The Mountain Divide Part 13

"What's the matter?" demanded Bucks, as Baggs, well in the lead, came within hailing distance.

"Matter!" panted Baggs, not slackening his pace. "Matter! Look at my engine! Indians!"

"Indians, your grandmother!" retorted Bob Scott mildly. "There's not an Indian within forty miles--what's the matter with you?"

"They wrecked us, Bob," declared Baggs, pointing to his roaring engine; "see for yourself, man. Them cotton-woods are full of Indians right now."

"Full of rabbits!" snorted Bob Scott. "You wrecked yourself by running too fast."

"Delaroo," demanded Dan Baggs, pointing dramatically at his taciturn fireman, who had now overtaken him, "how fast was I running?"

Peter Delaroo, an Indian half-blood himself, returned a disconcerting answer. "As fast as you could, I reckon." He understood at once that Baggs had raised a false alarm to protect himself from blame for the accident, and resented being called upon to support an absurd story.

Baggs stood his ground. "If you don't find an Indian has done this,"

he a.s.serted, addressing Bob Scott with indignation, "you can have my pay check."

"Yes," returned Bob, meditatively. "I reckon an Indian did it, but you are the Indian."

"Come, stop your gabble, you boys!" bl.u.s.tered the doughty engineman, speaking to everybody and with a show of authority. "Bucks, notify the despatcher I'm in the river."

"Get back to your engine, then," said Scott. "Don't ask Bucks to send in a false report. And afterward," suggested Scott, "you and I, Dan, can go over and clean the Indians out of the cotton-woods."

Baggs took umbrage at the suggestion, and no amount of chaffing from Scott disconcerted him, but after Bucks reported the catastrophe to Medicine Bend the wires grew warm. Baxter was very angry. A crew was got together at Medicine Bend, and a wrecking-train made up with a gang of bridge and track men and despatched to the scene of the disaster. The operating department was so ill equipped to cope with any kind of a wreck that it was after midnight before the train got under way.

The sun had hardly risen next morning, when Bob Scott, without any words of explanation, ran into Bucks's room, woke him hurriedly, and, bidding him dress quickly, ran out. It took only a minute for Bucks to spring from his cot and get into his clothes and he hastened out of doors to learn what the excitement was about. Scott was walking fast down toward the bridge. Bucks joined him.

"What is it, Bob?" he asked hastily. "Indians?"

"Indians?" echoed Bob scornfully. "I guess not this time. I've heard of Indians stealing pretty nearly everything on earth--but not this.

No Indian in this country, not even Turkey Leg, ever stole a locomotive."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean Dan Baggs's engine is gone."

Bucks's face turned blank with amazement. "Gone?" he echoed incredulously. He looked at Scott with reproach. "You are joking me."

"See if you can find it," returned Scott tersely.

As they hastened on, Bucks looked to the spot where the engine had lain the night before. It was no longer there.

He was too stunned to ask further questions. The two strode along the ties in silence. Eagerly Bucks ran to the creek bank and scanned more closely the sandy bed. It was there that the wrecked engine and tender had lain the night before. The sand showed no disturbance whatever. It was as smooth as a table. But nothing was to be seen of the engine or tender. These had disappeared as completely as if an Aladdin's slave, at his master's bidding, had picked them from their resting place and set them on top of some distant sand-hill.

"Bob," demanded Bucks, breathless, "what does it mean?"

"It means the company is out one brand-new locomotive."

"But what has happened?" asked Bucks, rubbing his eyes to make sure he was not dreaming. "Where is the engine?"

Scott pointed to the spot where the engine had lain. "It is in that quicksand," said he.

The engine, during the night, had, in fact, sunk completely into the sand. No trace was left of it or of its tender. Not a wheel or cab corner remained to explain; all had mysteriously and completely disappeared.

"Great Heavens, Bob!" exclaimed Bucks. "How will they _ever_ get it out?"

"The only way they'll ever get it out, I reckon, is by keeping Dan Baggs digging there till he digs it out."

"Dan Baggs never could dig that out--how long would it take him?"

"About a hundred and seventy-five years."

