The conductor found his train intact; but when he reached the head end he could find neither engine, tender, nor crew. All had disappeared. Running down the ladder of the head box-car, the conductor examined the draw-bar for evidence of an accident. The coupling was apparently uninjured but the tender and engine were gone. Francis, more upset than Bucks had ever seen him, or ever afterward saw him, walked moodily back to the caboose. What humiliated him more than the strange predicament in which he found himself was that he had trusted to a subordinate and gone to sleep in his caboose while on duty.

"Serves me right," he muttered, knitting his brows. "Brakeman," he added sternly, "take your lantern and flags and get out behind. The minute the buffaloes get across the track, go back two hundred yards and protect us. I will watch the head end. While these buffaloes are crossing they will be protection enough. Soon as it is daylight we will find out where we are."

The snow continued falling and the buffaloes drifted south with the storm, which was squally. Every moment, as the sky and landscape lightened, Francis, whom Bucks had followed forward, expected to see the last of the moving herd. But an hour passed and a second hour without showing any gaps in the enormous fields. And the brighter the daylight grew, the more buffaloes they could see.

Francis stormed at the situation, but he could do nothing. Finally, and as hope was deserting him, he heard the distant tooting of an engine whistle. It grew louder and louder until Bucks could hear the ringing of a bell and the hissing of the open cylinder cocks of a slow-moving locomotive. Gaps could now be discerned in the great herds of buffaloes, and through the blowing snow the uncertain outlines of the backing engine could dimly be seen. Francis angrily watched the approaching engine, and, as soon as it had cleared the last of the stumbling buffaloes on the track, he walked forward to meet it and greeted the engineman roughly.

"What do you mean by setting my train out here on the main track in the middle of the night?" he demanded ferociously, and those that knew Pat Francis never wanted to add to his anger when it was aroused.

"Don't get excited," returned Dan Baggs calmly, for it was the redoubtable Baggs who held the throttle. "I found I was getting short of water. We are just coming to Blackwood Hill and I knew I could never make Blackwood Siding with the train. So I uncoupled and ran to the Blackwood tank for water. We are all right now. Couple us up. If I hadn't got water, we should have been hung up here till we got another engine."

"Even so," retorted Francis, "you needn't have been all night about it."

"But when we started back there were about ten million buffaloes on the track. If I had been heading into them with the cow-catcher I shouldn't have been afraid. But I had to back into them, and if I had crippled one it would have upset the tender."

"Back her up," commanded Francis curtly, "and pull us out of here."

Meantime there was much excitement at the despatchers' office in Medicine Bend over the lost train. It had been reported out of White Horse Station on time, and had not reported at Blackwood. For hours the despatcher waited vainly for some word from the bridge timbers. When the train reported at Blackwood Station, the message of Francis explaining the cause of the tie-up seemed like a voice from the tombs. But the strain was relieved and the train made fast time from Blackwood in. About nine o'clock in the morning it whistled for the Medicine Bend yards and a few moments later Bucks ran upstairs in the station building to report for assignment.



CHAPTER XV

He found Baxter needing a man in the office, and Bucks was asked to substitute until Collins, the despatcher who was ill, could take his trick again. This brought Bucks where he was glad to be, directly under Stanley's eye, but it brought also new responsibilities, and opened his mind to the difficulties of operating a new and already over-taxed line in the far West, where reliable men and available equipment were constantly at a premium.

The problem of getting and keeping good men was the hardest that confronted the operating department, and the demoralization of the railroad men from the life in Medicine Bend grew steadily worse as the new town attracted additional parasites. When Bucks, after his return, took his first walk after supper up Front Street, he was not surprised at this. Medicine Bend was more than ten times as noisy, and if it were possible to add any vice to its viciousness this, too, it would seem, had been done.

As was his custom, he walked to the extreme end of Front Street and turning started back for the station, when he encountered Baxter, the chief despatcher. Baxter saw Bucks first and spoke.

"I thought you were taking your sleep at this time," returned Bucks, greeting him.

"So I should be," he replied, "but we are in trouble. Dan Baggs is to take out the passenger train to-night, and no one can find him. He is somewhere up here in one of these dives and has forgotten all about his engine. It is enough to set a man crazy to have to run trains with such cattle. Bucks, suppose you take one side of the street while I take the other, and help me hunt him up."

"What shall we do?"

"Look in every door all the way down-street till we find him. If we don't get the fellow on his engine, there will be no train out till midnight. Say nothing to anybody and answer no questions; just find him."

Baxter started down the right-hand side of the long street and Bucks took the left-hand side. It was queer business for Bucks, and the sights that met him at every turn were enough to startle one stouter than he. He controlled his disgust and ignored the questions sometimes hurled at him by drunken men and women, intent only on getting his eye on the irresponsible Baggs.

Half-way down toward the square he reached a dance hall. The doors were spread wide open and from within came a din of bad music, singing, and noise of every kind.

Bucks entered the place with some trepidation. In the rear of the large room was a raised platform extending the entire width of it. At one end of the platform stood a piano which a man pounded incessantly and fiercely. Other performers were singing and dancing to entertain a motley and disorderly audience seated in a still more disorderly array before them.

At the right of the room a long bar stretched from the street back as far as the stage, and standing in front of this, boisterous groups of men were smoking and drinking, or wrangling in tipsy fashion. The opposite side of the big room was given over to gambling devices of every sort, and this space was filled with men sitting about small tables and others sitting and standing along one side of long tables, at each of which one man was dealing cards, singly, out of a metal case held in his hand. Other men clustered about revolving wheels where, oblivious of everything going on around them, they watched with feverish anxiety a ball thrown periodically into the disc by the man operating the wheel.

Bucks walked slowly down the room the full length of the bar, scanning each group of men as he passed. He crossed the room behind the chairs where the audience of the singers and dancers sat. He noticed, when he reached this, the difference in the faces he was scrutinizing. At the gambling tables the men saw and heard nothing of what went on about them. He walked patiently on his quest from group to group, unobserved by those about him, but without catching a sight of the elusive engineman. As he reached the end of the gambling-room, he hesitated for a moment and had finished his quest when, drawn by curiosity, he stopped for an instant to watch the scene about the roulette wheels.

Almost instantly he heard a sharp voice behind him. "What are you doing here?"

Bucks, surprised, turned to find himself confronted by the black-bearded passenger conductor, David Hawk. Baxter's admonition to say nothing of what he was doing confused Bucks for an instant, and he stammered some evasive answer.

Hawk, blunt and stern in word and manner, followed the evasion up sharply: "Don't you know this is no place for you?" and before Bucks could answer, Hawk had fixed him with his piercing eyes.

"You want to hang around a gambling-table, do you? You want to watch how it is done and try it yourself sometime? You want to see how much smarter you can play the game than these sheep-heads you are watching?

"Don't talk to me," he exclaimed sternly as Bucks tried to explain. "I've seen boys in these places before. I know where they end. If I ever catch you in a gambling-den again I'll throw you neck and heels into the river."

The words fell upon Bucks like a cloud-burst. Before he could return a word or catch his breath Hawk strode away.

As Bucks stood collecting his wits, Baggs, the man for whom he was looking, passed directly before his eyes. Bucks sprang forward, caught Baggs by the arm, and led him toward the door, as he gave him Baxter's message. Baggs, listening somewhat sheepishly, made no objection to going down to take his train and walked through the front door with Bucks out into the street.

As they did this, a red-faced man who was standing on the doorstep seized Bucks's sleeve and attempted to jerk him across the sidewalk. Bucks shook himself free and turned on his assailant. He needed no introduction to the hard cheeks, one of which was split by a deep scar. It was Perry, Rebstock's crony, whom Stanley had driven out of Sellersville on the Spider Water.

"What are you doing around here interfering with my business?" he demanded of Bucks harshly. "I've watched you spying around. The next time I catch you trying to pull a customer out of my place, I'll knock your head off."

Bucks eyed the bully with gathering wrath. He was already upset mentally, and taken so suddenly and unawares lost his temper and his caution. "If you do, it will be the last head you knock off in Medicine Bend," he retorted. "When I find trainmen in your joint that are needed on their runs, I'll pull them out every time. The safest thing you can do is to keep quiet. If the railroad men ever get started after you, you red-faced bully, they'll run you and your whole tribe into the river again."

It was a foolish defiance and might have cost him his life, though Bucks knew he was well within the truth in what he said. Among the railroad men the feeling against the gamblers was constantly growing in bitterness. Perry instantly attempted to draw a revolver, when a man who had been watching the scene unobserved stepped close enough between him and Bucks to catch Perry's eye. It was Dave Hawk again. What he had just heard had explained things to him and he stood now grimly laughing at the enraged gambler.

"Good for the boy," he exclaimed. "Want to get strung up, do you, Perry? Fire that gun just once and the vigilantes will have a rope around your neck in five minutes."

Perry, though furious, realized the truth of what Hawk said. He poured a torrent of abuse upon Bucks, but made no further effort to use his gun. The dreaded word "vigilantes" had struck terror to the heart of a man who had once been in their hands and escaped only by an accident.

