CHAPTER I
THE NIGHT RUN

“Ralph Fairbanks.”

“On hand, sir.”

“You are to relieve Fireman Cooper on the Dover slow freight.”

“All right, sir.”

Ralph Fairbanks arose from the bench on which he was seated in the roundhouse at Stanley Junction.

Over a dozen men had been his companions for the past hour. There were engineers waiting for their runs, firemen resting after getting their locomotives in order, and “extras,” who, like the young railroader himself, were so far on the substitute list only.

Ralph was glad of his appointment. This was his second month of service as a fireman. It had been by no means regular employment, and, as he was industrious and ambitious, he was glad to get at work with the prospect of a steady run.

The foreman of the roundhouse had just turned from his desk after marking Ralph’s name on the list when a man hurriedly entered the place. He was rather unsteady in his gait, his face was flushed, and he looked dissolute and unreliable.

“Give me the slow freight run, Forgan,” he panted. “I’m listed next.”

“Two minutes late,” observed the foreman, in a business-like way.

“That don’t count on a stormy night like this.”

“System counts in this establishment always, Jim Evans,” said Mr. Forgan.

“I ran all the way.”

“Stopped too long at the corner saloon, then,” put in Dave Adams, a veteran engineer of the road.

Evans glared at the man who spoke, but recognizing a privileged character, stared down the row of loiterers and demanded:

“Who’s got my run?”

“Do you own any particular run, Jim?” inquired Adams, with a grin.

“Well, Griscom’s was due me.”

“Young Fairbanks was on hand, so it’s his run now.”

“That kid’s,” sneered Evans, turning on Ralph with angry eyes. “See here, young fellow, do you think it’s square cutting in on a regular man this way?”

“I’ll answer that,” interposed Tim Forgan sharply. “He was here, you weren’t. He holds the run till a better man comes along.”

Evans stood glaring at Ralph for a few minutes. Then he moved to the youth’s side.

“See here, kid,” he observed, “I want this run specially. It’ll be a regular, for Cooper is going with another road. I’m a man and must earn a man’s wages. You’re only a kid. I’ve got a family. Come, give me the run and I’ll treat you handsomely,” and the speaker extended a cigar.

“Thank you, I don’t smoke,” said Ralph. Then looking the man squarely in the eyes, he said: “Mr. Evans, I’ll give up the run on one condition.”

“What’s that?” inquired Evans eagerly.

“If you will sign the pledge, work steadily, and give your wages to your family as you should do.”

“I’ll do it!” shouted Evans, not a whit shame-facedly.

“No, you won’t,” announced Forgan. “Fairbanks, kindness is kindness, but business is business. If you drop this run, it goes to the next extra on the list according to routine.”

“Bah, you’re all down on me!” flared out Evans, and left the place in a rage.

“It would do no good, Fairbanks, to help that man,” observed Dave Adams. “He would sign anything to secure a personal advantage and never keep his word. He squanders all his money and won’t last long in the Great Northern, I can tell you.”

Ralph went outside as he heard a whistle down the rails. Evans was standing near a switch.

“Some kind of a plot, eh, you and your friend?” he sneered at Ralph.

“I don’t know what you mean, Mr. Evans,” replied Ralph.

“Oh, yes, you do. Forgan is partial to you. The others don’t like me because I’m a crack man in my line. One word, though; I’ll pay you off for this some time or other,” and Evans left the spot shaking his fist at Ralph menacingly.

“One of the bad kind,” mused Ralph, looking after the fellow, “not at all fit for duty half the time. Here comes one of the good kind,” he added as a freight engine with a long train of cars attached steamed up at the roundhouse. “It’s my run, Mr. Griscom.”

“That’s famous news,” cried old John Griscom, genuinely pleased.

“Good evening, Mr. Cooper,” said Ralph, as the fireman leaped from the cab.

“Hello,” responded the latter. “You got the run? Well, it’s a good man in a good man’s place.”

“That’s right,” said Griscom. “None better. In to report, Sam? Good-bye. Shovel in the coal, lad,” the speaker directed Ralph. “It’s a bad night for railroading, and we’ll have a hard run to Dover.”

