Bart Stirling's Road to Success by Allen Chapman

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[Illustration: A PIECE OF ROPE WAS LOOPED DEFTLY ABOUT BART'S ARMS.
_Bart Stirling's Road to Success Page_ 217]

BART STIRLING'S ROAD TO SUCCESS

Or

The Young Express Agent

BY ALLEN CHAPMAN

AUTHOR OF "THE HEROES OF THE SCHOOL," "NED WILDING'S DISAPPEARANCE,"
"FRANK ROSCOE'S SECRET," "FENN MASTERSON'S DISCOVERY," "BART KEENE'S
HUNTING DAYS," ETC., ETC.

NEW YORK
CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY
1908

* * * * *

THE BOYS' POCKET LIBRARY

BY ALLEN CHAPMAN

Cloth. Illustrated. Price per volume, 35 cents, postpaid.

THE HEROES OF THE SCHOOL
NED WILDING'S DISAPPEARANCE
FRANK ROSCOE'S SECRET
FENN MASTERSON'S DISCOVERY
BART KEENE'S HUNTING DAYS
BART STIRLING'S ROAD TO SUCCESS
WORKING HARD TO WIN
BOUND TO SUCCEED
THE YOUNG STOREKEEPER
NED BORDEN'S FIND

CUPPLES & LEON CO, Publishers, New York

* * * * *

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I. THE THIRD OF JULY
II. "WAKING THE NATIVES"
III. COUNTING THE COST
IV. BLIND FOR LIFE
V. READY FOR BUSINESS
VI. GETTING "SATISFACTION"
VII. WAITING FOR TROUBLE
VIII. THE YOUNG EXPRESS AGENT
IX. COLONEL JEPTHA HARRINGTON
X. QUEER COMRADES
XI. "FORGET IT!"
XII. THE MYSTERIOUS MR. BAKER
XIII. "HIGHER STILL!"
XIV. MRS. HARRINGTON'S TRUNK
XV. AN EARLY "CALL"
XVI. AT FAULT
XVII. A FAINT CLEW
XVIII. A DUMB FRIEND
XIX. FOOLING THE ENEMY
XX. BART ON THE ROAD
XXI. A LIMB OF THE LAW
XXII. BART STIRLING, AUCTIONEER
XXIII. "GOING, GOING, GONE!"
XXIV. MR. BAKER'S BID
XXV. A NIGHT MESSAGE
XXVI. ON THE MIDNIGHT EXPRESS
XXVII. LATE VISITORS
XXVIII. THIRTY SECONDS OF TWELVE
XXIX. BROUGHT TO TIME
XXX. "STILL HIGHER!"

* * * * *

BART STIRLING'S ROAD TO SUCCESS

CHAPTER I

THE THIRD OF JULY

"You can't go in that room."

"Why can't I?"

"Because that's the orders; and you can't smoke in this room."

Bart Stirling spoke in a definite, manly fashion.

Lemuel Wacker dropped his hand from the door knob on which it rested,
and put his pipe in his pocket, but his shoulders hunched up and his
unpleasant face began to scowl.

"Ho!" he snorted derisively, "official of the company, eh? Running
things, eh?"

"I am--for the time being," retorted Bart, cheerfully.

"Well," said Wacker, with an ugly sidelong look, "I don't take
insolence from anyone with the big head. I reckon ten year's service
with the B. & M. entitles a man to know his rights."

"Very active service just now, Mr. Wacker?" insinuated Bart pleasantly.

Lem Wacker flushed and winced, for the pointed question struck home.

"I don't want no mistering!" he growled. "Lem's good enough for me. And
I don't take no call-down from any stuck-up kid, I want you to
understand that."

"You'd better get to the crossing if you're making any pretense of real
work," suggested Bart just then.

As he spoke Bart pointed through the open window across the tracks to
the switch shanty at the side of the street crossing.

