The fight for the possession of the Manchester and Truesdale Railroad divides itself naturally into two acts. During the first week, while it would be absurd to say that the acts of either side were legal, all the proceedings had worn the cloak of law. But now matters had come to a deadlock. Judge Grey was both able and willing to undo any or all of the acts of Judge Black, and conversely. The last event of the first act was the attempt on Tuesday morning of the C. & S.C. people, armed with writs from Black, to seize the books of the company. They were courteously received and the vaults were thrown open to their inspection; but as the books had been spirited away the night before, the search was fruitless. Porter and McNally had been beaten at their own game, and they withdrew their forces to Truesdale. The fight was to be kept up on other lines.

Wednesday morning, No. 7 on the C. & S.C. brought down a much larger number of passengers for Truesdale than ordinarily came on that train. They climbed down to the station platform from different cars, and regarded each other with studied indifference, but there was something homogeneous about the crowd that drew upon it the frankest stares of the station loafers. There were no women or children among them, they carried no baggage, and there was an air about them, carefully repressed but still discernible, which suggested that if any one were looking for trouble they were the men to whom to apply. They seemed to be trying to attract as little attention as possible, but they were followed by many curious glances, as they straggled in a long irregular line up the street toward the Truesdale Hotel.

Katherine had driven into town that morning, and from her high trap she watched the spectacle with amused interest. Seeing McNally coming out of the hotel office she pulled up her horses and nodded to him with a peremptory cordiality which left him no escape from coming to speak to her.

“So war is declared,” she said laughingly, nodding toward the rear guard who were disappearing in the hotel entrance. “I see you are massing your troops. Is that the entire army, or only a division?”

McNally tried to utter a protest, but she went on unheeding. “I think they're too absurdly comical for words. They try so hard to look as if they weren't spoiling for a fight.”

“Miss Porter,” said McNally, seriously, “your father's interests are at stake now and we must be discreet.”

“I suppose so,” she said; “but really those men are irresistibly funny.”

She gathered up the reins and the horses started, but as they moved away she turned and called back to him,—

“Be sure and come out to luncheon—that is, if you don't go to the front.”

The words troubled McNally. Only two days before he had been dragged out of his hiding-place in the Manchester station and kicked downstairs. This experience still occupied a large place in his thoughts, and he took Katherine's remark as a reflection on his personal courage. Though he had no idea of “going to the front,” he decided not to go to the Porters' for luncheon.

All that morning new people kept streaming into Truesdale. No. 22 brought in McDowell, a division superintendent on the C. & S.C. and other less important employees of the same road came in on every train. All over the city was the exciting premonition that something was going to happen. The army, as Katherine had called it, was reenforced by two fresh detachments brought in on the C. & S.C. from no one knew just where, but they were carefully guarded from being too much in evidence, and there was not the least disorder. When noon came and nothing had happened the tension relaxed a little, and the town returned to its accustomed quiet.

At the M. & T. station, however, the excitement increased, manifesting itself in many ways. The trains came in and went out on their scheduled time, and the routine work went on without variation, but there was a nervous alertness evident everywhere. Train crews stood in little knots about the platform and yards, speculating about the fight whose issue meant much to each of them, but in which they had not as yet been able to take a part. At one forty-five No. 14, which leaves Truesdale at two o'clock for Tillman City, St. Johns, and Manchester, backed down to the station to take on its passengers. Carse, the conductor, stood near the cab talking to the engineer and the fireman, keeping all the while an eye on the passengers.

“We're getting a big crowd to-day,” he observed. “That's McDowell of the C. & S.C. getting in the rear coach there. He's a mean brute. Ain't you glad we ain't under him, Downs?”

The engineer nodded emphatically, and climbing down from the cab, stood beside the conductor. “Seems to me,” he said, “there are a lot of C. & S.C. boys taking this train. I've spotted three or four already.”

“Say,” exclaimed Carse, “do you suppose they're going back to Manchester to have another shot at the old man? I brought them back from there yesterday on No. 5, and they were the sickest crowd you ever saw. The old man can give them just about all they want.”

He paused and glanced at his watch. “We pull out in thirty seconds,” he said. And at two o'clock No. 14 started northward on what was to prove a most eventful run in the history of the M. & T. The train rattled over the yard switches, slid creaking under the brakes down to the river, rumbled across the bridge, and then toiled up the first of the long grades between Truesdale and Sawyerville.

Carse was collecting tickets in the second car when suddenly it thrilled and trembled, and the train, with grinding squealing brakes, came to a stop. The conductor was all but thrown from his feet, but he staggered to the platform, and leaping down ran toward the engine, followed by an excited crowd of passengers.

