Ralph, the Train Dispatcher: or, The Mystery of the Pay Car

CHAPTER XIII – “HOLD THE LIMITED MAIL!”

Ralph pressed closer to his loophole of observation at the amazing announcement of Grizzly, the traitorous train dispatcher.

“A wreck, you say?” observed Mason, in a dubious and faint-hearted tone of voice.

“Oh, nobody will get hurt,” declared Grizzly lightly. “What’s the matter with you? Haven’t you got any nerve? I said there was a thousand apiece in this, didn’t I?”

“I know you did.”

“So, don’t weaken about the knees when I give the word, but do just as I tell you. This affair to-night is a mere flyspeck to what’s coming along in a week.”

“Suppose-suppose we’re found out?” suggested Mason.

“We get out, isn’t that all? And we get out with good friends to take care of us, don’t we?”

“I suppose that’s so,” admitted Mason, but he shifted about in his seat as if he was a good deal disturbed.

Grizzly glanced again at the clock. Then he returned to his instrument. In a minute or two his fingers worked the key. Ralph watched and listened with all his might. What the operator did was to notify the dispatcher at Wellsville that he might go off duty, signing headquarters. Before he did this he spoke a few quick words that Ralph did not catch. Mason had selected some tools from his bag, and at once went nimbly aloft among the cable wires.

Ralph heard Mason fussing among the wires. He could only surmise what the two men were up to. The way he figured it out was that Mason had cut the wires running from the north branch through the relay into headquarters. He had thus completely blocked all messages from or to the north branch.

Mason came back to the operating room looking flustered and nervous.

“Nothing open north?” inquired Grizzly.

“Not on the Preston branch.”

“That’s right. We can splice ’em up again after two o’clock. Things will do their happening between now and then, and we leave no trace.”

“See here, Grizzly,” pleaded Mason in a spasmodic outburst of agitation; “what’s the deal?”

“What good will it do you to know?”

“Well, I want to.”

“All right; there’s to be a runaway. There’s an old junk engine down beyond Wellsville doing some dredging work, with a construction crew. She’s to be fired along.”

“What for?” inquired Mason, his eyes as big as saucers.

“For instance,” jeered Grizzly, with a disagreeable laugh.

“Where’s she to run to?”

The operator went to a map tacked to the wall. He ran his finger so rapidly over it that, the intent Mason standing between, Ralph could not clearly make out the route indicated.

“Nobody hurt, you see,” remarked Grizzly, in an offhanded way. “There isn’t another wheel running on that branch this side of Preston.”

“No, but the feeders and cut-ins? Along near Preston the Limited mail runs twenty miles since they’ve been bridging the main at Finley Gap.”

“She must take her chances, then,” observed Grizzly coolly. “Don’t get worried, son. The men working this deal know their business, and don’t want to get in jail.”

“What-what is there for me to do.” inquired Mason, acting like a man who had been persuaded to a course that had unnerved and distressed him.

“Set those wires back just as they were, when I give you the word.”

“Say, if you don’t mind, I’ll go somewhere and get a bracer. I’m feeling sort of squeamish.”

Grizzly regarded the speaker with a contemptuous look in his manifestation of weakness, but he made no remark, and Mason left the room. Ralph from his point of observation watched him descend the stairs and close the door after him as he went out into the storm, faced in the direction of the town.

The young railroader started down the cleat ladder, when Grizzly came out of the operating room. He looked thoughtful, as if he was uneasy at his comrade wandering off. As the lower door closed after him, Ralph decided that he was bent on joining Mason in his search for “a bracer,” and that now was his chance.

There flashed through the brain of Ralph the situation complete. A wreck was to happen, why and exactly where he could only guess. Clearly outlined in his mind, however, was the route ahead and beyond. By a rapid exertion of memory he could place every train on the road now making its way through the storm-laden night towards Stanley Junction. The Great Northern spread out in a quick mental picture like a map.

Ralph decided what to do, and he did not waste a second. He was down the cleat ladder and up the stairs and into the operating room in a jiffy. His thought was to give the double danger signal to headquarters and call for the immediate presence of the head operator or the chief dispatcher himself, if on duty.

