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

CHAPTER XXI
ARCHIE GRAHAM’S INVENTION

The cab was suddenly filled with smoke, ashes and steam. Something unusual had happened. Unable to determine it all in a minute, Ralph pulled the lever and set the air brakes.

Mingled with the jar and the hiss of steam there arose a great cry – it was a vast human roar, ringing, anguished, terrified. It proceeded from the lips of the self-dubbed Lord Montague, and glancing towards the tender Ralph witnessed a startling sight.

The monocled, languid-aired nobleman had struck a pose against the tender bar, and as Fogg opened the furnace door and the fire box suddenly belched out a sheet of flame and then a perfect cloud of ashes, the passenger of high degree was engulfed. Fogg, alert to his duty, after nimbly skipping aside, had kicked the furnace door shut. He was not quick enough, however, to prevent what seemed to be half the contents of the furnace from pouring out a great cascade of ashes as if shot from a cannon, taking the astounded and appalled Montague squarely down his front.

“Murder!” he yelled, and grasped his head in his hands to brush away the hot ashes that were searing his face.

As he did so he became a new personality. His mustache was brushed from his lip and fell to the bottom of the cab, while its former possessor made a mad dive to one side.

“Here, you chump!” cried Fogg; “do you want to kill yourself?” and grabbing the singed and frightened passenger, he pinned him against the coal and held him there. In doing this he brushed one whisker from the side of his captive’s face, and the latter lay panting and groaning with nearly all his fictitious make-up gone and quite all of his nerve collapsed.

“What’s happened?” asked Ralph, as they slowed down.

“It felt like a powder blast,” declared Fogg.

Archie Graham had uttered a cry of dismay – of discovery, too, it seemed to Ralph. The young engineer glanced at his friend perched on the top of the tender tank. The face of the young inventor was a study.

Archie acted less like a person startled than as one surprised. He appeared to be neither shocked nor particularly interested. His expression was that of one disappointed. It suddenly flashed across Ralph, he could scarcely have told why, that the young inventor had indeed been “inventing” something, that something had slipped a cog, and that he was responsible for the catastrophe of the moment. Now Archie looked about him in a stealthy, baffled way, as though he was anxious to sneak away from the scene.

Half-blinded, sputtering and a sight, “his ludship” struggled out of the grasp of the fireman. His monocle was gone. His face, divested of its hirsute appendages, Ralph observed, was a decidedly evil face. As the train came to a halt the dismantled passenger stepped from the cab, and wrathfully tearing the remaining false whiskers from place, sneaked down the tracks, seeking cover from his discomfiture.

“Hi! you’ve left that nobleman face of yours behind you,” shouted Fogg after him. “What’s his game, Fairbanks?”

“It staggers me,” confessed Ralph. “Hello, there, Graham!”

But the young inventor with due haste was disappearing over the rear of the tender, as though he was ashamed of a part in the puzzling occurrence at the moment.

“Something’s wrong,” muttered Fogg, and he opened the furnace door timidly. There was no further outburst of ashes. “Queer,” he commented. “It couldn’t have been powder. I noticed a draft soon as we started. What made it? Where is it now?”

“It was only when we were running fast,” submitted Ralph.

The fireman leaped down to the tracks. He inspected the locomotive from end to end. Then he began ferretting under the engine. Ralph watched him climb between the drivers. Strange, muffled mutterings announced some discovery. In a moment or two Fogg crawled out again.

“I vum!” he shouted. “What is this contraption?”

He grasped a piece of wire-netted belting, and as he trailed out its other end, to it was attached a queer-looking device that resembled a bellows. Its frame was of iron, and it had a tube with a steel nozzle.

“I say,” observed the young engineer, in a speculative tone, “where did that come from?”

“I found its nozzle end stuck in through one end of the draft holes in the fire box,” answered Fogg. “This belt ran around two axles and worked it. Who put it there?”

“Graham,” announced Ralph politely. “Well – well – I understand his queer actions now. Bring it up here,” continued Ralph, as the fireman was about to throw it aside.

“The young fellow who thinks he is going to overturn the system with his inventions? Well, he must have done a lot of work, and it must have taken a heap of time to fix the thing so it worked. The belt was adjusted to a T. Say, you’d better keep him out of the roundhouse, or he’ll experiment on us some day in a way that may lead to something serious.”

Ralph put the contrivance under his seat for more leisurely inspection later on. He had to smile to think of the patience, the ingenuity and the eccentric operation of the well-meant project of his young inventor friend. The bellows principle of increasing the furnace draft might have been harmless in a stationary engine. Even on the locomotive it had shown some added suction power while the locomotive was going ahead, but the moment the furnace door was opened the current of air from below sought the nearest vent. That was why “his ludship” had retired under a decided cloud in more ways than one.