"You know what he said is so, don't you?" laughed Hawk savagely. "What? You don't?" he demanded, as Perry tried to face him down. "You'll be lucky, when that time comes, if you don't get your heels tangled up with a telegraph pole before you reach the river," concluded Hawk tauntingly.

"Let him keep away from me if he doesn't want trouble," snarled the discomfited gambler, eying Bucks threateningly. But he was plainly out-faced, and retreated, grumbling, toward the dance-hall steps.

Dan Baggs, at the first sign of hostilities, had fled. Bucks, afraid of losing him, now followed, leaving Hawk still abusing the gambler, but when he overtook the engineman he found he was going, as he had promised, straight to the roundhouse.

It was almost time for the night trick. Bucks hastened upstairs to the despatchers' office and reported to Baxter, who had returned ahead of him and was elated at Bucks's success. Before the young substitute took up his train-sheet, he told the chief despatcher of how strangely the conductor, Dave Hawk, had talked to him.

"He has a reason for it," responded Baxter briefly.

"What reason?"

"There is as good a railroad man as ever lived," said Baxter, referring to the black-bearded conductor. "He is the master of us all in the handling of trains. He could be anything anybody is on this line to-day that he might want to be but for one thing. If he hadn't ruined his own life, Dave Hawk could be superintendent here. He knows whereof he speaks, Bucks."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean he is a gambler. Did you hear the shooting after I left you?"

"No, what was it?"

"It must have been while you were in Perry's. Not five minutes after we parted, a saloon-keeper shot a woman down right in front of me; I was standing less than ten feet from her when she fell," said the despatcher, recounting the incident. "But I was too late to protect her; and I should probably have been shot myself if I had tried to."

"Was the brute arrested?"

"Arrested! Who arrests anybody in this town?"

"How long is this sort of thing going on?" asked Bucks, sitting down and signing a transfer.

"How long!" echoed the despatcher, taking up his hat to go to his room. "I don't know how long. But when their time comes—God help that crowd up Front Street!"



CHAPTER XVI

Following Collins's return to duty, Bucks was assigned to a new western station, Point of Rocks. It was in the mountains and where Casement, now laying five and even six miles of track a day, had just turned over a hundred and eighty miles to the operating department. Bucks, the first operator ever sent to the lonely place afterward famous in railroad story, put his trunk aboard a freight train the next morning and started for his destination.

The ride through the mountains was an inspiration. A party of army officers and their wives, preferring to take the day run for the scenery, were bound for one of the mountain posts, Fort Bridger, and they helped to make the long day journey in the cabin car, with its frequent stops and its laborious engine-puffing over the mountain grades, a pleasant one. The women made coffee on a cabin stove and Bucks, the only other passenger, was invited to lunch with them.

When the train stopped at Point of Rocks and Bucks got off, the sun was setting, and though the thin, clear air brought the distant mountains very close, the prospect was not a cheerful one. In every direction mountain ranges, some brown and others snow-capped, rose upon the horizon. Where the railroad line made a tortuous way among the barren buttes that dotted the uneven plain all about, there was not a spear of grass nor a living thing except the stunted sage-brush of the alkali plain. In the midst of this desert a great upheaval of granite rock thrown squarely across the direct path of the railroad opposed its straight course and made a long reverse curve necessary. This was Point of Rocks.

"You," said Stanley once to Bucks, "may live to see this railroad built across these mountains as it should be built. There will be no sharp curves then, no heavy grades such as these our little engines have to climb now. Great compound locomotives will pull trains of a hundred cars up grades of less than one per cent and around two and three degree curves. These high wooden bridges will all be replaced by big rock and earth fills. Tunnels will pierce the heights that cannot be scaled by easy grades, and electric power supplied by these mountain streams themselves will take the place of steam made by coal and hauled hundreds of miles to give us costly motive power. You may live, Bucks, to see all of this; I shall not. When it comes, think of me."

But there was no thought now in Bucks's mind of what the future might bring to that forbidding desert. He saw only a rude station building, just put up, and as the train disappeared, he dragged into this his trunk and hand-bag, and in that act a new outpost of civilization was established in the great West.

He called up Medicine Bend, reported, lighted a fire in the little stove, and the spot in the desert known now to men as Point of Rocks for the first time in the story of the world became a part of it—was linked to the world itself.

But the place was lonely beyond words, and Bucks had a hard time to keep it from being too much so for him. He walked at different times over the country in every direction, and one night after a crudely prepared supper he strolled out on the platform, desperate for something to do. Desolation marked the landscape everywhere. He wandered aimlessly across the track and seeing nothing better to interest him began climbing Point of Rocks.

The higher he climbed the more absorbed he became. Youth and strength lent ardor to the ascent, and Bucks, soon forgetting everything below, was scaling the granite pile that towered above him. For thirty minutes, without a halt, he continued to climb, and reaching after a while what seemed the highest ledge of the rocky spur, he walked out upon it to the very edge and was rewarded for his labor with a magnificent panorama of the mountain divide.

In the west the sky was still golden and, though clouds appeared to be banking heavily in the north, the view of the distant peaks was unobstructed. From where he sat he could almost have thrown a stone into one tiny mountain stream that cut a silver path toward the setting sun, and another, a hundred yards away, that flowed gently toward the rising sun. And he knew—for Bill Dancing had told him—that the one rill emptied at last into the Pacific Ocean, and the other into the Atlantic Ocean. Alongside these tiny streams he could plainly trace the overland trail of the emigrant wagons, and, cutting in straighter lines, but following the same general direction, lay the right-of-way of the new transcontinental railroad.

Beyond, in every direction, stretched great plateaus, and above these rugged mountain chains, lying in what seemed the eternal solitude of the vast desert. He was alone with the sunset, and stood for some moments silenced by the scene before him. When a sound did at length reach his ear as he sat spellbound, it brought him back to himself with the suddenness of a shock.

At first he heard only distant echoes of a short, muffled blow, irregularly repeated and seeming familiar to the ear. As he speculated upon what the sound might be, it grew gradually plainer and came seemingly nearer. He bent his eyes down the valley to the west and scanned the wagon-trail and the railroad track as far as he could in the dusk, but could see nothing. Then the muffle of the sound was at once lifted. It came from the other direction, and, turning his eyes, he saw emerging from a small canyon that hid the trail to the east, a covered emigrant wagon, drawn by a large team of horses and driven by a man sitting in front of the hood, making its way slowly up the road toward the station.

The heavy play of the wheel-hubs on the axles echoed now very plainly upon his ears, and he sat watching the outfit and wondering whether the travellers would camp for the night near him and give him what he craved most of all, a little human society. The horses passed the station, and as they did so, the driver peered intently at the new building, looking back around the side of the canvas cover, and straining his neck to see all he could see, while the horses moved along.

This would have seemed to Bucks mere idle curiosity had he not noticed that some one within the wagon parted the canvas flaps at the rear as it went by and likewise inspected the building with close attention. Even this was no especial incident for wonderment, nor was Bucks surprised when the emigrants, after pursuing their way until they were well out of sight of the station itself, guided their wagon from the trail into a little depression along the creek as if to make camp for the night. The driver, a tall, thin man, wearing a slouch hat, got down from the front of the wagon and walked with a shambling gait to the head of his horses and loosened their bridles. While the horses were drinking, a second man, carrying a rifle, climbed down from the rear of the wagon. He was of a shorter and stockier build, and on one side the brim of his soft hat had been torn away so that it hung loosely over one ear, the other ear being covered only by a shock of dusty hair.

A third man emerged from under the canvas cover, dropping down almost behind the second—a fat man who looked about him with suspicion as he slowly drew a rifle out of the wagon. The driver joined his companions for a brief conference, and when it was finished the three men, examining their rifles, walked back up the road toward the station. As they neared it, two of them loitered back and presently took their places behind convenient rocks where, without being seen, they could see everything. The third man, the driver, carrying his rifle on his arm, walked ahead, crossed the road, and, proceeding with some care, stepped up on the platform and pushed open the door of the station building.

Bucks, perched high on the rocky spur above the scene, looked on, not knowing just what to make of it all. As he saw the two men conceal themselves, he wondered what sort of a call the third man intended making on the new agent, and why he should leave two armed men close at hand in ambush when calling on one lone telegraph operator. Bucks began to feel a bit creepy and watched the scene unfolding below with keen attention. The driver of the wagon getting no response as he opened the door, walked inside, and for a moment was not seen. He soon reappeared, and, stepping to the side of the building signalled his companions to come up. Bucks saw them emerge from their hiding-places and join the driver at the station door.

A second conference followed. It was briefer than the first, but there seemed some difference of opinion among the three men, and the talk terminated abruptly by the driver's clubbing his rifle and deliberately smashing in the sash of the window before which he was standing.

Whatever had held Bucks spellbound thus far released him suddenly for action when he saw the rifle-stock raised and heard the crash of the glass. He jumped up, and running to the edge of the ledge nearest the station yelled at the marauder and shook his finger at him vigorously. The attack on his habitation was too much for Bucks's composure, and, although he knew his words could not be heard from where he stood, he felt he could frighten the intruders.

This was his second mistake. No sooner had his visitors sighted him than two guns were turned on him and instantly fired. He jumped back before the fat man, who, slower than his companions, had some difficulty in shooting so high above his head, could get his gun up. Afterward, Bucks learned how providential this was, inasmuch as the big fellow was the deadliest shot of the three.

