THE TRAIN ROBBERS
When the colonel awoke next morning the train was running smoothly
over the Iowa prairies, while low hills and brick factory chimneys
announced Council Bluffs. The landscape was wide and monotonous; a
sweep of illimitable cornfields in their winter disarray, or bleakly
fresh from the plow, all painted with a palette holding only drabs and
browns; here and there a dab of red in a barn or of white in windmill
or house; but these livelier tints so scattered that they were no more
than pin spots on the picture. The very sky was as dimly colored as the
earth, lighter, yet of no brighter hue than the fog which smoked up
from the ground. Later in the spring this same landscape would be of
a delicate and charming beauty; in summer or autumn it would make the
beholder’s pulses throb with its glorious fertility; but on a blurred
March morning it was as dreary as the reveries of an aging man who has
failed.
Nevertheless, Rupert Winter’s first conscious sensation was not
depression, only a little tingle of interest and excitement, such as
stings pleasantly one who rises to a prospect of conflict in which
he has the confidence of his own strength. “By Jove!” he wondered,
“whatever makes me feel so kiddish?”
His first impulse was to peep through his curtains into the car. It
wore its early morning aspect of muffled berths and stuffy curtains,
among which Miss Smith’s trig, carefully finished presence in a fresh
white shirt-waist, attended by the pleasant whiffs of cologne water,
gave the beholder a certain refreshing surprise. One hand (white and
firm and beautifully cared for) held a wicker bottle, source of the
pleasant whiffs; her sleek back braids were coiled about her comely
head, and the hair grew very prettily in a blunted point on the
creamy nape of her neck. It was really dark brown hair, but it looked
black against the whiteness of her skin. She had very capable-looking
shoulders, the colonel noted, and a flat back; perhaps she wasn’t
pretty, but in a long while he had not seen a more attractive-looking
woman. She made him think of a Bonne Celine rose, somehow. He could
hear her talking to some one behind the berth’s curtains. Could those
doleful moans emerge from Archie? Could a Winter boy be whimpering
about the jar of the train in that fashion? Immediately he was aware
that the sufferer was Randall, for Miss Smith spoke: “Drink the tea,
and lie down again, I’ll attend to Mrs. Winter. Don’t you worry!”
“Getting solid with Randall,” commented the colonel. “Which is
she--kind-hearted, or an accomplished villainess? Well, it’s
interesting, anyhow.”
By the time he had made his toilet the train was slacking speed ready
to halt in Council Bluffs, and all his suspicions rushed on deck again
at the sight of Miss Smith and Archie walking outside.
He joined them, and he had to admit that Miss Smith looked as pleased
as Archie at his appearance. Nor did she send a single furtive glance,
slanting or backward, while they walked in the crisp, clean air.
Once the train had started and Miss Smith was in the drawing-room,
breakfasting with Mrs. Winter and Archie, he politely attended Mrs.
Millicent through the morning meal in the dining-car. It was so good
a meal that he naturally, although illogically, thought better of
Miss Smith’s prospects of innocence; and cheerily he sought Haley.
He found him in the smoking compartment of the observation-car,
having for companions no less personages than the magnate and a
distinguished-looking New Englander, who, Rupert Winter made no doubt,
was a Harvard professor of rank and renown among his learned kind. He
knew the earmarks of the species. The New Englander’s pencil was flying
over a little improvised pad of telegraph blanks, while he listened
with absorbed interest to Haley’s rich Irish tones. There was a little
sidewise lunge of Haley’s mouth, a faint twinkle of Haley’s frank and
simple eyes which the colonel appraised at very nearly their real
value. He knew that it isn’t in Irish-American nature to perceive a
wide-open ear and not put something worth hearing into it. Besides, his
sharp ears had brought him a key to the discourse, a sorrowful remark
of the sergeant’s as he entered: “Yes, sor, thim wather torchures is
_terrible_!”
