Ralph on the Overland Express: or, The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer

CHAPTER V
AT BAY

A queer-looking boy about eighteen years of age was proceeding slowly down the pavement. He was stockily built, and had an unusually massive head and great broad shoulders. He was a boy who would be remarked about almost anywhere. His hair was long, and this gave him a somewhat leonine aspect.

The hat of this boy was pushed far back on his head, and his eyes were fixed and his attention apparently deeply absorbed upon an object he held in his hand. This was a thin wooden rod with two cardboard wheels attached to it. These he would blow, causing them to revolve rapidly. Then he would study their gyrations critically, wait till they had run down, and then repeat the maneuver.

His side coat pockets were bulging, one with a lot of papers. From the other protruded what seemed to be a part of a toy, or some real mechanical device having also wheels in its construction.

“Well, there’s a queer make-up!” observed Clark in profound surprise.

“He is certainly eccentric in his appearance,” said Ralph. “I wonder who he can be.”

“No, what he can be,” corrected Clark, “for he’s an odd genius of some kind, I’ll wager.”

The object of their interest and curiosity had heard the derisive hail from across the street. He halted dead short, stared around him like a person abruptly aroused from a dream, traced the call to its source, thrust the device with which he had been experimenting into his pocket, and fixing his eyes on his mockers, started across the street. The hoodlum crowd nudged one another, blinked, winked, and looked as if expecting developments of some fun. The object of their derision looked them over in a calculating fashion.

“Did any one here speak to me?” he asked.

“No, Wheels – it was the birdies calling you!” hooted a jocose voice.

“You sort of suggest something, somehow,” drawled the lad in an abstracted, groping way. “Yes, certainly, let me see. What is it? Ah, perhaps I’ve made a memorandum of it.”

The lad poked into several vest pockets. Finally he unearthed a card which seemed to be all written over, and he ran his eye down this. The crowd chuckled at the profound solemnity of his manner.

“H’m,” observed the boy designated as “Wheels.” “Let me see. ‘Get shoes mended.’ No, that isn’t it. I have such a bad memory. ‘Order some insulated wire.’ No, that’s for an uptown call. ‘Buy Drummond on Superheated Steam.’ That’s for the bookstore. Ah, here we have it. ‘Kick Jim Scroggins.’ Who’s Jim? Aha! you young villain, I remember you well enough now,” and with an activity which could scarcely be anticipated from so easy-going an individual, Wheels made a dive for a big hulking fellow on the edge of the crowd. He chased him a few feet, and planted a kick that lifted the yelling hoodlum a foot from the ground. Then, calmly taking out a pencil, he crossed off the memorandum – “Kick Jim Scroggins” – gave the crowd a warning glance, and proceeded coolly down the sidewalk, resuming his occupation with the contrivance he had placed in his pocket.

The gang of loafers had drawn back. A sight of the massive arms and sledge hammer fists of the young giant they had derided, and his prompt measures with one of their cronies, dissuaded them from any warlike move.

“Whoop!” commented Clark in an exultant undertone, and he fairly leaned against his companion in a paroxysm of uncontrollable laughter. “Quick, nifty and entertaining, that! Say Engineer Fairbanks, I don’t know who that fellow Wheels is, but I’d be interested and proud to make his acquaintance. Now steam up and air brake ready, while we pass the crossing!”

“Passing the crossing,” as Clark designated it, proved, however, to be no difficult proceeding. The crowd of hoodlums had got a set-back from the boy with the piston-rod arm, it seemed. They scanned Ralph and Clark keenly as they passed by, but made no attempt to either hail or halt them.

“We’ve run the gauntlet this time,” remarked Clark. “Hello – four times!”

The vigilant companion of the young engineer was glancing over his shoulder as he made this sudden and forcible remark.

“Four times what?” inquired Ralph.

“That fireman of yours.”

“Mr. Fogg?”

“Yes.”

“What about him?”

“Say,” replied Clark, edging close to Ralph, “just take a careless backward look, will you? About half the square down on the opposite side of the street you’ll see Fogg.”

