The doors on the “off” side of the vestibule were locked, but Dorothy could peer through the glass. Directly beneath her she could see the broken top of the old army hat.
“He’s there!” gasped Dorothy, running back to Tavia. “Whatever shall we do about it?”
“I wish Lance was here,” said her friend. “He’d know what to do.”
“We can’t have men-folk around to help us out of all our troubles,” sniffed Dorothy.
“This isn’t trouble,” declared Tavia. “It’s really nothing to us——”
“But suppose the poor man should fall off?”
“We’re anxious for nothing, I wager,” said Tavia. “He is probably used to riding on car steps.”
“It’s such a narrow place,” groaned Dorothy. “He can’t more than cling to it. Oh! here’s a curve!”
They whirled around this corner and then over a long trestle that crossed a placid river. When the train did stop the girls did not see the tramp get off. All the stations chanced to be on the other side, as Killock had been.
The peril of the man whom Dorothy believed to be a fellow-soldier with her own father, Major Dale, was the uppermost topic in Dorothy’s mind and conversation. Tavia began to have another, and more personal, worry.
“I could eat a planked steak—plank and all!—right now,” said the flyaway. “Dear me, Doro! I wish your purse was like the widow’s cruse, and never gave out. There’s a buffet car on, too.”
They had to satisfy their appetites for the time being by buying some fruit from the train boy. But this was a poor substitute for planked steak—or any other hearty viand.
“I hope Aunt Winnie and Ned and Nat will wait for us at Sessions, as I asked them,” sighed Dorothy.
“If they don’t, we’ll have to steal a ride,” said Tavia, quickly. “Ned has our tickets, you know.”
But that was not a real worry. Dorothy was pretty sure her aunt and the boys would do just as she had asked them to do. What was happening outside that car, on the rear step, was a matter (so she thought) for real anxiety!
A dozen times she went back to peer through the window in the vestibule door and caught a glimpse of the top of the battered Grand Army hat.
Perhaps she went once too often—for the contentment of the old man who was cheating the railroad company of a fare. Or, it may have been in some other manner that the brakeman’s attention was called to the presence of the stowaway on the step. For he was discovered before the train reached the junction, at eleven o’clock, where Dorothy and Tavia were to leave the train.
The conductor had been through again and talked to them, and they had learned when and where to look for the station. Other passengers were already getting their baggage out of the racks, and putting on their light wraps.
Suddenly the two friends heard a disturbance at the end of the car. Tavia jumped up and looked back.
“Oh, Doro!” she cried, in a horrified tone, “they have him!”
Dorothy turned quickly and saw the brakeman drag the old tramp into the car and fling him into an end seat.
“How rough he is!” gasped Tavia, referring to the railroad employee.
Dorothy darted down the aisle. She would have interfered had the conductor not come at once and taken charge.
“On the step, eh? Well! he took his life in his hands,” grumbled the conductor. “Give him a drink of water, John. I expect he’s famished for it—chewing grit as he has been since we started.”
“Oh! what will you do with him?” cried Dorothy, clutching at the conductor’s sleeve.
“Nothing very bad, little lady,” assured the conductor, smiling at her. “We’ll hand him over to the railroad police at Sessions. They’ll take him to court.”
“Oh! must he be punished?”
“I am afraid so. The company’s pretty strict. He’s been stealing a ride and the magistrate will send him to the rockpile for that.”
“But he’s such an old man—and he’s a soldier,” whispered Dorothy, pointing to the button on the lapel of the old coat.
The conductor started and looked more closely. “It’s a Grand Army button—sure enough,” he muttered. Then he looked into the soot-lined face of the man and shook his head.
“Stole it, most likely,” was his comment, and went on through the car.
Dorothy did not believe that. The man’s eyes were dull, and it was evident that he was much exhausted. A traveling-man came up and offered him a drink from his pocket-flask. Dorothy was sorry to see how eagerly the trembling old hands went out for the spirits.
Soon color returned to the flabby cheeks, and a certain look of confidence to the old eyes, after the tramp had imbibed the liquor.
