f a P. S-W. standard. Olson was a trained
mechanic and a man of resources, and he chipped and filed and scraped at
the misfit brass until he made it serve. But when he climbed again to
the cab of his engine, and Ford swung up to the steps of the car, the
white headlight eye of an east-bound freight, left at a siding a full
hour's run to the rear, came in sight from the observation platform of
the laboring special.

These were the inauspicious beginnings of the pursuit; and the middle
part and the ending varied only in degree. All the way up to midnight,
at which hour a station of a bigness to supply a standard brass was
reached, the tinkered journal-bearing gave trouble and killed speed. Set
once more in running order upon its full quota of sixteen practicable
wheels, the special had fallen so far behind its Denver-planned schedule
as not only to be in the way of everything else on the division, but to
find everything else in its way. Ford held on stubbornly until the lead
of the train he was trying to outrun had increased to twelve hours. Then
he gave it up, directing his crew to turn the train on the nearest "Y,"
and to ask for retracing orders to Denver. After which he went to bed in
the state-room of the borrowed car, and for the first time in his
experience was a man handsomely beaten by the perversity of insensate
things.

The request for the retracing orders was sent from Coquina; and when it
came clicking into the despatcher's office at Denver, a sleep-sodden
young man with an extinct cigar between his teeth rose up out of his
chair, stretched, yawned, and pointed for the door.

"Going to leave us, Mr. Eckstein?" said the trick despatcher who was
sitting at the train table.

"Yes. If Mr. Ford has changed his mind, I may as well go home and go to
bed."

"Reckon he forgot something, and has to come back after it?" laughed the
operator.

"Maybe," said the private secretary, and he went out, shutting the door
behind him with the bat-like softness and precision that was his
distinguishing characteristic.

The sounders were clicking monotonously when the trick man turned to the
relief operator who was checking Darby's transfer sheet.

"What do you suppose Eckstein was up to, sitting here all night, Jim?"

"Give it up," said the relief man. "Ask me something easy."

"I'll bet a hen worth fifty dollars I can guess. He didn't want Mr. Ford
to make time."

The relief man looked up from his checking.

"Why?