“Million dollar robbery!” exclaimed Tim and the engineer. “What do you mean?”

“Just this,” explained Colonel Searle. “There’s a million in cold cash back in one of those mail cars. We got a tip after you were out of Raleigh that there might be trouble and there isn’t any question but that the timber was set afire in an attempt to stop the train. Whoever planned the robbery figured that the train crew would leave the train and go up for a closer view of the fire. When you decided to back up and run for it, you threw a monkey wrench into their plans. It must have been a small gang or they would have attempted to have stopped you even then.”

“Our fireman is missing,” put in Tim. “When we got the cinders out of our eyes after dashing through the fire we found Harry Benson gone.”

“Maybe he was in with the gang,” suggested Colonel Searle.

“Not Benson,” said the engineer firmly. “He’s one of the most loyal men on the line. Only one thing could have happened to him. He lost his balance and fell out the gangway.” Tears were in the engineman’s eyes and they were silent for a moment.

Gray streaks of dawn were making their appearance on the eastern sky when Tim and the head of the state police left the mail train.

Railroad officials had indicated that they would start an investigation of the cause of the fire, but Colonel Searle informed Tim that he intended to make his own inquiry.

They were leaving the station when the fresh engine which had been coupled on the mail sounded the “high ball” and another engineer took up the race for the coast.

They went to a hotel were Ralph, who had just dressed, greeted them. He wanted to know all about the events of the night and Tim painted a vivid word picture of what had happened.

“We’ll get something to eat,” said Colonel Searle, “and then fly down the line and take a look at that timber patch.”

“Do you think this may have something to do with the old Sky Hawk gang?” asked Tim, giving voice to a thought that he had harbored for some time.

“Looks like one of their fiendishly clever jobs,” admitted the colonel, “and it’s just about time for them to start something.”

Half an hour later they were at the Vinton airport, warming up the motor of the Good News. The sun was just turning the eastern sky into a warm, rosy dawn when Tim gave the motor a heavy throttle and sent the Good News winging off the field.

He swung the plane over Vinton, picked up the twin tracks of the Southwestern and headed back toward Atkinson. His hands, sore and bruised from handling the heavy scoop, ached as he held the controls of the plane. Unconsciously he compared the massive, brute power of the locomotive with the graceful, birdlike machine he was flying. Riding the cab of the mail had been an experience he would never forget but he was happy to be back in the clouds on the trail of what promised to be another sensational story.

The rails twisted and turned through the foothills and Tim marveled as he thought of the speed they had made with the mail, wondered how they had ever stayed on the steel at the dizzying pace with which they had split the night.

The hills broadened out, wider valleys appeared and it was in one of these that they found the smouldering patch of timber which had been an inferno of flame and smoke only a few hours before.

Railroad section men had already gathered at the scene and Tim could see other gasoline handcars speeding down the rails. Ties would have to be replaced, new ballast put in and the rails tested to make sure that the heat had not warped them. Traffic on the system must not be held up a minute longer than necessary and the railroad men were rallying to the emergency.

Tim found a small meadow which was large enough for a landing. He fish-tailed the Good News into the field and set the plane down lightly. They lashed it with spare ropes which Tim carried in his own cockpit and then started for the railroad, a quarter of a mile away.

Blackened stumps of trees reared their heads into the gay sunlight of the spring morning, grim reminders of the near tragedy. Perhaps they were the only headstones Harry Benson would ever have, thought Tim, as he wondered if they would find any trace of the fireman.

A husky section boss told them to get out and stay out but Colonel Searle displayed his badge, which gave them access to anything they wanted to see.

The entire timber lot was not more than four or five acres in extent. It had been covered with a heavy growth of underbrush and with the drought of the year before it had been tender for any careless or intentional match.

Small patches of timber were still burning but along the railroad right-of-way the flames had either died down or had been smothered by section men beating at them with wet sacks.

“Find anything of the fireman?” Tim asked one of the workers.

“Sure,” replied the railroad man, “he’s up the line a couple hundred feet.”

“Alive?”

“You bet. Got a broken leg but all right outside of that,” grinned the man as he continued beating a sack at a stubborn blaze at the base of a stump.

Tim waited for no further question but ran toward the far side of the timber lot where a group of railroad men had gathered. They were in a circle around someone on the ground. The flying reporter pushed them aside and looked down on the scorched, smoke-blackened features of Harry Benson. The fireman was in great pain from his broken leg, but he was making a brave attempt to smile.

