back again.

"Why, are you going with us, Mr. Bradley?" demanded Jack amazedly.
"What about your show?"

"Oh, Sam Stow kin look after that," was the easy rejoinder. "It won't
be the first time. I've worked long enough; now I'm off for a little
play."

"Won't be much play about it, I'm thinking," grunted Pete.

The engine bell clanged, a hoarse shriek came from her whistle, and the
wheels began to revolve. Ralph was at the throttle, while Bill Whiting
was up ahead to throw the switch.

"Good luck!" he cried, waving his hand as the locomotive swept by and
rolled out upon the main line.

"Good-by!" cried the crowd of adventurers in the cab, waving their
hands back at him.

Buck threw the furnace door open, and sent a big shovelful of coal
skittering into the glaring interior. The cumbrous machine gave a leap
forward, like a scared greyhound, as Ralph jerked the throttle open.

The Border Boys were off on what was to prove one of the most
adventurous incidents of their lives.

CHAPTER XXIII.

JACK MERRILL'S "SPECIAL."

The landscape swam by, the telegraph poles flashed past, as the flying
locomotive gained headway. The ponderous compound jolted and swung
along over the rough tracks like a ship in a stormy sea. But the
thrill of adventure, the buoyant sense of facing a big enterprise,
rendered the lads oblivious to everything but the track ahead.

From time to time, Buck Bradley stopped his shoveling, and, holding by
a hand-rail, leaned far out from the footplate, scanning the metals
that stretched out in two parallel lines ahead.

"Be like them varmints to hev blown up a bridge, or spiked a track," he
muttered.

All eyes were now on the alert for the first sight of the red-brick
station--the only one on the line--which Bill Whiting had told them
marked the Esmeralda switch. As yet it had not come into view, but
they judged it must be around a curve which lay ahead, the far side of
which was hidden from them by a clump of woods. Suddenly, from this
clump emerged a figure, waving a red flag. He stopped in the middle of
the track, waving his flag frantically.

"Shut down!" yelled Buck. "There's danger ahead!"

"Looks more like a trick, to me," growled the wary Coyote Pete.

"Can't afford to take chances," rejoined Buck. "How do we know what's
the tother side of that curve?"

"That's so," agreed Pete; "them critters might hev planted a ton of
dynamite there, fer all we know."

The bra