Ralph applied himself to his duties at once. He opened the fire door, and as the ruddy glow illuminated his face he was a picture pleasant to behold.

Muscular, healthy, in love with his work, friendly, earnest and accommodating, Ralph Fairbanks was a favorite with every fair-minded railroad man on the Great Northern who knew him.

Ralph had lived at Stanley Junction nearly all of his life. His early experiences in railroading have been related in the first volume of the present series, entitled “Ralph of the Roundhouse.”

Ralph’s father had been one of the pioneers who helped to build the Great Northern. When he died, however, it was found that the twenty thousand dollars’ worth of stock in the road he was supposed to own had mysteriously disappeared.

Further, his home was mortgaged to old Gasper Farrington, a wealthy magnate of the village. This person seemed to have but one object in life; to drive the widow Fairbanks and her son from Stanley Junction.

Ralph one day overheard Farrington threaten to foreclose a mortgage, and the youth suddenly realized his responsibilities. Leaving school, he secured a job in the roundhouse at Stanley Junction. Here, notwithstanding the plots, hatred and malice of a worthless, good-for-nothing fellow named Ike Slump, whose place he took, Ralph made fine progress. He saved the railroad shops from wholesale destruction, by assisting John Griscom to run an engine into the flames and drive a car of powder out of the way. For this brave deed Ralph secured the friendship of the master mechanic of the road and was promoted to the position of junior leverman.

In the second volume of this series, entitled “Ralph in the Switch Tower,” another vivid phase of his ability and merit has been depicted. He rendered signal service in saving a special from disaster and prevented a treasure train from being looted by thieves.

Among the thieves was his old-time enemy, Ike Slump, and a crony of his named Mort Bemis. They had been hired by Farrington to harass Ralph in every way possible. Ralph had searched for the motive to the old man’s animosity.

He learned that Farrington had appropriated his father’s railroad stock on an illegal technicality, and that the mortgage on their homestead had once been paid by Mr. Fairbanks.

Once knowing this, Ralph undertook the task of proving it. It required some clever work to unmask the villainous miser, but Ralph succeeded, and Farrington, to escape facing disgrace, left the town, ostensibly for Europe.

In unmasking the old man Ralph was assisted by one Van Sherwin, a poor boy whom he had befriended. Van and a former partner of Gasper Farrington, named Farwell Gibson, had secured a charter to build a short line railroad near Dover, in which project Ralph was very much interested.

As has been said, Ralph had now been a fireman for two months, but heretofore employed in yard service only.

“It’s the chance of my life,” he cried cheerily, as he piled in the coal, “and what a famous partner is dear, bluff, honest old John Griscom!”

“Won’t have me for a partner long, lad,” replied the veteran engineer with a slight sigh, as he moved the lever.

“Why not, Mr. Griscom?” inquired Ralph.

“Eyes giving out. Had to drop the Daylight Express. I’m going down the ladder, you are going up the ladder. Stick to your principles, lad, for they are good ones, as I well know, and you’ll surely reach the top.”

“I hope so.” said Ralph.

The locomotive gave a sharp signal whistle, and the slow freight started on its night run for Dover.

CHAPTER II
THE LANDSLIDE

“Trouble ahead!”

“What’s that, Fairbanks?”

“And danger. Quick! slow down, or we’re in for a wreck.”

Ralph Fairbanks spoke with suddenness. As he did so he leaped past the engineer in a flash, clearing the open window space at the side.

Two minutes previous the old engineer had asked him to go out on the locomotive to adjust some fault in the air gauge. Ralph had just attended to this when he made a startling discovery.

In an instant he was in action and landed on the floor of the cab. He sprang to his own side of the engine, and leaning far out peered keenly ahead.

They were now in a deep cut which ended a steep climb, and the engine had full steam on and was making fairly good speed.

“My bad eyes – ” began Griscom, and then he quivered in every nerve, for a tremendous shock nearly sent him off his seat.

“Just in time,” cried Ralph, and then he held his breath.

