Chapter XXIII. Mr. Damon at Bay - Page 2

did not shrink in the least. He stood adamant in the doorway of the cab.

Finding little relief in bad language, the enemy made another attempt to climb up. For one thing, he was physically brave. He did not call on his companions to go where he feared to.

"I'll show you!" he bawled, and scrambled up the rungs of the ladder.

Mr. Damon did show him. He drew from some pocket a black object with a bulb and a long barrel. Somebody below on the cinder path shouted:

"Look out, boss lie's got a gun!"

At that moment the marauder reached out to seize Mr. Damon's coat. Then the object in Mr. Damon's hand spat a fine spray into the florid face of the enemy!

"Whoo! Achoo! By gosh!" bawled the big man, and he fell back screaming other ejaculations.

"Bless my face and eyes!" cried Mr. Damon. "What did I tell you? And you other fellows want to notice it. Tom Swift isn't here just at this precise moment; but he is guarding his locomotive just the same. He invented this ammonia pistol, and I should say it was effectual. Do you?"

The eccentric man was shrewd enough now to keep behind the jamb of the cab door. For some of these fellows, he realized, might be armed with more deadly weapons than his own.

"Hey, Mr. Lewis!" cried one big fellow, "d'you want we should get that fellow for you?"

"I want to know how badly that blamed thing is smashed," replied the big man with the dyed mustache savagely. "Where's O'Malley?"

"O'Malley's lit out, Boss, like I told you. That giant and them other fellows is after him."

"Break into that cab! Oh! My eyes! I'll kill that old fool! Break a way in there--What's that?"

In pain as he was, his other senses were alert. He was first to hear the screeching whistle of the on-coming freight.

"Think they got wind of this so quick?" demanded Montagne Lewis, for it was he. "Are they sending help from Cliff City?"

"It's a regular freight," returned one of his men.

"She's comm' a-whizzin'," added another. "Right down the eastbound track. If the crew see us--"

"Wait!" commanded Lewis. "Isn't that switch open?"

"You bet it is, Boss."

"Let it be, then," cried the chief plotter. "Let 'em run into it. That freight will smash up this electric locomotive more completely than we could possibly do it. Stand away, men, and let her go!"

A sharp curve in the right of way hid the siding, as well as the open switch into it, from the gaze of the engineer who held the throttle of the coming freight. His locomotive drew a string of empties, eastbound, and having had a heavy pull of it coming up the grade to Cliff City, as soon as he had got