HOT ON THE TRAIL
Here seemed to be a clear case of murder. And murder, too, of the most
brutal kind.
What kind of men could they be who would not only kill a fellow
creature but laugh at his dying struggles? It seemed almost
unbelievable.
Sammy racked his memory to recall anything he might have read or heard
that would fit this case. He did very little reading of the newspapers,
and his parents were careful to keep from him any shocking details of
crime. Yet sometimes he would overhear his father talking with the
neighbors about some dreadful thing with which the country was ringing.
Yet try as Sammy would, he could not recall anything that seemed
to apply to the especial cold-blooded murder which these men were
evidently discussing.
Sammy glanced at his chums to see if they were listening. But they were
not, and for this he was glad. He wanted to unravel this mystery all
by himself if possible and only then reveal the matter proudly to the
others.
He strained his ears now as he never had before. He did not want to
miss a single detail.
"Yes," one of the men was saying, "he was badly cut up but his
squealing did no good."
Sammy shuddered. In imagination he could hear the groans and shrieks of
the victim.
He leaned forward in his seat, for the roar and rush of the train made
it hard to catch the words especially as the speakers' faces were
turned away from him.
Sammy wondered at their hardihood in discussing the crime so openly.
Probably they thought that the noise of the train would be their
protection. Or they might have noticed that those seated right behind
them were boys instead of men, and this might have made them careless.
"They never made a bigger mistake," Sammy said to himself. "I'll show
them that boys are not to be trifled with."
Already Sammy saw his name in big headlines in the papers, accompanied
by his picture. He thought of the sensation this would make, not only
with his own immediate chums, but with the other boys of Fairview. They
had often laughed at what they called his "fake mysteries," but now
they would laugh no more. Instead, they would be filled with envy and
admiration.
But now the men had either changed the subject of conversation or else
what they did say was so disconnected that Sammy could not make head
or tail of it. He did catch the word "stealing," however, and that
gave him another thrill. Probably the men were not only murderers but
hardened thieves as well. Perhaps their victim had been killed while
they were attempting to rob him.
But while he was considering the case from this new angle, the porter
passed through the car giving the first call for dinner.
"Dinnah's ready in de dinin' cah," he announced.
The words came like a trumpet call to three of the boys at least, and
they were astir in a moment. There was no inclination on their part to
wait for the second or third call. The first call was none too early
for them.
"Come along, fellows!" cried Frank.
"Will we?" sang out Bob and George in chorus.
Sammy would usually have been as eager as the rest, but just at this
minute, when he was hot on the trail, he would have been willing to
wait a little while.
"What's the matter with you, Sammy?" asked George, struck by his
unusual slowness.
"I never knew you to hang back on a call to dinner before," put in
Frank.
"Get a move on," suggested Bob, giving Sammy a vigorous poke in the
ribs.
Sammy would have protested, but just at this moment the two men in
front rose with the evident intention of going into the dining car, and
Sammy decided that it would be well to keep them in sight.
The boys were lucky enough to get a table together, while the two men
seated themselves at a table a few feet away on the other side of the
car. Sammy so arranged his own seat that he could have the men in view
all through dinner, promising himself that he would do more watching
than eating.
But his resolution failed before the good things that were heaped by
the smiling waiter on their table. There was soup and fish and oysters
and chicken and delicious fried potatoes and olives and relishes
of all kinds. Despite himself Sammy forgot for the time all about
the criminals and waded into the good things just as eagerly and
voraciously as the rest of the boys.
The colored waiter watched them with a grin that displayed all his
white teeth.
"Ah clah's to goodness," he confided to one of his mates, "ah wouldn't
want to have dem young gemmen as stiddy boarders. Dey suah would eat me
out of house and home."
But the boys' capacity had a limit, and at last they had finished the
solid part of their meal and were sitting happily back in their seats
waiting for their dessert of pie and ice cream.
Then it was that graver affairs than mere eating pressed upon Sammy. He
fastened his eyes upon the two men and kept them there without blinking.
"What are you staring at, Sammy?" asked George.
"He looks like a cat watching at a mousehole," remarked Bob.
"I bet he's working up another mystery," mocked Frank. "I know the
signs."
"Never you mind," said Sammy, impressively. "I know exactly what I'm
doing."
"That's something new for Sammy, then," gibed Frank. "Most of the time
he thinks he knows but he doesn't."
"What would you say," said Sammy, stung out of his resolve to keep the
matter quiet for the present, "if I told you that in this same car
where you're eating there are two murderers?"
This came to the boys like an electrical shock.
"What do you mean?" asked Frank.
"Stop trying to fool us," said Bob.
"Is that a joke?" demanded George.
Sammy was delighted at the sensation he had made.
"I mean just what I say," he declared with fitting solemnity. "I heard
them confess it with my own ears."
"When?" came breathlessly from the others.
"While you dubs were half asleep a little while ago," Sammy got back at
them.
"Who are they?" George demanded.
