How long Bucks lay in the darkness he did not know, but he woke to consciousness with thunder crashing in his ears and a flood of rain beating on his upturned face. When he opened his eyes he was blinded by sheets of lightning trembling across the sky, and he turned his face from the pelting rain until he could collect himself.

While he lay insensible from the shock of the bullet, which providentially had only grazed his scalp, the storm had burst over the mountains drowning everything before it. Water fell in torrents, and the desert below him was one wide river. Water danced and swam down the rocks and ran in broad, shallow waves over the sand, and the scene was light as day. Thunder peals crashed one upon another like salvoes of artillery, deafening and alarming the confused boy, and the rain poured without ceasing. Continuing waves of lightning revealed the railroad and station 210 building before him and he realized that he had fallen the rest of the way down from where he had been fired at on the face of the Point.

He took quick stock of his condition and, rising to his feet, found himself only sore and bruised. He pressed his way through the flood to the track, gained the platform, and, judging rightly that his assailants had abandoned their fight, entered the half-burned building unafraid. Rain poured in one corner where the roof had burned away before the storm had put out the fire.

Stumbling through the dÉbris that covered the floor, Bucks made his way to the operator’s table and put his hand up to cut in the lightning arrester. He was too late. The fire had taken everything ahead of him, and his hope of getting into communication with the despatchers was next dashed by the discovery that his instruments were wrecked.

He sat down––his chair was intact––much disheartened. But without delay he opened the drawer of the table and feeling for his box of cartridges found that the thieves had overlooked 211 it. This he slipped into his pocket with a feeling of relief, and, as he sat, rain-soaked and with the water dripping from his hair, he reloaded his revolver and made such preparations as he could to barricade the inner door and wait for the passing of the storm.

From time to time, awed by the fury of the elements, he looked into the night. It seemed as if the valley as far as he could see was a vast lake that rippled and danced over the rocks. Bucks had never conceived of a thunderstorm like this. Until it abated there was nothing he could do, and he sat in wretched discomfort, hour after hour, waiting for the night to pass and listening to the mighty roar of the waters as they swept broadside down the divide carrying everything ahead of them. Before daylight the violence of the storm wore itself away, but the creek in the little canyon south of the right-of-way, dashing its swollen bulk against the granite walls, pounded and roared with the fury of a cataract.

When day broke, ragged masses of gray cloud scudded low across the sky. The rain had ceased, 212 and in the operator’s room Bucks, aided by the first rays of daylight, was struggling to get the telegraph wires disentangled to send a message. His hopes, as the light increased and he saw the ruin caused by the fire, were very slender, but he kept busily at the wreckage and getting, at length, two severed strands of the wires to show a current, began sending his call, followed by a message for help to Medicine Bend. He worked at this for thirty minutes unceasingly, then, looking around on every side of the building, he satisfied himself that he was alone and, dropping down at his table, leaned upon it with his elbows, and, tired, wet, and begrimed, fell fast asleep.

He was roused by the distant whistle of a locomotive. Opening his eyes, he saw the sun streaming through the east side of the building where the window casement had burned away. Shaking off the heaviness of his slumber he hastened out to see an engine and box-car coming from the east. From the open door of the car men were waving their hats. Bucks answered by swinging his arm.

The engine stopped before the station and Bob Scott, followed by Dancing, Dave Hawk, and the train crew sprang from the caboose steps and surrounded him. They had brought two horses and Bucks saw that all the men were armed. It took only a minute to tell the story, and the party scattered to view the destruction and look for clues to the perpetrators.

Scott and Dancing were especially keen in their search, but they found nothing to suggest who the vandals were. They listened again to Bucks, as he repeated his story with more detail, and held a hurried conference in which Dave Hawk took charge. Meantime the men were tearing up planks from the platform to make a chute for unloading the horses.

Bucks’s excitement increased as he saw the businesslike preparations for the chase. “Have you any idea you can catch them, Bob?” he asked feverishly.

Bob Scott’s smile was not a complete answer. “How can you catch anybody in this country?” continued Bucks, regarding the scout sceptically. 214 But Scott looked across the interminable waste of sage-brush and rock as if he felt at home with it.

“If they stick to the wagon,” he explained leisurely, “we will have them in an hour or two, Bucks. A man might as well travel around here with a brass band as to try to get away with a wagon track behind him. If they stick to the wagon, we are bound to have them in two or three hours at most. You are sure they didn’t have a led horse?”

“They had nothing but the team,” said Bucks.

“In that case if they give up the wagon, three of them will have to ride two horses. They can’t go fast in that way. We will get some of them, Bucks, sure––somehow, sometime, somewhere. We have got to get them. How could I hold my job if I didn’t get them?”

