Jack Wright and His Electric Stage Part 9

The trip to Missouri was made without adventure by the Terror, but her peculiar appearance aroused the wonder of everybody who saw her during her journey through several States.

Late in the afternoon of a pleasant day she pa.s.sed Kearney, in Clay County, and followed an old country road.

A few miles from the town she arrived near a neat old log house standing back in a wooded pasture near the road.

This house contained three rooms; in the front yard were several lilac bushes, and all the way from its fences to the town many farm houses lined the road.

Sheriff Timberlake sat on the steerer's seat of the electric stage beside Jack, and the moment the old fas.h.i.+oned Western home referred to came in view he pointed at it and said:

"There is the home of the James Boys."

"Indeed!" exclaimed Jack, eying the house intently.

"Yes; it is the residence of Dr. Reuben Samuels, their step-father, and the mother of the two villains. She's a Tartar about her boys--a regular she-fiend in temper, although a woman of fifty-five. Ah--see! There she is now!"

He pointed at the house.

The woman, in a gingham dress, stood at the door.

She was shading her eyes with her hand.

A look of surprise crossed Jack's face as he glanced at her.

"Why," said he, "she has only got one arm."

"Yes; the other was blown off by the explosion of a hand grenade which a Pinkerton detective threw into the house some years ago in an attack upon her sons. There was a younger son of hers killed by the same bomb."

Mrs. Samuels was suspiciously and curiously eying the Terror as it rolled toward her.

Then she suddenly disappeared in the house.

Her action struck Jack as being very significant.

"Did you see that!" he asked the sheriff.

"Yes. She's a queer, violent tempered woman,"

"Perhaps she has gone in to warn her sons of our coming."

"By thunder, you may be right."

"We'd better search that house, Timberlake."

"I intend to do so."

"The woman is acquainted with you, ain't she?"

"Well, I should say so," laughed the officer. "I've been here often enough to be pretty well known. My posse has shot bullets into nearly every square inch of that house and the fence, in our past efforts to get at the two bandits."

"The woman can't have much affection for you."

"She would gladly kill me, I believe, if she had the chance."

By this time the Terror reached the house.

Jack cut out the current and alighted with his companion.

They knocked at the door, and a moment later it was opened by Mrs.

Samuels, who glared at her callers and demanded:

"Well--what do you want, Timberlake?"

"Your sons, madam," blandly replied the officer.

"They ain't here."

"I am not sure of that."

"Search the house if you like."

"Thank you. I shall."

He swiftly pa.s.sed inside and went through the rooms, but saw nothing of the James Boys.

Jack remained at the door with the woman.

He saw by her nervous manner that she was smothering a feeling of intense agitation.

Whether it came from her aversion of the officer, or because her sons were around, Jack could not judge.

"That's a mighty queer wagon you've got there," she remarked presently, as she pointed at the Terror.

"Yes," replied Jack. "It is designed to run down your sons."

She started, and a tigerish look flashed from her eyes.

"So you are leagued against them, too, eh!" she hissed.

"Yes. I am here to capture them if I can."

"But you will never succeed."

"That remains to be seen."

At this moment Timberlake rushed out.

He was terribly excited.