Wheeling round the end of the freight-car, he darted back, risking a hard fall in the darkness, and ran along the several cars to the first one, where he grasped his rifle and kept on. He heard his father's roar, like that of a mad bull, and shrill yells from the other men. Kurt laughed grimly. They would never catch him in the dark. While he ran he stuffed the money into his inside coat pockets. Beyond the railroad station he slowed down to catch his breath. His breast was heaving, his pulse hammering, and his skin was streaming. The excitement was the greatest under which he had ever labored.
"Now—what shall—I do?" he panted. A freight-train was lumbering toward him and the head-light was almost at the station. The train appeared to be going slowly through without stopping. Kurt hurried on down the track a little farther. Then he waited. He would get on that train and make his way somehow to Ruxton, there to warn Anderson of the plot against his life.
CHAPTER X
Kurt rode to Adrian on that freight, and upon arriving in the yards there he jumped off, only to mount another, headed south. He meant to be traveling while it was dark. No passenger-trains ran at night and he wanted to put as much distance between him and Wheatly as possible before daylight.
He had piled into an open box-car. It was empty, at least of freight, and the floor appeared to have a thin covering of hay. The train, gathering headway, made a rattling rolling roar. Kurt hesitated about getting up and groping back in the pitch-black corners of the car. He felt that it contained a presence besides his own. And suddenly he was startled by an object blacker than the shadow, that sidled up close to him. Kurt could not keep the cold chills from chasing up and down his back. The object was a man, who reached for Kurt and felt of him with a skinny hand.
"I.W.W.?" he whispered, hoarsely, in Kurt's ear.
"Yes," replied Kurt.
"Was that Adrian where you got on?"
"It sure was," answered Kurt, with grim humor.
"Than you're the feller?"