RALPH ON THE MIDNIGHT FLYER
[Illustration: THE FIRE WAS SWEEPING CLOSER AND CLOSER.]
RALPH ON THE MIDNIGHT FLYER
OR
THE WRECK AT SHADOW VALLEY
BY
ALLEN CHAPMAN
AUTHOR OF “RALPH OF THE ROUNDHOUSE,” “RALPH ON THE
ARMY TRAIN,” “THE RADIO BOYS’ FIRST WIRELESS,”
“THE RADIO BOYS TRAILING A VOICE,” ETC.
ILLUSTRATED
NEW YORK
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS
Made in the United States of America
BOOKS FOR BOYS
BY ALLEN CHAPMAN
12mo. Cloth, Illustrated.
THE RAILROAD SERIES
RALPH OF THE ROUNDHOUSE
Or Bound to Become a Railroad Man
RALPH IN THE SWITCH TOWER
Or Clearing the Track
RALPH ON THE ENGINE
Or The Young Fireman of the Limited Mail
RALPH ON THE OVERLAND EXPRESS
Or The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer
RALPH, THE TRAIN DISPATCHER
Or The Mystery of the Pay Car
RALPH ON THE ARMY TRAIN
Or The Young Railroader’s Most Daring Exploit
RALPH ON THE MIDNIGHT FLYER
Or The Wreck at Shadow Valley
THE RADIO BOYS SERIES
THE RADIO BOYS’ FIRST WIRELESS
Or Winning the Ferberton Prize
THE RADIO BOYS AT OCEAN POINT
Or The Message that Saved the Ship
THE RADIO BOYS AT THE SENDING STATION
Or Making Good in the Wireless Room
THE RADIO BOYS AT MOUNTAIN PASS
Or The Midnight Call for Assistance
THE RADIO BOYS TRAILING A VOICE
Or Solving a Wireless Mystery
THE RADIO BOYS WITH THE FOREST RANGERS
Or The Great Fire on Spruce Mountain
GROSSET & DUNLAP, Publishers, New York
COPYRIGHT, 1923, BY GROSSET & DUNLAP
Ralph on the Midnight Flyer
CONTENTS
I The Trouble-Maker
II Discipline
III A Good Deal to Think of
IV Zeph Fathers an Idea
V On the Heels of a Shadow
VI Touch and Go
VII Something Bad
VIII A Clash of Authority
IX It Happens Again
X The Night of the Strike
XI More Friction
XII Treachery
XIII News from Shadow Valley
XIV A Tragedy
XV Once More on the Rails
XVI Through Shadow Valley
XVII More Discipline
XVIII From Bad to Worse
XIX The Hold-Up in Shadow Valley
XX Strange Signals
XXI About Cherry
XXII The Threat Direct
XXIII What Lies Ahead?
XXIV Terrible News
XXV Through the Flaming Forest
XXVI The Wreck
XXVII Where Is Cherry?
XXVIII Ralph on the Trail
XXIX The Run Is Ended
RALPH ON THE MIDNIGHT FLYER
CHAPTER I—THE TROUBLE-MAKER
“What do you think, Ralph? Would any of our Great Northern employees
be foolish enough to join this wildcat strike?”
“Well, what do you think yourself?” asked Ralph Fairbanks, with some
impatience in his tone. “You know these roughnecks as well as I do.”
The general manager, in whose office at Rockton they were sitting,
threw up both hands and fairly snorted his disgust.
“I’ve been a long time at the railroad game,” he declared; “but I
never yet understood the psychology of a maintenance of way man. No,
sir. In some things they are as loyal to the road as I am myself. And
then they suddenly go off at a tangent because of something that, for
the life of me, I cannot see is important.”
“There lies the difficulty—the germ of the whole trouble,” Ralph
Fairbanks said thoughtfully.
