Top-Notch Magazine/Volume 14/Number 3/Signals Against Him/Chapter 5
CHAPTER V.
MEETING FORTUNE HALFWAY.
HARDING was dumfounded. Luck seemed to be going out of its way to shake hands with him. The course of events had spurned probability in a way that was well-nigh incredible.
That the man in the leather cap should have dropped the yellow tobacco bag out of his pocket was not to be wondered at; it was the series of circumstances immediately following the loss of the bag that stamped the whole proceeding as remarkable.
For that bag the line of least resistance was over the top of the swaying box cat and into the right of way. Not more than once in a thousand times would it have become wedged under the boards of the toe-path.
By an equally startling blunder of chance, the rear-end brakeman had found it and had offered it to Harding; and Harding, in the gloom and with nerves still athrill with excitement, had discovered no difference between the bag and the one given him by Lansing and had readily appropriated it.
Harding laughed softly to himself as he sat on the porch and turned these incidents over in his mind. And then his face straightened soberly as the more serious aspects of the affair slowly dawned on him.
The two scoundrels in the leather caps had robbed the miner! Why was Chris Davy helping them away from the scene of the holdup? On his own responsibility the freight conductor had given them a lift up the mountain and out of the toils of the law!
Had Davy known what those two strong-arm lads had done? Harding recalled the unpleasant surprise manifested by the men when he had entered the waycar. They were fugitives from justice, and naturally suspicious of strangers; and possibly Davy's friendship for the rascally pair was his real reason for wanting to get rid of Harding.
“This looks pretty black for Davy!” muttered Harding, rolling up the memorandum and the bank notes, snapping the rubber around them, dropped the roll into the bay, and the bag back into his pocket. “Question is: What am I to do with this money? I've got to get it into the hands of its rightful owner, of course; but that's only part of the job. If there's a chance, somehow, to bag those two footpads, then it can't be allowed to pass. I'm positive Davy knows more about this black business than he'd care to have anybody even guess. Could those holdup chaps be spotted by keeping an eye on Chris?”
Harding was impressed by this sudden turn of events. He felt as though Fortune had changed her tactics, was now moving in his direction and inviting him to meet her halfway. So far as pecuniary gain was concerned, there would, be none in the affair for Harding. What interested him was the significant fact that he was being favored by chance. He believed it a good omen in the fight he was making to come into his own on that Jerkwater Division.
“Why, William! When in the world did you get home?”
A soft voice, filled with surprise, floated toward Harding from the porch rail. He turned quickly in his chair, his face flushed with pleasure. A girl was leaning over the rail and peering at him from the shadowy depths of a sun-bonnet.
“Milly!” he exclaimed. “I've been watching for you, and”
“How can you expect me to believe that?” she broke in laughingly. “I came along the walk directly from our house, but your head was down and you never once looked up. Watching, eh? Why, I'm sure you weren't even thinking of me, William! There was something else on your mind.”
“Well, there's nothing else on my mind now!” With that, his arms went out over the rail and caught her. “Right here is where I prove it,” he added.
She struggled, or pretended to struggle. The sunbonnet fell back upon her shoulders, revealing a pretty face, a pair of dancing, brown eyes, and two roguish, tempting lips. Those lips paid tribute to the impetuous William, and no grudging tribute, either.
“Now, Miss Kent,” said William, straightening erect, “if you'll just come up on the porch and sit down, we'll have a bit of a talk. I'll tell you what Hardluck has been doing, and what he intends to do. You see,” he finished, “I'm going to change that name before I give you a chance to change yours.”
“Is there much of a chance?” she queried archly, springing lightly up the steps.
“Watch my smoke, Milly!” he answered. “I've taken the bit in my teeth, and I'm going to convince everybody on this line of track that luck has hooked arms with me and is going to be my side partner from now on.”
A pleased look crossed Milly's face.
“That's the way I like to hear you talk, William,” said she. “Every man ought to be bigger than his troubles. When you left the road, you know, I thought it looked like a stampede. It wasn't like you to show a white feather on the firing line.”
“Trawl was back of the stampede. You remember, Milly, he said I was too big a load for the division to carry, and that he was obliged to dispense with my valuable services. Calamity has been dogging my footsteps, and I've just awoke to the fact that maybe Fortune, like a certain young lady not a thousand miles from me this minute, had no use for a quitter. So, in spite of the division superintendent, I came back. Had a talk with him yesterday afternoon.”
“Don't think for an instant, William Horace, that I ever thought you were a quitter!" declared the girl, with a toss of the head and a glance of confidence and pride into his face. “You're a long way from being that. But, tell me, what did Mr. Trawl say?”
He told her briefly.
