Walker of the Secret Service/Chapter 1

Near the entrance of the great circus tent there was a little man in a canvas chair. He sat at the end of the long alley, which was hung with painted signs.

Nothing had escaped me.

I had no money to see any wonder, and so had to be content with what was displayed outside. It was early in the morning. The grass before the tents had not yet been trodden down; few persons were about, and I had the marvels of this fantastic alley to myself.

I had advanced slowly along every foot of it, and now I stood just beyond the roped-off entrance to the big tent, and the little man in the canvas chair.

There was something in the appearance of this man that drew my eye. He sat in the chair as though every muscle were relaxed, his eyes closed, his head drooping. Now and then he put up his hand and pressed the fingers over his face. It seemed a habit, as though his face had the sensation of being swollen.

No one disturbed him. He had been there for some time. I had noticed him at the end of the alley when I arrived, precisely in this posture, as of one worn out with some exertion.

I was looking at him as I had looked at the painted signs when the canvas of the big tent was thrust up and a man came out. He was a big young man in the overalls of a mechanic and he had some device in his hand like a dome-shaped metallic box.

He went directly to the man in the canvas chair.

“Mooney,” he said, “there’s something wrong with this damned thing; make it go.”

The little man opened his eyes without moving a muscle of his body. Then he put out his hand, took the metallic device, rested it on his knee, flicked a penknife out of his waistcoat pocket, and with a screw-driver blade took a plate off at the bottom of the thing. Then he adjusted something deftly inside, replaced the plate and returned the device to the mechanic.

It had taken only a moment; his fingers had moved with the precision of a pianist, and he had scarcely changed his position.

I had been greatly interested and had drawn a little closer. And when I looked up, the eyes of the big mechanic were on me; he had a hard, determined face and a sharp, piercing eye. I felt that he easily summed me up and had the measure of me. The little man in the canvas chair spoke as the mechanic turned away.

“White,” he said, “who’s it goin’ to be?”

“I don’t know yet,” replied the mechanic. “I’ll look ’em over.”

Then he disappeared under the circus tent.

I realized now that I was very close to the man in the canvas chair, and I stepped back across the green alley. A little group of tent hands were speaking as I came up.

“I wonder why they stick,” one of them was saying. “They can’t get much out of the boss for fixing these jimcracks. … The big one’s an expert mechanic and the dope Jimmy’s a wizard.”

It was late in the afternoon when I again saw the big mechanic.

The crowd from the circus was scattering. I had nowhere to go and was standing idly in the road when the man came up. He looked me over very carefully.

“Young fellow,” he said, “you don’t seem to be in much of a hurry; perhaps you could take a note over to the Red Sign Bar.”

I explained that I was a stranger in the town, but he pointed out very definitely how I could find the way.

“You will go into the bar,” he said, “and go straight through to the back room. There you will find the tired man who fixed the dynamo. Give him this note.”

He handed me a blank envelope sealed, and half a dollar. I needed the half dollar, for I was hungry. I had not a cent in the world and I had walked that afternoon ten miles into the town.

It was not possible to mistake the directions. I followed the road the circus wagons had made from the meadow where the tents were stretched, to the town. One could not miss the main street through it.

Presently I found the Red Sign Bar. The bar was crowded, so my passage was not marked. I opened the door at the end and went into a room.

Immediately the man sitting at the table sprang up.

On the table before him were a number of railroad folders and a map, and he was making some calculations on a blank sheet of paper.

He was the same man whom I had seen in the canvas chair in the alley of side shows before the big tent of the circus. But he was visibly changed. He was like a cat, incredibly active. His hands were in his pockets and he did not move after he was on his feet.

I closed the door and, going forward, put the envelope on the table.

“A gentleman out at the circus,” I said, “sent you this letter.”

He sat down with the same soft, quick feline motion, tore the envelope open with his finger and read the contents. But I had the feeling that while his eyes were on the paper they were also very carefully on me. Then suddenly he spoke.

“Do you know why White picked you?”