But at the moment, danger was the last thing the operator thought of. The unprovoked and murderous attack infuriated him, and again forgetting his caution he drew his own revolver without hesitation, and, running to a more protected spot, leaned over the ledge and fired point-blank into the group, as they looked up to see what had become of him.

If it had been his intention to hit any one of them with his bullets, his shooting was a failure and some experience in after years among men practised in gunnery convinced him that to aim at three men is not the right way to hit one.

But if he had meant only to create a sensation his move was successful beyond his greatest expectation. Had a bomb been exploded on the platform the marauders could not have scattered more quickly. Bucks never in his life had seen three men move so fast. The fat man, indeed, had given Bucks the impression of being heavy and slow in his movements. He now made a surprising exhibition of agility, and Bucks to his astonishment, saw him distancing his leaner companions and sprinting for the shelter at a pace that would have made a jack-rabbit take notice.

Bucks, somewhat keyed up, fired twice again at the fleeing men, but with no more effect than to kick up the dust once behind and once ahead of them as they ran. The instant they reached the rocks where they found shelter Bucks drew back out of sight, and none too soon, for as he pulled himself away from the ledge, a rifle cracked viciously from below and the slug threw a chunk of granite almost up into his face; the fat man was evidently having his innings.

Bucks, out of immediate danger, lay perfectly still for a few moments casting up the strange situation he found himself in. Why the men should have acted as they had, was all a mystery, but thieves or outlaws they evidently were, and outlaws in this country he already well knew were men who would stop at nothing.

He realized, likewise, that he was in grave danger. The night was before him. No train would be through before morning. He could not reach his key by which he might have summoned aid instantly. For a moment he lay thinking. Then taking off his hat he stuck his head carefully forward; it was greeted at once by a bullet. The lesson was obvious and next time he wanted to reconnoitre he stuck his hat forward first on the muzzle of his gun, as he had often read of frontiersmen doing, and, having drawn a shot, stuck his head out afterward for a quick look. All that remained in the open was the team and wagon, but this left the outlaws at a disadvantage, for if they wanted to get their outfit and go on their way they must expose themselves to Bucks's fire. While they might feel that one operator, armed with a revolver he hardly knew how to use, was not a dangerous foe, a Colt's, even in the hands of a boy who had thus far fired first and aimed afterward, was not wholly to be despised. An accident might happen even under such conditions, and the three men, knowing that darkness would soon leave them free, waited in absolute silence.

Night fell very soon and the light of the stars, though leaving objects visible upon the high ledge, left the earth in impenetrable darkness. Strain his eyes as he would, Bucks could perceive nothing below. He could hear, however, and one of the first sounds audible was that of the wagon moving quietly away. It was a welcome sound, even though he dared not hope his troublesome visitors would withdraw without further mischief. His chief concern at this juncture was to get safely, if he could, down the rocks and into the station to give the alarm to the despatcher; for he made no doubt that the outlaws, on their wagon trip west, would damage in any way they might be able railroad supplies and property along their way.

Before Bucks had climbed down very far and after he had made one or two startling missteps, he began to consider that it was one thing to get up a rough arete in daylight and quite another to get down one in the darkness. The heavy clouds moving down from the north had massed above Point of Rocks, and he heard once in a while an ominous roll of thunder, as he slipped and slid along and bruised his hands and feet upon the rocks.

He had with great care got about half-way down, when the pitch darkness below him was pierced by a small flame which he took at first for the blaze of a camp fire. In another moment he was undeceived. The station was on fire. It was evidently the last effort of the outlaws to wreak vengeance as they left. Bucks clambered over the rocks in great alarm. He thought he might reach the building in time to save it, and, forgetting the danger of being shot should his enemies remain lying in wait, he made his way rapidly down the Point. The flames now burst from the east window of the station, and he despaired of saving it, but he hurried on until he heard the crack of a rifle, felt his cap snatched from his head and fell backward against the face of the rock. As he lost consciousness he slipped and rolled headlong down the steep ledge.



CHAPTER XVII

How long Bucks lay in the darkness he did not know, but he woke to consciousness with thunder crashing in his ears and a flood of rain beating on his upturned face. When he opened his eyes he was blinded by sheets of lightning trembling across the sky, and he turned his face from the pelting rain until he could collect himself.

While he lay insensible from the shock of the bullet, which providentially had only grazed his scalp, the storm had burst over the mountains drowning everything before it. Water fell in torrents, and the desert below him was one wide river. Water danced and swam down the rocks and ran in broad, shallow waves over the sand, and the scene was light as day. Thunder peals crashed one upon another like salvoes of artillery, deafening and alarming the confused boy, and the rain poured without ceasing. Continuing waves of lightning revealed the railroad and station building before him and he realized that he had fallen the rest of the way down from where he had been fired at on the face of the Point.

He took quick stock of his condition and, rising to his feet, found himself only sore and bruised. He pressed his way through the flood to the track, gained the platform, and, judging rightly that his assailants had abandoned their fight, entered the half-burned building unafraid. Rain poured in one corner where the roof had burned away before the storm had put out the fire.

Stumbling through the debris that covered the floor, Bucks made his way to the operator's table and put his hand up to cut in the lightning arrester. He was too late. The fire had taken everything ahead of him, and his hope of getting into communication with the despatchers was next dashed by the discovery that his instruments were wrecked.

He sat down—his chair was intact—much disheartened. But without delay he opened the drawer of the table and feeling for his box of cartridges found that the thieves had overlooked it. This he slipped into his pocket with a feeling of relief, and, as he sat, rain-soaked and with the water dripping from his hair, he reloaded his revolver and made such preparations as he could to barricade the inner door and wait for the passing of the storm.

From time to time, awed by the fury of the elements, he looked into the night. It seemed as if the valley as far as he could see was a vast lake that rippled and danced over the rocks. Bucks had never conceived of a thunderstorm like this. Until it abated there was nothing he could do, and he sat in wretched discomfort, hour after hour, waiting for the night to pass and listening to the mighty roar of the waters as they swept broadside down the divide carrying everything ahead of them. Before daylight the violence of the storm wore itself away, but the creek in the little canyon south of the right-of-way, dashing its swollen bulk against the granite walls, pounded and roared with the fury of a cataract.

When day broke, ragged masses of gray cloud scudded low across the sky. The rain had ceased, and in the operator's room Bucks, aided by the first rays of daylight, was struggling to get the telegraph wires disentangled to send a message. His hopes, as the light increased and he saw the ruin caused by the fire, were very slender, but he kept busily at the wreckage and getting, at length, two severed strands of the wires to show a current, began sending his call, followed by a message for help to Medicine Bend. He worked at this for thirty minutes unceasingly, then, looking around on every side of the building, he satisfied himself that he was alone and, dropping down at his table, leaned upon it with his elbows, and, tired, wet, and begrimed, fell fast asleep.

He was roused by the distant whistle of a locomotive. Opening his eyes, he saw the sun streaming through the east side of the building where the window casement had burned away. Shaking off the heaviness of his slumber he hastened out to see an engine and box-car coming from the east. From the open door of the car men were waving their hats. Bucks answered by swinging his arm.

The engine stopped before the station and Bob Scott, followed by Dancing, Dave Hawk, and the train crew sprang from the caboose steps and surrounded him. They had brought two horses and Bucks saw that all the men were armed. It took only a minute to tell the story, and the party scattered to view the destruction and look for clues to the perpetrators.

Scott and Dancing were especially keen in their search, but they found nothing to suggest who the vandals were. They listened again to Bucks, as he repeated his story with more detail, and held a hurried conference in which Dave Hawk took charge. Meantime the men were tearing up planks from the platform to make a chute for unloading the horses.

Bucks's excitement increased as he saw the businesslike preparations for the chase. "Have you any idea you can catch them, Bob?" he asked feverishly.

Bob Scott's smile was not a complete answer. "How can you catch anybody in this country?" continued Bucks, regarding the scout sceptically. But Scott looked across the interminable waste of sage-brush and rock as if he felt at home with it.

"If they stick to the wagon," he explained leisurely, "we will have them in an hour or two, Bucks. A man might as well travel around here with a brass band as to try to get away with a wagon track behind him. If they stick to the wagon, we are bound to have them in two or three hours at most. You are sure they didn't have a led horse?"

"They had nothing but the team," said Bucks.

"In that case if they give up the wagon, three of them will have to ride two horses. They can't go fast in that way. We will get some of them, Bucks, sure—somehow, sometime, somewhere. We have got to get them. How could I hold my job if I didn't get them?"

That which had seemed impossible to Bucks looked more hopeful after Bob had smiled again. Dancing was busy installing the new telegraph outfit. While this was going on, Scott saddled the horses and, when he and Dave Hawk had mounted, the two rode rapidly down the emigrant trail toward Bitter Creek. The train was held until Dancing could get the instruments working again; then, at Hawk's request, it was sent down the Bitter Creek grade after himself and Scott; the trail followed the railroad for miles. Dancing remained with Bucks to guard against further attack.

