Pod Flits

by George Allan England

 

POD FLITS

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By George Allan England

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ADDITIONAL proof that "stone walls do not a prison make, not iron bars a cage."

TO Pod Slattery, sitting dejected in his narrow cell in the Ponkapog county jail, the rural turnkey delivered a newspaper which had been sent him, so its wrapper said, by one P. Benyon, New York City.

The wrapper was no longer on it, for Warden Tibbetts had ripped it off preparatory to inspecting the paper, lest in its bulk be hidden some metal tool, some "dope" or other contraband. But Tibbetts had discovered nothing. Though he had scanned the whole paper, sheet by sheet, he had found it innocent of guile. A certain blue-penciled article had, indeed, arrested his suspicious eye, but it had been merely an account of a riot at Tammany Hall.

"Nothin' to object to here," he had said to Turnkey Bartlett. "Let him have it." So Pod got the paper.

Wearily he unfolded it.

No avid reader, Pod. He was pining for the open, now that spring was coming over the hill—longing for the good green Fields of Graff, where erstwhile he and Bender had so joyously disported, before that misplay of the Old Homestead had combined with his own defective sprinting qualities to land him in the place of tin spoons, striped clothing, and barred windows.

"Readin'!" he scoffed disgustedly. "Who wants t' flash a lamp at readin', I'd like to know, with all those tricks just waitin' to be trumped on the outside?"

He yawned voluminously. Then his dull eye caught the blue-penciling.

"Eh? What?" he queried. "That looks like news from home!"

He read the article all through, squinting in the dim light of the cell. Then he turned the paper over and looked carefully at the back of it. He passed his fat finger over the surface. A smile broadened his good-humored face.

"Huh!" he grunted. "I guess that's what it is, all right, all right—news!"

Once more he scanned the text with minute attention, holding the paper close to his eyes with one hand, while with the other he scratched his bald spot. When he had quite finished, he held the paper up to the dull square of light which seeped in through the window from the jail yard.

Never in his life had his perceptions been more keen. Here, there, in certain letters of the print, minute holes showed, mere tiny punctures with the finest of needle-points.

Long, lovingly, Pod studied these punctures. Dawning comprehension brightened his smile. Half an hour or more he studied, by the fading light. Then he nodded, and with a sudden access of joy noiselessly slapped his leg.

He heard the pad-pad-pad of the turnkey's rubber soles coming down the corridor. Instantly he tore the paper into bits and flung it on the concrete floor.

"Huh! Who th' devil wants t' read stale news, in here?" the turnkey heard him growl disgustedly. Then came a rattling of the cell-door.

"Hey there, Bo, can't you give us somethin' that ain't green with moss?" Pod hailed.

"Shut up in there, you, or I'll report ye!" Bartlett retorted, as, frowning, he made his way to the office.

II.

One week from that day a book came to the Ponkapog jail addressed to Mr. William Slattery, and, this, too, reached his hands.

Warden Tibbetts, of course, looked it all through; but who could object to a series of essays on "Moral Regeneration" by the Rev. Kenneth Blair?

Pod let the turnkey see him dutifully reading the first of these essays; but that afternoon, at the early supper-hour, he "palmed" a tin spoon from the table, and took it with him to his cell.

Before the lights were all put out, at nine o'clock, he had straightened the handle of the spoon till it made a sort of blade, and had pried open the thick pasteboard back cover of the volume. From a little cavity deftly fashioned there he withdrew a very thin tablet of some reddish substance and a tiny camel's-hair brush. These he hid under his mattress.

The book, after having carefully pressed its cover together again and rubbed the edge with pipe-ashes till the split was hidden, he stood on the little corner shelf, along with the compulsory Testament.

Next morning he chewed his day's allowance of tobacco into a strong quid and tucked it close up under his arm-pit, where he held it all day long. And in the quiet hour between eight and nine, when prying eyes were few, he sought out his brush and tablet. Wetting the brush in his mouth he rubbed it on the tablet. The brush grew red.

"Anilin's the stuff, an' no miss-play, at that!" he murmured, as with deft dabs he spotted his face, neck, chest and arms with a fine red "rash." These he labored over till they were perfect.

"Tell me they ain't th' goods!" thought he. "'Nothin' you ever learn, Bill, but what may help you some time,' my poor old mother used t' say when I was a kiddo, and right she was!