That which had seemed impossible to Bucks looked more hopeful after Bob had smiled again. Dancing was busy installing the new telegraph outfit. While this was going on, Scott saddled the horses and, when he and Dave Hawk had mounted, the two rode rapidly down the emigrant trail toward Bitter Creek. The train was held until 215 Dancing could get the instruments working again; then, at Hawk’s request, it was sent down the Bitter Creek grade after himself and Scott; the trail followed the railroad for miles. Dancing remained with Bucks to guard against further attack.

The two railroad men rode carefully along the heavy ruts of the emigrant trail, from which all recent tracks had been obliterated by the flood, knowing that they would strike no sign of the wagon until it had been started after the storm. They had covered in this manner less than two miles when, rounding a little bend, they saw a covered emigrant wagon standing in the road not half a mile from the railroad track.

Scott led quickly toward concealment and from behind a shoulder of rock to which the two rode they could see that the wagon had been halted and the horses, strangely entangled in the harness, were lying in front of it. Scott and Hawk dismounted and, crawling up the shoulder where they could see without being seen, waited impatiently for some sign of life from the suspicious outfit. The description Bucks had given fitted the wagon very well, and the two lay for a time 216 waiting for something to happen, and exchanging speculations as to what the situation might mean. They were hoping that the thieves might, if they had gone away, return, and with this thought restrained their impatience.

“It may be a trick to get us up to shooting distance, Bob,” suggested Hawk when Scott proposed they should close in.

“But that wouldn’t explain why the horses are lying there in that way, Dave. Something else has happened. Those horses are dead; they haven’t moved. Suppose I circle the outfit,” suggested Scott benevolently.

“Take care they don’t get a shot at you.”

“If they can get a shot at me before I can at them they are welcome,” returned Scott as he picked up his bridle rein. “From what Bucks told me I don’t think a great deal of their shooting. He is a level-headed boy, that long-legged operator.” And Scott, with some quiet grimaces, recounted Bucks’s story of his descent of Point of Rocks the night before, under the fire of the three desperadoes.

That he himself was now taking his own life in his hands as he started on a perilous reconnoissance, cost him no thought. Such a situation he was quite used to. But for a green boy from the East to put up so unequal a fight seemed to the experienced scout a most humorous proceeding.

He mounted his horse and directing Hawk what to do if he should be hit, set out to ride completely around the suspected wagon. The canvas cover was the uncertain element in the situation. It might conceal nobody, and yet it might conceal three rifles waiting for an indiscreet pursuer to come within range. Scott, taking advantage of the uneven country, rode circumspectly to the south, keeping the object of his caution well in view, and at times, under cover of friendly rocks, getting up quite close to it.

Before he had completed half his ride he had satisfied himself as to the actual state of affairs. Yet his habitual caution led him to follow out his original purpose quite as carefully as if he had reached no conclusion. When he crossed the trail west of the wagon, he looked closely for fresh 218 tracks, but there were none. He then circled to the north and was soon able, by dismounting, to crawl under cover within a hundred yards of the heads of the horses. When he got up to where he could see without being seen he perceived clearly that his surmise had been correct.

Both horses lay dead in the harness. From the front seat of the wagon a boot protruded; nothing more could be seen. Scott now, by signals, summoned Dave Hawk from where he lay, and when the swarthy conductor reached the scout, Scott called out loudly at the wagon.

There was no answer, no movement, no sound. Things began to seem queer; in the bright blaze of sunshine, and with the parched desert glistening after the welcome rain, there in the midst of the vast amphitheatre of mountains lay the dead horses before the mysterious wagon. But nowhere about was any sign of life, and the wagon might hold within its white walls death for whoever should unwarily approach it.

Bob Scott had no idea, however, of sacrificing himself to any scheme that might have occurred 219 to the enemy to lure him within danger. He called out again at the top of his voice and demanded a surrender. No sound gave any response, and raising his rifle he sent a bullet through the extreme top of the canvas cover midway back from the driver’s seat.

The echoes of the report crashed back to the rocks, but brought nothing from the silence of the emigrant wagon. A second shot followed, tearing through the side board of the wagon-box itself; yet there was no answer. Scott, taking his horse, while Hawk remained in hiding and covered the scene with his own rifle, led the horse so that it served as a shelter and walked directly toward the wagon itself. As he neared it he approached from the front, pausing at times to survey what he saw. Hawk watched him lead his unwilling horse, trembling with fear, up to the dead team as they lay in the bright sunlight, and saw Scott take hold of the protruding boot, peer above it into the wagon itself and, without turning his head, beckon Hawk to come up.

Under the canvas, the driver of the wagon lay 220 dead with the lines clutched in his stiffened fingers, just as he had fallen when death struck his horses. The two frontiersmen needed no explanation of what they saw in the scarred and blackened face of the outlaw. A bolt of lightning had killed him and stricken both horses in the same instant. Bob crawled into the wagon and with Hawk’s help dragged the dead man forward into the sunlight. Both recognized him. It was Bucks’s assailant and enemy, the Medicine Bend and Spider Water gambler, Perry.