Part 25 (2/2)
”The train must be flagged before it reaches the X Y Z. I'll run the flivver to the crossing and try to get down the track. It's a mad scheme but it's the only chance. We couldn't get to the station at Slippy Bend in time if we tried. I'll take one of the men to wave a lantern----”
”You'll take me,” interrupted Jerry breathlessly. The amazing audacity of the plan thrilled her with its possibilities. ”We mustn't take a chance with a third party. Beechy warned me that Ranlett had sympathizers everywhere. We can't trust one of the men.”
”But there is a tremendous storm rising. What if Steve----”
”Steve may not be at home to-night; what he doesn't know won't trouble him. Tommy and Peg will have to worry. Individuals must be sacrificed to the good of the government, or words to that effect.” Her spirits were mounting now that she had secured an ally. ”Felice must not know that I am here.”
”I'll have Ito make my apologies to Mrs. Denbigh. He can tell her that I have been called away suddenly. He can also tel--slip down to the front gate and wait for me. I'll take your horse to the corral. If the men notice him at all, they win think merely that you have taken refuge from the storm.”
Crouched against the shrubs near the gate the girl waited. A lurid flash in the heavens gave an instant's glimpse of the ranch-house, the white fences of the corral. Then came the crash of thunder and utter darkness.
There was a sound as of a fusillade of bullets on the hard road. ”Here comes the rain!” Jerry murmured. The words were drowned in a sudden hissing downpour. She peered at the illuminated dial of her watch. Nine o'clock! In just one hour the train was due at Devil's Hold-up. Could they stop it? She listened. Was that the sound of wheels? Yes. Greyson was coasting the machine down the slight incline toward her; there was no sound of the engine. While it was still in motion she sprang to the running-board, took her seat and closed the door softly. Not a moment had been lost. For the first time she felt the rain beating on her bare head; it stung her shoulders through her thin blouse. The top of the car had been thrown back. She put her hand up. Her hat! Where was it? Then she remembered that she had flung it on the bench beside Greyson's front door. ”Being hatless is the least of my troubles,” she thought buoyantly as she peered forward into the darkness. At the foot of the incline Greyson bent to the lever.
”Now we're off,” he whispered. ”There is a lantern at your feet. Light that.”
On her knees in the bottom of the car Jerry struggled with the lantern.
The flivver bounced and swerved as the driver tried to force the engine belonging to the hundreds cla.s.s to speed achieved only by the thousands.
After using a profusion of matches, and--anathemas when she burned her fingers, Jerry lighted the lantern. She gave a long sigh of relief as she slipped back into her seat.
”It's done! The bottom of the car looks as though there had been a ma.s.sacre of matches, just as the floor round Steve's chair looks when he is smoking his pipe, but what are a few matches at a time like this?
What can I do next?”
”Jerry, you amazing girl! Nothing--nothing seems hard or impossible when you have a share in it,” Greyson burst out impetuously. He steadied his voice and directed, ”When we come to the gate get out and open it. I'll run through to the crossing. Be sure that you fasten the gate securely behind you. No sane person will think of our getting down the track this way. No sane person would think of attempting it,” he added under his breath.
Once through the gate Greyson cautiously steered the car off the crossing on to the track which paralleled that on which the west-bound train would come. He manipulated the motor until the left-hand wheels of the car hugged the inside of one rail and the right-hand wheels were in the road-bed. He waited for flashes of lightning to show him the way.
They came almost incessantly. The thunder crashed and rumbled as though the G.o.ds of the mountains were playfully pitching TNT sh.e.l.ls for exercise.
”This is going to be one little stunt,” the man confided to the girl as she took her seat beside him. ”Keep the lantern in your hand. When I say 'Ready' stand up on the seat and wave like mad. Now we're off, and may the G.o.ds be good to us!”
It wasn't a heathen G.o.d whom Jerry Courtlandt importuned. She never looked back upon that wild ride without a renewed thanksgiving that the prayer in her heart had been answered, without a reminiscent ache in every bone of her body, without seeing a close-up of Greyson, tense-jawed and wrinkle-browed bent over the wheel. He drove with his eyes intent on the tracks which seemed glistening streaks of fire when the lightning flashed. The swift transitions from dazzling light to inky darkness blinded her. It would always remain one of the inexplicable miracles to the girl that the flivver did not capsize. She felt no fear at the time. Only when from behind them came the sound as of a hundred furies let loose did she shudder.
”Is--is that a pack of wolves?” she whispered hoa.r.s.ely.
”Coyotes. Two can make as much noise as a dozen of anything else. Hear that? Begin to wave! Ready!”
Jerry scrambled to the seat. She lost her balance as the car careened tipsily. She clutched Greyson's hair with a violence which wrung a stifled ”Ouch!” from the victim.
”I'm sorry. My mistake! I wasn't trained as a bareback rider,” the girl apologized with an hysterical ripple of laughter.
”Wave! Wave!” Greyson shouted above the din of the storm.
The girl waved her lantern in curving sweeps. At first she could hear nothing, see nothing, then above the noise of their own wheels she heard a rumble which quickly increased to a roar. Then came a light and behind it a creature which might have belonged to the ancient order of Compsognatha, so long was it, so sinuous, so sinister. It was the train.
Jerry waved frantically. Surely, surely the engineer must see her light.
She caught her breath and held it as the roar grew deafening and the monster came leaping, writhing, pounding on.
<script>