witches in the Western
Division yards. Three minutes later the electric beam of Tischer's
following headlight sought and found the first section on the long tangent
leading up to the high plains, and the race was in full swing.

At Morning Dew, the first night telegraph station out of the capital, the
two sections were no more than a scant quarter of a mile apart; and the
operator tried to flag the second section down, as reported. This did not
happen again until several stations had been passed, and Callahan set his
jaw and gave the 1010 more throttle. But at Lossing, a town of some size,
the board was down and a man ran out at the crossing, swinging a red
light.

Callahan looked well to the switches, with the steam shut off and his hand
dropping instinctively to the air; and the superintendent shrank into his
corner and gripped the window ledge when the special roared past the
warning signals and on through the town beyond. He had maintained a dazed
silence since the episode of the flourished hammer, but now he was moved
to yell across the cab.

"I suppose you know what you're in for, if you live to get out of this!
It's twenty years, in this State, to pass a danger signal!" This is not
all that the superintendent said: there were forewords and interjections,
emphatic but unprintable.

Callahan's reply was another flourish of the hammer, and a sudden
outpulling of the throttle-bar; and the superintendent subsided again.

But enforced silence and the grindstone of conscious helplessness will
sharpen the dullest wit. The swerving lurch of the 1010 around the next
curve set Halkett clutching for hand-holds, and the injector lever fell
within his grasp. What he did not know about the working parts of a modern
locomotive was very considerable; but he did know that an injector, half
opened, will waste water as fast as an inch pipe will discharge it. And
without water the Irishman would have to stop.

Callahan heard the chuckling of the wasting boiler feed before he had gone
a mile beyond the curve. It was a discovery to excuse bad language, but
his protest was lamb-like.

"No more av that, if ye plaze, Misther Halkett, or me an' Jimmy Shovel'll
have to--Ah! would yez, now?"

Before his promotion to the superintendency Halkett had been a ward boss
in the metropolis of the State. Thinking he saw his chance, he took it,
and the blow knocked Callahan silly for the moment. Afterward there was a
small free-for-all buffet