“Hurry up, hurry up!” Ralph’s companion shouted back to his comrades. “Now, then, for a dash, and we’ll bag those rogues, plunder, rig and all.”
“Wait,” ordered Ralph sharply.
He was too late. The impetuous villager was greatly excited and he ran ahead and fired off his gun, two of the others following his example.
Ralph was very sorry for this, for almost instantly the robbers took the alarm and all lights near the caboose were extinguished. The echo of rapid orders reached the ears of the relief party. Fairly upon the scene, a flash of lightning showed the wagon being driven rapidly up a road leading from the cut.
“Look out for yourselves,” suggested Ralph. “Those men are armed.”
“So are we, now!” sharply sounded the voice of one of the men from Brocton, and another flash of lightning showed the enemy still in view.
“Up the road after them!” came a second order.
Ralph ran up to the side of the caboose.
“All safe?” he inquired anxiously.
“All but one of us,” responded the conductor.
Ralph lit a lantern, noticing one of the train hands lying on the ground motionless.
“He’s a fighter, Tom is,” said the conductor. “He resisted and grappled with one of the robbers, and another of them knocked him senseless.”
“What’s this in his hand?” inquired Ralph. “Oh, I see – a cap. Snatched it from the head of his assailant, I suppose. Hark! they are shooting up there.”
Shots rang out along the cut road. In a few minutes, however, the men from Brocton reappeared in the cut.
“No use wasting our lives recklessly,” said one of them. “They have bullets, we only small shot. The wagon got away. We’ll hurry back to Brocton, get a regular posse armed with rifles, and search the country for the rascals.”
“What’s the damage?” inquired Ralph of the conductor, going to the side of the car that had been broken open.
“Pretty big, I should say,” responded the conductor. “That car had a consignment of valuable silks from Brown & Banks, in the city, and they piled a fair load of it into their wagon. You have saved a wholesale plundering of the car.”
The men from Brocton departed. Ralph helped the train crew revive the poor fellow who had been knocked insensible. They carried him into the caboose, applied cold water to his head, and soon had him restored to consciousness.
“Fix the red lights,” ordered the conductor to a brakeman, “and then hurry to Brocton and have them telegraph the train dispatcher. What’s the trouble ahead, Fairbanks?”
Ralph explained. Shovels and crowbars were brought from the caboose, and two of the train crew accompanied him back to the locomotive.
Ralph thought of the cap he had stuck in his pocket. He looked it over carefully in the light of the lantern he carried.
On the leather band inside of the cap were two initials in red ink – “I. S.”
“Ike Slump,” murmured Ralph.
An old-time enemy had appeared on the scene, and the young fireman of the Great Northern knew that he would have to keep a sharp lookout or there would be more trouble.
CHAPTER III
EVERYBODY’S FRIEND
“Stand back there, you fellows!”
“Scatter, boys – it’s Ralph Fairbanks!”
It was two days after the landslide near Brocton. The young fireman had just left the roundhouse at Stanley Junction in a decidedly pleasant mood. His cheering thoughts were, however, rudely disturbed by a spectacle that at once appealed to his manly nature.
Ralph, making a short cut for home, had come across a farmer’s wagon standing in an alley at the side of a cheap hotel. The place was a resort for dissolute, good-for-nothing railway employes, and one of its victims was now seated, or rather propped up, on the seat of the wagon in question.
He was a big, loutish boy, and had apparently come into town with a load to deliver. The wagon was filled with bags of apples. Around the vehicle was gathered a crowd of boys. Each one of them had his pockets bulging with the fruit stolen from one of the bags in the wagon.
Standing near by, Jim Evans in their midst, was an idle crowd of railroad men, enjoying and commenting on the scene.
The farmer’s boy was seemingly asleep or unconscious. He had been set up on the seat by the mob, and one side of his face blackened up. Apples stuck all over the harness of the horses and on every available part of the vehicle. A big board lying across the bags had chalked upon it, “Take One.”
The crowd was just about to start this spectacle through the public streets of Stanley Junction when Ralph appeared. The young fireman brushed them aside quickly, removed the adornments from the horses and wagon, sprang to the vehicle, threw the sign overboard, and, lifting up the unconscious driver, placed him out of view under the wagon seat. As he did so, Ralph noticed the taint of liquor on the breath of the country lad.
“Too bad,” he murmured to himself. “This doesn’t look right – more like a piece of malice or mischief. Stand back, there!”
Ralph took up the reins, and also seized the whip. Many of the crowd he had known as school chums, and most of them drew back shamefacedly as he appeared.
There were four or five regular young loafers, however, who led the mob. Among them Ralph recognized Ted Evans, a son of the fireman he had encountered at the roundhouse two days previous. With him was a fellow named Hemp Gaston, an old associate of Mort Bemis.
“Hold on, there!” sang out Gaston, grabbing the bridles of the horses. “What you spoiling our fun for?”
“Yes,” added Ted Evans, springing to the wagon step and seizing Ralph’s arm. “Get off that wagon, or we’ll pull you off.”
Ralph swung the fellow free of the vehicle with a vigorous push.
“See here, you interfere with my boy and I’ll take a hand in this affair myself,” growled Jim Evans, advancing from the crowd of men.
“You’ll whip me first, if you do,” answered one of them. “This is a boys’ squabble, Jim Evans, and don’t you forget it.”
“Humph! he struck my boy.”
“Then let them fight it out.”
“Yes,” shouted young Evans angrily, “come down here and show that you are no coward.”
“Very well,” said Ralph promptly. “There’s one for you!”
Ralph Fairbanks had acted in a flash on an impulse. He had leaped from the wagon, dealt young Evans one blow and sent him half-stunned to the ground. Regaining the wagon he drove quickly into the street before his astonished enemies could act any further.
“Poor fellow,” said Ralph, looking at the lad in the wagon. “Now, what am I ever going to do with him?”
Ralph reflected for a moment or two. Then he started in the direction of home. He was sleepy and tired out, and he realized that the present episode might interfere with some of his plans for the day, but he was a whole-hearted, sympathetic boy and could not resist the promptings of his generous nature.
The young fireman soon reached the pretty little cottage that was his home, so recently rescued from the sordid clutches of old Gasper Farrington. He halted the team in front of the place and entered the house at once.
“Here I am, mother,” he said cheerily.
Mrs. Fairbanks greeted him with a smile of glad welcome.
“I