, as the young fireman learned later. The
officials of the road, it appeared, feared most an attack between
those two points, and the sealed orders had directed Griscom to take
the old, unused route, making a long circuit to the main line again.

Ralph remembered going over this route once--rusted rails, sinking
roadbed, watery wastes at places flooding the tracks. He kept at the
grating most of the time now, wondering if Griscom could pilot them
through in safety.

Finally there was a whistle as if in response to a signal, then a
sudden stop and then a terrible jar. Ralph ran to the rear grating.

"Why," he cried, "the guard car has been detached, there are Mr.
Griscom and the engineer in the ditch, and the locomotive and pay car
running away."

He could look along the tracks and observe all this. Engineer and
fireman had apparently been knocked from the cab. Some one was on the
rear platform of the pay car, a man who was now clambering to its
roof. The guards ran out of the detached coach and fired after the
stolen train, but were too late.

Rapidly the train sped along. Ralph ran to the front grating. The
locomotive was in strange hands and the tender crowded with strange
men.

"It's a plain case," said Ralph. "These men have succeeded in stealing
the pay car, and that little safe in the corner is what they are
after."

The train ran on through a desolate waste, then across a trestle built
over a swampy stretch of land. At its center there was a jog, a
rattle, the tracks gave way, and almost with a crash, the train came
to a halt.

It took some time to get righted again, and the train proceeded very
slowly. Ralph had done a good deal of thinking. He knew that soon the
robbers would reach some spot where they would attack the pay car.

"I must defeat their purpose," he said to himself. "I can't let
myself out, but--the safe! A good idea."

Ralph settled upon a plan of action. He was busily engaged during the
next half hour. When the train came to a final stop, there was an
active scene about it.

Half-a-dozen men, securing tools from the locomotive, started to break
in the door of the pay car. In this they soon succeeded.

They went inside. The safe was the object of all their plotting and
planning, but the safe was gone, and Ralph Fairbanks was nowhere in
the pay car.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE STRIKE LEADER

Ralph felt that he had done a decidedly timely and clever act in
outwitting the train