not a passenger engine crew free until two-thirty.”

“And then,” pointed out the night station master, who had likewise
appeared, “that crew must take out Number Fourteen.”

“I want none of _your_ advice, Cummings,” snapped the supervisor.

But Cummings was a gray-haired official and not easily browbeaten.

“You’d better listen to somebody, Mr. Hopkins,” he said doggedly. “I
know the boys on the list quite as well as you do—perhaps better,
considerin’ I’ve seen many of them growin’ up in the road’s employ.
There’s freight engineers, and there’s passenger engineers. Many an
engineer tries pulling the varnished cars and is glad to drop back
into an easy-going freight run. Though there is little on the division
that is really easy-going now.”

“Well, well?” said Hopkins, impatiently.

Cummings raised his eyebrows and glanced from Bob Adair to Ralph.

“There’s not a man on that list as well able to pull Number Two-o-two
as old By was, God rest him! And he couldn’t make the grade, as the
saying is. This Midnight Flyer is a disgrace to the division!”

“What do you mean?” demanded the supervisor angrily.

“Just what I say. It is a disgrace. It doesn’t keep to schedule half
the time. It is the laughing-stock on the system. You know it.
Somebody has got to sit on that bench that can get better time out of
the mill than ever it has made yet.”

“Well, we cannot think of that now. We have to send out the train. The
engineer that can show a card—any engineer—is the one we want, and
must have.”

He wheeled as though to hurry away on his quest. Cummings tapped him
with a finger on the shoulder.

“Wait, Mr. Hopkins,” he said.

“What is it?” snapped the supervisor.

“You’re going right away from about the only fellow that can help you
out,” Cummings said with some complacency. “Don’t you see this boy
here?” and he clapped a jovial hand upon Ralph’s shoulder.

“Oh, I say!” exclaimed the young train dispatcher. “None of that, Mr.
Cummings. I am not looking for any more trouble.”

But the old station master waved an airy hand. He held Barton Hopkins’
attention.

“I know that Ralph is in good standing with the Brotherhood. He is the
best little engineman there is on the division. If there is a man
to-night can take this train through to Hammerfest anywhere near on
time, it is him. The road is like a book to him——

“Ah! what’s the matter with you, boy?” he added, turning to face the
young fellow. “What are you—a man, or a monkey, I want to know? What
does it matter what people say or think? You are working for the Great
Northern and you’ve got the good of the road at heart. Isn’t that so?”

“You know it!” exclaimed Ralph, half angrily.

“All right. Here is the supervisor. He wants the best man he can get
for the job because _he_ is all for the road’s interest——”

“I do not know that Fairbanks is fit for any such task,” put in Mr.
Hopkins, in his very coldest tone. “I doubt if one so young is fit for
any important and responsible position. At least, I am very sure that
his exhibition of engine driving in the yard here the other evening
does not bear out the ability you claim for him, Cummings.”

“What’s that?” demanded the station master, angrily.

“I have felt it my duty to send in, attached to the report of that
wreck in the yard the other evening, the fact that all rules of the
road were violated by Mr. Fairbanks in trying to handle the switch
engine; and, as well, that in my opinion the wreck would not have
occurred had it not been for Fairbanks’ oversight. He shunted those
heavily loaded gondolas too far into the switch——”

“Nothing of the kind!” exclaimed Ralph, interrupting, in anything but
a respectful tone. “The train crews and yard crews are honeycombed
with treachery, and you daren’t accuse me of such a thing. I won’t
stand for _that_, Mr. Hopkins, and don’t you think it!”

“Hold on! Hold on!” admonished Mr. Adair in his ear.

“Now, this is too much!” cried the young train dispatcher. “I would
not help him out now at any price. Why, unless the G. M. himself told
me to take the throttle on that old mill, I wouldn’t touch it!”

He swung on his heel, panting in his anger, and ran right against a
bulky figure in an ulster, his hat brim drawn down over his eyes.
Ralph recoiled with a surprised grunt. The man grabbed him.

“Hold on!” he said. “I heard you. That train has got to pull out in
two minutes. I order you, Fairbanks, to get up into the cab and make
that engine behave. You’ve made the schedule. Let’s see if you can
make the Midnight Flyer conform to it. How’s that?”

Mr. Adair broke into a hearty laugh. But neither the station master
nor Ralph, and surely not the supervisor of the division, had
previously any idea of the general manager’s presence at the terminal.
He had stood back and listened to all that had been said since the
unfortunate old engineer had been carried out of the station.

“You take this matter entirely out of my hands, sir?” Hopkins asked,
his voice shaking.

“I do,” rejoined the general manager.

“I think you overlook the fact that you are interfering in my
province.”

“No, I don’t overlook it. But you come back to the office with me,
Hopkins, and I believe I can show you where it is for the road’s
interest to send Ralph out with this train. There’s the gong!”

“Send word to my mother!” cried Ralph to Adair, and made a flying leap
for the locomotive steps. The two firemen, who had listened in no
little interest and anxiety to the foregoing conversation, sprang to
their proper positions. They grinned for they both knew Ralph and
liked him.

It was a fact that there was not a locomotive on the division that the
train dispatcher had not tried out at one time or another. As he had
confessed he was, after all, an engineer by instinct. He slid into the
seat so recently occupied by the dead engineer, and his hand closed on
the throttle.

The exhaust coughed through the smokestack. The bell jangled. He let
the steam into the cylinders. The drivers groaned and rolled almost on
the instant of the conductor shouting his second “All aboard!”

As smooth as silk, the train rolled out of the station. Adair and
Cummings waved their hands to the young fellow on whom an important
duty had again devolved. He opened the throttle up wider. The wheels
began to drum over the rail joints in a tune that thrilled his blood.

“Once again on the rails!” he breathed. “This is the life!”




                             CHAPTER XVI

                        THROUGH SHADOW VALLEY


Hoo! Too-hoo-hoo!

The man on the other bench pulled the whistle cord for each crossing
and station, but the huge eight-driver engine and its long tail of
varnished cars sped past the switch targets and the station lights
with no decrease of speed.

The other fireman sprayed the coal into the firebox door, keeping an
even bed of living embers from which the lambent flames sprang like
live tongues. Occasionally Ralph stepped back upon the deck to look
over the fireman’s shoulder into the hot maw of the box.

The two firemen changed places every hour. And Ralph did not wonder at
this. When he had served his time with the shovel and bar it was on no
such mighty machine as this that drew the Midnight Flyer. The mountain
climbers and moguls had been big enough in those days. But this was
even a more powerful locomotive than the oil-burners, of which the
Great Northern owned several.

One man could never have fed the furnace of this engine for four
hours—the length of the run. They had to spell each other. The attempt
to make the schedule across the country from Rockton to Hammerfest was
no small job!

The minute he had got the long train out of the Rockton yard, Ralph
had set his mind to the work of arriving at Hammerfest on time. After
all, a good locomotive engineer pulls his train with his head more
than by any bodily exertion.

Sitting on the bench with the throttle within easy touch, Ralph for
the most part gazed ahead at the rails glimmering under the white
radiance of the headlight. It was true that he knew almost every foot
of this road as a boy knows his own back yard.

Here, he remembered, was a level with a sharp curve at the end. He
took three-quarters of the straight stretch at top speed; then he shut
off the steam and went around the sudden curve so easily that few of
the passengers, unless they were awake, would know anything about it.

For not only does the engineer of a fast and expensive train have to
make time, but he must run the train so well and with such precision
as to make a reputation for the road and the train which will bring
passengers back over the route.

On the mild grades Ralph could use the steam so skillfully that the
speedometer registered the same speed as on the levels. Nor had his
firemen anything to complain of.

“We got to hand it to you, Boss,” said one of the firemen, as Ralph
slowed to a stop at Shadow Valley Station. “You don’t waste the
precious steam. But poor old By was a hog for it, going up a grade.”

This point was a big summer resort place and had several hotels. There
was a junction here, too, with a small line, and a Y. Of course, at
this hour of the night the station was practically empty save for the
station workers and the few people who wished to board the Flyer.

The workers, however, were increased in number by men whom Ralph,
looking out of the cab window, marked as Mr. Adair’s operatives. Each
important station along the entire division was now guarded by
railroad detectives. Ralph hoped he might see his friend, Zeph Dallas.
The latter’s queer telegram had been sent from this station. But he
observed nobody who looked at all like the tall and gawky Zeph.

He got the conductor’s sign and rolled out of the Shadow Valley
Station exactly on the dot of the scheduled time. That alone was an
achievement, although Ralph well knew that the hardest part of the run
was ahead.

“Gee, Boss!” joked one of his crew, “I bet if you’d known you were
going to hold the lever on this old mill you would have given us a
little more time between here and Oxford, eh?”

Ralph laughed good-naturedly. It was true the cook had to drink his
own broth. But when making up the schedule in the Rockton train
dispatcher’s office, the young fellow had been confident that under
ordinary conditions the Midnight Flyer should hit the stopping point
on the nick of time. Provided, of course, west-bound freight kept off
the express train’s time.

Through Shadow Valley there were several places where the going was
hard. Ralph knew this quite well. But he had got the “feel” of the big
eight-wheeler now and he believed that it could show even greater
speed than it had ever recorded.

When they pulled out of the station he did not let the train merely
coast down the first grade. He opened her throttle wide and she began
to rock gently on the perfectly ballasted rails. The firemen began to
exchange glances—they could not exchange speech at this speed—and
realized that poor old Byron Marks had never got such speed out of the
engine.

Ralph, of course, was taking a chance. The grade really called for
brakes; but this was no ordinary situation. He realized that if he was
to make time at all, anywhere within the next fifty miles, it must be
right here.

“Shadow Valley.” Well named by some old pioneer with a poetic slant to
his brain. When the moon shone the black reflections of cliffs and
trees lay across the right of way of the railroad like blankets of
black velvet.

The locomotive headlight cut these shadows like the stroke of a
scimitar. Yard by yard the clear-way was revealed to the engineer as
the train plunged down the slope. He was taking a chance—a big
chance—Ralph knew, in opening the engine up in this way. Especially
now that there had been threats made against the road by the strikers
and their sympathizers.

All those people in the coaches behind him—most of them peacefully
sleeping—stirred the young fellow’s thought. He had pulled a Class-A
passenger train before this night—many times, in fact—and had felt
something of the same oppression of responsibility; but this case
seemed particularly important.

Thick forest hid the bottom of the valley. When he glanced down he
could see the pale moon silvering the tops of the firs and larches.
The express seemed plunging into a vast and bottomless pool of black
water.

He began to pull down for the curve at the bottom of the grade. This
was always a dangerous point. Once, years before, Ralph had seen the
wreck of the head-end of a freight piled up at the foot of this cliff,
which overhung the right-of-way.

Since that time the engineers of the Great Northern had broken off the
granite overhang of the cliff above this spot and had seemingly made a
repetition of that accident impossible.

Yet an enemy of the road might place some obstruction on the track
just below the curve. Until the head of the locomotive was right at
the turn, Ralph could not see what was ahead.

The road should have kept a signalman at this point, day and night.
Never before had the young fellow so understood the weight of
responsibility that rested on the engine driver’s shoulders.

Perhaps it was because he was growing older. Or perhaps the recent sad
happening to old Byron Marks had made a deep impression on Ralph
Fairbanks’ mind. At any rate, he felt that he would never round this
curve again—or any other blind curve on the division—without
experiencing a tremor of fear.

Suddenly a figure leaped into view, silhouetted against the silver
tree tops beyond and behind it, not on the dangerous side of the
rails. It stood upon a high bowlder across the right-hand ditch. A
tall, ghostly figure, the appearance of which made Ralph reach for the
reverse lever with nervously crooked fingers.

Then he realized that it was some person who signalled “All clear”
with arms like those of a semaphore. Somebody then was on watch here
at this dangerous turn.

Ralph applied the brakes carefully, gently. The long train shuddered;
but there was no harsh jouncing of the coaches. The wheels slid around
the turn.

And as the ray of the headlight caught the figure on the bowlder for a
moment, the young railroader knew who it was.

“Zeph!” he ejaculated, under his breath.

The young assistant of Bob Adair had selected the most perilous point
in Shadow Valley to watch. While Zeph was there, Ralph might be pretty
sure that no harm would befall the division trains.

He was carried past the bowlder swiftly. He leaned out to wave his arm
and try to attract the notice of his friend. But the flash of the
headlight’s ray had undoubtedly blinded Zeph for the moment and there
was no answering signal from him. However, as long as Zeph was
faithful at that post Ralph would feel little anxiety in approaching
it.

The young engineer pulled on through the valley at top speed and then
charged the hill to Oxford with four minutes to spare. Perfect running
of a passenger train means keeping at an exact and harmonious speed
for the entire distance between stops. In this case, however, Ralph
knew that if he had not gained something on the schedule before
striking the Oxford hill he never would have made that stop, as he
did, exactly on the schedule moment.

The worst of the run for the Midnight Flyer was then behind him.




                             CHAPTER XVII

                           MORE DISCIPLINE


That run on the Midnight Flyer was a memorable one for Ralph
Fairbanks, not alone because of the importance of the train to the
schedule of the division, but because of the mental strain he was
under all the way.

The general manager’s congratulatory wire that was put into his hand
when he climbed aboard his engine for the return trip from Hammerfest,
of course pleased him; but the young railroader felt that there was
something more due any engineer who pulled that Midnight Flyer and got
it into the western terminal on time, as he had.

Up in those offices overlooking the Rockton yard, Ralph as chief of
the train dispatching crew for the division, had got a little out of
touch with the engineers and firemen. He acknowledged it now.

He had been complaining because many of the hard-working mechanics had
not seemed to do their best in handling the division trains. Back in
the same harness that they wore, Ralph could appreciate their
difficulties again.

“And that’s the matter with Barton Hopkins,” thought the young fellow.
“He isn’t as fit as I am, for instance, to manage these men. He never
was an engineer, or sprayed coal into a firebox. No, sir! He doesn’t
know a thing about this end of railroading, save by theory.

“And mere theory is bound to get a man in wrong. Practise is the
thing! I wonder how Hopkins will come out of this, if the strike
becomes general? Why, the directors and stockholders who praise him so
now will fairly crucify him if things go wrong and he is shown to be
in any way at fault.”

Ralph believed thoroughly that Barton Hopkins was at fault. Every man
he talked to on the run was criticizing Supervisor Hopkins.

“They’re all knocking the super. The anvil chorus on Hopkins’ past,
present, and future seems to be the most popular number on the
division program,” Ralph said to his two firemen.