He was kept in the seat until the train stopped at the Sessions platform. Then, as the girls hurried out to find their friends, Dorothy saw the old man with the Grand Army button being taken off the car by two policemen in plain clothes.
“Dorothy Dale!”
“Tavia Travers!”
Two lusty shouts greeted the girls the moment they showed themselves upon the steps of the car. Ned and Nat White burst through the crowd outside and seized upon the two girls as they descended.
“Glory!” yelled Nat. “I could pound you girls, I’m so glad to see you. You had us scared stiff. And Little Mum will never get over it.”
“Not so bad as that,” rejoined his brother. “But you girls certainly managed to give us all a scare. I’d just as soon travel with two kids as with you graduates of Glenwood School.”
“Now, Neddie,” advised Tavia, “don’t put on airs.”
“We’re real sorry, boys,” admitted Dorothy. “But that old train went off and left us without saying one word!”
“I should think it did,” answered Ned. “And what business had you off of it?”
“It wasn’t we that went off,” declared Tavia. “It was the train that went off.”
“Where have you been all this time?” asked Nat. “How did you get here by an entirely different road? And who helped you?”
“Oh, there! now you’ve said something,” cried Tavia. “Just the very nicest young man. A cattle puncher by trade, and we rode fifty miles with him, and saw a Mrs. Little of gigantic size, and helped a young woman and her lover elope, and witnessed the ceremony while her father battered at the door and threatened to blow all our heads off—and were chased by the angry father thinking we were the elopers, and——”
“Stop her! stop her!” shouted Nat. “I know you girls can collect adventures as a magnet does steel filings, but you are going too far now. An elopement! and an angry father with a gun——”
“And our Grand Army man!” cried Dorothy, suddenly. “Where is he? We must do something to help him.”
“That’s so, Doro,” agreed Tavia. “We must find him.”
“Now they’re off again!” groaned Nat, looking helplessly at his brother.
“Where is Aunt Winnie?” demanded Dorothy, suddenly.
“She is at the hotel. And she’s gone to bed,” said Ned, gloomily. “You girls will give Little Mum the conniptions, if you’re not careful. She was awfully worried.”
“But you got our telegram?” cried Dorothy.
“Sure. But it read a good deal like the Irish foreman’s message to the widow of his fellow-countryman suddenly killed in the stone quarry: ‘Don’t worry about Pat. He’s only lost both legs and one arm; and if it wasn’t that his head was cut off, too, he’d be as good as ever.’ Your telegram gave just enough particulars to worry mother.”
“We’ll run and show her we are all right,” cried Tavia.
But Dorothy held back. Her eyes were fixed upon the ragged figure of the old tramp being led out of the station by the two policemen.
“Do you see that poor fellow, Ned?” she whispered. “He wears a Grand Army button—like father.”
“That tramp?” gasped Ned.
“Yes. But maybe he isn’t really a tramp. Only he stole a ride clear from Killock,” and s
he hastily told her cousins about the stowaway on the steps of the car. “And Ned!” added Dorothy Dale, “I want to save him from punishment. They are going to take him before the magistrate—and the conductor says the magistrate will send him to jail.”
“I expect so,” said Ned, slowly.
“Come, Ned!” exclaimed the girl, anxiously, shaking him by the sleeve. “Let Nat take Tavia to Aunt Winnie, and you come to court with me. Maybe we can help the poor old man. A Grand Army man, Ned!”
Ned White knew that there was no stopping his cousin when she had “taken the bit in her teeth.” And here was a case where she was greatly moved.
Nobody could gain Dorothy Dale’s sympathy like a Grand Army man. Ned merely shrugged his shoulders and went with her, while Nat and Tavia started in the other direction.
“Remember we go on the one o’clock train,” shouted Nat after them.
Dorothy and her cousin quickly caught up with the railroad police and their captive.
“Oh, please, sir!” cried Dorothy, to one of the officers, who had a very kind face, “where are you taking him?”
