THE RUN IS ENDED
Ralph, with Mr. Hopkins, Adair, and several of the latter’s
assistants, got aboard a dirt train going across to the Devil’s Den
where the replaced pillar under the trestle was still in course of
construction. Once there, they could easily walk up the grade to that
point where the young engineer had seen fluttering from the bushes on
the side of the cliff certain articles of apparel which he believed
belonged to his friend, Zeph Dallas.
The ragged remains of the vest and shirt still clung there. The cap
had probably been blown away. The forest fire had not run up the face
of the crag, so the wearing apparel had not been destroyed.
“Now, it is a fact,” Ralph put forth, “that Zeph hasn’t been seen
since the night the Flyer was pulled down here for that flaming
scarecrow when the pillar at Devil’s Den was blown out. Nor has he
been heard from, has he?”
“Not a sign of him,” agreed Adair.
“Then make up your mind he went up this cliff, and by that path. He
probably followed the rascals who dynamited the pillar. He was so
eager that he could not even wait to see if I got his fire signal and
stopped the train.”
“That would be just like him,” admitted Bob Adair again.
“Zeph discarded his vest, and then his shirt and cap, to mark his
trail. I believe it should have been followed before.”
“That sounds reasonable,” said Mr. Hopkins. “But that was some time
ago. What do you suppose has happened to him since?”
“He was captured by the men he followed. That goes without saying. I
don’t believe they would have killed the boy,” said the chief
detective. “But they would hold him prisoner.”
“Just as they are holding my daughter,” groaned out Mr. Hopkins.
“Not for ransom, in Zeph’s case,” said Adair grimly. “They know nobody
would give a dollar for him.”
“I’d give everything I’ve got for him!” cried Ralph, in some heat.
“Well, now, come to think of it,” said Adair, with twinkling eyes, “I
don’t know but I’d give something myself to see Zeph clear of the
rascals.”
“I guess you would!” exclaimed Ralph. “Zeph will try anything once,
but he is something more than a nut. He is faithful and brave and a
mighty good friend!”
However, they wasted little time in discussing the fine possibilities
of the situation. Ralph knew the path up the crag pretty well, and he
led the way. Two of the detective police were left below with rifles
to watch for any person who might appear above to obstruct the
climbers.
To climb that cliff at night must have been hard work. But by daylight
Ralph and his companions did not find it particularly difficult. In
half an hour they approached the summit of the ascent.
On the way Ralph had made sure that the rags of garments still hanging
to the brush had actually belonged to Zeph Dallas. He even found the
yellow brown cap that had fallen upon a shelf of rock. At any rate,
Zeph had passed this way and must have left the articles for some good
and sufficient reason.
“He expected to get into trouble, or he already was in trouble,” Ralph
said to Mr. Adair. “Think of him shedding his clothes in this way!”
“I have got through wondering about Zeph,” admitted the chief
detective. “He is always breaking out in a new spot.”
Ralph, however, could not feel so sure that his friend was all right.
As he led the way “over the top” he almost feared to find Zeph’s dead
body lying on the rocks.
But the first thing he found was somebody very much alive. As Ralph
scrambled over the lip of the last shelf of rock a figure suddenly
popped into view. The head and shoulders of a man appeared just above
the young fellow. And to the latter’s surprise, those head and
shoulders were shrouded in a flour sack on which the red and green
lettering was faintly visible.
“Here he is!” yelled Ralph, and sprang up and grabbed the fellow. The
latter had a club which he tried to use, but he had been so amazed by
the appearance of the young engineer and his party that he was quickly
overpowered.
In fact, Ralph was astride the fellow’s body and was tearing off the
mask when Mr. Adair and Mr. Hopkins reached the ledge of rock. Ralph
exposed the flaxen head and foolish face of Whitey Malone!
“We’ve got him, anyway, on the count of highway robbery,” said Mr.
Adair, with satisfaction.
“What does he know about my daughter?” demanded the supervisor.
“He’d better tell at once,” said the chief detective, “or we may throw
him over the cliff.”
This threat he made with a wink to Mr. Hopkins and Ralph; but Whitey
did not see that wink! He was scared to the marrow of his bones,
especially when he was dragged to the edge of the rock.
