he gangway and flung himself out. He sobbed like a
broken-hearted child afterwards when he told his story.

"I left her," he said. "I couldn't help it. The agony wasn't human--I
couldn't stand it. I was already past knowing what I was doing; but
the thought went through my mind that the pressure'd be down, and she'd
stop herself before she got up the mile climb to the summit. That's
the last I remember."

Dave Kinlock, the conductor, testified that he hadn't noticed anything
wrong until after they were over the summit--they'd come along the
bottoms at a stiff clip, as they always did, to get a start up the long
grade. They had slackened up almost to a standstill, as usual, when
they topped the summit; then they commenced to go down the Slide, and
were speeding up before he realized it. He put on the emergency brakes
then, but they wouldn't work. Why? It was never explained. Whether
the angle-cock had never been properly thrown into its socket and had
worked loose and shut off the "air" from the coaches, or whether--and
queerer things than that have happened in railroading--it just plain
went wrong, no one ever knew. They found the trouble there, that was
all. The emergency wouldn't work; and that was all that Dave Kinlock
knew then.

Now, Beezer had been out on the construction work about two weeks when
this happened, about two of the busiest weeks Beezer had ever put in in
his life. Harvey hadn't drawn the long bow any in describing what the
master mechanics had put over on him to haul his dump carts with. They
were engines of the vintage of James Watt, and Beezer's task in keeping
them within the semblance of even a very low coefficient of efficiency
was no sinecure. Harvey had six of these monstrosities, and, as he had
started his work at both ends at once, with a cutting at the eastern
base of the Devil's Slide and another at the summit, he divided them up
three to each camp; and it kept Beezer about as busy as a one-handed
paper-hanger with the hives, running up and down answering "first-aid"
hurry calls from first one and then the other.

The way Beezer negotiated his mileage was simple. He'd swing the cab
or pilot of the first train along in the direction, up or down, that he
wanted to go--and that's how he happened to be standing that afternoon
on the track opposite the upper construction camp about a hundred yards
below the summit, when Number One climbed up the approach, poked her
nose over