“Why such caution and mystery?” propounded Ralph.

“I’ll tell you later. See him?” inquired Clark, as Ralph followed out the suggestion he had made.

Ralph nodded assentingly. He had made out Fogg as Clark had described. The fireman was walking along in the direction they were proceeding. There was something stealthy and sinister in the way in which he kept close to the buildings lining the sidewalk.

“That’s four times I’ve noticed Fogg in this vicinity this morning,” reported Clark. “I discovered him opposite the lodging house when I first came out this morning. When I came back he was skulking in an open entry, next door. When we left the house together I saw him a block away, standing behind a tree. Now he bobs up again.”

“I can’t understand his motive,” said Ralph thoughtfully.

“I can,” declared Clark with emphasis.

“What’s your theory?”

“It’s no theory at all, it’s a dead certainty,” insisted Clark. “Your fireman and that gang of hoodlums hitch together in some way, you mark my words. Well, let it slide for a bit. I’m hungry as a bear, and here’s the restaurant.”

It was a neat and inviting place, and with appetizing zeal the two boys entered and seated themselves at a table and gave their order for wheat cakes with honey and prime country sausages. Just as the waiter brought in the steaming meal, Clark, whose face was toward the street, said:

“Fogg just passed by, and there goes the crowd of boys. I’m thinking they’ll give us a chance to settle our meal, Engineer Fairbanks!”

“All right,” responded Ralph quietly, “if that’s the first task of the day, we’ll be in trim to tackle it with this fine meal as a foundation.”

Their youthful, healthy appetites made a feast of the repast. Clark doubled his order, and Ralph did full credit to all the things set before him.

“I was thinking,” he remarked, as they paid their checks at the cashier’s counter, “that we might put in the day looking around the town.”

“Why, yes,” assented his companion approvingly, “that is, if you’re going to let me keep with you.”

“Why not?” smiled Ralph. “You seem to think I may need a guardian.”

“I’ve got nothing to do but put in the time, and get a signed voucher from you that I did so in actual railroad service and in good company,” explained Clark. “I think I will go back to Stanley Junction on your return run, if it can be arranged.”

“It is arranged already, if you say so,” said Ralph. “We seem to get on together pretty well, and I’m glad to have you with me.”

“Now, that’s handsome, Engineer Fairbanks!” replied Clark. “There’s some moving picture shows in town here, open after ten o’clock, and there’s a mechanics’ library with quite a museum of railroad contrivances. We’ve got time to take it all in. Come on. Unless that crowd stops us, we’ll start the merry program rolling. No one in sight,” the youth continued, as they stepped into the street and he glanced its length in both directions. “Have the enemy deserted the field, or are they lying in ambush for us?”

They linked arms and sauntered down the pavement. They had proceeded nearly two squares, when, passing an alley, both halted summarily.

“Hello! here’s business, I guess,” said Clark, and he and Ralph scanned closely the group they had passed just before the breakfast meal.

The hoodlum gang had suddenly appeared from the alleyway, and forming a circle, surrounded them. There was an addition to their ranks. Ralph noted this instantly. He was a rowdy-looking chunk of a fellow, and the swing of his body, the look on his face and the expression in his eyes showed that he delighted in thinking himself a “tough customer.” Backed by his comrades, who looked vicious and expectant, he marched straight up to Ralph, who did not flinch a particle.

“You look like Fairbanks to me – Fairbanks, the engineer,” he observed, fixing a glance upon Ralph meant to dismay.

“Yes, that is my name,” said Ralph quietly.

“Well,” asserted the big fellow, “I’ve been looking for you, and I’m going to whip the life out of you.”

CHAPTER VI
FOUR MEDALS

Marvin Clark stepped promptly forward at the announcement of the overgrown lout, who had signified his intention of whipping the young engineer of No. 999. Clark had told Ralph that athletics was his strong forte. He looked it as he squared firmly before the bully.

“Going to wallop somebody, are you?” spoke Clark cooly. “Watch the system-cylinder” – and the speaker gave to his arms a rotary motion so rapid that it was fairly dizzying, “or piston rods,” and one fist met the bulging breast of the fellow with a force that sent him reeling backwards several feet.

