He was much stronger than Ralph, and having jumped on him from behind, he bore the youth to the ground. He was astride Ralph in an instant, and seized upon the very dornick with which his captive had broken the lock of the door.
In a moment the young railroader might have been seriously hurt—even killed! But rescue in the shape of Mr. Barton Hopkins himself arrived in season. Reaching the spot with a clubbed rifle in his hands, the supervisor landed the stock of the weapon on the side of McCarrey’s head with such force that the villain toppled over, quite hors de combat for the time being.
Before Ralph could rise the supervisor had sprung to the door of the shack and thrown it open. The afternoon sunlight flooded into the interior of the place and Barton Hopkins saw his daughter, bound to a rude chair and gagged with a cloth tied across her face.
The anxious father was the first to reach the girl. He swiftly cut her bonds and tore off the bandage while Ralph staggered to an inner door, that of a closet where Zeph Dallas was confined.
“Great Jupiter and little fishes!” gasped Zeph hoarsely, when he saw Ralph’s face. “You’ve been a long time coming. And they’ve got a girl in prison here, too.”
“They haven’t got anybody in prison now,” said Mr. Adair’s cheerful voice from the doorway. “We’ve got them—and a fine bunch they are. That was a nice swipe you gave Andy, Mr. Hopkins. It ought to be some satisfaction to you to know that he will have to have some new teeth if he ever wants to chew his victuals on that side of his jaw.”
The situation had been a serious one, nevertheless, for it was later proved that several of the men McCarrey had in his band had prison records and were desperate criminals. The threat to injure the girl if her father did not pay for her release might not have been an empty one.
“However,” said Mr. Adair, as the friends and the supervisor and Cherry made their way to Rockton on an evening train, “this not only cleans up the McCarrey band, but it is the end of the wildcat strike. I don’t know that you had been so informed, Mr. Hopkins, but a committee of the striking shopmen, and from the old union, will wait on you to-morrow, and if you handle the situation wisely everything will be going smoothly very soon.”
“Perhaps I have been too stringent in my rules,” the supervisor said slowly. “At least, I will consider what the men have to offer.”
Cherry, hearing her father say this, nodded brightly to Ralph and squeezed his hand for a moment. “I believe you did something to help convince father that he was wrong about the railroad workers,” she whispered to her friend.