When they arrived at Riverton the young engineer made a search for both Archie and the disguised impostor. He located neither. From what he gathered from the conductor, Archie had left the train at the first station after the stop. The pretended English lord had been noticed footing it back towards Stanley Junction.

The return trip was uneventful. Archie did not put in an appearance, and Ralph fancied he might have gone back to Bridgeport. The next morning when Ralph reported for duty, little Torchy, the call boy, sidled up to him in a confidential way.

“Say, Mr. Fairbanks – I noticed a fellow was on your cab on your run yesterday that I have seen before–”

“Indeed,” answered Ralph curiously; “what about him?”

“Nothing much, only he was around here a couple of days ago. He pretended that he wanted to see the inside of a roundhouse, and Mr. Forgan sent me with him to show him about. When he got me alone he began asking me all about you. Then he tried to pump me about all your boy friends. I didn’t like his looks or his actions, so I thought I would tell you what I have.”

“Thank you,” said Ralph. “If you ever run against him again, tell me.”

“I will, sure,” responded the staunch little fellow, who had a genuine friendship for Ralph, who had encouraged him greatly, by initiating him into roundhouse duties when he first came to work for the Great Northern.

Ralph could not fathom the possible motive of the stranger, who apparently was somehow interested in his doings. When they started out on their regular run, he told Fogg what Torchy had imparted to him. The fireman reflected speculatively over the disclosure.

“I can’t understand what the fellow is up to,” he admitted, “unless one of the gangs is up to a new trick and has hired a stranger to work it on us.”

There was a long wait at Riverton after arrival that day. Then they were sided, and Fogg strolled off to a restaurant. Ralph sat down on a pile of ties at the side of the track and enjoyed the lunch that he had brought with him from home. He had just finished it and was about to go to the cab and get a book on railroading to read, when a tall, farmer-appearing fellow came upon the scene.

“Say,” he drawled, “is this 999 – yes, I see it is.”

“All right,” nodded Ralph; “what about it?”

“I want to see the engineer.”

“I am the engineer.”

“Name Fairbanks?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I’m sent to you.”

“By whom?”

“Don’t know – never saw the boy before. He’s a stranger in Riverton. Came up to me and gave me a half-a-dollar to come here and deliver a message to you.”

“Let me know it,” directed Ralph.

“Come out here on the tracks, and I’ll show you where he said you was to come to see him. See that old shed over beyond those freights? Well, the boy said you was to come there.”

“Oh, he did?” commented Ralph musingly.

“Yes, he said to come alone, as it was particular. He said you’d know when I said Martin – Martin, oh, yes, Clark, that’s it.”

“Marvin Clark,” decided the young railroader at once, and as the messenger went his way Ralph ran to the engine cab, threw off his jacket and then walked down the tracks. He of course thought of Fred Porter at once. It looked as though that individual had turned up again and had sent for him, and Ralph was glad to hear from him at last.

The building that had been pointed out to him by the boy messenger was a storage shed for repair tools and supplies. Ralph passed a line of damaged freights, and reaching the shed, found its door open. He stepped across the threshold and peered around among the heaps of iron and steel.

“Is anybody here?” he inquired.

“Yes, two of us,” promptly responded a harsh, familiar voice, that gave Ralph a start, for the next instant his arms were seized, drawn behind him, and the young engineer of No. 999 found himself a prisoner.

CHAPTER XXII
IKE SLUMP AGAIN

Ralph knew at once that he had fallen into a trap of some kind. He struggled violently, but it was of no avail. Two persons had slipped up behind him, two pairs of hands were holding him captive.

“Who are you?” demanded the young engineer sharply, over his shoulder.

There was no response, but he was forced forward clear back into the shed. The front door was kicked shut. Ralph was thrown roughly among a heap of junk. He recovered himself quickly and faced his assailants.

The light in the place was dim and uncertain. The only glazed aperture in the shed was a small window at the rear. With considerable interest Ralph strained his gaze in an endeavor to make out his captors. Then in immense surprise he recognized both.

“Ike Slump and Jim Evans,” he spoke aloud involuntarily.

“You call the roll,” observed Evans with a sneer.

Ralph reflected rapidly. The last he had heard of this precious brace of comrades, they had been sentenced to prison for a series of bold thefts from the railroad company. How they had gotten free he could not decide. He fancied that they had in some way escaped. At all events, they were here, and the mind of the young engineer instantly ran to one of two theories as to their plans: Either the gang at Stanley Junction had hired them to annoy or imperil him, or Slump and Evans were inspired by motives of personal revenge.

