reover, the mail in
the morning brought compensation. A letter came from Glover telling
him not to worry himself to death over the tie-up, and one came from
Bucks telling him to make ready for the building of the Crawling Stone
Line.

McCloud told Rooney Lee that if anybody asked for him to report him
dead, and going to bed slept twenty-four hours.

CHAPTER X

SWEEPING ORDERS

The burning of Smoky Creek Bridge was hardly off the minds of the
mountain men when a disaster of a different sort befell the division.
In the Rat Valley east of Sleepy Cat the main line springs between two
ranges of hills with a dip and a long supported grade in each
direction. At the point of the dip there is a switch from which a spur
runs to a granite quarry. The track for two miles is straight and the
switch-target and lights are seen easily from either direction save at
one particular moment of the day--a moment which is in the valley
neither quite day nor quite night. Even this disadvantage occurs to
trains east-bound only, because due to unusual circumstances. When the
sun in a burst of dawning glory shows itself above the crest of the
eastern range an engineman, east-bound, may be so blinded by the rays
streaming from the rising sun that he cannot see the switch at the
foot of the grade. For these few moments he is helpless should
anything be wrong with the quarry switch. Down this grade, a few
weeks after the Smoky Creek fire, came a double-headed stock train
from the Short Line with forty cars of steers. The switch stood open;
this much was afterward abundantly proved. The train came down the
grade very fast to gain speed for the hill ahead of it. The head
engineman, too late, saw the open target. He applied the emergency
air, threw his engine over, and whistled the alarm. The mightiest
efforts of a dozen engines would have been powerless to check the
heavy train. On the quarry track stood three flat cars loaded with
granite blocks for the abutment of the new Smoky Creek Bridge. On a
sanded track, rolling at thirty miles an hour and screaming in the
clutches of the burning brakes, the heavy engines struck the switch
like an avalanche, reared upon the granite-laden flats, and with forty
loads of cattle plunged into the canyon below; not a car remained on
the rails. The head brakeman, riding in the second cab, was instantly
killed, and the engine crews, who jumped, were badly hurt.

The whole operating department of the roa