It took him a minute or two to get the exact bearings of the instruments. At headquarters he was entirely familiar with the rheostat, wheat-stone bridge, polarized relays, pole changers and ground switches, but the station outfit was not so elaborate, the in table being provided only with the old relay key and sounder. His finger on the key, tapping the double danger challenge for attention, Ralph felt himself seized from behind.

With a whirl he was sent spinning across the room and came to a halt, his back against the out table, facing Grizzly. The latter had returned to the operating room suddenly and silently. His dark, scowling face was filled with suspicion.

“What’s this? Aha, I know you!” spoke the operator. “How did you come here?” and he advanced to seize the intruder. Ralph read that the fellow guessed that he was trapped. There was a dangerous gleam in his eyes, and the young railroader knew that he was in a dangerous fix.

One hand of Grizzly had gone to his side coat pocket, as if in search of a weapon. His shoulders egan to crouch. He was more than a match for Ralph in strength, and the latter did not know how soon his comrade Mason might return.

Ralph was standing with his back to the operating table. He put his hands behind him, quietly facing Grizzly, and let his right hand rest on the key. Carefully he opened the key and had clicked west twice when, quick as lightning, Grizzly jumped at him.

“Stop monkeying with that instrument!” he yelled. “You spy!”

There was a struggle, and Ralph did his best to beat off his powerful and determined opponent, but he tripped across a stool and went flat on his back on the floor. The operator was upon him in a moment. His strong hands pinned Ralph’s arms outspread.

“You keep quiet if you know what’s healthy for you,” warned Grizzly. “You’re Fairbanks?”

“Yes, that is my name,” acknowledged Ralph.

“And you’ve been watching us, and you was put up to it. Say, how much do you know and how many have you told about it?”

Ralph was silent. Just then there was a stamping up the stairs. Mason came blustering in.

“No lights ahead. I guess the stores are all shut up,” he began, and intercepted himself with a stare at Ralph and a vivid:

“Hello!”

“Don’t move!” ordered the telegraph operator in an irascible tone of voice. “We’re in it deep, it seems. Hand over that bunch of rope near the stove, Mason.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Cut for it. I know this fellow, and he isn’t here for nothing. Our game’s blown, or it will be. You needn’t squirm,” he directed at Ralph. “There’s two of us now.”

Ralph’s hands were tied in front of him and his feet secured, as well. It was only half-heartedly, however, that Mason assisted. He was pale and scared.

“Throw him across those blamed instruments, so they will keep quiet,” ordered Grizzly.

Ralph was roughly thrown upon the table, face downward, so that the relay was just under his waist. His weight against the armature stopped the clicking of the sounder. The two men grouped together in a corner, conversing rapidly and excitedly in undertones.

As luck would have it, Ralph’s left hand was in such a position that it just touched the key. He opened the key and pretended to be struggling quite a little.

Grizzly came over and gave him a push in the ribs.

“You keep quiet, or I’ll find a way to make you,” he said, with a fierce scowl.

Ralph became passive again. As the conspirators resumed their conversation, however, he began to telegraph softly on the west main line, which was clear. His objective point was Tipton.

It was here, within the next hour, that the Limited mail would arrive and, farther on, take the Preston cut-off for twenty miles, unless stopped. The relay being shut off by his weight, there was no noise from the sounder, and he sent so slowly that the key was noiseless. Ralph did not know on whom he was breaking in, but he kept on. He told the exact state of affairs, repeated the message twice, and trusted to luck. Then his last clickings went over the wire:

“T.B.I. T.I.S. – Hold the Limited Mail. Answer quick.”

CHAPTER XIV – OLD 93

The west wire was open, sure enough, and Ralph had accomplished his purpose. He knew it, and he felt a thrill of satisfaction as he heard the sharp tic-tac that announced the receipt of his message. He had raised up off the sounder.

“L. M. due at 11:53. Will hold-9,” and 9, Ralph well knew, meant train orders. He had stirred up a hornet’s nest for the conspirators, present and absent, and headquarters would soon get busy in running down the plot of the night.

“He’s done it!” almost shrieked Grizzly, as the return message conveyed to his expert ear the sure token that Ralph had shrewdly, secretly out-rivaled him. “Did you send a message?” he yelled, jumping at Ralph, both fists raised warningly, while his eyes glared with baffled fury.

