Chapter IX: A Suspicious Discovery

"Explain yourself, Lacey," directed the young railroader.

"Nothing to explain--it's exactly as I say. That lad's a wonder."

"At telegraphing, you said."

"At telegraphing, I mean."

"How do you know?"

"Heard him, saw him."

"When, where?"

"Just a little bit ago up at the old switch tower. You know they left one or two broken instruments there when they moved the general outfit. Wires down, but one or two good sharp keys still in place. I was snoozing on the bench outside. Suddenly--click! click! Then the regular call. Then the emergency--say, I thought I was back at Dover with old Joslyn Drake, the crack operator of the Midland Central. You know I put in a year at the key. Not much at it myself, but you bet your life I can tell fine work. Why, that lad ran the roll like a veteran. Then he began on speed. I crept closer. There he was, thinking no one saw him, rattling the key till it pounded like a piston on a sixty mile an hour run."

Ralph was a good deal astonished. Glen was a pretty young fellow to line up in the way that Dan Lacey described. Then a kind of vague disagreeable idea came into the mind of the young railroader. He recalled the old grandfather and his two villainous associates, for such they had proved themselves to be the evening previous.

"Things are dovetailing in a queer sort of way," reflected Ralph. "Perhaps a little investigation will give me a clew as to those fellows who slipped me in the tunnel."

When he had gathered up the scattered grain Glen Palmer glanced uneasily all about him as if looking for Ike Slump. Then he became his natural self.

"I'm awfully glad to see you," he said to Ralph, "although it seems as if there's a fight or a smashup, or some outlandish thing on the books every time I meet you."

"Well that doesn't matter so long as you come out of it all right, eh, Glen?" propounded Ralph brightly.

"You're a good champion in the nick of time," declared Glen. "I wanted to see you, so I took the liberty of sending for you."

"Why didn't you come up to the house?"

"Oh, no! no!----" began Glen with a start. "That is--I don't go to town much. I've got some money for you. There are ten dollars. I'll have the balance Saturday."

Ralph accepted the bank bills which Glen extended.

"I'll hand this to Mr. Fry," he said. "You don't need to pay it now, though, Glen."

"Oh, yes, I want to get out of debt as fast as I can."

"You're starting out the right way to do it. Pretty quick action you got on your chicken deal, it seems to me."

"Oh, that was luck," explained Glen, brightening up. "There was one special lot among the chickens, about twenty-four of them. They were in a tier of the car that wasn't battered in the smash up. We got them all out safe and sound. They are of a rare breed--they call them Blue Cochins."

"Valuable?"

"I didn't know till after we got them down to the farm. A man driving by noticed them. They have black eyes instead of the usual red ones, and he said they were very scarce. The next day he came down and offered me five dollars each for two settings of their eggs. Think of it--nearly a half a dollar an egg. I delivered them yesterday, and the man said there are any number of people who would buy the eggs if they knew I had them, and about the choice breed."

"Why, this is interesting," said Ralph.

"Say, can't you come down and see my layout?" inquired Glen eagerly. "I'd be dreadfully glad."

"Why, I might," replied Ralph thoughtfully, consulting his watch.

"There's our chance, if you will," said Glen, grabbing the arm of his companion and indicating a short freight train just pulling off from a side switch. "It's three miles and a half to the farm, and that train goes within a short distance of it."

They ran for the train. It was composed of empties with a caboose attached. Aboard of this the boys clambered and sat down on the rear platform.

"I come down here for the sweepings every morning," said Glen. "To-day and one other day in the week there isn't much to get. One day I got over two bushels and a half, though."

"That's pretty fine," commented Ralph.

"It's a big item in my feed bill, I can tell you," declared Glen. "I've got a new arrangement in view, too--the grain inspector at Stanley Junction."

"Yes, I know him," nodded Ralph.

"Well, my good friend the flagman here introduced him day before yesterday, and he told me that all those little bags containing samples are thrown into a big bin and dumped into the dust heap when they're past inspection. After this he's going to have them left in the bin, and I'm going to arrange to have a cartman call once a week and haul the stuff out to the farm."