“Hey, there! you keep out of this, if you don’t want to be massacreed!” spoke a voice at Clark’s elbow, and he was seized by several of the rowdy crowd and forced back from the side of Ralph.

“Hands off!” shouted Clark, and he cleared a circle about him with a vigorous sweep of his arms.

“Don’t you mix in a fair fight, then,” warned a big fellow in the crowd, threateningly.

“Ah, it’s going to be a fair fight, is it?” demanded Clark.

“Yes, it is.”

“I’ll see to it that it is,” remarked Clark briefly.

The fellow he had dazed with his rapid-fire display of muscle had regained his poise, and was now again facing the young engineer.

“Understand?” he demanded, hunching up his shoulders and staring viciously at Ralph. “I’m Billy Bouncer.”

“Are you?” said Ralph simply.

“I am, and don’t you forget it. I happen to have got a tip from my uncle, John Evans, of Stanley Junction. I guess you know him.”

“I do,” announced Ralph bluntly, “and if you are as mean a specimen of a boy as he is of a man, I’m sorry for you.”

“What?” roared the young ruffian, raising his fists. “Do you see that?” and he put one out, doubled up.

“I do, and it’s mighty dirty, I can tell you.”

“Insult me, do you? I guess you don’t know who I am. Champion, see? – light-weight champion of this burg, and I wear four medals, and here they are,” and Bouncer threw back his coat and vauntingly displayed four gleaming silver discs pinned to his vest.

“If you had four more, big as cartwheels, I don’t see how I would be interested,” observed Ralph.

“You don’t?” yelled Bouncer, hopping mad at failing to dazzle this new opponent with an acquisition that had awed his juvenile cohorts and admirers. “Why, I’ll grind you to powder! Strip.”

With this Bouncer threw off his coat, and there was a scuffle among his minions to secure the honor of holding it.

“I don’t intend to strip,” remarked Ralph, “and I don’t want to strike you, but you’ve got to open a way for myself and my friend to go about our business, or I’ll knock you down.”

“You’ll–Fellows, hear him!” shrieked Bouncer, dancing from foot to foot. “Oh, you mincemeat! up with your fists! It’s business now.”

The young engineer saw that it was impossible to evade a fight. The allusion of Bouncer to Jim Evans was enlightening. It explained the animus of the present attack.

If Lemuel Fogg had been bent on queering the special record run to Bridgeport out of jealousy, Evans, a former boon companion of the fireman, had it in for Ralph on a more malicious basis. The young railroader knew that Evans was capable of any meanness or cruelty to pay him back for causing his arrest as an incendiary during the recent railroad strike on the Great Northern.

There was no doubt but what Evans had advised his graceless nephew of the intended visit of Ralph to Bridgeport. During the strike Evans had maimed railroad men and had been guilty of many other cruel acts of vandalism. Ralph doubted not that the plan was to have his precious nephew “do” him in a way that he would not be able to make the return trip with No. 999.

The young engineer was no pugilist, but he knew how to defend himself, and he very quickly estimated the real fighting caliber of his antagonist. He saw at a glance that Billy Bouncer was made up of bluff and bluster and show. The hoodlum made a great ado of posing and exercising his fists in a scientific way. He was so stuck up over some medal awards at amateur boxing shows, that he was wasting time in displaying his “style.”

“Are you ready?” demanded Bouncer, doing a quickstep and making a picturesque feint at his opponent.

“Let me pass,” said Ralph.

“Wow, when I’ve eaten you up, maybe!”

“Since you will have it, then,” observed Ralph quietly, “take that for a starter.”

The young engineer struck out once – only once, but he had calculated the delivery and effect of the blow to a nicety. There was a thud as his fist landed under the jaw of the bully, so quickly and so unexpectedly that the latter did not have time to put up so much as a pretense of a protection.

Back went Billy Bouncer, his teeth rattling, and down went Billy Bouncer on a backward slide. His head struck a loose paving brick. He moaned and closed his eyes.

