“Then excuse me for a moment,” said the colonel, while I go and order a sharp lookout.”
As he left the car the locomotive uttered its warning call for brakes. In another minute the train was at a stand-still, and several men were stripping off their clothing preparatory to diving in the stream alongside the track to search for the missing rails.
“That’s the way it goes,” sighed Billings, resignedly. “We’ve done nothing but make tracks for the last two days. But come, old man, now’s the chance to spin your yarn; out with it. All communications with a stamp enclosed regarded as strictly confidential, you understand.”
So Myles told his story in as few words as possible, beginning with the capture of Lieutenant Easter’s command and ending with his own thrilling ride of that morning.
As he finished Billings sprang to his feet, and, seizing his friend’s hand, shook it warmly, exclaiming with a seriousness unusual to him:
“My dear fellow, you are a perfect trump; a full-fledged hero—with wings and tail-feathers well developed! And to think that these duffers should have taken you for a striker after what you did for them. It’s no wonder you look tough after what you’ve gone through; but it’s an honorable toughness, and every splotch of mud on your face is honorable mud. You just wait till I tell the boys of the 50th what a _Phonograph_ reporter has done for them. If they don’t give you three fizz-booms and a Bengal tiger, then I’m a brass monkey, that’s all.”
“Oh, no,” protested Myles, “don’t tell them. It isn’t any thing to make a fuss about.”
“Isn’t it? Well, we’ll just give the boys a chance to express an opinion about that,” laughed Billings, with a touch of his old drawling manner as he left the car.
Myles still remained in the baggage-car, and the guard posted there when he was first brought in, but not yet relieved, now stepped up to him and said in a manly fashion:
“I could not help overhearing what you were talking about just now, Mr. Manning, and, if you will let me, I shall be proud to shake hands with you. It isn’t every day that I meet with the fellow who is willing to risk his own life for mine, and when I do I like to know him.”
What Billings told of his exploits Myles never knew, but while he was shaking hands with his guard the car door flew open and the “boys” came rushing in. Privates and men with shoulder-straps, all were eager for a look at and a word with the _Phonograph_ reporter who had rendered them so great a service that morning.