THE HOLD-UP AT CASEY’S TANK
It was Sunday in St. Louis, and in East St. Louis as well, but there
was no rest for the officials of the Vandalia Line. Little Jack, the
messenger boy, and Tommy, the pump boy, were being examined by the
superintendent. The boys told their story without embarrassment. A
boy who has been messenger for a year in the roadmaster’s office, and
another boy who has been up against the White Mail with his mule, when
the Mail was making little less than a mile a minute, are not going
to get rattled when telling a simple story. When the superintendent
had heard that Two-card Charley, Jim, and Pete were going to rob the
Midnight Express on Monday night, he began to work the wire that went
to Chicago.
Then, as now, Chicago was the headquarters of the famous Watchem
Detective Agency, and the Vandalia wanted a good detective, right away,
regardless of expense.
Now, the elder Watchem happened to be a personal friend of the
President of the Vandalia Line, and he would send none other than his
boy, Billy, who had already made a world-wide reputation as a criminal
catcher. But Billy was away chasing a bank robber through the Michigan
forests, and could not be found.
Late in the afternoon the Superintendent grew impatient, but the head
of the Chicago agency assured him that a detective would reach the
river in time to take the Midnight Express on Monday night.
When the last train over the Alton left Chicago that Sunday night,
with no detective on board, the Superintendent went swearing to bed.
When all the morning trains pulled out on Monday, bringing no help,
the Superintendent said, over the wire, to Watchem, that he would give
the business to Theil. Whereupon, old man Watchem reached over to
Indianapolis, touched the President, and the President said, over the
wire, to the Superintendent, “Leave it all to Watchem,” and he left it,
and sulked in his tent the day.
The Michigan pines were making long shadows on Monday afternoon when
Billy Watchem came to the lake-side and caught a wire from his father,
bidding him hurry home.
“Step lively,” said Billy to his burglar, “you’re not the only robber
on the road. There is work for me near the home office;” and so the men
made haste.
The lamps had been lighted about the post office when young Watchem
rushed into the office of the Chicago & Alton and asked for a special
engine to carry him to East St. Louis. In his haste he got on the wrong
spur, and stumbled over a little, inexpensive, but extremely officious
official, whose business it is to pass upon the credentials of country
editors and see that the company’s advertisements are properly printed.
“For whom do you want a special?” asked the keeper of the clippings.
“For myself; that’s ‘‘whom.’”
Now, the keeper of the clippings gave the young man one withering
glance, and turned away with a hauteur in the presence of which the
President would have paled, as the morning star pales before the rising
sun.
At that moment a comfortable looking man stepped from the elevator.
That was the little man’s chief.
“Hello, Billy,” said the General Passenger Agent, giving the young
detective a glad hand, “are you all packed?”
“All packed,” said Billy, glancing at a hand grip that till now had
been hidden beneath a fall overcoat that hung on his arm.
“Then let us be off. We’ve got a special engine and Pullman car waiting
at the station for you,” and the two men went down together.
“Now, have I made of myself an ass?” mused the keeper of the clippings.
“I would have wagered my position that he was the editor of the
Litchfield Lamplight, and he goes to the river by special train over
our road. Ay, over the Alton,” and he closed his desk with a bang.
“I want you to make a mile a minute to-night,” said the General
Passenger Agent, offering a cigar to the engineer, as the slim
eight-wheeler moved out of the station shed.
As the car clicked over the switches, the young detective turned to
a cold lunch that the black boy had builded in the buffet, for he
had not eaten since morning. He had scarcely commenced his meal when
the heavy sleeper began to slam her flanges up against the rail and
show him that she was rolling. The Alton was one of the oldest of the
western roads, and upon this occasion she would take her place as
pace-maker for the rest, just as she had taught the Atlantic lines the
use of sleeping and dining cars. Indeed it is here, upon these very
rails, that we are wont to picture young Mr. Pullman, with a single
blanket and a wisp broom, swinging himself into his first sleeper, that
was not his, but a rented car.
By the time young Watchem had finished his “tea” the roar of passing
towns was coming closer and closer together. When the flying engine
screamed for a crossing, the whistle sounded above his head, and far
away in the rear of his car a rain of fire was falling in the furrowed
fields.
As well might the engine have been running light, for the one sleeper
only served to steady her. She was making a mile on a shovel of coal,
and five posts on a single fire.
“What’s that?”
