Bart ran as he had never run before. The train cleared the tracks as he
reached the spot where Wacker had disappeared.
At that moment above the jangling, clumping activity of the yards there
arose on the night air one frightful, piercing shriek.
Bart halted with a nameless shock, for the utterance was distinctly
human and curdling. He glanced after the receding train, fancying that
Wacker might have got caught under the cars and was being dragged along
with them.
That roadbed was clear, however. Two hundred feet to the right was a
second train. Its forward section was moving off, having just thrown
some cars against others stationary on a siding.
Bart ran towards these. Wacker could not have so suddenly disappeared in
any other direction. He crossed between bumpers, and glanced eagerly all
around. There was no hiding-place nearer than the repair shops, and they
were five hundred feet distant.
Wacker could not possibly have reached their precincts in the limited
space of time afforded since Bart had last lost sight of him.
"He is hiding in some of those cars," decided Bart, "or he has swung
onto the bumpers of the section pulling out--hark!"
Bart pricked up his ears.
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