“Should think you would join in, Fairbanks,” said one of them. “You’ve
got little to thank him for.”

“There is something bigger than Barton Hopkins to consider,” replied
Ralph.

“Sure! The rules of the Brotherhood,” was the quick reply.

“No! The welfare of the road. The Great Northern has supported me for
some years. I mean to support it. When I can’t do so I’ll resign and
get another job. But I won’t bite the hand that has fed me for so
long.”

“You would not strike, then, even if the Brotherhood ordered it?”
asked one of the firemen.

“Only for some very grave reason. Not over such a silly rule as those
shopmen went out on.”

“Oh, they had plenty of other grievances.”

“So have we all. Everybody is sore in these times. It’s in the air.
Fault-finding seems to be a germ-producing disease,” and Ralph
grinned. “But make up your mind,” and he added this earnestly, “I am
not going to be bit by such a microbe as McCarrey. Not any!”

Perhaps his sane and sensible speech on every possible occasion did
something toward keeping the better class of Great Northern employees
steady. But when he got back to Rockton on the return trip he found
the yards almost dead. The morning yard shift had gone out when they
found that the new order of the supervisor’s on the shop board applied
to them as well.

At once, of course, the train dispatching department was balled up
with late freights. But as it stood, Ralph had no part of that worry
on his mind. Mr. Glidden had sent one of his best men from main
headquarters to sit at Ralph’s desk, and the latter started home
through the bustling streets, weary but satisfied. He hoped to put in
a long sleep before being called for the midnight run again.

Was it by chance, or with voluntary intention, that the young
railroader went through the block on which Cherry Hopkins lived? He
did not always walk home that way. But it was true some thought of the
pretty girl was almost always in his mind at this time.

He had passed the Hopkins house without looking at it and was several
yards beyond when he heard a door slam and a clear voice called to
him:

“Ralph Fairbanks! Ralph Fairbanks!”

Ralph wheeled to see the girl, her bobbed hair flying, running down
the path and out of the gate. But he saw something else, too. Coming
along the sidewalk and increasing his stride as he saw and heard his
daughter, was Mr. Barton Hopkins. His countenance displayed all the
dislike and disapproval of Ralph that the latter knew the supervisor
felt.

“Oh, Ralph!” cried the unconscious Cherry. “I want to speak to you.”

Ralph walked back to meet her. He did not intend to run from Barton
Hopkins. But he foresaw trouble for the pretty and impulsive girl.

“Oh, Ralph Fairbanks! I have heard what you did last night. It was
fine of you—taking out the Flyer when the poor old engineer dropped
dead. What a terrible thing that was!”

“You are right. It is a sorry thing for By’s family. I understand he
did not leave them well fixed.”

“Won’t the Brotherhood——”

“It will do all that is possible. But there is no real pension for an
engineer’s family. He only carried accident insurance. There must have
always been something the matter with his heart that kept him from
getting regular insurance. And he hid it.”

“And was a criminal, thereby,” said the harsh voice of Supervisor
Hopkins behind his daughter. “Suppose that had happened—his death—when
he was driving his engine on the road? Somebody was at fault there,
and I mean to find out who. The old man should have been retired long
ago.”

“Oh, father! If he needed the work——”

“What do you know about that?” Mr. Hopkins said coldly. “Don’t believe
everything you hear, Cherry.”

“But Mr. Fairbanks says——”

“Least of all what this young man says. And now, once for all, I tell
you to drop this intimacy with Fairbanks,” he continued, starting with
his daughter toward the gate to the grounds. “I don’t care to have you
associate with him. Understand?”

“Oh, father!” cried Cherry, almost in tears. “Ralph has been kind to
me. I am sure he has done you no harm,” Ralph overheard her reply.

“Neither of your statements enters into the consideration at all. I
object to your associating with this fellow.”

“Why, father!”

“You have heard what I have said,” said Barton Hopkins bitterly.
“Fairbanks would better keep away from here. As for you, Cherry, I can
make you obey me. Let him alone. Don’t speak to him again.”

The girl’s head went up and she stared at her father proudly. Ralph
had previously decided that she did not take much after her mouse-like
mother. In some ways she had all the assertiveness of the supervisor
himself.

“I will obey you in every way possible, father,” she said softly but
firmly. “But I cannot pass Ralph on the street as though I did not
know him. He is my friend. He has been kind to me. I could not treat
him as you want me to.”

“Then, young lady, I’ll send you away where you will not be likely to
cross his path. You are getting too bold and stubborn, anyway. Go in
and pack your trunk. I’ll see your mother. You shall start this very
day for your aunt’s at Selby Junction. Go into the house!”

He hustled her up the path toward the house as though she were a small
child who had disobeyed him. Cherry was crying. As for Ralph, he had
never before so wanted to hit a man and refrained from doing it!

“Discipline,” he growled, as he moved away. “That is what he calls it.
He runs his household and his family just as he tries to run the
division.

“Well, sir, unless I much miss my guess, he is going to fall down, and
fall down badly, on both propositions. But poor Cherry! Wish I hadn’t
walked this way. I got her in bad. And now he’ll send her away and
I’ll probably never see her again,” he finished, with a sigh.




                            CHAPTER XVIII

                          FROM BAD TO WORSE


Ralph refrained from telling his mother anything about this recent
occurrence. He knew she would feel hurt because of what Barton Hopkins
had said. She was much more likely to resent a slight put upon her son
than Ralph was himself.

And, in any event, there was so much else to tell the widow regarding
the happenings of the last eighteen hours that he himself quite forgot
the sting that he had first felt because of Mr. Hopkins’ unfair speech
and ungentlemanly conduct.

But later the fact that Cherry Hopkins was to be sent away from
Rockton to get her out of Ralph’s way was a matter that returned again
and again to the young fellow’s mind. It seemed unfair, not alone to
him, but to the girl herself.

And he fancied Mrs. Hopkins would be much disturbed by her husband’s
decision. Ralph was really sorry to be the cause of friction in the
supervisor’s family.

“Why, if he had spoken decently—asked me like a man! He knew I could
hear all he said—meant I should—I would have promised not to speak to
Cherry or approach her in any way. Of course I would! What does he
think I am?”

The thought of this troubled him for several days in spite of all the
other matters of serious portent which weighed upon his spirits.

For things on the division were going rapidly from bad to worse. With
the shops practically closed, for as yet the Great Northern had not
tried to bring in strike-breakers, the rolling stock of the division
fast became crippled. There were breakdowns innumerable. Some of the
freight engines were soon ready for the scrap heap. And it made a
regular schedule, for freight at least, all but impossible.

The influence of other officials—not that of Barton Hopkins—kept the
older maintenance of way men faithful. Most of the section hands
stayed on the job. In fact the bulk of the trouble lay in the shops
and yards at Rockton.

There Andy McCarrey’s influence was most felt. He had some political
backing, too. And the dislike for Supervisor Hopkins was more
pronounced at this terminal than at the other, or along the line.

Meanwhile Ralph had continued as engineman of the Midnight Flyer and
the eastbound express from Hammerfest. That his mother was far from
reconciled to this change in his work, he well knew. But she was as
loyal in her way to the best interests of the Great Northern as the
young fellow himself.

“If the general manager asked you to do it, Ralph, of course you could
not refuse,” said Mrs. Fairbanks. “But I shall never be satisfied
until you are back in the train dispatcher’s office. I hope for your
advancement to more important positions than that of locomotive
engineer.”

“Plenty of time for that,” said her son cheerfully. “And I know the G.
M. will not forget me. It is only for a short time, we shall hope.
This strike will not last forever.”

But he did not tell her of the many delays and actually perilous
chances of his situation. He had been accosted on the street and
threatened by some of the strikers. The men who had broken away from
their unions as well as from the employing railroad were desperately
determined to stop every wheel on the division.

It was Andy McCarrey’s boast that he would have the Great Northern on
its knees in a month. It seemed that he had a large strike fund at his
command. And Ralph suspected that the fellow likewise had under his
control a band of rascals who would go to any length to cripple the
railroad.

Gangs of ill-favored fellows were hanging about the yards. He heard of
such men, too, all along the division. Tool sheds were broken into;
the gangs’ handcars were crippled; fires were set on railroad
property; numberless small crimes were committed which could not be
traced to the strikers themselves, but were undoubtedly committed at
Andy McCarrey’s behest.

“If we could just get one thing hitched to that slick rascal, we would
put him where the dogs wouldn’t get a chance to bite him for some
time,” Bob Adair said once to Ralph. “But McCarrey is as sharp as a
needle. By the way, how much of that old tenement house did you see
the night you and Zeph found him and Grif Falk over there?”

“Very little of it. It appeared to be practically empty. And I am sure
there were no families living in it,” Ralph replied.

“You are right in that,” said the detective. “It is an old condemned
tenement. But somehow McCarrey has got a lease of it. Nobody seems to
know what goes on in there. And there is no good reason, as far as the
police can find, for searching the premises.

“If I could just make sure the supply of liquor some of the men are
getting is stored there, it would give us an opening. But if we do
anything that can be proved illegal, McCarrey will have a case against
us. He has some of the sharpest lawyers in the city in his pay.”

“Did you find Whitey Malone?” asked the engineer of the Midnight Flyer
reflectively.

“No. Zeph has lost trace of him. But I believe the fellow is still
away from Rockton. I fancy McCarrey was afraid to trust him here. Or
he has been sent along the road on some errand that has not yet come
to a head. That boy, Zeph, is like a beagle on a trail, however. I
hope he will mark down his man before long.”

Ralph’s own eyes were always open for the appearance of Whitey. By
night, of course, while he sat on the bench of the big locomotive that
drew the Midnight Flyer, he could not hope to see much on either side
of the twin rails over which his train sped. But coming back by
daylight he saw a good deal more.

The eastbound express made several stops besides those four which the
Flyer made. And it was during those brief stops that Ralph picked up
most of the news he got regarding the feeling of the road’s employees
along the division.

At Hardwell, a considerable lumbering town some miles east of Oxford
and on the slope of Shadow Valley, Ralph first heard of the “bandit.”
He saw on the platform a man with his head bandaged surrounded by a
little group of interested natives. The engineer identified the
evidently wounded man as the third trick operator and signalman at
this station.

He could not leave his engine, of course, but the operator knew Ralph
and came down the platform to speak to him.

“I got a nasty smash on the head this morning,” he explained. “I don’t
know who the rascal was, but he got a hundred and forty dollars of the
road’s money and my watch and stickpin.”

“How came you to let him do that, Fiske?” Ralph asked, but with some
sympathy.

“I was setting the signals for your own train, Fairbanks, the Midnight
Flyer. I didn’t hear the fellow come in, but just as I turned from the
levers I found him there behind me. Sure I had a gun! But it was in
the desk drawer. We haven’t had a hold-up around here for years. He
hit me on the head with the butt of his gun and I went down and out.
When I came to he had lit out with my junk and the company’s money.”

“That is too bad,” said Ralph, as he caught sight of the conductor’s
raised arm. “What kind of looking fellow was he?”

“Don’t know. He had a flour bag over his head. Tall, husky fellow.
That is all I know about it. The super is giving me rats over the
wire.”

“He would,” called out Ralph, as he let the steam into the cylinders
and the train began to move.

“Now, I wonder,” thought the young engineer, “if Whitey Malone had
anything to do with that. Or is the bandit a free-lance with no
connection with these strikers? Humph! Where is Zeph, I wonder?”

When Zeph next appeared it was in an astonishing way. Neither Ralph
nor his queer friend was likely to forget the occasion.




                             CHAPTER XIX

                     THE HOLD-UP IN SHADOW VALLEY


As the days slowly passed Ralph Fairbanks became very curious on one
particular point. And this was something quite aside from his
activities on the road or the strike developments.

He wondered if Cherry Hopkins had been sent away from home as her
father had threatened.

The young fellow never went through the street where Mr. Hopkins lived
on his way to and from his home. He would not appear to be curious
regarding the girl. He did not want to attract her father’s attention
and create more trouble for Cherry, if the latter was still in
Rockton.

He thought highly of the young girl. As his mother had intimated, he
had never paid much attention to any particular girl before.

“How is your friend, Cherry Hopkins?” the widow sometimes asked him.

“Got too much to do now to think of girls,” he would return, with a
laugh.

But perhaps neither his tone nor his laugh quite convinced Mrs.
Fairbanks that all was right. She asked shrewdly on one occasion:

“Have you seen Miss Cherry lately?”

“Not for a week. I believe she expected to go away. I don’t know
whether she has or has not gone.”

“Would you like to know, Ralph?” asked his mother softly.

At that the young fellow awoke to the discovery that his mother was
looking at him queerly.

“Why, Mother!” he exclaimed, “you don’t suppose I care particularly
about any of the Hopkins family?”

“I think you do about Cherry,” she returned. “And from what I have
heard about her, she is well worth your caring for—in a friendly way,
I mean.”

“My goodness! What is all this?” asked the wondering Ralph.

His mother smiled and shook her head at him.

“You must not think that you can hide anything from me,” she said.
“There is a little bird comes and tells me——”

“Hoh!” cried Ralph, interrupting. “There are a lot of those ‘little
birds.’ And I bet they all belong to the St. Mark’s Sewing Guild. Yes,
sir! What has Gossip’s tongue been saying now?”

“Gossip can be kind as well as cruel. After all, Ralph, gossip is the
most interesting thing in the world. Newspapers and magazines and
books are full of it. Just gossip. And what I heard about you was
anything but unkind, although it did not sound good for Mr. Hopkins.”

His mother went on to relate what she had heard from an eyewitness of
the occurrence when the supervisor had forbidden his daughter to speak
to Ralph, and then had promised to send her away from home because of
her defiance.

“She is a girl who would make any boy a faithful friend. I admire her
very much, although I have never seen her,” Mrs. Fairbanks said. “And
I wonder at that man, Mr. Hopkins, Ralph, for picking on you the way
he does. I cannot understand it.”

“Unfortunately,” her son told her, “I have unintentionally occasioned
Mr. Hopkins some ruffling of the temper. And, believe me, his temper
is easy to ruffle. Well, I am sorry if Cherry was sent away because of
me. It’s so foolish.”

“Yes, I am told she has gone,” said his mother. “To Shelby Junction.
Of course, you never go as far away from Rockton as that?”

“Not likely,” replied Ralph, laughing to hide a good bit of his
disappointment. “Nobody but the strikers is taking a vacation on this
division of the Great Northern.”