"Keep your eyes down on the table now," said Sammy, "and then after a
while look carelessly over at the two men at the third table on the
other side of the car. If you should all look at them at once, they
might think that we were on to them and that the jig was up."
It was the hardest kind of work to keep their eyes glued to the table
when the boys were trembling with eagerness to look at the desperate
characters whose crime had been revealed to Sammy, but they did it and
then looked furtively in the direction that Sammy had indicated.
It must be admitted that the Fairview boys were disappointed. They had
expected to see low brutal foreheads, shifty eyes with a wicked glow
in them and faces seamed with the marks of vice and dissipation. But
instead they saw two pleasant-faced men, not unlike those they were
accustomed to see in Fairview, and those men instead of being oppressed
with guilt were laughing and joking with each other as though they had
not a care in the world.
"I don't believe it," muttered George.
"There's nothing bad about those fellows," pronounced Bob.
"One of them looks like Mr. Tetlow," observed Frank, referring to the
principal of the Fairview school.
Sammy smiled a wise smile into which he tried to put a little contempt
for the judgment of his chums.
"You judge things from the outside," he said in a superior way. "But
I'm not going by the way they look. I've got something better than
that. I know what I heard them say."
"What was it they said?" asked George.
"I'll tell you when we get back in our own car," promised Sammy,
importantly.
The ice cream and pie were brought in just then, and the boys applied
themselves to them, but not as whole-heartedly as they had to the
rest of the meal before Sammy had told them his startling news. Over
every mouthful they cast swift glances at the malefactors who were now
sipping their coffee with quiet enjoyment.
George, who, being the eldest, carried the purse for the party, paid
the check, not forgetting a modest tip to the grinning waiter who had
served them so bountifully, and the little party with one last glance
at the pair of alleged culprits filed their way back to their own car.
There they fell on Sammy at once and demanded that he tell them from
start to finish all that he had heard.
Sammy complied, doling his news out bit by bit, so as to keep their
appetites sharp, and when he was through they had to confess that it
certainly looked very serious.
"But it doesn't seem that either one of them did the actual killing,"
objected George. "It was this Billy, whoever it was, that they say
killed him."
"Yes. But they were all in it and that makes one as bad as another.
Billy may have been the one to use the knife--I heard him say that the
man was all cut up--but the others were there and laughed when the poor
fellow squealed and kicked."
"It must have been something awful to hear him," shuddered Bob.
"I wonder what they did with the body?" queried George.
"Buried it or burned it, I suppose. I guess when the detectives get
hold of these fellows they'll be able to get out of them what they did
with the body."
"Well, what are we going to do about it?" asked Frank.
"It seems to me that we ought to tell the police about it right away,"
replied Sammy.
"But how can we do that?" asked Bob.
"Oh, I don't know exactly," confessed Sammy, vaguely. "I suppose,
though, that one of us could get off at a station and send a telegram
to the police of some town ahead of us."
"We wouldn't need to get off the train for that," said George. "There's
a telegraph office in one of the cars ahead. But I think it would be
better to tell the whole thing to the conductor. He'll know what's the
best thing to do."
"But don't tell him just yet," put in Frank. "Perhaps the men will give
themselves away more yet if we wait a little while. We'll all keep our
ears open to-night and see what we can find out."
Further conversation stopped just then, for the two men came back from
the dining car and settled into their seats. They seemed in especially
good humor after their dinner. One of them even turned part way round
in his seat and tried to get into conversation with the boys.
"Where are you youngsters going all by yourselves?" he asked in a
friendly way.
"Out on a ranch," George answered promptly.
"Near Grand Forks," put in Sammy.
"We're going to stay all the rest of the Summer," added Bob.
"Is that so?" said the other genially. "Quite a long trip for boys of
your age without any grown-ups with you. I was born and brought up on a
ranch myself."
He went on to tell them many interesting things about ranch life, and
they listened with the most absorbing interest. There was a shiver and
yet a delightful thrill in the feeling that they were actually talking
to a real criminal. How the boys in Fairview would envy them when they
should tell them about it!
[Illustration: HE TOLD THEM MANY INTERESTING THINGS ABOUT RANCH LIFE.]
The man talked with them for perhaps fifteen minutes and then turned
again to his companion.
"Did you notice his hands?" Sammy whispered to George.
"They were awfully strong looking, but some of the fingers were crooked
as though they had been broken some time," returned George in a low
voice.
"I'd hate to have them holding on to my throat," murmured Frank with a
shudder.
"He seems so good-natured that I am almost sorry to have to give him
over to the police," put in Bob.
"That's so," said Sammy, solemnly, "but it's our duty."
If they had hoped to hear any more confessions that night, however, the
boys were disappointed. The men talked politics and business and there
was nothing to indicate that their crime was hounding them.
Pretty soon the porters made up their berths and the boys tumbled
in, deferring until the morning any further steps they might feel it
necessary to take.
They slept like tops and when they awoke in the morning a shock awaited
them.
The two men had left the train!