"JUDGE B-DAY"
The long call of the whistle through the hills was smothered in another
and nearer burst of firearms. The rattle of bullets against the
half-armored side of the Pullman told their own story and told it
unmistakably. The bandits were coming in force; the troops under General
Palo's subordinates were not standing up to the enemy at all!
The three in the Pullman heard the doughty little general charging out
of the other car to take personal leadership of the defending forces,
and Janice believed her father, wounded though he was, had gone with
him.
Marty had shot through the corridor of the car and the open compartments
to the rear. There he clawed open the door and stepped out upon the
observation platform.
Again he had heard that cheerful, raucous whistle.
"Hi tunket!" he said to Janice who followed. "If that don't sound like a
steamboat----"
"Or a steam train?"
"But those rails were torn up outside San Cristoval."
"They could be spiked to the sleepers again," the girl said quickly.
"Cricky! who's coming, then?" the excited boy demanded. "Friends or
foes?"
"Oh, dear me!" sighed Janice. "Everybody seems to be fighting everybody
else down here. Suppose we are in the middle of a great battle, Marty
Day?"
"Hi tunket! It'll be something to tell about when we get back to
Polktown."
"_If_ we get back," she shuddered.
"Shucks! of course we will. Though I'd like to stay here and get that
mine to working again. I wonder if Uncle Brocky would let me?"
"Marty Day! You're the most awful-talking boy I ever heard. Oh!"
Another volley of rifle shots drowned her voice. They crouched together
by the open door of the car and heard the bullets sing past.
"What shall we do if there are really more of the enemy coming?"
murmured Janice, after the immediate shower of lead was over.
"Holler _'Viva M['e]jico!_' and let it go at that," grinned Marty. "That
goes big with all of 'em."
It was no laughing matter nevertheless, and Marty did not feel half so
cheerful as he appeared. But the boy felt it incumbent upon him to keep
up the spirits of his cousin.
The sun was coming up, yet the shadows still lay deep upon the mesa.
Peering out of the doorway of the car Janice and Marty could see the
shifting ranks of the government troops. They retired after each volley.
How near, or how many the bandits numbered, the anxious spectators had
no means of judging.
That most of the rifle balls went high was, however, a fact. They
pattered on the sides of the cars, some of them above the windows; and
there seemed to be few casualties.
"It gets _me_!" murmured Marty.
Then the whistle sounded again--unmistakably that of a locomotive. It
was approaching steadily. There was a steep grade up the front of the
mesa and they could distinguish the panting of the locomotive exhaust as
it essayed this rise.
"It's coming!" Janice gasped.
Nobody seemed to notice the approach of the strange locomotive but
themselves. The desultory firing about them went on. The officers
commanding the government troops seemed to know but one order--that to
"fire by platoons and fall back." It was true that the woods covered the
position of the enemy and hid their number as well.
On this side of the plateau there was no place for the maneuvering of
horses. The ground was too rough. But why the general did not sweep the
wood with his machine guns, or shell it with his howitzers, seemed a
mystery. It was not until afterward that the Americans learned there
had been other treachery besides that of Tom Hotchkiss. Every big gun
had been put out of commission before Dario Gomez's attack.
In the growing light there was now to be distinguished the flash of
rifles at the edge of the wood. Word was passed that the bandits were
about to charge.
At this flank of the line the officer in command thought more of his own
safety and that of his men than aught else. At his order the troops
suddenly shifted _to the other side of the car_!
"Hi tunket!" yelled Marty. "This is where we get off! Lie down, Janice,
for we are going to be between two fires."
The sun's jolly red face appeared over the hills and suddenly revealed
the battle picture clearly. The morning mists and rifle smoke were
dissipated, and at almost the same moment the forefront of the whistling
locomotive poked out of the forest. There were several slat cars
attached to the great engine. Marty stood up again in the doorway of the
Pullman and yelled. He saw that the cattle cars bristled with rifles and
were gay with red and green uniforms.
"Oh! who are they?" cried Janice, directly behind her cousin.
"They're government troops, all right all right! Reinforcements for Miz'
Madam, I declare. No other soldiers in Mexico could afford real
uniforms," Marty shouted.
They beheld the uniformed soldiery pile out of the cars and heard them
cheer. One figure in civilian dress was running ahead and came to the
observation platform of the Pullman first.
"_Viva M['e]jico!_" yelled Marty, glaring at this individual as though he
saw an apparition.
"You young whipper-snapper!" exclaimed the apparition. "Where's Janice?"
"_Nelson!_"
"Oh, then," grumbled Marty, "_you_ see the same thing I do, do you?"
Janice darted past her cousin and stretched her arms out to the
schoolmaster. As he leaped up the steps to meet her the troops
reinforcing General De Soto Palo began to deploy across the mesa and the
firing of the bandits from the wood suddenly ceased.
