The Steel Horse
Contents
- The narrator (the Steel Horse, or bicycle) introduces himself and sets the scene as Joe Wayring and his friends set out on a cross-state bicycle tour. The opening action finds the boys on a night ride, discovering a large boulder on the railroad track and alerting the crew before a disaster can occur, while backstory recaps the aftermath of the Matt Coyle affair and Tom Bigden's uneasy social rehabilitation in Mount Airy.
- With the long summer vacation at hand, Joe Wayring, Roy Sheldon, and Arthur Hastings finalise plans for a bicycle tour across the state, debating routes and equipment with the help of an experienced road veteran. Their first evening in the city brings an encounter with a slick stranger who claims to have found a well-filled purse and pressures the boys into fronting money as a supposed goodwill gesture, but Joe sees through the confidence trick before any harm is done.
- Joe explains to the baffled Arthur and Roy exactly how the purse-exchange swindle works, revealing he recognised it from the start and played along to expose the schemer. The episode is soon overshadowed when Arthur is detained by a private detective named Babcock, who mistakes him for a wealthy runaway boy named Rowe Shelly, and is dragged off to a waiting yacht before his friends can intervene.
- Joe presses the local police for information about the detective agency holding Arthur and learns the yacht belongs to a man named Willis who acts as guardian to a runaway heir, Rowe Shelly. Meanwhile the chapter traces Rowe Shelly's own story: a rich orphan who keeps fleeing his appointed guardian to seek adventure, whose repeated escapes have made him a standing assignment for the Babcock detective agency.
- Separated from Joe and Arthur in the crush leaving the Academy of Music, Roy is seized by Babcock himself, who now mistakes Roy for the same runaway Rowe Shelly. Despite Roy's protests he is bundled aboard the yacht White Squall and carried off into the harbor before his identity can be established.
- Willis, the nervous guardian, begins to suspect Babcock has again arrested the wrong boy, and the detective quietly slips ashore leaving Willis to handle the situation alone. Roy is confined below decks on the White Squall and tries to convince the captain and Willis that he is not Rowe Shelly, but they are reluctant to release him without confirmation, creating a stand-off on the water.
- Roy is at last quietly released from the yacht and escorted to shore by Willis, who hopes to keep the blunder out of the papers; on the way Roy overhears startling news that makes him realise the whole misadventure was not entirely accidental. Rejoining Joe and Arthur, Roy pieces together what happened while the friends debate whether to continue the tour or return home.
- Eager to preserve his anonymity and keep the tour on track, Roy meets with Willis in a conciliatory spirit, and the two agree on a version of events that will satisfy both parties without appearing in the newspapers. Roy learns more about the real Rowe Shelly and the tangled financial interests that make his guardian so desperate to keep him under control.
- Roy realises he has been shanghaied a second time: the White Squall has slipped her mooring and is heading out to sea with him trapped aboard alongside a young sailor named Tony who is equally unwilling. Determined not to be carried out of the harbor, Roy and Tony risk a dangerous swim through rough water to reach shore, with Roy suffering bruises and a lame arm in the effort.
- Rescued by the crew of a light-ship after his swim, Roy endures a night of seasickness and persistent but fruitless questioning from men trying to find out who he is and what he knows about the White Squall. Keeping his own counsel, he refuses to give any information that could jeopardize his friends or betray his identity, earning grudging respect before being put ashore.
- Roy rejoins Joe and Arthur and the three finally resume their bicycle tour after days of delay, though Roy's visible bruises attract unwanted curiosity from every village they pass through. The friends ride out of the city and into open country, relieved to be moving again and determined that nothing else will derail their cross-state journey.
- The touring wheelmen discover that saboteurs have loosened a rail to wreck an oncoming train, and Joe makes a frantic night ride down the track to flag the engineer before a catastrophe occurs, negotiating a rickety trestle bridge at full speed in the dark. The train is stopped in time, the boys are briefly detained by suspicious railroad officials, and Joe's cool-headed heroism under pressure is the talk of the local papers.
- Continuing into the mountainous back country, the boys are warned by a train conductor that the roads ahead are rough and the local people unpredictable. They press on regardless, planning to rest and fish at Glen's Falls, but signs accumulate that they are entering territory where strangers are regarded with deep suspicion and where lawless elements operate freely.
- Departing from the hospitable miller Mr. Hudson who gave them lodging, the boys wheel deeper into wild country and are ambushed by a gang known locally as the Buster band, whose leader demands their bicycles and money at gunpoint. Arthur's coolness with his pocket rifle turns the tables on the ruffians and enables the three to escape, though the encounter leaves them shaken and watchful.
- The boys learn to their dismay that their old enemy Matt Coyle, whom they believed drowned in Indian River, is very much alive and living in the Glen's Falls area -- and has already spotted them. A friendly local man named Holmes tracks them down at their campsite to warn them that Matt is furious and gathering allies, urging the wheelmen to leave the neighborhood before night falls.
- Overhearing Matt Coyle nearby in the dark, the boys hold perfectly still while the vengeful squatter rages about his grudge against them and plots with an accomplice. The wheelmen slip away unseen and then, later the same day, narrowly avoid a second ambush laid by Matt along the road, escaping through a combination of speed and lucky timing.
- The remainder of the cross-state run passes without further serious incident, and the boys wheel back into familiar country toward their destination at Plymouth. There they encounter Tony, the young sailor who swam ashore with Roy from the White Squall, and through him learn the full truth about Willis, the White Squall, and the plot to keep Rowe Shelly under control -- confirming Joe's earlier suspicion that Roy's shanghaiing was no accident.
- Tony reveals that Willis's son Benny is even worse than his father, and the whole conspiracy against Rowe Shelly is finally exposed and brought to justice. The three wheelmen complete their tour in triumph, return to Mount Airy with their bicycles and their stories, and the Steel Horse closes his account satisfied that the vacation rambles -- despite every danger -- have ended happily for all concerned.