“Lexington,” said the porter, bracing himself with a hand on a seat at
either side of the aisle. “I tell you, boss, we’re flyin’. Dey don’
mak’ no swiftah ingin dan de nine-spot; an’ ef yo’ heah me shout, dat
man Jim know how t’ hit ’er, too.”
“What’s that?”
“Bloomin’ton, sah. I tell you, boss, dese towns am brushin’ by de
windahs to-night lak telegraph poles--we’re flyin’, boss,--flyin’, da’s
all.”
At a station where they took water, the despatcher asked the engineer
if he could stand the strain to cover the entire route. They were
holding the Midnight Express at the river. This was the most important
train on the Van. “Tell him yes,” said the engineer to the operator, as
he opened the throttle. The Alton was making history.
“We’re goin’ through, Mickey,” shouted the engineer, holding his open
watch in the thin glare of light that shot up behind the furnace door
that was on the latch.
“Good!” said the fireman, catching the enthusiasm that was contagious
in the cab.
When the two men had worked so, nervously alert, for another hour, they
were drunk with the excitement of the trip. They could not talk for the
roar and roll of the engine, but they could see each other in the dim
light, and smile at each other across the cab.
As tank after tank they passed without stopping, the fireman would look
over at the engineer, and the driver, making the sign of a man drinking
(which means “water” on an engine), would jerk his thumb over his
shoulder, and the fireman would go back and sound the engine tank and
show the wet line on the shovel handle to the engineer, and he would
raise his right hand and wriggle his wrist, which means “All right, let
’er go.”
Then he would take off his cap, hold his head out of the cab window,
and cool his temples in the dewy twilight. He had no thought now of
danger; not the faintest appreciation of the risk he was running. He
would drive her so to the very edge of the Mississippi, and, if the
lights were white, and the switches right, and if it were necessary, he
would take the trackless, tieless skeleton of the big bridge that was
being built over the broad river. They were flying.
The President of the C. & A., by a singular coincidence, was watching
at the Columbia Theatre in Chicago, men and women going ’round the
world in eighty days. “This,” thought the railway man, “is play-acting,
and you can’t prove it. But this,” he would add, as message after
message was passed into his box, “this play that the Alton is putting
up to-night is the real thing.”
The Midnight Express was thirty minutes over-due to leave when the
driver of the special, pale but calm faced, dashed up to the station at
East St. Louis and brought them to a stand with an emergency stop.
“This is no boy’s business,” growled the Superintendent, as he hurried
the young man from the special to the rear of the Midnight Express.
“Where’s your father?”
“In Chicago. Got any instructions?”
The Superintendent handed the voyager an envelope containing a letter,
his transportation, and a check for an upper berth.
“Thank you,” said the young man, and, ignoring the insult to his
tender age, he swung himself into one of the sleepers that were gliding
by.
Side by side with the Midnight Express came the O. & M. broad gauge,
lumbering along, her high wheels climbing the cold steel rails that lay
in “splendid isolation,” with six feet of earth between them. The O.
& M. Cannon Ball was jealous of the Midnight Express. In fact it was
the coming of the new line, with her narrower, swifter engines, that
caused the rails of the O. & M. to get together on a sensible gauge,
that has since become a standard for American railways. Side by side
the two trains passed the last lights of the city, and found the open
fields. Of course there would be a race. Everybody knew that, and when
the big engine had got her short train well under way, and her smoke
lay across the Van Line in the glare of the light of the Midnight
Express, she whistled the other man ahead. Under these circumstances
that constitutes a “dare,” and no self-respecting engineer will take
it. The Van answered the signal. The Express was a heavy train,
and before the driver could get them going (he would not tear the
fireman’s fire, full of green coal) he was looking into the tail lights
of the Cannon Ball. Five miles out the broad gauge had reached the
limit of her speed. The black plunger at the head of the Night Express
was hanging at her flank, as you have seen a farm-dog hang at the side
of a sow, racing up through a field, with only a row of corn between
them. Gradually she began to gain. To the joy of her driver and all of
her passengers, she began to crawl up. Her headlight could no longer
be seen from the sleepers behind the Cannon Ball--only the glare of
it. Now her stack stood opposite the mail car on the O. & M. She would
soon have the sow by the ear. There was not a man, woman, or child on
either of the two trains that did not enter into the excitement of the
chase. Now the headlight of the broad gauge engine shone full on the
face of the daring driver of the Midnight Express, who was looking back
from the cab window. He whistled the man ahead, and a moment later the
Van flyer, swinging into a shallow cañon near Collinsville, showed her
tail lights to the Cannon Ball.