A train was coming. Mr. Lemuel Wacker was "subbing" as extra for the
superannuated old cripple whose sole duty was to wave a flag as trains
went by. To this duty Wacker sprang with alacrity.

Bart dismissed the man from his mind, and, whistling a cheery tune, bent
over the book in which he had been writing for the past twenty minutes.

This was the register of the local express office of the B. & M., and
at present, as Bart had said, he was "running it."

The express shed was a one-story, substantial frame building having two
rooms. It stood in the center of a network of tracks close to the
freight depot and switch tower, and a platform ran its length front and
rear.

Framed by the window an active railroad panorama spread out, and beyond
that view the quaint town of Pleasantville.

Bart had spent all his young life here. He knew every nook and corner of
the place, and nearly every man, woman and child in the village.

Pleasantville did not belie its name to Bart's way of thinking. He voted
its people, its surroundings, and life in general there, as pleasant as
could well be.

Here he was born, and he had found nothing to complain of, although he
was what might be called a poor boy.

There were his mother, his two sisters and two small brothers at home,
and sometimes it took a good deal to go around, but Bart's father had a
steady job, and Bart himself was an agreeable, willing boy, just at the
threshold of doing something to earn a living and wide-awake for the
earliest opportunity.

Mr. Stirling had been express agent for the B. & M. for eight years,
and was counted a reliable, efficient employee of the company.

For some months, however, his health had not been of the best, and Bart
had been glad when he was impressed into service to relieve his father
when laid up with his occasional foe, the rheumatism, or to watch the
office at mealtimes.

Bart was on duty in this regard at the present time. It was about five
in the afternoon, but it was also the third of July, and that date, like
the twenty-fourth of December, was the busiest in the calendar for the
little express office.

All the afternoon Bart had worked at the desk or helped in getting out
packages and boxes for delivery.

A little handcart was among the office equipment, and very often Bart
did light delivering. On this especial day, however, in addition to the
regular freight, Fourth of July and general picnic and celebration goods
more than trebled the usual volume, and they had hired a local teamster
to assist them.

With the 4:20 train came a new consignment. The back room was now nearly
full of cases of fruit, a grand boxed-up display of fireworks for
Colonel Harrington, the village magnate, another for a local club, some
minor boxes for private family use, and extra orders from the city for
the village storekeepers.

It was an unusual and highly inflammable heap, and when tired Mr.
Sterling went home to snatch a bite of something to eat, and lazy Lem
Wacker came strolling into the place, pipe in full blast, Bart had not
hesitated to exercise his brief authority. A spark among that tinder
pile would mean sure and swift destruction. Besides, light-fingered Lem
Wacker was not to be trusted where things lay around loose.

So Bart had squelched him promptly and properly. The man for whom "Lem"
was good enough, was in his opinion pretty nearly good for nothing.

Bart made the last entry in the register with a satisfied smile and
strolled to the door stretching himself.

"Everything in apple-pie order so far as the books go," he observed. "I
expect it will be big hustle and bustle for an hour or two in the
morning, though."

Lem Wacker came slouching along. It was six o'clock, the quitting hour.
Lem was always on time on such occasions. The whistle from the shops had
ceased echoing, and, his dinner pail on his arm and filling his
inevitable pipe, he paused for a moment.

"Going to shut up shop?" he inquired with affected carelessness.

"I am going home, if that's what you mean," replied Bart--"as soon as my
father comes."

"Not feeling very well lately, eh?" continued Lem, his eyes roving in a
covetous way over the cozy office and the comfortable railroad armchair
Mr. Stirling used. "No wonder, he takes it too hard."

"Does he?" retorted Bart.

"You bet he does. Wish I had his job. I'd make people wait to suit my
ideas. How's the company to know or care if you break your neck to
accommodate people? Too honest, too."

"A man can't be too honest," asserted Bart.

"Can't he? Say, I'm an old railroader, I am, and I know the ropes. Why,
when I was running the express office at Corydon, we sampled everything
that came in. Crate of bananas--we had many a lunch, apples, cigars,
once in a while a live chicken, and always a couple of turkeys at
holiday time."

