[CHAPTER XXIV]
JED HOPKINS, PHŒNIX
For an instant, Allan stared stupidly at those red tongues of flame, licking merrily about the door—then, in a flash, he understood, and his pulses seemed to stop. The robbers had set fire to the station! It was in this way they proposed to get rid of the evidences of a crime far more serious than robbery. And thus, too, they hoped to get rid of the only witness of that crime not implicated in it—and then Allan remembered—it was not the robbers, it was Dan Nolan who had left him here to die—Nolan who had been told to place him in safety, and who had pretended to do so! He remembered Nolan’s last words, the chuckle which had accompanied them,—all this passed lightning-like through the boy’s mind, as a drowning man, in the moment before he loses consciousness, sees before him his whole life, in a kind of wonderful and fearful panorama.
And, indeed, Allan was as near death as any drowning man—and a death infinitely more horrible. Only for a breath did he lie there passive, staring at the flames; then he strained and tugged at his bonds, regardless of torn flesh, of bleeding wrists, of aching muscles, but the knots held firmly. Finally, still tight to the chair, he managed to turn upon his hands and knees and to drag himself, inch by inch, toward the door which opened into the waiting-room. Would he reach it in time? He scarcely dared hope so, for the other door was crackling and smoking, threatening every instant to burst into a sheet of flame.
He did reach it, somehow, and raised himself to turn the knob and open it, when from behind him there came a blood-curdling yell, the smoking door burst open and a frantic apparition plunged through the sheet of flame, snatched open the other door before which Allan crouched, and, catching the boy by the collar as it passed, hurled itself on across the waiting-room and through the outer door to safety. There it dropped the boy heavily beside the track, and threw itself into a pool of muddy water, left by the rain of the evening before. In this it wallowed and rolled, as though enjoying the utmost luxury of the bath, and Allan, watching it, began to fancy it some kind of monstrous amphibian.
But at last the monster rose, shook itself, and a hoarse voice issued from it.
“Thought they had Jed Hopkins, did they? Shoot him an’ burn him—bound t’ git him some way! Not this time, gentlemen! Oh, no, not this time,” and Jed rubbed his hand over his head, leaving himself almost bald, for his hair had been scorched off.
He stood an instant watching the flames. Then he remembered Allan, and strode toward him.
“Hello, kid,” he said. “What’d they do to you?”