“Picked me for what?” I said.

He folded the paper over his finger and, reaching across the table, showed me the lower half of what the note contained.

It was written in pencil in a large clear hand:

He whisked the note back into his pocket.

“So you are going to help us,” he said. “You look like a husky youngster.”

I was completely puzzled, but, as you will presently realize, I was ready for almost any adventure. My first clash with organized society had left me bewildered, and ready for any revenge that might present itself.

The little nervous man, Mooney, regarded me searchingly for some moments before he spoke. Then he said:

“Damn the Mexican government! There is some of its money going south to-night. How would you like to have a piece of it?”

As I have said, I was ready for nearly any adventure, but especially an adventure directed against a government with which we had lately been at war, and which was still, one felt, a potential enemy.

I did not reply.

Mooney leaned back in his chair and regarded me for some time, his hand moving about his face.

“You will be a stranger here,” he said, “and a reliable person or White would have passed you up. He has the eye of the devil for seeing through a man. Here’s a dollar.”

He took a paper dollar out of his waistcoat pocket and handed it to me.

“Do two things,” he said, “and don’t talk; go out and get something to eat and after that hunt up a piece of quarter-inch pipe about two feet long; slip it up your coat sleeve and be at the entrance of the big circus tent at eight o’clock.”

I went out like a person who has suddenly fallen from the commonplace world into some story of the Arabian Nights.

There was about me and over the world a haze of adventure. The details of this adventure were not clear, but it was one directed against the crooked Mexican government, and it involved a treasure like the treasure of the sunken Armadas.

It was the alluring stuff of the storybooks. I was ready for it with these strange adventurers.

This state of feeling requires a word here.

After my father’s death, as I was now alone, I came down out of the great blue mountains to seek my fortune, as the storybooks say. I walked, and on the road I was overtaken by an adventure. Near a little village I passed one of those local trains, common to this country: an engine, one or two cars, and an old passenger coach. The highway passed close beside the track, and as I trudged along a fireman leaned out of the tender and called to me.

“Hey, Reuben,” he said, “ring your bell when you pass.”

I told him with some heat, that I would ring his neck if he came down out of his iron box, and I went on.

But the thing was not ended. The train presently pulled on and, as it passed, the fireman threw a lump of coal at me. I countered at him with a stone, that missed the tender and struck the passenger car behind it.

At the next village I was arrested and taken before a justice of the peace. There I was told that it was a felony, under the laws of the state, to throw a stone at a passenger train, and that the railroad intended to put me into the penitentiary.

“And what are you going to do with the fireman who threw a lump of coal at me?” I said.

“Nothing,” replied the justice. “He didn’t hit you.”

“Then you’ll not do anything with me,” I said, and I rose.

The little office of the Justice was at the end of the village. A railroad detective sat beside me; the fireman who had made the charge lolled in the door.

It all happened in a moment.

I threw off the railroad detective who caught at my arm and as the big fireman swung around into the door I struck him as hard as I could in the chest. He went crashing down the steps. I jumped through the door and ran. The railroad detective followed me, firing his pistol. But he was no match for my youth across the fields, and he was soon out of sight.

I turned back the way I had come, crossed to another highway; and here on this afternoon I was. I did not know how far I had traveled and hardly the direction. You will see then how ready I was for any adventure—and especially if a railroad was included. It had become, by virtue of the injustice of this incident, an enemy open to revenge.

I had no trouble to find a dinner, but I found myself beset with difficulty about the piece of pipe. I tramped about the town during the afternoon, but I could think of no place where a piece of quarter-inch pipe could be obtained. It did not occur to me to go to a plumbing shop, and if I had thought of that I would not have known what excuse to make for my purchase. Besides, I had no money. You will remember that I was young and extremely hungry and the dollar and a half had disappeared in carrying out Mooney’s first direction.

I thought I should have to give it up.