The two railroad men rode carefully along the heavy ruts of the emigrant trail, from which all recent tracks had been obliterated by the flood, knowing that they would strike no sign of the wagon until it had been started after the storm. They had covered in this manner less than two miles when, rounding a little bend, they saw a covered emigrant wagon standing in the road not half a mile from the railroad track.

Scott led quickly toward concealment and from behind a shoulder of rock to which the two rode they could see that the wagon had been halted and the horses, strangely entangled in the harness, were lying in front of it. Scott and Hawk dismounted and, crawling up the shoulder where they could see without being seen, waited impatiently for some sign of life from the suspicious outfit. The description Bucks had given fitted the wagon very well, and the two lay for a time waiting for something to happen, and exchanging speculations as to what the situation might mean. They were hoping that the thieves might, if they had gone away, return, and with this thought restrained their impatience.

"It may be a trick to get us up to shooting distance, Bob," suggested Hawk when Scott proposed they should close in.

"But that wouldn't explain why the horses are lying there in that way, Dave. Something else has happened. Those horses are dead; they haven't moved. Suppose I circle the outfit," suggested Scott benevolently.

"Take care they don't get a shot at you."

"If they can get a shot at me before I can at them they are welcome," returned Scott as he picked up his bridle rein. "From what Bucks told me I don't think a great deal of their shooting. He is a level-headed boy, that long-legged operator." And Scott, with some quiet grimaces, recounted Bucks's story of his descent of Point of Rocks the night before, under the fire of the three desperadoes.

That he himself was now taking his own life in his hands as he started on a perilous reconnoissance, cost him no thought. Such a situation he was quite used to. But for a green boy from the East to put up so unequal a fight seemed to the experienced scout a most humorous proceeding.

He mounted his horse and directing Hawk what to do if he should be hit, set out to ride completely around the suspected wagon. The canvas cover was the uncertain element in the situation. It might conceal nobody, and yet it might conceal three rifles waiting for an indiscreet pursuer to come within range. Scott, taking advantage of the uneven country, rode circumspectly to the south, keeping the object of his caution well in view, and at times, under cover of friendly rocks, getting up quite close to it.

Before he had completed half his ride he had satisfied himself as to the actual state of affairs. Yet his habitual caution led him to follow out his original purpose quite as carefully as if he had reached no conclusion. When he crossed the trail west of the wagon, he looked closely for fresh tracks, but there were none. He then circled to the north and was soon able, by dismounting, to crawl under cover within a hundred yards of the heads of the horses. When he got up to where he could see without being seen he perceived clearly that his surmise had been correct.

Both horses lay dead in the harness. From the front seat of the wagon a boot protruded; nothing more could be seen. Scott now, by signals, summoned Dave Hawk from where he lay, and when the swarthy conductor reached the scout, Scott called out loudly at the wagon.

There was no answer, no movement, no sound. Things began to seem queer; in the bright blaze of sunshine, and with the parched desert glistening after the welcome rain, there in the midst of the vast amphitheatre of mountains lay the dead horses before the mysterious wagon. But nowhere about was any sign of life, and the wagon might hold within its white walls death for whoever should unwarily approach it.

Bob Scott had no idea, however, of sacrificing himself to any scheme that might have occurred to the enemy to lure him within danger. He called out again at the top of his voice and demanded a surrender. No sound gave any response, and raising his rifle he sent a bullet through the extreme top of the canvas cover midway back from the driver's seat.

The echoes of the report crashed back to the rocks, but brought nothing from the silence of the emigrant wagon. A second shot followed, tearing through the side board of the wagon-box itself; yet there was no answer. Scott, taking his horse, while Hawk remained in hiding and covered the scene with his own rifle, led the horse so that it served as a shelter and walked directly toward the wagon itself. As he neared it he approached from the front, pausing at times to survey what he saw. Hawk watched him lead his unwilling horse, trembling with fear, up to the dead team as they lay in the bright sunlight, and saw Scott take hold of the protruding boot, peer above it into the wagon itself and, without turning his head, beckon Hawk to come up.

Under the canvas, the driver of the wagon lay dead with the lines clutched in his stiffened fingers, just as he had fallen when death struck his horses. The two frontiersmen needed no explanation of what they saw in the scarred and blackened face of the outlaw. A bolt of lightning had killed him and stricken both horses in the same instant. Bob crawled into the wagon and with Hawk's help dragged the dead man forward into the sunlight. Both recognized him. It was Bucks's assailant and enemy, the Medicine Bend and Spider Water gambler, Perry.



CHAPTER XVIII

The two men, aided by the crew of the train that now came down the Bitter Creek grade, got the dead body of the outlaw back to Point of Rocks just as a mixed train from the east reached there, with Stanley and a detail of cavalry aboard. Stanley walked straight to Bucks, caught him by the shoulders, and shook him as if to make sure he was all right.

"Gave you a warm reception, did they, Bucks?"

"Moderately warm, colonel."

Stanley shook his head. "It is all wrong. They never should have sent you out here alone," he declared brusquely. "These superintendents seem to think they are railroading in Ohio instead of the Rocky Mountains. Dave," he continued, turning to Hawk as the latter came up, "I hear you have just brought in Perry dead. What have we got here, anyway?"

"Some of the Medicine Bend gang," returned Hawk tersely.

"What are they doing?"

"Evening up old scores, I guess."

Stanley looked at the dead man as they laid him out on the platform: "And hastening their own day of reckoning," he said. "There shall be no more of this if we have to drive every man of the gang out of the country. Who do you think was with Perry, Bob?" he demanded, questioning Scott.

"There is nothing to show that till we get them—and we ought to be after them now," returned the scout. "But," he added softly as he hitched his trousers, "I think one of the two might be young John Rebstock."

"You need lose no time, Bob. Here are ten men with fresh horses at your orders." Stanley pointed to the troopers who were unloading their mounts.

"Give Dave and me three of the best of these men," said Scott. "I will follow the west trail. Put a sergeant with the others on the trail east to make sure they haven't doubled back on us—but I don't think they have."

"Why?"

"They must have stolen that team and wagon, that is certain. More than likely they murdered the man they took it from. The trail is probably alive with men looking for them. These fellows were trying to get to Casement's camp for gambling, and probably they are heading that way fast now. We will pick those fellows up, colonel, somewhere between here and Bridger's Gap."

The three troopers that Scott selected were told off and, after a few rapid arrangements for sending back information, the five men of the west-trail party, headed by Scott and Dave Hawk, rode down Bitter Creek and, scattering in a wide skirmish line wherever the formation of the country permitted, scanned the ground for signs of the fugitives.

"We shan't find anything till we get to where they were when the rain stopped," Scott told the trooper near whom he was riding. It was, in fact, nearly ten miles from Point of Rocks before they picked up the footprints of two men travelling apart from each other, but headed north and west. These they followed on a long detour away from the regular wagon road until the two trails turned and entered, from the southwest, a camp made the night before by a big trading outfit on the regular overland trail.

Here, of course, all trace of the men disappeared. It was now drawing toward evening. Scott resolved to follow the trading outfit, but the party still rode slowly to make sure the men they wanted did not sneak away from the wagons of their new-found friends. The pursuers rode steadily on, and as the sun went down they perceived in a small canyon ahead of them the wagons of the outfit they were trailing, parked in a camp for the night.

Scott gave the troopers directions as to where to post themselves, at some distance east and west of the canyon, to provide against a sortie of the fugitives and, riding with Hawk directly into the camp, asked for the boss. He appeared after some delay and proved to be a French trader with supplies for Salt Lake.

Hawk, whose long visage and keen eyes gave him a particularly stern air—and David Hawk was never very communicative or very warm-mannered—asked the questions. The Frenchman was civil, but denied having any men with him except those he had brought from the Missouri River. However, he offered to line up his men for the railroad party to look over. To this Hawk agreed, and, when the word had been passed, the entire force of the trader were assembled in front of the head wagon.

Scott rode slowly up the line scrutinizing each face, and, turning again, rode down the line. Once he stopped and questioned a suspicious-looking teamster wearing a hat that answered Bucks's description, but the man's answers were satisfactory.

When Scott had finished his inspection the men started to disband. Hawk stopped them. "Stay where you are," he called out curtly. Turning to the Frenchman, he added: "We will have to search your wagons."

Again the trader made no objection, though some of his men did.

The three troopers were signalled in, and posted so there could be no dodging from one wagon to another, and Hawk gave them orders, loud enough for all to hear, to shoot on sight any one leaving the wagons. And while he himself kept command of the whole situation, Scott dismounted and accompanied by the trader began the search. The hunt was tedious and the teamsters murmured at the delay to their camp work. But the search went forward unrelentingly. Not a corner capable of concealing a dog was overlooked by the painstaking Indian and not until he had reached the last wagon was his hope exhausted.

This wagon stood at the extreme end of a wash-out in the side of the canyon itself. It was filled with bales of coarse red blankets, but no man was to be found among them.

Scott did find something, however, in a sort of a nest fashioned among the bales near the middle of the wagon. What would have escaped an eye less trained to look for trifles attracted his at once. It was a dingy metal tag. Scott picked it up. It bore the name of a Medicine Bend saloon and the heads of three horses, from the design of which the saloon itself took a widely known and ill name. He laid his hand on the blanket from which he had picked the tag. The wool was still warm.

