“Nothing nearer than Angels. There is an eastbound freight held there, loading the last of Jennings’s outfit. To order the engine back from that would add at least an hour and a half to the two-hour-and-fifty-minute running schedule I gave you the other day.”
Sprague swore out of a full heart, which, since he was the least profane of men, was an accurate measure of his growing disquietude.
“That’s on me!” he grated. “I had it all figured out to the tenth decimal place, and I didn’t put in the factor of chance! Dick, I want the biggest automobile in this town, and the one man among all your thousands who is least afraid to drive it.”
Maxwell was able to answer without hesitation. “The car will be Colonel Baldwin’s big ‘six,’ with Starbuck for your reckless chauffeur. But I doubt if you can get over the range in anything that goes on wheels.” Then he added: “What is it, Calvin? What have you figured out?”
Sprague ignored the anxious query and spoke only to the fact.
“Can’t get over the range? I tell you, we’ve got to get over the range! Good Lord! why in Heaven’s name doesn’t Starbuck hurry?”
Starbuck had hurried. He had looked to find most, if not all, of the men he had been told to summon, closeted in conference with Stillings, and his guess had gone true to the mark. Only Tarbell was missing, and him they picked up in front of The Tribune office as they were hurrying to the rendezvous in the colonel’s big touring-car.
Maxwell saw the car as it came under the corner electrics. “There’s a little luck, anyway!” he exclaimed. “That is the Colonel’s car, now, and Billy is driving it.”
“Tools and arms; half a dozen picks and shovels, and anything you can find that will shoot,” commanded Sprague, vaulting the porch railing to the sidewalk as easily as Starbuck had vaulted it a little while before. “See to that part of the outfit yourself, Dick, while I’m looking after the human end of it.”
One minute afterward the big man was standing beside the touring-car which had been drawn up at the town-side platform of the railroad building. Sprague shot the emergency at the five men in the car in bullet-like sentences.