"Friends everywhere, eh, Glen," said Ralph encouragingly.

"I'm so glad!" murmured his companion in a low grateful tone.

The young railroader calculated that he could visit the farm and get back to Stanley Junction by noon time. At the end of a three miles' jerky run the train slowed down at a crossing and Ralph and Glen left it.

"There's the place," said the latter, as they reached the end of a grove, and he pointed to an old, low-built ruin of a house just ahead of them.

"They call it Desolation Patch around here. It's in litigation somehow, and no one has lived in it until we came for several years, they tell me."

"It does look rather ragged, for a fact," said Ralph. "How did you come to pick it out, Glen?"

"Oh, it was just the place I was looking for. You see," explained the boy in a slightly embarrassed way, "my grandfather is sort of--queer," and Glen pointed soberly to his head.

"Yes, I understand," nodded Ralph.

"I didn't want to take him to a town where he might be noticed and mightn't feel at home. Then there were reasons which--yes, some reasons."

Ralph did not ask what they were. The farm embraced some twenty acres. Its improvements were mostly rickety, broken down barns and sheds. These seemed to be utilized in the chicken industry to the last foot of available space, the interested visitor noticed. An enclosure formed of sections of old wire netting held over a hundred of the feathery brood, and some of the boxes obtained from the wreck had been made into brooding pens.

Then Ralph laughed outright as he noticed two, four, half a dozen chickens limping about cheerfully with a stick taking the place of one broken or missing foot, and at others with a wing in splints.

"What do you think of it?" inquired Glen eagerly.

"I think you're a rare genius," declared Ralph, slapping his companion heartily on the shoulder.

"There are some neighbors beyond here who have been awfully kind to us," proceeded Glen. "They gave us an old cooking stove and other kitchen things, and now that we have the chickens and eggs we can trade in the neighborhood for most everything we want. We have plenty to eat--oh, you did a big thing the day you went bail for me on this chicken deal."

Glen went into details about his business when they reached the house. He showed Ralph a book in which he had enumerated his various belongings. Then he made an estimate of what sixty days' chicken farming would result in. The exhibit made Ralph dizzy. It was fowls and eggs and multiples of fowls and eggs in exact but bewildering profusion.

"You're heading right, that's sure," applauded Ralph. "What's that room for?"

Ralph was glancing into an adjoining apartment with a great deal of curiosity and interest. He had never seen such a room before. It held two rudely-constructed tables, and attached to these were some old telegraph instruments, just like the abandoned ones down at the old division tower shanty. Pieces of wire ran to the ceiling of the room, but no farther. On the wall above one of the tables was a great sheet of paper covered with a skeleton outline system.

Somewhere Ralph had seen a picture of a rude frontier train dispatcher's office. This was almost a perfect counterpart of it. He fixed his eyes in questioning wonderment on his companion. Glen looked somewhat embarrassed and flushed up. Then with an affected laugh he said:

"This is my grandfather's den."

"But--the telegraph instruments, the wires?"

"Why, grandfather was once a telegrapher, a famous----" He checked himself. "This is his hobby, and I fixed up things to please him."

"How about yourself?" asked Ralph, with a keen glance at his companion, recalling what Dan Lacey had told him back at the switch shanty.

Glen eyed him steadily for a moment. Then his eyes faltered.

"My grandfather has taught me a lot about telegraphy," he admitted.

Ralph walked over to the chart on the wall. The young engineer had learned his Morse alphabet early in his railroad career, and knew something of the system in vogue along the line.

As his eye studied the rude scrawl made with a red pencil, Ralph at once discerned that its dotted lines denoted three divisions of a railway system. From separate dots he traced a line of towns. Above each was a designation, an initial, a double initial, sometimes an additional numeral.

"The mischief!" muttered the young railroad engineer under his breath, "this doesn't look much like a plaything outfit. Why, that is a perfect transcript of the routing chart in the train dispatcher's office at Stanley Junction."