Snow on the Headlight Part 10

"You know what I believe," said the visitor; "and now good-night--I shall see you again soon."

"I hope so," said Dan. "It is indeed very good of you to call, and of you, too," he added, as he turned to his fairer visitor. "I shall not forget your kindness to me, and only hope that I may be of some help to you in some way, and do something to show my appreciation of this visit and of your friends.h.i.+p. But," he added, glancing about him, "one can't be of much use to his friends shut up in a hole like this."

"You can do me a great favor, even while in prison," she said.

"Only say what it is and I shall try."

"Tell us who put the dynamite on Blackwings."

"I shall try," he said, "only let me have time to think what is best to do."

"What is right is what is best to do," said Mrs. Cowels, holding out her hand--"Good-night."

"Good-night," said the prisoner, "come again when you can, both of you."

And the two visitors pa.s.sed out into the clear, cold night, and when the prisoner had seen them disappear he turned to his little friend, the book.

CHAPTER FOURTEENTH

"Mr. Scouping of _The London Times_ would like to see you for a few minutes," said the jailor.

"I don't care to see any newspaper man," said Moran, closing his book.

"I knew that," said the jailor, "but this man is a personal friend of mine and in all the world there is not his equal in his chosen profession, and if you will see him just for a few minutes it will be a great favor to me. I feel confident, Dan, that he can be of service to you--to the public at least--will you see him?"

The jailor had been extremely kind to the engineer and when he put the matter as a personal request, Moran a.s.sented at once and Mr. Scouping was ushered in. He was a striking figure with a face that was rather remarkable.

"Now, what are you thinking about?" asked the visitor, as Moran held his hand and looked him full in the face.

"Oh!" said the prisoner, motioning the reporter to a chair which the jailor had just brought in, "I was thinking what a waste of physical strength it was for you to spend your time pus.h.i.+ng a pencil over a sheet of paper."

"Are you sure?"

"Quite sure. What were you thinking about?"

"The trial of the robbers who held up the Denver Limited at Thorough-cut some eight or ten years ago. You look like the man who gave one of them a black eye, and knocked him from the engine, branding him so that the detectives could catch him."

Moran smiled. He had been thinking on precisely the same subject, but, being modest, he did not care to open a discussion of a story of which he was the long-forgotten hero. "It strikes me," said Moran, "as rather extraordinary that we should both recall the scene at the same time."

"Not at all," said the reporter. "The very fact that one of us thought of it at the moment when our hands and eyes met would cause the other to remember."

"Perhaps you reported the case for your paper, that we saw each other from day to day during the long trial, and that I remembered your face faintly, as you remembered mine. Wouldn't that be a better explanation?"

"No," said the journalist cheerfully. "I must decline to yield to your argument, and stick to my decision. What I want to talk to you about, Mr. Moran, is not your own case, save as it may please you, but about the mysterious death of Engineer Cowels."

"I know less about that, perhaps, than any man living," said Moran frankly.

"But you know the fireman's story?"

"No."

"Well, he claims that they were running at a maddening rate of speed, that he and the engineer had quarrelled as to their relative positions in the estimation of the public in general, the strikers in particular.

Cowels threw a hammer at the fireman, whereupon Guerin, as he claims, caught the man by the left arm and by the back of the neck and shoved his head out of the window. The engineer resisted, but Guerin, who is something of an athlete, held him down and in a few moments the man collapsed."

"How fast were they going?"

"Well, that is a question to be settled by experts. How fast will Blackwings go with four cars empty?"

"Ninety miles an hour."

"How fast would she go, working 'wide open in the first notch,' as you people say, down Zero Hill?"

"She would go in the ditch--she could hardly be expected to hold the rail for more than two minutes."

"But she did hold it."

"I don't believe it," said the old driver; "but if she did, she must have made a hundred miles an hour, and in that case the mystery of Cowels's death is solved--he was drowned."

"But his clothes were not wet, and he was still in the window when they reached Galesburg."

"I do not mean," said Moran, "that he was drowned in the engine-tank, but in the cab window--in the air."

"That sounds absurd."

"Try it," said the prisoner. "Get aboard of Blackwings, strike the summit at Zero Hill with her lever hooked back and her throttle wide open, let a strong man hold your head out at the window, and if she hangs to the rail your successor will have the rare opportunity of writing you up."

"Do you mean that seriously?"

"I do. If what you tell me is true, there can be no shade of doubt as to the cause of Cowels's death."

"I believe," said the reporter, "that you predicted his death, or that the train would go in the ditch, did you not?"

"No."

"I was not present at the examination, but it occurs to me that the man who claimed to be a detective, and who made the arrest, swore that you had made such a prediction."

"Perhaps," said Moran. "The truth is when that fellow was giving his testimony I was ignorant of Cowels's death, upon whose evidence I hoped to prove that the fellow was lying wilfully, or that he had misunderstood me, and later, I was so shocked and surprised at the news of my old fireman's death that I forgot to make the proper explanation to the magistrate."

"Why not make that explanation now? These are trying times and men are not expected to be as guarded in their action as in times of peace."

"If you hope to learn from me that I had anything to do with Cowels's death, or with the placing of the dynamite upon the locomotive, I am afraid you are wasting your time. Suppose you are an army officer, the possessor of a splendid horse--one that has carried you through hundreds of battles, but has finally been captured by the enemy. You are fighting to regain possession of the animal with the chances of success and failure about equally divided, but you have an opportunity, during the battle, to slay this horse, thereby removing the remotest chance of ever having it for yourself again, to say nothing of the wickedness of the act,--would you do it?"

"I should say not."

"And yet, I venture to say," said the prisoner, "that there is no love for a living thing that is not human, to equal the love of a locomotive engineer for his engine. To say that he would wilfully and maliciously wreck and ruin the splendid steed of steel that had carried him safely through sun and storm is utterly absurd."