"What's up?" asked Big Ben, presently, seeing that the conductor waited to be asked.
"Why, those Narrow Gauge fellows—they're owned here, you know—claim that two of their men were shot by the same gang that did up Breifogle. They're wiring both ways from the Junction, up here for sheriff and detectives, and down to the Springs for Bob Anthony. They say No. 4 and I both know things about the slugging we haven't told. They say No. 4 took three of the sluggers away, and that we're hiding some to take up into the mountains and turn 'em loose where they'll be safe. The only man with us is—this kid," and Cullin looked up darkly into the cab, his gloomy eyes on Geordie's coal-blackened face.
Now, indeed, it was time for action, and, quietly as he could, Geordie put the question:
"Did you tell them you had a stranger in the cab?"
"Told 'em you were the only thing—or kind—I had."
"But you told them I'd come all the way with you from Chimney Switch, did you not?"
"I didn't tell 'em anything except what I said to Folder here—the station-master. I told 'em, through him, if they wanted anything on this train they needn't ask me. I wasn't responsible."
Graham and Toomey exchanged quick glances. A wretched end would it be to all their planning if Geordie should now be dragged off the cab as accessory to the assault on young Breifogle, his helpless charge and patient of the early morning hours.
Yet that was just what now was likely to happen. Resentful of there being a mystery about the cab, a secret he was not allowed to share—an outsider made known by Cullin's superiors to Cullin's subordinates, yet not presented to him—true to human nature Cullin had told what Geordie would conceal. In less than no time the enemy would know 705 had brought a stranger within their gates who was too wary to come by passenger-train. In less than ten minutes they might be there with a warrant for his arrest.
And at that very moment there went up a shout from the group of miners at the office. One of their kind had come running in, breathless and alarmed. Three or four words only had he spoken, but they were enough. As one man the twoscore turned and ran for the broad street beyond the passenger station, were swallowed up in the gap between the express and baggage sheds and the passenger waiting-rooms, and could be heard shouting loudly beyond the high board fence—a chorus of cheers that seemed to start near the main entrance and went travelling on the wings of the wind westward up the lively street.