“Yes,” returned Bob, meditatively. “I reckon an Indian did it, but you are the Indian.”
“Come, stop your gabble, you boys!” blustered the doughty engineman, speaking to everybody and with a show of authority. “Bucks, notify the despatcher I’m in the river.”
“Get back to your engine, then,” said Scott. “Don’t ask Bucks to send in a false report. And afterward,” suggested Scott, “you and I, Dan, can go over and clean the Indians out of the cotton-woods.”
Baggs took umbrage at the suggestion, and no amount of chaffing from Scott disconcerted him, but after Bucks reported the catastrophe to Medicine Bend the wires grew warm. Baxter was very angry. A crew was got together at Medicine Bend, and a wrecking-train made up with a gang of bridge and track men and despatched to the scene of the disaster. The operating department was so ill equipped to cope with any kind 168 of a wreck that it was after midnight before the train got under way.
The sun had hardly risen next morning, when Bob Scott, without any words of explanation, ran into Bucks’s room, woke him hurriedly, and, bidding him dress quickly, ran out. It took only a minute for Bucks to spring from his cot and get into his clothes and he hastened out of doors to learn what the excitement was about. Scott was walking fast down toward the bridge. Bucks joined him.
“What is it, Bob?” he asked hastily. “Indians?”
“Indians?” echoed Bob scornfully. “I guess not this time. I’ve heard of Indians stealing pretty nearly everything on earth––but not this. No Indian in this country, not even Turkey Leg, ever stole a locomotive.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean Dan Baggs’s engine is gone.”
Bucks’s face turned blank with amazement. “Gone?” he echoed incredulously. He looked at Scott with reproach. “You are joking me.”