Scott only smiled to himself. Both ends of the little canyon were guarded. From where he was searching the scout peered carefully out at the canyon walls. There were hiding-places, but they were hardly large enough to conceal a man. It was somewhere in the rocks close at hand that the fugitives had found a temporary refuge; but they could not now escape—nor could they be far from the wagon.

Without losing sight of the surroundings, Scott, disclosing nothing of his discovery to the trader, announced that he was satisfied and that the men he wanted did not appear to be there. He added, however, that if the Frenchman had no objection his party would pitch camp close by and ride with him in the morning. The Frenchman maintained his courtesy by inviting the party to take supper with him, and Scott, agreeing to return, rode away with Hawk and the three troopers.

They had not ridden far, when Bob dismounted the party and leaving the horses with one trooper set two as pickets and posted himself in hiding on one side the canyon, with Hawk on the other, to watch the camp. What he saw or whether his patience was in any degree rewarded no one could have told from his inscrutable face as he walked into the camp at dusk and sat down with the trader to supper. The moon was just rising and down at the creek, a little way from where Scott sat, some belated teamsters were washing their hands and faces and preparing their own supper. Scott ate slowly and with his back to the fire kept his eye on the group of men down at the creek. When he had finished, he walked down to the stream himself. A large man in the group fitted, in his hat and dress, Bucks's exact description. Scott had already spotted him an hour before, and stepped up to him now to arrest young John Rebstock.

He laid his hand on the man's shoulder and the man turned. But to Scott's surprise he was not the man wanted at all. He wore Rebstock's clothes and fitted Rebstock's description, but he was not Rebstock. The scout understood instantly how he had been tricked, but gave no sign.

Within the preceding thirty minutes the real Rebstock, whom Scott had already marked from his hiding-place in the canyon, had traded clothes with this man and, no doubt, made good his escape.

If Bob was chagrined, he made no sign.

"You must have made a good trade," he said, smiling at the teamster. "These clothes are a little big, but you will grow to them. How much boot did you get?"

Scott looked so slight and inoffensive that the teamster attempted insolence, and not only refused to answer questions, but threatened violence if the scout persisted in asking them. His companions crowding up encouraged him.

But numbers were not allowed for an instant to dominate the situation. Scott whipped a revolver from his belt, cocked it, and pressed it against the teamster's side. Dave Hawk loomed up in the moonlight and, catching by the collar one after another of the men crowding around Scott, Hawk, with his right hand or his left, whirled them spinning out of his way. If a man resisted the rough treatment, Hawk unceremoniously knocked him down and, drawing his own revolver, took his stand beside his threatened companion.

Other men came running up, the trader among them. A few words explained everything and the recalcitrant teamster concluded to speak. Scott, indeed, had but little to ask: he already knew the whole story. And when the teamster, threatened with search, pulled from his pocket a roll of bank-notes which he acknowledged had been given him for concealing the two fugitives and providing them with clothes, Scott released him—only notifying the trader incidentally that the man was robbing him and had loot, taken from the ammunition wagon, concealed under his blanket bales just searched. This information led to new excitement in the camp, and the Frenchman danced up and down in his wrath as he ordered the blanket wagon searched again. But his excitement did not greatly interest Scott and his party. They went their way and camped at some distance down the creek from their stirred-up neighbors.

Hawk and Bob Scott sat in the moonlight after the troopers had gone to sleep.

"They can't fool us very much longer," muttered Scott, satisfied with the day's work and taking the final disappointment philosophically, "until they can get horses they are chained to the ground in this country. There is only one place I know of where there are any horses hereabouts and that is Jack Casement's camp."

Hawk stretched himself out on the ground to sleep. "I'll tell you, Dave," continued Scott, "it is only about twenty miles from here to Casement's, anyway. Suppose I ride over there to-night and wire Stanley we've got track of the fellows. By the time you pick up the trail in the morning I will be back—or I may pick it up myself between here and the railroad. You keep on as far as Brushwood Creek and I'll join you there to-morrow by sundown."

It was so arranged. The night was clear and with a good moon the ride was not difficult, though to a man less acquainted with the mountains it would have been a hardship. Mile after mile Scott's hardy pony covered with no apparent effort. Bob did not urge him, and before midnight the white tents of the construction camp were visible in the moonlight. Scott went directly to the telegraph office, and after sending his message hunted up food and quarters for his beast and a sleeping-bunk for himself.

At daylight he was astir and sought breakfast before making inquiries and riding back to his party. On the edge of the camp stood a sort of restaurant, made up of a kitchen tent with a dismantled box-car body as an annex.

In this annex the food was served. It was entered from one side door, while the food was brought from the kitchen through the other side doorway of the car.

Into this crowded den Bob elbowed an unobtrusive way and seated himself in a retired corner. He faced the blind end of the car, and before him on the wall was tacked a fragment of a mirror in which he could see what was going on behind him. And without paying any apparent attention to anything that went on, nothing escaped him.

Next to where he sat, a breakfast of coffee and ham and eggs had been already served for somebody, apparently on an order previously given. At the opposite end of the car a small space was curtained off as a wash-room. Scott ordered his own breakfast and was slowly eating it when he noticed through the little mirror, and above and beyond the heads of the busy breakfasters along the serving-counter, a large man in the wash-room scrubbing his face vigorously with a towel.

Each time Scott looked up from his breakfast into the mirror the man redoubled his efforts to do a good job with the towel, hiding his face meantime well within its folds. The scout's curiosity was mildly enough aroused to impel him to watch the diligent rubbing with some interest. He saw, too, presently that the man was stealing glances out of his towel at him and yet between times intently rubbing his face.

This seemed odd, and Scott, now eying the man more carefully, noted his nervousness and wondered at it. However, he continued to enjoy his own meal. The waiter who had served him, hurried and impatient, also noticed the waiting breakfast untouched and called sharply to the man in the wash-room that his ham was served and, with scant regard for fine words, bade him come eat it.

This urgent invitation only added to the ill-concealed embarrassment of the stalling guest; but it interested the scout even more in the developing situation. Scott finished his breakfast and gave himself entirely over to watching in a lazy way the man who was making so elaborate a toilet.

There was no escape from either end of the car. That could be managed only through the side doors, which were too close to Scott to be available, and the scout, now fairly well enlightened and prepared, merely awaited developments. He wanted to see the man come to his breakfast, and the man in the wash-room, combing his hair with vigor and peering anxiously through his own scrap of a mirror at Bob Scott, wanted to see the scout finish his coffee and leave the car. Scott, however, pounding ostentatiously on the table, called for a second cup of coffee and sipped it with apparent satisfaction. It was a game of cat and mouse—with the mouse, in this instance, bigger than the cat, but as shy and reluctant to move as any mouse could be in a cat's presence. Scott waited until he thought the embarrassed man would have brushed the hair all out of his head, and at last, in spite of himself, laughed. As he did so, he turned half-way around on his stool and lifted his finger.

"Come, Rebstock," he smiled, calling to the fugitive. "Your breakfast is getting cold."

The man, turning as red as a beet, looked over the heads of those that sat between him and his tantalizing captor. But putting the best face he could on the dilemma and eying Scott nervously he walked over and, with evident reluctance, made ready to sit down beside him.

"Take your time," suggested Scott pleasantly. Then, as Rebstock, quite crestfallen, seated himself, he added: "Hadn't I better order a hot cup of coffee for you?" He took hold of the cup as he spoke, and looked hard at the gambler while making the suggestion.

"No, no," responded Rebstock, equally polite and equally insistent, as he held his hand over the cup and begged Scott not to mind. "This is all right."

"How was the walking last night?" asked Scott, passing the fugitive a big plate of bread. Rebstock lifted his eyes from his plate for the briefest kind of a moment.

"The—eh—walking? I don't know what you mean, captain. I slept here last night."

Scott looked under the table at his victim's boots. "John," he asked without a smile, "do you ever walk in your sleep?"

Rebstock threw down his knife and fork. "Look here, stranger," he demanded with indignation. "What do you want? Can't a man eat his breakfast in this place? I ask you," he demanded, raising his right hand with his knife in it as he appealed to the waiter, "can't a man eat his breakfast in this place without interruption?"

The waiter, standing with folded arms, regarded the two men without changing his stolid expression. "A man can eat his breakfast in this place without anything on earth except money. If you let your ham get cold because you were going to beat me out of the price, and you try to do it, I'll drag you out of here by the heels."

These unsympathetic words attracted the attention of every one and the breakfasters now looked on curiously but no one offered to interfere. Quarrels and disputes were too frequent in that country to make it prudent or desirable ever to intervene in one. A man considered himself lucky not to be embroiled in unpleasantness in spite of his best efforts to keep out. Rebstock turned again on his pursuer. "What do you want, anyhow, stranger?" he demanded fiercely. "A fight, I reckon."

"Not a bit of it. I want you, Rebstock," explained Scott without in the least raising his voice.

Rebstock's throaty tones seemed to contract into a wheeze. "What do you want me for?" he asked, looking nervously toward the other end of the car. As he did so, a man wearing a shirt and new overalls rose and started for the door. The instinct of Scott's suspicion fastened itself on the man trying to leave the place as being Rebstock's wanted companion.