The number of strikers increased daily. News came from points all
along the division that little bunches of workmen in various
departments had thrown down their tools and joined the strikers.
Hopkins was strongly in favor of hiring men in the East and bringing
them out to take the strikers’ places, especially in the shops. And
perhaps he was right in this desire, for the locomotives and other
rolling stock were fast becoming decrepit.

Ralph, like most of the old-timers driving the engines, saw to it that
his toolbox was well fitted and he carried spare valves and cocks and
such small articles against chance trouble. It was not against the
rules for a locomotive engineer to tinker with his huge charge if it
broke down anywhere on the run.

When they came back to Rockton each day, however, Ralph and his two
firemen went over the mechanism of the big eight-wheeler with
meticulous care. The firemen took example of their chief and watched
for small faults and possible breakdowns, like two cats at a
mousehole.

Whenever the Midnight Flyer or the return eastbound express halted,
down jumped the firemen with their long nosed oilcans and squirted the
lubricant into every nook and cranny they could get at. The roundhouse
foreman sputtered like a wet firecracker about Ralph’s demands on him
for oil.

“Better be oil than brasswork and steel,” said the young engineer.
“Don’t forget that, Mike.”

“I don’t forget nothin’,” grumbled Mike. “But the super is watchin’
the out-put of lubricatin’ oil. He has an idee we feed it to the cats
and grease the turntables with it. He sees a chance of savin’ the
Great Northern two cents’ worth of oil in the course of a year. Huh!”

“Well, I am not going to buy the oil myself,” Ralph rejoined, with
conviction. “And we don’t carry a greaser’s slushpot on the Midnight
Flyer.”

“Sure, are the wheelboxes heatin’ on you?” asked the foreman.

“I think they need repacking. But, of course, there isn’t time between
runs to do all that. Is there another locomotive I could use to pull
the Flyer with?”

“You know there isn’t. Not a bull in the stable, anyway, could make
the time you are getting out of that mill. Two-o-two would be an hour
late at Hammerfest.”

“Don’t tell me that!” gasped Ralph. “I am having a hard enough time as
it is. Guess I’ll have to coax this one along until they can send you
a Class-A locomotive over from the main.”

“And when will that be, I dunno,” muttered the pessimistic foreman.

So Ralph was pulling out of the Rockton terminal every night with a
sort of sick feeling at the pit of his stomach. He said nothing to
anybody about this nervous apprehension—not even to his mother. It
seemed unmanly, he thought. He never knew before that he was a coward!

That is what he called it, cowardice. But it was not. It was the
effect of increased responsibility on his mind. The threat of some
terrible accident to the train he pulled was always hanging over him.

Strikers and their sympathizers now gathered about the crossings at
midnight when the Flyer pulled out and booed and threatened the train
crew. It was spread broadcast in the labor journals that something was
likely to happen to the crippled engines pulling the division trains.

Passengers were warned by big posters to refrain from traveling by
this division of the Great Northern in particular, because the strike
of shopmen and maintenance of way men made it impossible for the
trains to be run safely and on time.

But Barton Hopkins was by no means a fool. He gave an interview to the
reporters of the fair-minded journals in which he showed by schedule
that the passenger trains, at least, over the division, were
ordinarily on time. He even took advantage of Ralph Fairbanks’
governing the engine pulling the Midnight Flyer to prove that that
important train had kept closer to the schedule since the beginning of
the strike than ever before.

This statement to the press angered the strikers more than anything
that Hopkins had done. Its truth hurt their cause. When Ralph pulled
the Flyer out of the yards that night, at Hammerby Street the cab was
assailed with stones and rotten vegetables from a gang of hoodlums, of
course egged on my McCarrey.

“Scab! Scab!” these fellows yelled as the broken glass tinkled about
the ears of the engineer and his two firemen.

“Jim Perkins ought to be big enough to stop that,” urged one of the
firemen. “They say he still holds his job in the old union but has
spoken at the meetings in Beeman Hall.”

“There is a bunch of fellows helping him stir up trouble, too,”
observed his mate. “Billy Lyons and Sam Peters and some others. But
they all keep their cards in the old union. Something rotten—something
rotten, boy, believe me!”

This suspicion that the small unions were playing an underhanded
game—or that officers of those unions were doing so—kept many of the
wiser employees of the Great Northern in line.

Ralph secretly told himself that that fusillade of rotten vegetables
and stones aimed at his firemen and himself in the cabin of the big
locomotive that pulled the Midnight Flyer cured both of the firemen of
any suspicion of sympathy with the men who had struck and their
supporters.

But, after all, Ralph would have felt safer if there had been guards
riding on the train and on the locomotive, as there had been in war
times when he helped get the soldiers through to the embarkation port.
Mr. Adair, however, did not believe in a show of force. He had men in
plain clothes unobtrusively distributed along the division; but they
could not be discovered from the passengers save by those who had
inside information.

Coming down the hill beyond Shadow Valley Station on this very morning
that the Midnight Flyer engine crew had been bombarded, Ralph chanced
to be thinking of Zeph. It was a black hour; there was not a star
visible. The locomotive was steaming well. She was going so fast, in
fact, that if there had been any obstruction on the straight track it
is doubtful if the headlight would have picked it out in time for
Ralph to have stopped the heavy train.

But he had to take that chance to make the schedule. He knew the track
walkers of this section were all true and tried men. Under ordinary
circumstances and conditions, the inspection of this piece of track
had been made within half an hour.

Ralph sat with his hand on the throttle. He could shut off, without
reversing, and set the brakes with two swift motions in five seconds.
The brakes were really dragging a bit on the wheels, for the curve was
near and he must ease the engine around that.

No startling figure appeared this night on the bowlder beside the
right of way. Ralph needed no heart-stimulant, his pulse throbbed just
a little rapidly. He almost held his breath as he shut down the
throttle and the headlight flashed off the rails as the heavy engine
approached the turn.

This was the dangerous spot. For several moments the light did not
reveal the ribbons of steel very far ahead. Behind that turn wreck and
disaster might lie!

And yet, the young engineer dared not creep around it. To lose time on
this important run meant much to the Great Northern. He must keep on——

The head of the locomotive swerved and the light caught the two rails
again at a distance. The great white ray of the lamp shot into the
tunnel of blackness under the trees.

And then, as one of the watching firemen sang out from the other side
of the cab, Ralph grabbed the reverse lever and threw it down in the
corner. He could not stop for easing her off. He slapped on the
brakes. Fire flashed from the coach wheels and a grinding and bumping
told of the damage being done because of this vicious stop.

The occasion called for such drastic measures, however. The Midnight
Flyer was held up. What it meant, Ralph did not know, but in the
middle of the westbound track stood a man’s figure outlined by fire!

Had he not pulled down the heavy train as he had, the locomotive would
have collided with the flaming object.




                              CHAPTER XX

                           STRANGE SIGNALS


The pilot of the great engine was within six feet of the flaming
figure when the train was stopped. And Ralph knew, and unhappily, that
several of the coach wheels were so badly flattened by the pressure of
the brakes that they would have to go to the shops to be replaned.

This thought was back in his head, however. First and foremost he
wanted to know what this was ahead—this strange signal that had caused
him to bring the Flyer to such an abrupt stop.

One of the firemen leaped to the cinder path and ran ahead. In a
moment he turned and waved his arms madly.

“It’s a scarecrow! I believe it came out of yonder cornfield. A
scarecrow all afire!”

He kicked the blazing figure and it fell over, the straw contents of
the old coat and trousers flaring up into a more vivid flame.

“Somebody has played a joke on us,” shouted the other fireman. “And a
pretty poor joke, at that.”

“Maybe it is no joke,” was Ralph’s comment. “Stilling, you go forward
with a lantern. If all’s clear at the next curve give us a high-ball.
There may be something more than a joke in this mysterious affair.
Hurry up, now!”

Stilling ran ahead. The conductor came forward, worried about the
delay. The violent stopping of the train had awakened many of the
passengers and the Pullmans, he said, were buzzing.

“Let ’em buzz,” replied Ralph carelessly.

Stilling’s lantern flitted on like a firefly’s light. Ralph’s gaze was
fixed upon it. He hoped to see the sign given by the lamp that the way
was clear.

But when Stilling reached the long curve that began nearly an eighth
of a mile beyond the point where the Flyer had been brought to a stop,
he halted—they could see that by the motion of the lantern—and then
went on slowly. By and by he signaled:

“Come ahead—slow.”

There was something wrong. The conductor knew this as well as the
young engineer. The former’s lantern signaled a question back to his
flagman. The latter brought in his lantern from the other curve,
signaled “All aboard!” and Ralph started forward.

There was just slant enough to the roadbed here to make it necessary
for the engineer to keep some pressure of brakes on the wheels. The
heavy train slid down to the place where Stilling had stopped.

When the train again came to a halt the headlight did not show the
rails for more than ten yards. But it picked out the beginning of a
short trestle by which the rails were carried over a deep ravine.

Stilling walked back beside the huge boiler of the locomotive and
spoke no word until he was directly under Ralph’s window. He was pale.
His lips writhed before he could speak, and what he said was in a
voice so husky that the listeners could scarcely understand him.

“One pillar’s been blown out—blown to pieces. The rails are
sagging—have to be braced before anything can get over. Great guns! if
we’d come down here at the usual speed, the old mill and every wagon
in the string would have been piled in a heap down there in the
Devil’s Den!”

“By gum!” exclaimed the other fireman. “I thought I got some sound
like an explosion as we came down the hill. The dynamite must have
gone off only a few minutes ago.”

“That burning scarecrow saved all our lives,” muttered Ralph. “_Who
did that?_”

“If there are ghouls around trying to wreck the train, and there are,
then there are likewise watchers who defended us from harm. We have
somebody to thank,” said the conductor.

There was no more comment on this mysterious thing by the train and
engine crew for some time thereafter. There was too much else to do.
Somebody had to go forward to the nearest station and telegraph for
wrecking crew and other help.

A terrible disaster had barely been averted. The passengers aboard the
Midnight Flyer on this occasion would not be likely soon to forget the
incident. Stilling had not overstated the horror that had been
averted.

The wires certainly buzzed now, up and down the division. The express
was delayed fully two hours, although the wrecking train was brought
down from Oxford in record time. The freights began to pile up on both
tracks. If this dastardly attempt to wreck the Midnight Flyer was the
act of the strikers, they had come near to doing what Andy McCarrey
threatened. The division might have been tied up for a couple of days
if Ralph’s train had plunged into the Devil’s Den.

Some of the crew looked into the matter of the burning scarecrow that
had so luckily warned the engine crew of trouble ahead. The
straw-stuffed figure had been taken from a small field of corn
bordering the right of way. The owner of the field lived at some
distance, but he came over to see what had happened.

“I was woke up by that big explosion,” he declared. “I thought it was
a blast in the quarry. Quarry is ten miles away, though. And then I
began to wonder why they were blasting at night. So I got up and
looked out, and saw the lights of the train and knew something had
happened, because it was standing still. So I came over.”

As it chanced, Ralph heard him and he asked the farmer:

“Have you seen any suspicious persons around here lately?”

“Don’t know as I did. There’s been a young feller come to my place off
and on for a week or more. But he ain’t what you’d call suspicious. He
bought eggs and potatoes and such, and paid for ’em with good money.
He didn’t look bad enough to want to ditch a train. No, sir.”

There were too many people around for Ralph to describe Zeph Dallas to
this man and try to find out if the fellow he spoke of was his friend.
Yet he could not help believing that Zeph was still in this vicinity
and that he had taken the desperate chance of stopping the Midnight
Flyer with the burning scarecrow. Yet, if this was so, why had Zeph
not remained to see if his strange signal set against the train had
done its work of warning?

“Odd enough,” thought Ralph. “Odd enough to have emanated from Zeph’s
brain, that is sure. But where did Zeph go, if so, and why?”

In any event, Zeph did not show up at the place before the trestle was
braced and the express moved on. Ralph got his belated train to
Hammerfest, the end of the run, two hours late. He had to start back
almost immediately with the forenoon express that was supposed to
reach Rockton at half past eleven.

When this train reached the scene of the early morning excitement
Ralph had to ease her along very slowly. The first repairs on the
trestle were by no means permanent.

By daylight he could see, from the cab window, the entire scene of
what had come so near being an awful catastrophe. On the south side of
the right of way at this point was a towering crag. It was covered by
scrub growth that masked the rocks, but the young engineer had once
climbed that rock and knew that there was more than one path to the
top.

As he looked upward he saw, caught upon a bush some yards above the
level of the railroad, a garment fluttering in the breeze. He was
positive, after a moment, that it was a vest—a discarded vest.

“Some hobo has left part of his outfit,” thought Ralph.

But then, as he raised his eyes higher, he saw another strange signal
fluttering from a bush. It was a shirt. He could see the sleeves of
it, and it fluttered grotesquely.

“Why?” the young engineer muttered.

He looked farther up the steep wall and saw a cap! Something about
that cap astonished him even more than the other fluttering articles
of wearing apparel. Distant as it was, Ralph thought he recognized
that cap. It was of a mustard color, an odd color, and he remembered
that the night he had had his last adventure with Zeph Dallas in
Rockton Zeph had worn just that sort of cap!

Then he got the signal to go ahead, and could do nothing at the moment
to investigate these matters. He pulled up the hill toward Shadow
Valley Station.




                             CHAPTER XXI

                             ABOUT CHERRY


The first thing Ralph did on his arrival at Rockton after that
momentous round trip to and from Hammerfest, was to look up Bob Adair.
He knew where to find the chief detective now; or, at least, who to
ask about him without disturbing Supervisor Hopkins.

He reached the detective at last. Of course Mr. Adair had heard all
about the dynamiting of the trestle pillar at Devil’s Den. He had sent
a man to make a special report on the terrible affair. But he had not
heard from Dallas and he was worried.

“The boy’s in trouble. That is what is the matter. What you tell me,
Ralph, bears out my suspicion.”

“I bet he set up that scarecrow and fired it to stop the Flyer,” the
engineer of that fast train observed.

“Granted. He must have been watching in that vicinity. But the trestle
wreckers were too smart for him. The charge was exploded and the
trestle wrecked. He had not time to go to the nearest telegraph
station, so he set the fire instead. But what became of him then?”

“I fear something bad has happened to him,” was the answer.

“Great Scott! something is always happening to Zeph,” observed Mr.
Adair.

“I know. But it must have been something serious for him to discard
his cap and vest and even his outer shirt. For I believe all those
things hung on the bushes up there on the crag belonged to Zeph.”

