# The Steel Horse/Chapter 12

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CHAPTER XII.
JOE'S WILD RIDE.
"BOYS we've got to stop that train," said Joe, speaking rapidly but calmly.
"But how do we know which way it is coming from?" asked Roy, who did not show half as much pluck now as he did while he was struggling with the mate on board the White Squall.
"We don't know," answered Joe. "It's our business to find out. Art, you go back along the way we have come, and I'll go ahead. Roy, you stay here and be ready to signal either way in case anything happens to us and we don't succeed in stopping the train. Raise your lamp as high in the air as you can and lower it suddenly. That's 'down brakes' on the Mount Airy road, and I suppose the signal is the same the world over. At any rate an engineer with half sense will understand it. Off we go now. Don't be reckless of headers, Art, but speed along lively."
​In two seconds more my master and Arthur Hastings were hurrying away in different directions, and Roy, having carried his wheel across the ditch and placed it against the face of the bluff, was sitting on the rock with his lamp in his hand. In another two seconds Joe and I whirled around a sharp bend and were out of sight of everybody.
That was the wildest and most reckless run I ever undertook, for my master did not by any means follow the advice he had given Arthur Hastings. When Joe Wayring went into a thing he went in with his whole heart. I went ahead faster that I had ever been driven before, but a tricycle could not have run with more steadiness. Joe did not need the whole road-bed to travel in as he would if he had attempted a fast gait a week before, but held me firmly in one track. I could plainly see the way for a short distance in front of me, catch the glimmering of the wet rails on each side, and hear the faint "swishing" sound made by the rubber tires as they spurned the ground under them; but all on a sudden this sound ceased—or, rather, it gave way to a very low rumble, ​such as I had never heard before. The high bank on the left sank out of sight; the gurgling of the stream far below became a roar; solid walls of blackness surrounded us on all sides, relieved only by that little streak of light in front; and to my inexpressible horror I discovered that we no longer had the firm road-bed beneath us. We had left it, and were rushing with almost breathless speed over a trestle-work whose height could only be guessed at. An eight-inch plank nailed to the timbers between the tracks was our pathway. It was plenty wide enough for Joe, now that he had "mended his style of riding," if the plank had only been on the ground, and he had had daylight to show him where he was going; but there was plenty of room for accident. Suppose the plank should not extend entirely across the trestle, which was so long that I began to wonder if there was any other end to it! Or what if a tire should come off? Such accidents sometimes happen to the most careful bicyclists, and when I pictured to myself Joe Wayring lying stunned and bleeding among those timbers, and in danger of ​slipping through, into the rocky bed of the stream beneath while I toppled over the edge—when I thought of these things, I shivered so violently that my nickel-plated spokes would have rattled if they had not been tangent and tied together.
As for Joe Wayring, there was not the faintest exclamation from him to show that he realized his danger, although I knew well enough that he couldn't help seeing it. If his nerves had not been in perfect health, something disastrous would surely have happened. He struck the plank and passed over thirty feet of its length before he had time to take in the situation. Once started along the trestle he had to go on; there was no help for it. The light from the lamp was all thrown ahead, and an effort to dismount in the darkness might have resulted in a disabling fall among the timbers with me on top. Then what would become of the train, if it approached from the direction in which he was going? Plainly his only chance was to keep in motion; and Joe not only did that, but he laid out extra power on the pedals, and sent me ​ahead with increased speed. The rails looked like two continuous streaks of light, and the timbers passed behind with such rapidity that they presented the appearance of a solid floor. So great was our speed that by the time I had thought of all this, and become so badly frightened that I would have tumbled over if my momentum had not kept me right side up, that low rumbling sound ceased as suddenly as it had begun, the graveled road-bed, trodden smooth in the middle, shot into view and came rushing under the wheels, two high bluffs came out of the darkness and shut us in on both sides, and the trestle and its terrors were left behind. At the same instant, as if by a preconcerted signal, a bright light appeared far up the track, which at this point was perfectly straight, and another still nearer. The first was from the head light of the approaching train, and the second was emitted by a lantern in the hands of a man who seemed to be searching for something, for he held his light first toward one rail and then toward the other. He was moving away from us.
"It's the track-walker," gasped Joe, as he ​sounded his bell; and those were the first words I had heard him speak since we left the rock. "Suppose I had run onto him while I was scooting along that narrow plank! I'd be dead now, sure."
The moment the man with the lantern heard the bell he faced about; but, to my surprise, he did not appear to be at all alarmed. The orders he straightway began shouting at us showed conclusively that he was used to wheelmen and their methods.
"Git aff the track, ye shpalpeen," he yelled, frantically flourishing his lantern in the air. "Don't ye see the kyars coming forninst ye, an' haven't I towled ye times widout number, that if ye gets killed ye can't get no damages from the company? Will yees git aff the track?"