Rising like a flash, he covered the second man with his pistol. "Hold on!" he exclaimed, pointing at him with his left hand. "Come over here!"

The man in overalls turned a calm face that showed nothing more than conscious innocence. But Scott was looking at his feet. His worn shoes were crusted heavily with alkali mud. "What do you want with me?" snarled the man halted at the door.

"I want you," said Scott, "for burning Point of Rocks station night before last. Here, partner," he continued, speaking to the waiter. "I'll pay for these two breakfasts; search that man for me," he continued, pointing to the man in the overalls.

"Search him yourself," returned the waiter stolidly. Scott turned like a wolf.

"What's that?" Another expression stole over his good-natured face. Holding his revolver to cover any one that resisted, he turned his accusing finger upon the insolent waiter. "You will talk to me, will you?" he demanded sharply. "Do as I tell you instantly, or I'll drive you out of camp and burn your shack to the ground. When I talk to you, General Jack Casement talks, and this railroad company talks. Search that man!"

Before the last word had passed his lips the waiter jumped over the counter and began turning the pockets of the man in the new overalls inside out. The fellow kept a good face even after a bunch of stolen railroad tickets were discovered in one pocket. "A man gave them to me last night to keep for him," he answered evenly.

"Never mind," returned Scott with indifference, "I will take care of them for him."

The news of the capture spread over the camp, and when Scott with his two prisoners walked across to General Casement's tent a crowd followed. Stanley had just arrived from Point of Rocks by train and was conferring with Casement when Scott came to the tent door. He greeted Bob and surveyed the captured fugitives.

"How did you get them?" he demanded.

Scott smiled and hung his head as he shook it, to anticipate compliments. "They just walked into my arms. Dave Hawk and the troopers are looking for these fellows now away down on Bitter Creek. They wandered into camp here last night to save us the trouble of bringing them. Isn't that it, Rebstock?"

Rebstock disavowed, but not pleasantly. He was not in amiable mood.

"What show has a fat man got to get away from anybody?" he growled.



CHAPTER XIX

When Hawk saw Bob Scott, two hours later, riding into his camp on the Brushwood with the two prisoners, he was taciturn but very much surprised.

Scott was disposed to make light of the lucky chance, as he termed it, that had thrown the two men into his way. Hawk, on the other hand, declared in his arbitrary manner that it was not wholly a lucky chance. He understood the Indian's dogged tenacity too well to think for a moment that the fugitives could have escaped him, even had he not ridden into Casement's camp as he so fortuitously had done.

The scout, Hawk knew, had the characteristic intuition of the frontiersman; the mental attributes that combine with keen observation and unusually good judgment as aids to success when circumstances are seemingly hopeless. Such men may be at fault in details, and frequently are, but they are not often wholly wrong in conclusions. And in their pursuit of a criminal they are like trained hounds, which may frequently lose their trail for a moment, but, before they have gone very far astray, come unerringly back to it.

"If they ever give you a chance, Bob, you will make a great thief-catcher," exclaimed Hawk with his naturally prodigal generosity of appreciation.

"I certainly never expected to catch Rebstock and this fellow Seagrue as easily as that," smiled Scott, as the troopers took charge of his men.

"If you hadn't caught them there you would have trailed them there. It would only have meant a longer chase."

"A whole lot longer."

"When you come to think of it, Bob, the railroad was their only hope, anyway. They did right in striking for it. Without horses, the big camp and the trains for Medicine Bend every day were their one chance to get away."

Scott assented. "The trouble with us," he smiled, "was that we didn't think until after it was all over. Sometime a man will come to these mountains who thinks things out before they happen instead of after. Then we will have a man fit to run the secret service on this railroad. But we are losing time," he added, tightening up his saddle girths.

"What are you going to do now? And why," demanded Hawk without waiting for an answer, "did you drag these men away down here instead of leaving them for Casement to lock up until we were ready to take them to Medicine Bend?"

"I am going to drag them farther yet," announced Scott. "I am going to ride after the French trader and fit these two fellows out in their own clothes again to make it easier for Bucks to indentify them."

"Don't say 'indentify,' Bob, say 'identify,'" returned Hawk testily.

Bob Scott usually turned away a sharp word with silence, and although he felt confident Hawk was wrong, he argued no further with him, but stuck just the same to his own construction of the troublesome word.

"You've got the right idea, Bob, if you have got the wrong word," muttered Hawk. "Why didn't you think of that sooner?"

They broke camp and started promptly. About noon they overtook the trading outfit and after some threatening forced the tricky teamster to rig the two gamblers out in their own apparel. Having done this, they started on a long ride for Casement's camp, reaching it again with their prisoners, and all very dusty and fatigued, long after dark.

The hard work voluntarily undertaken by the scout to aid the boy, as he termed Bucks, in identifying his graceless assailants was vindicated when, the next morning, the party with their prisoners arrived on a special train at Point of Rocks, and Bucks immediately pointed to Seagrue as the man who had first fired at him.

There were a few pretty hot moments on the platform when Bucks, among a group of five camp malefactors on their way to Medicine Bend, confronted the two men who had tried to kill him, and unhesitatingly pointed them out. Seagrue, tall and surly, denied vehemently ever having been at Point of Rocks and ever having seen Bucks. He declared the whole affair was "framed up" to send him to the penitentiary. He threatened if he were "sent up" to come back and kill Bucks if it was twenty years later—and did, in that respect, try to keep his word.

But his threats availed him nothing, and John Rebstock who, though still young, was a sly fox in crooked ways, contented himself with a philosophical denial of everything alleged against him, adding only in an injured tone that nobody would believe a fat man anyway.

It was he, however, rather than the less clever Seagrue, who had begun to excite sympathy for what he called his luckless plight and that of his companion, before they had left the railroad camp. Among the five evil-doers who had been rounded-up and deported for the jail at Medicine Bend, and now accompanied the two gamblers, Rebstock spread every story he could think of to arouse his friends at Medicine Bend to a demonstration in his behalf.

The very first efforts at putting civil law and order into effect were just then being tried in the new and lawless frontier railroad town and the contest between the two elements of decency and of license had reached an acute pass when Rebstock and Seagrue were thrown into jail at Medicine Bend. A case of sympathy for them was not hard to work up among men of their own kind and threats were heard up and down Front Street that if the railroading of two innocent men to the penitentiary were attempted something would happen.

Railroad men themselves, hearing the mutterings, brought word of them to head-quarters, but Stanley was in no wise disturbed. He had wanted to make an example for the benefit of the criminals who swarmed to the town, and now welcomed the chance to put the law's rigor on the men that had tried to assassinate his favorite operator. Bucks, lest he might be made the victim of a more successful attack, was brought down from Point of Rocks the first moment he could be relieved. A plot to put him out of the way, as the sole witness against the accused gamblers, was uncovered by Scott almost as soon as Bucks had returned to the big town and, warned by his careful friend, he rarely went up street except with a companion—most frequently with Scott himself.

As the day set for Rebstock's trial drew near, rumors were heard of a jail delivery. The jail itself was a flimsy wooden affair, and so crude in its appointments that any civilized man would have been justified in breaking out of it.

Nor was Brush, the sheriff, much more formidable than the jail itself. This official sought to curry favor with the townspeople—and that meant, pretty nearly, with the desperadoes—as well as to stand well with the railroad men; and in his effort to do both he succeeded in doing neither.

Bucks was given a night trick on his old wire in the local station, and in spite of the round of excitement about him settled down to the routine of regular work. The constant westbound movement of construction material made his duties heavier than before, but he seemed able to do whatever work he was assigned to and gained the reputation of being dependable, wherever put.

He had risen one night from his key, after despatching a batch of messages, to stir the fire—the night was frosty—when he heard an altercation outside on the platform. In another moment the waiting-room door was thrown open and Bucks turned from the stove, poker in hand, to see a man in the extremity of fear rush into his lonely office.

The man, hatless and coatless and evidently trying to escape from some one, was so panic-stricken that his eyes bulged from their sockets, and his beard was so awry that it was a moment before Bucks recognized his old acquaintance Dan Baggs.

"They are after me, Bucks," cried Baggs, closing the door in desperation. "They will kill me—hide me or they'll kill me."

Before the operator could ask a question in explanation, almost before the words were out of the frightened engineman's mouth, and with Bucks pointing with his poker to the door, trying to tell Baggs to lock it, the door again flew open and Bucks saw the face of a Front Street confidence man bursting through it.

Bucks sprang forward to secure the door behind the intruder, but he was too late even for that. Half a dozen more men crowded into the room. To ask questions was useless; every one began talking at once. Baggs, paralyzed with fear, cowered behind the stove and the confidence man, catching sight of him, tried to crowd through the wicket gate. As he sprang toward it, Bucks confronted him with his poker.

"Let that gate alone or I'll brain you," he cried, hardly realizing what he was saying, but well resolved what to do.

The gambler, infuriated, pointed to Baggs. "Throw that cur out here," he yelled.

Baggs, now less exposed to his enemies, summoned the small remnant of his own courage and began to abuse his pursuer.



