CHAPTER XL

A HERO IN SPITE OF HIMSELF

Passion sent Mallory into the unequal fight with two armed and desperate outlaws. But reason had planned the way. He had been studying the robber all the time, as if the villain were a war-map, studying his gestures, his way of turning, and how he held the revolver. He had noted that the man, as he frisked the passengers, did not keep his finger on the trigger, but on the guard.

Marjorie's little battle threw the desperado off his balance a trifle; as he recovered, Mallory struck him, and swept him on over against the back of a seat. At the same instant, Mallory's right hand went like lightning to the trigger guard, and gripped the fingers in a vise of steel, while he drove the man's elbow back against his side. Mallory's left hand meanwhile flung around his enemy's neck, and gave him a spinning fall that sent his left hand out for balance. It fell across the back of the seat, and Mallory pinioned it with elbow and knee before it could escape.

All in the same crowded moment, his left knuckles jolted the man's chin in air, and so bewildered him that his muscles relaxed enough for Mallory's right fingers to squirm their way to the trigger, and aim the gun at the other robber, and finally to get entire control of it.

The thing had happened in such a flash that the second outlaw could hardly believe his eyes. The shriek of the astounded passengers, and the grunt of Mallory's prisoner, as he crashed backward, woke him to the need for action. He caught his other gun from its holster, and made ready for a double volley, but there was nothing to aim at. Mallory was crouched in the seat, and almost perfectly covered by a human shield.

Still, from force of habit and foolhardy pluck, Bill aimed at Mallory's right eyebrow, just abaft Jake's right ear, and shouted his old motto:

"Hands up! you!"

"Hands up yourself!" answered Mallory, and his victim, shuddering at the fierce look in his comrade's eyes, gasped: "For God's sake, don't shoot, Bill!"

Even then the fellow stood his ground, and debated the issue, till Mallory threw such ringing determination into one last: "Hands up, or by God, I'll fire!" that he caved in, lifted his fingers from the triggers, turned the guns up, and slowly raised both hands above his head.

A profound "Ah!" of relief soughed through the car, and Mallory, still keeping his eye on Bill, got down cautiously from the seat. The moment he released Jake's left hand, it darted to the holster where his second gun was waiting. But before he could clutch the butt of it, Mallory jabbed the muzzle of his own revolver in the man's back, and growled: "Put 'em up!" And the robber's left hand joined the right in air, while Mallory's left hand lifted the revolver, and took possession of it.

Mallory stood for a moment, breathing hard and a little incredulous at his own swift, sweet triumph. Then he made an effort to speak as if this sort of thing were quite common with him, as if he overpowered a pair of outlaws every morning before breakfast, but his voice cracked as he said, in a drawing-room tone:

"Dr. Temple, would you mind relieving that man of those guns?"

Dr. Temple was so set up by this distinction that he answered: "Not by a----"

"Walter!" Mrs. Temple checked him, before he could utter the beautiful word, and Dr. Temple looked at her almost reproachfully, as he sighed: "Golly, I should like to swear just once more."

Then he reached up and disarmed the man who had taken his wallet and his wife's keepsakes. But the doctor was not half so happy over the recovery of his property as over the unbelievable luxury of finding himself taking two revolvers away from a masked train-robber.

American children breathe in this desperado romance with their earliest traditions, and Dr. Temple felt all his boyhood zest surge back with a boy's tremendous rapture in a deed of derring-do. And now nothing could check his swagger, as he said to Mallory:

"What shall we do with these dam-ned sinners?"

He felt like apologizing for the clerical relapse into a pulpitism, but Mallory answered briskly: "We'd better take them into the smoking room. They scare the ladies. But first, will the conductor take those bags and distribute the contents to their rightful owners?"

The conductor was proud to act as lieutenant to this Lieutenant, and he quickly relieved the robbers of their loot-kits.

Mallory smiled. "Don't give anybody my things," and then he jabbed his robber with one of the revolvers, and commanded: "Forward, march!"

The little triumphal procession moved off, with Bill in the lead, followed by Dr. Temple, looking like a whole field battery, followed by Jake, followed by Mallory, followed by the porter and as many of the other passengers as could crowd into the smoking room.

The rest went after those opulent feed-bags.