"Stop that train," shouted Joe, in reply. "There's an obstruction on the track just beyond the trestle."
"What for lookin' abstraction is it?" inquired the track-walker, incredulously.
"A big rock," replied Joe; and seeing at once that he had a stupid, and no doubt an ​obstinate, man to deal with, he did not neglect to make preparations to stop the train himself. He promptly got me out of the way and detached the lamp; and when he bent over so that the light fell upon his face, I started in spite of myself. He was as white as a sheet.
"Aw! G'long wid ye now," said the track-walker. "Don't I be goin' down beyant there onct or twicst bechune trains iv'ry blessed day of me loife for three years an' better? An' don't I know—"
"I don't care what you have done during the last three years, or what you know," interrupted Joe, as he ran back to the track and signaled "down brakes" with his lamp. "There's a rock on the track—What are you trying to do, you loon?" exclaimed Joe, hotly, as the man made an effort to push him away and take his lamp from him. "Let me alone or I will report you. There'll be a wreck here in a minute more, and you will lose your place on the road."
Although the man didn't like the idea of allowing an outsider to interfere with his business, Joe's words had just the effect upon him ​that the boy intended they should have, and after a little hesitation he began signaling with his own light. Between them they succeeded in attracting the attention of the engineer, who called for brakes, and stopped his train within a few feet of the place where Joe and the track-walker stood.
"What's the trouble?" he asked from his cab window; and while Joe was explaining, the conductor came up and listened. The latter looked first at my master and then at me, and presently said:
"You didn't ride across the trestle, of course."
"Of course I did," replied Joe, "I couldn't have got across any other way. I would have been afraid to walk that narrow plank in the dark. How high is it above the water?"
"Sixty feet in some places, and the trestle is just half a mile long," answered the conductor. "Here, boys, put that wheel into the baggage car. Young man, you come with me, and I will take you to Dorchester."
"That's where we want to go," said Joe, surprised to learn that he and his friends had ​been riding on the back track ever since they struck the railroad.
In obedience to the conductor's order I was hoisted into the baggage car, placed against a pile of trunks so that I could see through the wide-open door and the engineer pulled slowly ahead. I had little idea how far we had run after leaving the trestle, but we were fully five minutes in getting back to it, and much longer in crossing it. There seemed to be no bottom to the gulf it spanned. It was so deep that I could see nothing but the tops of the trees that grew in it. About the time we got to the other end of it the baggage-master, who had been leaning half-way out the opposite door, drew in his head long enough to remark to some one whom I took to be his assistant:
"There's a chap out there calling for brakes the best he knows how," and I straightway made up my mind that it must be Roy Sheldon. "This would be a bad place for an accident with such a trainful of passengers as we've got. There's the rock," he added, a moment later, "and it's as big as this car."
​It wasn't quite as large as that, nor do I suppose it was even half as large as Rube Royall's cabin; but it was big and heavy enough to tax the strength of all the men who could get around it, including the engineer, fireman, cond actor, all the brakemen, some of the passengers and two wheelmen. With the aid of levers and much lifting and pushing they got it started at last, and it went down into the gulf with a terrific crash. I heard the engineer say, as he climbed back into his cab, that if he had struck that rock going as fast as he usually did at that place, he would have demolished his train so completely that it would have taken a microscope to find the wreck.
"All clear," shouted the conductor. "All aboard. Pass along that other wheel."
"One moment, please. There's another man in our party who went down that way because we didn't know where to look for the first train," said Joe, waving his hand in the direction in which Arthur Hastings had disappeared. "He'll be back directly, and as we don't care to be separated, perhaps you had better leave ​us here. We're just as much obliged to you, however."
"Has the other man got a lamp? All right. Jake," said the conductor, addressing the engineer, "keep a lookout for another wheelman a mile or so down the road. That'll be all right. Pile in."
Joe and Roy went into one of the passenger cars, while the latter's wheel was placed at my side against the trunks. The first words he uttered were:
"It's just dreadful to think of, isn't it?"
"Not so much so as it might be," said I. "If I had broken Joe Wayring's head for him while he was driving me at top speed across that trestle, then you might have had something to talk about."
"We've enough as it is. I know it might have been worse, and some unknown villains meant it should be. Roy Sheldon showed the marks to the engineer as soon as he got out of his cab."
"What marks?"
"Why, the marks on the rock. The engineer called the conductor's attention to them, ​and together they made it up not to say a word about it in the hearing of the passengers for fear of frightening them."
"What in the world did the passengers have to be frightened about so long as Joe and I stopped the train and averted the disaster? They ought to be tickled."
