the big
engine as Cranford started the train. Judson knew that in all human
probability the superintendent's special had already passed Timanyoni,
the last chance for a telegraphic warning; and here was the passenger
slipping away, also without warning.

Goodloe came back to the telephone when the train clatter had died away,
and took up the broken conversation.

"Are you there yet, John?" he called. And when Judson's yelp answered
him: "All right; now, what was it you were trying to tell me about the
special?"

Judson did not swear; the seconds were too vitally precious. He merely
repeated his warning, with a hoarse prayer for haste.

There was another pause, a break in the clicking of Goodloe's telegraph
instruments, and then the agent's voice came back over the wire: "Can't
reach the special. It passed Timanyoni ten minutes ago."

Judson's heart was in his mouth, and he had to swallow twice before he
could go on.

"Where does it meet the passenger?" he demanded.

"You can search me," replied the Little Butte agent, who was not of
those who go out of their way to borrow trouble. Then, suddenly: "Hold
the 'phone a minute; the despatcher's calling me, right now."

There was a third trying interval of waiting for the man in the darkened
room at the Wire-Silver head-quarters; an interval shot through with
pricklings of feverish impatience, mingled with a lively sense of the
risk he was running; and then Goodloe called again.

"Trouble," he said shortly. "Angels didn't know that Cranford had made
up so much time. Now he tries to give me an order to hold the
passenger--after it's gone by. So long. I'm going to take a lantern and
mog along up the track to see where they come together."

Judson hung up the receiver, reset the wire switch to leave it as he had
found it, climbed out through the open window and replaced the sash; all
this methodically, as one who sets the death chamber in order after the
sheet has been drawn over the face of the corpse. Then he stumbled down
the hill to the gulch bottom and started out to walk along the new spur
toward Little Butte station, limping painfully and feeling mechanically
in his pocket for his pipe, which had apparently been lost in some one
of the many swift and strenuous scene-shiftings.

XVIII

AT SILVER SWITCH

Like that of other railroad officials, whose duties constrain them to
spend much time in transit, Lidgerwood's desk-work went with him up and
down