"That time I panhandled in Beantown, hung out in the Retreat on T-Wharf and got hep to the gentle art of 'jiggered' arms and phony sores—say, what I learned then is the elixir now, eh? These here eruptions take the dust-microbes from none, or I'm a preacher. They'll keep me several laps in the lead over old Tibbetts, all right, till we uncover a few oddities!"

He finished his task, once more hid the tablet and the brush, then wrapped himself in his blanket and lay down in his bunk with a low groan.

"That groan comes pretty near bein' the genuine goods," he pondered. "Fact is, the quid's beginnin' to bite. By mornin' there'll be a sick Pod in this jail, no white-powder trance about that! Well, let 'er happen. I'm ready—if Ben is!"

He snuggled the tobacco closer under his arm and composed himself to sleep.

"Gee, but I'm dizzy, now I stop to notice it!" he murmured. "There'll sure be a sick Pod by breakfast-time!"

III.

There was a sick Pod, very sick, actively and noisily sick. By midnight, sleep had quite abandoned him. By 2 a.m. his groans were echoing with unsimulated wo through the corridors of Ponkapog jail.

By three—though he made no demand for help—the night-watchman realized that oaths and threats and commands to "Dry up, in there, an' go t' sleep!" availed nothing. By three-thirty the warden himself, roused from slumber, was standing over Pod, a lantern in one hand and a clinical thermometer in the other.

He didn't intend to be fooled by any malingerer, not he!

No doctor could be had at that unholy hour, save by telephoning over to Hampton Center, eight miles away, where the county pest-house was. Judson Atkins, the jail physician, was off to a convention on hospital practise, at Rutland. Warden Tibbetts therefore officiated.

"What's th' matter with ye? hey?" he demanded, prodding the sufferer.

He had no love for this fat, quizzical prisoner of his who could, on occasion, discourse freely in the most extraordinary language on rural characteristics.

"Come, speak up, thar! What's wrong?"

Pod only groaned and heaved, wrapped the blanket round his head, and breathed heavily in staccato time.

"Won't talk, you? I think ye're tryin' t' hornswoggle me. that's what I think! I've seed sech doin's afore. Cal'late this here thermometer will tell!"

He twitched the blanket from Pod's face, while the night-watchman stood behind him, holding the lantern, and thrust the little glass tube under the lolling tongue. Pod, sick as he really was, rolled his eyes horribly and added a little quiver to the groans.

"Thar! Now we'll see!" exclaimed Tibbetts presently, withdrawing the tube. He held it close to the lantern and squinted at it, turning it this way, then that, to catch the magnification of the mercury.

"What? One hundred an' two an' a half? An' pulse runnin' like a tarnation race-horse? Je-ru-salem! Say, Jackson, I reckon as how this here man has got somethin' crossways in his gizzard. Here, gimme that light, will ye?"

He held the lantern close to Pod's distorted face, and scanned it narrowly. A whistle escaped his puckered lips. He pulled down the blanket, ripped open Pod's coarse shirt and surveyed his fat chest, a growing fear in his eyes.

"My Lord, but I—I wish—" groaned Pod.

"Wish what, you?"

"Wish I'd—(oh, my head!)—been vaccinated 'fore I ever left New York! It—uhhh—run out last year, my—last vaccination did!"

Warden Tibbetts dropped his lantern, crashing, to the floor, and backed away in sudden, sickening fear.

"You—you, Jackson—you've had it a' ready, ain't ye?" he gasped.

"Sure I have! " answered the watchman, gathering up the lantern just in time to save it from going out. "Twelve years ago last fall. I—"

"All right, all right!" cried Tibbetts, retreating out of the cell. "You're th' man t' see this through, not me! I'll git a wagon. You wrap him up good an' hustle him out o' here, P.D.Q., see? Don't take him through the office. Take him out th' back way. We got t' git him over to th' Center right off quick!"

From well outside the place of dread he gave his orders in a tremulous voice. No more critical inspection for him!

"Gee, but it's lucky he's a coward, an' the light's poor!" reflected Pod, between groans.

All up and down the dark corridor bunks were creaking, cell-doors rattling, lugubrious voices asking:

"What's th' row? Somebody dyin'? Hey, Bo, put us wise."

Somebody answered: "Smallpox!" and a general gasp pervaded the night air.

"Git him out! Hurry! Hurry!" repeated Tibbetts, executing a well-covered retreat toward the office. Two minutes later he was rousing Big Jim Butts, the prison hostler, and ordering out the express-wagon.

