Page:Arthur Stringer - Gun Runner.djvu/335

 about the track in the darkness. The first was that the switch was locked. The closed padlock resisted his fiercest tugs and wrenches. He had to compel himself to calmness and demand of his jaded intelligence some more adequate means of attack.

He returned to the car, after a moment of thought, and groped about until he found one of the army-rifles lying between the cartridge-boxes. Then he felt his way back to the switch, and worked his gun-end carefully in through the lock-chain. It did not take him long, using his carbine-barrel as a crowbar, to pry and twist the lever free.

His second discovery was a more alarming one. Standing on the Guariqui track, blocking his way, was a flat-car. This car was piled high with roughly hewn sticks of logwood. To push any such dead weight as this ahead of them to Guariqui was out of the question. He knew it would have to be hauled back and sidetracked on the rails to the left. Whether or not it was beyond the strength of his motor only an actual test could tell.

He found a chain binding the logwood-pile together, and after a few minutes of hard work this chain was securely attached to his car-axle and hooked over the coupling-pin of the flat-car.