"Well, they wouldn't be if they knew how that rock came to be on the track. You probably did not see the conductor when he threw some pieces of round wood over the brink into the ravine, but I did, and I know that they were the rollers that were used to bring that bowlder into place after it had been tumbled down from the bluff. There's train-wreckers in this country, I tell you."
Roy's bike was so excited over what might have happened if we had found that railroad half an hour later, that he could not tell a straight story; but this is what I managed to draw from him after much patient and ingenious questioning:
When Joe and I disappeared in one direction and Arthur Hastings and his wheel sped swiftly away in the other, Roy Sheldon seated ​himself upon the rock with his lamp in his hand, and whistled softly, keeping time with his heels, for a full minute; then he grew tired of doing nothing, jumped off the rock and made a circuit of it, looking closely at it on all sides. It had cut a deep gash in the bluff as it came down, but Roy thought the ditch ought to have stopped it, because it was lower than the track. Somehow Roy could not bring himself to believe that it had come down with speed enough to run across a three foot ditch, up a hill that was eighteen inches high and six feet long, and stop so squarely in the middle of the track.
"There's something rather queer about it," soliloquized the young wheelman, as he moved around the obstruction. "Now, then, what's that?"
Just then something attracted his attention, and he bent over to examine it. It was the print of a foot in the soft earth at the end of one of the sleepers. Roy placed his own foot within it, and found, to his consternation, that it was at least a third larger than his shoe. Then he made another impression ​beside it, and the difference in size satisfied him beyond all doubt that he had not made that suspicious track himself. There were hob-nails in the track, and that proved that none of Roy's party could have stepped in that particular spot, for there were no nails of that sort in their foot-gear.
"This rock was put here for a purpose," said Roy; and when the thought passed through his mind the cold chills crept all over him. "There must have been a good many of them in the gang, for half a dozen men couldn't roll so heavy a weight out of the ditch unless they had something to work with. What's this and this, and those pieces of timber over there?"
The longer the boy continued his investigations, the more he found to confirm the alarming suspicions that had arisen in his mind. The objects that now attracted his notice were several pieces of round wood, with the bark scratched and torn from them, and as many sticks of timber that were likewise covered with wounds and abrasions. There were other large foot-prints too in abundance—in ​fact the ground about looked as though a large party of men had been at work there for a long time and presently the boy discovered marks upon the bowlder itself which might have been made with a spade or crowbar.
"Were we all blind that we didn't notice these things when we first came here?" said Roy to himself. "Probably we were so highly excited that we couldn't notice any thing except the rock. The fiends who put this thing on the track with the intention of wrecking the train ought to be hanged without judge or jury, lam glad I didn't know what I know now, for I wouldn't have had the courage to stay here alone."
Just then the thought flashed through Roy's mind that perhaps the would-be train-wreckers were concealed somewhere in the vicinity waiting for the time when they could descend into the gulf and complete their work, and that their evil eyes might at that very moment be fastened upon him, while they were discussing plans for getting him out of their way. If Joe and Arthur had known all this, would they have been so ready to dash off into the ​darkness to warn the unsuspecting engineer of his peril? How easily one of those concealed villains could have tumbled both his friends out of their saddles with a shot from a revolver! And what had prevented them, when the boys first started away, from throwing from the top of the bluff an obstruction upon the track that would have sent both the wheelmen to the ground? No doubt it was because Roy and his friends acted with so much promptness that they did not have time to think of it; but hadn't they had plenty of time since then to recover from their surprise and plan vengeance? This fear almost unnerved Roy. He took one step toward his wheel, but the thought that passed through his mind was driven out as quickly as it came. Come what might, he would not desert his post. He would stay there and warn the train, if one of his companions did not succeed in doing it, and in the mean time if those scoundrels wanted a fight, they could have it.
Roy's first care was to put his lamp behind the rock out of sight, and his second to pull his bicycle case off his shoulder and take out ​the rifle it contained. He had done considerable shooting with it since he had been on the road, although it had not yet brought him a young squirrel for his dinner. As often as he and his companions halted for a rest their little weapons were brought out, and Roy had learned by actual test that the one he owned could be depended on to shoot "right where it was held."
"Now I am ready for them," said Roy, taking his stand behind the rock outside the circle of light that came from the lamp. "If they advance along the road they had better make sure work of me at the start, for if they don't, some of them will get hurt."
If the train-wreckers were hidden where they could see him (and it was reasonable to suppose they were), they must have taken note of Roy's movements, and perhaps they saw that he had a weapon of some sort in his hands and was ready to defend himself. Be that as it may, they did not molest him, and the boy stuck to his post until the glare of the locomotive headlight fell upon him. The train was moving slowly, and that was proof enough that ​Joe Wayring had warned it; but to make sure of it, Roy caught up his lamp and "called for brakes the best he knew how." The engineer was the first man to speak to him, and when Roy called his attention to the marks on the rock, the big footprints on the ground and the timbers that were scattered about, the brave fellow turned so white that it showed through the black on his face. He in turn told the conductor, and the latter at once threw the timbers into the ditch, and pitched the pieces of round wood into the gulf.