Ike Slump had been a trouble to Ralph when he first began his ambitious railroad career. It was Slump who had hated him from the start when Ralph began his apprenticeship with the Great Northern, as related in “Ralph of the Roundhouse.” Ralph had detected Slump and others in a plot to rob the railroad company of a lot of brass journal fittings. From that time on through nearly every stage of Ralph’s upward career, Slump had gone steadily down the easy slope of crime.

When he linked up with Evans, his superior in years and cunning, he had several times sought revenge against Ralph, and but for the vigilance and courage of the young engineer his life might have paid the forfeit.

Evans acted promptly, wasting no words. He had drawn a weapon from his pocket, and this he handed to Slump. Then he turned a fierce, lowering visage upon Ralph.

“Fairbanks,” he began, “you’re to go with us – where, don’t matter, nor why. We owe you one, as you’ve known for a long time, and if it wasn’t that we’re here for the money there is in it, and not revenge, I’d take pleasure in balancing the months you got us in jail by crippling you so you’d never pull another lever. This is business, though, pure and simple. If you get hurt, you can blame yourself. You’ve got to go with us.”

“Why have I?” demanded Ralph.

“Because we say so. There’s a man quite anxious to see you.”

“Who is he?”

“That’s telling. He wants to ask you just one question. A civil answer given, and you are free as the wind. Slump, take this pistol, get up on that pile of rails, and guard Fairbanks. If he starts to run, shoot – understand?”

“I guess I do!” snarled the graceless Ike, climbing to the top of the pile of rails. “When I think of what this fellow has done to down me, it makes my blood boil.”

“I’ll be back with a wagon in fifteen minutes,” said Evans. “You take your medicine quietly, Fairbanks, and nobody will get hurt. Try any capers, and blame yourself.”

The speaker proceeded to the door of the shed, opened it, and closed it after himself as if everything was settled his way. Ike Slump, regarding the captive with a venomous expression of face, sat poising his weapon with the manner of a person glad to have an occasion arise that would warrant its use under the instructions given by his partner.

Ralph summed up the situation and counted his chances. It was apparent to him that only a bold, reckless dash could avail him. There was no chance to pounce upon and disarm the enemy, however, and Ralph hesitated about seeking any risks with a fellow who held him so completely at his mercy.

“How does it seem?” jeered Ike, after a spell of silence, but Ralph did not answer at once. He had experienced no actual fear when so suddenly seized. Now, although he could not disregard a certain risk and menace in the custody of two of his worst enemies, a study of the face of the youth before him made the young railroader marvel as to what he could find enticing in doing wrong, and he actually felt sorrow and sympathy, instead of thinking of his own precarious situation.

“Slump,” spoke Ralph finally, “I am sorry for you.”

“That so? Ho! ho! truly?” gibed the graceless Ike. “What game are you up to? Don’t try any, I warn you. You’re clever, Ralph Fairbanks, but I’m slick. You see, the tables have turned. I knew they would, some time.”

“What is it you fellows want of me, anyhow?” ventured Ralph, hoping to induce Ike to disclose something.

“Nothing to worry about,” declared Slump carelessly. “You’ll soon know. Say, though, Fairbanks, don’t stir the lion, don’t pull his tail.”

“You seem to be talking about menageries,” observed Ralph.

“You’ll think you’re in one, sure enough, if you rile Evans up. He won’t stand any fooling, you hear me. Shut up, now. We’ll leave discussing things till this job is over and done with. Then I may have something to tell you on my own personal account, see?” and Ike tried to look very fierce and dangerous. “I’ll give you something to think of, though. You’re going to tell a certain man all you know about a certain fellow, and you’re going to fix it so that the certain man can find the certain fellow, or you don’t run 999 for a time to come, I’ll bet you.”

“Who is this certain man?” inquired Ralph.

“I don’t know his name. He’s a stranger to me.”

“And who is the certain fellow?”

“I know that one – I don’t mind telling you. Then shut up. You’ve a way of worming things out of people, and I’m not going to help you any – it’s Marvin Clark.”

“I thought it was,” nodded the young engineer reflectively; and then there was a spell of silence.