“Four – medals!” he voiced faintly.

“Come on, Clark,” said Ralph.

He snatched the arm of his new acquaintance and tried to force his way to the alley opening. Thus they proceeded a few feet, but only a few. A hush had fallen over Bouncer’s friends, at the amazing sight of their redoubtable champion gone down in inglorious defeat, but only for a moment. One of the largest boys in the group rallied the disorganized mob.

“Out with your smashers!” he shouted. “Don’t let them get away!”

Ralph pulled, or rather forced his companion back against two steps with an iron railing, leading to the little platform of the alley door of a building fronting on the street.

“No show making a break,” he continued in rapid tones. “Look at the cowards!”

At the call of their new leader, the crowd to its last member whipped out their weapons. They were made of some hard substance like lead, and incased in leather. They were attached to the wrist by a long loop, which enabled their possessors to strike a person at long range, the object of the attack having no chance to resist or defend himself.

“Grab the railing,” ordered Clark, whom Ralph was beginning to recognize as a quick-witted fellow in an emergency. “Now then, keep side by side – any tactics to hold them at bay or drive them off.”

The two friends had secured quite a tactical position, and they proceeded to make the most of it. The mob with angry yells made for them direct. They jostled one another in their eager malice to strike a blow. They crowded close to the steps, and their ugly weapons shot out from all directions.

One of the weapons landed on Ralph’s hand grasping the iron railing, and quite numbed and almost crippled it. A fellow used his weapon as a missile, on purpose or by mistake. At all events, it whirled from his hand through the air, and striking Clark’s cheek, laid it open with quite a ghastly wound. Clark reached over and snatched a slungshot from the grasp of another of the assaulting party. He handed it quickly to his companion.

“Use it for all it’s worth,” he suggested rapidly. “Don’t let them down us, or we’re goners.”

As he spoke, Clark, nettled with pain, balanced himself on the railing and sent both feet flying into the faces of the onpressing mob. These tactics were wholly unexpected by the enemy. One of their number went reeling back, his nose nearly flattened to his face.

“Rush ’em!” shouted the fellow frantically.

Half-a-dozen of his cohorts sprang up the steps. They managed to grab Ralph’s feet. Now it was a pull and a clutch. Ralph realized that if he ever got down into the midst of that surging mob, or under their feet, it would be all over with him.

“It’s all up with us!” gasped Clark with a startled stare down the alley. “Fogg, Lemuel Fogg!”

The heart of the young engineer sank somewhat as he followed the direction of his companion’s glance. Sure enough, the fireman of No. 999 had put in an appearance on the scene.

“He’s coming like a cyclone!” said Clark.

Fogg was a rushing whirlwind of motion. He was bareheaded, and he looked wild and uncanny. Somewhere he had picked up a long round clothes pole or the handle to some street worker’s outfit. With this he was making direct for the crowd surrounding Ralph and Clark. Just then a slungshot blow drove the latter to his knees. Two of the crowd tried to kick at his face. Ralph was nerved up to desperate action now. He caught the uplifted foot of one of the vandals and sent him toppling. The other he knocked flat with his fist, but overpowering numbers massed for a headlong rush on the beleaguered refugees.

“Swish – thud! swish!” Half blinded by a blow dealt between the eyes by a hurling slungshot, the young engineer could discern a break in the program, the appearance of a new element that startled and astonished him. He had expected to see the furious Fogg join the mob and aid them in finishing up their dastardly work. Instead, like some madman, Fogg had waded into the ranks of the group, swinging his formidable weapon like a flail. It rose, it fell, it swayed from side to side, and its execution was terrific.

The fireman mowed down the amazed and scattering forces of Billy Bouncer as if they were rows of tenpins. He knocked them flat, and then he kicked them. It was a marvel that he did not cripple some of them, for, his eyes glaring, his muscles bulging to the work, he acted like some fairly irresponsible being.

Within two minutes’ time the last one of the mob had vanished into the street. Flinging the pole away from him, Fogg began looking for his cap, which had blown off his head as he came rushing down the alley at cyclone speed.

