“She's running slow,” said Jawn, at length.
Harvey stood breaking the match into bits. The noise of the other train came slowly nearer, but so slowly that all listened breathlessly. After a little they could hear the rumbling of an exhaust, and Jawn muttered, “She's stopped.”
“We'd better wait,” said Mallory. “It's more than likely that they have another gang ready for us. They probably will be coming this way before long.”
Harvey stepped up to the fireman's seat again, and fixed his eyes on the black cut ahead. It was still dark, but he could now distinguish the deep shadow which marked the spot where the track bent sharply to the left between its rock walls. For some time all were silent, listening to the noise of the other engine. Jawn sat on his bench, which he had not left for hours, ready either for going ahead or for backing, as the circumstances should dictate. Mallory moved to the step and swung out as before, watching and listening. The fireman swung his arms and shifted his feet in an effort to keep awake.
Occasionally they could hear men shouting, then there would be no sound save the subdued hiss of steam. After a long wait a bell rang, and Jawn's grasp tightened, but the other engine gave only a few coughs and stopped again. The ensuing silence was broken by Harvey stepping to the tender and beckoning to the detective, who had been sitting on the coal.
“All right,” said Harvey. “We'll go ahead and see what they're up to. You take the right bank, and keep close to the edge where I can talk to you if necessary.” He swung out of the cab and began laboriously to climb up the seamed sloping rock, which reached a man's height above the cab roof.
Excepting the occasional cracks and jagged projections there was no foothold, and it was at the expense of cut and scraped hands that he scrambled up the soft limestone and reached the top. He sat for a moment on the ground to recover his breath and to pull himself together. The detective was standing on the opposite bank and Harvey rose and stumbled forward. They crept along, climbing fences and tripping through underbrush. As they rounded the curve the ground began to slope away, and soon they could see the headlight of an engine. Behind it, at the Sawyerville platform, stretched a train of lighted cars.
Harvey and the detective had been talking across the cut, but now for the sake of caution they went on in silence. Harvey slipped around a farmyard that backed up to the track, and struck into the woods that lie north of Sawyerville almost up to the station and its lonely cluster of houses. Stepping quietly along a bridle path he soon came within earshot of the station.
Little knots of men stood on the platform talking excitedly. The new station agent and operator was running about in his shirt sleeves with his hand full of papers. Within the cars were crowds of men; Harvey estimated that there were several hundred. Standing near the engine, the centre of a small group, was a large man whom Harvey thought was McNally, but he could not be certain at that distance and in the uncertain light of flickering station lamps.
Harvey's sporting blood was up, and with entire forgetfulness of his exhaustion he crept slowly forward, worming through the brush and long grass behind a snake fence. Slowly he progressed until only a muddy road intervened between him and the north end of the platform. Taking advantage of a noisy blow-off from the engine, he piled some brush up in front of him and stretched out at full length with his chin on his arm, viewing the scene through the opening between the two lowest rails of the fence. Now he could easily recognize McNally, and without being able to distinguish words could even hear him talking. Suddenly McNally stepped out from the group and called down the platform,—