“Well, who are you, then? Come, spit it out quick! We haven’t any time for fooling.”
“I am a friend of Jacob Allen’s,” replied Myles, with a happy thought.
“Oh, you are, are you? Well, how do I know that? It’s easy enough to say you are a friend of Jake Allen’s, but how can you prove it?”
“By this,” said Myles, producing a folded bit of note-paper that Allen had given him the night before. The man read aloud:
The bearer, Mr. Manning, is my friend; and I wish all my friends to treat him as a friend of—Jacob Allen.
“That’s all right,” said the man, returning the note to Myles, “though some of those that Jake Allen thought were his friends have gone back on him lately. Still, I guess we’ll have to pass you this time. I must say, though, that for a friend of Allen’s you are in mighty poor company just now.” Then he walked away, and Myles left the car to see what was going on outside.
Now it happened that a soldier occupying the next seat in front of the reporter overheard the reading of this note, and was struck by its curious wording. He afterward told Lieutenant Easter of it, and the Lieutenant told Ben Watkins, adding his own suspicions that this friend of Jacob Allen-must be the very one who had conveyed to the strikers the news of this attempt to run a train through. “Otherwise,” he said, “they could not possibly have known of it in time to plan the stopping and capture of the train as they did.”
In thus laying suspicion upon Myles the Lieutenant entirely forgot that the reporter had a companion, the telegraph operator, the night before, when he himself gave away this information.
After leaving the car Myles was witness of some very funny scenes. First the strikers inside the cars secured all the guns they could find and passed them to their comrades outside. Then, two at a time, so guarded that there was no chance of escape, and solemnly assured that they were about to be hanged, the disgusted soldiers were made to leave the cars. As they appeared on the platforms in all the splendor of their gorgeous uniforms they were greeted with howls of derision. The nodding cocks’ plumes received their full share of attention, and at the cry of “Scalp ’em! scalp ’em! give us their scalps!” the gaudy feathers were shorn from the beaver caps or plucked out by the roots and distributed to all who wanted them. Then the prisoners were marched back into the bushes, struggling, protesting, pleading, making all sorts of promises, or, in some cases, laughing, and treating it all as a joke. As each couple reached a point beyond sight of their companions, to whom their fate was thus a mystery, they were stripped of their cherished uniforms with the exception of their shorn beavers, and made to put on pairs of greasy or coal-blackened overalls in place of them. Then the dejected-looking couple was allowed to step to one side and witness the similar treatment of the next two who were brought out.