on a street of McCloud such a
figure as Bucks, in his trousers and slippers, with his night-shirt free
as he sailed down the wind. In another instant he was bounding up the
stairs. Callahan told him.

"What have you done?" he panted, throwing himself into the chair.
Callahan told him. Bucks held his head in his hands while the boy
talked. He turned to the sheet--asked quick for 59.

"She's out of Callendar. I tried hard to stop her. I didn't lose a
second; she was gone."

Barely an instant Bucks studied the sheet. Routed out of a sound sleep
after an eight-hour trick, and on such a night, by such a message--the
marvel was he could think at all, much less set a trap which should save
59. In twenty minutes from the time Bucks took the key the two trains
would be together--could he save the passenger? Callahan didn't believe
it.

A sharp, quick call brought Griffin. We had one of the brightest lads on
the whole division at Griffin. Callahan, listening, heard Griffin
answer. Bucks rattled a question. How the heart hangs on the faint,
uncertain tick of a sounder when human lives hang on it!

"Where are your section men?" asked Bucks.

"In bed at the section house."

"Who's with you?"

"Night agent. Sheriff with two cowboy prisoners waiting to take 59."

Before the last word came, Bucks was back at him:

_To Opr._:

Ask Sheriff release his prisoners to save passenger-train. Go
together to west switch house-track, open, and set it. Smash in
section tool-house, get tools. Go to point of house-track
curve, cut the rails, and point them to send runaway train from
Ogalalla over the bluff into the river.

BUCKS.

The words flew off his fingers like sparks, and another message crowded
the wire behind it:

_To Agt._:

Go to east switch, open, and set for passing-track. Flag 59,
and run her on siding. If can't get 59 into the clear, ditch
the runaways.

BUCKS.

They look old now. The ink is faded, and the paper is smoked with the
fire of fifteen winters and bleached with the sun of fifteen summers.
But to this day they hang there in their walnut frames, the original
orders, just as Bucks scratched them off. They hang there in the
dispatchers' offices in the new depot. But in their present swell
surroundings Bucks wouldn't know them. It was Harvey Reynolds who took
them off the other end of the wire--a boy in a thousand for that night
and that minute.