"And who paid for them?" inquired Bart bluntly.

"We didn't, and no questions asked."

"I am afraid your ideas will not make much impression on my father, if
that is what you are getting at," observed Bart, turning unceremoniously
from Wacker.

"Humph! you fellows ought to run a backwoods post office," disgustedly
grunted the latter, as he made off.

Bart had only to wait ten minutes when his father appeared. Except for a
slight limp and some pallor in his face, Mr. Stirling seemed in his
prime. He had kindly eyes and was always pleasant and smiling, even when
in pain.

"Well! well!" he cried briskly, with a gratified glance at his son after
looking over the register, "all the real hard work is done, the work
that always worries me, with my poor eyesight. Come up to the paymaster,
young man! There's an advance till salary day, and well you've earned
it."

Mr. Stirling took some money from his pocket. There was a silver dollar
and some loose change. Bart looked pleased, then quite grave, and he put
his hand resolutely behind him.

"I can't take it, father," he said. "You have a hard enough time, and I
ought to pay you for the experience I'm getting here instead of being
paid."

"Young man," spoke Mr. Stirling with affected sternness, but a
twinkling in his eye, "you take your half-pay, make tracks, enjoy
yourself, and don't worry about a trifle of a dollar or two. If you
happen to drop around this way about nine o'clock, I'll be glad of your
company home."

He slipped the money into Bart's pocket and playfully pushed him through
the doorway. Bart's heart was pretty full. He was alive with tenderness
and love for this loyal, patient parent who had not been over kindly
handled by the world in a money way.

Then a dozen loud explosions over on the hill, followed by boyish shouts
of enthusiasm, made Bart remember that he was a boy, with all a boy's
lively interest in the Fourth of July foremost in his thoughts, and he
bounded down the tracks like a whirlwind.

CHAPTER II

"WAKING THE NATIVES!"

Turning the corner of the in-freight house Bart came to a quick halt.

He had nearly run down a man who sat between the rails tying his shoe.

The minute Bart set his eyes on the fellow he remembered having seen him
twice before--both times in this vicinity, both times looking wretched,
dejected and frightened.

The man started up, frightened now. He was about forty years old, very
shabby and threadbare in his attire, his thin pale face nearly covered
with a thick shock of hair and full black beard.

"Hello!" challenged Bart promptly.

"Oh, it's you, young Stirling," muttered the man, the haunted expression
in his eyes giving way to one of relief.

"Found a job yet?" asked Bart.

"I--haven't exactly been looking for work," responded the man, in an
embarrassed way.

"I should think you would," suggested Bart.

"See here," spoke the man, livening up suddenly. "I'll talk with you,
because you're the only friend I've found hereabouts. I'm in trouble,
and you can call it hiding if you like. I'm grateful to you for the help
you gave me the other night, for I was pretty nigh starved. But I don't
think you'd better notice me much, for I'm no good to anybody, and I
hope you won't call attention to my hanging around here."

"Why should I?" inquired Bart, getting interested. "I want to help you,
not harm you. I feel sorry for you, and I'd like to know a little more."

A tear coursed down the man's forlorn face and he shook his head
dejectedly.

"You can't sleep forever in empty freight cars, picking up scraps to
live on, you know," said Bart.

"I'll live there till I find what I came to Pleasantville to find!"
cried the man in a sudden passion. Then his emotion died down suddenly
and he fell to trembling all over, and cast hasty looks around as if
frightened at his own words.

"Don't mind me," he choked up, starting suddenly away. "I'm crazy, I
guess! I know I'm about as miserable an object as there is in the
world."

Bart ran after him, drawing a quarter from his pocket. He detained the
man by seizing his arm.

"See here," he said, "you take that, and any time you're hungry just go
up to the house and tell my mother, will you?"

