blamed traffic between here
and the Elk--what? We can thank God for that!"

Carleton didn't answer, except by another nod. He was listening to
Spence at the key, asking Brook's Cut why they didn't report Owsley
through.

The rain rattled at the window panes, and the sashes shook under the
gusts of wind; out in the yards below the switch lights showed blurred
and indistinct. Regan paced the room more and more impatiently.
Carleton's face began to go hard. Spence hung tensely over the table,
his fingers on the key, waiting for the sounder to break, waiting for
the Brook's Cut call.

It was only seven miles from Elk River, where the stalled passengers of
the Limited--will you remember this?--grumbled and complained, pettish
in their discontent at the delay, only seven miles from there to
Brook's Cut, the first station east--only seven miles, but the minutes
passed, and still Brook's Cut answered: "No." And Carleton's face grew
harder still, and Regan swore deep down under his breath from a full
heart, and Spence grew white and rigid in his chair. And so they
waited there, waited with the sense of disaster growing cold upon
them--waited--but Brook's Cut never reported Owsley "in" or "out" that
night.

Owsley? Who knows what was in the poor, warped brain that night? He
had heard her call to him, and they had brought him back the 1601, and
she was standing there, alone, deserted--and she had called to him.
Who knows what was in his mind, as, together, he and the 1601 went
tearing through that black, storm-rent night, when the rivers, and the
creeks, and the sluices were running full, and the Elk River, that
paralleled the right of way for a mile or two to the crossing, was a
raging torrent? Who knows if he ever heard the thundering crash with
which the Elk River bridge went out? Who knows, as he swung the curve
that opened the bridge approach, without time for any man, Owsley or
another, to have stopped, if the headlight playing on the surge of
maddened waters meant anything to him? Who knows? That was where they
found them, beneath the waters, Owsley and the 1601--and Owsley was
smiling, his hand tight-gripped upon the throttle that he loved.

"I dunno," says Regan, when he speaks of Owsley, "if the mountains out
here have anything to do with making a man think harder. I
dunno--sometimes I think they do. You get to figuring that the Grand
Master mabbe goes a long way back, years and years, to work things