"Good! that means batteries of some sort," said Ford. "Rummage for them, Brissac, while I get that wire in here."
The wire was successfully pulled in through the front vestibule without giving the alarm. Ford twisted it in two when he had enough of it to reach the central compartment. Adair did sentry duty while the two technicians wrought swiftly. The bell battery was found, the ground connection made with a bit of copper wire stripped from one of the state-rooms, and Ford quickly adjusted the delicate spring of the tiny field relay.
What he feared most was that the few dry-cells of the bell battery would not supply the current for the eight miles of line up Horse Creek. For a time, which lengthened to dragging minutes, the anxious experimenters hung over the tiny field instrument. The sensitive magnet seemed wholly dead. Then, suddenly, it began to tick hesitantly in response to Ford's tapping of the key.
"Thank God, the battery is strong enough," he exclaimed. "Now, if there is somebody within hearing at Frisbie's end of the line ..."
He was clicking persistently and patiently, "E-T," "E-T," "E-T," alternating now and then with the Horse Creek call and his own private code letter, when Adair came up from his post at one of the rear windows. The golden youth was the bearer of tidings, but Ford held up his hand for silence: some one was breaking in to reply from Frisbie's—Frisbie, himself, as the minimized tickings speedily announced.
Ford snipped out his call for help in the fewest possible words:
Arm M'Grath's gang and bring it by train to Horse Creek, quick. MacMorroghs are trying to dynamite us in the Nadia. Ford.
Almost without a break in the insect-like tickings the reply came:
Stand them off; help coming.
The thing done, the master workman in Ford snatched at the helm.