The Short Line War Part 27

"Are you crazy, man!" Mallory shouted. "Stop her! You'll kill us!"

Jawn opened her a little wider. For an instant Mallory looked at him in wonder, then he sprang forward and jammed the lever close to the boiler.

"Reverse!" he ordered.

For reply Jawn turned on Mallory and crowded him back. Weak-nerved from the long strain, suffering for lack of sleep, the two men broke down for the moment, and struggled about the cab. The fireman stumbled back against the boiler with a dazed face, but after a moment he recovered and rushed between the two men.

"This ain't right!" he screamed. "If you two fight, we're ditched."

As he spoke, the detective who had gone with Harvey came slipping and tumbling down the cut, and clambered aboard the engine. Jawn and Mallory fell back against the opposite benches and glared at each other. Jawn suddenly reached for the throttle.

"Wait a. minute," gasped Mallory; "she's stopped."

Half reluctantly Jawn listened. Sure enough, the other train had paused, evidently just around the curve.

"The man's right," Mallory went on. "We haven't got any business sc.r.a.pping; we've got to pull together. Now tell me what you were trying to do."

Jawn looked out ahead before he replied,--

"I ain't going to leave Mr. West down there."

"Isn't Mr. West back?" asked the detective, in a startled tone. "He's had time enough to go clear to the station and back. I went pretty near to it myself. They've got a train full of men. It looks like business."

"Hear that, Donohue?" said Mallory. "What do you think we can do against a gang like that?"

"That don't make no difference, Mr. Mattison says, 'Hold the line if you lose an engine doing it,' and I'm going to hold it."

"But stop to think, man. There isn't a possible chance of holding it.

We'll do more good by dodging back and keeping them guessing until the relief comes. As it stands now we are perfectly helpless."

"Now look here," said Jawn. "You go back and fetch every man you got."

"What are you up to?"

"No difference what I'm up to. You fetch your men."

Mallory looked sharply at Jawn, then he motioned to the detective, who dropped to the ground and hurried back.

"What's your plan?" Mallory asked again. But Jawn shook his head and watched the cut.

In a moment the detective reappeared followed by five others. All six came crowding upon the ap.r.o.n. Without leaving his seat Jawn gave his orders,--

"Get on the tender, as high up as you can, and when we go at 'em, yell like h.e.l.l."

With startled, wondering faces the men clambered back, Mallory among them, taking positions on the tank and on what was left of the coal. From around the curve another succession of puffs drew Jawn's eyes to the front, and his grip tightened.

"Hold on, back there," he called, "and don't yell till I holler. Fire up, Billy."

Billy fired up and the engine moved slowly forward. She crept cautiously toward the curve, foot by foot. On the rock wall dead ahead a yellow light flashed, and then crept around toward them. Jawn waited until it was almost full in his eyes.

"Whistle, Billy," he said.

The hoa.r.s.e whistle shrieked, and the other engine seemed to start, then hesitate.

"Now," said Jawn, without looking around, and he let out a tremendous yell of "At 'em, boys!" The men on the tender promptly raised an uproar, the fireman shouted as he jerked the whistle cord, and Jawn sat with one eye on the indicator, the other on the approaching headlight, his ba.s.s voice all the while roaring out a fiery challenge not unmixed with profanity.

The engineer of McNally's special had received no orders to sacrifice his engine, and had no desire to sacrifice himself. He wavered, stopped, then tried to back. But Jawn let out another notch, and rammed his bull nose into and through the other's pilot with such force that both locomotives left the track.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE COMING OF DAWN

The collision occurred at the southern end of the cut. It had for the men in the C. & S.C. train the additional force of unexpectedness. It was not violent, as railway collisions go, but the shock of it was enough to jerk the huddled, dozing men out of their seats, and to awaken them to a full consciousness that something had happened. In the stupefied hush which followed the crash they heard outside the train a chorus of shoutings,--derisive, blasphemous, triumphant. That completed their momentary demoralization; a panic swept them away, and the frenzied men fought each other in the effort to reach the car doors.

But the rush was checked as suddenly as it had begun. The first men to get through the doors had hardly leaped to the ground when they saw from the shadow of the cut the vicious spit of revolvers and heard the bullets singing unpleasantly over their heads. Where they stood the gray dawn made them perfectly visible, but the blackness of the cut screened their a.s.sailants and made it impossible to guess their numbers. About twenty men had got out of the C. & S.C. train when the volley was fired, and the celerity with which they scattered brought another cheer from Mallory's men intrenched in the cut.

Some of the fugitives scurried to the woods, while others struggled back into the cars. The shots had been heard inside the cars, and the rush to get out of them was succeeded by the impulse to lie down. The men were without leaders, without means of measuring the peril they were in or the force of their opponents, without knowledge of what was expected of them; and they lay cowering but angry in the barricaded cars, awaiting further developments.

There was no one to tell them what to do. Where were their leaders? The murmur ran through the line of cars that McNally and Wilkins had deserted them. For neither of them was on the train when the collision occurred.

McNally, standing on the Sawyerville platform near the rear end of his train, had already given the signal to go ahead when a man came out of the woods, hurried across the muddy road, ran down the platform, and clutching his arm said eagerly:--

"Mr. McNally, Wilkins wants you to come over here. We've caught one of them and he says he thinks it's the one you told him about."

McNally turned and shouted to the engineer, "Hold on up there a minute"; but the cry was unheard, and the long train continued slowly toward the curve. Smith, who had just brought the report to McNally, started up the platform in pursuit, but McNally stopped him.

"Never mind," he said. "They won't go far. Now tell me about this fellow you've caught. Where was he?"

"Right over here in the woods; it's only a little way. Wilkins wanted you should come over there."

"Go ahead," said McNally. "Show me the way."

The two men crossed the road and entered the woods by the path. It was still as black as midnight under the trees, and they felt their way cautiously. Just north of the farmhouse they left the path and stepped into the crackling underbrush. They had gone but a few paces when they were stopped by the sound of a low whistle close by at their left.

"There they are," said the guide.

McNally started to follow him, but hesitated and then whispered:--

"I'll wait here. Send Wilkins out to me, will you?"

When Wilkins appeared McNally stepped back a little and looked around nervously before he spoke.

"Can they hear us?"

Wilkins shook his head.