“Hello, Miss!” exclaimed the policeman, taking off his hat. “Are you interested in this old chap?”
Dorothy told him why, and how. “Oh!” said the railroad man, “I didn’t know but you knew him. He’s got to go to court, anyway.”
“Right away?” asked the girl, breathlessly.
“That’s where we are taking him, Miss,” said the other officer.
“May we go with you?”
“Of course you may. And if you want to say a good word for the old fellow to Judge Abbott, I’ll fix it so you can,” he added.
“That is so kind of you!” Dorothy said. “You see, he is a Grand Army man.”
“Mebbe he stole the button, Miss,” growled one of the police.
Dorothy turned swiftly to the prisoner. His old face was drawn and haggard. Dorothy put her finger upon the button on the frayed lapel of his coat.
“Where did you get that, sir?” she asked.
Almost instantly the dull eyes brightened. The sagging chin came up and the old shoulders were squared.
“It belongs to me, Miss,” he said, in a broken voice. “I am an army man—oh, yes! Thank you. I—I been in the Home; but I couldn’t stay indoor. So—so I ran away.”
“Ran away!” gasped Dorothy. “And where were you running to?”
“To the great out-of-doors,” whispered the old man. “I always lived in the open. I prospected, and I hunted, and I worked—all through these hills,” and he pointed westward.
“I suppose I did wrong in beating my way on the cars. But I’ve often done it,” confessed the old man. “I had no money for carfare. My pension’s turned over to the Home as is only right, I s’pose. But I got to get out into the open, or die!”
The two railroad police looked at each other, grimly. “What do you know about that?” one muttered. Dorothy was frankly crying.
“OUGHT HE TO BE A PRISONER WITH THAT BUTTON ON HIS COAT?” CRIED DOROTHY.
Dorothy Dale in the West Page 101
CHAPTER XI
AT DUGONNE AT LAST
“You see, Miss,” said one of the officers, “we got to take him to court. It’s as much as our job’s worth to let him go.”
“We’ll all go along,” said Ned, firmly. “Maybe the judge will be kind to him.”
“But they’ve got a bad law in this town,” said the other officer, shaking his head.
“What kind of a law?” asked Ned, quickly.
“In regard to vagrants. It’s three months on the stone pile, or with ball and chain. No getting out of it, unless the prisoner has money enough to buy a ticket that will take him fifty miles away, on one road or the other.”
“Why! that is barbarous!” exclaimed Dorothy.
“Dunno about that, Ma’am; but it’s the municipal ordinance.”
“Oh! the judge of the court must have some power,” cried Dorothy. “Do let me talk to him.”
The magistrate’s court was not far distant. Ned felt rather peculiar as he climbed the stairs in company with the prisoner and officers, holding Dorothy’s hand in the crook of his arm. There were some pretty rough looking characters on the stairs and hanging about the door of the magistrate’s court. But Ned and Dorothy pushed on in the wake of the railroad police and their prisoner.
Dorothy sympathized so deeply with the old man who had escaped from the discipline and routine of the Soldiers’ Home, that she paid little attention to her surroundings.
The courtroom was long, and ugly, and bare. The man sitting at the high desk at the end of the room, Dorothy knew, must be the magistrate. He was a young, smoothly shaven man, dressed very fashionably, and with a flower in his buttonhole. That flower was the single bright spot in all the somber place.
The railroad policeman looked knowingly at Dorothy, and she went forward with Ned. They were both allowed inside the railing. One of the officers spoke in a low tone to the magistrate, and the latter glanced interestedly at Dorothy.
Although Dorothy Dale had been traveling night and day for some time, she was too attractive a girl to lose all her bonny appearance under any circumstances.
The magistrate listened to the railroad detective. Then he called the poor old man to the bar.
“What is your name?” asked the magistrate.
“John Dempsey, your honor.”
“Without a home in this county, and no visible means of support, the officer says—is that right?”
“I—I—Yes, your honor.”
“And found riding on the train without a ticket?”
