Sergeant Silk the Prairie Scout Part 12

"All right; don't alarm the pa.s.sengers," cried Silk. "We're short of water. We've run past the plug. I'm going on with the engine alone to the next plug to get some. Climb up to the roof of the head car with a lamp and signal us back, see?"

Leaving the conductor to guess how it chanced that the locomotive was in charge of a sergeant of police, he opened the throttle valve and started off along the line at the highest speed that he could get out of the cranky old kettle, arriving at the hydrant with an empty tank and a dangerously exhausted boiler.

Halkett and d.i.c.k helped him, and almost before the tank was filled they had started on the back journey. Many precious minutes had been lost, but the engine had returned to the waiting train with a quarter of an hour to spare in which to reach Three Moose siding and get out of the way of the express.

"D'you reckon we can do it, Joe?" Silk asked with a quick glance at the engineer.

Halkett had abandoned his duty. He sat on a corner of the tool-box and was staring about him like a man in a fever, with a sort of wild gleam in his eyes, as if some mortal terror had taken hold of him and was tormenting him. He held a long-spouted oilcan in his hand, and the oil was dripping to his feet.

"Can we do it?" Silk repeated. And looking at Joe more attentively he began to realise that the man's strange agitation of mind was due to something quite apart from the danger of being run into by the express.

"We can't get to the switch on time," Joe roused himself to say in a voice that was hoa.r.s.e and unnatural. "You c'n try as you like; but, clever as you are, you'll never get this yer engine to pa.s.s Three Moose Crossing. Thar's blood on the track, see? The place is haunted--haunted by the ghost of a dead man."

"He's sure mad, now," muttered d.i.c.k. "Say, Sergeant, you'd best leave him and take charge. We might git inter the siding if we start right now."

Sergeant Silk s.n.a.t.c.hed the oilcan from Joe Halkett's grip and handed it to the fireman.

"Look here, d.i.c.k," he commanded, "take this can and run back to the tail of the train and grease the metals. Oil first one rail and then the other. D'you understand? It's our only chance. Let the oil run about a car's length on the top of each rail, and come back again quick as you can."

Before d.i.c.k returned, panting and perspiring, with the empty can, Silk was ready to start, with his hand on the throttle valve. He blew the whistle, and with a snort, a grunt, and a noisy rattle, the engine moved on, now wholly under the sergeant's control.

"It's no use," Joe Halkett muttered with an insane laugh. "She'll never go past that crossin'."

"What do you mean?" Silk demanded. "Three Moose Crossing?" he repeated.

And then, as if suddenly recollecting something, he looked down at Joe's face in the light from the fire-box; looked at it searchingly, wonderingly. "What do you know about Three Moose Crossing?" he asked with curious directness. "You were not on your engine that night--the night that Steve Bagshott was killed. What has it got to do with you?"

Halkett laughed--a ghastly, hollow laugh--then dropped into silence, while Silk forced the engine to fuller speed. But as the train dashed through the darkness, Halkett became more and more excited.

"The ghost'll be there, sure!" he repeated again and again.

"Well, and if it is," returned Silk, with his eye watchfully on the gauge, "I don't care for any of your ghosts. I don't care if there's a hundred of them so long as this train goes safe."

"But it can't go safe," cried Halkett, rising to his feet and laying a trembling hand on the sergeant's arm.

The train was covering the miles at terrific speed now as it went down the gradient. But it was not the speed that made Halkett shake like a reed and drove the blood from his cheeks.

"Sergeant," he said in a thick whisper as he clutched more tightly at Silk's arm, "that man who was run over--Steve Bagshott--wasn't killed by accident."

"What do you mean?" Silk cried. "What has come over you to-night?"

Joe bent his face forward. His hot breath was on the sergeant's cheek.

"He wasn't killed by accident," he repeated hoa.r.s.ely. "He was murdered!

That's why he haunts the crossing. He can't rest."

"Murdered?"

"Yes," Joe nodded grimly. Then, loosening his grip, he went to the side of the cab and peered forward into the darkness. "We're gettin' near,"

he muttered. "We're gettin' near the place, but we can't go on. She can't go safe over the crossing to-night."

Sergeant Silk blew the whistle, asking for a signal. He did not know that he was still many miles from the siding. He turned to speak to the fireman, who was at work among the coals. When he looked back again, Joe Halkett had slipped forward and had raised his hand to shut off steam.

"Stop!" shouted Silk, seizing his arm. "Do you think you can play with this train? She's going on, and at the same speed, until I get a signal, though there were a score of haunted crossings in the way. Stand back!"

He thrust the man aside. But Joe renewed his grip. His hard face was working with terror and his eyes were starting out of his head.

"I murdered him!" he panted. And by the light of the fireman's lamp Silk could see great beads of agony on his forehead. He went on jerkily, his voice rising sharp and wild as he told his fearful story of a brutal vengeance.

But Sergeant Silk flung him aside, not heeding him, thinking only that the fate of the racing train and the lives of scores of human beings depended upon what happened in the next few minutes.

"I dragged him to the crossing," Joe went on. "I laid him across the line. There was a train due in three minutes. This train--this engine.

They thought it was accident. You--_you_--thought so, too. But it wasn't. I did it--I!"

His voice rose to a shriek. Then he crept to Silk's side.

"Sergeant, there's death ahead and death behind," he cried, and with a leap forward he seized the lever.

"Let go!" Silk shouted, flinging him backward among the coals. "Lay hold of him, d.i.c.k," he ordered. "The express must be coming on behind. But that oil has delayed her, sure."

Once again he whistled for a signal, and this time one came, telling him that the switch was open. He slowed down cautiously. He had pa.s.sed the crossing, and now with a sudden turn from the straight track, the engine panted into the siding, safe from all possible harm.

"Oh, stopping again, are we?" said the millionaire in the private car.

"We've run short of water again, I suppose. I wonder that your railway companies don't introduce those water troughs on the permanent way, such as we have in England."

"We do, on some lines," returned the Colonel. "But I don't fancy it's water this time. Listen! Yes, I thought so. We've gone into a side track to let the limited express go past. Dear me, she must have been exceedingly close on our heels! But our engine-driver--a man named Halkett, is a magnificent fellow. Quite the best driver on the line, I believe."

When the express had rushed by, he lowered the window and looked out.

Some one was walking along the line towards the rear of the train.

"I say, there!" the Colonel called out. "Are we going to stop here very long?"

"No, Colonel; no!" came the answer. "We're changing engines, that's all.

I'm going along to have a word with my mare. I reckon she's missing me."

"Oh, it's you, Silk, is it?" laughed the Colonel. "I didn't know you with your overcoat on. Won't you come in along with us here? Sir George is anxious to have a yarn with you, and I'm sure you'll be more comfortable here than in that third-cla.s.s."

"Thank you, Colonel," returned Silk, "but I've changed my plans. I've got to go back to Macleod with a man who is rather ill. Good-night!"

He said nothing of who the man was, and no one on the train knew then or even afterwards anything of the danger that they had escaped. But that was Sergeant Silk's way.

CHAPTER IX

RED DERRICK