The sound of the oncoming train grew louder. Mr. Copewell attained a higher rate of speed. The sweat poured into his bulging eyes. The rumble grew, gathering into a crescendo, then dropped down the scale of sound with diminuendo. He knew the train had passed. It had not stopped. It had not hesitated. The engineer was getting a good forty-five miles an hour out of his boilers!
As a capstone to his arch of misfortune an outcropping root caught Mr. Copewell’s toe and threw him headlong into a deep cut. It began to look as though, in the question of his marriage, the nays had it. A very definite pain in the chest and shoulder told him that something had broken. He staggered to his feet and went more slowly. A torment in one ankle retarded him—also, there was no further need of hurrying. At the fire he discerned the peacefully recumbent figure of Mr. Connors, his head pillowed on the suit-case.
“Why in —— didn’t you stop that train?” bawled Mr. Copewell in futile frenzy.
“It’s like dis, pal,” confided Mr. Rat Connors placidly. “I just gets t’rowed offen one dangler, see? I ain’t goin’ ter take chances stoppin’ no fliers in places like dis. It ain’t healt’y. Meself, I knows w’en I gets plenty.”
“Didn’t you agree to do it?” screamed Mr. Copewell, choking and sputtering like a cataleptic maniac.
“Sure,” smiled Mr. Connors, “but I loses me noive, see?” He did not add that he had accomplished his real object when he had rifled the suit-case and that his promise had been purely strategic.
Mr. Copewell sank down by the fire. Perhaps it was the shock of the wetting and a broken clavicle. Perhaps it was despair and pain combined. The blood in his temples seemed to be cascading into his eyeballs and flooding his sight with red. Slowly Mr. Copewell crumpled forward in a senseless heap on the stone-ballasted right of way.
Mr. Connors, rolling a cigarette, was startled by the collapse of his vis-à-vis. He rose and went over to investigate. He studied the face and its pallor impressed him. Mr. Rat Connors stood indicted for several dozen felonies. More cities claimed him living than ever claimed Homer dead. The fact that he was at large was sufficient evidence of his criminal efficiency. Yet at times he felt that a career of great promise was seriously handicapped by a tendency toward softheartedness.
Now his hands played over the prostrate body as deftly as though the fingers were experimenting with the combination of a safe. The diagnosis told him that a rib and a collar bone were broken. There might be also other breakages, but these two were patent on a cursory inventory.
“Now if dat ain’t ——,” snarled Mr. Connors, “I’ll eat a goat!”