"Oh, my, what you goin' t' do with me?" blubbered Pod. "You ain't goin' to—take me to th'—pest-house, are you?"

"Sure I be!" answered Jackson cheerfully.

"No! No!" protested the sick man with pitiable terror. "Not there! Any place but there! Oh, why can't you lemme die in peace, right here?"

"We ain't a worryin' none 'bout your dyin'," Jackson assured him, as he wrapped the extra blanket close about Pod's quivering form. "It's th' jail we're thinkin' of. Can't have that infested, y' see.

"Hev t' fumigate it now, as it is. Come on, now, set up. Git yer feet to th' floor. I'll help ye. You kin still walk a bit, can't ye?"

"Walk? Nah! Won't neither! No pest-house fer mine!"

In vain Jackson pleaded, urged, threatened, expostulated. Only when he had commandeered a trembling, panic-stricken prisoner, and with his help lugged the groaning, feebly struggling two hundred and eighty pounder by main force down the corridor and through the back entrance, did Pod Slattery leave the Ponkapog county jail.

IV.

Away in the chill dark of that early April morning drove the little party, headed for Hampton Center. Big Jim Butts drove the official mare. Jackson sat beside him, spitting tobacco-juice between stray bits of conversation; and in the bottom of the wagon, tightly wrapped in two thick blankets, lay the prostrate and complaining Pod.

Warden Tibbetts did not appear to see the party off. Already with panic haste he was getting out the sulfur-candles and filling the jail with strangling, choking fumes. . The village was asleep as they drove through it at a walk. The houses were all dark. No life showed itself, save a lone, barking cur, and a matutinal chanticleer or two.

Over the frozen ruts the wagon jolted, to the accompaniment of the sick man's groaning. Out of the town it passed, and, turning to the south at the sign-boards, headed for Hampton Center.

Jackson, had he bothered to look round, might have seen his invalid reach in under the coarse shirt, withdraw something from his arm-pit, and fling it away; but Jackson saw nothing. He was too busy with reminiscences of his own smallpox siege, twelve years ago.

By the time the wagon had traversed four miles, Pod found his health notably bettered. The absence of the poisoning quid helped him, the fresh air revived him, and a certain expectant eagerness stimulated his returning strength. He forgot, now and then, to groan.

"Sinkin', is he?" queried Big Jim Butts.

"Seems like," the watchman answered. "No matter. What th' devil do we care? We're doin' our jooty anyhow, ain't we?"

He clucked to the mare, and urged her to a lumbering trot.

Another mile passed. The road took a curve, and plunged into Babbett's Woods, on the other side of which lay Hampton.

"Dark in here, ain't it?" commented Jim, flicking his whip at an overbending spruce bough.

There came no answer, for all at once the roadside bushes crackled and in the semidusk Jackson and Butts saw a small, crouching man run with unsteady steps back into the woods, dodging from tree to tree as though to hide himself.

"I swow! What th' tarnation's that?" cried Jim, reining the mare to a standstill. "Sheep-thief, or hobo, or—"

"I dunno. Somethin' wrong abaout it, anyhow!" Jackson replied. "Hey, you!" he shouted. "Halt, there, in the name o' the law!"

The fugitive sank to earth and disappeared. In the dark undergrowth, they lost all sight of him.

"Shall we drive on?" asked Jim.

"Not by a gosh-blamed sight!" Jackson retorted. He was keen for laurels and promotion. "No, sirree! You wait here; I'll ketch th' cuss an' see what he's up to, anyhow."

Over the wheel he leaped, through the brushwood he crashed, and with cautious circumspection made his way toward the spot where the stranger had seemed to hide. As he went, rustling last fall's dead leaves underfoot, he called out warnings, commands, and challenges.

"Don't hurt me! Leave me be!" rose a voice from a little dell off a couple of hundred feet to the left. "I ain't done nothin' to you!"

"That's all right what you've done er ain't done," roared Jackson, suddenly emboldened by the fugitive's evident fear and weakness. "You're a s'picious character, that's what ye be. Yeou come along o' me, savvy? I arrest ye, in th' name o' the State o' Verhampshire!"

The man lay quite still, cringing and terrified. Jackson strode up to him. Big Jim, craning his neck from the wagon, could just barely make out the watchman's figure.

"Get up!" commanded Jackson, kicking him.

"Oooh! Don't, please!" begged the man. Jackson saw that he was slight, and ragged, and in apparent pain. "'Tain't my fault if I'm sick an' ain't got no home nor place t' go! Lemme be!"

