CHAPTER III
EVERYBODY’S FRIEND

“Stand back there, you fellows!”

“Scatter, boys – it’s Ralph Fairbanks!”

It was two days after the landslide near Brocton. The young fireman had just left the roundhouse at Stanley Junction in a decidedly pleasant mood. His cheering thoughts were, however, rudely disturbed by a spectacle that at once appealed to his manly nature.

Ralph, making a short cut for home, had come across a farmer’s wagon standing in an alley at the side of a cheap hotel. The place was a resort for dissolute, good-for-nothing railway employes, and one of its victims was now seated, or rather propped up, on the seat of the wagon in question.

He was a big, loutish boy, and had apparently come into town with a load to deliver. The wagon was filled with bags of apples. Around the vehicle was gathered a crowd of boys. Each one of them had his pockets bulging with the fruit stolen from one of the bags in the wagon.

Standing near by, Jim Evans in their midst, was an idle crowd of railroad men, enjoying and commenting on the scene.

The farmer’s boy was seemingly asleep or unconscious. He had been set up on the seat by the mob, and one side of his face blackened up. Apples stuck all over the harness of the horses and on every available part of the vehicle. A big board lying across the bags had chalked upon it, “Take One.”

The crowd was just about to start this spectacle through the public streets of Stanley Junction when Ralph appeared. The young fireman brushed them aside quickly, removed the adornments from the horses and wagon, sprang to the vehicle, threw the sign overboard, and, lifting up the unconscious driver, placed him out of view under the wagon seat. As he did so, Ralph noticed the taint of liquor on the breath of the country lad.

“Too bad,” he murmured to himself. “This doesn’t look right – more like a piece of malice or mischief. Stand back, there!”

Ralph took up the reins, and also seized the whip. Many of the crowd he had known as school chums, and most of them drew back shamefacedly as he appeared.

There were four or five regular young loafers, however, who led the mob. Among them Ralph recognized Ted Evans, a son of the fireman he had encountered at the roundhouse two days previous. With him was a fellow named Hemp Gaston, an old associate of Mort Bemis.

“Hold on, there!” sang out Gaston, grabbing the bridles of the horses. “What you spoiling our fun for?”

“Yes,” added Ted Evans, springing to the wagon step and seizing Ralph’s arm. “Get off that wagon, or we’ll pull you off.”

Ralph swung the fellow free of the vehicle with a vigorous push.

“See here, you interfere with my boy and I’ll take a hand in this affair myself,” growled Jim Evans, advancing from the crowd of men.

“You’ll whip me first, if you do,” answered one of them. “This is a boys’ squabble, Jim Evans, and don’t you forget it.”

“Humph! he struck my boy.”

“Then let them fight it out.”

“Yes,” shouted young Evans angrily, “come down here and show that you are no coward.”

“Very well,” said Ralph promptly. “There’s one for you!”

Ralph Fairbanks had acted in a flash on an impulse. He had leaped from the wagon, dealt young Evans one blow and sent him half-stunned to the ground. Regaining the wagon he drove quickly into the street before his astonished enemies could act any further.

“Poor fellow,” said Ralph, looking at the lad in the wagon. “Now, what am I ever going to do with him?”

Ralph reflected for a moment or two. Then he started in the direction of home. He was sleepy and tired out, and he realized that the present episode might interfere with some of his plans for the day, but he was a whole-hearted, sympathetic boy and could not resist the promptings of his generous nature.

The young fireman soon reached the pretty little cottage that was his home, so recently rescued from the sordid clutches of old Gasper Farrington. He halted the team in front of the place and entered the house at once.

“Here I am, mother,” he said cheerily.

Mrs. Fairbanks greeted him with a smile of glad welcome.

“I was quite anxious about you when I heard of the wreck, Ralph,” she said with solicitude. He had not been home since that happening.

“It was not a wreck, mother,” corrected Ralph. Then he briefly recited the incidents of the hold-up.

“It seems as though you were destined to meet with all kinds of danger in your railroad life,” said the widow. “You were delayed considerably.”

“Yes,” answered Ralph, “we had to remove the landslide debris. That took us six hours and threw us off our schedule, so we had to lay over at Dover all day yesterday. One pleasant thing, though.”

“What is that, Ralph?”

“The master mechanic congratulated me this morning on what he called, ‘saving the train.’”

“Which you certainly did, Ralph. Why, whose wagon is that in front of the house?” inquired Mrs. Fairbanks, observing the vehicle outside for the first time.

Ralph explained the circumstances of his rescue of the vehicle to his mother.

“What are you going to do with the farmer’s boy?” she inquired.

“I want to bring him in the house until he recovers.”

