CHAPTER XXXV
Detail
A PLATFORM, a siding, a water-tank, a Wells-Fargo office, and a telegraph and ticket office, backed by three rough frame buildings, that is Detail on the Santa Fé.
Shortly after nightfall the steel ribbons of the Santa Fé began to hum. A headlight peered suspiciously round a shoulder of the eastern range, took heart of courage to find the plain still wrapped in peace, and trudged stolidly toward Detail, the engine, whose eye it was, pulling after it a string of freight cars, both flat and box.
At Detail the train paused. Its crew alighted and engaged in animated argument. Detail gathered that the excitement was due to the unaccountable disappearance of the caboose: none seemed to have any notion as to how it could have broken loose, yet missing it conspicuously was.
In the pause that followed, while a report was telegraphed to headquarters and instructions returned to proceed without delay, one of the trainmen spied a boyish figure lurking in the open door of an empty box-car. Cunningly boarding this car from the opposite side, the trainman caught the skulker unawares, and booted him vaingloriously into the night.
Shortly after the freight train had gone on its way a second headlight appeared in the east, swept swiftly across the plain, stopped at Detail an instant, and then proceeded to back onto the siding.
The second bird of passage proved to be a locomotive drawing a single car—a Pullman.
As the Pullman jolted across the frogs, however, the brakeman, interposing himself between it and the tender, released the coupling.
By the time that the Pullman had come to a full stop on the siding the locomotive was swinging westward like a scared jackrabbit. Then three men appeared on the Pullman's platform and shook impotent fists in the direction taken by the fugitive engine.
At the sound of a voice calling from the interior of the par—a voice strangely sonorous of tone—the three men ran back into the car and reported, with countenances variously apologetic, to a man wrapped in a steamer-rug and a cloud of fury.
While this was taking place, the person of boyish appearance, who had been keeping aloof and inconspicuous in the background of Detail ever since that unhappy affair with the trainman, stole up to the rear of the stalled Pullman, climbed aboard, and unceremoniously interrupted the conference just as the invalid was polishing off a rude but honest opinion of the intellectual calibre of one of the three, named Marrophat, who figured as his right-hand man and familiar genius.
"Amen to that!" the boyish person ejaculated. "There's many a true word spoken in wrath, Mr. Marrophat. Father forgot only one thing—your masterly way with a revolver. There's something downright uncanny in the way you can hit anything but what you aim at!"
To this Mr. Marrophat found nothing to say, but there was great eloquence in his manner of performing one of the minor gestures in the repertoire of every properly barefaced scoundrel—the trick known as biting the lip.
"Judith!" exclaimed the invalid. "Where did you drop from?"
"From that freight," Judith explained carelessly, neglecting to elucidate the exact fashion of drop. "I judged you'd be along presently, and thought I'd like to learn the news. Well, what luck?"
Her father shrugged with his one movable shoulder. The others shuffled uneasily.
"None?" Judith interpreted. "You don't mean to tell me that after I had cast the caboose loose on the middle of that trestle you didn't have the nerve to go through with the business!"
"We went through with it all right," replied Marrophat defensively, "but as usual they were too quick for us. They jumped out and dropped off the trestle before our engine hit the caboose. We smashed that to kindling wood, but they got away. It was dark and no telling which way they had run. We did our best," Marrophat continued. "We can't be blamed if something—somehow—always happens to tip the others off."
The girl swung to face him with blazing eyes. "Just what does that mean?" she demanded in a dangerous voice. But her eyes just then travelled past the person of Mr. Marrophat to the doorway of the drawing-room, and found it framing a stranger, a man of such huge bulk that his head must bow to pass beneath the lintel, while his shoulders all but touched both jambs. A heavy Colt's .45 hung level in his either hand.
"Excuse me, friends," he offered in a lazy, semi-humorous drawl. "It pains me considerable to butt in on this happy family gathering, but business is business, and I got to ask you all to please put up your hands!"
There was little to choose between the alacrity with which nine hands were elevated; but one, the right hand of the invalid, remained motionless. And this the intruder indicated with a significant jerk of one revolver.
"You, too, mister," he advised. "I'm sorry to, judge you're sickly, but I can't afford to play no favourites! Both hands is what I meant."
"Shoot," said the invalid, "if you like. The hand is paralyzed, even fear of death cannot move it. What do you want?"
"Why," drawled the bandit, "nothing in particular, only your cash. Shell out, if you please."
"One minute," the invalid interposed. "I guarantee you shall be amply satisfied. I give you my word—the word of Seneca Trine."
The eyes of the bandit widened. "No? Is that so? Seneca Trine, the railroad king? You ought to be able to pay something handsome"
"I'll pay you far more handsomely than you dream of if you'll do as I wish," Trine interrupted. "Do me the service I wish, and name your price, whatever it is, you shall have it! What's the life of a man worth in this neck of the woods?"
"How much you got?"
"I'll pay you ten thousand dollars for the life of the man I will name."
"Give me a thousand on account," said the other, "and a paper saying you'll pay me nineteen thousand more in exchange for one dead man, properly identified as the one you want, and your man's as good as dead this minute."
"Jimmy, find a thousand dollars for this gentleman. Make out the paper he indicates for the balance, and I'll sign it."
"Ain't you powerful trustful, Mr. Trine? How do you know I'll do anything more'n pocket that thousand and fade delicately away."
"My daughter and this gentleman, Mr. Marrophat, will accompany you."
"Oh, that's the way of it, is it?"
"Precisely!" Trine snapped.
"All right," he agreed at length, after a surprised recognition of Judith's femininity and a deliberately admiring review of her charms, "you're on as aforesaid."
"Name?" interjected the secretary.
"Slade," said the bandit, "James Slade, commonly known as Hopi Jim. That's me."
"Then attend closely, Mr. Slade," said Trine. "The man whose life I want is named Alan Law. He is running away with my daughter Rose, accompanied by a person named Barcus disguised as a Pullman porter"
"The three of them having recently escaped from a train wreck up yonder on the trestle?" Hopi Jim interposed.
"You've met them?" Judith demanded.
"About an hour ago," Hopi Jim replied, "a good ways down the road. They stopped and asked where they could get put up for the night. I directed 
JUDITH FELT THE FIRST QUICKENING OF LOVE FOR THE MAN SHE HAD MEANT TO KILL.
JUDITH AND HER GUIDE WERE PLUNGED INTO THE ICY WATERS.
Hopi Jim drifted away into the desert night, to return soon with horses and an assistant—one "Texas"—for whose utter innocence of scruples Mr. Slade unhesitatingly vouched.