“I was, your honor.”
“Why? Why did you do it?”
“Sure, your honor, they treat me well enough at the Home; but I want to get out in the open. It’s stifled I am become by four walls.”
“But that does not explain away the fact that you stole a ride upon the complainant’s train?” said the magistrate, sternly.
Dorothy looked up at him pleadingly. John Dempsey was silent; he could not plead his own cause in speech as eloquent as Dorothy’s eyes pleaded for him! Judge Abbott beckoned the young girl to step up beside him.
“I understand you wish to speak in the prisoner’s behalf?” said the magistrate.
“Oh, Judge! ought he to be a prisoner with that button on his coat?” cried Dorothy Dale, impulsively. “He is an old Veteran—a man who fought for our country. I am sure Mr. Dempsey is a good man. Don’t punish him, Judge!”
“But, my dear young lady, how can I help it? He has committed a misdemeanor. He must either be sent to jail, or he must produce his fare out of town—and fifty miles out of town, at that!”
“Oh, sir! can’t somebody else pay his fare?” asked Dorothy, anxiously.
“Surely, Miss. Are you prepared to do so?”
“No, sir, not now. But I will take him away on the one o’clock train—I will indeed.”
“Very well. Sentence suspended. Paroled in your care,” added the judge to one of the railroad officers. “You have him at the station in season for the train, and the young lady will be responsible for his fare.”
Dorothy thanked him, but went eagerly to the prisoner.
“Where do you want to go, sir?” she asked.
“I—I—Well, Miss, it don’t so much matter as long as I git to go. I want to reach the hills.”
“You shall go with us as far as Dugonne, at least,” said Dorothy, impulsively. “I’m sure we can find something for him to do at the Hardin place, Ned?” she added, turning to her cousin.
Ned was more than a little startled by this. Things were moving rather too fast for him. But he managed to say:
“You—you’ll have to settle that with the mater, Dot.” But then he whispered: “What can an old fellow like him do on a ranch?”
“That’s all right,” Dorothy returned. “We’ll make him think he can do something.”
“You do beat all!” gasped her cousin, with astonishmen
t.
Dorothy shook hands with the judge, and with the railroad officers, and with John Dempsey. She scattered the sunshine of her smiles all about the dingy court room, and things seemed to brighten up for everybody.
Then she hurried with Ned to the hotel where Aunt Winnie was waiting.
“My dear girl!” said that good lady. “How you have worried me. And Tavia’s account of your adventures have not served to relieve our anxiety—much. Going to court with a tramp——”
“Not a tramp, Auntie!” interposed Dorothy Dale. “He is one of father’s old comrades. He is a Veteran.”
“I hope so. I hope you have not been imposed upon. But it will cost money——”
“You told me,” said Dorothy, earnestly, “that when we got to the Hardin place you’d buy a pony for my very own use. Take that money and pay John Dempsey’s fare. I don’t need a pony.”
Aunt Winnie kissed her. “My dear girl! I am afraid your sympathy will often lead you astray,” she said. “But you will stray in kindly paths. I do not believe there will be much serious harm for you that way.”
“What do you think of me?” broke in Tavia. “I am always going astray, too. At least, so they all tell me.”
“Your heart is all right, my dear Octavia,” said Mrs. White, smiling, “but it is your head that leads you astray,” she added, not unkindly.
They all went to the railroad station in good season, and there found the policeman and old John Dempsey waiting for them. The good-natured officer had improved the old man’s appearance considerably by having his clothing brushed and finding him the means for washing. Dempsey had likewise been fed.
He was a brown-faced, blue-eyed man of nearly seventy. The blue eyes had, perhaps, a wandering look, and the muscles about the old man’s mouth had weakened, but otherwise he was sturdy looking.
He saluted Dorothy when she hurried toward him, but took off his hat to Mrs. White.
“’Tis a pity, Ma’am,” he said, to the lady, “that you do be troubled by such as me. But I’m fair desp’rit! I’d take charity from anybody to git back into the open once more.
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