Slowing down, the train had come to a crashing halt. The locomotive reared upon its forward wheels and then settled back on a slant, creaking at every joint. Ralph had swung the air lever or there would have been a catastrophe.

“What was it?” gasped Griscom, clearing his old eyes and peering ahead, but Ralph was gone. Seizing a lantern, he had jumped to the ground and was at the front of the locomotive now. The engineer shut off all steam after sounding the danger signal, a series of several sharp whistles, and quickly joined his assistant.

In front of the locomotive, obstructing the rails completely, was a great mass of dirt, gravel and rocks.

“A landslide,” spoke Griscom, glancing up one steep side of the cut.

“If we had struck that big rock full force,” observed Ralph, “it would have been a bad wreck.”

“You saved us just in time,” cried the old engineer. “I’ve often wondered if some day there wouldn’t be just such a drop as this of some of these overhanging cliffs. Company ought to see to it. It’s been a fierce rain all the evening, perhaps that loosened the mass.”

“Hardly,” said Ralph thoughtfully, and then, inspecting a glazed piece of paper with some printing on it he had just picked up, he looked queerly at his companion.

“Give them the trouble signal in the caboose, please, Mr. Griscom,” said the young fireman. “I think I had better get back there at once. Have you a revolver?”

“Always carry one,” responded Griscom.

“Keep it handy, then.”

“Eh!” cried the engineer with a stare. “What you getting at, lad?”

“That is no landslide,” replied Ralph, pointing at the obstruction.

“What is it then?”

“Train wreckers – or worse,” declared Ralph promptly. “There is no time to lose, Mr. Griscom,” he continued in rapid tones.

“Of course, if not an accident, there was a purpose in it,” muttered Griscom, reaching into his tool box for a weapon, “but what makes you think it wasn’t an accident?”

Ralph did not reply, for he was gone. Springing across the coal heaped up in the tender, he climbed to the top of the first freight car and started on a swift run the length of the train.

The young fireman was considerably excited. He would not have been a spirited, wide-awake boy had he been otherwise. The paper he had found among the debris of the obstruction on the rails had an ominous sentence across it, namely, “Handle With Care, Dynamite.”

This, taken in connection with what had at first startled him, made Ralph feel pretty sure that he had not missed his guess in attributing the landslide to some agency outside of nature.

While adjusting the air gauge Ralph had noticed a flare ahead, then a lantern light up the side of the embankment, and then, in the blaze of a wild flash of lightning, he had witnessed the descent of a great tearing, tossing mass, landing in the railroad cut.

“It can mean only a hold-up,” theorized Ralph. “Yes, I am quite right.”

He slowed down in his wild dash over the car tops, and proceeded with caution. Down at the end of the train he saw lights that he knew did not belong to the train hands.

Ralph neared the caboose and then dropped flat to the top of the car he was on. Peering past its edge, he made out a wagon, half-a-dozen men, and the train hands backed to the side of the cut and held captive there by two of the strangers, who menaced them with revolvers.

Then two others of the marauding gang took crowbars from the wagon, and one, carrying a lantern, proceeded along the side of the cars inspecting the freight cards.

“They must know of some valuable goods on the train,” reflected Ralph.

It was an ideal spot for a train robbery, between two stations, and no train was due for several hours.

Ralph was in a quandary as to his best course of procedure. For a moment he considered going for Griscom and arming himself with a bar of rod.

“It would be six to two and we would get the worst of it,” he decided. “There is only one thing to do – get back to Brocton. It’s less than a mile. Can I make it before these fellows get away with their plunder? Good! a patent coupler.”

The boy fireman had crept to the end of the car next to the caboose. Glancing down, he discovered that the couplings were operated by a lever bar. Otherwise, he could never have forced up the coupling pin.

The cars were on a sharp incline, in fact, one of the steepest on the road. Ralph relied on simple gravity to escape the robbers and hasten for relief.

“There’s some one!”

Careful as Ralph was, he was discovered. A voice rang out in warning. Then with a quick, bold snap, Ralph lifted the coupler and the pin shot out. He sprang to the forward platform of the caboose. As the car began to recede, he dashed through its open door.

