of the forward car--Heney and Carrol. And as Bradley
ran, a thin stream of flame spurted upward from the cab, and there came
faintly, almost lost in the thunder of the train, the bark of a
revolver shot--and the two figures, ducking instantly, crouched lower.

And then Bradley stood beside the others; and Heney, that no man ever
called a coward, clutched at Martin Bradley and shouted in his ear:

"For God's sake, Martin, what'll we do? The throttle was wide at the
top of the grade when he threw Bull Coussirat off. We saw it from the
cupola. It's certain death to make a move for him!"

But Bradley made no answer. Tight-lipped, he was staring down into the
cab; and a livid face stared back at him--the face of the man that he
had stopped to look at as they had pulled out of Big Cloud--Pietro--the
face, hideously contorted, of a maniac. And on the floor of the cab,
stretched out, wriggling spasmodically, Reddy MacQuigan lay upon his
back; and Pietro half knelt upon him, clutching with one hand at the
boy's throat, pointing a revolver with the other at the roof of the car.

Wild, crazy fast now, the speed was; the engine dancing ahead; the cars
wriggling behind; the yellow glimmer of the caboose shooting this way
and that like a pursuing phantom will-o'-the-wisp; and from beneath the
roofs of the cars rose that muffled, never-ending scream of terror from
the Polacks, the Armenians and the Swedes--rose, too, from the roofs of
the cars themselves, for some were climbing there. It was disaster
absolute and certain not a mile ahead where the track in a short,
murderous curve hugged Bald Eagle Peak, with the canyon dropping a
thousand feet sheer down from the right of way, disaster there--if they
ever got that far!

But Bradley, though he knew it well enough from a hundred runs, was not
thinking of that. In a calm, strange way there seemed to come one more
analogy between Mrs. MacQuigan's life and his--this human thing that
looked like a gorilla was choking her son to death, the son that was
making a home for her as she had dreamed he would do some day, the son
that was all she had to depend upon. Mrs. MacQuigan's son--his little
girl. Both out!

There seemed to flash before him the picture of the gray head bowed
upon the red-checkered tablecloth in the little dining room, the frail
shoulders shaking with the same grief that he was drinking now to the
dregs, the same grief that he would have sold his soul to avert-