s
hands." Then his eyes fell on the two firemen. "One of _you's_ wanted,"
he added, "but I don't know which, and they're coming now."

He pointed down the yard toward the east entrance. Almost on the run,
two men came hurrying in. Toomey grabbed Geordie's sleeve. "They
sha'n't have you _here_, anyhow. Jump for the cab." And jump they did,
all three. Moved now by some indefinable sympathy he had not felt
before, Cullin urged them on, and thrust the order into Big Ben's hairy
fist as it swung from the window. Ben gave one glance, his left hand
grasping the lever; Toomey made a flying leap for the bell-cord;
Geordie scrambled in after; hiss went the steam-cocks; clang went the
bell, and with an explosive cough that shook her big frame almost free
of the rails the Mogul heaved slowly ahead. The shortened "Time
Freight" picked up its heels and came jerkily after, and with her
ponderous drivers rolling swifter and swifter, and the heavy panting
speedily changing to short, quick, and quickening puffs, faster and
faster big 705 swung clear of the switch-points, smoothly rounded to
the main line, and with its dozen brown chickens following close,
Indian file, after the fussy old hen in the lead, away went the fast
freight, flaunting its green flags at the rear in the face of the
pursuit, and the deputies drew up disgusted at the edge of the yard,
their signals and their shouts unheeded.

CHAPTER VIII

A RACE TO THE FORT

Three miles out and the Mogul's six drivers were spinning like so many
tops. Flat along the grimy roofs of the heaving freight-cars behind,
the cloud of coal smoke from her stunted chimney fled rearward until
clear of the train, then drifted idly across the rolling uplands. Ahead
and to right and left, distant, snow-capped summits barred the
sky-line. On either side the gray-green slopes, bare and treeless,
billowed away, higher and higher toward the range, with here and there
a bunch of fattening cattle gazing stupidly at the invaders of their
peace and quietude. Close at hand to the left the murky waters of the
stream flashed quickly by. Close at hand to the right the hard-beaten
prairie road meandered over the sod. There had been a ridge or two
and some sharp curves just west of town, and now, as they rounded
the last of these and flew out upon an almost level track, the bottom
of some prehistoric mountain lake, the eyes of two of the three silent
occupants of the cab were strained along the glea