He glanced suspiciously from one of Haley’s audience to the other. The
newspaper cartoonist had pictured on all kinds of bodies of preying
creatures, whether of the earth or air, the high brows, the round head,
the delicate features, the thin cheeks, the straight line of the
mouth, and the mild, inexpressive eyes of the man before him. He had
been extolled as a far-sighted benefactor of the world, and execrated
picturesquely as the king of pirates who would scuttle the business of
his country without a qualm.
Winter, amid his own questionings and problems, could not help a
scrutiny of a man whose power was greater than that of medieval kings.
He sat consuming a cigarette, more between his fingers than his lips;
and glancing under drooping eyelids from questioner to narrator. At the
colonel’s entrance he looked up, as did Haley, who rose to his feet
with an unconscious salute. “I’d be glad to spake wid youse a minnit,
if I might, General,” said Haley, “about where I put your dress-shute
case, sor.”
The colonel, of course, did not expect any remarks about a suit case
when he got Haley by himself at the observation end of the car; but
what he did get was of sufficient import to drive out of his mind a
curt lecture about blackening the reputation of the army with lies
about the Philippines. Haley had told him that he had seen the man with
the two moles on his face jump out of his own car at Council Bluffs.
He had simply stood on the platform, looking to right and left for a
moment; then he had swung himself back on the car. Haley had watched
him walk down the aisle and enter the drawing-room. He did not come
out; Haley had found out that the drawing-room belonged to Edwin S.
Keatcham, “the big railroad man, sor.”
“It doesn’t seem likely that _he_ would be an accomplice of a
kidnapper,” mused the colonel. “The man might have gone in there while
he was out.”
“Sure, he might, sor; ’twas mesilf thinking that same; and I wint
beyant to the observation-car, and there the ould gintleman was
smoking.”
“And you stopped to tell yarns to that other gentleman instead of
getting back and following--”
“No, sor, I beg your pardon, sor; I was kaping me eyes open and on him;
for himsilf was in the observation-car where you are now, sor, until we
come in, and thin he walked back, careless like, to his own car. Will I
be afther following him?”
“Yes; don’t lose him.”
They did not lose him; they both saw him enter the drawing-room and
almost immediately come out and sit down in one of the open sections.
“See if you can’t find out from the conductor where he is going,” the
colonel proposed to Haley; and he frowned over his thoughts for a bad
quarter of an hour at the window. The precipitate of all this mental
ferment was a determination to stick close to the boy, saying nothing.
He hoped that when they stopped over night at Salt Lake City, according
to Aunt Rebecca’s plan, they might shake off the “brother’s” company.
The day passed uneventfully. He played bridge with Mrs. Millicent and
Miss Smith and Archie, while Aunt Rebecca kept up her French with one
of Bentzon’s novels.
Afterward she said grimly to him: “I think you must have been converted
out in the Philippines; you never so much as winced, that last hand;
no, you sat there smiling over your ruin as sweetly as if you enjoyed
it.”
The colonel smiled again. “Ah, but, you see, I did enjoy it; didn’t you
notice the hand? No? Well, it was worth watching. It was the rubber
game; they were twenty-four and we were twenty-six and we were on the
seventh round; Miss Smith had made it hearts. She sat on my left, dummy
on my right. Millicent had the lead. She had four little spades, a
little club, the queen of hearts and a trey; dummy had the queen, the
ten and the nine of spades, it had the king of hearts and three clubs
with the jack at the top. I had a lovely diamond suit which I hadn’t
had a chance to touch, top sequence, ace, king, queen; I had the jack
of trumps and the jack of spades; and the queen and a little club. I
hadn’t a lead, you understand; Millicent had taken five tricks and
they had taken one; they needed six to win the game, we needed two;
see? Well, Millicent hadn’t any diamonds to lead me, and unhappily she
didn’t think to lead trumps through dummy, which would have made a
world of difference. She led a club; dummy put on the jack. I knew Miss
Smith had the ace and one low heart; no clubs, a lot of low diamonds,
and she might or might not have a spade. I figured that she had the
ace and a little one; if she would trump in with the little one, as
ninety-nine out of a hundred women would have done, her ace and her
partner’s king would fall together; or, at worst, he would have to
trump her diamond lead, after she had led out her king of spades, and
lead spades, which I could trump and bring in all my diamonds. Do you
take in the situation?”
