ve explained it.

"There must have been a post set too near the track, and anyway 590's
cab is extra wide, so the first thing he knew--and he didn't know
that--his head was knocked clean off, or as good as that, and there was
590, her throttle wide open, tearing along, with a fireman stoking for
all he was worth and a dead engineer hanging out the window.

"So they ran for eight miles, and Billy Maine--he was firing--never
suspected anything wrong--for of course he couldn't see--until they
struck the Mississippi bridge at full speed. You remember crossing the
bridge just before we pulled in here. It's twenty-two hundred feet long,
and we always give a long whistle before we get to it, and then slow
down. That's the law," he added, smiling, "and, besides, there's a draw
to look out for. When he heard no whistle this time, Billy Maine jumped
around quick to where Giddings was, and then he saw he had a corpse for
a partner."

[Illustration: "THEY STRUCK THE MISSISSIPPI BRIDGE AT FULL SPEED."]

Another question I asked was about stopping a train at great speed for
an emergency--how quickly could they do it? "I've stopped," said
Bullard, "in nine hundred and fifty feet, pulling five cars that were
making about sixty-two miles an hour. I don't know what I could do with
this new train, only three cars, and going eighty or ninety miles an
hour. That's a hard proposition."

"Would you reverse her?"

"No, sir. All engineers who know their business will agree on that. I'd
shut the throttle off, and put the brakes on full. But I wouldn't
reverse her. If I did, the wheels would lock in a second, and the whole
business would skate ahead as if you'd put her on ice."

Then we talked about the nerve it takes to run an engine, and how a man
can lose his nerve. It's like a lion-tamer who wakes up some morning and
finds that he's afraid. Then his time has come to quit taming lions, for
the beasts will know it if he doesn't, and kill him. There are men who
can stand these high-speed runs for ten years, but few go beyond that
term, or past the forty-five-year point. Slow-going passenger trains
will do for them after that. Others break down after five years. Many
engineers--skilled men, too--would rather throw up their jobs than take
the run Bullard makes. Not that they feel the danger to be so much
greater in pushing the speed up to seventy, eighty, or ninety miles an
hour, but they simply _cannot_ stand the strain of doing the thing.