“Just in time. Whew!” ejaculated Ralph, “those fellows are desperate men and doing this in true, wild western style.”

The caboose, once started, began a rapid backward rush. Ralph feared that its momentum might carry the car from the track.

A curve turned, and the lights of Brocton were in sight. Before the runaway caboose slowed down entirely it must have gone fully three-quarters of a mile.

Ralph jumped from the car, and ran down the tracks at his best speed. He was breathless as he reached the little depot. It was dark and deserted, but opposite it was the one business street of the town.

Ralph left the tracks finally and made a dash for the open entrance of the general store of the village. The usual crowd of loiterers was gathered there.

“Hello! what’s this?” cried the proprietor, as the young fireman rushed wildly into the store.

“Fireman on the Dover freight,” explained Ralph breathlessly.

“What’s the trouble – a wreck?”

“No, a hold-up. Men! get weapons, a handcar, if there is one here, and we may head off the robbers.”

It took some urging to get that slow crowd into action, but finally half-a-dozen men armed with shotguns were running down the tracks following Ralph’s lead.

It was a steep climb and several fell behind, out of breath. One big fellow kept pace with Ralph.

“There they are,” spoke the latter as they rounded a curve.

Lights showed in the near distance. A flash of lightning momentarily revealed a stirring scene. The robbers were removing packages from a car they had broken into, and these they were loading into their wagon at the side of the train.

“Hurry up, hurry up!” Ralph’s companion shouted back to his comrades. “Now, then, for a dash, and we’ll bag those rogues, plunder, rig and all.”

“Wait,” ordered Ralph sharply.

He was too late. The impetuous villager was greatly excited and he ran ahead and fired off his gun, two of the others following his example.

Ralph was very sorry for this, for almost instantly the robbers took the alarm and all lights near the caboose were extinguished. The echo of rapid orders reached the ears of the relief party. Fairly upon the scene, a flash of lightning showed the wagon being driven rapidly up a road leading from the cut.

“Look out for yourselves,” suggested Ralph. “Those men are armed.”

“So are we, now!” sharply sounded the voice of one of the men from Brocton, and another flash of lightning showed the enemy still in view.

“Up the road after them!” came a second order.

Ralph ran up to the side of the caboose.

“All safe?” he inquired anxiously.

“All but one of us,” responded the conductor.

Ralph lit a lantern, noticing one of the train hands lying on the ground motionless.

“He’s a fighter, Tom is,” said the conductor. “He resisted and grappled with one of the robbers, and another of them knocked him senseless.”

“What’s this in his hand?” inquired Ralph. “Oh, I see – a cap. Snatched it from the head of his assailant, I suppose. Hark! they are shooting up there.”

Shots rang out along the cut road. In a few minutes, however, the men from Brocton reappeared in the cut.

“No use wasting our lives recklessly,” said one of them. “They have bullets, we only small shot. The wagon got away. We’ll hurry back to Brocton, get a regular posse armed with rifles, and search the country for the rascals.”

“What’s the damage?” inquired Ralph of the conductor, going to the side of the car that had been broken open.

“Pretty big, I should say,” responded the conductor. “That car had a consignment of valuable silks from Brown & Banks, in the city, and they piled a fair load of it into their wagon. You have saved a wholesale plundering of the car.”

The men from Brocton departed. Ralph helped the train crew revive the poor fellow who had been knocked insensible. They carried him into the caboose, applied cold water to his head, and soon had him restored to consciousness.

“Fix the red lights,” ordered the conductor to a brakeman, “and then hurry to Brocton and have them telegraph the train dispatcher. What’s the trouble ahead, Fairbanks?”

Ralph explained. Shovels and crowbars were brought from the caboose, and two of the train crew accompanied him back to the locomotive.

Ralph thought of the cap he had stuck in his pocket. He looked it over carefully in the light of the lantern he carried.

On the leather band inside of the cap were two initials in red ink – “I. S.”

“Ike Slump,” murmured Ralph.

An old-time enemy had appeared on the scene, and the young fireman of the Great Northern knew that he would have to keep a sharp lookout or there would be more trouble.