postpone it. Might be as well, anyway."
He lay there for an hour, his bright eyes fastened now on the dirty,
squalling brood of children upon the floor, now on the heavy,
slatternly figure of their mother, and now on the tin bowl of boiled
sheep's head that awaited the arrival of Ivan Peloff, the master of the
house--and then, with abhorrent disgust, he turned his eyes to the wall.
"Thank God, I get into a decent place soon!" he mumbled once. "It's
the roughest month I ever spent. I'd rather be back where"--he smiled
sort of cryptically to himself--"where I came from." A moment later he
spoke again in a queer, kind of argumentative, kind of self-extenuating
way--in broken sentences. "Maybe I put it on a little too thick
boarding here so's to stand in with Carleton and pay that ten back
quick--but, my God, I was scared--I've got to stand in with somebody,
or go to the wall."
It was after seven when Ivan Peloff came--smelling strong of drink, and
excitement heightening the flush upon his cheek.
"Hello, Meester Walton!" he bubbled out with earnest inebriety. "We
rise hell to-night--by an' by. Get him goods by midnight." Ivan
Peloff drew his fingers around his throat, and, in lieu of English that
came hard to him at any time, jerked his thumb dramatically up and down
in the air.
"Who?" inquired P. Walton, without much enthusiasm.
"Dam' robber--him by train come in," explained Ivan Peloff laboriously.
"Oh," said P. Walton, "talking of stringing him up--is that it?"
Ivan Peloff nodded his head delightedly.
P. Walton swung himself lazily from his bunk.
"Eat?" invited Ivan Peloff, moving toward the table.
"No," said P. Walton, moving toward the door. "I'm not hungry; I'm
going out for some air."
Ivan Peloff pulled two bottles of a deadly brand from under his coat,
and set them on the table.
"Me eat," he grinned. "By an' by have drinks all 'round"--he waved his
hands as though to embrace the whole Polack quarter--"den we
comes--rise hell--do him goods by midnight."
P. Walton halted in the doorway.
"Who put you up to this, Peloff?" he inquired casually.
"Cowboys," grinned Peloff, lunging at the sheep's head. "Plenty drink.
Say have fun."
"The cowboys, eh?" observed P. Walton. "So they're in town, are
they--and looking for fun?"
"We fix him goods by midnight," repeated Ivan Peloff, wagging his head;
then, with a sudden scowl: "You not tell--eh, Meester Walton?"
P. Walton smiled disinterestedly--but there wasn't any doubt in P.
Walton's mind that devilment was in the wind--Big Cloud, in the early
days, knew its full share of that.
"I?" said P. Walton quietly, as he went out. "No; I won't tell. It's
no business of mine, is it?"
It was fall, and already dark. P. Walton made his way out of the
Polack quarters, reached the tracks, crossed them--and then headed out
through the fields to circle around the town to the upper end again,
where it dwindled away from cross streets to the houses flanking on
Main Street alone.
"I guess," he coughed--and smiled, "I won't postpone it till to-morrow
night, after all."
It was a long walk for a man in P. Walton's condition, and it was a
good half hour before he finally stopped in the rear of Sheriff
Carruthers' back shed and listened--there were no fences here, just a
procession of buttes and knolls merging the prairie country into the
foothills proper of the Rockies--neither was there any sound. P.
Walton stifled a cough, and slipped like a shadow through the darkness
around to the front of the shed, shifted the wooden bar noiselessly on
its pivot, opened the door, and, as he stepped inside, closed it softly
behind him.
"Butch!" he whispered.
A startled ejaculation, and a quick movement as of a man suddenly
shifting his position on the floor, answered him.
"Keep quiet, Butcher--it's all right," said P. Walton calmly--and,
stooping, guiding his knife blade by the sense of touch, cut away the
rope from the other's ankles. He caught at the steel-linked wrists and
helped the man to his feet. "Come on," he said. "Slip around to the
back of the shed--talk later."
P. Walton pushed the door open, and the man he called the Butcher,
lurching a little unsteadily from cramped ankles, passed out. P.
Walton carefully closed the door, coolly replaced the bar in position,
and joined the other.
"Now, run for it!" he said--and led the way straight out from the town.
For two hundred yards, perhaps a little more, they raced--and then P.
Walton stumbled and went down.
"I'm--I'm not very well to-night," he gasped. "This will do--it's far
enough."
The Butcher, halted, gazed at the prostrate form.
"Say, cull, what's yer name?" he demanded. "I owe you something for
this, an' don't you forget it."
P. Walton made no answer. His head was swimming, lights were dancing
before his eyes, and there was a premonitory weakness upon him whose
issue he knew too well--unless he could fight it off.
