Watkins went on with his questions, his eyes still fixed on the poor girl’s face, and all the time his fingers, as it were, playing with the key.  If he were imperturbable, so was not a man sitting at a receiving instrument nearly five hundred miles away.  He had “taken” but a few words when he jumped from his chair and cried: 

“Shut that door, and call the superintendent and be quick!  Charley, brace up—­lively—­and come and write this out!” With his wonderful electric pen, the handle several hundreds of miles long, Watkins, unknown to his interlocutor, was printing in the Morse alphabet this startling message: 

“Inform’n rec’d.  Perry gang going to throw No. 17 off track near —­xth mile-post, this division, about nine to-morrow (Thursday) night, kill passengers, and rob express and mail.  Am alone here.  No chance to verify story, but believe it to be on square.  Better make arrangements from your end to block game.  No Sheriff here now.  Answer.”

The superintendent, responding to the hasty summons, heard the message before the clerk had time to write it out.  His lips were closely compressed as he put his own hand on the key and sent these laconic sentences:  “O.  K. Keep perfectly dark.  Will manage from this end.”

Watkins, at Barker’s, rose from his seat, opened the door a little way, saw that the station was empty, and then said to the girl, brusquely, but kindly: 

“Sally, you’ve done the square thing, and saved that train.  I’ll take care that you don’t suffer and that you get well paid.  Now come home with me, and my wife will look out for you.”

“Oh! no,” cried the girl, shrinking back, “I must run away.  You’re mighty kind, but I daren’t go with you.”  Detecting a shade of doubt in his eye, she added:  “Don’t be afeared; I’ll die before they’ll know I’ve given them away to you!” and she disappeared in the darkness.

At the other end of the wire, the superintendent had quietly impressed secrecy on his operator and clerk, ordered his fast mare harnessed, and gone to his private office.

“Read that!” said he to his secretary.  “It was about time for some trouble of this kind, and now I’m going to let Uncle Sam take care of his mails.  If I don’t get to the reservation before the General’s turned in, I shall have to wake him up.  Wait for me, please.”

The gray mare made the six miles to the military reservation in just half an hour.  The General was smoking his last cigar, and was alert in an instant; and before the superintendent had finished the jorum of “hot Scotch” hospitably tendered, the orders had gone by wire to the commanding officer at Fort ------, some distance east of Barker’s, and been duly acknowledged.

Returning to the station, the superintendent remarked to the waiting secretary: 

“The General’s all right.  Of course we can’t tell that this is not a sell; but if those Perry hounds mean business they’ll get all the fight they want—­and if they’ve got any souls—­which I doubt—­may the Lord have mercy on them!”