"Bless her--and you, too!" murmured the man, with a hoarse catch in his
throat. "I'll take the money, for I need it desperately bad, but don't
you fret--it will come back. Yes! it will come back, double, the day I
catch the man who squeezed all the comfort out of my life!"

He dashed away with a strange cry. Bart, half decided that he was
demented, watched him disappear in the direction of a cheap eating house
just beyond the tracks, and started homewards more or less sobered and
thoughtful over the peculiar incident.

It was nearly eight o'clock when Bart got through with his supper, did
his house chores, mended a broken toy pistol for one junior brother,
made up a list of purchases of torpedoes, baby-crackers and punk for the
other, and helped his sisters in various ways.

Bart was soon in the midst of the fray. Every live boy in Pleasantville
was in evidence about the village pleasure grounds, the common and the
hill. Group after group greeted Bart with excited exclamations. He was a
general favorite with the small boys, always ready to assist or advise
them, and an acknowledged leader with those of his own age.

He soon found himself quite active in devising and assisting various
minor displays of squibs, rockets and colored lights. Then he got mixed
up in a general rush for the sheer top of the hill amid the excited
announcement that something unusual was going on there.

The crowd was met by a current of juvenile humanity.

"Run!" shouted an excited voice, "she's going off."

"No, she ain't," pronounced another scoffingly--"ain't lighted yet--no
one's got the nerve to do it."

Bart recognized the last speaker as Dale Wacker, a nephew of Lem. He had
noticed a little earlier his big brother, Ira, a loutish, overgrown
fellow who had gone around with his hands in his pockets sneering at the
innocent fun the smaller boys were indulging in, and bragging about his
own especial Fourth of July supply of fireworks which were to come from
some mysterious source not clearly defined. The Wacker brothers belonged
to a crowd Bart did not train with usually, but as Dale espied him and
seized his arm energetically, Bart did not draw away, respecting the
occasion and its courtesies.

"You're the very fellow!" declared Dale.

"You bet he is!" cried two others, crowding up and slapping Bart on the
back. "He won't crawfish. Give him the punk, Dale."

The person addressed extended a lighted piece of punk.

"Yes, take it, Stirling," he said. "Show him, boys."

"Yes, you'll have to show me," suggested Bart significantly. "What's the
mystery, anyhow?"

"No mystery at all," answered Dale, "only a surprise. See it--well, it's
loaded."

"Clean to the muzzle!" bubbled over an excited urchin.

They were all pointing to the top of the hill. Bart understood, for
clearly outlined against the light of the rising moon stood the grim old
sentinel that had done duty as a patriotic reminder of the Civil War for
many a year.

"Old Hurricane" the relic cannon had been dubbed when what was left of
Company C, Second Infantry, came marching back home in the sixties.

There was not a boy in town who had not straddled the black ungainly
relic, or tried to lift the heavy cannon balls that symmetrically
surrounded its base support.

Two years before, Colonel Harrington had erected at his own expense a
lofty flagpole at the side of the cannon and donated an elegant flag.
Every Washington's Birthday and Fourth of July since, this site had been
the center of all public patriotic festivities, and the headquarters for
celebrating for juvenile Pleasantville.

Bart was a little startled as he comprehended what was in the wind. He
thrilled a trifle; his eyes sparkled brightly.

"It's all right, Stirling," assured Dale Wacker. "We cleaned out the
barrel and we've rammed home a good solid charge, with a long fuse ready
to light. Guess it will stir up the sleepy old town for once, hey?"

Bart was in for any harmless sport, yet he fumbled the lighted piece of
punk undecidedly.

"I don't know about this, fellows"--he began.

"Oh! don't spoil the fun, Stirling," pleaded little Ned Sawyer, a rare
favorite with Bart. "We asked one-legged Dacy on the quiet. He was in
the war, and he says the gun can't burst, or anything."

The crowd kept pushing Bart forward in eager excitement.

"Why don't you light it yourself?" inquired Bart of Dale.