He was a young fellow of attractive personality—good looking, too. The
girls had begun to notice the young railroader, and had he not been so
thoroughly devoted to his calling—and to the finest mother a fellow
ever had—Ralph might have been somewhat spoiled by the admiration
accorded him in certain quarters.
Just now, however, having been called in from the train dispatchers’
department where he worked, the young fellow’s attention was deeply
engaged in the subject the general manager had brought up. Ralph was
an extraordinary employee of the Great Northern. His superiors trusted
him thoroughly. And having worked his way up from the roundhouse,
switch tower, as fireman and engineer, to the train dispatcher’s
grade, he was often called upon by the railroad officials for special
duties.
The general manager stared at the young fellow after his last remark
for fully a minute before asking:
“What do you mean by that? What is the germ of the whole trouble?”
“The fact that the officials cannot see things just as the men see
them.”
“Oh!”
“No getting away from the fact that the laborer seldom looks at a
thing as his superior looks at it,” Ralph pursued earnestly. “A rule
promulgated by some officer of the road seems to him the simplest way
of getting at a needed result. But after it is spread on the board at
the roundhouse, for instance, it creates a riot.”
“So it does. And I am hanged if I have been able to understand in some
cases why the men go off half-cocked over some simple thing.”
“Not simple at all to them. It is often a rule that lops off some
cherished privilege. It may be something that looks as though it were
aimed at the laborer’s independence.”
“Bah!” ejaculated the general manager with more than a little disdain
in his tone.
“You see!” laughed Ralph. “You can’t see it in the same way that I
can, for instance. You make an order, say, changing the style of the
caps the men wear around the roundhouse and switch towers, and see
what a row you’ll have on your hands. Some ‘lawyer’ among ’em will see
a deliberate attempt for somebody to graft—or worse. Those caps they
get for a quarter and can buy in the little stores that crop up around
every railroad yard. The hogheads and firemen wear them. Everybody
wears them. You order that the cap hereafter worn shall be quite
different from the present cap, and you’ll start something that you’ll
never be able to stop save by buckling down to the boys.”
“But why?” demanded the official. “Tell me! What is the reason?
Another cap might not cost them a penny more——”
“Or might not cost them as much. That would make no difference. You
strike at his independence in changing the style of the cap. And his
independence is the most cherished possession of the railroader. You
should know that.”
“I know that they think they are independent,” growled the general
manager. “But like the rest of us, they are just about as independent
as the hog on the cake of ice.”
The young train dispatcher laughed again. He could really appreciate
the mental attitude of both the disgruntled railroad workers, at this
time stirred up all over the country from ocean to ocean, and the
higher officials of the road, who realized fully that unless all
branches of the railroad pulled together during the next few months
there would surely come financial wreckage to many systems.
The Great Northern was really in better circumstances than many trunk
lines at the time. But on the division the headquarters of which were
here in Rockton, friction had developed. The shopmen talked strike;
the yardmen were disgruntled; the section hands of the division talked
more than they worked. Altogether the situation was so serious that
the general manager himself found it necessary to look the field over.
And it was not strange that he should have called Ralph Fairbanks into
conference. Young as the latter was, he was a link between the
officials and the workmen at large.
“Look here, Ralph,” said the general manager suddenly, swinging about
in his chair with one leg over its arm and pointing his lighted cigar
at the young fellow, “I’m going to ask you a pointed question. What do
you think of Bart Hopkins?”
“Mr. Hopkins—the division super?” returned Ralph briskly and looking
straight into the general manager’s face. “I think that Mr. Hopkins
has a lovely daughter. As the boys say, she’s a peach!”
“No,” replied the general manager gloomily, “she’s a Cherry—a
different kind of fruit. But I am not asking your opinion of Cherry
Hopkins. How about Bart?”
“I guess I haven’t been thinking much about him,” confessed Ralph
slowly. “He has been here in charge for three months, and to tell the
truth I have not spoken to him half-a-dozen times. He has nothing to
do, of course, with the dispatchers’ department. Mr. Hopkins is a
pleasant-spoken man.”