Bucks, between the two men with his poker, tried to stop the din long enough to get information. He drew the enraged gambler into a controversy of words and used the interval to step to his key. As he did so, Baggs, catching up a monkey-wrench that Bucks ordinarily used on his letter-press, again defied his enemy.

It was only a momentary burst of courage, but it saved the situation. Taking advantage of the instant, Bucks slipped the fingers of his left hand over the telegraph key and wired the despatchers upstairs for help. It was none too soon. The men, leaning against the railing, pushed it harder all along the line. It swayed with an ominous crack and the fastening gave way. Baggs cowered. His pursuers yelled, and with one more push the railing crashed forward and the confidence man sprang for the engineer. Baggs ran back to where Bucks stood before his table, and the latter, clutching his revolver, warned Baggs's pursuers not to lay a hand on him.

Defying the single-handed defender, the gambler whipped out his own pistol to put an end to the fight. It was the signal for his followers, and in another minute half a dozen guns covered Bucks and his companion.

Seconds meant minutes then. Bucks understood that only one shot was needed as the signal for his own destruction. What he did not quite realize was that the gambler confronting him and his victim read something in Bucks's eye that caused him to hesitate. He felt that if a shot were fired, whatever else happened, it would mean his own death at Bucks's hand. It was this that restrained him, and the instant saved the operator's life.

He heard the clattering of feet down the outside stairway, and the next moment through the open door on the run dashed Bill Dancing, swinging a piece of iron pipe as big as a crowbar. The yardmaster, Callahan, was at his heels, and the two, tearing their way through the room, struck without mercy.

The thugs crowded to the door. The narrow opening choked with men trying to dodge the blows rained upon them by Dancing and Callahan. Before Baggs could rub his eyes the room was cleared, and half a dozen trainmen hastily summoned and led by a despatcher were engaged out upon the platform in a free fight with the Front Street ruffians.

Within the office, the despatcher found Bucks talking to Callahan, while Baggs was trying to explain to Bill Dancing how the confidence men had tried to inveigle him into a "shell" game and, when they found they could not rob him of his month's pay in any other way, had knocked him down to pick his pockets.

Callahan, who knew the trouble-making element better than any of the railroad men, went up town to estimate the feeling after the fight, which was now being discussed by crowds everywhere along Front Street. For every bruised and sore head marked by the punishment given by Dancing in the defence of Baggs a new enemy and an active one had been made.

Stanley came in late from the west and heard the story of the fight. His comment was brief but significant. "It will soon be getting so they won't wait for the railroad men to draw their pay. They will come down here," said he ironically, "to draw it for them."



CHAPTER XX

A second and more serious disturbance followed close on the fight at the railroad station. A passenger alighting in the evening from a westbound train was set upon, robbed, and beaten into insensibility within ten feet of the train platform. A dozen other passengers hastened to his assistance. They joined in repulsing his assailants and were beating them off when other thugs, reinforcing their fellows, attacked the passengers and those railroad men that had hurried up to drive off the miscreants.

In the melee, a brakeman was shot through the head and a second passenger wounded. But the railroad men rallied and, returning the pistol fire, drove off the outlaws.

The train was hurried out of town and measures were taken at once to defend the railroad property for the night. Guards were set in the yards, and a patrol established about the roundhouse, the railroad hotel and the eating-house and freight-houses.

Stanley, with his car attached to the night passenger train, was on his way to Casement's camp when the fight occurred, and had taken Bucks with him. The despatch detailing the disturbance reached him at a small station east of Point of Rocks, where he was awakened and the message was read to him advising the manager of the murder of the brakeman.

A freight-train, eastbound, stood on the passing track. Stanley roused Bucks and, notifying the despatchers, ordered the engine cut off from the freight-train, swung up into the cab, and started for Medicine Bend. As they pulled out, light, Stanley asked for every notch of speed the lumbering engine could stand, and Oliver Sollers, the engineman, urged the big machine to its limit.

The new track, laid hastily and only freshly ballasted, was as rough as corduroy, and the lurching of the big diamond stack made the cab topple at every rail joint. But Sollers was not the runner to lose nerve under difficulties and did not lessen the pressure on the pistons. If Stanley, determined and silent, his lips set and hanging on for dear life as the cab jumped and swung under him, felt any qualms at the dangerous pace he had asked for, he betrayed none. With Bucks, open-eyed with surprise, hanging on in front of him, Stanley gave no heed to the bouncing, and the freight-engine pounded through the mountains like a steam-roller with a touch of crushed-stone delirium. Hour after hour the wild pace was kept up through the Sleepy Cat Mountains and across the Sweet Grass Plains. There was no easing up until the frantic machine struck the gorge of the Medicine River and whistled for the long yards above the roundhouse.

Things had so quieted down by the time Stanley, springing up the stairs two steps at a time, reached the despatchers' office, that they were sorry they had sent in such haste for him. Stanley himself had no regrets. He knew better than those about him the temper of the crowd he had to deal with and felt that he needed every minute to prepare for what he had to do. Bucks was sent to bring in Dancing, Bob Scott, and the more resolute among the railroad men. A brief consultation was held, and the attitude of the gamblers carefully discussed.

Scott, who had been up town since the murder, had collected sufficient proof that the chief outlaw, Levake, had done the shooting, and Stanley now sent Scott to Brush, the sheriff, with a verbal message demanding Levake's arrest.

Every man that heard the order given knew what it meant. Every one that listened realized it was the beginning of a fight in which there could be no retreat for Stanley; that it would be a fight to a finish, and that no man could say where it would end.

Bob Scott hitched his trousers at the word from his sandy-haired chief. For Bob, orders meant orders and the terror of Levake's name in Medicine Bend had no effect on him.

"You might as well ask a jack-rabbit to tackle a mountain lion as to try to get Brush to arrest Levake," declared Dave Hawk cynically.

But Stanley's hand struck the table like a hammer: "We are going to have a show-down here. We will go through the forms; this is the beginning—and I am going to follow it to the end. Either Levake has got to quit the town or I have."

Dave Hawk looked around with a new idea. He bent his eyes on Bob: "Better get Brush to deputize you to make the arrest."

"That is it!" exclaimed Stanley. "Get him to deputize you, Bob, and we will clean up this town as it hasn't been cleaned since the flood."

Scott shook his head: "I don't believe Brush has the sand for that. We will see."

Up Front Street, through the various groups of men still discussing the events of the evening, Scott, followed only by Bill Dancing, made his way, nodding and patiently or pleasantly grinning as the greetings or ridicule of the crowd were thrown at him. He went to the rooms of the sheriff only to find them locked, and made his way down town again looking through the resorts in a search for Brush.

After much trouble, he found him at a gaming-table, inclined to appear sceptical as to the story that Levake had killed an unoffending brakeman. When Scott repeated Stanley's demand that Levake be arrested, the sheriff slammed down his cards and declared he would not be made a cat's-paw for any man; that the brakeman, according to accounts reaching him, had been killed in a fair fight and he would hear no more of it. Then, as if his game had been unreasonably interfered with and his peace of mind injured, he rose from the table to relieve his annoyance.

Meantime Bill Dancing slipped into his vacated seat, picked up the discarded hand of cards and announced it was too good to throw away. "Will anybody," Bill asked dryly, "play the hand with me while Brush is arresting Levake?" The laugh of Brush's own companions at this proposal stung him as an imputation of his cowardice, and he made an additional display of rage to counteract the unconcealed contempt in which his cronies held him.

He turned on Scott angrily. "Go arrest the man yourself, if you want him," he thundered.

Scott snapped up the suggestion. He pointed a lean finger at the shifty peace officer. "Deputize me to do it, if you dare, Brush!" he softly exclaimed, fixing his brown eyes on the flushed face of the coward.

Not a man in the room moved or spoke. Brush saw himself trapped. Scott's finger called for an answer and the sheriff found no escape. "I knew you hadn't the nerve to give me a deputy's badge," laughed Scott, to spur the man's lagging courage; "you are too afraid of Levake."

The taunt had its effect. Brush raved about his courage, and Bill Dancing, slapping him ferociously on the back, convinced him that he really was a brave man. Taken volubly in tow by the two railroad emissaries, who were far from being as simple as they seemed, Brush returned to his lodgings at the jail to issue the coveted paper authorizing Scott to serve any warrants in his stead.

Before the ink was dry on the certificate the word had gone down Front Street, and the town knew that Levake's arrest was in prospect. As Dancing and Scott left the jail and walked down to the station, they were surrounded by a curious throng of men watching for further developments in the approaching crisis of the struggle with outlawry in the railroad town.

The night was far advanced, but a third element was now to make itself felt in the situation. The decent business men had already seen the approach of the storm and resolved on protecting their own interests, which they realized were on the side of law and order. Word had been passed from one to another of a proposed meeting. It was held toward daybreak in a secret place. One and all present were pledged to act together under a leadership then and there agreed upon, and after so organizing, with a resolute merchant named Atkinson at their head, and with a quiet that foreboded no good to the gamblers and outlaws, the men who had gone to the rendezvous as business men left it as vigilantes, banded together to defend their rights and property against the lawless element that had terrorized legitimate business.

