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But out of all this hodge-podge of cooked up news and irresponsible hints there remained just the one plausible clew to hang any hopes on and that was trainman Hanlon's recollection of seeing a child in a mackinaw jacket and carrying a jack-knife in the company of two men who alighted from a northbound train at Catskill, within ten miles of Temple Camp.
"I'll fall off if I try to get up." "And you a showman?" laughed the brakeman satirically, at the same time grabbing Teddy by the coat collar and jerking him to his feet. The trainman did not appear to mind the giddy swaying of the stock car.
The Democratic party, he thought, should feel toward its leader as a confiding ward would feel toward a guardian who had squandered a rich estate, or as a passenger would feel toward a trainman who opened a switch and precipitated a wreck.
"No hurry," said a trainman. "All in good time. Go on!" he called to the Altrurian. The Altrurian resumed: "There had been, from the beginning, an almost ceaseless struggle between the Accumulation and the proletariate.
Long, unimproved roads wandered over the hills, following roughly the section lines, but perfectly willing to turn aside through some man's field in order to avoid a steep grade or soft going. These things the rivermen saw from their stream exactly as a trainman would see them from his right-of-way.
You wondered if they were French, Italians, Belgians, English, Australians, Canadians, Moroccans, Algerians, or Americans. It was too dark to see, but suddenly you heard a familiar voice saying, "Gosh, I wish I was back in little ole New York," and you made a grab in the darkness for that lad's hand. All during your trip no trainman appears.
Immediately the brakeman slid the car door back a few inches, flashed his lantern four times, muffled it, and ran the door open its full width. The critical moment had come. Gathering himself together, Jack braced with knees and elbows. The trainman seized the box, swung it to the door, and tipped it forward. The next instant Jack felt himself hurled out into the darkness.
As the message came, Bucks heard shooting farther up the creek and this continued at intervals for some moments. It was sickening to hear, for it meant, Bucks surmised, that another trainman was being murdered. Meantime the Indians that he could see were smashing into the wrecked merchandise cars and dragging the loot out upon the open prairie.
"Oh, a wreck?" she exclaimed. "Will we have time to go up and see it?" "I'd say it's a wreck," grinned the trainman. "An' you've got all the time you want. We're a-goin' to pull in on the sidin' an' let the wrecker an' bridge crew at it. But even with 'em a-workin' from both ends it'll be tomorrow sometime 'fore they c'n get them box cars drug out an' a temp'ry trussle throw'd acrost."
He made answer to our letter that he was no longer an opulent trainman, but drew only the slender income of a soldier, and even that pittance was in arrears. Disappointment was swallowed up in remorse.
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