"Do tell!" murmured Marty, staring at the schoolmaster and his cousin.
"Gone to a clinch, have they? Huh! I guess it's time to go home."
It was some moments before Janice realized that her father was standing
by, a smoking revolver in his left hand and a rather grim smile upon his
lips.
"You might introduce me, my dear," he said mildly. "This, I presume, is
Nelson?"
"Mr. Day!" cried the schoolmaster, who seemed much brisker and more
assertive than had been his wont at home, "I am delighted to see you
looking so well. I feared----"
"Evidently," Mr. Day said dryly. "Was it _fear_ that brought you down
here into Mexico, Mr. Haley?"
"Yes, sir. Fear for Janice's safety," the young man replied with a
direct look. "It was for her I came."
"Ah? Well, we'll talk of that later," Broxton Day returned.
There was no time then for further personalities. Madam appeared, still
in _dishabille_, to meet the schoolmaster, and the general, too,
strutted forward.
The bandits had made off; these reinforcements had been sent to obey
his, General De Soto Palo's, orders; his campaign must now be successful
against all the rebels in this part of Chihuahua. But he would beg his
good friend, Se[~n]or B-Day, and the young Se[~n]or Haley, to add to their
party in retreat to the Border the so-br-r-rave wife of his bosom,
Se[~n]ora Palo! There was, too, a certain locked chest----
It was decided before breakfast, the frightened cook having returned,
that the Pullman car should be coupled to the second locomotive and be
pulled back to San Cristoval. There it might be attached to some train
going to El Paso, for the railroad was open again to the Border, the
government troops patrolling all that part of Chihuahua.
It was at breakfast that Nelson related in sequence his own adventures,
after hearing of all that had happened to Janice and Marty. And Nelson
boldly held Janice's hand--under the table--neglecting to eat while he
told his moving tale.
He had had no means of learning when and where Janice and Marty crossed
the Rio Grande, if at all, until he reached El Paso. Then a long
telegram reached him from Frank Bowman, repeating Marty's message sent
to Jason Day from Fort Hancock, and including the information of the
presence of Tom Hotchkiss at the Border.
At El Paso Nelson had learned the railroad was open once more and that a
government force was assigned to join General Palo's division at the
mines beyond San Cristoval. Therefore, believing to get to Mr. Broxton
Day and rescue him from further peril was the more important, Nelson had
postponed looking for Janice and Marty, but had used such influence as
he could muster to obtain permission to join the reinforcements going up
into the hills.
"I did not know where this dear girl was--in the body," said Nelson,
with a proud look at Janice; "but I knew where her heart was. It would
be with her father up here in the hills and I knew I could do nothing to
win her gratitude more surely than by coming immediately to the
Alderdice Mine."
"Nelson! how well you know me, after all!" Janice murmured.
There was much haste in getting ready for the departure. The general
declared over and over again that the front was no place for his dear
wife, after all. He had made a mistake in allowing her to come on from
New York. It would be a long time yet before the district would be a
settled place. But in time---- And there was the chest of
valuable--er--papers, and the like!
"Most of them do it," Mr. Broxton Day said reflectively to his little
party. "Just as soon as these 'liberators' acquire a little power they
acquire treasure of a lasting quality. And this treasure they cache
outside of Mexico. It is a sign of thrift; the laying up of something
against the proverbial rainy day. And these rainy days in Mexico
sometimes suggest the deluge."
There was another small matter that puzzled the general.
"He is _Americano_, se[~n]or," he said to Mr. Day. "He of the red vest. I
know not for sure whether he was sent to rouse panic among my troops or
no. He succeeded in doing so and Dario Gomez might have plundered the
camp with his handful of men.
"If he were one of my own people I would have him shot without
compunction. If you would decide, se[~n]or----"
"Let me talk to him, General," said Broxton Day quietly.
His talk with the man who had swindled his brother resulted in Tom
Hotchkiss gladly joining the party bound for the Border. What they might
do to him in the United States would be nothing so bad as an adobe wall
and a file of riflemen!
"Now, Judge B-Day!" whispered Janice in her father's ear, "pass judgment
likewise on another culprit."
"Who, Daughter?"
"What do you think of Nelson now that you have seen him and know what he
has done?"
"My dear," said "Judge B-Day," smiling at her tenderly, "caution was
never yet a fault to my mind--and Nelson possesses it. It may go well
with your impulsiveness. After all, I think your Nelson is a good deal
of a man."
This dialogue was between Janice and her father. Marty was still eyeing
the cringing Tom Hotchkiss.
"The water's all squeezed out o' _that_ sponge," sniffed Marty. "He'll
never fill out that red vest of his again--not proper. And won't dad
take on a new lease of life when he hears about it--hi tunket!"