"I've sprained my foot--limping now," explained young Wacker. "She may
kick, you see, and soon as you light her you want to scoot."

"Go ahead, Bart! touch her off," implored little Sawyer, quivering with
excitement.

"Whoop! hurrah!" yelled a frantic chorus as Bart took a voluntary step
up the hill.

That decided him--patriotism was in the air and he was fully infected.
One or two of the larger boys advanced with him, but halted at a safe
distance, while the younger ones danced about and stuck their fingers in
their ears, screaming.

Bart got to the side of the cannon. It was silhouetted in the landscape
on a slight slant towards the stately mansion and grounds of Colonel
Harrington, in full view at all times of the magnate who had improved
its surroundings.

Bart made out a long fuse trailing three feet or more over the side of
the old fieldpiece. He blew the punk to a bright glow.

"Ready!" he called back merrily over his shoulder.

The hillside vibrated with the flutter of expectant juvenile humanity
and a vast babel of half-suppressed excited voices.

Bart applied the punk, there was a fizz, a sharp hiss, a writhing worm
of quick flame, and then came a fearful report that split the air like
the crack of doom.

CHAPTER III

COUNTING THE COST

Bart had quickly moved to one side of the cannon after lighting the
fuse, and was about twenty feet away when the explosion came.

The alarming echoes, the shock, flare and smoke combined to give him a
terrific sensation.

The crowd that had retreated down the hill in delightful trepidation now
came trooping back filled with a bolder excitement.

They had indeed "waked the natives," for gazing downhill against the
lights of the street and stores at its base they could see people
rushing outdoors in palpable agitation.

Some were staring up the hill in wonder and terror, others were starting
for its summit, among them two village officials, as demonstrated by the
silver stars they wore.

"They heard it--it woke 'em up, right enough!" shrieked little Sawyer
in a frenzy of happiness.

"Look yonder!" piped a second breathless voice. "Say, I thought I heard
something strike."

Dale Wacker came upon the scene--not limping, but chuckling and winking
to the cronies at his back.

"Pretty good aim, eh, fellows?" he gloated. "Stirling, you're a capital
gunner."

All eyes were now turned in a new direction--in that whither the muzzle
of the cannon was pointed.

The grounds of the Harrington mansion were the scene of a vivid
commotion. The porch lights had been abruptly turned on, and they
flooded the lawn in front with radiance.

Bart gasped, thrilled, and experienced a strange qualm of dismay. He
discerned in a flash that something heretofore always prominently
present on the Harrington landscape was not now in evidence.

The wealthy colonel was given to "grandstand plays," and one of them had
been the placing of a bronze pedestal and statue at the side of the
driveway.

It bore the inscription "1812," and according to the colonel, portrayed
a military man life-size, epaulettes, sword, uniform and all--his
maternal grandfather as he had appeared in the battle scene where he had
lost a limb.

Now, in effigy, the valiant warrior was prostrate. The colonel's
servants were rushing to the spot where the statue had tumbled over on
the velvety sward.

"See here!"--cried Bart stormingly, turning on Dale Wacker.

"Loaded," significantly observed the latter with a diabolical grin.

A rush of keen realization made Bart shiver. He recognized what the
foolhardy escapade might have cost had that whirling cannon ball met a
human, instead of an inanimate, target.

As it was, he easily calculated the indignation and resentment of the
haughty village magnate who was given to outbursts of wrath which
carried all before him.

"You've spoiled my Fourth," began Bart in a tumult. "I'll spoil your--"

"Cut for it, fellows! they're coming for us!"

"They" were the village officers. Bart had made a jump towards Dale
Wacker, but the latter had faded into the vortex of pell-mell fugitives
rushing away downhill to hiding.

Bart put after them, trying to single out the author of the scurvy joke
that he knew had serious trouble at the end of it.

"Hold on!" gasped a breathless voice.

