THE STEAM MAN.
When the Steam Man went smashing up against the door of the
counterfeiters’ head-quarters, the shock caused by the sudden recoil
was so great that Charley Gorse flew one way and Harry Hale went
another.
The man shivered and stood still, for the power of action ceased
immediately after the collision.
If Charley had only been a second sooner in shutting off steam, they
would have stopped before reaching the door.
The man’s feet were fairly on the stone steps of the door.
When he recoiled from the stout panel that had withstood even this
great shock, the Steam Man actually staggered.
From side to side he swayed on the uneven footing, and had it not been
for the far-reaching foresight that had built his legs wide apart, he
must have inevitably fallen.
But he was well balanced, and, after a moment’s rocking, he settled
down on the steps.
The shock had one totally unlooked-for effect.
There must have been some very slight cause of interference in the
machinery connected with the headlight; most likely a piece of dirt
lodged in a delicate part of the intricate coils, and this obstruction
had been jolted out by the shock.
As the coils came into action again they were fired by a steam of
electricity that ran from the wagon, and the man’s eyes again blazed
with powerful light.
Charley Gorse had been hurled with great force from his seat.
His head came in contact with some very hard substance, and then
Charley forgot where he was for some time, for his five senses were
knocked out of proper working order, and he lay on the hard ground,
totally bewildered, and too much dazed to think.
Harry Hale was like a cat.
If you had tossed him into the air for a dozen feet, it is more than
probable that he would come down upon his feet, merely from habit.
He came upon his feet this time, but nearly six yards from the
Steam Man, and for all that he had accomplished a neat involuntary
back-somersault, and he did not feel very glorious over it for every
bone in his body seemed started from head to foot.
“By George, that was rough!” he cried, as he picked himself up. “I
wonder where the boy is?”
Charley was lying about twenty feet from him, too much stunned to
wonder back in return.
At this moment the light blazed forth with great brilliancy from the
eyes of the giant.
Cries were heard from within the house, and the sound of hurrying
footsteps came to Hale’s ears.
The door was flung open.
Half a dozen men stood in the wide hallway.
They were all armed in a rough and ready fashion, having apparently
taken what weapons that chanced to come first to their hands.
Well, that huge old prairie traveler came very near scaring the life
out of them.
As they flung open the door his powerful bright eyes flooded them with
light, and if they had been childishly superstitious to any degree they
might have thought that some of the giants of their nursery rhymes, the
ones with eyes of flame and breath of smoke, had come to pay them a
visit, and that the thundering noise with which he announced his advent
was merely his style of tapping for admittance.
They yelled one excited yell of wholesale terror.
Only one man out of all that party stood his ground, and that man was
Captain Jerry Prime.
The fact of the case was that he would just as soon have shaken hands
with the devil as with any one else, and therefore, even this alarming
specter was not calculated to make him turn tail in affright.
The rest were badly scared, and they all dropped their arms.
Two of them, religiously superstitious, fell down upon their knees on
the floor, and began to hurriedly jabber over some prayers.
Others turned to fly, and in the hurry and bustle of that demoralized
moment they were not careful about putting their feet down properly,
and one of the men kneeling on the floor got a number nine boot in his
mouth with such hearty good force that he flew off to a distant corner,
minus several teeth.
Others tumbled over the kneeling form of his comrade, and then the
cursing and kicking began.
They fought, bit, cursed, kicked, gouged, and, in fact, did anything to
get away from the terrifying spectacle.
Captain Jerry Prime seized some of the fools by the collar of their
coats, and with no gentle hand lifted them erect.
“Silence!” he roared. “What the devil do you mean by this? Can’t you
see that it’s the Steam Man standing up against the door? What the
devil is the matter with you, Browning?”
“Yes, sir.”
One of the men answered him.
“Grab a torch and jump out there as lively as you can.”
“Yes, sir,” said Browning; and seizing a torch from a socket in the
wall, he made a desperate leap past the Steam Man into the darkness.
He didn’t care to go, not a bit of it, but then Captain Jerry Prime had
a peculiar style about giving orders.
He gave out his command, and then fixed his eyes upon the man he had
given the order to; one hand rested upon the butt of a revolver in his
belt, and the poor chap knew that it meant obedience or death, every
time.
The first thing Browning met when he reached the open air was a hand--a
human hand.
This hand was formed with the usual amount of fingers and the
adjunctive thumb, and they were all doubled up into a compact ball.
Browning must have met this with his face, somewhere about the region
of the center of his face.
It would have appeared to an outsider that he was puzzled.
He evidently thought that it was some sort of a problem, for he lay
down on the ground at full length to solve it.
By this time Charley Gorse had got upon his feet, and began looking
about him in surprise.
He saw Harry Hale’s fist shoot out, and he saw Browning go down, and
then the clear voice of his comrade rang out:
“Charley!”
“Here.”
“Follow me,” said Hale.
“Lead on,” cried Charley Gorse.
Hale leaped forward, a pistol clutched in his hand.
After him came Charley Gorse, but not similarly armed.
In a hand-to-hand affair Charley Gorse liked the bowie-knife.
It was heavy, deadly, and he was skilled in its use, and at close
quarters, such as threatened them now, he preferred it to the best of
revolvers.
Like a tiger Hale leaped through the gap left between the huge body of
the man and the side of the door, and his flying form struck squarely
against the rather light-weighted Jerry Prime.
The captain went down, and Harry Hale flew over him.
Close upon his heels came the heavy form of the border boy, who landed
safely upon his feet.
Hale sprang to his feet with a swift, nimble bound, and as he did so
the voice of his trusty follower, Barry Brown, came up from below:
“Hale to the rescue!”
“Follow!” shrieked Hale to Charley. “Barry, we come!”