Chapter 10 QUEER COMRADES

So many sensational occurrences had marked the last twenty-four hours of Bart Stirling's career, that it seemed as though the accumulating series would never end.

It was a particularly ragged and miserable-looking arm, and why it could so summarily check, halt and hold the great magnate of Pleasantville, was the problem that now tried Bart's reasoning faculties.

Bart closed the door of the express office and stepped out to where he could get a clearer view of the colonel and his environment.

Suddenly the strain was removed. The colonel threw up his arms with a gasp. He started to turn around, clutched at his neck in a strangling kind of a way, tottered, reeled, and plunged forward on his face against a heap of cinders.

"This is serious," murmured Bart.

He rapidly covered the two hundred foot space between the express shed and the freight car.

"Colonel-Colonel Harrington!" he called in some alarm, kneeling by the prostrate body of his enemy.

Bart tried to pull him over on his back. As he partially succeeded, he noticed that the colonel's face was pitted, and in one or two places scratched and bleeding from contact with the cinder particles.

The bulky form was quivering and convulsed. The colonel had been dazed, it seemed, but not rendered entirely unconscious, for now with a groan he struggled to a sitting posture.

Bart drew out his handkerchief and tried to clean the dirt from the military man's face.

The colonel resisted, he swayed and mumbled. Then he groaned again as his eyes lit on the freight car.

"Get me away from here," he moaned-"get me away! What's happened to me?"

"That is what I was going to ask you," said Bart. "Don't you know?"

The colonel passed his hand over his face and mumbled, but made no coherent reply.

Bart glanced at the freight car. It afforded no evidence of present occupancy. He reflected for moment.

"Wait for just two minutes," he directed.

Running over to the drug store on the next street, he spoke a few words to the man in charge, and darted out again as the druggist hurried to his telephone to call up the livery stable.

When he got back to the colonel, Bart found the latter sitting propped up against the cinder heap, his eyes open, and breathing heavily, but still in a helpless kind of a daze.

He worked over the colonel, and finally got the man on his feet. His position was so unsteady, however, that he had to support him with one hand while he dusted off his clothes with the other.

As he stood trying to keep his charge on his feet, a cab rushed across the tracks. Its driver, bluff Bill Carey, nodded familiarly to Bart, and looked the colonel over critically. He got the latter into the cab in an experienced way.

"Same old complaint!" he intimated to Bart with a wink. "Drinks pretty heavily."

Bart leaned over into the cab.

"Colonel Harrington," he said, "do you wish to be driven home?"

The colonel gave him a fishy stare, groaned and put out a wavering hand.

"Come," he mumbled.

"Jump in," directed Carey. "You'll be useful explaining the 'fall' up at the house!"

As they went on their way, the young express agent experienced a striking sensation.

A topsy-turvy day of excitement was ending with the peculiar combination of his riding in the same carriage with his most bitter enemy, and acting the good Samaritan.

They proceeded slowly, or rather cautiously, for the popping and banging had recommenced all over town.

Carey had to keep the spirited horses in strong check as they passed groups of boys, reckless of the quantity of firecrackers they deliberately fired off as the team neared them.

Suddenly the horses were pulled to their haunches with a vociferous shout. The cab swerved and creaked, and the horses' hoofs beat an alarming tattoo on the cobblestones.

"Whoa! whoa!" yelled Bill Carey. "You young villains! get that infernal machine out of the way. Can't you see-"

Bart stuck his head out of the cab window to view an animated scene.

A fourteen-inch cannon cracker was hissing and spitting out smoke barely two feet ahead of the terrified horses in the middle of the street.

At that moment it exploded. The horses gave a wild snort, a frightened jerk at the reins.

Bart saw the staunch driver dragged from his seat. He lit on his feet, braced, but was pulled over, as, with a fierce tug, the horses snapped the line in two.

Then, unrestrained, the team shot down the street without guide or hindrance and with the speed of the wind.

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