“That is what I am here for,” replied the young railroader tranquilly. “You had better try and undo what you have already done.”

Bang! Seizing an iron bar, the maddened operator smashed into the open west wire, as if that did any good. Then he grabbed at Ralph and threw him brutally to the floor. His foot was raised, as if to wreak a cruel vengeance upon his defenseless victim, but his companion interposed.

“See here, Grizzly,” he shouted, snatching up the tool bag and making for the door, “I’m shy!”

The operator bent his head towards the instrument, now clicking away urgently and busily, growled out like a caged tiger, and ran to his desk and ripped open drawer after drawer.

Ralph watched him poke papers and other personal belongings into his pockets. With a final snarl at Ralph, he made after Mason.

“It’s a big jump, and a quick one,” Ralph heard him say to his hurrying companion, as they bolted down the stairs, “but a thousand dollars goes a long way.”

Their footsteps faded away. Ralph was now alone. He listened intently to the messages going over the wires. O.S. messages, consists, right of track orders began to fly in every direction, while ever and constantly from headquarters came the keen imperative hail:

“R.S. – R.S. – sine.”

“I’ve got no ‘sine’ and nothing to say,” replied Ralph, half humorously, despite his forlorn situation. “It’s wait for somebody now, and somebody will be along soon-sure enough!”

It was old Glidden who broke in upon the solitude first. He came up the outside stairs in big jumps and burst into the operating room breathless, his eyes agog.

“Hello! H’m! thought something wrong. Up with you, Fairbanks,” he shouted, pulling at Ralph and tearing him free from his bonds. “Now, then, out with it, quick! What’s up?”

“Foul play.”

“I guessed it. The double call enlightened me, and you’ve got headquarters and down lines wild. Out with it, I say!”

Ralph talked about as fast as he had ever done. There was need for urgency, he felt that. The old operator knew his business.

“I’ll mend up this mess,” he said promptly. “That smashup-get to the superintendent. Do something anyway. Be a live wire!”

Ralph ran down from the relay room. He could trust Glidden to get at work and straighten out the tangle left behind by the fugitive conspirators.

The north branch was cut out and the operator ordered off duty. Ralph trusted to it that Glidden would try some circuitous work to get word around to the other end of the branch.

“Anyhow, the Limited is safe,” ruminated Ralph, as he reached the ground.

His first thought was to get to headquarters. He looked for some stray freight or switch locomotive to help him on his way. He made out a live one on a side track. Ralph ran over to it.

“Hello, Roberts!” he hailed, recognizing the fireman, and a jolly-faced, indolent looking young fellow smiled a welcome. “Going to the Junction?”

“Exactly the other way.”

Ralph, his foot on the step of the tender, drew back disappointedly.

“Waiting for Bob Evers. He’s my engineer,” explained Roberts. “We’re to run to Acton, over the old dumping tracks-north branch.”

“What!” exclaimed Ralph eagerly. “Right away?”

“No, any time; so we report at 5 a. m. for a short haul on the north branch.”

“Look here, Roberts,” said the young railroader eagerly, “you think I understand my business?”

“Know it, Fairbanks,” nodded the fireman.

“When will Evers be here?”

“Any time within two hours.”

“Two hours?” retorted Ralph. “That won’t do at all. I’m going for a special order, and I want you to have steam up to the top notch by the time I get back.”

“That so,” drawled the fireman in his usual indolent fashion, but he arose from his lounging attitude instantly, and his great paw of a hand grasped the coal scoop with zest. “All right.”

“Good for you,” said Ralph, and he started back to the relay station.

“Mr. Glidden,” he spoke rapidly, as he came again into the operating room. “There is no time to lose. All we know is that a wild engine is to be sent down the north branch.”

“Yes, that’s all we know, and no way to stop it,” replied Glidden.

“There may be a way. Ninety-three is fired up for a fly down the dump to Acton.”

“Aha!” nodded the old operator, pricking up his ears with interest.

“I don’t say it, but it may be that we can get to the branch before the runaway does.”

“Suppose so?”

“We’ll set the switch and ditch her.”

