“Queer--and pestiferous,” said Fogg with vehemence. “I don’t mind a fair and square fight with any man, but this stabbing in the back, tumbling into man traps in the dark and the like, roils me.”
The Overland Express was on its return trip to Stanley Junction. Outside of the incident of the recognition of the old grandfather of Glen Palmer at the bluff curve, nothing had occurred to disturb a smooth, satisfactory run. Ralph and Fogg had discussed the first incident for quite some time after it had come up.
“I don’t like the lineup,” Fogg had asserted. “Here one day you run across that old man in the company of two fellows we’d put in jail on mere suspicion. The next day we find the same old man cleaning up a wreck. Is that part of some villanious programme? Did some fine play send that chicken car down into the ditch, say?”
“Decidedly not,” answered Ralph. “It doesn’t look that way at all. Even if it did, I would vouch for young Palmer. He had no hand in it. I’ll look this business up, though, when we get back home.”
“H’m, you’d better,” growled Fogg, and the fireman was back in his old surly suspicious mood all of the rest of the run.
Now, on the return trip, Fogg was brought up to a positive pitch of frenzy. It was just after their layover at Rockton when a messenger had come from the assistant superintendent to the roundhouse. The waiting hands there knew him. He approached Ralph, addressed him in a low confidential tone, and the two proceeded to headquarters together. It was the sentiment of the majority that the young engineer of the Overland Express was “on the carpet for a call down.”
Ralph came back from the interview with the railway official with a serious but by no means downcast face. He parried the good natured raillery of his fellow workmen. It was not until he and his fireman were well out of Rockton on their return trip that he told Fogg what had taken place in the private office of the assistant superintendent.
There was not much to tell, but there was lots left to surmise, and worry over, according to Fogg’s way of thinking. The railroad official had pledged Ralph to treat the interview as strictly confidential, except so far as his fireman was concerned. There was trouble brewing unmistakably, he told Ralph. The latter had weathered some pretty hard experiences with personal enemies and strikers in the past. The official wished to prepare him to battle some more of it in the future.
Bluntly he informed Ralph that two rival roads were “after the scalp” of the Great Northern. They could not reach the Overland schedule of the latter line by fair means, and they might try to break it by foul ones. The official gravely announced that he felt sure of this. He would have later specific information for Ralph. In the meantime, he wished him to exercise unusual vigilance and efficiency in overcoming obstacles that might arise to delay or cripple the Overland Express.
Two things rather startled the young engineer, for they seemed to confirm hints and suspicions already in the wind. In a guarded way the official had referred to “harmony in the train dispatcher’s office.” He had next made an allusion to the fact that if competitive rivalry grew fierce, it might attract under cover a lot of disreputable criminals, and he spoke of extra precaution when the pay trips of the line were made, tallying precisely with suspicions already entertained by Ralph.