Free Cult of Crime by Franklin W. Dixon

themselves against the hill as the train drew near.
    Then it was passing them. Frank tried to yell orders, but the noise drowned his words. He strained his eyes, looking for the right boxcar to jump. Two cars filled with cattle passed, followed by cars full of coal and corn. Then he saw what he was looking for. Coming up was an open, empty boxcar.
    He grabbed Holly’s wrist again and pulled her along. From the corner of his eye, he could see Joe on the move already, heading along the tracks the other way.
    Nimbly Joe grabbed the handles on the side of the empty car as it eased past him, He was in his element, moving the way he had learned in the gym, pulling himself up the row of handles the way he would pull himself up a rope. It was child’s play for him. With the grace of a trained gymnast, he swung from the handles through the open door. He was inside.
    As the boxcar caught up to Frank and Holly and pulled past them, Joe held the frame of the door and stretched his arm out. Holly’s fingers touched his and slid off.
    “I can’t do it!” she cried. “I can’t! I can’t!” She stopped, clenching her fists. She started to curl up like a child.
    Frank clutched her around the waist and lifted her into the air. Without pausing to think, he tossed her bodily into the boxcar. She smacked the floor and rolled across it, dazed.
    The boxcar moved on, leaving Frank running beside the train.
    Joe howled and leaned out of the car again, hoping to give Frank a hold it was no use. Frank stopped running and tried to catch his breath. Throwing Holly aboard had used up the last of his strength. It was too long since he had slept.
    Moments later, the last car in the train, a caboose, pulled alongside him. It’s now or never, he thought, gritting his teeth. He took a deep breath and leaped. His hand caught the back steps of the train.
    Gasping for breath, he pulled himself aboard and collapsed on the caboose’s back platform. No one else was aboard the caboose. It was being used for storage, with big sacks of grain piled inside.
    Frank leaned out over the edge of the platform and looked along the train. He could see Joe in the open car, smiling and waving. At last they were safe. They could rest.
    A bullet splintered the wall above Frank’s ear. At the sound of the shot, loud even against the roar of the train, Joe leaped back to the door. Figures lined the hilltop they had just climbed down. Flames spat from their hands as the thunderclaps exploded.
    It was Keller and his men. Rosie hadn’t lost them after all, and they were shooting at Frank.
    The train rounded the mountain, allowing Joe a view of the back of the caboose. He could see his brother trying to stand and get a view of the shooters. “No!” Joe cried.
    A shot rang out, driving the’ figure on the caboose platform backward. It swayed on the opposite side for a second and then plunged off the train.
    Joe scrambled to the other side of the boxcar and wrenched the door open. He saw the moon reflected in the water below. Next he saw a cloth covered lump bob twice in the river, then sink beneath the swirling waters. Frank was gone.

Chapter 11
    “HE WAS THE only one who loved me,” Holly said through her tears.
    Joe looked up wearily and shook himself awake. He sat crouched over his knees against the wall of the boxcar; he had been sitting that way for hours while Holly cried herself to sleep on and off.
    “I don’t want to talk about Frank anymore,” he said. A lump about the size of a fist rose in his throat and choked him. He had always known that danger might one day take one of them. But not yet, he thought. It shouldn’t have happened yet.
    Holly was so grief-stricken, though, that she couldn’t see how upset Joe was. “I know he loved me,” she repeated. “If he didn’t love me, he wouldn’t have gone into the commune after me. Poor Frank.”
    “He didn’t love you!” Joe shouted in exasperation. Holly sat up stiffly and stared at him, pain and