HIS MIND WORKING AT LIGHTNING SPEED, Slade’s voice rang out, “Trail, Shadow, trail!”
Instantly the big black extended himself, racing along parallel to the moving cars. Slade urged him to greater speed with voice and hand. Unless something was done about it, a ripsnorting wreck was in the making when the locomotive reached the end of the tracks and plunged onto the ground beyond. Cars and stone would be scattered all over the section in a tangled mess it would take many hours to straighten out, and very likely a couple of days to reload the stone and get it moving. Above the thunder of the exhaust and the grinding of the wheels, he heard the voices of the workers raised in startled shouts. He gaged the distance to the railhead; it was frightfully close. But Shadow was overtaking the locomotive, slowly, but surely. Very quickly, however, it would be different as the train picked up more and more speed.
Inch by inch Shadow crept up on the head car, a boxcar loaded with tools and materials. That car, Slade knew, must be reached before making the dreadfully dangerous try at boarding the moving train.
“It’s going to be close, Shadow, it’s going to be close!” he muttered. “Sift sand, feller!”
Shadow responded gallantly; he was still going a little faster than the flying cars. Slade stood in the stirrups, on tip-toe, gaged the distance to the side of the boxcar with the utmost nicety. Another moment and he leaned far over, reached out and grasped the grab irons near the end of the car.
The jerk when he left the saddle was terrific. One hand was torn loose from its hold. For an instant he dangled by two fingers, with the deadly wheels spinning beneath him. Then he caught a firm hold and swarmed up the grab irons to the roof of the rocking car. Another quick estimate of distance and he leaped across the opening to the tender, slipped, floundered, caught his balance and went sliding down the coal. He shoved his way between the coal gate chains, reached the deck of the cab and was slammed hard against the hot boilerhead. He reached up, grabbed the throttle and jammed it shut. Seizing the airbrake lever, he applied the brakes, slowly and steadily. Too much pressure on the shoes grinding against the wheels might well cause a derailment on the not yet ballasted track. Sliding onto the engineer’s seatbox, he stuck his head out the window and gazed ahead. The rails gleamed in the starlight, but frightfully close was the dark void that was the bare ground beyond the steel.
The train was slowing, but not enough. Slade drew a deep breath and took the devilish chance of “wiping the gauge”—applying every ounce of air pressure to the shoes.
The locomotive bucked and leaped. Couplers clanged and jangled. Showers of sparks flew out the length of the train. The bunched cars nudged the engine hard. It skittered forward on locked drivers, its tires grinding shavings from the steel, and stopped with the pilot hanging over the rail ends!
Slade threw the “Johnson Bar,” the reverse lever, back on the quadrant and cautiously released the brakes, blew three warning blasts on the whistle and slowly backed the train a score of yards or so from the rail ends. Making sure there was plenty of water in the boiler, he descended from the cab to meet the workers who were streaming toward him, shouting and cheering.
Foremost of all was old Casey. “Be gorry, sir! I thought for a minute you and the whole shootin’ match was goners!” he panted. “How in blazes did it happen, I wonder? Air must have leaked from the brake cylinders and when she started rolling down the grade the throttle kicked open. Never saw anything like it before, but I reckon it could happen.”
“Possibly,” Slade replied, without further comment. “Have the boys set the hand brakes on a couple of cars, and place a watchman over this engine. Anyhow, the cars are right where we want them for the unloading onto the wagons in the morning.
“And now,” he added, “I think I’ll finish the little ride I’d started to take when I got into the race with the cast iron cayuse.”
“You know where you are going to sleep, don’t you, sir?” Casey asked. “The caboose on Number Four track. Mr. Dunn had it run down here for the engineer. Sorta rough quarters, but I hope you’ll make out.”
“I’ve slept in rougher,” Slade assured him as he forked Shadow and turned the big black’s head south. The assembled workers watched him ride away into the night.
“I wonder if there’s anything he can’t do?” observed Casey. “Stopping that runaway train like he did! And the chance he took, grabbing onto that rockin’ boxcar from a horse’s back!”
“The kind of a boss who’ll back you till the last spike is druv if you’re right, and if you ain’t, he’ll set you right and back you anyway,” said another voice.
“Yep,” nodded Casey. “Except that he’s tall and good lookin’ and Mr. Dunn is short, and ugly as the devil wants him to be, they’re alike as two peas. Raunchin’ fine men to work for, both of ’em.”
Slade rode slowly under the stars. He could always think best on horseback and he felt that he had plenty to think about. He did not in the least agree with Casey’s hazarded explanation of the runaway. There was no doubt in his mind but that somebody had released the brakes, jerked open the throttle and slipped from the cab when the engine started to move, to fade away into the darkness.
Which meant that somebody whose chore it was to delay the construction as much as possible had been planted among the scores of workers. Several somebodies, perhaps. Who? Slade hadn’t the slightest notion, but he intended to find out.
After a while he turned Shadow’s head and rode back to the camp, which was quieting down for the night. A light burned in the caboose that was his sleeping quarters and he found an old Mexican who helped around the kitchen and dining cars awaiting his arrival. A comfortable bunk was made up and, for Jaggers Dunn always went all out, running water was available from an engine tank coupled to the caboose.
Slade greeted the Mexican in Spanish, evidently to the old fellow’s delight. He bowed reverently to El Halcón and took his leave after Slade assured him that everything needful was provided.
