All this was in a low whisper; and now the despatcher climbed up on the fireman's side and pressed a bit of crumpled tissue-paper into the driver's hand.
"Pull out over the switches slowly, and when you are clear of the yards read your orders an' fly."
The driver opened the throttle gently, the big wheels began to revolve, and the next moment the sheriff and one of his deputies boarded the engine. They demanded to know where that train was bound for.
"The train," said the driver, tugging at the throttle, "is back there at the station. I'm goin' to the round-house."
When the sheriff, glancing back, saw that the coach had been cut off, he swung himself down.
"They've gi'n it up," said the deputy.
"I reckon—what's that?" said the sheriff. It was the wild, long whistle of the lone black engine just leaving the yards. The two officers faced each other and stood listening to the flutter of the straight stack of the black racer as she responded to the touch of the erstwhile drowsy driver, who was at that moment laughing at the high sheriff, and who would return to tell of it, and gloat in the streets of Spokane.
The sheriff knew that three of the men for whom he held warrants were at Hillier, seven miles on the way to Canada. This engine, then, had been sent to pick them up and bear them away over the border. An electric line paralleled the steam way to Hillier, and now the sheriff boarded a trolley and set sail to capture the engine, leaving one deputy to guard the special car.
By the time the engineer got the water worked out of his cylinders, the trolley was creeping up beside his tank. He saw the flash from the wire above as the car, nodding and dipping like a light boat in the wake of a ferry, shot beneath the cross-wires, and knew instantly that she was after him.
An electric car would not be ploughing through the gloom at that rate, without a ray of light, merely for the fun of the thing. A smile of contempt curled the lip of the driver as he cut the reverse-lever back to the first notch, put on the injector, and opened the throttle yet a little wider.