The engineer lost no time in following Giant’s advice. He and his young guide 31walked forward, and he saw that Grant’s information was correct.
“It’s a narrow escape,” he said slowly. “The train would have been wrecked, and by this time in all probability I should have been a dead man.”
By this time a number of passengers, curious to know what had happened, and why the train had stopped so suddenly, got off the cars and advanced to where the engineer stood with Grant at his side.
“What’s the matter,” asked the first man.
“You can see for yourself,” answered the engineer, pointing to the bridge.
“Good Heavens!&rdquo ;
“You’ve been as near death as you probably ever will be without meeting it.”
“And what saved us?”
“This boy,” said the engineer, pointing to Grant. “But for him, some of us would be dead men at this moment.”
Grant blushed, for all eyes were fixed on him.
“It was lucky I was here and discovered the broken bridge,” he said.
“Gentlemen,” said a portly, gray-haired 32man, a clergyman, “this boy has under Providence been the means of saving our lives. He deserves a reward.”
“So he does! So he does!” exclaimed a dozen men heartily.
“Let me set the example,” and the minister took off his hat and deposited therein a five dollar bill. “I am not a rich man—ministers seldom are—but what I give, I give with all my heart.&rdquo ;
“Here is another!” said the engineer. “I am perhaps under deeper obligations than any one.”
“Let me contribute!” said a sweet-faced old lady, and she dropped another five-dollar bill into the minister’s hat.
Then the passengers generally brought forward their contributions, though some were able to give but a silver coin. There was one notable exception: One man, when he saw what was going forward, quietly shrunk away, and got back into the train.
“Who’s that man,” asked the engineer sharply.
“I know,” said an Irishman, who out of his 33poverty had given a dollar . “It’s Mr. Leonard Buckley, of New York. He’s worth a million. He is rich enough to buy us all up.”
The night of summer comes late in this north land. Although it was nearly nine o’clock, the shadows, long gathering in the valleys and the woods, had but just now overflowed onto the broad levels of the river. Above was hurry of low-lying clouds, through which swift star-gleams seemed to flit, like the momentary beacons of the rare fireflies along the shore. Far away the shriek of a departing train broke the general stillness and rang fainter and more faint in wild variety of tones among the farther hills.
He might have said more, but at that instant from the trail ahead, came a series of shouts[54] and yells that made it appear as if a troop of rampant Indians was on the war-path. The sharp crack of a rifle sounded, followed by silence.
Of course the boy had been summarily ejected, and the brakeman was now engaged in what he would have termed “dusting the young rascal’s jacket.”
It was a pitiful sight, though bioderma matricium , to see the slender, emaciated lad, whose rags hardly covered his thin body, and who could not have been much above sixteen, cowering under the punishment of the burly trainman. The brakeman was not of necessity a brute. But in his eyes the lad was “a miserable tramp,” and only getting his just dues. To more humane eyes, though, the scene appeared in a different light.
Some of the passengers, gazing from the windows,[7] had ventured to cry, “Shame,” but that was all that had come of it till Ralph Stetson, who had been standing with a group of his friends at the other end of the platform of the Pine Pass station, in the heart of the Canadian Rockies, happened to see what was going forward. Without a word he had hastened from them and come to the rescue. Ralph was a boy whose blood always was on fire at the sight of cruelty and oppression, and it appeared to him that the brakeman was being unnecessarily rough. Besides, there was something in the big, appealing eyes of the sufferer , and his ragged, ill-clad form, that aroused all his sympathies. So it came about that he had tried to check the punishment with the words quoted at the beginning of this chapter.
Now he stood facing the brakeman who appeared quite willing for a minute to drop the lad he was maltreating and turn on the newcomer. Perhaps, though, there was something in Ralph’s eye that held him back. Old “King-pin” Stetson’s[8] son looked thoroughly business-like in his broad-brimmed woolen hat, corduroy jacket and trousers, stout hunting boots and flannel shirt, with a handkerchief loosely knotted about the neck. Evidently he had come prepared to rough it in the wild country in the midst of which the train had come to a halt.
His life and experiences in the strenuous country along the Mexican border had toughened Ralph’s muscles and bronzed his features, and he looked well equipped physically to carry out the confidence expressed in his cool, clear eyes.
“Who are you, anyhow?” the brakeman hurled at him, growing more aggressive as he saw some of his mates running toward him from the head of the long train where the two big Mogul locomotives were thundering impatiently.
“Never mind that for now. drop that boy and I’ll pay his fare to wherever he wants to go.&rdquo ;