"Don't stop me!" shouted Bart, trying to tear loose from a frantic grip.
"Oh, it's you--what do you want?"

He halted to survey the person who detained him--the man who haunted the
freight tracks--to whom he had given money earlier in the evening.

"Come, quick!" the man panted. "Express shed--where your father
is--trouble. Don't wait--not a minute."

"See here," challenged Bart, instantly startled into a new tremor of
anxiety, "what do you mean?"

But the forlorn roustabout could not be coherent. He continued to gasp
and splutter out excited adjectives, fragmentary sentences.

"Plot--get you into trouble--father--I heard 'em."

Then as his glance fell upon the people coming up the hill, the officers
in their lead, his eyes bulged with terror, he grasped Bart's arm, let
out an unearthly yell of fear, and by sheer force carried Bart
pell-mell down the other side of the hill with him.

"See here," panted Bart, as, still running, they were headed in the
direction of the railroad, "my business is here. Don't you hurry me off
in this fashion unless there's something to it."

"Told you--express shed--robbers!"

"Robbers? You mean some one is stealing something there?"

"Yes!" gulped Bart's companion.

"Who is it?"

"Don't know."

"Why didn't you stop them?"

"I don't dare do anything," the man wailed. "I'm a poor, miserable
object, but I'm your friend. I heard two fellows whispering on the
tracks near the express shed. Said they were going to steal some
fireworks. I ran to the shed to warn your father. He was asleep in his
chair. They might see me--didn't dare do anything."

Bart now believed there might be some basis to the man's statements. He
plunged forward alone, not conscious that he was outdistancing his late
companion.

Reaching the tracks, Bart ran down a line of freights. The express shed
was in view at last. It was lighted up as usual, the door stood open,
and nothing suggested anything out of the ordinary.

"The fellow's cracked," reflected Bart. "Everything looks straight
here--no, it doesn't!" He checked himself abruptly. "Here! what are you
at?"

Sharp and clear Bart sang out. Approaching the express shed from the
side, his glance shifted to the rear.

The little structure had one window there, lightly barred with metal
strips. Two men stood on the platform beneath it. One of them had just
pried a strip loose with some long implement he held in his hand. The
other had just pushed up the sash by reaching through the convenient
aperture thus made.

Bart bounded to the platform with a nimble spring. As his feet clamped
down warningly on the boardway, the man who had pushed up the window
turned sharply.

"It's young Stirling!" Bart heard him mutter. "Drop it, and run."

The speaker sprang to the ground and disappeared around the corner of
the shed with the words.

His companion, who had been stooping on one knee in his prying
operations, essayed to join him, slipped, tilted over, and before he
could recover himself Bart was upon him.

"What are you about here?" demanded the latter.

The prisoner was of man-like build and proportions. He did not speak,
and tried to keep his features hidden from the rays of the near switch
light.

"Lemme go!" he mouthed, with purposely subdued intonation.

"Not till I know who you are--not till I find out what you're up to,"
declared Bart. "Turn around here. I'll stick closer than a brother till
I see that face of yours!"

He swung his captive towards the light, but a broad-peaked cap and the
partial disguise of a crudely blackened face defeated his purpose.

Bart was about to shout to his father in front, or to his roustabout
friend, whom he expected must be somewhere near by this time, when his
captive gave a jerk, tore one arm free, and whirled the other aloft.

His hand clenched the implement he had used to pry away the bars, and
Bart now saw what it was.

The object the mysterious robber was utilizing for burglarious
purposes, was the signal flag used at the switch shanty where Lem Wacker
had been doing substitute duty that day.

It consisted of a three foot iron rod, sharpened at the end. At the
blunt end the strip of red flag was wound, near the sharp end the
conventional track torpedo was held in place by its tin strap.

"Lemme go"; again growled the man.

"Never!" declared Bart.

The man's left arm was free, and he swung the iron rod aloft. Bart saw
it descending, aimed straight for his head. If he held on to the man he
could scarcely evade it.

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