The Butcher bent down until his face was within an inch of P. Walton's.
"So help me!" he informed the universe in unbounded amazement. "It's
de Dook!"
"Sit down there opposite me, and hold out your hands," directed P.
Walton, with an effort. "We haven't got any time to waste."
The Butcher, heavy with wonderment, obeyed mechanically--and P. Walton
drew a rat-tail file from his pocket.
"I saw you in the express car this afternoon, and I went to the
roundhouse for this when I left the office," P. Walton said, as he set
to work on the steel links. "But I was feeling kind of down and out,
and was going to leave you till to-morrow night--only I heard they were
going to lynch you at midnight."
"Lynch me!" growled the Butcher. "What fer? They don't lynch a fellow
'cause he's nipped in a hold-up--we didn't kill no one."
"Some of the cowboys are looking for amusement," said P. Walton
monotonously. "They've distributed red-eye among the Polacks, for the
purpose, I imagine, of putting the blame--on the Polacks."
"I get you!" snarled the Butcher, with an oath. "It's de Bar K
Ranch--we took their payroll away from 'em two weeks ago. Lynchin',
eh? Well, some of 'em 'll dance on air fer this themselves, blast 'em!
Dook, yer white--an' you always was. I thought me luck was out fer
keeps to-day when Spud--you saw Spud, didn't you?"
"Yes," said P. Walton, filing steadily.
"Spud always had a soft spot in his heart," said the Butcher. "Instead
of drilling that devil, Nulty, when he had the chance, Nulty filled
Spud full of holes, an' we fluked up--yer gettin' a bit of my wrist,
Dook, with that damned file. Well, as I said, I thought me luck was
out fer keeps--an' _you_ show up. Gee! Who'd have thought of seein'
de Angel Dook, de prize penman, de gem of forgers! How'd you make yer
getaway--you was in fer twenty spaces, wasn't you?"
"I think they wanted to save the expense of burying me," said P.
Walton. "The other wrist, Butch. I got a pardon."
"What's de matter with you, Dook?" inquired the Butcher solicitously.
"Lungs," said P. Walton tersely. "Bad."
"Hell!" said the Butcher earnestly.
There was silence for a moment, save only for the rasping of the file,
and then the Butcher spoke again.
"What's yer lay out here, Dook?" he asked.
"Working for the railroad in the super's office--and keeping my mouth
shut," said P. Walton.
"There's nothin' in that," said the Butcher profoundly. "Nothin' to
it!"
"Not much," agreed P. Walton. "Forty a month, and--oh, well, forty a
month."
"I'll fix that fer you, Dook," said the Butcher cheerily. "You join de
gang. There's de old crowd from Joliet up here in de mountains. We
got a swell layout. There's Larry, an' Big Tom, an' Dago Pete--Spud's
cashed in--an' they'll stand on their heads an' yell Salvation Army
songs when they hear that de slickest of 'em all--that's you, Dook--is
buyin' a stack an' settin' in."
"No," said P. Walton. "No, Butch, I guess not--it's me for the forty
per."
"Eh!" ejaculated the Butcher heavily. "You don't mean to say you've
turned parson, Dook? You wouldn't be lettin' me loose if you had."
"No; nothing like that," replied P. Walton. "I'm sitting tight because
I have to--until some one turns up and gives my record away--if I'm not
dead first. I'm too sick, Butch, to be any use to you--I couldn't
stand the pace."
"Sure, you could," said the Butcher reassuringly. "Anyway, I'm not fer
leavin' a pal out in de cold, an'----" He stopped suddenly, and leaned
toward P. Walton. "What was it you said you was doin' in de office?"
he demanded excitedly.
"Assistant clerk to the superintendent," said P. Walton--and his file
bit through the second link. "You'll have to get the bracelets off
your wrists when you get back to the boys--your hands are free."
"Say," said the Butcher breathlessly, "it's a cinch! You see de
letters, an' know what's goin' on pretty familiar-like, don't you?"
"Yes," said P. Walton.
"Well, say, can you beat it!" Once more the Butcher invoked the
universe. "You're de inside man, see? Gee--it's a cinch! We only
knew there was mazuma on de train to-day by a fluke, just Spud an' me
heard of it, too late to plan anything fancy an' get de rest of de
gang. You see what happened? After this we don't have to take no
chances. You passes out de word when there's a good juicy lot of swag
comin' along, we does de rest, and you gets your share--equal. An'
that ain't all. They'll be sendin' down East fer de Pinkertons, if
they ain't done it already, an' we gives 'em de laugh--you tippin' us
off on de trains de 'dicks' are ridin' on, an' puttin' us wise to 'em
generally. An' say"--the Butcher's voice dropped suddenly to a low,
sullen, ugly growl--"you give us de lay de first crack we make when
that low-lived, snook-nosed Nulty's aboard. He goes out fer Spud--an'
he goes out quick. He's fired a gun de last time he'll ever fire
one--see?"
