"Tell me what we have to do, David. I am a little lame in law matters."

"Do? We have to appear in Judge MacFarlane's court to-morrow afternoon prepared to show that this thing is only a hold-up with a blank cartridge.

Hawk meant to take a snap judgment. He counted on throwing the whole thing up against Hunnicott, knowing perfectly well that a little local attorney at a way-station couldn't begin to secure the necessary affidavits."

Loring paused with one end of his collar flying loose.

"Let me understand," he said. "Do we have to disprove these charges by affidavits?"

"Certainly; that is the proper rejoinder--the only one, in fact," said Kent; then, as a great doubt laid hold of him and shook him: "You don't mean to say there is any doubt about our ability to do it?"

"Oh, no; I suppose not, if it comes to a show-down. But I was thinking of your man Hunnicott. Doesn't it occur to you that he is in just about as good a fix to secure those affidavits in Gaston as we are here, David?"

"Good Lord! Do you mean that we have to send to Boston for our ammunition?"

"Haven't we? Don't you see how nicely the thing is timed? Ten days later our Trans-Western reorganization would be complete, and we could swear our own officers on the spot. These people know what they are about."

Kent was walking the floor again, but now the strength of the man was coming uppermost.

"Never mind: we'll wire Boston, and then we'll do what we can here. Could you get me to Gaston on a special engine in three hours?"

"Yes."

"Then we have till eleven o'clock to-morrow to prepare. I'll be ready by that time."

"David, you are a brick when it comes to the in-fighting," said the general manager; and then he finished b.u.t.toning his collar.

X

WITHOUT BENEFIT OF CLERGY

At ten forty-eight on the Sat.u.r.day morning Kent was standing with the general manager on the Union Station track platform beside the engine which was to make the flying run to Gaston.

Nine hours of sharp work lay between the hurried conference in Loring's bedroom and the drive to the station at a quarter before eleven. Boston had been wired; divers and sundry friends of the railway company had been interviewed; some few affidavits had been secured; and now they were waiting to give Boston its last chance, with a clerk hanging over the operator in the station telegraph office to catch the first word of encouragement.

"If the Advisory Board doesn't send us something pretty solid, I'm going into this thing lame," said Kent, dubiously. "Of course, what Boston can send us will be only corroborative; unfortunately we can't wire affidavits. But it will help. What we have secured here lacks directness."

"Necessarily," said Loring. "But I'm banking on the Board. If we don't get the ammunition before you have to start, I can wire it to you at Gaston.

That gives us three hours more to go and come on."

"Yes; and if it comes to the worst--if the decision be unfavorable--it can only embarra.s.s us temporarily. This is merely the preliminary hearing, and nothing permanent can be established until we have had a hearing on the merits, and we can go armed to that, at all events."

The general manager was looking at his watch, and he shut the case with a snap.

"Don't you let it come to that, as long as you have a leg to stand on, David," he said impressively. "An interregnum of ten days might make it exceedingly difficult for us to prove anything." Then, as the telegraph office watcher came to the door and shook his head as a sign that Boston was still silent: "Your time is up. Off with you, and don't let Oleson scare you when he gets 219 in motion. He is a good runner, and you have a clear track."

Kent clambered to the footplate of the smart eight-wheeler.

"Can you make it by two o'clock?" he asked, when the engineer, a big-boned, blue-eyed Norwegian, dropped the reversing lever into the corner for the start.

"Ay tank maybe so, ain'd it? Yust you climb opp dat odder box, Mester Kent, and hol' you' hair on. Ve bane gone to maig dat time, als' ve preak somedings, _ja_!" and he sent the light engine spinning down the yards to a quickstep of forty miles an hour.

Kent's after-memory of that distance-devouring rush was a blurred picture of a plunging, rocking, clamoring engine bounding over mile after mile of the brown plain; of the endless dizzying procession of oncoming telegraph poles hurtling like great side-flung projectiles past the cab windows; of now and then a lonely prairie station with waving semaph.o.r.e arms, sighted, pa.s.sed and left behind in a whirling sand-cloud in one and the same heart-beat. And for the central figure in the picture, the one constant quant.i.ty when all else was mutable and shifting and indistinct, the big, calm-eyed Norwegian on the opposite box, hurling his huge machine doggedly through s.p.a.ce.

At 12:45 they stopped for water at a solitary tank in the midst of the brown desert. Kent got down stiffly from his cramped seat on the fireman's box and wetted his parched lips at the nozzle of the tender hose.

"Do we make it, Jarl?" he asked.

The engineer wagged his head.

"Ay tank so. Ve maig it all right iff dey haf bane got dose track clear."

"There are other trains to meet?"