“I’ll show you! I’ll tell!” he cried. “But Andy will kill me.”
“You tell the truth,” Mr. Adair promised, “and you will be out of jail
a good many years before Andy McCarrey gets through paying the penalty
for _his_ crimes.”
It was a point that even Whitey Malone could appreciate. Much as he
feared McCarrey and Griffin Falk, the weak-minded fellow knew that he
could save himself much trouble by telling all he knew to the
representatives of the law.
Back from the verge of this cliff in a thick wood was an old charcoal
burner’s cabin. Zeph Dallas, in attempting to follow McCarrey’s
ruffians who had dynamited the trestle pillar (Whitey had not been in
that crime) was captured, as Ralph believed, and was held prisoner in
the charcoal burner’s shack.
At the time of the wreck of Number 33 in Shadow Valley, some of these
same employees of McCarrey, lurking in the bushes, had recognized
Cherry Hopkins and had seized her during the confusion. Binding her
and muffling her cries, the rascals had taken her by a roundabout way
to the same shack in which Zeph was held prisoner.
With this information wrenched from the reluctant Whitey, Ralph,
Supervisor Hopkins, Adair and his men, went on to the cabin. They
approached it with much care, for a large band of the outlaws were on
guard.
Ralph and Mr. Adair, who were well informed regarding the identity of
the striking shopmen, saw no ex-railroad employee in the clearing
where the shack stood. But McCarrey and his chief henchman, Falk, were
there.
Without doubt, although McCarrey had wormed himself into the
confidence of the dissatisfied shopmen and other employees of the
division, he had done so merely for his own personal aggrandizement.
He hated the supervisor of the division and he had worked merely to
control the strike fund of the ill-advised railroaders and to hurt Mr.
Barton Hopkins.
Chance, it seemed, had put Cherry into the power of this scoundrel.
When he heard that she had been captured he left Rockton immediately
and took up his personal fight against the supervisor. He knew Hopkins
had some money and he was determined to make him ransom his daughter.
With this knowledge in their possession, Ralph and his companions
attacked the gang at the charcoal burner’s shack with considerable
determination. Although they had firearms, they did not have to use
them. Advancing under the chief detective’s direction on the clearing
from all sides, the rescuers clubbed their men down, frightening them
as much as they injured them.
While the men were fighting, Ralph ran to the door of the shack. He
had already heard Zeph’s hoarse voice shouting. Ralph burst in the
door with a stone, shattering the lock.
As he did so a man hurled himself upon the young railroader. Although
the attack was sudden and from the rear, the young fellow knew that
his antagonist was Andy McCarrey.
“I’ve got _you_, anyway!” growled out the chief of the band of
scoundrels. “You got into that house one night. I remember you! And I
bet you gave us away.”
He was much stronger than Ralph, and having jumped on him from behind,
he bore the youth to the ground. He was astride Ralph in an instant,
and seized upon the very dornick with which his captive had broken the
lock of the door.
In a moment the young railroader might have been seriously hurt—even
killed! But rescue in the shape of Mr. Barton Hopkins himself arrived
in season. Reaching the spot with a clubbed rifle in his hands, the
supervisor landed the stock of the weapon on the side of McCarrey’s
head with such force that the villain toppled over, quite _hors de
combat_ for the time being.
Before Ralph could rise the supervisor had sprung to the door of the
shack and thrown it open. The afternoon sunlight flooded into the
interior of the place and Barton Hopkins saw his daughter, bound to a
rude chair and gagged with a cloth tied across her face.
The anxious father was the first to reach the girl. He swiftly cut her
bonds and tore off the bandage while Ralph staggered to an inner door,
that of a closet where Zeph Dallas was confined.
“Great Jupiter and little fishes!” gasped Zeph hoarsely, when he saw
Ralph’s face. “You’ve been a long time coming. And they’ve got a girl
in prison here, too.”
“They haven’t got anybody in prison now,” said Mr. Adair’s cheerful
voice from the doorway. “We’ve got them—and a fine bunch they are.
That was a nice swipe you gave Andy, Mr. Hopkins. It ought to be some
satisfaction to you to know that he will have to have some new teeth
if he ever wants to chew his victuals on that side of his jaw.”
