The stranger watched him furtively, pistol in hand, swaying to and fro like a reed in the wind and grinning like a monkey.
"There, I hope you're satisfied now," muttered Grizzly.
"Of course I am," chuckled the ranchman; "only I rushed a dodge on you, for the pistol isn't loaded. You bit like a fish."
It was the turn of Grizzly to chuckle, however. As the fellow disappeared Mason came into sight again, and the twain chuckled over the deluded ranchman whose message would not go over the wires for many hours to come.
Towards ten o'clock things quieted down. Few messages went over the wires. It was only occasionally that the clicking told off some important train report from big centers. Grizzly looked and acted uneasy. He arose and strode about the room, looking out at the stormy night, stopping dead short in reflective halts, and glancing frequently at the clock, as though he was expecting somebody or something.
"You act as if you was watching for something to happen," suggested Mason, after a long spell of silence.
"I am," replied the operator. "See here, Mason; you know those wires overhead, I'm thinking?"
"On the tap of eleven I send the man on the north branch home for a good stop."
"Did you think I sent for you at twenty dollars a night for fun?"
"It's this serious: It's a wreck, and a bad one, but if it goes through it's a thousand dollars apiece for us."
Ralph pressed closer to his loophole of observation at the amazing announcement of Grizzly, the traitorous train dispatcher.
"A wreck, you say?" observed Mason, in a dubious and faint-hearted tone of voice.
"Oh, nobody will get hurt," declared Grizzly lightly. "What's the matter with you? Haven't you got any nerve? I said there was a thousand apiece in this, didn't I?"
"So, don't weaken about the knees when I give the word, but do just as I tell you. This affair to-night is a mere flyspeck to what's coming along in a week."
"Suppose--suppose we're found out?" suggested Mason.
"We get out, isn't that all? And we get out with good friends to take care of us, don't we?"
"I suppose that's so," admitted Mason, but he shifted about in his seat as if he was a good deal disturbed.
Grizzly glanced again at the clock. Then he returned to his instrument. In a minute or two his fingers worked the key. Ralph watched and listened with all his might. What the operator did was to notify the dispatcher at Wellsville that he might go off duty, signing headquarters. Before he did this he spoke a few quick words that Ralph did not catch. Mason had selected some tools from his bag, and at once went nimbly aloft among the cable wires.