The Wire Devils

by Frank L. Packard

Came another yell from behind him. He heard the freight shed door flung violently open; and then, in grim emphasis of a sudden chorus of wild, infuriated shouts from Dixer's waiting companions, the vicious tongue flame of a revolver split the black, and the roar of the report reverberated through the yard like a cannon shot.

And now from the yard itself, the roundhouse and the station came answering shouts. On the Hawk ran—he was alongside the private car now, which was already in motion—and now he was opposite the cab of the yard engine. The fireman, at the sudden pandemonium, head thrust out, was hanging in the gangway. The Hawk's automatic swung to a line with the other's head.

“Get out!” gritted the Hawk coldly. “Both of you—you and your mate! Get out—on the other side!”

The man, with a dazed oath, retreated, and the Hawk sprang through the gangway. The engineer, jumping from his seat, hesitated, and in the yellow light of the cab lamp looked for the fraction of a second into the muzzle of the Hawk's automatic, and into the hard, uncompromising black eyes behind the mask—and followed the fireman in a hasty exit through the opposite gangway.

The Hawk snatched at the throttle, pulled it wider—and, like a beast stung to sudden madness under the spur, the yard engine quivered, and in a storm of exhausts, coughing the red sparks skyward from the stack, the drivers racing, spitting fire as they sought to bite and hold the steel, plunged forward. Ahead the way was clear to the main line, but behind——The Hawk dropped his package on the floor of the cab, leaned suddenly far out through the gangway, and as suddenly fired, his automatic cutting a lane of flame through the darkness. He had fired at the ground, but his shot had been effective. The engineer or the fireman, he could not distinguish which, leaping to board the private car by the rear platform, leaped back instead, and with a series of wild gesticulations, in which arms and fists waved furiously, vanished in the darkness.

The yard engine, as though playing snap-the-whip with the private car behind it, took the main line switch with a stagger and a lurch, and straightened away into the clear. There was speed now, and the speed was increasing with every second. The shouts, the yells, the cries, the pandemonium from the yard was blotted out in the pound of the drivers and the belch of the exhaust; and the station and switch lights were lost to sight as engine and car flew on, heading west into the foothills. The Hawk chuckled to himself. There would be wild confusion in the dispatcher's office, and wild confusion all along the line west of Selkirk, as regulars, extras and traffic of all sorts scurried for safety to the sidings—but there would be no interference with him! Where they would otherwise have ditched him, given him an open switch at the first station and sent him to destruction without compunction, he possessed, as it was, a most satisfactory hostage in the person of the division superintendent, whom they would hesitate about sending to eternity at the same time!

Possibly a minute and a half, two at the outside, had passed since he had jumped through the gangway. He eased the throttle a little now, reducing the speed to a rate more nearly commensurate with safety; and, placing the package on the driver's seat, ripped off the outside wrapper. There was a queer, hard smile on the Hawk's lips, as his fingers tore at the covering of one of the small sealed packets within. Was it the dummy parcel—or the twenty-five thousand in cash? Had Dixer succeeded—or was the money still behind him there in the private car?

The cab lamp above the dancing gauge needles seemed to throw its meagre yellow glow with strained inquisitiveness over the Hawk's shoulder—and then the Hawk laughed softly, and laughed again. In his hands were banknotes. He riffled the stack through his fingers. It was here, in his possession—twenty-five thousand dollars in cash!

And he laughed again, and glanced around him—through the cab glass at the white ribbons of steel glistening under the headlight's glare, around the murky cab that in its sway and jolt seemed to endow a legion of shadowy with movement, vitality and life, at the platform of the private car, which he could see by looking along the edge of the tender, and which, like its fellow at the rear, was bathed in the soft radiance of a dome light. Well, he might have known from the fact that the occupants of the car had not made any move as yet, at least from the forward end, that they had been in bed and asleep when the disturbance began; and he might, on that count, if he had stopped to think, have known that Dixer had succeeded even before he, the Hawk, had put it to the proof by opening the parcel.

A lurch of the cab sent him against the seat, and scattered the sealed packages. He gathered them together again hurriedly. He had only to slow down the engine a little more, jump to the ground, let the engine and car go on, make his own way back through the fields, and he would be safe unless—that strange, queer smile, half grim, half whimsical, was flickering across his lips—unless he cared to risk his life for that dummy package back there in the car behind, that contained nothing more valuable than neatly trimmed pieces of blotting paper!