And a moment later, even while they were wondering, out came "Folder here," the agent—this time paper in hand and waving for Cullin. "Orders at last," said Cullin, and sprang to get them. And this time both Graham and Toomey swung from the cab and eagerly followed. "Warrant out for Nolan!" they heard Folder say, "but they'll not get him here. The gang has whisked him away to the Fort and beyond, I reckon; and the sheriff who goes to Silver Shield takes his life in his hands." Then his eyes fell on the two firemen. "One of you's wanted," he added, "but I don't know which, and they're coming now."
He pointed down the yard toward the east entrance. Almost on the run, two men came hurrying in. Toomey grabbed Geordie's sleeve. "They sha'n't have you here, anyhow. Jump for the cab." And jump they did, all three. Moved now by some indefinable sympathy he had not felt before, Cullin urged them on, and thrust the order into Big Ben's hairy fist as it swung from the window. Ben gave one glance, his left hand grasping the lever; Toomey made a flying leap for the bell-cord; Geordie scrambled in after; hiss went the steam-cocks; clang went the bell, and with an explosive cough that shook her big frame almost free of the rails the Mogul heaved slowly ahead. The shortened "Time Freight" picked up its heels and came jerkily after, and with her ponderous drivers rolling swifter and swifter, and the heavy panting speedily changing to short, quick, and quickening puffs, faster and faster big 705 swung clear of the switch-points, smoothly rounded to the main line, and with its dozen brown chickens following close, Indian file, after the fussy old hen in the lead, away went the fast freight, flaunting its green flags at the rear in the face of the pursuit, and the deputies drew up disgusted at the edge of the yard, their signals and their shouts unheeded.
CHAPTER VIII[ToC]
A RACE TO THE FORT
Three miles out and the Mogul's six drivers were spinning like so many tops. Flat along the grimy roofs of the heaving freight-cars behind, the cloud of coal smoke from her stunted chimney fled rearward until clear of the train, then drifted idly across the rolling uplands. Ahead and to right and left, distant, snow-capped summits barred the sky-line. On either side the gray-green slopes, bare and treeless, billowed away, higher and higher toward the range, with here and there a bunch of fattening cattle gazing stupidly at the invaders of their peace and quietude. Close at hand to the left the murky waters of the stream flashed quickly by. Close at hand to the right the hard-beaten prairie road meandered over the sod. There had been a ridge or two and some sharp curves just west of town, and now, as they rounded the last of these and flew out upon an almost level track, the bottom of some prehistoric mountain lake, the eyes of two of the three silent occupants of the cab were strained along the gleaming rails ahead, and almost at the same instant the same thought sprang to the lips of each—Big Ben, with his left hand at the throttle, hunched up on his shelf, his cap pulled down over the bushy brows, and Geordie, across the cab on the fireman's seat, clinging to the window-frame to withstand the lurching of the throbbing monster, while between them, on the coal-blackened floor, Toomey, with his big shovel flinging open the iron gate to the blazing furnace for every new mouthful he fed it, and snapping it shut when he turned away for another, for not a whiff of the draught could be wasted. Once past the deserted station at the Fort there would come eight miles of twisting and turning and struggling up-grade, and every pound of steam would be needed to pull even this baker's dozen of heavily laden cars now thundering merrily along behind.
