Whispering Smith/Chapter 26
CHAPTER XXVI
TOWER W
AT the end of a long and neglected hall on the second floor of the old bank block in Hill Street, Whispering Smith had a room in which he made headquarters at Medicine Bend; it was in effect Whispering Smith’s home. A man’s room is usually a forlorn affair in spite of any effort to make it home-like. If he neglects his room it looks barren, and if he ornaments it it looks fussy. Boys can do something with a den because they are not yet men, and some tincture of woman’s nature still clings to a boy. Girls are born to the deftness that is to become all theirs in the touch of a woman’s hand; but men, if they walk alone, pay the penalty of loneliness.
Whispering Smith, being logical, made no effort to decorate his domestic poverty. All his belongings were of a simple sort and his room was as bare as a Jesuit’s. Moreover, his affairs, being at times highly particular, did not admit of the presence of a janitor in his quarters, and he was of necessity his own janitor. His iron bed was spread with a pair of Pullman blankets, his toilet arrangements included nothing more elaborate than a shaving outfit, and the mirror above his washstand was only large enough to make a hurried shave, with much neck-stretching, possible. The table was littered with letters, but it filled up one corner of the room, and a rocking-chair and a trunk filled up another. The floor was spread with a Navajo blanket, and near the head of the bed stood an old-fashioned wardrobe. This served not to ward Whispering Smith’s robes, which hung for the most part on his back, but to accommodate his rifles, of which it contained an array that only a practised man could understand. The wardrobe was more, however, than an armory. Beside the guns that stood racked in precision along the inner wall, McCloud had once, to his surprise, seen a violin. It appeared out of keeping in such an atmosphere and rather the antithesis of force and violence than a complement for it. And again, though the rifles were disquietingly bright and effective-looking, the violin was old and shabby, hanging obscurely in its corner, as if, whatever it might have in common with its master, it had nothing in common with its surroundings.
The door of the room in the course of many years had been mutilated with keyholes and reënforced with locks until it appeared difficult to choose an opening that would really afford entrance; but two men besides Whispering Smith carried keys to the room—Kennedy and George McCloud. They had right of way into it at all hours, and knew how to get in.
McCloud had left the bridge camp on the river for Medicine Bend on the Saturday that Marion Sinclair—whose husband had finally told her he would give her one more chance to think it over—returned with Dicksie safely from their trip to the Frenchman ranch.
Whispering Smith, who had been with Bucks and Morris Blood, got back to town the same day. The president and general manager were at the Wickiup during the afternoon, and left for the East at nine o’clock in the evening, when their car was attached to an east-bound passenger train. McCloud took supper afterward with Whispering Smith at a Front Street chop-house, and the two men separated at eleven o’clock. It was three hours later when McCloud tapped on the door of Smith’s room, and in a moment opened it. “Awake, Gordon?”
“Sure: come in. What is it?”
“The second section of the passenger train—Number Three, with the express cars—was stopped at Tower W to-night. Oliver Sollers was pulling; he is badly shot up, and one of the messengers was shot all to pieces. They cracked the through safe, emptied it, and made a clean get-away.”
“Tower W—two hundred and seventy-six miles. Have you ordered up an engine?”
“Yes.”
“Where’s Kennedy?”
A second voice answered: “Right here.”
“Strike a light, Farrell. What about the horses?”
“They’re being loaded.”
“Is the line clear?”
“Rooney Lee is clearing it.”
“Spike it, George, and leave every westbound train in siding, with the engine cut loose and plenty of steam, till we get by. It’s now or never this time. Two hundred and seventy-six miles; they’re giving us our money’s worth. Who’s going with us, Farrell?”
“Bob Scott, Reed Young, and Brill, if Reed can get him at Sleepy Cat. Dancing is loading the horses.”
“I want Ed Banks to lead a posse straight from here for Williams Cache; Dancing can go with him. And telephone Gene and Bob Johnson to sit down in Canadian Pass till they grow to the rocks, but not to let anybody through if they want to live after I see them. They’ve got all the instructions; all they need is the word. It’s a long chance, but I think these are our friends. You can head Banks off by telephone somewhere if we change our minds when we get a trail. Start Brill Young and a good man from Sleepy Cat ahead of us, George, if you can, in a baggage car with any horses that they can get there. They can be at Tower W by daybreak and perhaps pick up a trail before we reach there, and we shall have fresh horses for them. I’m ready, I guess; let’s go. Slam the door, George!” In the hall Whispering Smith threw a pocket-light on his watch. “I want you to put us there by seven o’clock.”
“Charlie Sollers is going to pull you,” answered McCloud. “Have you got everything? Then we’re off.” The three men tiptoed down the dark hall, down the stairs, and across the street on a noiseless run for the railroad yard.
The air was chill and the sky clear, with a moon more than half to the full. “Lord, what a night to ride!” exclaimed Whispering Smith, looking mournfully at the stars. “Well planned, well planned, I must admit.”
The men hastened toward the yard, where lanterns were moving about the car of the train-guards near the Blue Front stables. The loading board had been lowered, and the horses were being carefully led into the car. From a switch engine behind the car a shrill cloud of steam billowed into the air. Across the yard a great passenger engine, its huge white side-rod rising and falling slowly in the still light of the moon—one of the mountain racers, thick-necked like an athlete and deep-chested—was backing down for the run with the single car almost across the west end of the division. Trainmen were running to and from the Wickiup platform. By the time the horses were loaded the conductor had orders. Until the last minute, Whispering Smith was in consultation with McCloud, and giving Dancing precise instructions for the posse into the Cache country. They were still talking at the side door of the car, McCloud and Dancing on the ground and Whispering Smith squatting on his haunches inside the moving car, when the engine signalled and the special drew away from the chute, pounded up the long run of the ladder switch, and moved with gathering speed into the canyon. In the cab Charlie Sollers, crushing in his hand the tissue that had brought the news of his brother’s death, sat at the throttle. He had no speed orders. They had only told him he had a clear track.