The situation had been a serious one, nevertheless, for it was later
proved that several of the men McCarrey had in his band had prison
records and were desperate criminals. The threat to injure the girl if
her father did not pay for her release might not have been an empty
one.
“However,” said Mr. Adair, as the friends and the supervisor and
Cherry made their way to Rockton on an evening train, “this not only
cleans up the McCarrey band, but it is the end of the wildcat strike.
I don’t know that you had been so informed, Mr. Hopkins, but a
committee of the striking shopmen, and from the old union, will wait
on you to-morrow, and if you handle the situation wisely everything
will be going smoothly very soon.”
“Perhaps I have been too stringent in my rules,” the supervisor said
slowly. “At least, I will consider what the men have to offer.”
Cherry, hearing her father say this, nodded brightly to Ralph and
squeezed his hand for a moment. “I believe you did something to help
convince father that he was wrong about the railroad workers,” she
whispered to her friend.
“As for the strikers themselves,” went on Mr. Adair, “the union will
get rid of Jim Perrin and those that helped him betray the union
members to McCarrey. I was able to prove to the union heads their
treachery through the written list Ralph got from Malone that night
and the warning Perrin slipped into Ralph’s engine the night
Thirty-three was wrecked. Undoubtedly Perrin believed McCarrey meant
to try again to wreck the Flyer.”
“How did he come to consider Ralph at all?” asked Mr. Hopkins. “Is
Perrin such a close friend of yours?” and he asked the question
directly of the young man.
“I’ll tell you,” confessed the other. “Some time ago Perrin’s crippled
daughter—a sweet little girl—needed to be treated at one of the big
Eastern hospitals. Mother and I—more mother than me,” added Ralph,
“were able to assist in sending the child there. She has come back
cured and I expect, Perrin was grateful.”
It was evident that Mr. Hopkins’ estimation of Ralph Fairbanks
increased by leaps and bounds during that run to Rockton. When it was
ended the supervisor shook hands warmly with the young fellow before
he hastened his daughter away in a taxicab to the hospital, to see her
mother.
“I see I have a good deal to thank you for, Fairbanks,” the supervisor
said. “Believe me, I shall not forget it.”
However, it was a month before Ralph saw much more of the Hopkins
family, even of Cherry. During that time he continued to drive Number
202, and the troubles of all kinds on the division gradually cleared
up.
Then another engineer was found to relieve Ralph, and he went back to
his desk as chief dispatcher for the division. It was the evening of
this day that he kept his first dinner engagement at the Hopkins’
bungalow and met the recovered wife and mother at her own table.
Beside Ralph, too, there sat Mrs. Fairbanks. They found that Barton
Hopkins, when he wished to be, could be a very charming host. And Mrs.
Fairbanks, as they walked homeward after dinner, repeated to her son
something she had already said about Cherry:
“That girl is well worth knowing, Ralph.”
“I’ll tell the world!” agreed the young train dispatcher.
THE END
THE TOM SWIFT SERIES
By VICTOR APPLETON
UNIFORM STYLE OF BINDING. INDIVIDUAL COLORED WRAPPERS.
These spirited tales, convey in a realistic way, the
wonderful advances in land and sea locomotion. Stories
like these are impressed upon the memory and their reading
is productive only of good.