"Sick, be ye? Let's see! Reckon yeou 'll be sicker' fore I'm through with ye!"

Jackson knelt beside the prostrate form. Something flashed. The watchman, with hair-bristling fear, found himself looking right into the round, cold mouth of a blue revolver—a mouth that seemed big as a young cannon to his terrified eyes.

"What—what—?" he stammered. The fugitive sat up and with fearful earnestness exclaimed: "Make me sicker, will you? We'll see about that! Look here, you blundering yahoo, if you want to live, you do just what I tell you, now, and do it quick, see?"

"I—I—all right—what?"

"Put your two hands out here. No, closer together. There, that's right. Now hold 'em so! Shut your eyes, tight!"

There came a click, another one. Jackson felt something cold upon his wrists.

"Bracelets!" he groaned. "Gosh a'mighty, what's up?"

The slight man with the blue revolver vouchsafed no answer. All he said was: "Now stand up against that hemlock, there. No, not that one—the other. Be quick, or—"

"All right, I will. Don't shoot, mister!"

And the erstwhile valiant one backed up with an exceeding meekness to a towering conifer. A minute later, the slight man had lashed him firmly to it with a hank of braided rope, thin rope but very strong. Then with deft speed he gagged the captive with a rough stick and some linen twine. His hands were none too tender and the twine cut Jackson's flesh, but Jackson never whimpered, for the fear of death was strong upon him.

The slight man whistled twice, a shrill note, and started toward the road.

Big Jim Butte, his suspicions well aroused that something was amiss, dropped the reins and started to clamber down from the wagon. But just as his foot touched the top of the wheel, a strange thing happened. Up from behind him rose a huge, inchoate form, vast in bulk, shedding blankets right and left. Staggering it rose, dizzy with anguish, yet terrible in determination.

Clad only in rough prison underwear, pallid, with contracted features, this apparition hurled itself on Jim, from the rear, before the driver could so much as turn. Not by dint of blows, but just with sheer impact of weight, the mighty form hurled Butts to earth, fell atop of him, then clung, crushing the very breath out of him. Jim had no wind for even a second cry of "Help!"

Help was fast coming, though not for Jim. The slight and agile man, crying: "Hold him, Pod! Hold him!" burst out of the woods into the road, and Jim Butts, too, found himself inspecting the blue muzzle of the .44.

"You can get up now," said the slight man.

"I don't know about that," Pod answered. "Dizzy? Say! My coco's doin' a merry whirl, all right. Here, Ben, give us a flipper, will you? So, that's right!"

He leaned against the wagon, panting.

Jim, gasping for breath, blinked at the revolver.

"Sma—sma—smallpox! Keep away!" he managed to hiccup. "You'll—catch it!"

"Sure, I understand," Bender assented. "Get up! Peel!"

"Huh?"

"Stand up and get your clothes off, P.D.Q., or I'll make a salt-shake out of you! Got it?"

Utterly dazed, Big Jim arose.

Five minutes later, he too, wrapped in blankets, was standing in the woods, bound fast to a tree and gagged with his own handkerchief.

"We'll send somebody for you, before night!" was Bender's parting shot as he and Pod climbed into the wagon and with a sharp cut of the lash started the mare down the dusky road through the woods.

V.

Ben drove, while Pod with haste and more agility than seemed compatible with one so fat and recently so ill, clambered into the clothes of Big Jim.

"Now you take the ribbons, Pod," said Ben. And straightway he effected his disguise by simply peeling off his ragged gear and flinging it into the woods. Underneath, a clean, whole suit appeared. Ben drew a cap from his pocket, and the transformation was complete.

"Gee, Ben, but you're the nifty slickerine!" commented Pod with wonderment. "We've sure got the fun-ball circling now!"

"But not pocketed, as yet," Ben answered. "Remember, it's nine miles to the station at Rawline, and fast getting daylight. And this whole county a spider-web of rural telephones. Don't forget that!"

"You mean—"

"I mean that when the patient don't arrive at Hampton pest-house, as he ought to, now, inside of half an hour or so, there'll be doings. Tibbetts has notified 'em you're coming, of course. You see what's due to arrive, all right! If we romp home in the lead, it'll be no fault of theirs!"

"True for you. Shall we duck th' buggy and beat it on foot?"

"Forget it! I've got something down on the dope-sheet worth ten of that. Just you wait and keep the optics skinned! Say, but it worked, didn't it, eh? Oh, a pip! All fitted together like a jig-saw puzzle. Tibbetts, ha! ha!"