Clark stared at the fireman in petrified wonder. Ralph stood overwhelmed with uncertainty and amazement.

“Mr. Fogg, I say, Mr. Fogg!” he cried, running after the fireman and catching at his sleeve, “How – why–”

“Boy,” choked out Lemuel Fogg, turning a pale, twitching face upon Ralph, “don’t say a word to me!”

And then with a queer, clicking sob in his throat, the fireman of No. 999 hastened down the alley looking for his cap.

CHAPTER VII
DAVE BISSELL, TRAIN BOY

“I don’t understand it at all,” exclaimed Ralph.

“Mad – decidedly mad,” declared young Clark. “Whew! that was a lively tussle. All the buttons are gone off my vest and one sleeve is torn open clear to the shoulder, and I guess there were only basting threads in that coat of yours, for it’s ripped clear up the back.”

Clark began to pick up some scattered buttons from the ground. His companion, however, was looking down the alley, and he followed Fogg with his eyes until the fireman had disappeared into the street.

“You’re wondering about things,” spoke Clark. “So am I.”

“I’m trying to figure out the puzzle, yes,” admitted the young engineer. “You see, we were both of us wrong, and we have misjudged Mr. Fogg.”

“I don’t know about that,” dissented Ralph’s companion.

“Why, he has helped us, instead of hurt us.”

“Yes,” said Clark, “but why? It’s nonsense to say that he didn’t start out on your trip fixed up to put you out of business if he could do it. It is folly, too, to think that he didn’t know that this Billy Bouncer, relative of that old-time enemy of yours back at Stanley Junction, Jim Evans, had put this gang up to beat you. If that wasn’t so, why has he been hanging around here all the morning in a suspicious, mysterious way, and how does he come to swoop down on the mob just in the nick of time.”

“Perhaps he was planning to head off the crowd all the time,” suggested Ralph.

“Not from the very start,” declared Clark positively. “No, sir – I think he has had a fit of remorse, and thought better of having you banged up or crippled.”

“At all events, Fogg has proven a good friend in need, and I shall not forget it soon,” observed Ralph.

When they came out into the street the hoodlum crowd had dispersed. They entered the first tailor shop they came to and soon had their clothing mended up.

“There’s a moving picture show open,” said Clark, after they had again proceeded on their way. “Let’s put in a half-hour or so watching the slides.”

This they did. Then they strolled down to the shops, took in the roundhouse, got an early dinner, and went to visit the museum at the Mechanics’ Exchange. This was quite an institution of Bridgeport, and generally interested railroad men. Clark was very agreeable to the proposition made by his companion to look over the place. They found a fine library and a variety of drawings and models, all along railroad lines.

“This suits me exactly,” declared Clark. “I am not and never will be a practical railroader, but I like its variety just the same. Another thing, a fellow learns something. Say, look there.”

The speaker halted his companion by catching his arm abruptly, as they turned into a small reading room after admiring a miniature reproduction in brass of a standard European locomotive.

“Yes, I see,” nodded Ralph, with a slight smile on his face, “our friend, Wheels.”

Both boys studied the eccentric youth they had seen for the first time a few hours previous. He occupied a seat at a desk in a remote corner of the room. Propped up before him was a big volume full of cuts of machinery, and he was taking notes from it. A dozen or more smaller books were piled up on a chair beside him.

Young as he was, there was a profound solemnity and preoccupation in his methods that suggested that he had a very old head on a juvenile pair of shoulders. As Ralph and his companion stood regarding the queer genius, an attendant came up to Wheels. He touched him politely on the shoulder, and as the lad looked up in a dazed, absorbed way, pointed to the clock in the room.

“You told me to inform you when it was two o’clock,” spoke the attendant.

“Did I, now?” said Wheels in a lost, distressed sort of a way. “Dear me, what for, I wonder?” and he passed his hand abstractedly over his forehead. “Ah, I’ll find out.”

He proceeded to draw from his pocket the selfsame memorandum he had consulted in the case of Jim Scroggins. He mumbled over a number of items, and evidently struck the right one at last, for he murmured something about “catch the noon mail with a letter to the patent office,” arose, put on his cap, and hurriedly left the place, blissfully wool-gathering as the fact that noon had come and gone several hours since.

