Frontier Boys in Frisco Part 5

As he shoved the valise under the berth he heard the conductor coming back on his return trip, and he remained as quiet as a frozen mummy, leaning far into the berth and behind the curtain, as the conductor brushed past him. Then he proceeded to the dangerous part of his task.

Jim's coat lay under his head, a precaution he never neglected.

With his knife in his teeth, better than a revolver for close work and entirely noiseless, the fellow began slowly and with great cunning to work his hand into the pockets of the coat. He found a long flat letter; this was what he was told to get. Now his cupidity was aroused. He had found nothing of pecuniary value, and he knew that this young fellow carried some treasures of value in the way of jewels.

Jim was too old a campaigner to put these even in the coat on which he was asleep. The spy knew that they must be in a belt around the boy's body. Carefully he located it, and now the l.u.s.t of theft as strong as that of the Italian for blood gripped him. He despised all risk though he did not lose his craft or caution; he cut the leather belt at Jim's back, and began to draw it by minute particles towards him.

Then Jim was aroused and was wide awake in an instant. He knew that he had been robbed and grabbed for the fellow who slipped away as though he had been quicksilver and when Jim who became entangled in the bed clothes got to the door of the sleeper it was locked. Perhaps he has gone the other way, thought Jim, and he rushed to the other end of the car; the door there was likewise locked.

Jim hated to raise a hue and cry, but he was determined to get the thief. The loss of the belt which contained many of the jewels which he had brought from Mexico was a severe jolt. It would cripple him cruelly in his plans for his coming campaign when he reached San Francisco. At all hazards he must recover that belt.

He went to his berth and slipped into his trousers and sweater and then he found the porter apparently asleep in the smoking-room.

"Here you wake up," cried Jim, shaking him by the shoulder; "I've been robbed not three minutes ago."

"I didn't rob you. I dunno nothing about it," declared the porter surlily. "I've been sleeping all the time."

"You go and get the conductor," ordered Jim.

"I can't leave this hyah car," replied the negro.

Jim's face grew hard with anger, and he grabbed the porter by the back of the neck in a grip that fairly made that worthy's bones crack, and lifted him towards the door.

"All right, Boss, all right, I'll fatch him sure," cried the terrified porter. "I dunno you was in such a hurry."

Jim said nothing but kept watch until the porter returned with the conductor to whom he briefly explained the situation. He looked hard at the porter, who began to protest his utter innocence with great vehemence. "Why, Boss, I wouldn't steal a chicken if he crowed right in my face," he concluded.

"I smelled a rat when I came through this car a time back. You say you caught sight of this fellow when he escaped from your section?"

"Yes," replied Jim. "It was dark of course. But when he slipped through the curtains I got a glimpse of him. He was very short, with a hat pulled down, hiding most of his face, but I think that he had a beard. I reckon he must be in here somewhere for I found both doors locked and I was out in a hurry."

"Here you get in there, Porter," cried the conductor, his face red with wrath, and he gave the negro a shove into the smoking-room, and slammed and locked the door. "That will hold him for a while. I saw that fellow all right enough. He was a Mexican and he got on at Reno."

"A Mexican!" cried Jim, starting back. "No, it can't be, this fellow had a beard."

"Sure! he had a beard!" agreed the conductor. "Well if he is on this train we will get him."

"He couldn't be anywhere else," declared Jim.

"Not at the rate we are going," agreed the conductor. "This is no country to jump off in, especially this time of the year."

A thorough search was made of the sleeper which aroused all the pa.s.sengers, but the Mexican was not found. However, a trace was discovered when the conductor unlocked the tall, narrow door, to the linen closet.

"Somebody has been here all right," declared the conductor. "I bet he hid here when I came through the train. Something is liable to happen to that c.o.o.n when we get to Oakland."

Meanwhile the search was going on through the other cars of the train.

Nearly everyone had been asleep at the time and the fellow might have pa.s.sed through a number of the coaches and not been seen. One woman in the chair car declared that she had seen someone just like the Mexican going through the car, about one o'clock.

Everyone joined in the search, looking under the seats in every nook and corner of the cars. If he was inside the train, it seemed that he must have the trick of invisibility to escape. At that moment, an idea came into Jim's mind suggested by a former experience.

"Maybe the beggar has crawled up on top of the cars," he said.

"He must be an acrobat," remarked the conductor, "to do that."

"I'm going to have a look, anyway," Jim declared. The trainmen regarded him with amazement.

"No, you don't," said the conductor; "that's foolhardy."

"It's slippery as the deuce on top of the cars," put in the brakeman. "I wouldn't risk it myself."

Then Jim's face broke into a grin, as a sudden thought struck him, in regard to the subject.

"It won't take long to find out whether the Mexican gent is enjoying the fresh air on top of the cars," announced Jim; "there's plenty of snow on top and none has fallen for the past six hours."

The conductor hit Jim a clip on the shoulder.

"Long head, boy!" he exclaimed, "I never thought of that."

They went outside and Jim, the tallest of the crowd, was boosted up by a couple of trainmen, between the swaying cars (this was long before the days of vestibules), but they found no trace of the bandit.

"He's certainly not roosting up there," declared Jim.

"Well, if he jumped off, he's a dead greaser," a.s.serted the conductor.

"We will watch and see that he don't slide off at the next station,"

remarked one of the brakemen.

"He couldn't have slipped under one of the cars, could he?" questioned Jim.

The conductor shook his head with emphasis.

"There's no telling what that fellow mightn't do," said one of the trainmen.

"With the devil to help him," put in Jim.

"To make sure we will search under the train," decided the conductor, "at the next stop."

In a few minutes the train rolled into a small station, near the top of the range. There was a flare of yellow torches under the cars as the trainmen searched every possible foothold, while Jim stood a short distance back so that he could see on either side of the train if a short, dark figure should dart forth to seek escape in the wilds of the mountains; but their quarry was not flushed into the open, even by the flare and glare of the torches.

"Well, boy, we will have to give it up," said the conductor to Jim, when the train started once more.

"It seems so," admitted Jim quietly.

It was hard for him to accept defeat, in this very first skirmish with his old enemy, Bill Broome, and harder still to lose his treasure that was to be the sinews of war in the campaign that had already opened. But Jim soon pulled himself together with rugged determination.

"If I remember right, old Broome gave us a jolly good licking to start with, when he captured us in the canyon in the coast range," mused Jim to himself, "and we beat him in the end."

But the reader is probably asking about the "Mysterious Mexican or Where Did He Go To." Well, friend, I will tell you in confidence that Mr.

Mexican was in the train all the time. Perhaps the ingenious reader has already solved the problem of the Mexican's escape, but for those who do not care to be bothered, I will relate what happened, and where he was located.