As Scott spoke, the two heard footsteps behind them. Baggs and Delaroo, who had slept at the section-house, were coming down the track. "Baggs," said Scott ironically, as the sleepy-looking engineman approached, "you were right about the Indians being in the cotton-woods last night."

"I knew I was right," exclaimed Baggs, nodding rapidly and brusquely.

"Next time you'll take a railroad man's word, I guess. Where are they?" he added, looking apprehensively around. "What have they done?"

"They have stolen your engine," answered Scott calmly. He pointed to the river bed. Baggs stared; then running along the bank he looked up-stream and down and came back sputtering.

"Why--what--how--what in time! Where's the engine?"

"Indians," remarked Scott sententiously, looking wisely down upon the sphinx-like quicksand. "Indians, Dan. They must have loaded the engine on their ponies during the night--did you hear anything?" he demanded, turning to Bucks. Bucks shook his head. "I thought I did," continued Scott. "Thought I heard something--what's that?"

Baggs jumped. All were ready to be startled at anything--for even Scott, in spite of his irony, had been as much astounded as any one at the first sight of the empty bed of sand. It was enough to make any one feel queerish. The noise they heard was the distant rumble of the wrecking-train.

In the east the sun was bursting over the sand-hills into a clear sky.

Bucks ran to the station to report the train and the disappearance of the engine. When he had done this he ran back to the bridge. The wrecking-train had pulled up near at hand and the greater part of the men, congregated in curious groups on the bridge, were talking excitedly and watching several men down on the sand, who with spades were digging vigorously about the spot which Baggs and Delaroo indicated as the place where the engine had fallen. Others from time to time joined them, as they sc.r.a.ped out wells and trenches in the moist sand. These filled with water almost as rapidly as they were opened.

Urged by their foreman, a dozen additional men joined the toilers.

They dug in lines and in circles, singly and in squads, broadening their field of prospecting as the laughter and jeers of their companions watching from the bridge spurred them to further toil. But not the most diligent of their efforts brought to light a single trace of the missing engine.

The wrecking crew was mystified. Many refused to believe the engine had ever fallen off the bridge. But there was the broken track! They could not escape the evidence of their eyes, even if they did scoff at the united testimony of the two men that had been on the engine when it leaped from the bridge and the two that had afterward seen it lying in the sand.

The track and bridge men without more ado set to work to repair the damage done the track and bridge. A volley of messages came from head-quarters. At noon a special car, with Colonel Stanley and the division heads arrived to investigate.

The digging was planned and directed on a larger scale and resumed with renewed vigor. Sheet piling was attempted. Every expedient was resorted to that Stanley's scientific training could suggest to bring to light the buried treasure--for an engine in those days, and so far from locomotive works, was very literally a treasure to the railroad company. Stanley himself was greatly upset. He paced the ties above where the men were digging, directing and encouraging them doggedly, but very red in the face and contemplating the situation with increasing vexation. He stuck persistently to the work till darkness set in. Meantime, the track had been opened and the wrecking-train crossed the bridge and took the pa.s.sing track. The moon rose full over the broad valley and the silent plains. Men still moved with lanterns under the bridge. Bucks, after a hard day's work at the key, was invited for supper to Stanley's car, where the foremen had a.s.sembled to lay new plans for the morrow. But Bob Scott, when Bucks told him, shook his head.

"They are wasting their work," he murmured. "The company is 'out.'

That engine is half-way to China by this time."

It might, at least, as well have been, as far as the railroad company was concerned. The digging and sounding and sc.r.a.ping proved equally useless. The men dug down almost as deep as the piling that supported the bridge itself--it was in vain. In the morning the sun smiled at their efforts and again at night the moon rose mysteriously upon them, and in the distant sand-hills a thousand coyotes yelped a requiem for the lost locomotive. But no human eye ever saw so much as a bolt of the great machine again.

CHAPTER XIV

The loss of the engine at Goose Creek brought an unexpected relief to Bucks. His good work in the emergency earned for him a promotion. He was ordered to report to Medicine Bend for a.s.signment, and within a week a new man appeared at Goose Creek to relieve him.