“What's the matter?” he demanded of Downs, whom he found clambering out of the cab.

“That's what I want to know,” answered the engineer. “Didn't you pull the signal cord?”

“No,” said Carse, looking puzzled. “I wonder what's up.”

At that moment a man came forward from the group of passengers: it was McDowell. “I signalled you to stop,” he said.

Carse waited an instant for him to go on, and then asked impatiently, “Well, what's wrong?”

“Nothing that I know of,” said McDowell, easily. “I wanted the train to stop.”

Carse stepped toward him angrily. “I don't know whether you're drunk or not,” he said, “but that's a damned poor kind of a joke. You'll find that out as soon as we get to Sawyerville.”

“Oh, no, I won't,” said McDowell. “I'm superintendent of this road, and the first thing I'm going to do is to fire you. Haven,”—he called to one of the group behind him,—“you can take this train to Manchester.”

Another man pushed into the circle. He was Stewart, the sheriff of Evelyn County. “Mr. McDowell is quite right. Mr. Frederick McNally, the receiver of the road, appointed him this morning. And I now serve on you a writ from Judge Black—”

“See here,” interrupted Carse, “are you sheriff of Evelyn County or of the whole United States? You'd better keep out of this; the county line's about half a mile back.”

“We're wasting time,” said McDowell, shortly. “James and Mangan, take the engine. We'll take charge of this train, sir, county or no county.”

“Not if I can help it,” said Carse, under his breath. Then shouting, “Get away, boys; don't mind me,” he sprang upon McDowell, hitting out swift and hard, and in a second the two men were clinched and rolling in the sand. Downs took the hint and, leaping into the cab, let off the air brake and seized the throttle, while Berg, his big fireman, wrenched free from the two men who tried to hold him and rushed toward the cab. For a moment it looked as though No. 14 was going to get away.

But the first detachment of Mr. McNally's army was not at hand for nothing. Berg was pulled down from the step he had succeeded in reaching, and a blow from behind stretched him unconscious beside the track. Downs caught up the shovel which lay at his feet, and brought it down hard on a man who was climbing over the tender; then without turning he drove the handle squarely into the face of another who was standing on the step and trying to clutch his legs. But the odds were too great, and in a moment he was rushed back against the fire-box, and his arms were pinioned fast. McDowell had been freed from his assailant by two of his brawny supporters, and he rose to his feet with some difficulty; the blood was streaming down his face, but he was quite cool. Seeing that resistance was at an end, he called to the men in the engine:—

“Let up on that man; we don't want to kill him. Bring him down here.”

A moment later, he said: “Put bracelets on all three of them and take them into the smoker. Some of you stay around and see that they don't do any more mischief.” Then turning to the men he had already ordered to take charge of the train, he said: “All right, boys, let her go. We're nearly ten minutes late.”

McNally's plans were well laid; so well laid that McDowell's mistake in not stopping the train soon enough did not prevent their being carried out successfully. The sheriff of Malden County had been told what was expected of him, and he was waiting on the platform of the Sawyerville station when No. 14 pulled in. There had been no warning, there was no possibility of resistance, and everything moved as smoothly as clockwork. The writs were served, the telegraph office seized, and the M. & T. employees about the station replaced by McDowell's “boys” almost before the dazed incumbents knew what was happening. The new telegraph operator wired to McNally, who had already taken possession of the Truesdale terminal, telling him briefly of the fight for the train and the capture of Sawyerville. McNally sent back brief instructions for the conduct of the rest of the raid. They were told to make no attempt to keep schedule time, but to go slowly and cautiously, and to use as little violence as possible. Altogether McDowell had reason to feel well satisfied when he came out on the station platform ready to take his train on its unique journey up the road.

There stood near him a number of passengers gathered in an excited group, discussing the fight, the delay of the train, and the somewhat remote chance of getting to Manchester. One of them, a very stout man with deep-set, watery eyes and a florid complexion, recognized the Superintendent and turned to him.

“Are we likely to have to wait as long as this at every station?” he asked.

“I guess so,” answered McDowell, shortly.

“This is an outrage,” exclaimed the other, angrily. “I took this train for the purpose of getting to Manchester.”

“You'd better get aboard then,” said McDowell. “We're going to start now.”

His coolness exasperated the stout man, and he shouted after the Superintendent, “I won't submit to this. I tell you, you'll be sorry for it before I get through with you.”

McDowell paid no heed to the threat, and nodded Haven to go ahead; but a young telegraph operator, whose services were to be required further up the road, heard the words and shouted to the angry man:—

“If you don't want to take the train, there's probably a livery stable here, or else you can go to the hotel. It's a gold cure, but I guess they'd take you in.”