P. Walton felt around on the ground, picked up the bit of chain he had
filed from the handcuffs, and handed it, with the file, to the Butcher.
"Put these in your pocket, Butch," he said, "and throw them in the
river where it's deep when you get a chance--especially the file. I
guess from the way you put it I could earn my stake with the gang."
"Didn't I tell you, you could!" The Butcher, with swift change of
mood, grinned delightedly. "Sure, you can! Larry's an
innocent-lookin' kid, an' he's not known in de town. He'll float
around an' get de bulletins from you--you'll know ahead when there's
anything good comin' along, won't you?"
"When it leaves the coast," said P. Walton. "Thirty-six
hours--sometimes more."
"An' I thought me luck was out fer keeps!" observed the Butcher, in an
almost awe-struck voice.
"Well, don't play it too hard by hanging around here until they get you
again," cautioned P. Walton dryly. "The further you get away from Big
Cloud in the next few hours, the better you'll like it to-morrow."
"I'm off now," announced the Butcher, rising to his feet. "Dook,
you're white--all de way through. Don't forget about Nulty, blast
him!" He wrung P. Walton's hand with emotion. "So long, Dook!"
"So long, Butch!" said P. Walton.
P. Walton watched the Butcher disappear in the darkness, then he began
to retrace his steps toward the Polack quarters. His one thought now
was to reach his bunk. He was sick, good and sick, and those
premonitory symptoms, if they had been arrested, were still with him.
The day had been too much for him--the jostling on the platform, mostly
when he had fought his way through the rear of the crowd for fear of an
unguarded recognition on the part of the Butcher; then the walking he
had done; and, lastly, that run from the sheriff's shed.
P. Walton, with swimming head and choking lungs, reeled a little as he
went along. It was farther, quite a lot farther, to go by the fields,
and he was far enough down from Carruthers' now so that it would not
make any difference anyhow, even if the Butcher's escape had been
discovered--which it hadn't, the town was too quiet for that. P.
Walton headed into a cross street, staggered along it, reached the
corner of Main Street--and, fainting, went suddenly down in a heap, as
the hemorrhage caught him, and the bright, crimson "ruby" stained his
lips.
Coming up the street from a conference in the super's office, Nulty,
the express messenger, big, brawny, hard-faced, thin-lipped, swung
along, dragging fiercely at his pipe, scowling grimly as he reviewed
the day's happenings. He passed a little knot of Polacks, quite
obviously far gone in liquor--and almost fell over P. Walton's body.
"Hullo!" said Nulty. "What the deuce is this!" He bent down for a
look into the unconscious man's face. "The super's clerk!" he
exclaimed--and stared around for help.
There was no one in sight, save the approaching Polacks--but one of
these hurriedly, if unsteadily, lurched forward.
"Meester Walton!" announced Ivan Peloff genially. "Him be sick--yes?"
"Where's he live?" demanded Nulty, without waste of words.
"Him by me live," said Ivan Peloff, tapping his chest proudly as he
swayed upon his feet. He called to his companions, and reached for P.
Walton's legs. "We take him by us home."
"Let him alone!" said Nulty gruffly, as the interior of a Polack shanty
pictured itself before his eyes.
"Him by me live," repeated Ivan Peloff, still reaching doggedly, if
uncertainly, for P. Walton's legs.
"Let him alone, I tell you, you drunken Guinea!" roared Nulty suddenly,
and his arm went out with a sweep that brushed Ivan Peloff back to an
ultimate seat in the road three yards away. Without so much as a
glance in the direction taken by the other, Nulty stepped up to the
rest of the Polacks, stared into their faces, and selecting the one
that appeared less drunk than the others, unceremoniously jerked the
man by the collar into the foreground. "You know me!" he snapped.
"I'm Nulty--Nulty. Say it!"
"Nultee," said the bewildered foreigner.
"Yes," said Nulty. "Now you run for the doctor--and you run like hell.
If he ain't at home--find him. Tell him to come to Nulty--_quick_.
Understand?"
The Polack nodded his head excitedly.
"Doctor--Nultee," he ejaculated brightly.
"Yes," said Nulty. "Go on, now--run!" And he gave the Polack an
initial start with a vigorous push that nearly toppled the man forward
on his nose.
Nulty stooped down, picked up P. Walton in his arms as though the
latter were a baby, and started toward his own home a block away.