“Good boy!”

“I have no orders, though.”

“I’ll give them to you-I’ll fix it up with headquarters. Fire away.”

Ralph was out of the relay station and down the tracks in a hurry. Roberts was bustling about and had fired up the old switch locomotive as if ordered for a mile-a-minute dash.

“What’s the programme?” he inquired simply.

“To reach the north branch just as quick as we can.”

“All right. You’ll run her?”

“Yes.”

“You know how.”

Ralph was delighted with his helper. Roberts made no delay, asked no questions. Ralph was all nerved up with the exploit in view.

Their destination was a good forty miles to the northwest. The dump tracks comprised practically an abandoned line, and, as Ralph knew, was free of either freight or passenger traffic at that hour. It was occasionally used as a cut-off in cases of emergency. The roadbed was somewhat neglected and uneven, but he had run over it twice within a few months, and as they started out Roberts announced that their special orders had shown clear tracks.

The route was a varied one, and there were some odd old-fashioned curves and a few hair-raising ten per cent. grades.

No. 93 buckled down to work right royally. There were two switches to unset, and then right again before they left the main line. At these points Roberts ran ahead and did emergency duty.

As they slid off onto the dump tracks, Ralph consulted the clock in the cab, estimated distance and set his running pace.

“She acts like a pet lamb,” he observed approvingly to Roberts after a five-mile spurt.

“Yes, she’ll chase to terminus all right if the coal holds out,” replied the fireman. “There’s a bunch of sharp curves and steep grades ahead.”

“Here’s one of them, see,” said Ralph, and he pushed back the throttle and let the locomotive move on its own momentum.

The sturdy little engine wheezed through cuts, grunted up grades and coughed down them.

“She’s only an old tub,” submitted Roberts, though fondly; “but how do you like her, anyway?”

“Famous!” declared Ralph, warming to his work.

The run for a good twenty miles was a series of jarring slides, the wheels pounding the rails and straining towards a half tip over a part of the time.

There was not a signal light along the old, abandoned reach of tracks, and only one or two scattered settlements to pass. At length they came in sight of the signals of the north branch. No. 93 paralleled it on a curving slant for nearly a mile.

They were barely two hundred rods from the point where they would slide out onto the rails of the branch, and Ralph had started to let down on speed, when his helper uttered a vivid shout.

“Fairbanks-something coming!”

Ralph cast his eyes to the other side of the cab. Something, indeed, was coming-coming like a flash, going like a flash. It whizzed even with them, and ahead, like some phantom of the rail. Its course was so swift that the cab lights were a flare, then a disappearing speck.

“We are too late,” said Ralph. “That is the runaway.”

“So?” questioned Roberts, who only half understood the situation.

“We ran here in the hopes of ditching that engine.”

“Did?”

“We’re too late.”

“Are?”

“Roberts,” added the young railroader determinedly, “we’ve got to catch that runaway.”

“Then it’s a race, is it?” asked Roberts, grasping the fire rake.

“Yes.”

“I’m with you to the finish,” announced the doughty fireman of No. 93.

CHAPTER XV – CHASING A RUNAWAY

“What’s the programme?” asked Roberts, after filling the fire box with coal.

“We must beat the speed of that runaway locomotive,” replied Ralph.

The wild engine was going at a terrific rate of progress. Ralph could only surmise where she had been started on her mad career. The motive, her intended destination, how long she would last out-all this he could only guess at.

A drift of cinders struck his face as he shot No. 93 across a switch and out upon the in track of the north branch. At the same time he bent his ear and listened critically to the chug-chug of the escape valves.

“Some one is aboard of that engine,” he told Roberts.

“Then it’s a chase instead of a race,” said the fireman. “All right. You boss and watch out ahead.”

Pursued and pursuer were now on parallel tracks. Ralph wondered if he could be mistaken, and the locomotive ahead a special or returning from duty.

To test this he gave a familiar challenge call. From ignorance or defiance there was no response. Ralph was sure that the locomotive was in charge of some one. Its movements, the cinder drift, the wheeze of the safety valve, told that the machinery was being manipulated.

