Blazing with indignation at the injustice and meanness of Snyder’s absurd charge against his favorite brakeman, Conductor Tobin answered promptly: “I know him to be one of the best brakemen on the road, although he is the youngest. He is one of the pluckiest too and as honest as he is plucky. I’ll own he might have made a mistake in going off with that engine; but all the same it was a brave thing to do and I am certain he thought he was on the right track.”
“Do you know him too?” asked the sheriff of the other brakeman.
“Yes, sir. I am proud to say I do and in regard to what I think of him Conductor Tobin’s words exactly express my sentiments.”
“Do you also know him?” was asked of the fireman.
“Yes, I know him to be the young rascal who ran me twice into such a storm of bullets from the train robber’s pistols that it’s a living wonder I’m not full of holes at this blessed minute.”
“What else did he do?”
“What else? Why, he jumped from the engine while she was running a good twenty mile an hour, and started off like the blamed young lunatic he is to chase after the train robber afoot. Wanted me to go with him too, but I gave him to understand I wasn’t such a fool as to go hunting any more interviews with them pistols. No, sir; I stuck where I belonged and if he’d done the same he wouldn’t be in the fix he’s in now.”
“And yet,” said the sheriff, quietly, “this ‘blamed young lunatic,’ as you call him, succeeded in overtaking that train robber after all. He also managed to relieve him of his pistols you seem to have dreaded so greatly, recover the valuable property that had been stolen from the express car, and also a fine horse that the robber had just appropriated to his own use. On the whole gentleman, I don’t think I’d better arrest him, do you?”