TOM SWIFT AND HIS MOTOR CYCLE
TOM SWIFT AND HIS MOTOR BOAT
TOM SWIFT AND HIS AIRSHIP
TOM SWIFT AND HIS SUBMARINE BOAT
TOM SWIFT AND HIS ELECTRIC RUNABOUT
TOM SWIFT AND HIS WIRELESS MESSAGE
TOM SWIFT AMONG THE DIAMOND MAKERS
TOM SWIFT IN THE CAVES OF ICE
TOM SWIFT AND HIS SKY RACER
TOM SWIFT AND HIS ELECTRIC RIFLE
TOM SWIFT IN THE CITY OF GOLD
TOM SWIFT AND HIS AIR GLIDER
TOM SWIFT IN CAPTIVITY
TOM SWIFT AND HIS WIZARD CAMERA
TOM SWIFT AND HIS GREAT SEARCHLIGHT
TOM SWIFT AND HIS GIANT CANNON
TOM SWIFT AND HIS PHOTO TELEPHONE
TOM SWIFT AND HIS AERIAL WARSHIP
TOM SWIFT AND HIS BIG TUNNEL
TOM SWIFT IN THE LAND OF WONDERS
TOM SWIFT AND HIS WAR TANK
TOM SWIFT AND HIS AIR SCOUT
TOM SWIFT AND HIS UNDERSEA SEARCH
TOM SWIFT AMONG THE FIRE FIGHTERS
TOM SWIFT AND HIS ELECTRIC LOCOMOTIVE
Grosset & Dunlap, Publishers, New York
THE OUTDOOR CHUMS SERIES
By CAPTAIN QUINCY ALLEN
The outdoor chums are four wide-awake lads, sons of
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love outdoor life, and are greatly interested in hunting,
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boats, canoes, etc., and during their vacations go
everywhere and have all sorts of thrilling adventures. The
stories give full directions for camping out, how to fish,
how to hunt wild animals and prepare the skins for
stuffing, how to manage a canoe, how to swim, etc. Full of
the spirit of outdoor life.
THE OUTDOOR CHUMS
Or The First Tour of the Rod, Gun and Camera Club
THE OUTDOOR CHUMS ON THE LAKE
Or Lively Adventures on Wildcat Island.
THE OUTDOOR CHUMS IN THE FOREST
Or Laying the Ghost of Oak Ridge.
THE OUTDOOR CHUMS ON THE GULF
Or Rescuing the Lost Balloonists.
THE OUTDOOR CHUMS AFTER BIG GAME
Or Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness.
THE OUTDOOR CHUMS ON A HOUSEBOAT
Or The Rivals of the Mississippi.
THE OUTDOOR CHUMS IN THE BIG WOODS
Or The Rival Hunters at Lumber Run.
THE OUTDOOR CHUMS AT CABIN POINT
Or The Golden Cup Mystery.
12mo. Averaging 240 pages. Illustrated. Handsomely bound in Cloth.
Grosset & Dunlap, Publishers, New York
THE BOBBSEY TWINS BOOKS
For Little Men and Women
By LAURA LEE HOPE
Author of “The Bunny Brown” Series, Etc.
12mo. DURABLY BOUND. ILLUSTRATED. UNIFORM STYLE OF BINDING
Copyright publications which cannot be obtained elsewhere.
Books that charm the hearts of the little ones, and of
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THE BOBBSEY TWINS
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THE BOBBSEY TWINS AT THE SEASHORE
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THE BOBBSEY TWINS ON A HOUSEBOAT
THE BOBBSEY TWINS AT MEADOW BROOK
THE BOBBSEY TWINS AT HOME
THE BOBBSEY TWINS IN A GREAT CITY
THE BOBBSEY TWINS ON BLUEBERRY ISLAND
THE BOBBSEY TWINS ON THE DEEP BLUE SEA
THE BOBBSEY TWINS IN THE GREAT WEST
Grosset & Dunlap, Publishers, New York
THE BUNNY BROWN SERIES,
By LAURA LEE HOPE
Author of the Popular “Bobbsey Twins” Books
Wrapper and text illustrations drawn by
FLORENCE ENGLAND NOSWORTHY
12mo. DURABLY BOUND. ILLUSTRATED. UNIFORM STYLE OF BINDING
These stories by the author of the “Bobbsey Twins” Books
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Bunny was a lively little boy, very inquisitive. When he
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BUNNY BROWN AND HIS SISTER SUE
BUNNY BROWN AND HIS SISTER SUE ON GRANDPA’S FARM
BUNNY BROWN AND HIS SISTER SUE PLAYING CIRCUS
BUNNY BROWN AND HIS SISTER SUE AT CAMP REST-A-WHILE
BUNNY BROWN AND HIS SISTER SUE AT AUNT LU’S CITY HOME
BUNNY BROWN AND HIS SISTER SUE IN THE BIG WOODS
BUNNY BROWN AND HIS SISTER SUE ON AN AUTO TOUR
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BUNNY BROWN AND HIS SISTER SUE GIVING A SHOW
BUNNY BROWN AND HIS SISTER SUE AT CHRISTMAS TREE COVE
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