“Will you order the carriage, please, right away. I'm going out.”
Porter was with McNally in one of the offices of the M. & T. station. The two had been sitting there ever since the building had been seized by the deputies, getting satisfactory reports from station after station as the raiders moved up the line. Porter was on the point of starting home for dinner when the reports began coming in from Tillman City. The first of the yellow sheets the boy brought them simply repeated the news that had come in so many times that afternoon. The station was in the hands of the C. & S.C. men, and there had been no resistance. But the second sheet was less satisfactory, for it told of Stevens's escape on the yard engine.
Porter read it and exclaimed petulantly, “McDowell must have been asleep when he let a man get away like that.”
“Do you think there's much harm done?” asked McNally.
“I'm afraid so. Weeks will hear all about it in a few minutes, if he hasn't already, and he's sure to hit back. He moves quick, too.”
“We can wire McDowell to stay right where he is, and rush through another train with re-enforcements,” suggested McNally. “We may not be able to get the rest, but we can at least keep what we've got.”
“You'd better make up another train, anyway. We can fill it up with men from our carshops. McDowell had better keep right on up the line. If we have to fight, it'll be better to do it at some small place than at Tillman. We're less likely to be interfered with. Tell McDowell to go slow and not too far.”
The order to McDowell with the promise of reeforcements was sent out in time to catch him before he left Tillman, and then McNally turned his attention to massing his reserve. At the end of an hour and a half of hard work he saw the last files of the rear guard march down the platform and into the train. His frown expressed dissatisfaction, for these men were not so good fighting material as those McDowell had captained. Their manner was sheepish; they did not finger lovingly the clubs they had been provided with, and altogether they seemed to feel a much greater respect for law and order than was appropriate to the occasion.
They were the best men available, however, and there were several hundred of them, and McNally was about to give the order which would send them up the road to the succor of McDowell, when Porter came hurrying toward him from the telegraph office.
“Don't send those men out yet, McNally,” he said. “There's something wrong here. I think they've bagged McDowell.”