ow of cars. Wild looking men with rifles over their shoulders
and revolvers in their right hands tore open the carriage doors and
rushed quickly through the whole train.

"Dick, where's Forster?"

"Here," answered a rough voice.

"Off to the engine! Into the cars, quick! Are you ready? Is anyone
missing? Arthur! Where's Arthur?"

"Here, Dick!"

"Good work, Arthur, that's what I call good work," said the leader;
"well done, my boys! We're all right so far! Now for the rest of it."

Fighting Dick distributed his men among the different cars and then he
and Forster, formerly an engineer on the Northern Pacific, climbed into
the cab.

"They've made it easy for us," said Forster, "they've only just put
fresh coal on! We can start at once! And if it isn't my old engine at
that! I only hope we won't have to give her up! The Japs shan't have her
again, anyhow, even if she has to swallow some dynamite and cough a
little to prevent it."

"We're off," shouted Fighting Dick, whose fame as a desperado had spread
far beyond the borders of the State of Washington. With such men as
these we were destined to win back our native land. They were a wild
lot, but each of them was a hero: farmers, hunters, workmen from shop
and factory, numerous tramps and half-blooded Indian horse-thieves made
up the company. Only a few days ago Fighting Dick's band had had a
regular battle in the mountains with a troop of Japanese cavalry, and in
the woods of Tacoma more than one Japanese patrol had never found its
way back to the city. These little encounters were no doubt also
responsible for the strengthening of the Japanese garrison at Tacoma.

The thing to do now was to get the five thousand guns and ammunition
cases out of Tacoma by surprising the enemy.

Thus far, nothing but the explosion of the bomb at the Centralia station
could have betrayed the plot. It is true that the distant mountains had
sent the echoes of the detonation far and wide, but a single shot didn't
have much significance at a time like this when our country resounded
with the thunder of cannon day in day out!

The train rushed through the darkness at full speed. A misplaced switch,
a loose rail, might at any moment turn the whole train into a heap of
ruins and stop the beating of a hundred brave American hearts. The
headlight of Forster's engine lighted up the long rows of shining rails,
and in the silent woods on both sides of the track, beneath the branches
of the