Ralph could only conjecture as to the significance of Ike’s statement. There certainly was some vivid interest that centered about the missing son of the railroad president. That name, Marvin Clark, had been used to lure Ralph to the old shed. Now it was again employed. It took a far flight of fancy to discern what connection young Clark might have with these two outcasts – worse, criminals. Ralph decided that their only mission in any plot surrounding Clark was that of hired intermediaries. He did not know why, but somehow he came to the conclusion that Evans and Slump were acting in behalf of the pretended Lord Montague. Why and wherefore he could not imagine, but he believed that through circumstances now developing he would soon find out.

Slump shifted around on the pile of rails a good deal. They afforded anything but a comfortable resting place. Finally he seemed to decide that he would change his seat. He edged along with the apparent intention of reaching a heap of spike kegs. He never, however, took his eye away from Ralph. Ike, too, held his weapon at a continual menace, and gave his captive no chance to act against him or run for the door.

Near the end of the pile of rails, Ike prepared to descend backwards to the spike kegs. He planned to do this without for an instant relaxing his vigilance. As he reached out one foot to touch the rails, there was an ominous grinding sound. He had thrown his weight on one rail. The contact pushed this out of place.

Once started, the whole heap began to shift. Ralph, quite awed, saw the pile twist out of shape, and, tumbling in their midst, was his watcher. A scream of mortal agony rang through the old shed, and Ike Slump landed on the floor with half a ton of rails pinioning his lower limbs.

CHAPTER XXIII
A CRITICAL MOMENT

If the rails under which Ike Slump lay had not caught at their ends with other rails, his limbs would have been crushed out of all semblance. Ralph noted this at once, and as well the extreme peril of the situation of the enemy who, a minute previous had been gloating over his helplessness.

“Don’t move – for your life, don’t move!” shouted Ralph, and he sprang forward in front of the pinioned Ike Slump.

“I’m killed, I’m crushed to death!” bellowed Ike. “Oh, help! help!”

The weapon had fallen from his hand. Both arms wildly sawing the air, Ike shivered and shrank like the arrant craven he was at heart.

“Do just as I say,” ordered the young engineer breathlessly. “Don’t stir – don’t even breathe.”

Ralph had jumped to the end of the pile of rails. His quick eye selected the one rail that was the key of the tangle, which, directed wrong, would sweep the mass with crushing force across the pinioned body of Ike. The rails were short lengths. But for this, Ralph, strong as he was, could have done little or nothing. He got a grasp upon the rail. Then he sung out.

“Slip when I lift.”

“I can’t, – I can’t!” wailed Ike.

“You’ve got to – now!”

Ralph gave a tug at the rail. There was an ominous grind and quiver as the others interlocked. He made a tremendous lift, one which strained every sinew and started the perspiration from every pore.

“I’m numbed, I’m all crushed!” snivelled Ike; nevertheless he managed to crawl out, or rather slip out from under the uplifted rail. He rolled on the dirt floor of the shed, making a great ado. It was just in time, for Ralph felt his eyes starting from his head. He dropped the heavy mass he had sustained and staggered back, well-nigh overcome.

As his breath came back to him, Ralph glanced particularly at Ike. The latter was completely absorbed in his own sufferings. Ralph could discern from the movements of his limbs that neither of them was dislocated and apparently no bones were broken. Still, he realized that they must be badly bruised and that Ike was disabled, at least for a time.

“I’m going for help,” he said simply, and darted from the shed. Ike yelled after him to protest against desertion, but Ralph paid no attention. He planned to get to friends while Evans was still away, and he determined to get back with friends by the time Evans returned.

Fogg was at the engine as Ralph ran along the tracks, and one of the brakemen of the accommodation was with him. Ralph rapidly apprized his fireman of the situation.

“Slump and Evans, eh!” muttered Fogg, a deep crinkle of belligerency crossing his forehead. “It was Slump who stole half my chickens. As to Evans, his mean treachery during the strike came near getting me discharged. I thought they were safe in jail.”

“So did I,” said Ralph. “They seem to have escaped, though. Mr. Fogg, they are bad people to have at large.”

“Bad! they’re of a dangerous breed, I tell you. Simmons, hustle along with us.”

The fireman snatched up a furnace poker and put down the track after Ralph, on the run. He was the first to dart into the shed when they reached it, and ran up against the others following, after a swift glance about the place.

“No one here,” he reported. “Gone – they’ve slipped us – there’s no one in this shed.”

“Ah, I see,” spoke Ralph, with a look about the place outside. “Here are wagon wheels,” and then he cast his eye across the landscape.

It was so crowded with tracks, buildings and trees beyond that he could not look far in the distance. Ralph, however, was satisfied that Evans, returning with the wagon, had made haste to carry his helpless comrade to the vehicle and get beyond reach of capture.

