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Some months previously Alex and Jack had arranged to take their two weeks' vacation at the same time, and to spend one week at Haddowville, Jack's home, and the other at Bixton. The long looked-for Monday had at length arrived, early that morning Jack had joined Alex at Exeter, and the two boys, aboard the Eastern Mail, were now well on their way to Haddowville.
Call in your posse. "Sheriff Quigg County." What the at first puzzled and then thunderstruck operator at Watson Siding read off his instrument ran very differently. It read: "Safe THEY blowers ARE have HERE been IN captured STATION near INTEND here. GOING call OUT in BY your NIGHT posse. A moment after giving his "OK" the Watson Siding operator was at the telephone calling for Bixton central.
Quickly trimming the lantern wick, he lit it, with his handkerchief tied it to the semaphore arm, and turned it so that the bull's-eye pointed toward the station. Then, catching off his cap, he held it over the bull's-eye, and alternately covering and uncovering the stream of light, began flashing across the darkness signals that corresponded with the telegraphic call of the Bixton station.
When, after school that afternoon, Alex Ward waved a good-by to his father, the Bixton station agent for the Middle Western, and set off up the track on the spring's first fishing, he had little thought of exciting experiences ahead of him.
Emerging from the woods, excitedly talking and gesticulating, was a party of foreigners who had been working on the track near Bixton, and in their midst, his hands bound behind him, was Hennessy, their foreman. For a moment Alex stood rooted to the spot. What did it mean? Suddenly realizing his own possible danger, he caught up his rod and fish, and sprang for the door.
For an attempt had been made that morning to rob the Farmers' Savings Bank at Zeisler, a posse had been sent from Bixton to aid in the pursuit of the robbers, and reports from the hunt were being anxiously looked for. "Take care you don't get in line for any bullets," laughed the operator as he left.
"He did! Look here," sent Alex quickly, "come to Bixton and spend some of it with me. I'll promise you all kinds of a good time. Though I am not sure I can guarantee anything as exciting as last night's work," he added. Jack readily accepted the invitation. And, as it turned out, Alex might as well have made his promise. He could have kept it.
With admiration Alex watched. Suddenly a sense of something familiar about the figure stirred within him. The man came opposite, and Alex uttered an involuntary ejaculation. It was Big Tony, the Italian who had led the trouble amongst the trackmen at Bixton two years back, and with whom he had had the thrilling encounter at the old brick-yard.
And while the instruments at Bixton remained momentarily silent, the surprised operator at Watson Siding read in draggy but decipherable signals the words: "Read every other word." "Come on! Come on!" exclaimed the man in the doorway, turning suspiciously. Immediately Alex withdrew his foot and closed the key, and at the resulting audible click Jones announced: "The wire has closed.
Like an inspiration had come the remembrance of Alex Ward's signalling feat two years before at Bixton, of which he had heard from Jack Orr. Could he not do the same? Try and signal Alex or Jack, at the construction-train? Say, from one of the box-cars at the farther corner of the yard?
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