Finally in a blacksmith shop I found a rusted rod that had been part of a wagon brake. I asked the blacksmith to give it to me. Naturally, he wished to know what I was going to do with it, and for a moment I was in difficulty for an answer. Then I told him that they wanted such a piece of iron out at the circus, and had promised to give me a ticket in if I could find it. He laughed.

“I’m glad,” he said, “that there’s something else they want, if the elephant ain’t thirsty.”

He flung me the rod and wished that I might enjoy the circus.

I had it in my sleeve when White appeared in the grass alley before the circus entrance.

I got out of the crowd and followed him. It was now dark. We went around the big tent, through the stables for the horses, then struck out across the meadow in a direction opposite from the town.

I walked beside him with my piece of rod in my sleeve, very much as a child, it now seems to me, might set out on a fairy expedition with an all-abiding confidence in the resources of those conducting him, and with no clear idea of what he might come to, unconcerned and careless of events.

White had very few words during the long walk through the dark in the meadow.

“You are a husky youngster,” he said. “You could shove along a bull wagon or I miss my guess.”

He was correct in that estimate. I was a sturdy youngster, hardened by the out-of-doors. Physically I was developed, but I seemed in my conception of affairs to have been still a child, albeit approaching that stage of youth where, instantly, as by merely awaking in the morning, one becomes a man.

We came finally to the railroad track. There was a short switch with a little red house beside it. It was less a house than a sort of box with a low door. Leaning against this door, when we arrived, was Mooney.

He was smoking a cigarette; the tiny point of light had been visible to us as we approached.

“Young man,” he said, “did you bring the piece of pipe?”

I drew the rod out of my sleeve and handed it to him. He struck a match and examined the door; there was a padlock on it. He thrust the rod through the bow of the padlock and with a quick twist broke it out of the lock. Inside was a hand car, and then it was that I realized why these men were concerned to have what they called a “husky” assistant.

It was with difficulty that we were able to get the car on the track. Finally it was accomplished and we started away in the darkness. I knew nothing about the operation of a hand car, but I was quickly shown. We set out in the direction which I took to be south of the town. White and I on opposite sides pumped the car and Mooney squatted on the platform. He had under him what looked like a feed sack, filled with something that had a considerable bulk. He carried also the iron rod in his hand, but it had served his purpose. At the first stream we crossed he tossed it into the water.

It was a piece of possible evidence and he did not wish it to be picked up along the track. True, it connected neither him nor White with the thing which we were undertaking, but perhaps I might be remembered by it, and it was this man’s policy to leave no point at which any one could begin with his investigation.

We went on for some time into the night.

Once in a while we passed a house lighted in the distance, but no village and no dwelling near the track. There was hardly any sound except that of the car on the rails. I wondered at how still the world could be. For a long time we continued to move south, White and I at the pump handles of the car and Mooney, as I have said, squatted on the platform.

Suddenly in the silence he swore softly.

“What’s the matter?” said White.

The little nervous man replied, drawling out the words.

“It’s an ax,” he said. “We ought to have an ax.”

“That’s easy,” replied White. “We’ll pull up at the next house and send our young friend to borrow one.”

And they followed that plan. At a turn of the road we made out a house a few hundred yards above us on the slope of the hill. The car stopped and I went to borrow an ax.

I do not know how it happened that there was no dog about, for there are dogs at all these houses in the south. I looked outside, but there was no ax to be found. Then I looked in at the window.

There was a wood fire dying down in the fireplace, and a ladder leading to the loft. The person who lived there was evidently in his bed above. The man’s coat and boots were on the floor by the ladder, and beside the chimney there were some tools—a mattock, a hoe, and the ax for which I was looking. It was a hinged window secured on the inside by a button. The ax was safe from any method that I knew, and I went back to the hand car.

I told the men what I had found.

Mooney got up from his sack on the platform.

“My son,” he said, “I will show you something useful; let us go back for the ax.”

As we went along he took a newspaper out of his pocket and dipped it in a ditch until it was thoroughly wet. When we reached the window he spread the wet paper against the glass and with the pressure of his hand broke the pane out.

