- Helen is seated at the telegraph instrument in Fardale Station when a train pulls in. She delivers orders to the engineer and sees three men climb from between two of the cars and hurry away. Chuck, Pug and Brandon, the three crooks, cross the fields to their lair. Brandon, the head crook, has been wounded in the arm. An examination is made by his pals and it is decided to obtain a doctor. Chuck drives to Fardale Station and requests Helen to wire for a doctor, giving her a new ten-dollar bill to pay the charge. Helen has received a message stating that U.S. Treasury ten-dollar bank notes of a given series have been stolen. In making change she notes the newness of the bill and upon examination discovers that it is one of the notes stolen. She wires for the doctor and also a detective. They arrive; the detective takes the doctor's place and drives to the hut with Chuck. Johnson, the detective, is discovered. The crooks tie him to a push car, and send it down a grade on the main line. Helen discovers the plot and races to the drawbridge which is drawn up as the push car and Johnson approach. She uses a lariat, throws it over the end of the drawbridge, lets herself down as the drawbridge goes up and as the car bearing Johnson, who has freed himself from the ropes, comes to the bridge. Helen slips her arm through his arms, which are handcuffed, and saves him from the plunge into the river beneath.
- Helen, the operator at Fardale, receives a message that the Centralia Bank has been robbed of treasury notes. Brandon and his two companions arrive at Fardale, riding the rods. Brandon's arm is hurt so seriously that one of his pals goes to summon a doctor. Helen tells him that there is no physician in Fardale, but that she can telegraph to Harts Junction for one. In payment for the telegram the man gives her a ten dollar bill, which Helen sees to be one of those stolen from the Centralia Bank. Helen wires her discovery to headquarters. The superintendent sends the railroad detective to Fardale With the doctor. Arrived at Fardale the detective, the doctor and Helen see Brandon's companion returning to the station. The detective poses as the doctor and accompanies the crook to the shack in the woods. There he is recognized by Brandon's other companion, and the two men overpower him. They take him out to put him out of the way. In answer to Helen's telegram detectives arrive from the city and trace the men to the shack. They see the two crooks making away with the captured detective, and follow them. The detective is taken to Pine Ridge, across the river from Fardale, where he is tied to a handcar and started down an incline toward a bridge. The other detectives arrive in time to see him start on the perilous journey. While three of them capture the bank robbers the fourth rushes to a nearby station and telephones Helen of the detective's danger. Helen mounts her horse and rides to the drawbridge with a long coil of rope. She reaches the drawbridge only to see it opening and the handcar bearing down upon the open draw on the other side of the river. She clambers up the riding bridge, reaches the top, attaches her rope and lets herself down toward the river. Swinging perilously in mid-air Helen dangles at the brink of the river as the handcar is about to plunge into the water. She reaches down, grabs the detective by the handcuffs on his wrist and swings him safely to earth. The bank robbers captured, the detective thanks Helen, who had won "the race to the drawbridge."
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