“I’m curious,” observed Clark, and as Wheels left the place he followed the attendant to the library office, and left Ralph to stroll about alone, while he engaged the former in conversation. In about five minutes Clark came back to Ralph with a curious but satisfied smile on his face.

“Well, I’ve got his biography,” he announced.

“Whose – Wheels?”

“Yes.”

“Who is he, anyway?” inquired Ralph.

“He thinks he is a young inventor.”

“And is he?”

“That’s an open question. They call him Young Edison around here, and his right name is Archie Graham. His father was an aeronaut who was an expert on airships, got killed in an accident to an aeroplane last year, and left his son some little money. Young Graham has been dabbling in inventions since he was quite young.”

“Did he really ever invent anything of consequence?” asked Ralph.

“The attendant here says that he did. About two years ago he got up a car window catch that made quite a flurry at the shops. It was used with good results, and the Great Northern was about to pay Graham something for the device, when it was learned that while he was bringing it to perfection some one else had run across pretty nearly the same idea.”

“And patented it first?”

“Both abroad and in this country. That of course shut Graham out. All the same, the attendant declares that Graham must have got the idea fully a year before the foreign fellow did.”

The boys left the place in a little while and proceeded towards the railroad depot. Ralph had conceived quite a liking for his volatile new acquaintance. Clark had shown himself to be a loyal, resourceful friend, and the young engineer felt that he would miss his genial company if the other did not take the return trip to Stanley Junction. He told Clark this as they reached the depot.

“That so?” smiled the latter. “Well, I’ll go sure if you’re agreeable. I’ve got no particular program to follow out, and I’d like to take in the Junction. Another thing, I’m curious to see how you come out with your friends. There’s that smash-up on the siding at Plympton, too. Something may come up on that where I may be of service to you.”

They found the locomotive, steam up, on one of the depot switches in charge of a special engineer. It lacked over half an hour of leaving time. While Clark hustled about the tender, Ralph donned his working clothes and chattered with the relief engineer. The latter was to run the locomotive to the train, and Ralph walked down the platform to put on the time.

“I’ve stowed my vest in a bunker in the cab,” said Clark, by his side.

“That’s all right,” nodded Ralph.

“And I’m going to get some sandwiches and a few bottles of pop for a little midnight lunch.”

“All right,” agreed the young engineer, as his companion started over towards Railroad Row.

Lemuel Fogg had not put in an appearance up to this time, but a few minutes later Ralph saw him in the cab of No. 999, which he had gained by a short cut from the street. As Ralph was looking in the direction of the locomotive, some one came briskly up behind him and gave him a sharp, friendly slap on the shoulder.

“Hello, Ralph Fairbanks!” he hailed.

“Why, Dave Bissell!” said the young railroader, turning to face and shake hands with an old acquaintance. Dave had been a train boy on an accommodation run at Stanley Junction about a year previous, and had graduated into the same line of service on the Overland Limited.

“I’m very glad to see you,” said Ralph; “I hear you’ve got a great run.”

“Famous, Fairbanks!” declared Dave. “I’m hearing some big things about you.”

“You call them big because you remember the Junction and exaggerate home news,” insisted Ralph.

“Maybe so, but I always said you’d be president of the road some time,” began Dave, and then with a start stared hard at young Clark, who appeared at that moment crossing the platform of a stationary coach from the direction of Railroad Row. “Why!” exclaimed Dave, “hey! hi! this way.”

Clark had halted abruptly. His expressive features were a study. As he evidently recognized Dave, his face fell, his eyes betokened a certain consternation, and dropping a package he carried he turned swiftly about, jumped from the platform and disappeared.

“Why” spoke Ralph, considerably surprised, “do you know Marvin Clark?”

“Who?” bolted out Dave bluntly.

“That boy – Marvin Clark.”

“Marvin Clark nothing!” shouted the train boy volubly. “That’s my cousin, Fred Porter, of Earlville.”