“Very well, I will make up a bed on the lounge for him,” said the woman. “It is too bad, poor fellow! and shameful – the mischief of those men at the hotel.”

Ralph carried the farmer’s boy into the house. Then he ate his breakfast. After the meal was finished, he glanced at his watch.

“I shall have to lose a little sleep, mother,” he said. “I am anxious to help the poor fellow out, and I think I see a way to do it.”

The young fireman had noticed a small blank book under the cushion of the wagon seat. He now inspected it for the first time. All of its written pages were crossed out except one. This contained a list of names of storekeepers in Stanley Junction.

Ralph drove to the store first named in the list. Within two hours he had delivered all of the apples. It seemed that the storekeepers named in the account book ordered certain fruits and vegetables regularly from the owner of the team, the farmer himself coming to town to collect for the same twice each month.

When Ralph got back home he unhitched the horses, tied them up near the woodshed, and fed them from a bag of grain he found under the wagon seat.

“What is this, I wonder?” he said, discovering a small flat parcel under the wagon seat. The package resembled a store purchase of some kind, so, for safe keeping, Ralph placed it inside the shed.

His mother had gone to visit a sick neighbor. The farmer boy was sleeping heavily.

“Wake me before the boy leaves,” he wrote on a card, leaving this for his mother on the kitchen table. Then, pretty well tired out, Ralph went to bed.

It was late in the afternoon when he awoke. He went down stairs and glanced into the sitting room.

“Why, mother,” he exclaimed, “where is the farmer boy?”

“He left two hours ago, Ralph.”

“Is that so? Then why didn’t you wake me up? I left a card for you on the kitchen table.”

“I did not find it,” said the widow, and then a search revealed the card where the wind had blown it under the stove.

“What did the boy say?” inquired Ralph.

“He told me his name was Zeph Dallas. I talked to him about his misfortunes of the morning, and he broke down and cried. Then he went out to the wagon. He found an account book there, and said you must have delivered his load for him, and that he would never forget your kindness.”

“There was a package in the wagon,” said Ralph.

“He spoke of that, and said some one must have stolen it.”

“You are sure he didn’t find it later?” inquired Ralph. “It was in the woodshed, where I placed it for safe keeping.”

Ralph went out to the shed, and found the package where he had left it. He returned to the house with it, ate a hurried meal, and hastened down town. He learned that Zeph had called at several stores. The farmer boy appeared to have discovered Ralph’s interest in his behalf, and had driven home.

“I wonder what there is in the package?” mused Ralph, when he again reached the cottage. “I had better open it and find out.”

The young fireman was quite startled as he untied the parcel and glanced at its contents. The package contained two bolts of silk, and the tags on them bore the name of the firm which, Ralph had learned at Dover, had shipped the goods stolen from the slow freight two nights previous.

CHAPTER IV
AN OLD-TIME ENEMY

“New engine, lad?”

“Not at all, Mr. Griscom, as you well know,” answered Ralph.

The veteran engineer chuckled, but he continued looking over the locomotive with admiring eyes.

The young fireman had come to work early that afternoon. The roundhouse men were careless and he decided to show them what “elbow grease” and industry could do. In an hour he had the old freight locomotive looking indeed like a new engine.

They steamed out of the roundhouse and were soon at the head of their freight train.

“I wish I had a little time to spare,” said Ralph.

“Half-an-hour before we have to leave, you know, lad,” said Griscom. “What’s troubling you?”

“I wanted to see Bob Adair, the road detective.”

“About the silk robbery?” inquired the engineer with interest.

“Yes.”

“Something new?”

“Considerable, I think.”

“You might find him in the depot offices. Run down and see. I’ll attend to things here.”

“Thanks, Mr. Griscom.”

Ralph hurried away from the freight train. He wished to report about the discovery of the silk, and hunt up Zeph Dallas at once.

“I hardly believe the farmer boy a thief,” mused Ralph, “but he must explain his possession of that silk.”

The young fireman did not find Adair at the depot, and came back to the engine to discover Jim Evans lounging in the cab.

“Been helping Griscom out,” grinned the man.

“Well, get out, now,” growled Griscom. “Time to start up. There’s the signal from the conductor. That man has been hanging around the engine ever since you left,” the old engineer continued to Ralph, “and he is too good-natured to suit me.”

“Nothing out of order,” reported the youth, looking about the cab.

“Now, lad, for a run on time,” said Griscom. “This run has been late a good deal, and I don’t want to get a bad name. When I ran the Daylight Express it was my pride and boast that we were always on time to the minute.”

They made good time out of Stanley Junction to Afton. Ten miles beyond, however, there was a jolt, a slide and difficult progress on a bit of upgrade rails.

