“Keep it handy, then.”
“Eh!” cried the engineer with a stare. “What you getting at, lad?”
“That is no landslide,” replied Ralph, pointing at the obstruction.
“What is it then?”
“Train wreckers—or worse,” declared Ralph promptly. “There is no time to lose, Mr. Griscom,” he continued in rapid tones.
“Of course, if not an accident, there was a purpose in it,” muttered Griscom, reaching into his tool box for a weapon, “but what makes you think it wasn’t an accident?”
Ralph did not reply, for he was gone. Springing across the coal heaped up in the tender, he climbed to the top of the first freight car and started on a swift run the length of the train. 12
The young fireman was considerably excited. He would not have been a spirited, wide-awake boy had he been otherwise. The paper he had found among the debris of the obstruction on the rails had an ominous sentence across it, namely, “Handle With Care, Dynamite.”
This, taken in connection with what had at first startled him, made Ralph feel pretty sure that he had not missed his guess in attributing the landslide to some agency outside of nature.
While adjusting the air gauge Ralph had noticed a flare ahead, then a lantern light up the side of the embankment, and then, in the blaze of a wild flash of lightning, he had witnessed the descent of a great tearing, tossing mass, landing in the railroad cut.