It was very early in the morning; the faint glow of the sunrise was spreading over the sky, as the car quietly slipped out of the yard and started on its adventures. Mary Louise, seated in front beside Danny Dexter, turned to smile at the Colonel and Irene and to wave a last good-bye to Uncle Eben and Aunt Sally. Then turning their faces straight to the west she and Danny started trustingly and determinedly on their errand of mercy.
CHAPTER XIX
THE ESCAPE
It was not difficult for James O’Hara to realize that his presence on the Limited was discovered. The rolling of the porter’s eyes in his direction and the interested glances of the train men, as they took especial occasion to glance at him was enough to tell that fact to this man, keyed up as he was from sheer excitement. He sat very tense and stared out of the window, every faculty alert, his body straight and rigid.
When he did act it was with tiger-like agility and without an instant’s forethought.
As the train neared the Albuquerque station, a women across the aisle raised her window to lean out and see more clearly. She had no time to make a further move. O’Hara had leaped across the aisle, and brushing her aside, had flung himself through the window of the now slowly moving train.
It was done so quietly and so quickly that it was a few seconds before the occupants of the car realized what had happened. A hue and cry was then immediately raised. The whole car, which up till now had been the usual poised and indifferent gathering, turned loose into a veritable bedlam.
As the train stopped at the station the passengers piled out one after another to gaze across the sand by the tracks and watch the fleeing man. But their amazement was great when, strain their eyes as they would, they could see no trace of any man. The only sign of activity was the flying dust of a distant automobile, so they turned their attention to the officers who had been waiting for the refugee and were now hastily mounting ponies to ride in pursuit of the fleeing man, undoubtedly hidden somewhere in the sagebrush.
As the horsemen vanished in the cloud of dust, the tourists, once again their normal and conventional selves, turned their full attention to the most conventional but utterly abnormal Indians of the Harvey Eating House.