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In a little while the men, would be out of the railroad yard and he would go down and finish the work. But his rejoicings were turned into amazement by the sight which now presented itself at the door of the car. With Pauline, carried over one arm as if she had been a wisp of straw, the gorilla was crawling down to the trackside.
The manner of taking or "catching" the mail from the trackside by some invisible power on a railroad train plunging through space has seemed to many a feat of almost legerdemanic skill, when all that is required is a simple mechanical apparatus and a quick, firm movement of the arm in using it at the right moment.
Here he cast about for a comfortable seat, lighted on a big boulder under a birch by the trackside, sate down upon it with a very long, serious upper lip, and, the sun now shining in upon us between two peaks, put his pocket-handkerchief over his cocked hat to shelter him.
The others, masked as they were, with their coatless bodies, and loose, unclean shirts, their leather chapps, and the guns they wore upon their hips well, they made an exquisite picture of that ruffianism which bows to no law of civilization, but that which they carry in the leather holsters hanging at their waists. The trackside was strewn with disemboweled whitewood barrels.
Tom, Andrews, and Brown stood aside while the men filed from the tender into the cab. The first stood on the step for a moment, then jumped. Tom saw him strike the trackside and go sprawling. The second jumped ... the third ... the fourth.... "Get ready to reverse the engine, Knight," said Andrews. "We'll send it back on them." Knight threw the lever over.
They cursed everybody and everything, but most of all they cursed the bucolic agent at White Point. Then came a cautious reconnoitering beyond the door. This was promptly followed by a pell-mell dash for the open. In a moment they were crowding the trackside, staring with stupid eyes and mouths agape at the miniature snowfall of sugar, and the wreckage of whitewood barrels.
It was Morgan's hope in the first few rods of this frightful journey that a brakeman might appear on top of the train, whose attention he might attract before the speed became so great he could no longer maintain it, or a lurch or a stumble in the ditch at the trackside might throw him under the wheels.
Here he cast about for a comfortable seat, lighted on a big boulder under a birch by the trackside, sate down upon it with a very long, serious upper lip, and the sun now shining in upon us between two peaks, put his pocket-handkerchief over his cocked hat to shelter him.
By reason of what was upon them the clothes burned slowly, sending up a smudge of acrid smoke to mingle with smells of carbolic acid and iodoform, and the scent of boiling food, and of things infinitely less pleasant than these. Presently a train rolled in and we crossed through the building to the trackside to watch what would follow.
Had Andrews' men attacked the outside rail first, the race would have ended there, with the Texas a battered wreck, strewn over the trackside. On the other hand, if Fuller and Murphy had seen the break sooner, a wreck would have been inevitable, for the locomotive, in checking its speed, would have rested evenly upon both rails. Luck was with the pursuers. Now the rain was falling in torrents.
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