“The boys on this division afraid to work with you?” Milly echoed, her upper lip curling. “Let him tell that to the marines! And, William”—here she lifted a forefinger admonishingly—“if you ever try to grow a beard and get work on the division under a false name, I'll never speak to you again! The idea! You're not a skulker, and that name of yours is one to be proud of.”
“Just what I was telling him, Milly,” came the voice of Mrs. Harding from the open door. “I'm glad you feel about that as I do. If Mr. Trawl can't give William a chance under his own name, then he doesn't want the chance.”
“Let him make a chance for himself,” answered Milly. “He wouldn't be a Harding if he couldn't do that.”
“I've made up my mind to stick to my colors,” said Harding. “I can't wait in Divide to hear from Trawl, so I'm going down to division headquarters to-night and demand my rights.”
A shadow of disappointment crossed his mother's face. “Better stay here for a week or two, Willie,” urged Mrs. Harding. “You look worn and tired, and the rest will do you a world of good.”
“I know I could have a fine time here, mother, but I feel as though I'd be loafing on the job. I've got a notion that the iron is hot, and that now is the time to strike.”
“I'm afraid Mr. Trawl won't listen to you, now. He has given advice, and you're not taking it. He's a man, I think, who likes to have his way. I can't imagine how he'd be so cruel hard on one of our family. Did you tell Milly about that message he sent to Sweetbriar?”
Telling his mother about that message was one thing, but repeating it to Milly, with all the attending circumstances, was quite another. Harding's pride balked at letting the girl know the extremity to which he had been reduced. Now that the message had been mentioned, however, he had to tell about it.
The fine eyes of the girl filled with sympathy, and then with indignation. She did not laugh. Like Mrs. Harding she could see nothing humorous in what Trawl was pleased to call a joke.
“What your father and your uncle have done for this road, William,” said Milly warmly, “ought to entitle you to an annual pass over every part of it. And Trawl could refuse you a ride from Sweetbriar to Crook City! I'd just like to tell him what I think about that! I've a notion to go down to headquarters and talk with him. Dad's on the fast express run to-night, and I know he'd let me ride with him on the engine.”
“That wouldn't do, Milly,” protested Harding; “never in the world. I'll fight my own battles, little girl.”
Anson Kent, Milly's father, was one of the best engineers on the division. He had been on the left side of the cab at Rolling Stone, and it was William's father who had flung him from the gangway to safety.
“I guess you're right about that, William,” said Milly. “There's one man on this road that's not afraid to work with you, and that's dad. Tell Trawl to give you a place in the cab with him.”
“I want an engine,” answered Handing, “and before I'm done with Trawl he's going to see that I have one.”
“He can't help himself,” the girl returned, “if you go into this fight with that kind of a spirit. I wish there was something I could do to help you.”
“You're the biggest kind of a help to me, just as it is,” asserted Harding. “You and mother are my backers,” he added, laughing, “and I've got to make good just to show you what I can do.”
He did not tell them of the “find” he had recently made in the yellow tobacco bag. He hesitated to let them know about Davy's hostility, for he was sure it would fill them with needless worries; and he couldn't tell about Prebble's money without bringing the venomous freight conductor into the narrative.
The fast mail and express went roaring down the mountain at two in the morning. If Anson Kent had that run, then Harding knew he was sure of a ride back to Crook City.
That was a day of rest and comfort for Harding. The quiet little house filled him with a spirit of cheer and confidence. In the parlor he stood before the enlarged crayon portrait of his father, and the steady gray eyes of the picture looked into his and seemed to impart a message of hope and an admonition to be strong.
Late in the afternoon William and his mother paid a visit to the little cemetery back of the town. A granite block had been placed on the Harding lot by the railroad company, and the inscription on the stone at the head of William Harding's' grave told how the dead engineer had given his life for his passengers at the Rolling Stone.
Side by side with the elder William, lay Horace. The company had honored him with another headstone and with an inscription telling of his courage and loyalty and of the company's gratitude.
Leaning on the arm of her stalwart son, Mrs. Harding wept and scattered the flowers she had brought. Many times William had visited that hallowed spot, but never before had he felt as he did then.
Out of the past came influences that nerved and strengthened him for the battles ahead. He felt, in every tingling fiber of his body, the power to take his fate in his two hands and make of it what he would.
After his mother had gone to bed, William sat long on the porch. The local passenger had come over the rim of the mountain and gone screaming down into the shadows, and, an hour or two afterward, Harding got up from his chair and strolled down the street to the railroad station. O'Grady was the night man, and Harding knew him well. He would gossip a while with O'Grady, and so beguile the time while waiting for the fast mail and express to arrive.