bill johnson, engineer of the 187, pulling the pay-car, stared out into the night, his hand on the throttle. the long gleam of the headlight shot out through the driving rain, and he could see the wet rails gleaming far ahead. he was making a record run; the superintendent had given him some hint of his fear for the safety of the pay-car, and he heaved a sigh of relief as the train swung around a curve and hurtled down the fill on the straightaway course for wadsworth. once in the yards there, the pay-car would be safe.
then, with a quick gasp, he closed the throttle, reversed the engine, and threw on the brakes, for, far down the track ahead of him he had caught the gleam of a red lantern waved twice in the air. the light had vanished mysteriously in full flight, but a single glimpse of it was warning enough for johnson.
the moment the brakes were applied, the detectives, back in the pay-car, had grabbed down the winchesters from the wall and made ready for a fight. it might be that the engineer had sighted an obstruction on the track, and they waited instant by instant to feel the car leave the rails. it stopped with a jerk, and the detectives piled out, ready for anything.
“what’s the matter?” they asked, coming to the spot where johnson was leaning out of his cab window.
“somebody flagged me a minute ago,” answered johnson, still peering out through the night. “it’s funny he don’t come ahead an’ tell us what’s th’ trouble.”
“maybe it’s a trick to get us away from the car,” said somebody, and the detectives faced about in the darkness, instinctively bracing themselves to receive a volley of bullets.
“climb up here in th’ cab,” suggested johnson, “an’ i’ll go ahead slow, an’ find out what’s th’ matter.”
they climbed up instantly, and the engine crept slowly ahead, while they all peered out through the dashing rain, expecting they knew not what.
“there’s somethin’ on th’ track,” cried johnson, after a moment, his trained eyes catching the first glimpse of a dim obstruction. “it’s a man!” he said. “it’s th’ track-walker. somebody done fer him jest as he was signallin’ me! that’s why his lantern went out!”
the men ran forward, mr. schofield among them. in the white glare of the headlight, they could see a form stretched heavily across the track, lying on its face.
one of the men turned it over.
“my god! it’s young west!” cried mr. schofield, and dropped on his knee beside him.
“and shot through the breast,” added one of the detectives, indicating the growing blood-stain upon the boy’s shirt.
they carried him tenderly back to the pay-car and laid him on a cot there. his right hand still grasped the handle of his shattered lantern, holding it so tightly that they could not remove it. mr. schofield himself did what he could to stop the flow of blood; then went forward cautiously to investigate. in the centre of the trestle, they found that a rail had been torn from the track.
“there’s where we’d have been by this time but for that boy,” said mr. schofield, in a low voice, and motioned toward the abyss, his face set and livid. “how he got past the wreckers i can’t imagine. now i want you men to run down the fiends who did this. we’ve got to have them, no matter what it costs! now get after them! i’ll get this rail back—don’t bother about that—and take the pay-car in. you fellows catch these scoundrels!”
the detectives hurried away into the night, while mr. schofield called the train-crew, got out an extra rail which was always kept by the side of the bridge, and soon had it spiked into place.
“now go ahead, johnson,” he called to the engineer, “but you’d better run slow—maybe there’s another rail loose somewhere,” and he swung himself up the steps of the pay-car and sat down by allan’s cot, with a very grim face.
but let johnson, the engineer, tell the rest of the story, as he told it to a group of interested auditors the very next day in the roundhouse office.
“i tell you, i run over that trestle mighty cautious-like,” he said, “an’ it give me a turn when i looked down into that ditch an’ thought of what would have happened if th’ boy hadn’t flagged us. but we got across all right, an’ started through th’ cut, still runnin’ slow, fer i didn’t know but what there might be a rock on the track, when i heard somebody hollerin’ at me, an’ in a minute up comes reddy magraw climbin’ into th’ cab, lookin’ crazier ’n ever.
“‘how did i git out here?’ he asked, wild-like. ‘who fetched me out here? what ’m i doin’ ’way out here?’
