The Wire Devils

by Frank L. Packard

They were swaying now, the two of them, bumping their shoulders and their arms and elbows against first one side of the corridor and then the other. There was the crash of splintering glass as they lunged into a window—another crash, louder, more ominous, and with it a tongue of flame, as the automatic went off in their hands—and something like a red-hot iron seared the Hawk's side, and a blur came before his eyes.

He reeled, recovered himself, and, massing all his strength for the effort, as, with a cry of triumph, Meridan closed again, he tore himself free from the other's grasp. There was one way—he was still in possession of the automatic—only one way now.

With a lightning swing he whipped the hutt of the weapon to the other's head, backed rapidly away as the boy slid a limp thing to the floor, and, picking up the package as he moved backward, holding the narrow corridor with his automatic, though Lanson was kneeling now at Meridan's side, he reached the observation compartment, whirled, ran for the door, opened it, and stepped out on the platform.

He stood panting here, a little dizzy, a sort of nauseating weakness upon him, as he fumbled in his pocket. He was not as quick as usual in his work, not as expert now in the use of his skeleton keys, but, swiftly for all that, he locked the car door.

The car and the engine seemed to sway and lurch and pitch and toss as they had never done before. Was the speed greater? What was it? He stumbled and nearly fell as he climbed to the tender. He fell, unable to maintain his footing in the shifting coal, as he reached the cab. There was something hot and wet that seemed to be working its way down his leg; his side was giving him intolerable pain.

He looked at the package in his hands, looked at it queerly for a moment, and then his drawn lips parted in the old whimsical smile, as he lurched forward and opened the fire-box door. The red glow filled the cab and spread upward, tinging the sky with a rosy light—and the Hawk thrust the package into the fire, and, swaying unsteadily, watched it burst into flame.

He glanced at the gauge now. The steam was dropping rapidly. He swept his hand across his eyes. He had two things to do, and it seemed as though his brain clogged in its decision as to which he should do first—he had to get more coal on the fire, or else the engine would run down, and he did not want it to run down, for it must keep on going a long way, a very long way if possible, after he left it; and he must stop the flow of blood from his wound somehow, or else——

He put coal into the fire-box. It was painful, dizzy work, and he spilled a great deal of it, and the lumps rolled over the floor of the cab, and he stumbled over the lumps.

The Hawk's teeth were biting into his bloodless lips, as he finally shut the fire-box door, and, staggering to the side of the cab, lifted up the engineer's seat again. Here, under the packages of banknotes, he found a bunch of waste and some cord; and then, reeling with the lurch of the cab, reeling with his own weakness that only an iron nerve held back from mastering him, he examined his wound, found it, though painful and bleeding profusely, to be only a bad flesh wound, and, making a thick pad of the waste, he laid it against his side, and bound it there by passing the cord tightly several times around his body. It was a crude bandage, but it should, at least, check the flow of blood—afterwards, if he had luck, there would be opportunity for a better one!

His mind reverted, seemingly without volition of his, to the fight in the car, and he spoke aloud.