Page:Top-Notch Magazine, May 1 1915 (IA tn 1915 05 01).pdf/40

 Ruthven had trained his mind to quick action on many a hard-fought field. Now his wits worked with lightning rapidity. On foot he never could overhaul Morrison, with the speeder rushing along the clicking steel. How was he to follow with any hope of success?

He flashed a keen look around. Near the depot was a small shanty in which the section gang stored a hand car and tools. The shanty was open. There were no laborers about, but the hand car had been pushed out on the main track.

In six jumps Ruthven had reached the car. Running with it for a few yards, he gave it a start and then leaped upon it and caught the handlebars. At once he began to work with all his might, lifting and falling with the bars, and urging the car into a wild clip.

There was to be a race between the hand car and the speeder. Ruthven felt that he had never been in better trim to put up a good fight. And he still felt sure that he was going to lay hands on Weasel Morrison.

MILE east of Dry Wash the single track crossed a bridge. It was a long bridge and spanned a river that ran between wide, deep banks. Ruthven had hoped he might overtake Weasel Morrison before the chase brought them to the bridge, but he soon saw that the hope was not to be realized. The hand car was gaining upon the lighter speeder, because of the superior strength applied to the levers. The gain, however, was slow.

When Morrison was close to the end of the bridge, Ruthven, who was lifting and bending to his work with clocklike regularity, saw him hurl the satchel from the speeder into the bushes on the river bank. This seemed a very queer move for Morrison to make, and it was only by a chance that the man behind saw anything of it. The next moment the speeder was upon the bridge, and a little later the hand car rumbled out upon it. Perhaps half a minute afterward fate played a high card and brought that flight and pursuit to an unexpected termination.

Morrison, in great excitement, suddenly applied the brakes and brought the speeder to a quick stop. In the utmost alarm he piled off the velocipede and started to run back toward the western bank of the river. A view of Ruthven, rushing down upon him, caused him to pause.

For a brief space Ruthven marveled at these weird actions of the crook. Then, as a roar and rattle dinned in his ears above the rumble of the hand car, it flashed through his mind that a train was coming from the east. The approach of the train was screened by a bluff shoulder of rock beyond the end of the bridge, but that it was dangerously close there could be no doubt.

Morrison had been nearly two-thirds of the way across when he had halted the speeder, and Ruthven, as he bore down with all his weight on the foot brake, was nearly halfway over. Morrison, following an instant of indecision, whirled to make for the eastern bank of the river. Evidently he preferred taking chances with the oncoming train than with Ruthven. He was too late in executing this change of plan, however, for he had barely started his retreat when the nose of the engine pushed into sight around the curtain of rock.

Consternation seized Ruthven. The bridge was scarcely more than a trestle, and beyond the ends of the ties on either side there was nothing but space and the waters below. At intervals beams jutted out from the bridge, each beam supporting a barrel of water for emergency in case of fire. To get out