In the morning secret word was brought by Atkinson to Stanley of the resolve of the new allies to stand by him in his efforts to rid the town of its undesirables for good and all. It was welcome intelligence, and the railroad chief assured the plucky merchant of his hearty cooperation in the designs of the newly constituted law-and-order committee.

"When the machinery of the law has miserably failed to protect our lives and property," he said concisely, "we have nothing left for it but to protect them ourselves." Arms had been telegraphed for and every effort made to secure troops in the emergency. But the Indian uprising had taken every available infantryman and trooper into the north and there was not now sufficient time to get them together for action. The railroad men, Stanley knew, must depend on themselves and upon such assistance as the decent element in the town could render.

Meantime the outlaws were not idle. They spent the day whipping the gamblers and their hangers-on into line, upon the prediction that if they themselves were dispersed scant quarter would be shown their disorderly associates.

Scott spent the day leisurely. Stanley had asked him not to move until his own arrangements for a defensive fight were completed. That the outlaws had secret sources of information even in the railroad circles, came out startlingly. A special train—an express car pulled by an engine—entered the railroad yard at dusk that evening, when a party of men running out from the cover of the freight warehouse attempted to rush it for arms and ammunition.

They were met at the car doors by six of the best men that could be picked up along the line during the day run of the special across the plains. Stanley had wired instructions to head-quarters to send him six men that feared neither smoke nor powder, and six stalwarts taken on at Grand Island, North Platte, and Julesburg guarded the car and tumbled like cats out of a bag upon the surprised raiders.

The encounter was spirited, but it took only a moment to convince the assaulting party that they had made a mistake. Clubbing their heavy revolvers, the guards, any one of whom in close quarters could account for two ordinary men, threw themselves from the car step directly into the crowd and struck right and left. There was no regard for persons, and in the half-dark the Medicine Bend ruffians, surprised and confused, were soon fighting one another.

But one-sided as the contest was, it did not go fast enough to suit the guards, who, seizing the clubs thrown away by the rabble, charged them in a line and drove them up the street. Railroad men who came running from the station to help were too late. The flurry was over and they found nothing to do but to cheer their new aids.

Nor were the gamblers asleep. Word had gone out both east and west of the approaching crisis between the disorderly and the law-and-order elements, and every passenger train into Medicine Bend brought mysterious men from towns and railroad camps who were openly or secretly allied in one or another vicious calling to the classes that were now making a stand for the rule or ruin of the railroad town.

A mob of sympathizers gathered in Front Street to protect from further punishment the party that had tried to capture the express car. But the railroad men had no idea of pursuing the raiders beyond the yard limits, and indeed were restrained by strict orders from doing so. Stanley sent word immediately to the sheriff, demanding the arrest of the new peace-disturbers, but the sheriff no longer made a pretence of arresting law-breakers. In Front Street, the mob, emboldened by their apparent control of the situation and increasing in clamor and numbers, were now in a humor for anything that promised pillage or vengeance. There were still among them a few cool-headed criminals who counselled caution, but these were hooted down by men who had never tasted the rigor of vigilante rule.

Out of a dozen wild schemes broached by as many wild heads of the excited crowd, in which were now lined up for any lawlessness all the idlers, floaters, the improvident, and the reckless elements of a frontier gambling town, one caught the popular fancy. Some one proposed a jail delivery to release Rebstock and Seagrue, persecuted by the railroad company. The idea spread like wildfire, and a score of men, reinforced by more at every door as they proceeded up Front Street, made their way to the jail.

Fast as they came, time was given for word to the sheriff, who conveniently got out of the way, and, led by half a dozen men with crowbars and spike-mauls, the outlaws surrounded and overran the jail yard and without a show of resistance from any one began smashing in the entrance and battering down the cell doors.

The first suggestion included only the delivery of the two men. But this was effected so easily that more was undertaken. The jail at Medicine Bend, being the only one within many miles in any direction, harbored the criminals of the whole mountain region, and these now cried to friendly ears for their own freedom. Cell after cell was battered open and the released criminals, snatching tools from the mob, led in the fight to free their fellows. In less than half an hour every cell had been emptied and a score of hardened malefactors had been added to the mob, which now proposed to celebrate the success of its undertaking by setting fire to the jail itself.

The vigilantes down town, though taking the alarm, had moved too slowly. A jail delivery meant, they knew, that their stores would be looted, and, under the leadership of Atkinson, they attempted to avert the mischief impending.

Gathering twenty-five determined men, they started with a shout for the hill, only to see the sky already lighting with the flames of the burning building. The mob, not understanding at first, welcomed the new-comers with a roar of approval.

But they were soon undeceived. The vigilantes began to try to save the jail and their efforts brought about the first clash of a night destined long to be remembered in Medicine Bend. The brawlers in the crowd stayed to fight the vigilantes. The thieves and night-birds fell away in the darkness, and like black cats scurried down town to pillage the stores and warehouses of the fire-fighters on the hill.

The few clerks and watchmen defending the stores, these knaves made short work of. Dancing and Scott, with Stanley, Bucks, and a party of railroad men, uneasy at the reports from the jail and now able to see the sky reddening with the flames, moved in and out of the gloom of side streets to keep track of the alarming situation and were the earliest to discover the looting movement.

A convenient general store at Front and Hill Streets was the first to be pillaged. Dancing wanted to lead a party against the looters, but Stanley pointed out the folly of half a dozen men trying to police the whole street.

"We can do nothing here, Bill. Those vigilantes have no business on the hill. Get word to them, if you can, that the stores are being robbed. They can't save the jail; they ought to come back and save their own property. I can't bring men up from the roundhouse. We've got to protect our own property first. If we could get word to them—but a man never could get through that mob to the jail."

"I reckon I can, colonel," said Bill Dancing, throwing off his coat.

"They will kill you, Bill," predicted Stanley.

"No," growled the lineman, rolling up his shirt sleeves. "Not me. I wouldn't stand for it."



CHAPTER XXI

Slipping away behind the long warehouses in Front Street and moving swiftly in and out of friendly shadows on his long journey up the hill, Dancing started for the jail. He was hardly more than well under way when he was aware of one following him and, turning to fell him with his fist, he started as he found it was Bucks.

The latter confronted him coolly: "Go ahead, Bill; I am going with you."

"Who said you could go?" exclaimed the lineman. "You can't. Go back!"

Bucks stood his ground.

"Do you want to get killed?" thundered Dancing hotly.

"Two are better than one on a job like this," returned Bucks, without giving way. "Go on, will you?"

With a volley of grumbling objections, Dancing at length directed Bucks to stick close to him, whatever happened, and to fight the best he could in case they were cornered.

Ahead of them the glare of the conflagration lighted the sky and the air was filled with the shouts of the mob surrounding the fighting vigilantes. Only half a block away, men were hurrying up and down Front Street, while the two clambered along the obscure and half-opened street leading to the jail and parallel to the main thoroughfare.

Dancing, to whom every foot of the rocky way was familiar and who could get over obstructions in the dark as well as if it were day, led the way with a celerity that kept his companion breathing fast. Both had long legs, but Dancing in some mysterious way planted his feet with marvellous certainty of effect, while Bucks slipped and floundered over rocks and brush piles and across gullies until they took a short cut through a residence yard and found themselves on the heels of the mob surrounding the burning jail and in the glare of the fire in upper Front Street.

"Stick close, sonny," muttered the lineman, "we must push through these fellows before they reco'nize us."

He stooped as he spoke and picked up a piece of hickory—the broken handle of a spike-maul. "Railroad property anyway," he muttered. "It might come handy. But gum shoes for us now till we are forced. Perhaps we can sneak all the way through."

Without further ado Dancing, with Bucks on his heels, elbowed his way into the crowd. The outer fringe of this he knew was not dangerous, being made up chiefly of onlookers. But in another minute the two were in the midst of a yelling, swaying mix-up between the aggressive mob and a thin fringe of vigilantes, who, hard-pressed, had abandoned the jail to its fate and were trying to fight their way down town.

Dancing, like a war-horse made suddenly mad by smoke of battle, throwing caution and strategy to the winds, suddenly released a yell and began to lay about him. His appearance in the fray was like that of a bombshell timed to explode in its midst. The slugging gamblers turned in astonishment on the new fighting man, but they were not long left in doubt as to which cause he espoused. In the next instant they were actively dodging his flashing club, and the vigilantes encouraged as if by an angel fought with fresh vigor.

Bucks was stunned by the suddenness of Bill's change of tactics. It was evident that he had completely forgotten his mission and now meant to enjoy himself in the unequal fray that he had burst in upon. The vigilantes cried a welcome to their new ally. But one cry rose above every other and that was from Dancing's own throat as he laid about with his club.

Consternation seized the rioters and they were thrown for a moment into confusion. They then recognized Dancing and a shout went up.

"Railroad men!" cried a dozen of the mob at once.

And above these cries came one wheezing but stentorian voice: "You've got 'em now; finish 'em!"

Bucks knew that voice. It was Rebstock.

The crowd took up the cry, but the lineman, swinging right and left with terrific strength and swiftness, opened a way ahead of him while Bucks kept close by till Dancing had cut through to the vigilantes. Then, turning with them as they raised their own cry of triumph, Dancing helped to drive the discomfited rioters back.