“By gum!” exclaimed the other fireman. “I thought I got some sound like an explosion as we came down the hill. The dynamite must have gone off only a few minutes ago.”
“That burning scarecrow saved all our lives,” muttered Ralph. “Who did that?”
“If there are ghouls around trying to wreck the train, and there are, then there are likewise watchers who defended us from harm. We have somebody to thank,” said the conductor.
There was no more comment on this mysterious thing by the train and engine crew for some time thereafter. There was too much else to do. Somebody had to go forward to the nearest station and telegraph for wrecking crew and other help.
A terrible disaster had barely been averted. The passengers aboard the Midnight Flyer on this occasion would not be likely soon to forget the incident. Stilling had not overstated the horror that had been averted.
The wires certainly buzzed now, up and down the division. The express was delayed fully two hours, although the wrecking train was brought down from Oxford in record time. The freights began to pile up on both tracks. If this dastardly attempt to wreck the Midnight Flyer was the act of the strikers, they had come near to doing what Andy McCarrey threatened. The division might have been tied up for a couple of days if Ralph’s train had plunged into the Devil’s Den.
Some of the crew looked into the matter of the burning scarecrow that had so luckily warned the engine crew of trouble ahead. The straw-stuffed figure had been taken from a small field of corn bordering the right of way. The owner of the field lived at some distance, but he came over to see what had happened.
“I was woke up by that big explosion,” he declared. “I thought it was a blast in the quarry. Quarry is ten miles away, though. And then I began to wonder why they were blasting at night. So I got up and looked out, and saw the lights of the train and knew something had happened, because it was standing still. So I came over.”
As it chanced, Ralph heard him and he asked the farmer:
“Have you seen any suspicious persons around here lately?”