The broken glass stuck to the paper and it made almost no sound.

Then he put his hand through and unbuttoned the latch, opened the window and climbed in noiselessly like a cat, got the ax and came out.

We were very near to our destination, it proved, and in half an hour we reached a water tank. It was near a little creek and in a strip of wood. I had judged that we were on our way to a water tank from the few lines Mooney had shown me, and what he had said. The money of the Mexican government would be on a train that would stop here for water, and, like the pirates of the Spanish Main, it was our affair to capture the treasure.

We stopped. Mooney got down and removed from the car a bundle upon which he had been sitting. White and I upended the hand car and sent it down the embankment into the thick bushes; then we moved around behind the water tank to prepare for the undertaking.

The night had long ceased to be dark. There was no moon, but the sky was sown with stars, and there was a sort of faint white light in the world. We could see distinctly what we were about, even in the thicket behind the water tank, shaded somewhat by the wood. Here Mooney untied his bundle.

It contained three suits of overalls such as are worn by railroad men, blue trousers and a sort of blue coat; they were not new. Mooney was too clever a person, as I came afterward to realize, to make his party conspicuous by any new article.

This was the disguise for our bodies. For head covering Mooney had three sugar sacks dyed black, with round holes for the eyes and mouth. These we pulled over our heads. He had also an ordinary burlap feed sack—the “loot sack,” he called it.

Then he brought out the weapons.

He made a little speech about these weapons. They were the latest model of automatic pistols, each precisely like the others. He said it was a great mistake to go out with a different variety of weapons because in a protracted fight there could be no exchange of ammunition.

His voice drawled with nervous jerks at the end of it. He might have been lecturing to a Sunday school. He asked me if I understood the weapon. I did not understand it and said so.

“Well,” he said, “it is simple enough. You have only to pull the trigger and keep on pulling it; whatever happens will be over by the time you get to the last cartridge. Don’t worry about it, my son.”

He added another direction:

“Turn the muzzle up when you shoot; it don’t do any good to hit ’em.”

He made a little ridiculous gesture.

“The maneuvers of train robbing,” he said, “are directed against the mind.”

Then he explained what each of us was to do.

White was to use the ax in order to break in the door of the express car. He, Mooney, would be the gunman, and it was my part in the business to stand on the platform between the express car and the next passenger coach to keep back the conductor or any one else who might attempt to go forward into the train.

They seemed to know precisely what the trainmen would do, and were prepared to meet it. Either the man called White had watched this train on some previous night or he had taken some other precaution to discover precisely what would happen when the train stopped at the tank, for they went into their parts when the event arrived precisely as though they had drilled for it and were entering at the cue of some director.

We were hidden in the bushes close beside the tank when the train rolled in.

To me it seemed immense, gigantic, in the darkness. The blinding headlight, the roar, and grating of the brakes seemed to make a bewildering confusion. I think I should not have moved from the bushes, in such confusion was I thrown, had I not been between the two men; and as it happened, I got up with them.

We waited until the engine had taken water and the conductor and porter had made their round of the train; then we slipped out of our hiding place as the train pulled out. We swung on to the rear platform of the express car precisely at the moment that the porter climbed on to the steps of the same platform at the other side.

Mooney jammed his gun into the man’s face.

The porter nearly lost his hold on the rail of the car with terror.

“My God!” he muttered. “Don’t shoot.”

We must have presented every element of terror to him—the deadly weapons and the three looming figures in their black peaked caps.

“Keep still,” said Mooney. “Do what you are told and you won’t get hurt.”

White tried the door to the express car; it was open. He pitched away the ax, seized the porter by the shoulders, and he and Mooney rushed the express car, using the body of the terrorized porter for a shield against any bullet that might be fired.

To their surprise they found the baggage master, mail clerk and express messenger all sitting on the floor eating lunch from dinner buckets.

There was no resistance.

They all threw up their hands almost with a single motion.

“Which is the express messenger?” said Mooney.

“I am,” replied one of the men.