“‘if you don’t know, i don’t,’ says i. ‘set down there an’ rest. what’s th’ matter with your head?’ i asked, fer i saw it was all bloody on one side.
“reddy put his hand up and felt of his head; then he took his hand down an’ looked at the blood on it.
“‘i dunno,’ he says. ‘mebbe th’ engine hit me. where’s welsh an’ the rest o’ th’ gang? they oughtn’t to have gone off an’ left me layin’ out here like this,—i didn’t think they’d do that!’
“‘what engine hit you?’ i asked.
“‘why, th’ engine o’ number four,’ he says. ‘i didn’t have time t’ git out of th’ road after i threw th’ switch. but i didn’t think th’ boys’d ’a’ left me layin’ out here like this. why, i might ’a’ died!’
“well, sir, it come to me all in a minute that somehow reddy magraw had got his senses back, an’ i tell you it set me a-tremblin’ jest like th’ time my wife had her first baby. i was purty nigh scared to death!
“‘i guess th’ engine must ’a’ hit you, sure,’ i says, to ease him up. then, as th’ track was clear, i opened up my engine, while magraw set on the floor of th’ cab in a dazed sort of way. never a word did he say till we pulled into the yards.
“‘you’d better see a doctor,’ i says. but he jumped off th’ engine th’ minute we stopped.
“‘i don’t want no doctor,’ he says. ‘i’m goin’ home.’ an’ he started off on a run.
“well, you orter seen mr. schofield when i told him. he went along with th’ boy, an’ seen him fixed up, an’ then hurried away with th’ doctor t’ see reddy. an’ he found him at home with his wife on one knee an’ his children on th’ other,—he told us when he got back.”
johnson stopped, took out his handkerchief, and mopped his eyes openly.
“i don’t keer,” he said, looking around defiantly. “it’s enough t’ make any man’s eyes wet t’ think of what that family’s been through, an’ now reddy’s give back to ’em ag’in with a head’s good as anybody’s. why, it beats anything i ever heard of!”
and, indeed, it was a nine-days’ wonder to every one. the doctors came and looked at him and explained what had happened in many learned words, and one of them wrote a paper about it, which he read before a medical society; the newspapers heard of it and wrote it up, and published reddy’s photograph,—why, mrs. magraw has all those papers put carefully away, and she gets them out occasionally even yet, and reads them and cries over them,—but they are tears of happiness and thanksgiving. for reddy was as well as ever, and the gist of all the learned medical opinions was that the blow on the head which allan dealt him had somehow set right the brain disordered by the blow it had received from the engine months before. it did for him just what an operation might have done, and did it effectually. how it had done it, the doctors couldn’t say, and there were many warm discussions over it. it was not without precedent,—not unfrequently a case of the same kind is reported,—but the righting of that delicate mechanism, the brain, is something that no physician, be he never so famous, as yet thoroughly understands.
the one fact remained that reddy was himself again, and freed for ever from the influence of dan nolan. and, indeed, nolan himself was destined to pay the penalty for his iniquities. for the detectives soon found the trail of him and his companions; the help of the wadsworth police force was secured, a bloodhound was brought to the scene, and all that night the pursuit was kept up among the hills. when morning dawned, the quarry was run to cover in an old log hut near the top of mount logan, and the detectives and police surrounded it.
the robbers put up a short fight, but they saw they had no chance to escape, and the bullets from the winchesters were whistling through the cabin in a most unnerving way, so they waved a white rag out of one of the windows and surrendered. there were four in the party, nolan and three tramps whom nobody knew. they were taken back to wadsworth and lodged safely in jail there, leaving it only to go to the state penitentiary at columbus to serve a term of years. nolan broke down at the last, like the great coward he really was, confessed, plead guilty, and turned state’s evidence against his comrades in order to save himself a year or two of imprisonment. so that was the end of nolan for a time; but his power for mischief was not yet at an end, and he later involved some of his old associates in new disasters—but that story cannot be told here.