“Perhaps he hung them there before the pillar was blown out.”

“But what for? I don’t get it at all,” cried Ralph. “Queer as Zeph is,
he isn’t crazy. Not at all! He had a reason for making signals to
somebody, and that shirt et cetera are signals.”

“See to-morrow when you go by if they are still there,” suggested Mr.
Adair. “Meanwhile I will have my men beat the bushes for him around
there. I will have that farmer you speak of interviewed.”

“But if anything bad has really happened to Zeph, it will be too
late,” sighed Ralph as he turned away and started homeward.

He could not take Mr. Adair’s easy view of the mystery. Ralph had a
fondness for Zeph. He could not forget the many times the odd fellow
had helped him or been associated with him in dangerous adventure.

And now, it seemed to Ralph, Zeph Dallas must himself need help or he
would not have shed his garments on the side of that crag overhanging
the Devil’s Den. Ralph greatly desired to look into the matter.

Yet, he could not do that. The general manager had put him on his
honor when he gave him the Midnight Flyer run. Ralph could not desert
that duty even to aid a friend.

He heard about another person in trouble when he arrived at home. His
mother was full of it.

“Did you hear that Mrs. Hopkins was very ill, Ralph?” the widow asked,
almost at once when he entered the cottage.

“I’d be ill if I were that man’s relative,” grumbled the young
engineer. “What is the matter with her?”

“It seems to be a long-standing trouble the doctor has been treating
her for, and now she must go under an operation. Actually, they say
she is wearing her heart out because Cherry is away from her and at
Shelby Junction. She has never been separated from her before so she
tells Mrs. Wagner. That man is awful!”

“He is getting worse around the yards,” said Ralph. “I just heard he
accuses one of the section foremen of letting the strikers steal
dynamite so that they could blow up that trestle.”

Mrs. Fairbanks had heard of that; but she had no idea her son’s life
had been in danger. And Ralph was not telling her too much. He was
glad she switched to Mrs. Hopkins’ illness again.

“If Cherry is not allowed to come home, I fear her mother will never
come through the operation alive,” said the widow. “Mrs. Wagner says
the doctor declares Hopkins the hardest man to move from a decision he
ever knew. He calls it ‘mental delinquency’ on the supervisor’s part.
He says,” and Mrs. Fairbanks smiled, “if Hopkins had been spanked at
the right time when he was a boy, and spanked enough, he would not
have got the ‘self-importance complex’ and become such a nuisance to
his fellowmen.”

“That medico knows his business!” laughed Ralph. “Ain’t it the truth?
as Zeph would say. And that reminds me, Mother. I fear Zeph is in some
trouble down the line. Mr. Adair does not know what has become of
him.”

“That boy is always getting into some difficulty,” said the widow. “I
would not worry about him, if I were you, Ralph.”

That day passed without any particular outbreak by the strikers in
Rockton. The police and railroad detectives had the situation pretty
well in hand about the terminal and the city yards.

Mr. Hopkins had taken the bit in his teeth regarding the attempted
wrecking of the Midnight Flyer in Shadow Valley. One of the section
foremen near the trestle had obtained some dynamite for a specific
purpose, and the supervisor had jumped to the conclusion that this
foreman had given up the explosive to the strikers.

This unproved assertion provoked more trouble on the entire length of
the division. The section foreman had complained to his union. The
full quantity of dynamite was promptly found in his possession, and
inside of ten hours the union officials had demanded that Mr. Hopkins
retract his accusation.

“Now, why don’t they ask a hungry bulldog to give up a bone?” Ralph
observed, when he read this in the evening paper before leaving home
for his night run to Hammerfest. “Those fellows are as bad as the
super himself. He never handles anybody with gloves; but you can’t
handle him without having your own hands muffled. And those union
leaders ought to know it.”

Ralph kissed his mother warmly at the door and started off for the
station, swinging his heavy lunch can. Mrs. Fairbanks never overlooked
the fact that a railroader is always hungry. And Ralph hated
restaurant food. He carried enough for a bite on the engine as well as
a hearty breakfast at the far end of his run.

He did not go down to the roundhouse himself, but trusted to his
firemen to back the locomotive on to the westbound track and into the
train-shed. As he stood in his overalls and with his coat and lunch
kit near the open window of the telegraph room, he heard Mr. Barton
Hopkins’ voice inside.

“Anything on, Silsby?” asked the supervisor, in his sharp, quick way.

“No, Mr. Hopkins,” returned the night operative.

“Rush this, then,” ordered the supervisor and then Ralph heard his
quick step going out of the room.

The operative, Silsby, turned immediately to his key. Ralph heard him
call Shelby Junction and repeat the call until he got an answer. Then
he sent the following, Ralph reading the Morse easily as Silsby tapped
it out:

             Miss C. Hopkins,
               “22 Horatio Street,
                 “Shelby Junction.
             “Your mother ill. Old trouble, but serious.
             Come home at once.
             “(Signed) B. Hopkins.”

There was the repeat back from the Shelby Junction operator, and then
Silsby gave the “O. K.” and closed his key. Ralph, waiting for the
backing in of the big eight-wheeler for Number 202, wondered if Mr.
Hopkins was, after all, as case-hardened and hard-crusted as he
appeared to be.

The supervisor was having domestic trouble. Perhaps he loved his
mouse-like little wife, and his daughter, as well. These family
troubles might be one present cause of the supervisor’s caustic
remarks and his uncompromising attitude in railroad affairs.

“I was telling the G. M. the officials did not look at things from the
men’s standpoint,” considered Ralph. “Perhaps the men ought to see
things from the supervisor’s standpoint, too.”




                             CHAPTER XXII

                          THE THREAT DIRECT


Had Ralph Fairbanks not been standing just outside the telegraph
office window he would not have obtained a certain bit of information
which proved, later, to be most important.

He had heard the operator send Mr. Hopkins’ wire to his daughter, and
he knew very well that the girl would quickly respond to his and her
mother’s need. But Ralph was not at all expecting such a seemingly
prompt response as followed.

The big illuminated clock in the train shed now pointed to a quarter
to twelve. The long string of cars belonging to the Midnight Flyer had
been backed in some time before and the gates had been opened for the
passengers to swarm aboard. The berths were all made up, of course,
and the passengers immediately went to bed.

The young engineer, standing there idly, had his mind fixed upon the
Hopkins’ troubles. How shocked Cherry would be to learn of her
mother’s serious condition! It was true, as Ralph’s mother had said,
never before had her son thought so much of any girl as he did of
Cherry Hopkins.

Suddenly he heard the Rockton call on the telegraph sounder. It was
rapped out a dozen times before Silsby, the operator, got to the key.

“I, I, Rok,” was the notification Silsby gave impatiently.

“Night letter for Super Hop. Overlooked. Shoot it,” came the reply, as
plain to Ralph’s ear as it was to Silsby’s.

“Oh, boy!” retorted the Rockton operator. “You’re all set for trouble.
I’ll try to smooth it. Go!”

Instantly the sounder began to click again and the Morse flowed
smoothly to the listening engineer’s ears:

    “B. Hop., Super,
    “Rockton.
       “Got mother’s letter. Know she is ill.
    Am starting to-night on 10:40. Con. will
    pass me on your book. Tell mother I am
    coming.
                       “(Signed) C. Hopkins.”

It was odd, but the first thought Ralph Fairbanks had on overhearing
this delayed message of Cherry Hopkins to her father was that the
Midnight Flyer would pass the 10:40 from Shelby Junction in Shadow
Valley not far from the Devil’s Den.

This message that had been delayed by some oversight should have
reached the supervisor before he telegraphed to his daughter to come
home. Cherry had evidently read between the lines of her mother’s
letter and determined to rejoin Mrs. Hopkins, whether her father
approved or not.

“Plucky girl!” thought Ralph. “She’s one person who doesn’t cower
before the Great-I-Am. And she is already on the iron, coming home, as
she thinks, without her father’s approval. Well, I guess the Hopkins
will have to fight their family battles without any aid from me.”

Ralph started for the edge of the platform, for he saw the rear of the
locomotive backing in. Stilling held the throttle. This fireman would
soon apply for an engineer’s job. He handled the huge machine like a
veteran, and when the coupling was made the passengers already in
their berths aboard the train scarcely knew it, save for the long sigh
of the compressed air.

Ralph stepped aboard while the firemen made the connections. As usual
he put his can under the seat on the driver’s side. As he stooped to
do this, he saw something white fluttering in the draught.

It was a folded paper hung upon a nail under the seat. He could not
have missed seeing it when he set the luncheon kit down on the floor.
He picked up the paper and stood up. He unfolded it in the light of
his target lamp. Written boldly across the sheet were these words:

    “Fairbanks:—You’re due for a bump to-night. If you like
    yourself, stay off the Midnight Flyer.”

This threatening screed was unsigned. And yet, as Ralph stared at it,
he somehow felt that he had seen the careless writing before.

Who was this who seemed to be warning him, as well as threatening him?
Was it a fake, or in earnest? Were the strikers or their friends
trying to frighten him? Or did somebody who really felt kindly toward
the young engineer believe that he should be warned of a real danger?

And where had he seen that handwriting before?

This last question seemed as important as the others. After the
blowing out of the trestle pillar at the Devil’s Den, Ralph could
easily believe that Andy McCarrey’s crowd would attempt other wicked
designs against the peace and safety of the road and its loyal
employees.

That the malcontents were making a grave mistake was undoubtedly a
fact. The outrage at Devil’s Den and further attempts to wreck trains
on the division would arouse the antagonism of the Brotherhoods
instead of bringing their membership into line, as McCarrey had hoped.
Such attempts threatened the lives of the train crews. Engineers and
firemen and conductors and brakemen could not be frightened into
aiding McCarrey in his wildcat strike. That went without saying.

Ralph had very little time to decide what he should do about this
paper that he had found under his bench. He glanced up at the clock.
Three minutes of midnight!

But as his gaze fell to the platform again he saw the tall figure of
Mr. Adair hurrying along beside the train. Ralph leaned farther out of
the window and beckoned him.

“What do you want, Ralph?” asked the chief detective hastily, as he
leaped up the steps of the locomotive. “I have just heard——”

“And I’ve just found _this_.” The young engineer told him where. “And
I believe I’ve seen that writing before.”

“Whose is it?” demanded Adair the instant he had scanned the warning
words.

Ralph leaned closer to his ear and whispered a name. Adair started.
“No?” he cried. “Do you believe that?”

“Compare it with that paper Zeph gave you,” urged Ralph.

The gong sounded. The young engineer’s hand went to the throttle. The
conductor shouted “All aboard!”

“Keep your eyes open, Ralph,” advised the chief detective, swinging
himself down. “That is no idle threat. I am going to keep the wires
hot ahead of the Midnight Flyer to-night. Never mind if you smash your
schedule all to flinders. Safety first, my boy.”

“That is not the super’s motto,” said Ralph, rather sharply. “‘Get her
through,’ is what he wants.”

“You should worry!” exclaimed Adair as the great drivers began to
turn. “The G. M. is behind you. I am having the whole division
watched. I’ll jack the boys up right now. But if anything happens——”

His voice trailed off into silence. At least it was drowned by the
exhaust. The express rumbled out from under the train shed and Ralph
eased her through the yards.

“Due for a bump to-night.” If that warning was serious, it was well
worth Ralph Fairbanks’ attention.

“But the fellow doesn’t intimate where the bump is coming. Humph!
Perhaps he doesn’t know. I bet that Andy McCarrey, if he has planned
to hold up this train again, is not telling many people about it.

“Just those who do his wicked work. And who are _they_? Is Whitey
Malone down there in Shadow Valley yet? Is it he whom Zeph is
watching? Did he set off the dynamite that blew out that pillar?

“My goodness! I could ask a hundred questions along this line and get
the same answer to all. Nothing! Well——”

The train left the outskirts of Rockton without any trouble. It ran
smoothly over the well-ballasted track. The engineer and firemen gazed
ahead keenly. All were on the alert for trouble, but Ralph did not
tell his firemen of the warning he had received.

“Why worry them?” he thought. “It’s bad enough that I should feel as
though a sword were hanging over me.”




                            CHAPTER XXIII

                           WHAT LIES AHEAD?


Whether it was wise or not, Ralph Fairbanks kept this special suspense
to himself. In truth, while a fast train like the Midnight Flyer is
under headway, the crew on the locomotive have little time for
conversation.

The atmosphere in the cabin of such an engine as this great
eight-wheeler drawing the express was tense enough all the way. There
were but four let-ups in this mental strain which was felt by the
firemen, as well as by the engineer. The Flyer pulled down to a stop
at four stations before reaching the end of the run at Hammerfest. At
these stops only, could the men on the locomotive talk with comfort.

More keenly than ever on this run did Ralph watch for signals. With
raised hands he and the fireman at the other side of the cab signaled
to each other the nature of the switch targets and semaphore lights as
they picked them up.

And now and then, at some dangerous crossing or lonely, empty station,
the young engineer caught the secret signal of Mr. Adair’s police—the
double flash of an electric torch from the bushes or some other hiding
place. The chief detective’s operatives were on hand and faithful to
their trust.

This fact reminded Ralph the more keenly of Zeph Dallas. What was he
doing? Indeed, where was he and what was his situation on this night
when so much seemed at stake?

Fryburg was the first stop. The Midnight Flyer drew in there without a
thing having been observed suggesting the nature of the threat of
which Ralph had been warned in the paper he had found under his bench.

The night operator at this station ran out and along the side of the
train to the locomotive. He reached up a message to Ralph and gave
another to the conductor. Under the light near his shoulder Ralph read
the following:

    Fairbanks, engineman, Train 202:—
    Speed up. Fire reported in timber Shadow Valley near tracks.
                                               “Hopkins, Super.”

“That is what it is, then,” said the telegraph operator. “I heard an
hour ago that the sky was red over that way. But there has been no
report come in from Shadow Valley Station.”

“Reckon the op. can’t see it there any better than you can,” said
Ralph. “You know the station is on this slope of the ridge.”

“I like that ‘speed up,’” growled Stilling, who had read the message
over Ralph’s shoulder. “Wonder what the Great-I-Am thinks we are?”

“He knows we’re on time, anyway,” said the conductor, and started back
along the coaches, calling “All Aboard!”

Ralph, as he eased his locomotive into smooth action, considered the
difficulty ahead of him. It was more than a matter of keeping to
schedule. That was important enough. He confessed to himself now that
he thoroughly disliked Mr. Hopkins; but much as he disliked the
supervisor, he realized that this wire was worthy of consideration.