"Don't lisp a word of it," he said, earnestly. "We've got a heavy, packed train, and the folks would be scared to death. Young fellow," he added, turning to give Joe Wayring a hearty slap on the shoulder, "you have been the means of preventing a slaughter. I'll bet there isn't another wheelman in the State who can ride over that trestle."
"Haw, haw!" laughed Joe. "I guess you haven't seen many wheelmen, have you?"
"Or who would have the courage to attempt it in daylight, let alone a dark night like this," continued the conductor. "Why, man ​alive, it's a very narrow plank that was put there for the convenience of the track-walker, and the trestle is sixty feet high and half a mile long."
"I am glad I didn't know that when I was going over it," was all Joe had to say in reply.
This is what I meant when I said a while ago that little things often bring about great events. I now know that my master was frightened out of a year's growth when he found himself on that trestle, but he had confidence and nerve enough to go ahead without attempting to dismount. It was that short interview with the strange wheelman that did it, and made Joe Wayring the steady rider he was that night. He knew as well as anybody that he "wobbled too much," but he supposed that was something every novice did, and that the fault would correct itself without any care or trouble on his part. But as soon as his attention was called to it he promptly set about "mending his style," and this was the result. He was glad of it now. It was the only thing that put it in his power to save the train, for on the day he encountered ​that strange wheelman he could not have ridden fifty feet on an eight-inch plank at full speed without falling off.
By this time all the trainmen had come forward, accompanied by some of the wakeful passengers who wanted to inquire into the cause of this second stoppage, and by their united efforts the rock was tumbled harmlessly over the brink of the gulf and the engineer pulled out for Dorchester, keeping watch along the way for Arthur Hastings. He found him about two miles farther on, but the boy was not signaling, because the appearance of the train was proof enough that Joe had met and warned it. Arthur was surprised to see it come to a stop at the place where he got off the track, and to hear the engineer shout at him to chuck his bike into the baggage car and get aboard, for he was half an hour behind already. But he lost not a moment in thinking about it after he saw Joe and Roy beckoning to him from the platform of one of the passenger cars, and the train once more started on its way, this time moving at a rate of speed that gave me a faint idea of the crash that would have ​followed and the fearful loss of life that would have taken place if it had come in contact with that bowlder.
This is the substance of the story Roy's wheel told me during the run to Dorchester, and the one to which Joe and Arthur listened while perched upon the wood-box in one of the crowded cars. The conductor could not give them a seat, for every one was filled with weary travelers who had slumbered serenely through it all, and who when they awoke at intervals, and looked with sleepy eyes toward the three dusty, white-faced boys behind the stove-pipe, never dreamed that one of them, a short half-hour before, held all their lives in his hand. The conductor knew it and could hardly find words with which to express his gratitude, although he tried hard enough. The young wheelmen conversed in whispers and looked frightened, as indeed they were; and Joe Wayring hoped from the bottom of his heart that no such responsibility would ever devolve upon him again.
"I don't know what you fellows want to go to Dorchester for," said the conductor, who ​came into their car as soon as the train was fairly under way. "The place has a big name, but there are only three houses in it. There's no hotel at which you can stop. There is a boarding-house, but I tell you plainly that it will be of no use to go there, for old man Kane won't let you in. He says he can eat anybody who comes along, but he can't and won't sleep 'em."
"That's queer," said Joe. "The author of our road-book has been through here, and says he got the best kind of treatment at Kane's boarding-house."
"Oh, the old fellow sets a good table, and can be civil and obliging enough when he feels like it; but he won't get up after he has gone to bed. It's against his principles."
"Why do you stop at such an out-of-the-way place?"
"Because there's a horse railroad there that connects with a little town a few miles back in the country, and there are some people aboard who want to get off. The depot is always kept locked at night, and I am afraid you will have to bunk on the platform unless you will ​go on with me. Will you? I'll bring you back."
The boys thanked him, but said they didn't think that was the best thing they could do. Their route ahead was laid out, and they wanted to stick as closely to it as they could. They were used to camping out, had warm blankets in their bundles, and would just as soon sleep on the platform as in abed, provided old man Kane could be prevailed upon to give them a good breakfast in the morning.
"But there's one thing about it," said Joe. "Every wheelman in the State ought to be warned that if he intends to travel this route, he had better time his runs so as to pass through this contemptible little Dorchester in daylight, unless he is prepared to camp out."
Arthur Hastings thought it would be a good plan for one of them to state the facts of the case to the man who wrote the guide-book, so that he could have the warning put in subsequent editions.