“You mean that Janet had the king of spades alone, the ace and the
little trump and four worthless diamonds? I see. It is a chance for the
grand _coup_; I reckon she played it.”
“She _did_!” cried the colonel with unction. “She slapped that ace on
the trick, she modestly led her king of spades, gathered in my jack,
then ‘she stole, she stole my child away,’ my little jack of trumps;
it fell on dummy’s king, and dummy led out his spades and I had to see
that whole diamond suit slaughtered. They made their six tricks, the
game and the rubber; and I wanted to clap my hands over the neatness of
it.”
“She is a good player,” agreed Aunt Rebecca, “and a very pleasant
person. You remember the epitaph, don’t you, Bertie? ‘She was so
pleasant.’ Yet Janet has had a heap of trouble; but, after all,
happiness is not a condition but a temperament; I suppose Janet has the
temperament. She’s a good loser, too; and she never takes advantage of
the rules.”
“She certainly loves a straight game,” reflected the colonel. “I
confess I don’t like the kind of woman that is always grabbing a trick
if some one plays out of the wrong hand.”
He said something of the kind to Millicent, obtaining but scant
sympathy in that quarter.
“She’s deep, Bertie; I told you that,” was the only reply, “but I’m
watching. I have reason for my feeling.”
“Maybe you have been misinformed,” ventured her brother-in-law with
proper meekness.
“Not at all,” retorted she sharply. “I happen to know that she worked
against me with the Daughters.”
“Daughters,” the colonel repeated inanely, “your daughters?”
“Certainly not! The Daughters of the Revolution.”
“It’s a mighty fine society, that; did a lot during the Spanish War.
And you are the state president, aren’t you?”
“No, Rupert,” returned Mrs. Melville with dignity, “I am no longer
state regent. By methods that would shame the most hardened men
politicians I was defeated; why! didn’t you read about it?”
“You know I only came back from the Philippines in February.”
“It was in all the Chicago papers. I was interviewed myself. I assure
you the other candidates (there were two) tried the very _lowest_
political methods. Melville said it was scandalous. There were at
least three luncheons given against me. It wasn’t the congress, it was
the lobby defeated me. And their methods! I would not believe that
gentlewoman could stoop to such infamy of misrepresentation.” The
colonel chewed his mustache; he felt for that reporter of the Chicago
paper; he was evidently getting a phonographic record now; he made an
inarticulate rumble of sympathy in his throat which was as the clucking
of the driver to the mettled horse. Mrs. Melville gesticulated with
Delsartian grace, as she poured forth her woes.
“They accused me of a domineering spirit; they said I was trying to
set up a machine. _I!_ I worked for them, many a time, half the night,
at my desk; never was a letter unanswered; I did half the work of the
corresponding secretary; yet at the crucial moment _she betrayed me_!
I learned more in those two days of the petty jealousy, the pitiless
malevolence of _some_ women than I had known all my life before; but at
the same time, to the faithful band of friends”--the colonel had the
sensation of listening to the record again--“whose fidelity was proof
against ridicule and cruel misrepresentation, I return a gratitude
that will never wane. Rupert”--she turned herself in the seat and
waved the open palm of her hand in a graceful and dramatic gesture,
“--those women not only stooped to malignant falsehoods, they not only
trampled parliamentary law underfoot, but they circulated through the
hall a cartoon called the _Making of the Slate_. Of course, we had
our quarters at a hotel, and after the evening meeting, after I had
retired, in fact, a bell-boy brought me a message; it was necessary
to have a meeting at once, to decide for the secretaryship, as we had
found out Mrs. Ellennere was false. The ladies in the adjoining rooms
and the others of us on the board who were loyal came into my chamber.
Rupert, will you believe it, those women, had a grotesque picture of
_us_, with faces cut out of the newspapers--of course, all our pictures
were in the papers--and they had the audacity and the meanness to
picture me in--in the garments of night!”