If the forest fire reached the right of way before the Flyer could
descend into Shadow Valley, the train of varnished cars might not get
through at all. Taking a chance with a freight train in a burning area
of timber, as Ralph had actually done in the past, was an entirely
different matter from plunging into a conflagration with Pullman
coaches.

Besides, the smoke and flames might cloud the vision of the engine
crew so that they could not see clearly the right of way. An obstacle
placed on the rails by the strikers, who might be the cause of the
fire itself, could derail the big locomotive in the middle of the
burning woods and place the crew of the train and the passengers in
great peril.

Ralph could not fail to remember the strange warning he had received
before leaving Rockton. If he was “due for a bump” it might be that
the locality of the attempted wreck was in the midst of the fire.

Shadow Valley offered every opportunity for the rascals who were
fighting the Great Northern to carry out a hold-up or cause a serious
wreck. The lower plain of the valley was a wild country of both field
and forest. There were few farmsteads, and those mostly of squatters
who had broken ground in small patches.

Hanging above the right of way of the railroad, as at Devil’s Den,
were lofty crags, wooded for the most part, and offering plenty of
hideouts for outlaws and tramps in general.

Ralph remembered the recent bandit scare at Hardwell. The fellow with
the flour sack over his head, of whom Fiske, the telegraph operator,
had told the engineer, was a person to consider at this time.

That bandit might be a free lance outlaw or he might be working with
Andy McCarrey and his gang of trouble-makers. Almost, Ralph was
convinced, Zeph Dallas must know about that outlaw. Did the same
fellow dynamite the trestle pillar at Devil’s Den?

“My gracious! how I’d like to get off this run and take a hand in
dealing with these scoundrels myself,” groaned Ralph. “I’d like to
find Zeph and learn what he knows. I just ache to get into the fight!”

He was in peril enough. He knew that, of course. On every foot of the
way ahead lay uncertainty. But his work now was passive. He craved
action. He desired greatly to know what lay ahead. The situation was
fraught with so much uncertainty that Ralph Fairbanks was in keen
expectation of momentary disaster.

It was a star-lit night; but with the approach of the false dawn a
misty curtain was drawn across the sky. The zenith looked as though it
were covered with a vast milky way. On the earth, even where open
fields bordered the tracks, the shadows became denser.

Too-hoo! Hoo! shrieked the whistle of the Midnight Flyer.

Those passengers sleeping so comfortably in their berths had no
thought for the anxiety that tugged at the heart of the young engineer
in the locomotive cab. Ralph hung out of the cab window as the pilot
struck a short curve, and tried to catch a glimpse of the right of way
ahead of the focal point of the headlight.

He saw the flash on the instant that the fireman pulled the whistle
cord again—a long flash, then two short ones. It was the signal agreed
upon by Bob Adair and his operatives to pull down any train they
wished to board.

Ralph had not expected that the Midnight Flyer would be stopped on any
pretext. He was all but willing to fly by without paying attention to
the signal. Then memory of the warning he had received came to his
mind and he shut off the power on the huge locomotive. He applied the
brakes gently. The long train eased to almost a standstill.

Out of the brush beside the way popped a figure in a long coat. The
man leaped the ditch and boarded the locomotive steps. Instantly Ralph
threw off the brakes and opened the throttle. The man sagged into the
seat behind the young engineer. The latter could hear the breath
sobbing in the fellow’s throat. He glanced back at him and recognized
one of Adair’s old operatives, Frank Haley.

“What under the sun’s the matter, Haley?” shouted Ralph, so that his
companion might hear, for the wheels were drumming again.

“I’m not sure. I was back on the road at a house, telephoning, when
the girl on the switchboard at Shadow Valley began to broadcast
something that I got. I dropped the receiver and beat it so as to
catch you.”

“What is the matter?” repeated Ralph anxiously.

“There’s been a wreck—a bad one.”

“Where?”

“Down in the valley.”

“Why, there’s a fire there, too!”

“Yes. And the fire guard is out already to try to put it out. But this
is something else. A train has been derailed, and the girl says all
railroad dicks are supposed to get down there in a hurry. That is why
I took the chance of stopping the Midnight Flyer,” concluded Haley.




                             CHAPTER XXIV

                            TERRIBLE NEWS


“What train is off the iron?” asked Ralph quickly. “Anything ahead of
us? Will we be held up?”

That was his first consideration. To think of the Flyer’s schedule as
being of the first importance had become an obsession with him.

“I didn’t get any details,” said Haley, over the engineer’s shoulder.
“I don’t even know whether the wreck is this side or the other side of
the burning woods. But somehow I’ve got to get there. Adair’s orders.”

“Let’s see,” ruminated Ralph, “there is Sixty-four that takes the
siding at Cole’s Station to let us pass. Hold on! She hasn’t much more
than left Shadow Valley. The only other west-bound train in our way
right now is the passenger accommodation that pulls into Oxford just
ahead of us. Number Fifty-two. Think it may be her, Haley?”

Haley had caught most of what the engineer said. He shook his head.

“The wreck may be on the eastbound track,” he observed.

“You’re right at that!” exclaimed Ralph. “We pass Number Thirty-three,
eastbound passenger, this side of the Devil’s Den. Where would she be
about now? Let’s see.”

Without looking at the printed schedule which every trainman carries,
Ralph figured out from his memory of the train dispatcher’s orders
which he had himself formulated the locality of Number 33 if it was on
time.

“That Thirty-three comes clear from the Junction, doesn’t she?” asked
Haley, over Ralph’s shoulder.

“Yes. She leaves Shelby Junction at ten-forty——”

The young fellow halted in his speech. A new thought stabbed him to
the quick. Cherry Hopkins had telegraphed her father that she was
leaving Shelby Junction at that hour. If anything had happened to
Number 33 this girl was aboard it!

He said nothing more to Haley, but gave his strict attention to the
running of the train. But the specter of the wreck ahead took on a
grimmer cast in Ralph Fairbanks’ mind.

If there was any way of coaxing more speed out of the big locomotive,
the engineer put it to the test now. The run between Fryburg and
Shadow Valley Station was not a long one, at best. He had lost two
minutes in shutting down to let Frank Haley aboard. Ralph recovered
those two minutes and steamed into the next stop with another minute
to spare.

Early morning though it was, the station platform was thronged. Ahead,
as Ralph and his crew could now see, the sky was blood red. The forest
fire must be of great consequence and burning a big area in the Shadow
Valley basin.

The fire had called the curious together at the railroad; but news of
the wreck on the far side of the valley was likewise rife. The station
agent himself was on hand and brought the engineer and conductor the
messages. They read:

    “Speed up to get ahead of fire in Shadow Valley.”

    “Wreck of 33 between Hardwell and Timber Brook. Reported
    spread across right of way.”

The second message struck Ralph to the heart. He had feared it. Poor
Cherry! He felt that she might be seriously injured, or even dead.

When he saw doctors, nurses, and a hospital outfit getting aboard one
of the Pullmans he was more than convinced that the wreck had been a
terrible catastrophe.

“If those strikers did it, it will break the back of the strike,”
declared Haley, with confidence.

Ralph felt no interest in the strike just then. He was visualizing
Cherry Hopkins’ pretty figure writhing in a tangle of flaming wood and
scorching iron.

If Cherry was killed or disfigured, her mother surely would die.
Supervisor Hopkins might lose all his family at one blow! Ralph found
himself considering the supervisor’s case with a feeling of sympathy
which he had never supposed he would have for the crotchety railroad
official.

There were several railroad detectives riding on the locomotive when
Number 202 pulled out of Shadow Valley Station; but they talked among
themselves. The crew of the locomotive had too much to do right then
to engage in any conversation.

Ralph hung out of his window, watching the ribbons of steel ahead of
the pilot. Where the track was straight, the mild glare of the
headlight glistened along the rails for yards upon yards. He could
mark every joint of the steel rods.

At times he glanced skyward. That angry glare quenched such light as
remained of the misted stars. The train mounted the remainder of the
grade and then took the straight pitch down to that curve on the side
of Shadow Valley which had already been the scene of several exciting
events for the young railroader.

Now and then they flew past a closed station where only the night
lamps and switch targets revealed life. The small hamlets near these
stations, themselves endangered by the fire below—especially, if the
wind rose—were all but deserted. All the able-bodied men had joined
the State fire guard in opposing the forest fire.

Ralph could see at last the bottom of the valley. If the fire had been
set, and for the purpose of overwhelming the railroad, the wind at
first had been against the criminals’ plans. It had spread in a
direction away from the right of way.

The bottomlands of Shadow Valley were enveloped in crimson flames, and
the smoke rising from this pit was borne northward and away from the
line. But it was a veritable sea of fire!

A great dead pine that had been a landmark ever since Ralph had known
this division suddenly sprang into flame as though it were by
spontaneous combustion. It stood alone on a knoll and there was little
but low brush near its base. Yet, of a sudden, it was aflame from root
to topmost twig!

“A few of ’em like that burning near the tracks would settle us!”
thought the young engineer. “One at least would be sure to fall. If we
headed into it—good-night!”

The men riding on the locomotive were all eagerness as the Flyer slid
down the incline. Ralph could give but a glance now and then to the
fire, for never had he watched the rails ahead more closely.

The warning he had received before leaving Rockton still loomed
importantly in his mind. He was sure that had not referred to the
wreck of Number 33. His own train was threatened with disaster!

His strained interest in Cherry Hopkins’ fate, however, urged him to
drive the Flyer as fast as he dared. The smooth slope into the heat
and glow of the furnace-like valley tempted him to push the engine to
the limit of her speed. Number 202 was actually flying before she was
half way to the curve this side of the Devil’s Den!




                             CHAPTER XXV

                      THROUGH THE FLAMING FOREST


Again Ralph thought of the night when Zeph Dallas had leaped upon the
bowlder beside the right of way and had waved him the signal “All’s
clear” as the Flyer took the curve above Devil’s Den. But there was
nobody on guard at this point, now.

Number 202 came rushing down to the dangerous point. Ralph shut off
the throttle and applied the brakes with judgment. He knew that he was
some minutes ahead of his schedule, but he hated to retard the train
at all.

The wreck on the other side of the valley—the wreck of the train on
which Cherry Hopkins had taken passage for Rockton—drew Ralph like a
magnet. The news of the terrible disaster had shaken even the
detectives riding on the locomotive.

The express took the curve. The track was clear to the next easy turn,
right at the beginning of the trestle where the pillar had been blown
out. A gang had been at work here putting in new masonry to take the
place of the impermanent pillar which now held up the trestle, but the
forest fire to the north had called them off the job.

Every railroad employee who could possibly be spared, had been sent to
aid the State fire guard. One man was here to watch the dangerous
spot, and with his lantern he signaled the Midnight Flyer to come on.

Ralph ran on easily to the end of the trestle, and so over it and onto
the firm ground beyond. He speeded up again. But now the heat of the
flaming forest began to be felt even in the locomotive cab.

“Hey, Fairbanks!” shouted Frank Haley, the detective, in the
engineer’s ear. “Hey, you going to take the chance? I believe there is
a back-draught. The fire is coming this way.”

Ralph nodded, with grimly set lips. He had noted the cloud of
flame-streaked smoke lying across the tracks not half a mile ahead.
How wide was that cloud? Were the trees directly beside the right of
way on fire now? What, indeed, was he driving the express into?

He gripped the reverse lever. A flashlike picture of his own train
wrecked and in the midst of the flaming forest rose before Ralph’s
mental vision. Ought he to risk the unknown peril masked by the
rose-hued cloud of drifting smoke?

But the thought of the wreck ahead called him on. Cherry in peril!
Perhaps dying of her injuries. The thought was so enthralling that the
young engineer could not bring himself to the reversal of the
locomotive’s mechanism and the pulling down of the heavy train. He did
shut off some speed. They rolled into the cloud of smoke at less than
thirty miles an hour. At that rate, he could have stopped the heavy
train within a hundred yards.

The suspense, if not the heat from the fire, brought the perspiration
out on Ralph Fairbanks’ face as he leaned from the window. He shaded
his eyes with his hand, trying to spy through the smother of smoke.
The headlight’s beam was dimmed by the cloud. Now and then tongues of
flame seemed to leap through it, as though reaching to lap the
locomotive.

Above and higher than the rumble of the train he now distinguished the
roar of the conflagration. With it came the loud snapping of falling
trees and explosions when dead timber burst from the heat of the fire
that consumed it at the heart.

He realized that he was taking an awful chance, and he had taken it on
his own responsibility. At any point the pilot might crash into some
fallen monarch of the forest.

The heat came up into his face in a suffocating wave. Ralph was forced
to draw back into the cab. He had been wise enough to close the
forward and first side window on his side of the locomotive.
Embers—flaming and white-hot—began rattling against the glass.

A ball of fire—the torn-away top of some coniferous tree—hurtled
overhead, barely missing the smokestack, and fell flaming and smoking
upon the firemen’s side of the boiler. The varnish began to smoke.
Stilling leaped through the front window, ran along the board, and
kicked the flaming bush off the locomotive.

The fire was sweeping closer and closer to the right of way. Ralph
realized at last that he was driving into, not through, a belt of
smoke and flame.

Ahead, and across the valley, the forest had ignited closer to the
rails. The farther they went, the greater the danger.

This discovery was made too late, however. Ralph realized that it
would be worse than ridiculous to stop and try to back out of the fire
zone. The flames were being swept nearer and nearer to the tracks. He
opened wide his throttle again and the Flyer drove at increased speed
into whatever fate had in store for them.

The headlight seemed utterly quenched now by the glare of the fire.
Smoke swirled into the cab and filled their lungs. Choking and
coughing, the detectives cowered on the deck. The fireman on duty at
the furnace could scarcely see what he was about. Stilling, the other
fireman, could see no more than Ralph could ahead of the locomotive.

Had the strikers or the ruffians employed in secret by Andy McCarrey
imagined this situation they could easily have derailed the Midnight
Flyer. Any obstacle on the track would have brought the fast train to
grief. But if the forest fire was started by McCarrey’s order, he
expected that the fire itself would halt the trains on the division.
His object, at most, was to throw the trains out of schedule, rather
than to wreck the trains.

The Midnight Flyer’s arrival at the basin of Shadow Valley a little
ahead of her schedule, if anything, and the fact that Ralph Fairbanks
was willing to take a chance overcame the conspiracy of the strike
leaders. 202 came through the danger area without much hurt. The crew
and detectives on the locomotives suffered the most. The train was a
vestibule train for its entire length and the doors were kept closed.
Such little heat and smoke as entered the ventilators was of small
consequence.

