Over the bridge rumbled the train; and in a moment Ned and Tom, two forlorn figures, descended at the depot.
Their car had stopped beyond the depot crowd, and nobody noticed them emerge from the vestibule, upon the bricks below. Tom, who had halted a limited train, was equal to this next crisis.
The hacks and ’buses were at the other end of the depot, but across the wide brick walk he saw Luke Denee’s white horse and veteran express and transfer wagon, with Luke himself standing by it, waiting for whatever hauling the train might have brought him.
“Oh, Mr. Denee! Mr. Denee!” called Tom, running forward. “Won’t you carry Ned Miller up town—he’s been shot!”
“What’s that?” inquired Luke, bustling forward. “Ned Miller? Where is he—why, bless my soul!” catching sight of Ned himself. “Who shot him?”
“I did. My gun went off by accident,” explained Tom, wearily; he was growing tired of confessing it so often. “He ought to be got to a doctor right away.”
“You bet I’ll take him, and we’ll get him there in a jiffy,” assured Luke. “Golly the grog and the great horn spoon, Ned boy—did Tom take you for a goose, or a snipe, or what?”
“A what, I guess,” replied Ned, as Luke helped him into the rear of the wagon, and settled him upon a trunk. The train was pulling out, and from every window the passengers’ faces stared out upon them.
Barely waiting for Tom, with the two guns, to leap into the wagon, Luke plumped upon the seat and lifting the lines clucked vigorously to his white horse. The report of Ned’s plight was now being repeated from mouth to mouth through the depot and vicinity, and as the wagon rolled away and turned down the street it was followed by a murmur and many eyes.
With Ned sitting upon the trunk, and Tom standing beside him to steady him, and Luke laying the whip on his astonished steed, the wagon rattled down the thoroughfare. Scenting something wrong, the people whom it passed gazed after it in wonder.