"My God," he muttered, "a railroad man down there in a state like
this--he'd have a long chance, he would! Poor devil, guess he won't
last out many more of these. Blast it all, now if the wife was home
she'd know what to do--blamed if I know!"
For all that, however, Nulty did pretty well. He put P. Walton to bed,
and started feeding him cracked ice even before the doctor came--after
that Nulty went on feeding cracked ice.
Along toward midnight, Gleason, the yard-master, burst hurriedly into
the house.
"Say, Nulty, you there!" he bawled. "That blasted train robber's got
away, and--oh!" He had stepped from the hall over the threshold of the
bedroom door, only to halt abruptly as his eyes fell upon the bed.
"Anything I can do--Nulty?" he asked in a booming whisper, that he
tried to make soft.
Nulty, sitting in a chair by the bed, shook his head--and Gleason
tiptoed in squeaky boots out of the house.
P. Walton, who had been lying with closed eyes, opened them, and looked
at Nulty.
"What did he say?" he inquired.
"Says the fellow we got to-day has got away," said Nulty shortly.
"Shut up--the doctor says you're not to talk."
P. Walton's bright eyes made a circuit of the room, came back, and
rested again on Nulty.
"Would you know him again if you saw him?" he demanded.
"Would I know him!" exclaimed Nulty. "It's not likely I wouldn't, is
it? I was dead-heading him down from Gopher Butte, wasn't I?"
"I think," said P. Walton slowly, "if it were me I'd be scared stiff
that he got away--afraid he'd be trying to revenge that other fellow,
you know. You want to look out for him."
"I'd ask nothing better than to meet him again," said Nulty grimly.
"Now, shut up--you're not to talk."
P. Walton was pretty sick. Nulty sat up all that night with him, laid
off from his run the next day, and sat up with P. Walton again the next
night. Then, having sent for Mrs. Nulty, who was visiting relatives
down the line, Mrs. Nulty took a hand in the nursing. Mrs. Nulty was a
little, sweet-faced woman, with gray Irish eyes and no style about
her--Nulty's pay-check didn't reach that far--but she knew how to
nurse; and if her hands were red and the knuckles a little swollen from
the washtub, she could use them with a touch that was full enough of
tender sympathy to discount anything a manicure might have reason to
find fault with on professional grounds. She didn't rate Nulty for
turning her home into a hospital, and crowding her train-sheet of work,
already pretty full, past all endurance--Mrs. Nulty, God bless her,
wasn't that kind of a woman! She looked at her husband with a sort of
happy pride in her eyes; looked at P. Walton, and said, "Poor man," as
her eyes filled--and went to work. But for all that, it was touch and
go with P. Walton--P. Walton was a pretty sick man.
It's queer the way trouble of that sort acts--down and out one day with
every signal in every block set dead against you; and the next day a
clear track, with rights through buttoned in your reefer, a wide-flung
throttle, and the sweep of the wind through the cab glass whipping your
face till you could yell with the mad joy of living. It's queer!
Five days saw P. Walton back at the office, as good, apparently, as
ever he was--but Mrs. Nulty didn't stop nursing. Nulty came down sick
in place of P. Walton and took to bed--"to give her a chance to keep
her hand in," Nulty said. Nulty came down, not from overdoing it on P.
Walton's account--a few nights sitting up wasn't enough to lay a man
like Nulty low--Nulty came down with a touch of just plain mountain
fever.
It wasn't serious, or anything like that; but it put a stop order,
temporarily at least, on the arrangements Nulty had cussed P. Walton
into agreeing to. P. Walton was to come and board with the Nultys at
the same figure he was paying Ivan Peloff until he got a raise and
could pay more. And so, while Nulty was running hot and cold with
mountain fever, P. Walton, with Mrs. Nulty in mind, kept his
reservations on down in the Polack quarters, until such time as Nulty
should get better--and went back to work at the office.
On the first night of his convalescence, P. Walton had a visitor--in
the person of Larry, the brains and leader of the gang. Larry did not
come inside the shack--he waited outside in the dark until P. Walton
went out to him.
"Hullo, Dook!" said Larry. "Tough luck, eh? Been sick? Gee, I'm glad
to see you! All to the mustard again? Couldn't get into town before,
but a fellow uptown said you'd been bad."
"Hello, Larry," returned P. Walton, and he shook the other's hand
cordially. "Glad to see you, too. Yes; I guess I'm all right--till
next time."
"Sure, you are!" said Larry heartily. "Anything good doing?"