“That was pretty tough. But where does Miss Smith come in?”
“She was at the convention. She is a Daughter. I’ve always said we are
too lax in our admissions.”
“Who drew the picture?”
“It may not be Miss Smith, but--she does draw. I’m _sure_ that she
worked against me; she covered up her footprints so that I have no
proof; but I suspect her. She’s deep, Bertie, she’s deep. But she can’t
hoodwink _me_. I’ll find her out.”
The colonel experienced the embarrassment that is the portion of a rash
man trying to defend one woman against another; he retreated because he
perceived defense was in vain; but he did not feel his growing opinion
of Miss Smith’s innocence menaced by Mrs. Melville’s convictions.
She played too square a game for a kidnapper--and Smith was the
commonest of names. No, there must be some explanation; Rupert Winter
had lived too long not to distrust the plausible surface clue. “It is
the improbable that always happens, and the impossible most of the
time,” Aunt Rebecca had said once. He quite agreed with her whimsical
phrase.
Nothing happened to arouse his suspicions that day. Haley reported
that Cary Mercer was going on to San Francisco. The conductor did not
know his name; he seemed to know Mr. Keatcham and was with him in his
drawing-room most of the time. Had the great man a secretary with him?
Yes, he seemed to have, a little fellow who had not much to say for
himself, and jumped whenever his boss spoke to him. There was also a
valet, an Englishman, who did not respond properly to conversational
overtures. They were all going to get off at Denver.
Haley was not misinformed, as the colonel perceived with his own
eyes--and he saw Cary Mercer bow in parting to the great man, who
requited the low salute with a gruff nod. Here was an opportunity for a
nearer glimpse of Mercer, possibly for that explanation in which Winter
still had a lurking hope. He caught Mercer just in the car doorway, and
politely greeted him: “Mr. Mercer, I think? You may not remember me,
Colonel Winter. I met you in Cambridge, three years ago--”
It seemed a brutal thing to do, to recall a meeting under such
circumstances; but if Mercer could give the explanation he would
excuse him; it was better than suspecting an innocent man. But there
was no opportunity for explanation. Mercer turned a blank and coldly
suspicious face toward him. “I beg pahdon,” he said in his Southern
way, “I think you have made a mistake in the person.”
“And are you _not_ Mr. Cary Mercer?” The colonel felt the disagreeable
resemblance of his own speeches to those made in newspaper stories by
the gentleman who wishes his old friend to change a fifty-dollar bill
or to engage in an amusing game with a thimble. Mercer saw it as well
as he. “Try some one from the country,” he remarked with an unpleasant
smile, brushing past, while the color mounted to the colonel’s tanned
cheek. “The _next_ time you meet me,” Rupert Winter vowed, “you’ll know
me.”
A new porter had come on at Denver; a light brown, chubby, bald man
with a face that radiated friendliness. He was filled with the desire
for conversation, and he had worked on the road for eight years, hence
could supplement _Over the Range_ and the other guide-books with
personal gossip. He showed marked deference to the colonel, which
that unassuming and direct man could not quite fathom, until Archie
enlightened him. Archie smiled, a queer, chewed-up smile which the
colonel hailed with:
“Why are you making fun of me, young man?”
“It’s Lewis, the porter; he follows you round and listens to you in
such an awestruck way.”
“But why?”
“Why, Sergeant Haley told him about you; and I told him a _little_,
and he says he wishes you’d been on the train when they had the
hold-ups. This is an awful road for hold-ups, he says. He’s been at
five hold-ups.”
“And what does he advise?”
“Oh, he says, hold up your hands and they won’t hurt you.”
“Well, I reckon his advice is sound,” laughed the colonel. “See you
follow it, Archie.”
“Shall _you_ hold up your hands, Uncle Bertie?” asked Archie.
“Much the wisest course; these fellows shoot.”