“You know blamed well that I am not asking, either, about Bart
Hopkins’ social qualities,” said the exasperated general manager.
“What do you think of him as a railroad man? What is he doing here?”
A flash of feeling came into Ralph Fairbanks’ face and he looked
steadily at his old friend and superior.
“What did you expect him to do here?”
“Confound it all! I don’t want to be catechised. I want you to answer
me. I want to know what you think of the man’s work?”
“You want it straight, then, do you?” asked Ralph sharply.
“Yes, I do.”
“Then I think he will end in setting everybody by the ears and
bringing on a strike that may spread to every division of the Great
Northern. You have forced this answer from me. Remember, you must not
quote me.”
“I won’t snitch,” said the general manager, with a wry grin. “I
understand. Then you take the men’s view of Bart? You believe he is a
trouble-maker?”
“As sure as you are two feet high!” exclaimed Ralph, with conviction.
“Huh! He has already brought about changes that have saved the
division a mint of money.”
“The other changes he has made will cost the road a good deal more—if
there is a strike.”
“Actually, do you believe there will be a strike, Ralph?”
“If Andy McCarrey has his way, there will be. And Mr. Hopkins is
playing right into McCarrey’s hands.”
“I can’t believe that Bart would deliberately do anything to bring on
trouble.”
“No. But he’s been bitten by the efficiency bug. The swelling is a
terrible one,” said Ralph, smiling again. “Mr. Hopkins can’t seem to
see things at all from the men’s standpoint. As I said before, an
inability to see the effect of an order on the men’s minds is the germ
of most friction between the laborers and the railroad heads. McCarrey
is a bad man. He wants to lead a strike. Naturally a strike will put a
lot of money in McCarrey’s hands. These strike leaders do as they
please with strike funds—there is never any check on them.
“Besides, as I believe, he has a personal enmity for Mr. Hopkins.
Somewhere in the East, where Hopkins came from, McCarrey got a grudge
against him.”
“Yes, I understand Barton Hopkins was in the middle of some trouble on
the Eastern Shore Railroad. He is a stormy petrel. But he is making
good here. He has saved us money,” reiterated the general manager.
“Well, if money is more to the Great Northern than a loyal band of
employees,” said Ralph with some bitterness, as he got up from his
chair, “then you have got just what you want in Mr. Hopkins. I’m
telling you that I see trouble ahead. And it is coming soon.”
Ralph Fairbanks felt deeply regarding the situation which had arisen
in Rockton. When he walked down past the railroad shops a little later
on his way home and looked in at the open windows, he could not fail
to notice that the shopmen were talking together in groups instead of
being busy at their various jobs.
“Looks bad,” muttered Ralph. “I hated to knock the new super.
Especially when he has got such a pretty daughter,” and he smiled
reminiscently.
Suddenly he started and then quickened his steps. Ahead of him he saw
a trimly dressed figure crossing the railroad at Hammerby Street. He
could not mistake the girl. Not when she had been in his mind the
previous instant.
Miss Cherry Hopkins was a pronounced blonde. It was at the time when
bobbed hair was popular, and bobbed hair added to Cherry’s chic
appearance. She was slim, and of good figure. She wore a silk sweater,
a sport skirt, and a hat that was in keeping.
The girl crossed the tracks and reached the sidewalk on the other
side. There were no dwellings near; only warehouses. And save for a
group of roughly dressed men loitering behind the flagman’s shanty,
there were few people near the crossing.
Suddenly Ralph saw something that caused him to dart forward, shouting
angrily:
“Look out, Miss Cherry! Look out!”
The girl flashed a look behind her. Fortunately she dodged
involuntarily at Ralph Fairbanks’ cry, for the next instant a missile
flew over her shoulder and crashed against the end of the warehouse.
Had it struck the girl it would have hurt her seriously.