Fogg was for starting a pursuit, but Ralph convinced him of the futility of this course, and they returned to the locomotive. Once there, the fireman went over the case in all its bearings. Ralph had heretofore told him little concerning Fred Porter and Marvin Clark. He had shown him the photograph of the latter some days previous, asking him to keep an eye out for its original. Now he felt that some confidence was due his loyal cab mate, and he recited the entire story of what he knew and his surmises.

“You’ve got a square head, Fairbanks,” said Fogg, “and I’ll rely on it every time. It’s logic to think your way. Some fellow is mightily interested in this young Clark. None too good is the fellow, either, or he wouldn’t have to beat around the bush. No, he’s not straight, or he wouldn’t hire such fellows as Evans and Ike Slump to help him out.”

“I don’t understand it all,” confessed Ralph, “but I can see that a good deal of mysterious interest centers around this young Clark. I’m going to try and get some word to Porter – and to Zeph Dallas. They should know what’s going on regarding Clark.”

The incident did not depart from the young engineer’s mind during the return trip to Stanley Junction, nor for several days later. With the escape of Evans and Ike Slump, however, the episode ended, at least for the time being. A week and more passed by, and that precious pair and their presumable employer, the pretended Lord Montague, seemed to have drifted out of existence quite as fully as had Zeph, Porter and young Clark.

One morning there was an animated discussion going on when Ralph entered the roundhouse. He was greatly interested in it, although he did not share in the general commotion.

The result of somebody’s “confidential” talk with the division superintendent had leaked out – the Great Northern was figuring to soon announce its new train.

“As I get it,” observed old John Griscom, “the road is in for a bid on the service the Midland Central is getting.”

“You don’t mean through business?” spoke an inquiring voice.

“Sure, that,” assented the veteran railroader. “We’ve beat them on the China & Japan Mail run to Bridgeport, and now the scheme is to run the Overland Express in from the north, catch her up here, and cut out Bridgeport at a saving of fifty miles on the regular western run.”

“Then they will have to take the Mountain Division from Stanley Junction.”

“Just that, if they expect to make the time needed,” assented Griscom. “Hey, Bill Somers,” to a grizzled old fellow with one arm, who was shaking his head seriously at all this confab, “what you mooning about?”

“I wouldn’t take that run,” croaked Somers, “if they gave me a solid gold engine with the tender full of diamonds. I left an arm on that route. Say, Dave Little and I had a construction run over those sliding curves up and down the canyon grades. It lasted a month. There were snowslides, washouts, forest fires. There’s a part of the road that’s haunted. There’s a hoodoo over one section, where they kill a man about once a week. Little lost his leg and his job there. My old arm is sleeping thereabouts in some ravine. No Mountain Division run for me, boys!”

“You won’t get it, never fear,” observed a voice.

“No, I know that,” retorted Somers a little sadly, indicating his helplessness by moving his stump of an arm, “but I pity the fellow who does.”

Day by day after that there were new additions to the fund of gossip concerning the new run. It all interested Ralph. Nothing definite, however, was as yet stated officially. Ralph and Fogg continued on the accommodation, and there was now little break in the regular routine of their railroad experience.

Ralph had made a short cut across the switch yards one morning, when a stirring episode occurred that he was not soon to forget, nor others. It took an expert to thread the maze of cars in motion, trains stalled on sidings, and trains arriving and departing.

It was the busiest hour of the day, and Ralph kept his eye out sharply. He had paused for a moment in a clear triangle formed by diverging rails, to allow an outward bound train to clear the switch, when a man on the lower step of the last car waved his hand and hailed him.

It was the master mechanic, and Ralph was pleased at the notice taken of him, and interested to learn what the official wanted of him. The master mechanic, alighting, started across the tracks to join Ralph.

A train was backing on the one track between them. Another train was moving out on the rails still nearer to Ralph.

It was a scene of noise, commotion and confusion. If the master mechanic had been a novice in railroad routine, Ralph could not have repressed a warning shout, for with his usual coolness that official, timing all train movements about him with his practiced eye, made a quick run to clear the train backing in to the depot. He calculated then, Ralph foresaw, to cross the tracks along which the outgoing train was coming.

“He’s taking a risk – it’s a graze,” murmured the young engineer in some trepidation.

The master mechanic was alert and nimble, though past middle age. He took the chances of a spry jump across the rails, his eye fixed on the outgoing train, aiming to get across to Ralph before it passed. In landing, however, he miscalculated. The run and jump brought him to a dead halt against a split switch. His foot drove into the jaws of the frog as if wedged there by the blow of a sledge-hammer.