DOWN BRAKES!
Just as Kathleen flung her head in baffled vexation, and Mallory
started to slink back to Marjorie, with another defeat, there came an
abrupt shock as if that gigantic child to whom our railroad trains are
toys, had reached down and laid violent hold on the Trans-American in
full career.
Its smooth, swift flight became suddenly such a spasm of jars, shivers
and thuds that Mallory cried:
"We're off the track."
He was sent flopping down the aisle like a bolster hurled through the
car. He brought up with a sickening slam across the seat into which
Marjorie had been jounced back with a breath-taking slam. And then
Kathleen came flying backwards and landed in a heap on both of them.
Several of the other passengers were just returning from breakfast and
they were shot and scattered all over the car as if a great chain of
human beads had burst.
Women screamed, men yelled, and then while they were still struggling
against the seats and one another, the train came to a halt.
"Thank God, we stopped in time!" Mallory gasped, as he tried to
disengage himself and Marjorie from Kathleen.
The passengers began to regain their courage with their equilibrium.
Little Jimmie Wellington had flown the whole length of the car,
clinging to his wife as if she were Francesca da Rimini, and he Paolo,
flitting through Inferno. The flight ended at the stateroom door with
such a thump that Mrs. Fosdick was sure a detective had come for her
at last, and with a battering ram.
But when Jimmie got back breath enough to talk, he remembered the
train-stopping excitement of the day before and called out:
"Has Mrs. Mallory lost that pup again?"
Everybody laughed uproariously at this. People will laugh at anything
or nothing when they have been frightened almost to death and suddenly
relieved of anxiety.
Everybody was cracking a joke at Marjorie's expense. Everybody felt a
good-natured grudge against her for being such a mystery. The car was
ringing with hilarity, when the porter came stumbling in and paused at
the door, with eyes all white, hands waving frantically, and lips
flapping like flannel, in a vain effort to speak.
The passengers stopped laughing at Marjorie, to laugh at the porter.
Ashton sang out:
"What's the matter with you, Porter? Are you trying to crow?"
Everybody roared at this, till the porter finally managed to
articulate:
"T-t-t-train rob-rob-robbers!"
Silence shut down as if the whole crowd had been smitten with
paralysis. From somewhere outside and ahead came a pop-popping as of
firecrackers. Everybody thought, "Revolvers!" The reports were mingled
with barbaric yells that turned the marrow in every bone to snow.
These regions are full of historic terror. All along the Nevada route
the conductor, the brakemen and old travelers had pointed out scene
after scene where the Indians had slaked the thirst of the arid land
with white man's blood. Ashton, who had traveled this way many times,
had made himself fascinatingly horrifying the evening before and
ruined several breakfasts that morning in the dining-car, by regaling
the passengers with stories of pioneer ordeals, men and women
massacred in burning wagons, or dragged away to fiendish cruelty and
obscene torture, staked out supine on burning wastes with eyelids cut
off, bound down within reach of rattlesnakes, subjected to every
misery that human deviltry could devise.
Ashton had brought his fellow passengers to a state of ecstatic
excitability, and, like many a recounter of burglar stories at night,
had tuned his own nerves to high tension.
The violent stopping of the train, the heart-shaking yells and shots
outside, found the passengers already apt to respond without delay to
the appeals of fright. After the first hush of dread, came the
reaction to panic.
Each passenger showed his own panic in his own way. Ashton whirled
round and round, like a horse with the blind staggers, then bolted
down the aisle, knocking aside men and women. He climbed on a seat,
pulled down an upper berth, and, scrambling into it, tried to shut it
on himself. Mrs. Whitcomb was so frightened that she assailed Ashton
with fury and seizing his feet, dragged him back into the aisle, and
beat him with her fists, demanding that he protect her and save her
for Sammy's sake.
Mrs. Fosdick, rushing out of her stateroom and not finding her
luscious-eyed husband, laid hold of Jimmie Wellington and ordered him
to go to the rescue of her spouse. Mrs. Wellington tore her hands
loose, crying: "Let him go, madam. He has a wife of his own to
defend."
Jimmie was trying to pour out dying messages, and only sputtering,
forgetting that he had put his watch in his mouth to hide it, though
its chain was still attached to his waistcoat.
Anne Gattle, who had read much about Chinese atrocities to
missionaries, gave herself up to death, yet rejoiced greatly that she
had provided a timely man to lean on and should not have to enter
Paradise a spinster, providing she could manage to convert Ira in the
next few seconds, before it was everlastingly too late. She was
begging her first heathen to join her in a gospel hymn. But Ira was
roaring curses like a pirate captain in a hurricane, and swearing that
the villains should not rob him of his bride.
Mrs. Temple wrung her twitching hands and tried to drag her husband to
his knees, crying:
"Oh, Walter, Walter, won't you please say a prayer?--a good strong
prayer?"
But the preacher was so confused that he answered: "What's the use of
prayer in an emergency like this?"
"Walter!" she shrieked.
"I'm on my va-vacation, you know," he stammered.
Marjorie was trying at the same time to compel Mallory to crawl under
a seat and to find a place to hide Snoozleums, whom she was warning
not to say a word. Snoozleums, understanding only that his mistress
was in some distress, refused to stay in his basket and kept offering
his services and his attentions.
Suddenly Marjorie realized that Kathleen was trying to faint in
Mallory's arms, and forgot everything else in a determined effort to
prevent her.
After the first blood-sweat of abject fright had begun to cool, the
passengers came to realize that the invaders were not after lives, but
loot. Then came a panic of miserly effort to conceal treasure.
Kathleen, finding herself banished from Mallory's protection, ran to
Mrs. Whitcomb, who had given Ashton up as a hopeless task.
"What shall we do, oh, what, oh what shall we do, dear Mrs.
Wellington?" she cried.
"Don't you dare call me Mrs. Wellington!" Mrs. Whitcomb screamed; then
she began to flutter. "But we'd better hide what we can. I hope the
rah-rah-robbers are ge-gentlemen-men."
She pushed a diamond locket containing a small portrait of Sammy into
her back hair, leaving part of the chain dangling. Then she tried to
stuff a large handbag into her stocking.
Mrs. Fosdick found her husband at last, for he made a wild dash to her
side, embraced her, called her his wife and defied all the powers of
Nevada to tear them apart. He had a brilliant idea. In order to save
his fat wallet from capture, he tossed it through an open window. It
fell at the feet of one of the robbers as he ran along the side of the
car, shooting at such heads as were put out of windows. He picked it
up and dropped it into the feed-bag he had swung at his side. Then
running on, he clambered over the brass rail of the observation
platform and entered the rear of the train, as his confederate,
driving the conductor ahead of him, forged his way aft from the front,
while a third masquerader aligned the engineer, the fireman, the
brakeman and the baggagemen.