So serious was the difficulty that Griscom stopped the train and got out to investigate. He returned to the cab with a set, grim face.

“Grease,” he reported; “some one has been tampering with the rails. Spite work, too.”

There was fully an hour’s delay, but a liberal application of sand to the rails helped them out. Five miles later on the locomotive began to puff and jerk. With full steam on, the engine did only half duty.

“Water gauge all right,” said Ralph. “I don’t understand it.”

“I do,” said Griscom, “and I can tell it in two words – Jim Evans.”

“Why, what do you mean, Mr. Griscom?”

“He didn’t come into the cab for nothing. Yes, we are victims of the old trick – soap in the water and the valves are clogged.”

“What are we going to do about it?” inquired Ralph anxiously.

“Pump out the water at the next tank and take a new supply on.”

There was a further delay of nearly two hours. Once more they started up. Ten miles from Dover, a few seconds after Ralph had thrown in coal, a terrible explosion threw the fire cover open and singed and burned both engineer and fireman.

Griscom looked angry, for the fire now needed mending.

“Lad,” he said grimly, “these tricks are done to scare you and delay the train.”

“I am not scared one particle,” retorted Ralph, “only this strikes me as a dangerous piece of mischief – putting explosives in among the coal.”

“Jim Evans did it,” positively asserted Griscom. “That’s what he sneaked into the cab for, and he has confederates along the line.”

Ralph said nothing but he resolved to call Evans to account when he returned to Stanley Junction.

They were over an hour late on the run. Returning to Stanley Junction, they were delayed by a wreck and the time record was bad at both ends of the line.

“I don’t like it,” said Griscom.

“We’ll mend it, Mr. Griscom,” declared the young fireman, and he did not go home when they reached Stanley Junction, but proceeded at once to the home of Jim Evans.

Ralph knocked at the open door, but no one answered the summons and he stepped to the door of the sitting room.

“Any one here?” he called out through the house.

“Eh? oh – no,” answered a muffled voice, and a man in the adjoining room got up quickly and fairly ran out through the rear door.

“That’s queer,” commented Ralph. “That man actually ran away from me.”

“Ma has gone after pa,” lisped a little urchin in the kitchen. “Man wants to see him. What for funny man run away?”

Ralph hurried past the infantile questioner and after the object of his curiosity.

“Yes, the man did look funny, for a fact,” said Ralph. “He was disguised. There he is. Hey, there! whoever you are, a word with you.”

He was now in close pursuit of a scurrying figure. The object of his curiosity turned to look at him, stumbled, and went headlong into a ditch.

Ralph came to the spot. The man lay groaning where he had fallen.

“Help me,” he muttered – “I’m nearly stunned.”

“Why!” exclaimed Ralph as he assisted the man to his feet, “it is Gasper Farrington.”

It was the village magnate, disguised. He stood regarding Ralph with savage eyes.

“I thought you had gone to Europe, Mr. Farrington,” said Ralph.

“Did you? Well, I haven’t,” growled Farrington, nursing a bruise on his face.

“Are you going to stay in Stanley Junction, then?”

“None of your business.”

“Oh, yes, it is,” retorted Ralph quickly. “You owe us thousands of dollars, and we want it.”

“You’ll collect by law, then. I’ll never give you a cent willingly.”

Ralph regarded the man thoughtfully for a minute or two.

“Mr. Farrington,” he said, “I have come to the conclusion that you are trying to make me more trouble. This man Evans is up to mischief, and I believe that you have incited him to it.”

The magnate was silent, regarding Ralph with menacing eyes.

“I warn you that it won’t pay, and that you won’t succeed,” continued Ralph. “What do you hope to accomplish by persecuting me?”

The old man glanced all about him. Then he spoke out.

“Fairbanks,” he said, “I give you one last chance – get out of Stanley Junction.”

“Why should I?” demanded Ralph.

“Because you have humiliated me and we can’t live in the same town together, that’s why.”

“You deserved humiliation,” responded Ralph steadily.

“All right, take your own view of the case. I will settle your claim for five thousand dollars and pay you the money at once, if you will leave Stanley Junction.”

“We will not take one cent less than the full twenty thousand dollars due us,” announced Ralph staunchly, “and I shall not leave Stanley Junction as long as my mother wants to live here.”

“Then,” said Gasper Farrington, venomously, as he walked from the spot, “look out for yourself.”

Ralph went back to the Evans home, but found only the little child there. He concluded he would not wait for Evans that evening. The discovery of his old-time enemy, Farrington, had been enlightening.

“I will have a talk with mother about this,” he mused.

When Ralph reached home a surprise greeted him. The little parlor was lighted up, indicating a visitor. He glanced in through the open windows.

The visitor was Zeph Dallas, the farmer boy.