Sweeping Orders

The whole operating department of the road was stirred. What made the affair more dreadful was that it had occurred on the time of Number Six, the east-bound passenger train, held that morning at Sleepy Cat by an engine failure. Glover came to look into the matter. The testimony of all tended to one conclusion--that the quarry switch had been thrown at some time between four-thirty and five o'clock that morning. Inferences were many: tramps during the early summer had been unusually troublesome and many of them had been rigorously handled by trainmen; robbery might have been a motive, as the express cars on train Number Six carried heavy specie shipments from the coast.

Yet a means so horrible as well as so awkward and ineffective seemed unlike mountain outlaws. Strange men from headquarters were on the ground as soon as they could reach the wreck, men from the special-service department, and a stock inspector who greatly resembled Whispering Smith was on the ground looking into the brands of the wrecked cattle. Glover was much in consultation with him, and there were two or three of the division men, such as Anderson, Young, McCloud, and Lee, who knew him but could answer no inquiries concerning his long stay at the wreck.

A third and more exciting event soon put the quarry wreck into the background. Ten days afterward an east-bound passenger train was flagged in the night at Sugar Buttes, twelve miles west of Sleepy Cat. When the heavy train slowed up, two men boarded the engine and with pistols compelled the engineman to cut off the express cars and pull them to the water-tank a mile east of the station. Three men there in waiting forced the express car, blew open the safe, and the gang rode away half an hour later loaded with gold coin and currency.