Archie looked disappointed. “I suppose so,” he sighed. “I’m afraid I’d
want to, if they were pointing pistols at me. Lewis was on the train
once when a man showed fight. He wouldn’t put up his hands, and the
bandit plugged him, like a flash; he fell crosswise over the seat and
the blood spurted across Lewis’ wrist; he said it was like a hot jet of
water.”
The homely and bizarre horror of the picture had evidently struck home
to Archie; he half shivered.
“Too much imagination,” grumbled the colonel to himself. “A Winter
ought to take to fighting like a duck to water!” He betook himself to
Miss Smith; and he was uneasily conscious that he was going to her for
consoling. But he felt better after a little talk about Archie with
her. Plainly she thought Archie had plenty of spirit; although, of
course, he hadn’t told her about the bandits. The negro was “kidding”
the passengers; and women shouldn’t be disturbed by such nonsense.
The colonel had old-fashioned views of guarding his womankind from
the harsh ways of the world. Curious, he reflected, what sense Miss
Smith seemed to have; and how she understood things. He felt better
acquainted with her than a year’s garrison intercourse would have made
him with any other woman he knew.
That afternoon, they two sat watching the fantastic cliffs which took
grotesque semblance of ruined castles crowning their barren hillsides;
or of deserted amphitheaters left by some vanished race to crumble.
They had talked of many things. She had told him of the sleepy old
South Carolinian town where she was born, and the plantation and the
distant cousin who was like her mother, and the hospital where she
had been taught, and the married sister who had died. Such a narrow,
laborious, innocent existence as she described! How cheerfully, too,
she had shouldered her burdens! They talked of the South and of the
Philippines; a little they talked of Archie and his sorrow and of the
eternal problems that have troubled the soul of man since first death
entered the world. As they talked, the colonel’s suspicions faded into
grotesque shadows. “Millicent is ridiculous,” quoth he. Then he fell to
wondering whether there had been a romance in Miss Smith’s past life.
“Such a handsome woman would look high,” he sighed. Only twenty-four
hours ago he had called Miss Smith “nice-looking,” with careless
criticism. He was quite unconscious of his change of view. That night
he felt lonely, of a sudden; the old wound in his heart ached; his
future looked as bleak as the mountain-walled plains through which
he was speeding. After a long time the train stopped with a jar and
rattle, ending in a sudden shock. He raised the curtain to catch the
flash of the electric lights at Glenwood. Out of the deep defile they
glittered like diamonds in a pool of water. Why should he think of Miss
Smith’s eyes? With an impatient sigh, he pulled down the curtain and
turned over to sleep.
His thoughts drifted, floated, were submerged in a wavering procession
of pictures; he was back in the Philippines; they had surprised the
fort; how could that be when he was on guard? But they were there--
He sat up in his berth. Instinctively he slipped the revolver out of
his bag and held it in one hand, as he peeped through the crevice
of the curtains. There was no motion, no sound of moving; but heads
were emerging between the curtains in every direction; and Archie was
standing, his hands shaking above his tumbled brown head and pale face.
A man in a soft hat held two revolvers while another man was pounding
on the drawing-room door, gruffly commanding those inside to come
out. “No, we shall not come out,” responded Aunt Rebecca’s composed,
well-bred accents, her neat enunciation not disturbed by a quiver. “If
you want to kill an old woman, you will have to break down the door.”
“Let them alone, Shay, it takes too long; let’s finish here, first,”
called the man with the revolver; “they’ll come soon enough when we
want them. Here, young feller, fish out! Nobody’ll get hurt if you keep
quiet; if you don’t you’ll get a dose like the man in number six, two
years ago. Hustle, young feller!”
The colonel was eying every motion, every shifting from one foot to
the other. Let them once get by Archie--
The boy handed over his pocket-book.
“Now your watch,” commanded the brigand; “take it, Shay!”
“Won’t you please let me keep that watch?” faltered Archie; “that was
papa’s watch.”
The childish name from the tall lad made the robber laugh. “And mama’s
little pet wants to keep it, does he? Well, he can’t. Get a move on
you!”
