rk of the exhaust came quicker and quicker, swelled and rose into
the full, deep-toned thunder of a single note. Notch by notch, Dorsay
opened out the 1014, notch by notch, and the big mountain racer,
answering like a mettlesome steed to the touch of the whip, leapt
forward, ever faster, into the night.

Now the headlight played on shining steel ahead; now suddenly threw a
path of light across the short, yellow stubble of a rising butte, and
Dorsay checked grudgingly for an instant as they swung the curve--just
for an instant--then into the straight again, with wide-flung throttle.

It was mad work, and in that reeling, dizzy cab no man spoke. The
sweep of the singing wind, the wild tattoo of beating trucks, the
sullen whir of flying drivers was in their ears; while behind, the
derrick crane, the tool car and the coaches writhed and wriggled,
swayed and lurched, tearing at their couplings, bouncing on their
trucks, jerking viciously as each slue took up the axle play, rolling,
pitching crazily like cockleshells tossed on an angry sea.

Now they tore through a cut, and the walls took up the deafening roar
and echoed and reechoed it back in volume a thousandfold; now into the
open, and the sudden contrast was like the gasping breath of an
imprisoned thing escaped; now over culverts, trestles, spans, hollow,
reverberating--the speed was terrific.

Over his levers, bounding on his seat, Dorsay, tense and strained,
leaned far forward following the leaping headlight's glare; while
staggering like a drunken man to keep his balance, the sweat standing
out in glistening beads upon his grimy face, Stan Willard watched the
flickering needle on the gauge, and his shovel clanged and swung; and
in the corner, back of Dorsay, bent low to brace himself, thrown
backward and forward with every lurch, in the fantastic, dancing light
like some tigerish, outraged animal crouched to spring, Flannagan, with
head drawn into his shoulders, jaws outthrust, stared over the
engineer's back, stared with never a look to right or left, stared
through the cab glass to the right of way ahead--stared toward Spider
Cut.

Again and again, with sickening, giddy shock, wheel-base lifted from
the swing, the 1014 struck the tangents, hung a breathless space, and,
with a screech of crunching flanges, found the rails once more.

Again and again--but the story of that ride is the doctors' story--they
tell it best. Dorsay made the run that night from Big