ike a storm of snow. Streets of the raw prairie
towns stared deserted at the sky. Even cowboys kept their ranches, and
through the gloom of noon the sun cast a coward shadow. It was a
wretched day, and the sun went down with the wind tuning into a gale,
and all the boys in bad humor--except Bucks. Not that Bucks couldn't get
mad; but it took more than a cyclone to start him.

No. 59, the California Express, was late that night. All the way up the
valley the wind caught her quartering. Really the marvel is that out
there on the plains such storms didn't blow our toy engines clear off
the rails; for that matter they might as well have taken the rails, too,
for none of them went over sixty pounds. 59 was due at eleven o'clock;
it was half-past twelve when she pulled in and on Callahan's trick. But
Bucks hung around the office until she staggered up under the streaked
moonlight, as frowsy a looking train as ever choked on alkali.

There was always a crowd down at the station to meet 59; she was the big
arrival of the day at McCloud, even if she didn't get in until eleven
o'clock at night. She brought the mail and the express and the
landseekers and the travelling men and the strangers generally; so the
McCloud livery men and hotel runners and prominent citizens and
prominent loafers and the city marshal usually came down to meet her.
But it was not so that night. The platform was bare. Not even the hardy
chief of police, who was town watch and city marshal all combined,
ventured out.

The engineer swung out of his cab with the silence of an abused man. His
eyes were full of soda, his ears full of sand, his mustache full of
burrs, and his whiskers full of tumble-weeds. The conductor and the
brakemen climbed sullenly down, and the baggage-man shoved open his door
and slammed a trunk out on the platform without a pretence of sympathy.
Then the outgoing crew climbed aboard, and in a hurry. The
conductor-elect ran down-stairs from the register, and pulled his cap
down hard before he pushed ahead against the wind to give the engineer
his copy of the orders as the new engine was coupled up. The fireman
pulled the canvas jealously around the cab end. The brakeman ran
hurriedly back to examine the air connections, and gave his signal to
the conductor; the conductor gave his to the engineer. There were two
short, choppy snorts from the 101, and 59 moved out stealthily, evenly,
resistlessly into the teeth of the night. In another mi