They untied the terrified watchman and added him to the group. In the
dark, and by way of vacant lots and unlighted streets, he took them to a
certain point where an engine had just backed a single, unlighted day
coach on to a siding and stood there with air-pump wheezing and the
engineer crawling around beneath with his oil can. By the rear steps of
the coach a mystified conductor stood waiting with his lantern hidden
under his coat. A big man was the conductor; once a policeman and
therefore with a keen nose--don't laugh!--for mysteries.
He wore a satisfied look when he saw the men that were being hustled into
the car. His uniform tightened as he swelled with the importance of his
mission. He nodded to Sheriff O'Malley and the chief of police, cast an
obliquely curious glance at Starr, who stayed on the ground, and when
Starr gave the word he swung his lantern to the watching fireman, and
caught the handrail beside the steps.
"Fort Bliss it is; and there won't nothing stop us, buh-lieve me!" he
muttered confidentially to Starr, whom he recognized only as the man who
stood behind the mystery. The engine began to creep forward, and he swung
up to the lower step. "We may go in the ditch or something; but we'll get
there, you listen to me!"
"Go to it, and good luck," said Starr, but there was no heartiness in his
voice. He stood with his thumbs hooked inside his gun-belt and watched
the coach that held the peace of the country within its varnished walls
go sliding out of the yard, its green tail lights the only illumination
anywhere behind the engine. When it had clicked over the switch and was
picking up speed for its careening flight south through the cool hours of
early morning, he gave a sigh that had no triumph in it, and turned away
toward his cabin.
"Well, there goes the revolution," he said somberly to himself. "And here
I go to do the rest of the job; and alongside what I've got to do, hell
would be a picnic!"
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
STARR TAKES ANOTHER PRISONER
With a slip of paper in his pocket that would have gone a long way toward
clearing Helen May, had he only taken the trouble to look at it, Starr
rode out in the cool early morning to Sunlight Basin. He looked white and
worn, and his eyes were sunken and circled with the purple of too little
sleep and too much worry, for in the three days since he had seen her,
Starr had not been able to forget his misery once in merciful sleep. Only
when he was busy with capturing the Junta had he lost for a time the keen
pain of his hurt.
Now it was back like an aching tooth set going again with cold water or
sweets. He tried to make himself think that he hated Helen May, and that
a girl of that type--a girl who could lend herself to such
treachery--could not possibly win from him anything but a pitying
contempt. He told himself over and over again that he was merely sore
because a girl had "put something over on him"; that a man hated to have
a woman make a fool of him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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