Chapter 9

Jed and Al discussed the problem of how they were going to trap Harrington and Smedly. The Rangers were sure that Smedly was planning to buy the H&T at a bankruptcy sale, but they did not know how Harrington figured into the deal. The conspirators didn't have a lot of wiggle room though, because the H&T should be able to get back on its feet within six months if the raids stopped. Shipping business was already starting to pick up even though it had only been a few days since Baker was thrown into jail. Word gets around fast when the pocketbook is involved.

Fortunately, some engineer had the foresight to set the track width on the H&T to standard guage so that "foreign" freight cars, such as from The Austin & El Paso RR could route their traffic over the H&T once they were convinced that the raids were over. They would certainly do it, since it would save over 100 miles of travel on the TG where the rates were astronomical.

In fact, the TG made so much more money when the H&T was not operating that the Rangers believed that the TG had something to do with the raids. That certainly would explain Harrington's connection to the scheme. They suspected that the plan was for Smedly to buy the H&T and sell it to the TG, making a nice profit from the deal. If the TG owned the H&T right-of-way, they could charge as much as they wanted to for freight to use the shortcut.

Smedly could claim to be innocent of any wrong doing in the H&T affair, since all he was doing was buying a defunct railroad and trying to sell it at a profit. That was something any businessman would do. It looked like the only way to nail Smedly was to find enough evidence against Harrington that he would implicate Smedly just to lift some of the pressure from himself.

Jed and Al spent a week trying to get some solid evidence against Harrington, but, still, all they had was Baker's word. Then, on a Wednesday, there was another attack on the H&T freight run from Hadleyville. This was a real amateurish thing with only four men in the raiding party. The only smart thing the raiders did was attack while the train was stopped to take on fuel and water. They were easily beaten off by the guards and crew, and the freight run continued to Templeton with no further delays.

There were two intermediate stops between Hadleyville and Templeton where there were small stations and a "team track" where cars could be dropped off for local deliveries and pickups could be made. Both of these were at small towns of little consequence, so nobody expected any trouble at either of them and, indeed, there had never been any. However, that was about to change.

There was no train running on Thursday, so everybody on the H&T relaxed. But Thursday, boxcars parked at each of the two intermediate stops were set on fire. Again, it was a very amateurish job. The outside of the car was scorched a bit, but neither one was really damaged. The two Rangers were back riding in the caboose on Friday and went with the conductor to inspect the damage to each boxcar. In both cases, the conductor snorted and ordered the boxcars coupled into the train and business continued.