Slade slept soundly until aroused by the awakening activities of the camp. He had just finished washing and dressing when the old Mexican appeared with a tray on which rested a steaming pot of coffee and a tasty breakfast. With ceremony he spread a snowy cloth on a small table, the room for which one of the caboose bunks had been removed.
“Gracias, Felipe, but I’d just as soon eat in one of the cars with the boys and save you this extra work,” Slade protested.
“It is the pleasure and the honor to serve El Halcón, the just, the good,” the Mexican replied. “Besides, the Señor Dunn, for whom I have worked for many years, told me to provide you with the best of care,” he added in his precise English.
“Well, guess I can hardly argue with both of you,” Slade surrendered, and proceeded to do full justice to the repast.
After eating, he saddled up and rode to the railhead, where he found the stone for the bridge piers being loaded into the big, six-horse freighting wagons. They would proceed to Presidio via the Chihuahua Trail, which paralleled the right-of-way. He watched the operation for a while, then summoned Casey.
“I’m riding to Presidio,” he told the foreman. “You will be in charge here until I get back, which may not be until tomorrow, according to how I find things going down there. And, Casey, keep your eyes open. Something else like what happened last night may be pulled if an opportunity presents to whoever was responsible for that runaway.”
The old foreman stared at him. “You figure somebody deliberately started that engine going?” he asked.
“That’s exactly what I mean,” Slade replied. “On a par with the fires that have been set and the dynamite explosion which came so near killing a man. I’m speaking plainly to you, for we’ve got to be on our toes and try to prevent future sabotage of a similar nature.”
Old Casey nodded, and his face was grim. “I’ve had something of the same notion ever since the other night,” he said. “I didn’t do any talking, for I figured it wasn’t my place to bring it up first. But I did sorta take a precaution, as it were.”
As he spoke, he swung back his loose overall jacket to show a heavy gun on his hip.
“Took a notion it wouldn’t be bad to have old Betsy handy, just in case,” he explained.
“A darn good notion,” Slade agreed. “And I think,” he added, “that I’ll have a few more of the boys go armed, just in case, as you say.”
“And if I can get a chance at the hellion who’s been pulling things, I figure to blow his guts around his backbone,” Casey declared. And the way he said it, Slade knew he meant it.
“Hope you get the chance,” he replied. “Okay, I’ll be seeing you.” He spoke to Shadow and headed south.
As he rode, Slade pondered the situation in regards to the railroad construction. A not unfamiliar pattern; he had encountered it before. A campaign of petty harrassment in an endeavor to slow up a rival’s progress. Each incident in itself trivial, productive of only minor delay; but cumulative, they could be disastrous.
A method employed by financiers of a certain type whose code of ethics was flexible, to put it mildly. In recent years, Texas had thrown itself furiously into railroad building, and not all of the promoters were all that the heart could wish. To add to the turmoil, more reputable magnates, while reluctant to initiate such practices themselves, felt obliged to fight fire with fire. The result a devil’s brew which kept law enforcement officers hopping.
Such, in a modified form, was the situation here as Slade summed it up. Jaggers Dunn would not stoop to such practices; if he couldn’t win by fair means, he wouldn’t win at all. Such had always been his policy and he refused to deviate from it.
So far the great empire builder had been uniformly successful, a couple of times with Slade’s assistance. El Halcón believed that a similar result would be obtained in this ambitious project. But Dunn might have a fight on his hands, especially if the M.K. was back of the delaying tactics. The M.K. was big and packed plenty of influence, and the men who ran it were predatory when it came to business matters. Dunn had tangled with them before, and up to the present had always come out on top, again with Slade’s assistance.
Then, too, there were vindictive old Andy Jorg, the wealthy and influential cowman, and the mysterious Gordon Plant, the head of the carting combine that, to all appearances, had largely squeezed out the Mexican drivers who hithertofore had enjoyed something very like a monopoly.
All in all, Walt Slade saw lively times ahead. “Looks like we’re always getting mixed up in something to keep us stepping,” he said to Shadow. His voice was mournful but there was a gleam in his eye which belied his tonal inflection. And Shadow was not in the least fooled.
“You go looking for it, so stop handing out the sheep dip,” his snort seemed to say.
Slade chuckled and did not argue the point.
His thoughts turned momentarily to the incident of the runaway locomotive the night before. It would have been a sweet smashup had he not been able to halt the train before it plunged off the rails. Of paramount importance was the ferreting out of the individual responsible for the attempt. Very likely old Casey would be an invaluable aid where that chore was concerned, knowing the men who worked under him as he did, and by a process of elimination being able to narrow the list of suspects he, Slade, must keep an eye on.
The true desert was petering out, replaced by the semi-arid land north of Presidio. Here there were bristles of growth which Slade, as was habitual with him, studied carefully, taking note of animals going about their various businesses, and the activities of birds, especially the latter, for more than once they had saved him from disaster by indicating that there was something foreign which they feared in the vicinity of their nests or perch branches.
Everything appeared peaceful, however, and he rode on at a steady pace.
Abruptly he turned his gaze to the east. Half a dozen riders were skalleyhooting across the sparsely grown grassland. Their course would cut across the trail a little distance ahead of where he rode. He loosened his Winchester in the saddle boot and watched their approach; this was a wild land where anything could happen, and with things going as they had of late, he knew he must be constantly on the alert. He could see that the horsemen were eyeing him and pointing in his direction.