"Took th' hook, line, sinker, pole an' all. Scared green, too. Did a quick reverse when he saw the spots."

"Don't blame him. Slickest make-up ever. So smooth it took all curves without a jar—except to Tibb & Co. There's more show-me happenings, stamped with the hap-brand, too, dated to arrive. Just wait!"

Joyfully discussing things past, present, future, they drove on and on at the mare's best speed. Half a mile from the scene of the hold-up they passed a farmer driving in with milk to Hampton. He eyed them keenly, but did not molest them.

"Hang this dawn-stunt!" growled Pod. "If it was only midnight, now—! Why ain't I a Joshua?"

Even in the deep woods they could see that the light was growing very strong. The sun would be up, now, any time. At a little brook running beneath the road, they paused for a drink and a wash, which served the double purpose of refreshing them and removing Pod's anilin rash.

"Quick convalescence, eh?" smiled Ben, as they once more set forward and turned into a cross-road leading over the hills to Rawlins.

"Surest thing you know!" assented Pod. "Nobody could stay sick long, with your patent get-there line o' remedies."

The woods thinned out, and finally gave place to cleared land as they kept eastward. Morning had now fully come, and with it a revival of life in farm-houses and along the road. Ben urged the old mare forward. Plain to see, he chafed under the rural scrutiny. Pod, too, was anxious.

Just outside a little settlement, which straggled down a hillside, they came to an old church set far back from the road in a grove of cypress. To the left of it stood a tumble-down hearse-house. Ben drove into the yard and reined the mare to a standstill beside this structure.

"Here we are. Get out!" he remarked. "Here's the place I picked."

Pod climbed ponderously down. He and Ben forced the door, with a couple of vigorous shoves, and peered in.

"Good! Still there!" said Ben. "You unharness. I'll run it out." He seized the shafts of the old-fashioned, solid-sided vehicle.

Presently the wagon was in the hearse-house and the hearse was hitched to the official mare. They closed the door again. Nobody had seen them—so, at least, they thought.

"Now, Pod, here's the dido I haven't put you lucid to, as yet. In you go, now, quick!"

"In? In where?"

"In there!"

"What? Me, in that cold-meat cart? With not even a window to peek out of?"

"That's the program. You're dead—of smallpox—see?"

Pod spluttered protests, but Ben stood firm. "Get in, you stiff! What right's a cadaver to talk back, eh? Here, I'll help you up. So! Now remember, whatever happens, not a word out o' you, or it's all off!"

A minute later, Ben was on the seat, looking very lugubrious, and the hearse, weighted to the limit of its springs, was swaying and jolting out of the church-yard behind the somnolescent equine.

VI.

Ben turned back from the settlement, back over the hill, and soon had the satisfaction of seeing the last of the church-spire with the morning sun gilding its tip. Down the first cross-road running east he turned, and urged the mare into a trot.

The hearse bounced and rocked, yawing heavily into the ruts and coming up into the wind, as it were, with a strong list as its ponderous cargo shifted. A groan, now and then, issued from the stuffy box, but Ben rapped on its top with his whip-handle, commanding silence. Farmhouses were scattered all along the road, and he could not afford to risk such a luxury on Pod's part as groaning.

They had proceeded a couple of miles, and already Ben's spirits were rising high—for the railroad now lay less than an hour's travel ahead, and with this change of equipage all« chances seemed in their favor—when a disconcerting set-back brought the frowns to the driver's keen face.

They were just passing a farm, Ben driving decorously, with hat pulled low over his eyes, when a gaunt woman appeared at the door of a wood-shed and scanned the hearse with knitted brows and hand on hip. There were telephone-wires leading into the house.

"Cy! Cy!" Ben heard her call. "Come here, quick!"

Ben kept his pose and never so much as jerked a rein, but his heart leaped. A man appeared in the doorway.

"I snum ef it ain't!" Ben heard him say, in answer to some inaudible remark of the woman's. "I'll hook up, an' see!"

"Oh, you'll see, will you?" thought Ben. He had passed, now, out of sight of the house, so he lashed the mare to a sharp trot.

"Somebody must be wise," he thought. "Somebody must have piped the game. And curse these rural telephones for gossip! Well, if we've got to do the dash, we've got to do it, that's all. Come on, there, come!" Once more the whiplash whistled.

