"How many miles have we got left to catch 'em?"
"I don't know," answered Dick, as for a moment he ceased his labors, and holding to the rail at the side of the cab peered ahead along the parallel lines of light; "it can't be much more, for we are in the hills now, and on the down grade. If we are to do any good at all it must be soon."
The next moment there was a long weird shriek of the whistle, then the grinding of brake-shoes on the wheels as the signal for the train guards to man the wheel brakes followed in staccato blasts. Groaning, straining, shaking, screeching, bumping and thumping, the train slackened its speed, crawled for a few yards, and then with one last resounding rattle it stopped, and there, but a few short yards ahead, waiting to discover the reason for the wild signals for help they had picked up, stood the officers and men of the artillery train, safe and unharmed.
Owing to a "hot-box" they had been forced to stop and repair at a station called Brasiles. While there they discovered that the lines of wire either side of the station had been cut and later, hearing the wild whistling of the engine in their rear as they proceeded cautiously on their way, and believing rightly that the signal was meant for them, it was decided best to await the arrival of the news before going further.
It was Richard Comstock who, a little later from the seat above the cow-catcher of the leading train, gave a shout of satisfaction. Rounding the last abrupt curve in the hills before descending to the straight road-bed of the plain, he espied a great mass of rock thrown directly across the rails. Had the train been other than creeping along through the cuts and defiles a serious accident would have followed undoubtedly.
Slowly the train drew up to the dangerous obstacle, and then, true to the contents of the letter which Dick had delivered into the hands of the Marine Officer in charge, they found crushed beneath the mass of rock the body of a man in whose pockets was the letter and the money, which, if the truth had not been known, might have changed the pages of Nicaragua's history.
CHAPTER XXIV
THE SITUATION WELL IN HAND
Zoom! Whiz-z-z, and then a distant bursting cloud of cottony white smoke high in the blue sky over the hill called Coyotepe. Soon the waiting ear heard the sharp explosion of that seemingly soft fluffy cotton-ball, which in reality carried death in its wake, for with the bursting came hundreds of tiny bits of steel and bullets seeking out the enemy behind their entrenchments. And through the day and the night following the sound of the field guns prepared the way for the attacking marines, sailors and Federal troops the next morning.
At the first break of day two battalions of United States Marines began their advance. In reserve, a battalion of sailors, as yet untried in land warfare, fretted and fussed at their position behind the actual firing line, and some even rolled in the yellow mud till their white suits were the color of marine khaki and then, rifle in hand, sneaked away from their command and joined their brothers in arms. As for the Nicaraguans, supposed to attack but not relishing the job, they delayed and delayed, only too happy to let Colonel Pendleton and his command assume the task of attempting to drive Zeladon and his insurrectos from Coyotepe and Barrancas. Deep down in their hearts they felt that what no Nicaraguan army had yet accomplished could never be carried to a successful issue by these few pale-faced Americans from the North.