SOME one shouted that they must run the boy down. Christian hurried off to the side with another rifle, hoping to get another shot at the target, but the youngster did not appear again except for an instant as he rounded the shoulder of a hill half a mile away and was quickly out of view again.
Five men were on fast horses, only waiting the signal before they spurred away, but Christian said to them calmly:
“No use, boys. That boy weighs only a feather, and by the way the legs of that mustang twinkled, it’s a little speedster. We’ve simply had a break of bad luck.”
He turned toward Bill Naylor, who was gradually picking himself up from the ground.
“At least,” said Christian, “bad luck is what we can call it for the time being.”
His voice was perfectly quiet. His eyes were still and calm, also. But it was the brightness of a steel point that was glittering deep in them. There was not the least alteration of feature in the man, and yet Naylor knew that he was ready to drink hot blood.
“Seemed to me a risky thing, chief,” said Naylor, holding his injured head. “I didn’t see how even you could shoot at that pair without chancing hitting the kid.”
“And suppose I had?” demanded Christian. “Suppose that I had hit the boy? What of it?”
Naylor said nothing. He had a perfectly definite impression that if he had uttered a word, no matter what, he would be murdered on the spot.
Christian said to him softly: “I’ve owed you several things. They’re wiped out. We start level again, Naylor, unless you did get the word to Jim Silver last night.”
He meant it. There was no doubt about that. If ever Christian had even a fair suspicion that Naylor had carried that warning to Jim Silver, there would be death, there would be a death more hideous than fire for the traitor.
Christian had turned from Naylor to the others, and he was saying:
“Boys, this is a bit of hard luck. But the game isn’t finished. It’s several miles from here to Elsinore. Ordinarily it would require a good bit of time, in a town like that, to get together a posse to come out after a crowd like ours. But these are not ordinary times. You can see, now, why I wanted to get rid of Jim Silver last night.
“He’s back there in Elsinore, unless some kind devil moved him to leave the place to-day. He’s there in Elsinore, and the instant the news is brought in by that lad riding horseback, Jim Silver will know what’s up. He’ll have a crowd together inside of three minutes, and be pelting out here to get at us. There’s only one thing in our favor, and that is that the train is due in ten minutes. If everything works smoothly, we’ll be able to put the deal through before any interference comes this way from Elsinore and Jim Silver. Get back to your places and wait!”
They went back solemnly.
Pokey paused beside Naylor and looked him curiously in the eye.
“How’d you like it?” asked Pokey, and then, grinning, he sauntered on his way.
The whole band would turn against Naylor now. He had been too high in the favor of the chief before. He was too low in that favor now.
He sat down, muttering savagely to himself. He had been right, he knew, in disturbing the aim of the chief. He was glad that he had done it. Other people would be glad to know that he had been man enough to interfere even with terrible Barry Christian for such a purpose as that. Sally Townsend would be glad. Jim Silver would be glad, too.
As for the personal indignity, he hardly felt it, for he would never have dreamed of comparing himself with the bright glory of Barry Christian. But it seemed to Bill Naylor, as the minutes passed, that he was being carried on wings far away, and far away from the whole purpose of his old life, in which Christian had been a hero.
Some one was calling in a rather hushed voice: “The train’s already ten minutes overdue, chief. If we wanta have space between us and Jim Silver, hadn’t we better start making tracks now?”
Barry Christian stood up. He said:
“Boys, every one of you can do as he pleases. I don’t want any one of you to stay here with me unless he wants to — except Bill Naylor. The rest of you are perfectly free to run and save your scalps. If I’m left alone, I’m going ahead with this job, anyway, and if Jim Silver comes up in the middle of it, we’ll simply try to show him that bullets can cut through his flesh as easily as they cut through ours!”
It was a good talk, delivered with the right sort of a ring in the last words. It was greeted with a faint cheer, and Naylor knew that not a man of the lot would actually withdraw. That was what proper leadership meant. He wondered what this same Barry Christian could accomplish if he had behind him an army of honest men, and himself could fight with an honest purpose?
There was something else for Naylor to think of, and that was the entire attitude of Barry Christian toward him. He was now suspect, which meant that to-morrow he might be dead.
He was still in the midst of these broodings when some one called:
“I hear it! I hear it comin out of the ground!”
There was something ghostly in that announcement — all the bright heat of the sun could not remove the suggestion of a spirit transpiring from the solid earth. But then, with his own ears, Naylor heard the faint and distant humming of the heavy iron wheels on the rails.
“All right, boys,” Christian said. “The thing is going through like a song. Remember, I’m going to crack that safe if I have to do it with my hands and my teeth. There’s several hundred thousand dollars waiting for us. Everybody steady. Everybody cool. Think of the scare we’ll be throwing into the poor devils in that train — and don’t shoot at a man until you see him flash a gun! A few rounds in the air as we close in, that’s all!”
Bill Naylor repeated his own part to himself. He was to get close to the cab of the locomotive as soon as possible and cover the engineer and fireman. Cassidy, on the other side of the track, would be busy with the same task. They were the foremost of the gang stationed to get at the head of the train. Though it seemed to Naylor, as he looked down the rails, that sanded tracks and heavy brakes would surely bring the train to a halt much more quickly than had been anticipated after the engine rounded the curve of the valley.
In that case, might not the engineer be able to throw the gears into reverse and back the huge weight of the train away from the danger spot? Once under way, it would be an easy matter for the armed men in the train to keep off three times as many horsemen as Christian could offer for the battle.
These were the doubts that rose in the mind of Naylor as the sound of humming increased along the rails and then the distinct noise of the engine was heard. But he had prefigured a sort of heavy thundering of steam exhaust and laboring metal, such as a big train makes when it pulls up under the hollow of a vault of a station house, and he was amazed and taken by surprise when the engine suddenly poked its nose around the bend and came grandly on.
It looked as tall as a tree, and from its stubby smokestack a column of smoke shot swiftly back, expanding, spreading out in a flowing cloud like a half-divided head of hair. Then the engineer seemed to see the obstacle that crossed the tracks. There was a wild hooting of the whistle, and the brakes screamed, and the wheels skidded with a terrible vibration on the tracks.