CHAPTER XXXVII

DOWN BRAKES!

Just as Kathleen flung her head in baffled vexation, and Mallory started to slink back to Marjorie, with another defeat, there came an abrupt shock as if that gigantic child to whom our railroad trains are toys, had reached down and laid violent hold on the Trans-American in full career.

Its smooth, swift flight became suddenly such a spasm of jars, shivers and thuds that Mallory cried:

"We're off the track."

He was sent flopping down the aisle like a bolster hurled through the car. He brought up with a sickening slam across the seat into which Marjorie had been jounced back with a breath-taking slam. And then Kathleen came flying backwards and landed in a heap on both of them.

Several of the other passengers were just returning from breakfast and they were shot and scattered all over the car as if a great chain of human beads had burst.

Women screamed, men yelled, and then while they were still struggling against the seats and one another, the train came to a halt.

"Thank God, we stopped in time!" Mallory gasped, as he tried to disengage himself and Marjorie from Kathleen.

The passengers began to regain their courage with their equilibrium. Little Jimmie Wellington had flown the whole length of the car, clinging to his wife as if she were Francesca da Rimini, and he Paolo, flitting through Inferno. The flight ended at the stateroom door with such a thump that Mrs. Fosdick was sure a detective had come for her at last, and with a battering ram.

But when Jimmie got back breath enough to talk, he remembered the train-stopping excitement of the day before and called out:

"Has Mrs. Mallory lost that pup again?"

Everybody laughed uproariously at this. People will laugh at anything or nothing when they have been frightened almost to death and suddenly relieved of anxiety.

Everybody was cracking a joke at Marjorie's expense. Everybody felt a good-natured grudge against her for being such a mystery. The car was ringing with hilarity, when the porter came stumbling in and paused at the door, with eyes all white, hands waving frantically, and lips flapping like flannel, in a vain effort to speak.

The passengers stopped laughing at Marjorie, to laugh at the porter. Ashton sang out:

"What's the matter with you, Porter? Are you trying to crow?"

Everybody roared at this, till the porter finally managed to articulate:

"T-t-t-train rob-rob-robbers!"

Silence shut down as if the whole crowd had been smitten with paralysis. From somewhere outside and ahead came a pop-popping as of firecrackers. Everybody thought, "Revolvers!" The reports were mingled with barbaric yells that turned the marrow in every bone to snow.

These regions are full of historic terror. All along the Nevada route the conductor, the brakemen and old travelers had pointed out scene after scene where the Indians had slaked the thirst of the arid land with white man's blood. Ashton, who had traveled this way many times, had made himself fascinatingly horrifying the evening before and ruined several breakfasts that morning in the dining-car, by regaling the passengers with stories of pioneer ordeals, men and women massacred in burning wagons, or dragged away to fiendish cruelty and obscene torture, staked out supine on burning wastes with eyelids cut off, bound down within reach of rattlesnakes, subjected to every misery that human deviltry could devise.

Ashton had brought his fellow passengers to a state of ecstatic excitability, and, like many a recounter of burglar stories at night, had tuned his own nerves to high tension.

The violent stopping of the train, the heart-shaking yells and shots outside, found the passengers already apt to respond without delay to the appeals of fright. After the first hush of dread, came the reaction to panic.

Each passenger showed his own panic in his own way. Ashton whirled round and round, like a horse with the blind staggers, then bolted down the aisle, knocking aside men and women. He climbed on a seat, pulled down an upper berth, and, scrambling into it, tried to shut it on himself. Mrs. Whitcomb was so frightened that she assailed Ashton with fury and seizing his feet, dragged him back into the aisle, and beat him with her fists, demanding that he protect her and save her for Sammy's sake.

Mrs. Fosdick, rushing out of her stateroom and not finding her luscious-eyed husband, laid hold of Jimmie Wellington and ordered him to go to the rescue of her spouse. Mrs. Wellington tore her hands loose, crying: "Let him go, madam. He has a wife of his own to defend."

Jimmie was trying to pour out dying messages, and only sputtering, forgetting that he had put his watch in his mouth to hide it, though its chain was still attached to his waistcoat.

Anne Gattle, who had read much about Chinese atrocities to missionaries, gave herself up to death, yet rejoiced greatly that she had provided a timely man to lean on and should not have to enter Paradise a spinster, providing she could manage to convert Ira in the next few seconds, before it was everlastingly too late. She was begging her first heathen to join her in a gospel hymn. But Ira was roaring curses like a pirate captain in a hurricane, and swearing that the villains should not rob him of his bride.

Mrs. Temple wrung her twitching hands and tried to drag her husband to his knees, crying:

"Oh, Walter, Walter, won't you please say a prayer?--a good strong prayer?"

But the preacher was so confused that he answered: "What's the use of prayer in an emergency like this?"

"Walter!" she shrieked.

"I'm on my va-vacation, you know," he stammered.

Marjorie was trying at the same time to compel Mallory to crawl under a seat and to find a place to hide Snoozleums, whom she was warning not to say a word. Snoozleums, understanding only that his mistress was in some distress, refused to stay in his basket and kept offering his services and his attentions.

Suddenly Marjorie realized that Kathleen was trying to faint in Mallory's arms, and forgot everything else in a determined effort to prevent her.

After the first blood-sweat of abject fright had begun to cool, the passengers came to realize that the invaders were not after lives, but loot. Then came a panic of miserly effort to conceal treasure.

Kathleen, finding herself banished from Mallory's protection, ran to Mrs. Whitcomb, who had given Ashton up as a hopeless task.

"What shall we do, oh, what, oh what shall we do, dear Mrs. Wellington?" she cried.

"Don't you dare call me Mrs. Wellington!" Mrs. Whitcomb screamed; then she began to flutter. "But we'd better hide what we can. I hope the rah-rah-robbers are ge-gentlemen-men."

She pushed a diamond locket containing a small portrait of Sammy into her back hair, leaving part of the chain dangling. Then she tried to stuff a large handbag into her stocking.

Mrs. Fosdick found her husband at last, for he made a wild dash to her side, embraced her, called her his wife and defied all the powers of Nevada to tear them apart. He had a brilliant idea. In order to save his fat wallet from capture, he tossed it through an open window. It fell at the feet of one of the robbers as he ran along the side of the car, shooting at such heads as were put out of windows. He picked it up and dropped it into the feed-bag he had swung at his side. Then running on, he clambered over the brass rail of the observation platform and entered the rear of the train, as his confederate, driving the conductor ahead of him, forged his way aft from the front, while a third masquerader aligned the engineer, the fireman, the brakeman and the baggagemen.