Ralph cast up in his mind all the facts and probabilities of the hairbreadth exploit in which he was participating. He acted on the belief that the locomotive he was chasing was wild, or soon to be put in action as one. It would be run to some intended point, abandoned, and sent full speed ahead on its errand of destruction.

Ralph did not know what might be ahead on either track. The schedule, he remembered, showed no moving rolling stock this side of the north main. He urged his fireman to fire up to the limit and did some rapid calculating as to the chances for the next twenty miles.

The locomotive ahead was fully a mile away before Roberts got old 93 in the right trim, as he expressed it. He clucked audibly as his pet began to snort and quiver. Pieces of the machinery rattled warningly, but that only amused him.

“She’s loose-jointed,” he admitted to Ralph; “but she’ll hold together, I reckon, if you can only keep her to the rails. That fellow ahead is sprinting, but we’re catching up fast. What’s the ticket?”

“Our only hope is to beat the runaway and switch or bump her.”

“There’ll be some damage.”

“There will probably be worse damage if we don’t stop her.”

The paralleled tracks widened a few miles further on to get to the solid side of a boggy reach. It was here that No. 93 came fairly abreast of the runaway. It was here, too, that the furnace door of the runaway was opened to admit coal, and the back flare of the hissing embers outlined the figure of a man in the cab.

“She’s spurting,” observed Roberts, watching all this, as the runaway started on a prodigious dash.

“I see she is,” nodded Ralph, grimly trying to hold No. 93 over, yet aware that she was already set at her highest possible point of tension.

“And we’re getting near.”

“Yes, there are the station lights ahead.”

About four hundred yards to the left the runaway dashed past a deserted station. Ralph never let up on speed. The chase had now led to the cut-off, a stretch of about twenty miles. Where this ran into the main again there was an important station. This point Ralph was sure had been advised of the situation from headquarters if Glidden had done his duty, and the young railroader felt sure that he had.

“Hello; now it is a chase!” exclaimed Roberts.

In circling into the cut-off No. 93 had passed a series of switches, finally sending her down the same rails taken by the runaway.

“It’s now or never, and pretty quick at that,” said Ralph to his fireman. “Crowd her, Roberts.”

“She’s doing pretty nigh her best as it is,” replied the fireman. “I don’t know as she’ll stand much more crowding.”

“That’s better,” said Ralph in a satisfied tone, as, fired up to the limit, the old rattletrap made a few more pounds of steam.

“Going to scare or bump the fellow ahead?” grinned Roberts, his grimed face dripping with perspiration. “We’re after her close now. It’s our chance to gain. They don’t dare to coal up for fear of losing speed.”

A score of desperate ideas as to overtaking, crippling, wrecking or getting aboard of the runaway thronged the mind of the young railroader. They were gaining now in leaps and bounds.

It was at a risk, however, Ralph realized fully. No. 93 was shaking and wobbling, at times her clattering arose to a grinding squeal of the wheels, as though she resented the terrific strain put upon her powers of speed and endurance.

“Whew! there was a tilt,” whistled Roberts, as No. 93 scurried a curve where she threatened to dip clear over sideways into a swampy stretch which had undermined the solid roadbed.

Ralph gave a sudden gasp. He had watched every movement of the machinery. To his expert, careful ear every sound and quiver had conveyed a certain intelligent meaning.

Now, however, No. 93 was emitting strange noises-there was a new sound, and it boded trouble.

It came from the driving rod. Roberts caught the grinding, snapping sound, stared hard from his window, craning his neck, his eyes goggling, and then drew back towards the tender with a shout:

“Go easy, Fairbanks; something’s tearing loose-look out!”

The warning came none too soon. Ralph slipped from his seat and dropped backwards into the tender just in time.

A giant steel arm had shot through the front of the cab. It was the right driving rod. It came aloft and then down, tearing a great hole in the floor. It shattered the cab to pieces with half a dozen giant strokes. It smashed against the driving wheels with a force that threatened to wreck them.

Then it tried to pound off the cylinder. The flying arms next took the roof supports, snapping them like pipe stems, and buried the fireman in a heap of debris.

“Jump!” gasped Roberts.

“I stay,” breathed Ralph.

And, stripped of everything except her cylinder, No. 93 dashed on-a wreck.