"Well," said P. Walton, "I don't know whether you'd call it good or
not, but there was a new order went into effect yesterday to remain in
force until further notice--owing to the heavy passenger traffic. They
are taking the mail and express cars off the regular afternoon
east-bound trains, and running them as a through extra on fast time.
They figure to land the mails East quicker, and ease up on the
equipment of the regular trains so as to keep them a little nearer
schedule. So now the express stuff comes along on Extra No. 34, due
Spider Cut at eight-seventeen p. m., which is her last stop before Big
Cloud."
"Say," said Larry dubiously, "'taint going to be possible to board a
train like that casual-like, is it?" Then, brightening suddenly: "But
say, when you get to thinking about it, it don't size up so bad,
neither. I got the lay, Dook--I got it for fair--listen! Instead of a
train-load of passengers to handle there won't be no one after the
ditching but what's left of the train crew and the mail clerks; a
couple of us can stand the stamp lickers up easy, while the two others
pinches the swag. We'll stop her, all right! We ditch the train--see?
There's a peach of a place for it about seven miles up the line from
here. We tap the wires, Big Tom's some cheese at that, and then cuts
them as soon as we know the train has passed Spider Cut, and is wafting
its way toward us. Say, it's good, Dook, it's like a Christmas
present--I was near forgetting the registered mail."
P. Walton laughed--and coughed.
"I guess it's all right, Larry," he said. "According to a letter I saw
in the office this afternoon, there's a big shipment of banknotes that
some bank is remitting, and that will be on board night after next."
"Say that again," said Larry, sucking in his breath quickly. "I ain't
deaf, but I'd like to hear it just once more."
"I was thinking," said P. Walton, more to himself than to his
companion, "that I'd like to get down to Northern Australia--up
Queensland way. They say it's good for what ails me--bakes it out of
one."
"Dook," said Larry, shoving out his hand, "you can buy your ticket the
day after the night after next--you'll get yours, and don't you forget
it, I'll see to that. We'll move camp to-morrow down handy to the
place I told you about, and get things ready. And say, Dook, is that
cuss Nulty on the new run?"
"I don't know anything about Nulty," said P. Walton.
"Well, I hope he is," said Larry, with a fervent oath. "We're going to
cut the heart out of him for what he did to Spud. The Butcher was for
coming into town and putting a bullet through him anyway, but I'm not
for throwing the game. It won't hurt Spud's memory any to wait a bit,
and we won't lose any enthusiasm by the delay, you can bet your life on
that! And now I guess I'll mosey along. The less I'm seen around here
the better. Well, so long, Dook--I got it straight, eh? Night after
to-morrow, train passes Spider Cut eight-seventeen--that right?"
"Eight-seventeen--night after to-morrow--yes," said P. Walton. "Good
luck to you, Larry."
"Same to you, Dook," said Larry--and slipped away in the shadows.
P. Walton went uptown to sit for an hour or two with Nulty--turn about
being no more than fair play. Also on the following night he did the
same--and on this latter occasion he took the opportunity, when Mrs.
Nulty wasn't around to hear and worry about it, to turn the
conversation on the hold-up, after leading up to it casually.
"When you get out and back on your run again, Nulty, I'd keep a sharp
look-out for that fellow whose pal you shot," he said.
"You can trust me for that," said Nulty anxiously. "I'll bet he
wouldn't get away a second time!"
"Unless he saw you first," amended P. Walton evenly. "There's probably
more where those two came from--a gang of them, I dare say. They'll
have it in for you, Nulty."
"Don't you worry none about me," said Nulty, and his jaw shot out.
"I'm able to take care of myself."
"Oh, well," said P. Walton, "I'm just warning you, that's all. Anyway,
there isn't any immediate need for worry. I guess you're safe
enough--so long as you stay in bed."
The next day P. Walton worked assiduously at the office. If excitement
or nervousness in regard to the events of the night that was to come
was in any wise his portion, he did not show it. There was not a
quiver in the steel-plate hand in which he wrote the super's letters,
not even an inadvertent blur on the tissue pages of the book in which
he copied them. Only, perhaps, he worked a little more slowly--his
work wasn't done when the shop whistle blew and he came back to the
office after supper. It was close on ten minutes after eight when he
finally finished, and went into the despatcher's room with the sheaf of
official telegrams to go East during the night at odd moments when the
wires were light.
"Here's the super's stuff," he said, laying the papers on the
despatcher's desk.
"All right," said Spence, who was sitting in on the early trick.
"How's P. Walton to-night?"
"Pretty fair," said P. Walton, with a smile. "How's everything moving?"
"Slick as clockwork," Spence answered. "Everything on the dot. I'll
get some of that stuff off for you now."
"Good," said P. Walton, moving toward the door. "Good-night, Spence."