t shoot two av us to wanst; an' the wan that's
left'll slap on the air," was Callahan's answer; and he slacked off a
little to bring the following train within easy striking distance.

Danforth went painfully and carefully back with this defiance, and while
he was bridging the nerve-trying gap, another station with the stop-board
down and red lights frantically swinging was passed with a roar and a
whistle shriek.

"Fwhat are they doing now?" called Callahan to his fireman.

"They've gone inside again," was the reply.

"Go back an' thry the tank," was the command; and Jimmy Shovel climbed
over the coal and let himself down feet foremost into the manhole. When he
slid back to the footplate his legs were wet to the mid shin.

"It's only up to there," he reported, measuring with his hand.

Callahan looked at his watch. There was yet a full hour's run ahead of
him, and there was no more than a scant foot of water in the tank with
which to make it.

Thereafter he forgot the Naught-seven, and whatever menace it held for
him, and was concerned chiefly with the thing mechanical. Would the water
last him through? He had once made one hundred and seventy miles on a
special run with the 1010 without refilling his tank; but that was with
the light engine alone. Now he had the private car behind him, and it
seemed at times to pull with all the drag of a heavy train.

But one expedient remained, and that carried with it the risk of his life.
An engine, not overburdened, uses less water proportionately to miles run
as the speed is increased. He could outpace the safe-guarding mail, save
water--and take the chance of being shot in the back from the forward
vestibule of the Naught-seven when he had gained lead enough to make a
main-line stop safe for the men behind him.

Callahan thought once of the child mothered by the Sisters of Loretto in
the convent at the capital, shut his eyes to that and to all things
extraneous, and sent the 1010 about her business. At the first reversed
curve he hung out of his window for a backward look. Tischer's headlight
had disappeared and his protection was gone.

On the rear platform of the private car four men watched the threatening
second section fade into the night.

"Our man has thought better of it," said the governor, marking the
increased speed and the disappearance of the menacing headlight.

Guilford's sigh of relief was almost a groan.

"My God!" he said; "it makes me cold to th