HOW RUFUS TRAPPED THE BURGLARS.

BY WILLIAM HEMMINGWAY.

The squealing of dry snow under horses' hoofs awakened Rufus Walker. His room was the nearest to the turnpike crossing. Perhaps that was why he was the only sleeper in the railroad station at Winona to be aroused by the approaching sleigh. It was a sleigh, that was certain; for now Rufus could hear the smooth, easy, half-shuffling sound of the runners on the well-packed snow. Who could it be travelling at that time of night? The horses were going at a walk. Neither of them wore a bell. "Maybe some one has come to wake up father and send a telegram," thought Rufus, sleepily. But no, the sleigh bumped over the railroad tracks and passed on. The boy heard the shrill crunching of the snow a few times more, and then he fell asleep again. If he had only felt enough curiosity to get up and look out of the window he would have seen something to make his heart beat very fast indeed; but the cold air nipped the tip of his nose and made it numb, and he buried his face in the blankets and slept.

Rufus Walker's father was the station agent and telegraph operator at Winona, in the heart of a vast wheat-raising section of Dakota. For miles the country stretched away in gentle undulations. In the spring you looked out on a sea of waving, tossing green, crinkled and fretted by every passing breeze. In the fall the green sea had turned to gold, and those noisy ships, the mowing-machines, went clattering through it. Now the vast expanse lay white and still under its frosty blanket. The wheat harvest had been gathered into the barns, and for weeks little Rufus had heard the farmers talking about "number one hard," and "number one," and all the other varieties of the grain. Right opposite the station and across the railroad track stood a grain elevator. Its gigantic shape rose over the little station like a castle towering above a tiny cottage. The farmers for miles around would begin to haul wheat to the elevator to-morrow, for Mr. Price, Pillsbury's elevator superintendent, had arrived that day. He had brought a satchel full of packages of new crisp bank-notes, and fat little rolls of gold eagles and double-eagles. He always paid cash for the wheat as he bought it. That is the custom all through the wheat country.

The thick black bag of alligator-skin that held more than five thousand dollars was locked in the safe that stood in the office of the grain elevator. The money was the attraction that had brought the three men, who silently got out of the sleigh in the shadow of the tall building. They tied their horses to a ring near the office door, then stealthily crept through the snow to the railroad station.

Little Rufus Walker woke up with a start. A big man with a handkerchief tied across the lower part of his face was shaking him by the shoulder.

"How old are you, sonny?" asked the stranger.

"Ten years last August," Rufus answered, huskily.

"Well, you're old enough to have sense," said the man. "All you've got to do is to keep still. We're just goin' to relieve Mr. Price of that bag o' money. You keep still, d'ye hear?"

The big man strode out of Rufus's room and joined his two companions at the further end of the hallway. They had gathered Mr. Price, Rufus's father, Mrs. Walker, and big Tom Walker in one of the rooms. Evidently the strangers had awakened Rufus last of all. He sat up, shivering, with the blankets wrapped around him. His hair was standing up so straight that it seemed to bend backward. His teeth chattered.

"Where's the boy?" he heard a strange voice ask.

"Oh, I left him in his bed!" replied the voice of the big man. "He's no bigger than your thumb, and he—"

"Better bring him in here with the rest," said the strange voice.

"No; let him stay in his bed," said the big man's voice. "He ain't sizable enough to make trouble. He couldn't live to go two miles to the nearest house for help."

"All right," said the strange voice. "Now, Mr. Price, we don't aim to bust your safe. If you was a polite gentleman you'd just skip over and open her for us. However, we've got the little implements here, and we'll have her open in less than an hour fair an' easy. Bill, you keep these folks quiet till we whistle for you."

Rufus heard two men go down stairs. Then he heard them stamping through the snow toward the grain-elevator. There was silence for five minutes or so, and then he heard the "bink! bink! bink!" of hammers falling on steel wedges. Rufus suddenly wondered if he couldn't call help in a way the robbers hadn't thought of. He stealthily got out of bed and put on his coat, trousers, and thick woollen stockings. His heart fluttered and jumped so hard that he was afraid he'd lose it as he crept inch by inch to the stairs that led down to the ticket and telegraph office. How glad he was when at last he stole in there as silently as a ghost! How glad he was that his father had encouraged him to learn how to telegraph! He wasn't a fine operator yet, but he thought he could manage to telegraph something useful. Very slowly he pulled out the plug in the switchboard that cut in the instrument on the telegraph line. He threw over a little brass lever so that the noisy "sounder" was cut off from the "relay" instrument. He screwed the points of the relay down so fine that the instrument ticked no louder than a watch. He tightened up the key, too. From upstairs he could hear the gruff voice of the big robber as he made jokes at the expense of his victims. Rufus knew that the night train-despatcher at Springfield was always at the wire, so he telegraphed,

"Sg—Sg—Wn!"

That meant, "Springfield, Winona is calling you!"

In a moment the relay ticked out, "Ay—ay—Sg." That meant that the despatcher heard the call. Then Rufus, his fingers stiff from the cold and clumsy with fright, bravely ticked this message:

"3 robrs hv held us up. 2 are brkg opn safe in elevator, and 1 is guardg our ppl. Pls send help qk. Do you 13?"

This meant: "Three robbers have held us up. Two are breaking open the safe in the elevator, and one is guarding our people. Please send help quickly. Do you understand!"

The despatcher gave a quick "Ay, ay!" closed his key, and rushed out into the railroad yard. Within two minutes a locomotive was running westward toward Winona, eighteen miles away. Besides the engineer and fireman, there were four freight brakemen in the cab. Each one had a rifle. The engineer kept the throttle wide open until he was within a mile of Winona. Then he shut off steam.

"Her headway'll carry her a long way," he remarked to his companions, "and it's all down grade from here."

Within a quarter of a mile of Winona the fireman put all his strength on the brake-wheel and brought the engine to a stop. The four brakemen cautiously plodded up the track.

Little Rufus sat in the dark office, numb with cold and fear. Every sense was on the alert. He thought the glare of the moonlight in the snow would blind him as he gazed down the track, minute after minute, through a knothole in the shutter. At last he saw a black dot away down the track. The dot turned into four dots as it swung around the curve. They came nearer, and he could make out the burly figure of Tim Ryan and the other three brakemen, each with a gun resting across the hollow of his left arm. The four figures silently passed by the office window, and crossed over to the grain elevator. Rufus could still hear the "bink! bink! bink!" of the hammers on the steel wedges. If he had dared to follow, he would have enjoyed what happened. The door of the safe was almost off when the robbers heard Tim Ryan's soft voice bidding them "Be aisy, now, an' lift yere hands above yere heads!" The two thieves almost fell over in their surprise.

The fourth brakeman easily captured the lone robber upstairs. Little Rufus went up stairs as soon as the excited men stopped talking. When the three thieves had been tied hand and foot, and Rufus had explained to his father and mother how he had summoned help, everybody looked at him in surprise.

"Weren't you scared?" asked his father.

"So scared I could hardly hold on to the key," said Rufus. "But I was too scared to let go of it, too."