The colonel had the sensation of an electric shock; as the second
robber grabbed at the fob in the boy’s belt, Archie struck him with the
edge of his open hand so swiftly and so fiercely under the jaw that
he reeled back against his companion. The colonel’s surprise did not
disturb the automatic aim of an old fighter of the plains; his revolver
barked; and he sprang out, on the man he shot. “Get back in the berths,
all of you,” he shouted; “give me a chance to shoot!”
The voice of the porter, whose hands had been turning up the lights not
quite steadily, now pealed out with camp-meeting power, “Dat’s it; give
de colonel a chance to do some killing!”
Both bandits were sprawling on the floor of the aisle, one limp and
moaning; but the other got one hand up to shoot; only to have Archie
kick the revolver out of it, while at the same instant an umbrella
handle fell with a wicked whack on the man’s shoulder. The New England
professor was out of his berth. He had been a baseball man in his own
college days; his bat was a frail one, but he hit with a will; and
a groan told of his success. Nevertheless, the fellow scrambled to
his feet. Mrs. Melville was also out of her berth, thanks to which
circumstance he was able to escape; as the colonel (who had grappled
with the other man and prevented his rising) must needs have shot
through his sister-in-law to hit the fleeing form.
[Illustration: Miss Smith was sitting beside Archie, holding the watch.
Page 67]
“What’s the matter?” demanded Mrs. Melville, while the New Englander
used an expression which, no doubt, as a good church-member, he
regretted, later, and the colonel thundered: “All the women back into
their berths. Don’t anybody shoot! You, professor, look after that
fellow on the floor.” He was obeyed; instinctively, the master of the
hour is obeyed. The porter came forward and helped the New Englander
bind the prostrate outlaw, with two silk handkerchiefs and a pair of
pajamas, guard mount being supplied by three men in very startling
costumes; and a kind of seraglio audience behind the curtains of the
berth being enacted by all the women in the car, only excepting Aunt
Rebecca and Miss Smith. Aunt Rebecca, in her admirable traveling
costume of a soft gray silk wrapper, looked as undisturbed as if
midnight alarms were an every-night feature of journeys. Miss Smith’s
black hair was loosely knotted; and her face looked pale, while her
dark eyes shone. They all heard the colonel’s revolver; they all saw
the two men who had met him at the car door spring off the platform
into the dark. The robbers had horses waiting. The colonel got one
shot; he saw the man fall over his horse’s neck; but the horse galloped
on; and the night, beyond the little splash of light, swallowed them
completely.
After the conductor and the engineer had both consulted him, and the
express messenger had appeared, armed to the teeth, a little too late
for the fray, but not too late for lucid argument, Winter made his
way back to the car. Miss Smith was sitting beside Archie; she was
holding the watch, which had played so important a part in the battle,
up under the electric light to examine an inscription. The loose black
sleeves of her blouse fell back, revealing her arms; they were white
and softly rounded. She looked up; and the soldier felt the sudden rush
of an emotion that he had not known for years; it caught at his throat
almost like an invisible hand.
“Well, Archie,” he said foolishly, “good for jiu-jitsu!”
Archie flushed up to his eyes.
“Why didn’t you obey orders, young man, and hold up your hands?” said
Colonel Rupert Winter. “You’re as bad as poor Haley, who is nearly
weeping that he had no chance, but only broke away from Mrs. Haley in
time to see the robbers make off.”
“I--I did at first; but I got so mad I forgot,” stammered Archie
happily. “Afterward you were my superior officer and I had to do what
you said.”
All the while he chaffed the boy, he was watching for that beautiful
look in Janet Smith’s eyes; and wondering when he could get her off by
herself to brag to her of the boy’s courage. When his chance at a few
words did come he chuckled: “Regular fool Winter! I knew he would act
in just that absurd, reckless way.” Then he caught the look he wanted;
it surely was a lovely, womanly look; and it meant--what in thunder
_did_ it mean? As he puzzled, his pulses gave the same unaccountable,
smothering leap; and he felt as the boy of twenty had felt, coming back
from his first battle to his first love.