Ben felt that the true character of his freight was still quite unsuspected. Surely the time had been too short for the whole truth to leak; but none the less, if he were suspected merely of stealing the settlement hearse, that would bring on most fatal complications.

"Got to beat it, that's all!" said he.

Around the bends he drove at a good lick, the old hearse creaking, jolting and careering heavily. A long hill, he saw, lay before him, down into the valley at whose lower end lay Rawlins, the railroad, deliverance. He thanked his stars for the long hill. That would speed him half a mile or more on his way. Vigorously he laid on the whip; the old mare kicked up her heels and hit the grit in earnest.

And now the hearse lunged into a mad career. Loose rocks and gravel flew, dust rose in the morning sunlight, springs complained and loose spokes rattled.

Every "thank-you-ma'am" sent the crazy rattletrap bounding into air, to come down a-slew and right itself with wild, eccentric gyrations.

The pace quickened. The old hearse, freighted as never before, hurled itself down the hill, devouring space, faster and faster as it neared the bottom.

Ben, laughing aloud, laying on the whip where it would do the most good, glanced back. His laughter ceased, and a strong word filled his mouth. Behind him, just topping the hill some half a mile in the rear, plainly visible against the sky-line, he caught sight of a pursuing wagon. He saw the driver's arm rise, fall, and knew the rod was nowise being spared.

"Go it, Cresceus!" he shouted to the now terrified mare, and rained down blows.

The hearse struck a hummock. Something went Smash! and shrill cries rang out—wild, inarticulate cries. Ben, hauling vainly on the ribbons, looked round. He saw the roadway strewn with boards, ascatter.

"Good Lord! The bottom's out!" he cried. "Pod's running, in the hearse!"

Then, as he looked, a huge and rotund figure fell astern, rolled, ricochetted, sprawled, bounced, and came to rest. It struggled up and lunged into a staggering run after the fleeing equipage, with wild yells, dusty, disheveled.

"Whoa, Emma! Whoa!" roared Ben, jerking the reins savagely. The mare obeyed. Slower and slower the hearse went, then stopped still.

Ben jumped from the seat and ran back.

"Hurt?" he cried.

"Hurt, nothin'! But say—what—"

"Cut the questions, Pod! They're after us! We've got to make a diversion of some sort, and hike across-lots! Hear that?"

He held up a warning finger. Pod listened, panting. Far up the hill, out of sight around its sweep, came a rattle of loose stones.

"Yaps coming! Be here in three minutes! Quick, that hay!"

Ben pointed at a lop-sided old hay-stack by the roadside.

"Quick! Stuff the hearse!"

Without waiting for explanations, he dived for the stack and came back with a heaping armful. Pod, questioning not, imitated him. Into the hearse they crammed it. Enough bottom-boards remained to hold it in its place.

"Now, a match! Hurry! Hurry!"

The match went Fsss! Ben thrust it into the hay. A tiny flame leaped up, then thickened and threw out yellow smoke.

"All right, let 'er go!" cried Ben. "Duck for the woods!"

He gave the mare a fierce, final cut of the lash.

"Get up! Go on there, you!" he shouted, and kicked her in the ribs. She, terrified beyond all measure, leaped into a wild run.

Flaming like a meteor, with a long, demise trail of smoke streaming behind, the blazing apparition hurled itself into the valley.

"Down! Down!" cried Bender, seizing Pod and hauling him behind a tangled growth of birch and hardback.

Barely hidden from sight of the road, they heard the dash and rattle of their pursuer's wagon. Then came another, and a third. Profane, astonished yells rose on the air.

"Hell's loose! Thar goes—th' fust load—naow!" a high-pitched nasal voice shouted in mingled fear and amaze.

Quite still lay Pod and Ben. No more wagons passed. Gradually peace descended on the spring landscape.

"Come on, Bo, let's beat it for the uncut!" chuckled Pod, at length.

"Right-o. I'm with you!" answered Ben.

They got cautiously to their feet and started for the woods which lay a quarter of a mile back of the road.

"That'll hold 'em for an hour or two, that Hell-buggy will," grinned the ex-invalid.

"Longer than that," Ben opined, "or I don't know the Jay psychology. And by that time, let 'em find us—if they can!

"There's other stations besides Rawlins, and other south-bound night freights besides the one that stops there. Give us a freight and the two phony-cards I've got in my pocket, and—"

"And it's Broadway for ours, a one best bet!" exclaimed the radiant Pod as they disappeared into the sheltering forest.