“I want what you have in the way box,” he said.

The messenger denied having anything.

“Give me your key and I will find out.”

Mooney went about the thing with deliberation. He unlocked the box, took out all packages, and put them in his loot sack. Then he left White to stand guard over the men while he took the mail clerk into the mail car to see what he could get there.

All this time I was standing at my post between the two cars looking through the glass door into the faces of the passengers. I could see the faces of the men before me clearly, for I was looking from the dark into the lamplight. Nevertheless I felt as though their eyes were fixed on me and each man had a weapon in his pocket; but no one moved toward my end of the car.

There was no suspicion of the events that were going forward a few feet beyond the door and I doubt, even if it had been known, whether any one would have taken the chance of coming out of the door.

I must have been a formidable, mysterious figure. Although the youngest, I was the largest of the three men, and with the pistol in my hand and the “spook cap,” as Mooney called it, it would have taken courage to have advanced against me.

It was the plan that when Mooney had finished with his work and had the loot in the sack ready to go he would pull the emergency air brake. This would stop the train instantly and we should all get off on the fireman’s side of the train. He had explained to us in his lecture behind the water tank that train officials always look on the engineer’s side when any trouble arises.

I do not know how it happened, but for some reason Mooney directed White to make this signal and by mistake he pulled the wrong cord.

That warned the engineer.

I felt the automatic air begin to clamp the brake shoes. The engineer blew four long sharp blasts to call the conductor forward. The conductor with the flagman at his heels started on the run. They had been sitting in the car before me, all the time under my eyes. Now they plunged through the door on to the platform.

I shouted at them as they advanced.

“Go back or I’ll shoot you to death.”

In my excitement I roared the words. They stopped suddenly like men who had come up against an invisible wall, dropped back through the door and closed it with a bang.

I heard Mooney call to me as he jumped down. I jumped with him.

By this time the train had stopped. The engineer was still blowing. The conductor had run to the rear of the train, it seems, when I had driven him back, and got a rifle, and was on the ground when I got off. He was shooting at Mooney and White as they disappeared through the bushes. He was almost up to me as I stood there on the step uncertain what to do. Then I remembered the direction Mooney had given, elevated the muzzle of the automatic and fired it in his face.

I did not hit him, but I got the result Mooney predicted.

He dropped the gun and fell back with a startled cry. I took the chance and plunged into the bushes after my companions. But my assault on his mind did not permanently disable him; he stooped over, groped for the rifle, got it in his hands, and began firing at me as I ran. Once he hit a tree so close to me that the splinters flew in my face, but in a moment I was covered by the wood.

I ran on for some distance and then squatted down behind a tree. But no one followed. For some time there were confused noises, voices scarcely audible at the distance; then the train moved on.

It was Mooney’s direction that after the train had passed we should return to the water tank. “It would be better to go back at once,” he said. There would be no posse for the train to leave, but later the authorities would be informed and search would be made for us.

I followed his direction.

But I must have gone farther than the others, for both he and White were behind the tank when I came up. He had lighted a little fire of twigs and leaves and in this we burned the “spook caps.” I did not see the “loot sack” and I asked him about the Mexican money.

“No luck, my son,” he said. “White had the wrong tip, but I am not a man to disappoint a lad. Here’s twenty dollars for you. Meet the circus at Marysville.”

He pointed out the direction through the fields.

I gave him back the automatic pistol and the railroad clothes and prepared to set out on my journey. It was not above half a dozen miles, he said, and I could not miss the way. He would show me. He climbed up on the crossbars of the water tank and pointed out the direction, the distant hilltop where I would find a turn of the road.

I was about to set out when he stopped me.

“Wait a moment,” he said, “and I will put you clear of the bloodhounds.”

He stooped and in the darkness carefully passed his hand over the soles of my shoes.

I went up the railroad track until I was clear of the wood, climbed the hill, and got down into the road. I had become an outlaw, a member of the most daring gang of train robbers in all the annals of that high-handed crime.