In a few minutes the locomotive pilot burst through the far side of
the smoke-cloud. The headlight beamed along the rails again. The
forest here lay untouched by fire on either side of the right of way.

Haley smote Ralph on the shoulder, a congratulatory blow.

“Good boy, Fairbanks!” he shouted. “I thought you were running us into
a hot corner one while. But you certainly know your business. How far
are we from that wreck?”

Ralph could figure that out exactly after a glance at the first
numbered signpost. He increased the speed of the train on the instant.

Not far ahead now lay the scene of the disaster, of which they had
secured so few particulars. Timber Brook, the little settlement
mentioned in the message that had been passed up to him at Shadow
Valley Station, was already in sight.




                             CHAPTER XXVI

                              THE WRECK


There was a red lamp out for the Flyer just beyond Timber Brook. Ralph
pulled down to a crawl and set the pilot of his engine almost against
the lamp that had been placed between the rails. Around the next turn
was the wreckage of Number 33.

A white-faced section hand came to Ralph’s side of the cab while the
detectives climbed down and started ahead along the right of way.

“What happened to her?” the young engineer asked the laborer.

“They set up two ties between the rails and the old mill was thrown
off the track. It carried half the train with it. Only one car—the
smoker—overturned, but everybody was badly shaken up.”

“How many killed?” gasped Ralph anxiously.

“Not a one. Lucky, I call it. And only a dozen or so hurt to any
amount.”

The hospital outfit that had come from Shadow Valley Station went by
on a trot. Ralph was eager to leave his post and to go forward to
satisfy himself about Cherry Hopkins, but he could not do this at
once.

He could not pull the train forward, for the locomotive of Number 33
was across the westbound track. Finally, after some minutes of
suspense, he was informed by wire from the station just passed that
the delayed Flyer was to remain where it was until the rails were
cleared. He could not have run it back, anyway, for the fire was now
burning on both sides of the right of way.

Leaving Stilling in command of the locomotive, and with the
conductor’s permission, Ralph finally got away and hurried around the
curve to the scene of the eastbound train’s wreck.

The wrecking train from Oxford was on the scene, and a big crew was at
work clearing the rails. But Ralph saw that he would be very late when
he pulled into Hammerfest that morning.

He saw Frank Haley, and the detective told him that, without a doubt,
the wreck had been caused by ghouls working in the pay of the wildcat
strike leaders.

“They knocked out one of our guards, and he only came to after the
accident had occurred. He is in the hospital car. He tells me a
curious thing, Fairbanks.”

“What is that?” asked the young engineer.

“He says that at least one of the men who attacked him had his head
and face muffled in a flour sack. He had cut a hole through it to see
through. Didn’t that fellow at Hardwell report that the bandit that
held him up and robbed the station the other night was masked in that
way?”

“He did. I talked with Fiske myself,” Ralph agreed. “And I had my
doubts then that the fellow was merely a robber. In this case it seems
to be proved that he did not wreck the train to rob the passengers.”

“Nothing like that! It was just a ghastly thing, planned to injure the
road. If we could only connect this fellow in the flour-sack mask with
Andy McCarrey and his co-workers, we would have a case that would
surely send Andy over the road to the penitentiary.”

“I hope you get the evidence,” said Ralph heartily.

Ralph’s interest, however, was much more closely held by another
thing. Where was Cherry Hopkins? Had she been injured? Was she one of
those who were in the hospital car that had been brought down from
Oxford coupled to the wrecking train?

Leaving the detective, Ralph hurried to the hospital car. A doctor who
had come down from Shadow Valley Station was just coming out.

“Nothing much I can do,” he said cheerfully. “Everybody is in good
trim. A pretty case of compound fracture, a comminuted fracture of the
left arm, a broken nose and possibly two cases of rib fracture—can’t
really tell without an X-ray examination. And——”

“But who are the cases, Doctor?” Ralph asked in anxiety. “Are they men
or women, or—or girls?”

“No young people hurt at all. I should say the youngest patient was
thirty-five years of age.”

“Great!” exclaimed the young fellow, with a sigh of relief.

The doctor stared at him, then grinned. “You’re a sympathetic person—I
don’t think!”

But Ralph did not stop to explain. He hurried away to mix with the
passengers of the wrecked train who hung upon the fringe of the scene
where the wreckers were hard at work. He saw few feminine passengers
in these groups, and nowhere did he see the face and figure he was in
search of.

He entered the cars still standing on the rails and walked through
from one end to the other. Cherry Hopkins was in none of them. He
hesitated at first to speak to anybody about the girl, but finally he
saw the conductor of the wrecked accommodation.

“Wait a moment, Mr. Carlton,” said Ralph, holding the excited man by
the sleeve. “Do you remember if the supervisor’s daughter was one of
your passengers to-night?”

“Supervisor Hopkins’ girl?” exclaimed Carlton. “Why, yes, she was. I
mind seeing her father’s pass, viséed by him for her use. Yes, she
came with us from Shelby Junction.”

“So I understood,” said Ralph. “Have you seen her since the accident?”

“Why, I—No, I haven’t, Fairbanks!”

Ralph followed Carlton back through the train. Most of the women were
gathered in one car. Carlton asked briskly if any of them had seen
Miss Cherry, Supervisor Hopkins’ daughter.

Several of the women remembered the girl.

“She was not hurt. I am sure of that,” said one woman whose arm was in
a sling, “for she helped bandage my arm. Then, it seems to me, she ran
out of the car to see what was going on. I have not seen her since.”

Nobody else remembered having seen her since soon after the wreck.
Carlton, the conductor, had done all he could to aid Ralph in his
quest. The latter was forced to go back to his own train without
finding the supervisor’s daughter.

One thing that he had learned, however, quieted the young fellow’s
anxiety. It seemed quite sure that Cherry had not been hurt when
Number 33 left the track. If she could help her fellow passengers
after the accident, she was in no need of attention herself.

His relief was not so great, however, as he desired. He had not seen
and spoken with the girl. Three hours later, when he finally got his
train to Hammerfest, he wired the man he knew would be in charge of
the train dispatching at Rockton, this question:

    “Find out for me secretly if Miss Hopkins has arrived with
    other passengers of wrecked 33.”

Before he pulled out of Hammerfest on the return trip the answer to
his question was handed up to him by the local telegraph operator:

    “No. Hop. is crazy. What do you know? Girl disappeared at
    scene of wreck.”




                            CHAPTER XXVII

                           WHERE IS CHERRY?


The responsibilities of the driver of a Class-A train such as Ralph
Fairbanks conducted are not to be belittled. His mind must be given to
the running of his locomotive, and that first of all, no matter what
else may happen. Death or disaster must not swerve the engineer from
his immediate duty.

The express back to Rockton was now the young fellow’s charge. When he
arrived at the scene of the morning wreck the eastbound way was clear
again and he had to drive right on. With all his heart he desired to
stop the locomotive, desert it, and make personal search about the
neighborhood for some trace of the supervisor’s daughter.

What could have happened to Cherry Hopkins? She surely had not been
injured at the time of the wreck. Then what had become of her after
she had run out of the car to view the wreckage closer?

In no possible way, as far as Ralph could see, could Cherry have been
hurt at a later time and her injury not reported. The train crew and
passengers were all about her, or so it seemed reasonable to suppose,
while she viewed the wreck. Her disappearance was a mysterious thing!

Ralph could not even pull down his locomotive at the place where
Number 33 had been wrecked. He got the signal from the guard beside
the tracks and had to push on. Despite the fire, that fortunately was
now blowing away from the tracks, he made the run without any trouble
and arrived at the Rockton terminal at 11:30.

The young engineer had no desire to see Mr. Barton Hopkins at this
time. He learned from the day telegraph operator that nothing new
about Cherry had been discovered. The supervisor had become wildly
excited when he had tried to find his daughter and could not do so. It
was positive that the girl had not arrived in town. She had surely
disappeared at the scene of the wreck of Number 33.

Ralph did not go home at once after being relieved of his duty on the
locomotive. Instead, he searched for Bob Adair. But the chief
detective had not returned. It was believed he had gone down into
Shadow Valley to examine into the wreck at first hand.

Ralph wondered if Mr. Adair was in the supervisor’s confidence. Had
the road detective gone to Shadow Valley to look for Cherry Hopkins?
The young fellow was tempted greatly to take the first train for the
vicinity of the morning’s disaster!

Again, and quite involuntarily, Ralph found himself passing through
the street on which the Hopkins family lived. He hesitated at the door
of the bungalow, then ventured up the walk and rang the bell. A maid
servant came to the door.

She started back and half closed the door when she saw Ralph in his
overalls and cap. It was evident that she had been warned against
receiving employees of the railroad.

“What do you want?” demanded the girl sharply.

“I don’t suppose Mr. Hopkins is at home?” asked Ralph.

“You know he ain’t supposed to be home at this time of day.”

“And—and hasn’t Miss Cherry returned?”

The maid broke out crying. “Ain’t you heard? She’s dead—or lost—or
something. Her father is ’most crazy about it——”

“And Mrs. Hopkins?” Ralph interrupted. “What does she think?”

“They don’t dare tell her. Anyway, Mrs. Hopkins isn’t here. They took
her last evening to Dr. Poole’s sanitarium. She’s going under an
operation. Miss Cherry was coming back to be with her.”

“That’s tough,” muttered Ralph, turning away.

He went home feeling much disturbed. Mrs. Fairbanks had not only
obtained some news of the wreck at Shadow Valley, but she had got a
garbled account of Supervisor Hopkins’ family troubles.

“They have taken that poor woman to the sanitarium, and they say he
won’t let the girl come home to her mother,” Ralph’s mother said,
quite excitedly. “Somebody ought to talk to that Barton Hopkins.”

“Hold on! Hold on!” advised her son. “This is one time when that
‘little bird’ of yours has got the news wrong. I positively know that
Mr. Hopkins sent for Cherry to return. She left Shelby Junction last
night on the ten-forty train—Number Thirty-three.”

“Why, Ralph, that was the train that was wrecked!”

“Yes, Mother,” the young fellow replied with more gravity. “And,
believe me, I’m worried enough. The Flyer was held up two hours and
more by the wreck of Thirty-three. I got a chance to search for
Cherry. She wasn’t there. She’s lost—disappeared.”

“Disappeared?” his mother cried, in amazement.

“Yes. She was aboard the train. The conductor remembered her. Ladies
told me they saw her after the train was derailed. She was all right
then. But she was not to be found when I inquired, and she did not
reach Rockton with the other passengers.”

“This is awful, Ralph! What does Mr. Hopkins say?”

“I don’t know. I’m sure I don’t want to see him. But Mr. Adair has
gone over to Shadow Valley, and perhaps he has gone to look for
Cherry. My gracious! I’d like to go myself. If I hadn’t promised the
G. M. that I would stick to the Midnight Flyer, I would be tempted
right now to throw up my job and join any search party that may look
for Cherry.”

“Are you afraid the strikers have something to do with her
disappearance, Ralph?” asked his mother.

“I’m afraid of what that Andy McCarrey might do. I have said from the
start that this was a personal fight between McCarrey and the super.
And Hopkins can be hurt, and hurt badly, through Cherry.”

“And his poor wife ill as she is, too! It is dreadful,” repeated Mrs.
Fairbanks. “I do wish you could help look for her, my boy; although I
wouldn’t want you to get into any trouble.”

“Oh, that would be all right. I am not afraid of trouble. But I can’t
go back on the G. M. He is my best friend.”

His mother was thinking deeply.

“Ralph, my boy,” she said, of a sudden, “isn’t it true that Zeph
disappeared down there in Shadow Valley?”

“That’s true enough, Mother. But Zeph is a different person. He can
take care of himself. He is not a delicate girl, helpless in the hands
of such villains as Andy McCarrey and his associates. Cherry——”

“I was just thinking,” said the widow, “that Zeph might have been
captured and imprisoned by the same men and in the same place as the
supervisor’s girl. Isn’t it possible?”

“Humph! That’s an idea! I had forgotten Zeph since Cherry disappeared.
But it might be. Indeed, it is more than likely so. Now I wonder just
where Andy McCarrey is right now? That man they tell of in the
flour-sack mask could not be him. But, then——”

He was more than puzzled and disturbed. Ralph was downright frightened
on account of Cherry Hopkins. And now he began to wonder if he ought
not to take Mr. Hopkins into his confidence. Although it seemed that
the supervisor must know as much about the disappearance of his
daughter as Ralph did.

Actually the person the young engineer desired most to consult was the
road’s chief detective. But he heard nothing of that gentleman that
day or in the evening when he went down town early. There was a buzz
of excitement about the terminal offices, however, and Ralph learned
that while he had slept at home several important events had occurred.

The police had raided the old tenement in which Ralph and Zeph Dallas
had had their adventure at night with Whitey Malone and the chief
strike leaders, Andy McCarrey and Griffin Falk. Intoxicated men coming
out of the place had been seen and a supply of liquor was found in the
very upstairs room into which Ralph had peered.

But the attempt to arrest McCarrey or Falk in the place had failed.
They had been warned of the raid and had got out. Indeed, it was
believed they had left town.

Another important thing was that Jim Perrin of the old shopmen’s union
had been suspended from his office. Certain men who had been close to
the traitorous Perrin were likewise under a cloud, especially Billy
Lyon, Abe Bertholdt, Mike Ranny and Sam Peters. The split in the
shopmen’s union was being healed. It was even prophesied by some that
the wildcat strike would be ended as far as the shopworkers of Rockton
were concerned within a few hours.

These bits of news were encouraging in a general way, but Ralph
Fairbanks’ interest lay in an entirely different direction now. Much
as he had been worried about railroad affairs, in his mind the
disappearance of Cherry Hopkins at the scene of the wreck in Shadow
Valley loomed up as being far more important.

Ralph went up to the dispatchers’ offices to talk over the schedule
with his substitute, and, also, to learn of any news that might be
rife in that department. Naturally, the boys there knew little about
Supervisor Hopkins and his troubles.

“Just the same, the lads tell me,” said Johnny, who was Ralph’s old
assistant, “that Hopkins is getting rattled. He has stopped hunting
for faults to correct in our division system. They say he’s got a sick
wife and that his girl has run away from him.”