McDowell laughed and went into the car. He did not hear what his former passenger answered, and he did not care. He would probably have been less amused if he had known that the man was none other than State Senator “Sporty” Jones. It does not pay to enrage any man wantonly, and especially not a man who makes it his main principle in life to get even. And as any of his circumspect associates could inform you, Senator Sporty Jones was just such a man.

It was nearing six o'clock when No. 14 slowed down in the southern outskirts of Tillman City. The army, though depleted, was jubilant, and more than made up in esprit du corps what it had lost in numbers. The raid had so far been completely successful: all the stations had been seized, and the south-bound trains they had met had been held up and placed in charge of C. & S.C. employees. There had been no resistance worth mentioning, and they had prevented any warning of their coming from going up the line ahead of them. Tillman City was lying an unsuspecting prey, though fairly in their clutches.

Bill Stevens, the agent at Tillman, knew that something had gone wrong, for No. 14 was later than usual, and had not been reported from the last two stations; so when the drooping semaphore told him that she was in the block, he went out on the platform to find out what had happened. As the train came panting up to the station he saw two strange men in the cab instead of Downs and Berg, and this puzzled him more than ever.

The sheriff was the first man off the train; he walked straight up to the agent, and in two minutes the formalities were over. Stevens and his subordinates were discharged, and the ticket office and baggage room put in charge of the new employees with a celerity born of practice. A number of deputies under McDowell's orders scattered out to take possession of the roundhouse, the freight depot, and the yards.

Still standing on the platform in an excited crowd of raiders, former employees, and station loafers, was the agent. He was thinking fast, for he saw the importance of getting word to Manchester of what was happening along the line. The telegraph line was in the hands of the enemy, but a locomotive—It was worth a trial, anyway. There were three at Tillman: 33 that had just brought in No. 14, 7 on a siding waiting to take the train to Manchester, and 10, the regular yard engine. The two passenger engines were out of the question, for they were already well guarded, but the little switching locomotive lay at the northern end of the yard, and had not as yet been seized by the deputies. In the confusion, and aided by the gathering dusk of the early October evening, something might be done.

Glancing around, Stevens saw Murphy, the hostler, standing at his elbow. Without turning toward him he spoke softly.

“Murphy,” he said, “slip out of this crowd and follow me. I'm going to try to get away on 10. I want you to throw a switch for me.”

The hostler nodded without a word, and threaded his way after the agent to the edge of the platform. Once out of the glare of the station lights there was less need for caution, and the two men set out at a rapid walk toward the north end of the yards.

Suddenly a deputy came out from behind a freight car and laid a detaining hand on the agent's arm.

“What are you up to?” he demanded.

There was no word of reply, but Murphy's fist shot out, landing dully on the man's jaw, and without an outcry he sank inert on the sand.

The agent darted forward, keeping out of the heavy sand by bounding along the irregularly laid ties, and in a moment he was climbing into the cab of the switch engine.

“Thank God! there's steam and water,” he thought, and throwing over the reversing lever he grasped the throttle and came backing rapidly down the siding.

It was too dark for the men at the station to see perfectly what had happened, but they saw enough to excite their suspicion, and No. 33, which had already uncoupled from the train, ran up the main track to investigate. James and Mangan and a couple of deputies were in the cab.

Murphy had already thrown the switch and was standing beside it, holding a coupling pin in his hand, awaiting developments. The two locomotives were running right at each other, and unless somebody changed his mind very promptly a collision was inevitable; but the agent was in such a frame of mind that a smash-up was rather to his liking than otherwise, and he pulled the throttle a little wider open. He would waste no steam whistling, but grasping the hand rail he swung out from the cab and waved his free arm.

“Look out!” he yelled, “I'm coming.”

Furthermore it was obvious to the men in 33 that he meant to keep on coming, and as none of them had any wish to try conclusions, even with little No. 10, the big locomotive stopped short and went backing down the track, the deputies shouting to their comrades at the station for reenforcements.

No. 10 slowed down as she backed on to the main track, and as Murphy threw the switch she stopped and then moved forward. Stevens waited for Murphy, who left the switch open and climbed into the cab. Then with a clear track before her No. 10 went tearing down the long grade as fast as her dumpy little drivers would carry her.

Halfway to Byron is a milk shed with a short siding, and when they reached it Stevens shut down and stopped with a jerk.

“Get out,” he said to Murphy, “and throw over that switch and put out the lamp.”

As they started on again he said dryly, “When they strike that, it may teach 'em to go slow for the rest of the run.”

It was just six-seventeen by the station clock when Mason, the operator at Byron, heard No. 10 coming in. He ran out on the platform, but Stevens waved him back.

“Get in there,” he said as he dropped from the cab. “I want you to send a message quick.”