He waited on the bank long enough for the water to drip off from him, and getting his breath, started to regain the railroad tracks.

When he came to a little station he found it closed for the night, but he knew that the agent must live in some one of the few houses in the settlement. He might locate him and induce him to come to the station and telegraph to Stanley Junction. With the aid of a signal lantern, however, Ralph was able to see the clock in the station. It was a few minutes after ten o'clock.

"There's a train reaches the Junction at eleven twenty-five," he reflected. "By hustling I can catch it at Acton. I can tell more and do more personally in five minutes than I can in five hours by wiring."

Ralph reached Acton some minutes before the West train came in. He had some change in his pocket, paid his fare to the Junction, and went out on the rear platform as they neared the destination.

He left the train a mile from the depot, swinging off at a point that would enable him to reach the roundhouse foreman's house by a short cut.

Ralph found the place closed up. There was a light in one upper room, however, and he had only to knock twice when Forgan came to the door in his shirt-sleeves.

"Is it you, Fairbanks?" he said, in some surprise.

"Yes, sir, and--special!"

"Why, what have you been into?" exclaimed Forgan, catching a glimpse of Ralph's bedraggled form and disfigured head.

"I have been in a freight car for one thing, and in the river for another," said Ralph. "There is no time to lose, Mr. Forgan, if you want to get back those stolen fittings."

"You know where they are?"

"I know where they were at eight o'clock," responded Ralph, "but I know they won't be there much after midnight.

"Good--wait a minute," directed Forgan.

He hurried back into the house and returned drawing on his coat. "I was just going to bed," he explained. "Now, then, Fairbanks," as he led the way to the street. "Tell your story--quick."

Ralph recited his experience of the past four hours, and Forgan hastened his steps as the narration developed the necessity of sharp, urgent action.

"Fairbanks, you are a trump!" commended Forgan, as the story was all told. "I'll leave you here. You get home, into dry clothes, and have your hurt attended to. You had better take the sick-list benefits for a day or two. Good-night--till I have something more definite to say to you."

A dismissal did not suit Ralph at all. It looked like crowding him out of an exciting and interesting game only half-finished.

"I might help you some further," he began, but Forgan interrupted him with the words:

"You've done the real work, Fairbanks, and neither of us will care to muddle in with the details of arrest. I shall put the matter directly in the hands of the road detective, Matthewson. I am sorry for his father's sake if Ike Slump gets caught in the net, but he deserves it fully, and I can't stop to risk the interests of the railway company."

Ralph went home. As he expected, his mother was waiting up for him. She was not the kind of a woman to faint or get hysterical at the sight of a little blood, but she was anxious and trembling as she helped Ralph to get into comfortable trim.

"Don't worry, mother," said Ralph. "This is probably the end of trouble with the Ike Slump complication."

"I always fear an enemy, Ralph," sighed the widow. "It seems as if you are fated to have them at every step. I keep thinking day and night about Gasper Farrington's unmanly threat."

"Mother," said Ralph earnestly, "I am trying to do right, am I not?"

"Oh, Ralph--never a boy better!"

"Thank you, mother, that is sweet praise, and worth going through the experience that will make a man of me. Well, I am going to keep right on doing my duty the best way I know how. I expect ups and downs. Men like Farrington may succeed for a time, but in the end I believe I shall come out just right."

Ralph found himself a trifle sore and stiff the next morning, but he started for work as usual. He was curious as to the outcome of the foreman's action the night previous. Forgan, however, did not show up at the roundhouse till ten o'clock. He at once called Ralph into his little office.

"Well, Fairbanks," he said briskly, "I suppose you will be interested to know the outcome of last night's affair?"

"Very much so," acknowledged Ralph.

"The road detective and myself were at Cohen's before midnight. The birds had flown."

"Had they moved the plunder, too?"

"Yes, what you described as being in boxes was all carted away."

"And Ike Slump had gone?"

"Presumably. We found that two horses and a wagon belonging to Cohen were missing. The only person we found, outside of Cohen, was a little fellow asleep in an outside shed."

"Was his name Teddy?" And Ralph gave a rapid description of the county farm waif.

"That's the boy. He's in jail with Cohen, now. They want to detain him as a witness. In Cohen's barn, hidden under some hay, we found two old locomotive whistles. He claims that he did not know they were there.

The road detective, however, says if we can fasten the least real suspicion on Cohen and break up his fence, we will have rooted out this robbery evil, for the crowd he housed and encouraged to steal has scattered."

"Has Mr. Matthewson tried to overtake the wagon?"

"Yes, he has men out in pursuit. If we can recover those fittings, Fairbanks, it will be a glad day for me and a lucky one for you."

But with the arrest of Cohen, his release on bail, bound over to appear before the September grand jury, the affair seemed ended.

The little fellow, Teddy, could not, or would not tell, much and was also released. Ike Slump's crowd melted away, and Ike Slump, and his tramp friend, and Cohen's two horses and wagon, and the boxed-up bra.s.s fittings, had vanished as completely as if the earth had opened and swallowed them up.

CHAPTER XXIII--BARDON, THE INSPECTOR

Matters dropped into a pleasant routine for Ralph, the two weeks succeeding his rather stormy introduction into active railroad life at the roundhouse of the Great Northern at Stanley Junction.

It was like a lull after the tempest. The youthful hoodlum gang that had been a menace to Ralph and the railroad company had been entirely broken up.

Tim Forgan was a changed man. He and the senior Slump had drifted apart, and the foreman's previous irascibility and suspicious gloom had departed. He was more brisk, natural and cheery, and Ralph believed and fervently hoped had given up the tippling habit which had at times made him a capricious slave to men and moods.

The lame helper had become a useful, pleasant chum to Ralph. There was not a day that he did not teach the novice some new and practical point in railroad experience.

Gasper Farrington Ralph had not met again.

At the cottage Van led an even, happy existence, making no trouble, being extremely useful and industrious, and daily more and more endearing himself to both Ralph and Mrs. Fairbanks.

With the dog house crowd Ralph had become a general favorite. He had won the regard of those rough and ready fellows, and his loyal adhesion to Griscom in the fire at the shops, his rescue of little Nora Forgan, and his manly, accommodating ways generally, had enforced their respect, and more than one dropped his oaths and coa.r.s.eness when Ralph approached, and they tipped over the liquor bottle of one of the "extras" who had the temerity to ask Ralph to test its contents.

Altogether, Ralph was going through a happy experience, and every day life and railroading seemed to develop some new charm of novelty and progress.