“Bother gossip!” exclaimed Ralph heatedly. “Miss Hopkins has been
kidnapped, if anybody should ask you. No doubt of that. I am sorry for
Hopkins.”

As he went down to the train-shed platform he passed the door of the
telegraph room. The operator had just been called to the instrument.
Ralph could not resist halting to listen.

He was a quick and perfect reader of the sounder. And almost instantly
his interest was caught and held by the message coming over the wire.
In the first place it came from Timber Brook. At this hour Timber
Brook Station, near the spot where Thirty-three had been wrecked,
should be closed for the night.

The message came haltingly. The operator sending seemed to be a
regular “ham,” as the telegraph fraternity call a poor sender. But
Ralph could not mistake the meaning of what came over the wire:

    “B. Hopkins, Super:
        “If you want to see your girl again you
        know who to communicate with and what it
        will cost you. Be quick. We will not wait
        long. We want satisfaction.”

Ralph could not keep back an excited ejaculation. The operator swung
about to look at him.

“What—what do you think of that?” he gasped.

“Get a repeat!” exclaimed the young engineer. “That wasn’t the regular
operator at Timber Brook.”

“Not much! It was a rank amateur.” The operator was repeating the
distant station’s call—TB, TB, TB, in staccato. There was no reply.
The wire was dead. “It must be a fake.”

“No fake at all,” returned Ralph hastily. “Where is Mr. Hopkins?”

“He told me he was going to the hospital to see how his wife was, and
he would be back. Here he is!”

Ralph wheeled. The supervisor came striding to the door of the
telegraph room. He scowled as usual at Ralph. Then he asked the
operator:

“Anything doing?”

The man hesitated for a moment. Then, in silence, he handed the
supervisor the record he had made of the strange telegraph message.




                            CHAPTER XXVIII

                          RALPH ON THE TRAIL


Ralph Fairbanks had stepped back under the inimical glare of the
supervisor’s look. At that moment he had been ready to forget Mr.
Hopkins’ unkindness and unfairness to him. But the man’s plain dislike
aroused renewed antagonism in Ralph’s mind. He turned away and, in
spite of the tugging at his own heartstrings, was prepared to ignore
the supervisor’s trouble. His worst fears for Cherry had been
realized, and he suspected that the blow to her father would be well
nigh overwhelming.

Swinging his dinner can, the young engineer went down the platform,
approaching the big locomotive he drove and which had just been
brought up from the roundhouse by his faithful firemen. But before he
arrived beside the engine he heard a cry and the quick pounding of
feet upon the cement. He glanced back over his shoulder.

Supervisor Hopkins, white-faced and staring, was tearing along after
him, waving the telegram in his hand. The man was utterly beside
himself. At last the strain of all his troubles and anxieties had
broken him. One would scarcely have recognized the erstwhile stern and
uncompromising supervisor who had, within four months, managed to
create so much disturbance on this division of the Great Northern
Railway.

“Pull out! Pull out!” he cried, seizing Ralph’s arm and hustling him
toward the steps of the huge locomotive.

“Can’t pull out for four minutes, Mr. Hopkins,” Ralph said, trying to
keep his own voice and manner placid. “The schedule——”

“Hang the schedule!” cried this former exponent of method and
exactness. “Do you know what has happened? Those demons!” He shook the
paper in his hand. “Do you know what they have done, Fairbanks?”

“I read the message off the wire,” returned the young fellow coolly.
“I have been afraid all along that Andy McCarrey’s gang had something
to do with Miss Cherry’s disappearance.”

“It is those bloodthirsty strikers!” gasped Hopkins.

“The strikers are not bloodthirsty. They are men who have worked for
the railroad for years. Some of them are my neighbors and friends.
They have been badly advised in this strike, I admit. But I doubt if a
single ex-employee of this division has had anything to do with this
beastly thing.”

“This message——”

“You were threatened before. I guess you were threatened before you
came to Rockton, Mr. Hopkins,” said Ralph quickly. “You are pretty
sure who is the moving spirit in this dastardly crime.”

“McCarrey. Yes, I know that. But he has men to help him. I must get to
Shadow Valley at once——”

The gong in the train-shed roof sounded. Ralph started up the steps of
the locomotive. Hopkins remained right at his elbow.

“You get a seat in one of the coaches where you will be comfortable,
Mr. Hopkins,” advised Ralph. “I’ll get you to the place you want to
reach as quickly as I can.”

“I’ll ride with you. Want me to write a pass for myself?” the excited
supervisor asked. “In the locomotive I will be that much nearer the
place this message came from.”

“Come aboard, then,” said Ralph, not even smiling. “We’ll waive the
pass for this once.”

“All aboard!” called out the conductor from the end of the train.

Ralph leaped to his seat and seized the lever. The supervisor followed
him into the cab. You should have seen the eyes of the two firemen!

Supervisor Hopkins was certainly shaking. Out of the corner of his eye
Ralph watched those long, lean, red hands twitching nervously.

“Maybe he has been under this pressure all the time,” Ralph
considered. “It might be. He is as close-mouthed as a clam. Anybody
can see that. Mr. Barton Hopkins would never confide in any person as
long as he could keep his self-control. My gracious! I never saw him
so broken up.”

While Ralph was thinking these thoughts he was speeding up the great
eight-wheeler. The train, gaining on its pace with each revolution of
the drivers, left the Rockton yard behind. It whirled up the small
slope beyond, and then the searchlight, like a bright index finger,
pointed the way into the black cavern of the cloudy night.

Suddenly the young engineer realized that Mr. Hopkins’ fingers were
quiet. He sat on the bench without fidgeting as he had at first. Ralph
could even sense that the man breathed regularly.

He turned in some surprise to look into Barton Hopkins’ face. What had
changed him in this brief time? The supervisor’s gaze was fixed upon
Ralph’s left hand, the hand which rested all the time on the throttle.

Faster and faster the train sped on. As he had promised, the young
fellow was sending the Midnight Flyer on at the best pace he could
compass. Never during the time he had handled the train had he made
better time.

On and on they rushed, the wheels drumming over the rail-joints with a
rhythm of sound that could only be compared to faint rifle-fire. Again
and again the whistle sent its warning through the night. They rushed
past little stations and parti-colored switch targets as though they
were merely painted upon the backdrop of the night.

Now and then a white flash told Ralph that Adair’s guards were still
on duty. “All’s well” they signaled, and he dared keep the heavy train
at top speed over stretches of road which ordinarily would call for
more cautious driving.

The lights of Fryburg finally came into view. Distant specks like
star-shine at first. Almost immediately they were slowing down for the
town and the bell was jangling. Ralph brought the train to a
wonderfully easy stop.

Not for a moment had he been troubled by the presence of the
supervisor behind him on the seat. He was so sure of himself that he
was never ruffled by being watched at his work.

But as the locomotive came panting to its stop, Barton Hopkins put a
now quite steady hand upon Ralph Fairbanks’ shoulder.

“A wonderful run, Fairbanks,” he said, in his usual stern voice. “I
had no idea you were such a master of your art. I could give you
nothing but praise for your work. And you have gained three minutes
over the schedule. I thank you.”

For some reason Ralph felt a lump in his throat. There was something a
bit pathetic in the supervisor’s honest assurance that he appreciated
what little Ralph could do for him. The young fellow understood that
the man’s keen interest in the way the engineer handled his locomotive
had aided to calm him and had helped him gain control of himself.

They went on from Fryburg to Shadow Valley Station at a speed quite in
keeping with the first stretch of the run. There was no red glow in
the sky ahead to-night. When Ralph had returned from Hammerfest the
day before the area of the forest fire had been much reduced.

Again the Flyer made the swift plunge into the valley. They rounded
the curves and crossed the trestle at the Devil’s Den in safety. Under
instructions from the supervisor, the train was pulled down at Timber
Brook Station. Ralph could not stop to learn if anything had happened
there of moment.

The supervisor got down on the lower step of the cabin and made a
flying leap to the cinder path. He waved his hand to Ralph as the
latter speeded up the train again. Then the lights of the little
station and the tall figure of the supervisor were shut out of his
sight.

The Midnight Flyer made another of her famous runs that morning, and
Ralph brought her to Hammerfest in ample season for the connection on
the Boise City road. Although he had closely applied himself to the
running of the train, Ralph’s mind was hot with thoughts of the
mystery of Cherry Hopkins’ disappearance.

Something his mother had said regarding Zeph Dallas’s dropping out of
sight shuttled to and fro in his thought; and at last it pointed to a
fixed fact. He thought he saw a way of helping Hopkins find the place
of captivity of his lost daughter.

But to put this idea to the test he must have freedom. He rushed to
the telegraph office the minute he was free of the locomotive and
began to put in requests for the master mechanic. But that individual
was at neither end of the division, and at that early hour of the day
he could not be found.

While Ralph in his anxiety was striving to reach Mr. Connoly and was
waiting outside the telegraph office, he saw an accommodation from the
west pull in, to the tail of which was attached a very familiar
private car. He could have tossed up his cap in glee as he started on
a run for the end of the platform.

Before he reached the private car the general manager stepped down and
approached the station. He hailed Ralph genially.

“Oh, yes, this is your end of run, isn’t it, Ralph? How are you?”

“Terribly troubled, sir,” admitted the young engineer.

“It seems your whole division is troubled,” grumbled the general
manager. “I have been wondering, boy, if you were not right when you
said that an official should be able to see things from the men’s
standpoint. This Hopkins——”

“Don’t say another word against him!” gasped Ralph. “Let me tell you!”

And he proceeded to do so—to tell the genial general manager the
particulars of everything that had happened within his ken on the
division since Barton Hopkins’ drastic rules had begun to create
friction. But mainly Ralph gave the details of the wreck in Shadow
Valley, what had led up to it, and what had now resulted from it. His
text was, after all, Cherry Hopkins.

“You mean to say those blackguards have stolen the supervisor’s
daughter?” cried the general manager. “Why, the State police ought to
be out after them.”

“Here’s the boy who ought to be after them,” declared Ralph boldly,
pointing to himself, and he went on to sketch for the general manager
his own belief of what should be done in the matter of searching for
Cherry.

“If I could get excused from this run back to Rockton I’d be able to
do something. If they haven’t found her down there in Shadow Valley, I
believe I can. I’ll get back to Rockton in time to take out the
Midnight Flyer to-night.”

“Is there an engineer here able to take over your locomotive?”

“Ben Rogers is the man!” exclaimed Ralph. “I’ll put him wise to
everything before we reach Timber Brook.”

“Go to it then, boy!” exclaimed the general manager. “I am sorry for
Barton Hopkins. Until this strike came he was saving money right and
left for the Great Northern. It is a pity that he has been under this
strain—if he has—all this time. I hope Adair is helping him.”

Ralph had been quite sure that Bob Adair was giving his full attention
to the kidnapping of Cherry Hopkins, and when he dropped off his
locomotive at Timber Brook he was so assured. For he chanced to meet
Mr. Adair right at the little station.

When they had exchanged news, Ralph found that the chief detective had
not thought of the point that Mrs. Fairbanks had put into her son’s
mind. The detectives had spent all the morning with Mr. Hopkins in
beating the forest on either side of the road—even the burned area—for
some trace of a hideout that the villains might use.

It was learned that the Timber Brook Station had been broken into, and
one of the kidnappers had sent that message to Mr. Hopkins which Ralph
had heard off the wire. But otherwise, nobody had seen any suspicious
person about the right of way since the wreck of Thirty-three.

“Come on!” said Ralph excitedly. “I believe my mother has the right
idea. At any rate, Mr. Adair, don’t you think it is worth putting to
the test?”

Bob Adair agreed, and they started at once toward the Devil’s Den.




                             CHAPTER XXIX

                           THE RUN IS ENDED


Ralph, with Mr. Hopkins, Adair, and several of the latter’s
assistants, got aboard a dirt train going across to the Devil’s Den
where the replaced pillar under the trestle was still in course of
construction. Once there, they could easily walk up the grade to that
point where the young engineer had seen fluttering from the bushes on
the side of the cliff certain articles of apparel which he believed
belonged to his friend, Zeph Dallas.

The ragged remains of the vest and shirt still clung there. The cap
had probably been blown away. The forest fire had not run up the face
of the crag, so the wearing apparel had not been destroyed.

“Now, it is a fact,” Ralph put forth, “that Zeph hasn’t been seen
since the night the Flyer was pulled down here for that flaming
scarecrow when the pillar at Devil’s Den was blown out. Nor has he
been heard from, has he?”

“Not a sign of him,” agreed Adair.

“Then make up your mind he went up this cliff, and by that path. He
probably followed the rascals who dynamited the pillar. He was so
eager that he could not even wait to see if I got his fire signal and
stopped the train.”

“That would be just like him,” admitted Bob Adair again.

“Zeph discarded his vest, and then his shirt and cap, to mark his
trail. I believe it should have been followed before.”

“That sounds reasonable,” said Mr. Hopkins. “But that was some time
ago. What do you suppose has happened to him since?”

“He was captured by the men he followed. That goes without saying. I
don’t believe they would have killed the boy,” said the chief
detective. “But they would hold him prisoner.”

“Just as they are holding my daughter,” groaned out Mr. Hopkins.

“Not for ransom, in Zeph’s case,” said Adair grimly. “They know nobody
would give a dollar for him.”

“I’d give everything I’ve got for him!” cried Ralph, in some heat.

“Well, now, come to think of it,” said Adair, with twinkling eyes, “I
don’t know but I’d give something myself to see Zeph clear of the
rascals.”

“I guess you would!” exclaimed Ralph. “Zeph will try anything once,
but he is something more than a nut. He is faithful and brave and a
mighty good friend!”

However, they wasted little time in discussing the fine possibilities
of the situation. Ralph knew the path up the crag pretty well, and he
led the way. Two of the detective police were left below with rifles
to watch for any person who might appear above to obstruct the
climbers.

To climb that cliff at night must have been hard work. But by daylight
Ralph and his companions did not find it particularly difficult. In
half an hour they approached the summit of the ascent.

On the way Ralph had made sure that the rags of garments still hanging
to the brush had actually belonged to Zeph Dallas. He even found the
yellow brown cap that had fallen upon a shelf of rock. At any rate,
Zeph had passed this way and must have left the articles for some good
and sufficient reason.

“He expected to get into trouble, or he already was in trouble,” Ralph
said to Mr. Adair. “Think of him shedding his clothes in this way!”

“I have got through wondering about Zeph,” admitted the chief
detective. “He is always breaking out in a new spot.”

