not, Mr. Griscom?” inquired Ralph.
“Eyes giving out. Had to drop the Daylight Express. I’m going down the ladder, you are going up the ladder. Stick to your principles, lad, for they are good ones, as I well know, and you’ll surely reach the top.”
“I hope so.” said Ralph.
The locomotive gave a sharp signal whistle, and the slow freight started on its night run for Dover.
CHAPTER II
THE LANDSLIDE
“Trouble ahead!”
“What’s that, Fairbanks?”
“And danger. Quick! slow down, or we’re in for a wreck.”
Ralph Fairbanks spoke with suddenness. As he did so he leaped past the engineer in a flash, clearing the open window space at the side.
Two minutes previous the old engineer had asked him to go out on the locomotive to adjust some fault in the air gauge. Ralph had just attended to this when he made a startling discovery.
In an instant he was in action and landed on the floor of the cab. He sprang to his own side of the engine, and leaning far out peered keenly ahead.
They were now in a deep cut which ended a steep climb, and the engine had full steam on and was making fairly good speed.
“My bad eyes – ” began Griscom, and then he quivered in every nerve, for a tremendous shock nearly sent him off his seat.
“Just in time,” cried Ralph, and then he held his breath.
Slowing down, the train had come to a crashing halt. The locomotive reared upon its forward wheels and then settled back on a slant, creaking at every joint. Ralph had swung the air lever or there would have been a catastrophe.
“What was it?” gasped Griscom, clearing his old eyes and peering ahead, but Ralph was gone. Seizing a lantern, he had jumped to the ground and was at the front of the locomotive now. The engineer shut off all steam after sounding the danger signal, a series of several sharp whistles, and quickly joined his assistant.
In front of the locomotive, obstructing the rails completely, was a great mass of dirt, gravel and rocks.
“A landslide,” spoke Griscom, glancing up one steep side of the cut.
“If we had struck that big rock full force,” observed Ralph, “it would have been a bad wreck.”
“You saved us just in time,” cried the old engineer. “I’ve often wondered if some day there wouldn’t be just such a drop as this of some of these overhanging cliffs. Company ought to see to it. It’s been a fierce rain all the evening, perhaps that loosened the mass.”
“Hardly,” said Ralph thoughtfully, and then, inspecting a glazed piece of paper with some printing on it he had just picked up, he looked queerly at his companion.
“Give them the trouble signal in the caboose, please, Mr. Griscom,” said the young fireman. “I think I had better get back there at once. Have you a revolver?”
“Always carry one,” responded Griscom.
“Keep it handy, then.”
“Eh!” cried the engineer with a stare. “What you getting at, lad?”
“That is no landslide,” replied Ralph, pointing at the obstruction.
“What is it then?”
“Train wreckers – or worse,” declared Ralph promptly. “There is no time to lose, Mr. Griscom,” he continued in rapid tones.
“Of course, if not an accident, there was a purpose in it,” muttered Griscom, reaching into his tool box for a weapon, “but what makes you think it wasn’t an accident?”
Ralph did not reply, for he was gone. Springing across the coal heaped up in the tender, he climbed to the top of the first freight car and started on a swift run the length of the train.
The young fireman was considerably excited. He would not have been a spirited, wide-awake boy had he been otherwise. The paper he had found among the debris of the obstruction on the rails had an ominous sentence across it, namely, “Handle With Care, Dynamite.”
This, taken in connection with what had at first startled him, made Ralph feel pretty sure that he had not missed his guess in attributing the landslide to some agency outside of nature.
While adjusting the air gauge Ralph had noticed a flare ahead, then a lantern light up the side of the embankment, and then, in the blaze of a wild flash of lightning, he had witnessed the descent of a great tearing, tossing mass, landing in the railroad cut.
“It can mean only a hold-up,” theorized Ralph. “Yes, I am quite right.”
He slowed down in his wild dash over the car tops, and proceeded with caution. Down at the end of the train he saw lights that he knew did not belong to the train hands.
Ralph neared the caboose and then dropped flat to the top of the car he was on. Peering past its edge, he made out a wagon, half-a-dozen men, and the train hands backed to the side of the cut and held captive there by two of the strangers, who menaced them with revolvers.
Then two others of the marauding gang took crowbars from the wagon, and one, carrying a lantern, proceeded along the side of the cars inspecting the freight cards.
“They must know of some valuable goods on the train,” reflected Ralph.
It was an ideal spot for a train robbery, between two stations, and no train was due for several hours.
Ralph was in a quandary as to his best course of procedure. For a moment he considered going for Griscom and arming himself with a bar of rod.
“It would be six to two and we would get the worst of it,” he decided. “There is only one thing to do – get back to Brocton. It’s less than a mile. Can I make it before these fellows get away with their plunder? Good! a patent coupler.”
The boy fireman had crept to the end of the car next to the caboose. Glancing down, he discovered that the couplings were operated by a lever bar. Otherwise, he could never have forced up the coupling pin.
The cars were on a sharp incline, in fact, one of the steepest on the road. Ralph relied on simple gravity to escape the robbers and hasten for relief.
“There’s some one!”
Careful as Ralph was, he was discovered. A voice rang out in warning. Then with a quick, bold snap, Ralph lifted the coupler and the pin shot out. He sprang to the forward platform of the caboose. As the car began to recede, he dashed through its open door.
“Just in time. Whew!” ejaculated Ralph, “those fellows are desperate men and doing this in true, wild western style.”
The caboose, once started, began a rapid backward rush. Ralph feared that its momentum might carry the car from the track.
A curve turned, and the lights of Brocton were in sight. Before the runaway caboose slowed down entirely it must have gone fully three-quarters of a mile.
Ralph jumped from the car, and ran down the tracks at his best speed. He was breathless as he reached the little depot. It was dark and deserted, but opposite it was the one business street of the town.
Ralph left the tracks finally and made a dash for the open entrance of the general store of the village. The usual crowd of loiterers was gathered there.
“Hello! what’s this?” cried the proprietor, as the young fireman rushed wildly into the store.
“Fireman on the Dover freight,” explained Ralph breathlessly.
“What’s the trouble – a wreck?”
“No, a hold-up. Men! get weapons, a handcar, if there is one here, and we may head off the robbers.”
It took some urging to get that slow crowd into action, but finally half-a-dozen men armed with shotguns were running down the tracks following Ralph’s lead.
It