cial; only Extra No. 69 was a heavy
train and she was feeling her way down the grade like a snail, while
the Directors' Special, with the spur and prod of her own delinquency
and misbehavior, was hitting up the fastest clip that old Dan, who knew
every inch of the road with his eyes shut, dared to give within the
limits of safety on that particular piece of track.

It came quick. Ten yards clear on the right of way, then a gray wall
of rock, a short, right-angled dive of the track around it--and, as the
pilot of the 1608 swung the curve, old Dan's heart for an instant
stopped its beat--three red lights focussed themselves before his eyes,
the tail lights on the caboose of Extra No. 69. There was a yell from
little Billy Dawes, his fireman.

"My God, Dan, we're into her!" Dawes yelled. "We're into her!"

Cool old veteran, one of the best that ever pulled a throttle in any
cab, there was a queer smile on old Dan MacCaffery's lips. He needed
no telling that disaster he could not avert, could only in a measure
mitigate, perhaps, was upon them; but even as he checked, checked hard,
and checked again, the thought of others was uppermost in his mind--the
train crew of the freight, some of them, anyway, in the caboose. Dawes
was beside him now, almost at his elbow, as nervy and as full of grit
as the engineer he'd shovelled for for five years and thought more of
than he did of any other man on earth--and for the fraction of a second
old Dan MacCaffery looked into the other's eyes.

"Give the boys in the caboose a chance for their lives, Billy, in case
they ain't seen or heard us," he shouted in his fireman's ear. "Hold
that whistle lever down."

Twenty yards, fifteen between them--the 1608 in the reverse bucking
like a maddened bronco, old Dan working with all the craft he knew at
his levers--ten yards--and two men, scurrying like rats from a sinking
ship, leaped from the tail of the caboose to the right of way.

"Jump!" The word came like a half sob from old Dan. There was nothing
more that any man could do. And he followed his fireman through the
gangway.

It made a mess--a nasty mess. From the standpoint of traffic, as nasty
a mess as the Hill Division had ever faced. The rear of the freight
went to matchwood, the 1608, the baggage and two Pullmans turned
turtle, derailing the remaining cars behind; but, by a miracle, it
seemed, there wasn't any one seriously hurt.

Scared? Yes--pretty badly. The direct