"_Ja_; two bane comin' dis vay; ant Nummer Samteen ve pa.s.s opp by."

Oleson dropped off to pour a little oil into the speed-woundings while the tank was filling; and presently the dizzying race began again. For a time all things were propitious. The two trains to be met were found snugly withdrawn on the sidings at Mavero and Agriculta, and the station semaph.o.r.es beckoned the flying special past at full speed. Kent checked off the dodging mile-posts: the pace was bettering the fastest run ever made on the Prairie Division--which was saying a good deal.

But at Juniberg, twenty-seven miles out of Gaston, there was a delay.

Train Number 17, the east-bound time freight, had left Juniberg at one o'clock, having ample time to make Lesterville, the next station east, before the light engine could possibly overtake it. But Lesterville had not yet reported its arrival; for which cause the agent at Juniberg was constrained to put out his stop signal, and Kent's special came to a stand at the platform.

Under the circ.u.mstances, there appeared to be nothing for it but to wait until the delayed Number 17 was heard from; and Kent's first care was to report to Loring, and to ask if there were anything from Boston.

The reply was encouraging. A complete denial of everything, signed by the proper officials, had been received and repeated to Kent at Gaston--was there now awaiting him. Kent saw in antic.i.p.ation the nicely calculated scheme of the junto crumbling into small dust in the precise moment of fruition, and had a sharp attack of ante-triumph which he had to walk off in turns up and down the long platform. But as the waiting grew longer, and the dragging minutes totaled the quarter-hour and then the half, he began to perspire again.

Half-past two came and went, and still there was no hopeful word from Lesterville. Kent had speech with Oleson, watch in hand. Would the engineer take the risk of a rear-end collision on a general manager's order? Oleson would obey orders if the heavens fell; and Kent flew to the wire again. Hunnicott, at Gaston, was besought to gain time in the hearing by any and all means; and Loring was asked to authorize the risk of a rear-end smash-up. He did it promptly. The light engine was to go on until it should "pick up" the delayed train between stations.

The Juniberg man gave Oleson his release and the order to proceed with due care while the sounder was still clicking a further communication from headquarters. Loring was providing for the last contingency by sending Kent the authority to requisition Number 17's engine for the completion of the run in case the track should be blocked, with the freight engine free beyond the obstruction.

Having his shackles stricken off, the Norwegian proceeded "with due care,"

which is to say that he sent the eight-wheeler darting down the line toward Lesterville at the rate of a mile a minute. The mystery of the delay was solved at a point half-way between the two stations. A broken f.l.a.n.g.e had derailed three cars of the freight, and the block was impa.s.sable.

Armed with the general manager's mandatory wire, Kent ran forward to the engine of the freight train and was shortly on his way again. But in the twenty-mile run to Gaston more time was lost by the lumbering freight locomotive, and it was twenty minutes past three o'clock when the county seat came in sight and Kent began to oscillate between two sharp-pointed horns of a cruel dilemma.

By dropping off at the street-crossing nearest the Court House, he might still be in time to get a hearing with such doc.u.mentary backing as he had been able to secure at the capital. By going on to the station he could pick up the Boston wire which, while it was not strictly evidence, might create a strong presumption in his favor; but in this case he would probably be too late to use it. So he counted the rail-lengths, watch in hand, with a curse to the count for his witlessness in failing to have Loring repeat the Boston message to him during the long wait at Juniberg; and when the time for the decision arrived he signaled the engineer to slow down, jumped from the step at the nearest crossing and hastened up the street toward the Court House.

In the mean time, to go back a little, during this day of hurryings to and fro Blashfield Hunnicott had been having the exciting experiences of a decade crowded into a corresponding number of hours. Early in the morning he had begun besieging the headquarters wire office for news and instructions, and, owing to Kent's good intentions to be on the ground in person, had got little enough of either.

At length, to his unspeakable relief, he had news of the coming special; and with the conviction that help was at hand he waited at the station with what coolness there was in him to meet his chief. But as the time for the hearing drew near he grew nervous again; and all the keen pains of utter helplessness returned with renewed acuteness when the operator, who had overheard the Juniberg-Lesterville wire talk, told him that the special was hung up at the former station.

"O my good Lord!" he groaned. "I'm in for it with empty hands!" None the less, he ran to the baggage-room end of the building and, capturing an express wagon, had himself trundled out to the Court House.

The judge was at his desk when Hunnicott entered, and Hawk was on hand, calmly reading the morning paper. The hands of the clock on the wall opposite the judge's desk pointed to five minutes of the hour, and for five minutes Hunnicott sat listening, hoping against hope that he should hear the rush and roar of the incoming special.

Promptly on the stroke of three the judge tapped upon his desk with his pencil.