Of all the people on the two trains, the man who was to occupy lower
seven and the man who was to occupy upper seven were least interested
in the race. The former kept his thin face, with its receding forehead,
pressed to the pane, peering into the night, and thinking wild and
awful thoughts.
“What are these common carriers but soulless corporations, oppressors
of the poor,--the poor that are growing poorer, as the rich grow
richer. Something is radically wrong. The world owes me a living and I
mean to have it.”
These and many other thoughts were running through the young man’s
almost empty head. Beside him lay a copy of the “Police Gazette” and
a small yellow-back branded “Dead on the Desert;” and when young
Watchem, who held a check for upper seven, saw the literature, he
guessed that this must be Two-card Charley, the amateur and somewhat
theatrical young highwayman. Noting the almost expressionless face and
the nothingness of the man’s physique, the strong young detective felt
sympathy for this would-be criminal.
Retiring to the smoking-room the detective read his letter of
instructions, which was little more and no less than the story of
how the messenger boy and the pump boy had overheard the three
conspirators conspiring to rob the Midnight Express. In Pete, the
chicken-hearted, the shrewd detective recognized “Epsom Pete,” who had
held up a stenographer and burglarized a box car in Kansas City. Of
Two-card Charley he knew nothing, save the little he had gathered from
a few moments’ observation. To begin with, Charley smoked cigarettes
excessively, and that made him wakeful and nervous. He ate opium,
and that wrecked his morals. But Jim--“Cheyenne Jim,” as he called
himself--was a hard nut. His knife-handle, as Watchem was well aware,
was notched for two Chinamen, a sheriff, and a Sioux. He was a coward.
All his men had been killed going, and a conscienceless coward had no
business with a gun. This man must be handled gingerly or somebody
would get hurt.
Presently Charley came and sat in the narrow smoking-room opposite the
detective, but with his gaze bent upon the black window.
“Charley,” said Watchem, puffing at a cigar which he was attempting
to re-light, and instantly Charley’s right hand went back toward his
pistol pocket, “we’re going to have a hard winter, I think,” he added,
between puffs.
“Sir,” exclaimed the robber, bringing his hands in front of him again,
“you have me at some disadvantage.”
“Oh, no! but I’d like to have you so; s’pose you give me your gun.”
Again Charley’s hand went back and his face went chalk white.
“Not so fast, not so fast, my boy,” said the detective, shoving the
point of his own pistol up to Charley’s chin; “slowly now. That’s it,
butt first. Now we can talk.”
But Charley only glared at the detective and refused to say a word.
He had read in the various “works,” with which he was more or less
familiar, that the real game robber never gave up to a detective.
When the fresh locomotive that had been hooked on at Effingham had
galloped over the Ambraw bridge and stopped at Greenup, Epsom Pete
boarded the blind baggage, and a moment later the black steed, snorting
in the frosty morn, was dashing away across Fanchers’ farm.
The detective took a pair of handcuffs, which he happened to have in
his grip, and festooned them upon Charley’s wrists. Stepping out on the
rear platform he cut off a few feet of surplus bell rope that hung on
the railing, and fettered Charley’s feet, so that he might not jump off
and lose himself.
When the engineer whistled for Casey Tank he cut the cord and marched
the robber-chief up through the train. When the engine had been placed,
the detective, standing on the rear end of the day coach, fired three
shots, imitating as well as he knew how “the measured beating of my
lady’s heart.”
Leaping to the ground, he pushed Charley along in front of him until
they came to Pete, cutting the coupling. “Come on, Pete,” said Watchem,
and Pete, wondering who the new captain could be, followed on to the
locomotive.
“Speak to the gentleman on the engine, Charley,” said the detective.
“Call him off or I shall be compelled to kill him.”
“Jim,” said Charley, dramatically, “we have been betrayed. This train
is loaded down with detectives and deputy sheriffs. We are surrounded,
drop your gun.”
“Just hand it over to the engineer, please,” said Watchem. “There,
that’s better. There’s not so many of me that I feel like fighting the
whole band.”
“An’ now,” said Pete, facing Two-card Charley, “I reckon here’s whar’
we ’pologize an’ bow ourselves out.”