Larry took no part in the joking talk. His gaze was fixed upon a ring in the iron floor of the cab; a loose ring that was threaded through an eye in the end of an iron rod that came up through a hole in the floor; rod and ring jingling musically as the engine went bumping over the rail joints.
Twice the slow back-and-forth journey had been made, and still Dick was industriously exchanging mild chaffings with the “twinkly-eyed bandit” on the driver’s box. Then suddenly the fireman broke in.
“Lookout, Bill!” he shouted to the engineer, “they’re gettin’ ready to rush us!”
The alarm was not entirely unwarranted. Between two minutes there had been a swift remobilization of the Short Line track-laying forces, followed by a quick resumption of the strenuous activities of the night.
Instantly the big engineman’s free hand shot out to grab Dick’s collar and he dropped the joking mood like a cast-off garment.
“Now you know why I tolled you up here with us!” he growled menacingly. “I happen to know who you are, kid; you’re the Short Line general manager’s son, and if that gang over there tries to pull any of the rough stuff on us, you’ll get it in the neck, and get it first—savvy?”
Being totally unexpected, it was the sharpest trial that had ever come to Dickie Maxwell; but he met it like a man—and with a laugh.
“I’m not hiding behind my father—not so that you could notice it,” he retorted cheerfully. “And, if you like, I can tell you what our men are getting ready to do. They are going to give you two crossings to watch instead of one.”
That was what developed in almost less than no time at all. As if every move had been planned in advance—as it actually had—the Short Line army began to throw down a track in a wide curve to come at a crossing some four or five hundred yards below the original survey. When this object made itself understandable, someone in authority on one of the steel cars of the blockading train yelled out an order, and the big engineer promptly lengthened his pendulum swing run to make it include the new location as well as the old, at the same time quickening the speed a bit.