Ralph, however, could not feel so sure that his friend was all right.
As he led the way “over the top” he almost feared to find Zeph’s dead
body lying on the rocks.

But the first thing he found was somebody very much alive. As Ralph
scrambled over the lip of the last shelf of rock a figure suddenly
popped into view. The head and shoulders of a man appeared just above
the young fellow. And to the latter’s surprise, those head and
shoulders were shrouded in a flour sack on which the red and green
lettering was faintly visible.

“Here he is!” yelled Ralph, and sprang up and grabbed the fellow. The
latter had a club which he tried to use, but he had been so amazed by
the appearance of the young engineer and his party that he was quickly
overpowered.

In fact, Ralph was astride the fellow’s body and was tearing off the
mask when Mr. Adair and Mr. Hopkins reached the ledge of rock. Ralph
exposed the flaxen head and foolish face of Whitey Malone!

“We’ve got him, anyway, on the count of highway robbery,” said Mr.
Adair, with satisfaction.

“What does he know about my daughter?” demanded the supervisor.

“He’d better tell at once,” said the chief detective, “or we may throw
him over the cliff.”

This threat he made with a wink to Mr. Hopkins and Ralph; but Whitey
did not see that wink! He was scared to the marrow of his bones,
especially when he was dragged to the edge of the rock.

“I’ll show you! I’ll tell!” he cried. “But Andy will kill me.”

“You tell the truth,” Mr. Adair promised, “and you will be out of jail
a good many years before Andy McCarrey gets through paying the penalty
for _his_ crimes.”

It was a point that even Whitey Malone could appreciate. Much as he
feared McCarrey and Griffin Falk, the weak-minded fellow knew that he
could save himself much trouble by telling all he knew to the
representatives of the law.

Back from the verge of this cliff in a thick wood was an old charcoal
burner’s cabin. Zeph Dallas, in attempting to follow McCarrey’s
ruffians who had dynamited the trestle pillar (Whitey had not been in
that crime) was captured, as Ralph believed, and was held prisoner in
the charcoal burner’s shack.

At the time of the wreck of Number 33 in Shadow Valley, some of these
same employees of McCarrey, lurking in the bushes, had recognized
Cherry Hopkins and had seized her during the confusion. Binding her
and muffling her cries, the rascals had taken her by a roundabout way
to the same shack in which Zeph was held prisoner.

With this information wrenched from the reluctant Whitey, Ralph,
Supervisor Hopkins, Adair and his men, went on to the cabin. They
approached it with much care, for a large band of the outlaws were on
guard.

Ralph and Mr. Adair, who were well informed regarding the identity of
the striking shopmen, saw no ex-railroad employee in the clearing
where the shack stood. But McCarrey and his chief henchman, Falk, were
there.

Without doubt, although McCarrey had wormed himself into the
confidence of the dissatisfied shopmen and other employees of the
division, he had done so merely for his own personal aggrandizement.
He hated the supervisor of the division and he had worked merely to
control the strike fund of the ill-advised railroaders and to hurt Mr.
Barton Hopkins.

Chance, it seemed, had put Cherry into the power of this scoundrel.
When he heard that she had been captured he left Rockton immediately
and took up his personal fight against the supervisor. He knew Hopkins
had some money and he was determined to make him ransom his daughter.

With this knowledge in their possession, Ralph and his companions
attacked the gang at the charcoal burner’s shack with considerable
determination. Although they had firearms, they did not have to use
them. Advancing under the chief detective’s direction on the clearing
from all sides, the rescuers clubbed their men down, frightening them
as much as they injured them.

While the men were fighting, Ralph ran to the door of the shack. He
had already heard Zeph’s hoarse voice shouting. Ralph burst in the
door with a stone, shattering the lock.

As he did so a man hurled himself upon the young railroader. Although
the attack was sudden and from the rear, the young fellow knew that
his antagonist was Andy McCarrey.

“I’ve got _you_, anyway!” growled out the chief of the band of
scoundrels. “You got into that house one night. I remember you! And I
bet you gave us away.”

He was much stronger than Ralph, and having jumped on him from behind,
he bore the youth to the ground. He was astride Ralph in an instant,
and seized upon the very dornick with which his captive had broken the
lock of the door.

In a moment the young railroader might have been seriously hurt—even
killed! But rescue in the shape of Mr. Barton Hopkins himself arrived
in season. Reaching the spot with a clubbed rifle in his hands, the
supervisor landed the stock of the weapon on the side of McCarrey’s
head with such force that the villain toppled over, quite _hors de
combat_ for the time being.

Before Ralph could rise the supervisor had sprung to the door of the
shack and thrown it open. The afternoon sunlight flooded into the
interior of the place and Barton Hopkins saw his daughter, bound to a
rude chair and gagged with a cloth tied across her face.

The anxious father was the first to reach the girl. He swiftly cut her
bonds and tore off the bandage while Ralph staggered to an inner door,
that of a closet where Zeph Dallas was confined.

“Great Jupiter and little fishes!” gasped Zeph hoarsely, when he saw
Ralph’s face. “You’ve been a long time coming. And they’ve got a girl
in prison here, too.”

“They haven’t got anybody in prison now,” said Mr. Adair’s cheerful
voice from the doorway. “We’ve got them—and a fine bunch they are.
That was a nice swipe you gave Andy, Mr. Hopkins. It ought to be some
satisfaction to you to know that he will have to have some new teeth
if he ever wants to chew his victuals on that side of his jaw.”

The situation had been a serious one, nevertheless, for it was later
proved that several of the men McCarrey had in his band had prison
records and were desperate criminals. The threat to injure the girl if
her father did not pay for her release might not have been an empty
one.

“However,” said Mr. Adair, as the friends and the supervisor and
Cherry made their way to Rockton on an evening train, “this not only
cleans up the McCarrey band, but it is the end of the wildcat strike.
I don’t know that you had been so informed, Mr. Hopkins, but a
committee of the striking shopmen, and from the old union, will wait
on you to-morrow, and if you handle the situation wisely everything
will be going smoothly very soon.”

“Perhaps I have been too stringent in my rules,” the supervisor said
slowly. “At least, I will consider what the men have to offer.”

Cherry, hearing her father say this, nodded brightly to Ralph and
squeezed his hand for a moment. “I believe you did something to help
convince father that he was wrong about the railroad workers,” she
whispered to her friend.

“As for the strikers themselves,” went on Mr. Adair, “the union will
get rid of Jim Perrin and those that helped him betray the union
members to McCarrey. I was able to prove to the union heads their
treachery through the written list Ralph got from Malone that night
and the warning Perrin slipped into Ralph’s engine the night
Thirty-three was wrecked. Undoubtedly Perrin believed McCarrey meant
to try again to wreck the Flyer.”

“How did he come to consider Ralph at all?” asked Mr. Hopkins. “Is
Perrin such a close friend of yours?” and he asked the question
directly of the young man.

“I’ll tell you,” confessed the other. “Some time ago Perrin’s crippled
daughter—a sweet little girl—needed to be treated at one of the big
Eastern hospitals. Mother and I—more mother than me,” added Ralph,
“were able to assist in sending the child there. She has come back
cured and I expect, Perrin was grateful.”

It was evident that Mr. Hopkins’ estimation of Ralph Fairbanks
increased by leaps and bounds during that run to Rockton. When it was
ended the supervisor shook hands warmly with the young fellow before
he hastened his daughter away in a taxicab to the hospital, to see her
mother.

“I see I have a good deal to thank you for, Fairbanks,” the supervisor
said. “Believe me, I shall not forget it.”

However, it was a month before Ralph saw much more of the Hopkins
family, even of Cherry. During that time he continued to drive Number
202, and the troubles of all kinds on the division gradually cleared
up.

Then another engineer was found to relieve Ralph, and he went back to
his desk as chief dispatcher for the division. It was the evening of
this day that he kept his first dinner engagement at the Hopkins’
bungalow and met the recovered wife and mother at her own table.

Beside Ralph, too, there sat Mrs. Fairbanks. They found that Barton
Hopkins, when he wished to be, could be a very charming host. And Mrs.
Fairbanks, as they walked homeward after dinner, repeated to her son
something she had already said about Cherry:

“That girl is well worth knowing, Ralph.”

“I’ll tell the world!” agreed the young train dispatcher.

                               THE END




                         THE TOM SWIFT SERIES
                          By VICTOR APPLETON
      UNIFORM STYLE OF BINDING.    INDIVIDUAL COLORED WRAPPERS.

    These spirited tales, convey in a realistic way, the
    wonderful advances in land and sea locomotion. Stories
    like these are impressed upon the memory and their reading
    is productive only of good.

                TOM SWIFT AND HIS MOTOR CYCLE
                TOM SWIFT AND HIS MOTOR BOAT
                TOM SWIFT AND HIS AIRSHIP
                TOM SWIFT AND HIS SUBMARINE BOAT
                TOM SWIFT AND HIS ELECTRIC RUNABOUT
                TOM SWIFT AND HIS WIRELESS MESSAGE
                TOM SWIFT AMONG THE DIAMOND MAKERS
                TOM SWIFT IN THE CAVES OF ICE
                TOM SWIFT AND HIS SKY RACER
                TOM SWIFT AND HIS ELECTRIC RIFLE
                TOM SWIFT IN THE CITY OF GOLD
                TOM SWIFT AND HIS AIR GLIDER
                TOM SWIFT IN CAPTIVITY
                TOM SWIFT AND HIS WIZARD CAMERA
                TOM SWIFT AND HIS GREAT SEARCHLIGHT
                TOM SWIFT AND HIS GIANT CANNON
                TOM SWIFT AND HIS PHOTO TELEPHONE
                TOM SWIFT AND HIS AERIAL WARSHIP
                TOM SWIFT AND HIS BIG TUNNEL
                TOM SWIFT IN THE LAND OF WONDERS
                TOM SWIFT AND HIS WAR TANK
                TOM SWIFT AND HIS AIR SCOUT
                TOM SWIFT AND HIS UNDERSEA SEARCH
                TOM SWIFT AMONG THE FIRE FIGHTERS
                TOM SWIFT AND HIS ELECTRIC LOCOMOTIVE

                Grosset & Dunlap, Publishers, New York




                       THE OUTDOOR CHUMS SERIES
                       By CAPTAIN QUINCY ALLEN

    The outdoor chums are four wide-awake lads, sons of
    wealthy men of a small city located on a lake. The boys
    love outdoor life, and are greatly interested in hunting,
    fishing, and picture taking. They have motor cycles, motor
    boats, canoes, etc., and during their vacations go
    everywhere and have all sorts of thrilling adventures. The
    stories give full directions for camping out, how to fish,
    how to hunt wild animals and prepare the skins for
    stuffing, how to manage a canoe, how to swim, etc. Full of
    the spirit of outdoor life.

          THE OUTDOOR CHUMS
          Or The First Tour of the Rod, Gun and Camera Club
          THE OUTDOOR CHUMS ON THE LAKE
          Or Lively Adventures on Wildcat Island.
          THE OUTDOOR CHUMS IN THE FOREST
          Or Laying the Ghost of Oak Ridge.
          THE OUTDOOR CHUMS ON THE GULF
          Or Rescuing the Lost Balloonists.
          THE OUTDOOR CHUMS AFTER BIG GAME
          Or Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness.
          THE OUTDOOR CHUMS ON A HOUSEBOAT
          Or The Rivals of the Mississippi.
          THE OUTDOOR CHUMS IN THE BIG WOODS
          Or The Rival Hunters at Lumber Run.
          THE OUTDOOR CHUMS AT CABIN POINT
          Or The Golden Cup Mystery.

  12mo. Averaging 240 pages. Illustrated. Handsomely bound in Cloth.
             Grosset & Dunlap,   Publishers,    New York




                       THE BOBBSEY TWINS BOOKS
                       For Little Men and Women
                          By LAURA LEE HOPE
               Author of “The Bunny Brown” Series, Etc.
   12mo.   DURABLY BOUND.   ILLUSTRATED.   UNIFORM STYLE OF BINDING

    Copyright publications which cannot be obtained elsewhere.
    Books that charm the hearts of the little ones, and of
    which they never tire.

                THE BOBBSEY TWINS
                THE BOBBSEY TWINS IN THE COUNTRY
                THE BOBBSEY TWINS AT THE SEASHORE
                THE BOBBSEY TWINS AT SCHOOL
                THE BOBBSEY TWINS AT SNOW LODGE
                THE BOBBSEY TWINS ON A HOUSEBOAT
                THE BOBBSEY TWINS AT MEADOW BROOK
                THE BOBBSEY TWINS AT HOME
                THE BOBBSEY TWINS IN A GREAT CITY
                THE BOBBSEY TWINS ON BLUEBERRY ISLAND
                THE BOBBSEY TWINS ON THE DEEP BLUE SEA
                THE BOBBSEY TWINS IN THE GREAT WEST

             Grosset & Dunlap,   Publishers,    New York




                       THE BUNNY BROWN SERIES,
                          By LAURA LEE HOPE
             Author of the Popular “Bobbsey Twins” Books
               Wrapper and text illustrations drawn by
                      FLORENCE ENGLAND NOSWORTHY
   12mo.   DURABLY BOUND.   ILLUSTRATED.   UNIFORM STYLE OF BINDING

    These stories by the author of the “Bobbsey Twins” Books
    are eagerly welcomed by the little folks from about five
    to ten years of age. Their eyes fairly dance with delight
    at the lively doings of inquisitive little Bunny Brown and
    his cunning, trustful sister Sue.

    Bunny was a lively little boy, very inquisitive. When he
    did anything, Sue followed his leadership. They had many
    adventures, some comical in the extreme.

        BUNNY BROWN AND HIS SISTER SUE
        BUNNY BROWN AND HIS SISTER SUE ON GRANDPA’S FARM
        BUNNY BROWN AND HIS SISTER SUE PLAYING CIRCUS
        BUNNY BROWN AND HIS SISTER SUE AT CAMP REST-A-WHILE
        BUNNY BROWN AND HIS SISTER SUE AT AUNT LU’S CITY HOME
        BUNNY BROWN AND HIS SISTER SUE IN THE BIG WOODS
        BUNNY BROWN AND HIS SISTER SUE ON AN AUTO TOUR
        BUNNY BROWN AND HIS SISTER SUE AND THEIR SHETLAND PONY
        BUNNY BROWN AND HIS SISTER SUE GIVING A SHOW
        BUNNY BROWN AND HIS SISTER SUE AT CHRISTMAS TREE COVE

             Grosset & Dunlap,   Publishers,    New York