r faces to the
dust, are trembling before us. Let us strike--strike! We rush, five
hundred of us; we smash and wreck. Then we are masters, not slaves.
_The trestle must go--now!_"

"Me, too," murmured Werner from the shadows. "Damn glad I got a start.
Wonder how far it is to my next meal."

"Come closer, men, closer!" Koppy was holding out his arms to them.
"Let me feel your strong hands before we strike. It is almost time.
It is dark. From the crawling shadows five hundred--"

He had overdone it. Five hundred pairs of eyes tore themselves from
their leader's face and shifted fearfully to the lurking, crawling
shadows that closed them in.

And at the instant a dismal howl struck through the night, unplacable,
all-pervading, unearthly. At the top of its most hideous note it
crashed to silence.

Five hundred pairs of eyes sought each other with the blankness of
terror-numbed minds. Five hundred bodies trembled. Transfixed, they
waited.

It came again, louder, crushing menace in its tone. Two piercing
whistles cut it short, and some huge, unearthly creature crashed out
from the darkness toward the place where they stood. A roar of cannon
seemed to tear their ear-drums--another--and another--everywhere about
them. With one mind five hundred imaginative workmen dropped their
weapons from nerveless hands and fled, bumping, tumbling, fighting each
other. A voiceless flow of chaotic clamour marked their course toward
the camp.

Koppy, teeth gnashing, threw up his hands and slunk into the darkness.

And from the shadows moved one solitary Indian and his squaw, one
inoffensive little broncho, one great mongrel Russian wolf hound.

"Phew!" breathed the Indian, as he snapped his rifle shut and reached
up to fondle the horse's ears.

CHAPTER XXII

NIGHT--AND THE MYSTERIOUS SPEEDERS

Big Jim Torrance sighed happily. He was thinking of the orders he had
issued for the commencement of the fill-in. In the definition thus
given to the task he found the most effective silencer of every fear.

Supply trains had multiplied of late, but not the heaviest had made so
much as a visible tremble in the trestle; and he should know, for he
watched with bated breath and expert eye. Even the crews were teasing
that they hoped once more to see home and mother. Torrance accepted
their banter with a pleased grin, and hurried to tell it word for word
to Tressa and Adrian.

Yet as darkness fell flashes of the ol