A HERO IN SPITE OF HIMSELF
Passion sent Mallory into the unequal fight with two armed and
desperate outlaws. But reason had planned the way. He had been
studying the robber all the time, as if the villain were a war-map,
studying his gestures, his way of turning, and how he held the
revolver. He had noted that the man, as he frisked the passengers, did
not keep his finger on the trigger, but on the guard.
Marjorie's little battle threw the desperado off his balance a trifle;
as he recovered, Mallory struck him, and swept him on over against the
back of a seat. At the same instant, Mallory's right hand went like
lightning to the trigger guard, and gripped the fingers in a vise of
steel, while he drove the man's elbow back against his side. Mallory's
left hand meanwhile flung around his enemy's neck, and gave him a
spinning fall that sent his left hand out for balance. It fell across
the back of the seat, and Mallory pinioned it with elbow and knee
before it could escape.
All in the same crowded moment, his left knuckles jolted the man's
chin in air, and so bewildered him that his muscles relaxed enough
for Mallory's right fingers to squirm their way to the trigger, and
aim the gun at the other robber, and finally to get entire control of
it.
The thing had happened in such a flash that the second outlaw could
hardly believe his eyes. The shriek of the astounded passengers, and
the grunt of Mallory's prisoner, as he crashed backward, woke him to
the need for action. He caught his other gun from its holster, and
made ready for a double volley, but there was nothing to aim at.
Mallory was crouched in the seat, and almost perfectly covered by a
human shield.
Still, from force of habit and foolhardy pluck, Bill aimed at
Mallory's right eyebrow, just abaft Jake's right ear, and shouted his
old motto:
"Hands up! you!"
"Hands up yourself!" answered Mallory, and his victim, shuddering at
the fierce look in his comrade's eyes, gasped: "For God's sake, don't
shoot, Bill!"
Even then the fellow stood his ground, and debated the issue, till
Mallory threw such ringing determination into one last: "Hands up, or
by God, I'll fire!" that he caved in, lifted his fingers from the
triggers, turned the guns up, and slowly raised both hands above his
head.
A profound "Ah!" of relief soughed through the car, and Mallory, still
keeping his eye on Bill, got down cautiously from the seat. The
moment he released Jake's left hand, it darted to the holster where
his second gun was waiting. But before he could clutch the butt of it,
Mallory jabbed the muzzle of his own revolver in the man's back, and
growled: "Put 'em up!" And the robber's left hand joined the right in
air, while Mallory's left hand lifted the revolver, and took
possession of it.
Mallory stood for a moment, breathing hard and a little incredulous at
his own swift, sweet triumph. Then he made an effort to speak as if
this sort of thing were quite common with him, as if he overpowered a
pair of outlaws every morning before breakfast, but his voice cracked
as he said, in a drawing-room tone:
"Dr. Temple, would you mind relieving that man of those guns?"
Dr. Temple was so set up by this distinction that he answered: "Not by
a----"
"Walter!" Mrs. Temple checked him, before he could utter the beautiful
word, and Dr. Temple looked at her almost reproachfully, as he sighed:
"Golly, I should like to swear just once more."
Then he reached up and disarmed the man who had taken his wallet and
his wife's keepsakes. But the doctor was not half so happy over the
recovery of his property as over the unbelievable luxury of finding
himself taking two revolvers away from a masked train-robber.
American children breathe in this desperado romance with their
earliest traditions, and Dr. Temple felt all his boyhood zest surge
back with a boy's tremendous rapture in a deed of derring-do. And now
nothing could check his swagger, as he said to Mallory:
"What shall we do with these dam-ned sinners?"
He felt like apologizing for the clerical relapse into a pulpitism,
but Mallory answered briskly: "We'd better take them into the smoking
room. They scare the ladies. But first, will the conductor take those
bags and distribute the contents to their rightful owners?"
The conductor was proud to act as lieutenant to this Lieutenant, and
he quickly relieved the robbers of their loot-kits.
Mallory smiled. "Don't give anybody my things," and then he jabbed his
robber with one of the revolvers, and commanded: "Forward, march!"
The little triumphal procession moved off, with Bill in the lead,
followed by Dr. Temple, looking like a whole field battery, followed
by Jake, followed by Mallory, followed by the porter and as many of
the other passengers as could crowd into the smoking room.
The rest went after those opulent feed-bags.