“Hello, reporter,” he said. The words were close clipped and came from lips tense with pain.

“Hello yourself,” said Tim. “We thought you must have been thrown out into the fire after we missed you last night.” “Not me,” said the fireman. “It was a close call but I didn’t get anything more than a bad scorching. Who fired for the rest of the run?”

Tim held out his sore, cramped hands and the railroad men joined in the fireman’s laugh.

“Laugh all you want to,” smiled Tim, “but I kept that kettle of yours hot and Henshaw took her in on time.”

“How did you happen to fall out of the cab?” asked Colonel Searle, who had joined the group around the fireman.

“I was trying to get one more shovel of coal into the old pot,” said Benson. “I misjudged the distance and speed and was caught half way between cab and tender when we hit the fire. Figured I knew my way back to my side of the cab and made a jump for it. Instead of going where I intended I dove out the gangway. Good thing for me it only took us about five seconds to run that fire or I’d have plunged right into the center of it. I landed rolling, hit a rock and broke my leg and have been here ever since. Now we’re waiting for a special that is coming down from Vinton with a doctor.”

“Notice anything peculiar about the fire while you were lying here?” asked the officer.

“Only one thing,” admitted the fireman. “It smelled kind of oily and the smoke was mighty dark but my leg was hurting so much I didn’t pay a lot of attention to the fire except to worry for fear it might spread and I wouldn’t be able to get out of the way.”

“Did you hear any strange sounds?” asked Tim.

“Only once,” replied the fireman. “Sounded sort of like a high-powered car but when I didn’t hear it again I thought I must have been going batty.”

“Didn’t see anyone?” asked the colonel.

“Not until some of these section hunkies came chugging down the line,” said the fireman.

Satisfied that they could gain no additional information from questioning the fireman, Tim and Colonel Searle turned away and joined Ralph to start a systematic search of the blackened timber.

The two reporters and the head of the state police moved back and forth across the timber, searching for something that might indicate how the fire had started. They covered the section of timber on the right side of the railroad without result and then crossed over the rails and resumed their search on the left side.

For half an hour they combed the charred underbrush but without success and they met on the far side of the timber lot to discuss further plans.

“Slim pickings,” commented the colonel. “I haven’t found enough to hang on a toothpick.”

“About all I’ve got is an idea,” said Tim as he started toward an old stream bed which cut through the valley. The colonel and Ralph, their curiosity aroused, followed the flying reporter.

The creek which ran through the valley had changed its channel a number of times and its old courses were filled with rubbish which the wind had deposited. It was in these old creek beds that Tim resumed his search. He had not been hunting five minutes when his cry brought the colonel and Ralph to his side.

Below them, hidden in the underbrush of the old channel, they saw half a dozen large tin containers.

“That’s how your fire was started,” said Tim. “Someone doused the timber with a generous supply of crude oil and how that stuff does burn.”

They slid down the bank of the old creek bed and Tim and Ralph pulled one of the containers out where they could get a better view.

“Careful how you handle those,” warned Colonel Searle, “and don’t move more than one or two. I’ll have a fingerprint expert out here to look them over. We may find a valuable story in the fingerprints if the chaps who started the fire got careless.”

“They’re not the type to overlook any clues,” said Tim.

“Not as a rule,” conceded the colonel, “but you must remember they wouldn’t have figured in the state police being in on this so soon. Believe me, it was a clever stunt of theirs setting fire to the woods and using that as a ruse to stop the mail. If it hadn’t been for the determination of engineer Henshaw to get his train through on the new schedule on time, we’d have had something to really worry about this morning. If it had been a large gang they would have attempted to stop you anyway so it must have been a small, brainy outfit. Just the type of fellows the Sky Hawk used to have in his outfit.”

There were no identifying marks on the containers and Tim and Ralph were careful not to disturb more than the one they had pulled into view.

The whistle of the special from Vinton sounded and when they climbed back to the level floor of the valley, they saw the stubby three car train grinding to a halt.

Behind the engine were two cars loaded with construction material, new rails and ties and fresh ballast. The last car was a passenger coach which was disgorging half a hundred workmen. A doctor, nurse and several railroad officials also got off the rear car and hastened toward the injured fireman.

“Benson will soon be out of his agony,” said Tim. “What a night he must have had, lying there with the flames all around and practically helpless because of his broken leg.”

A telegraph operator who had come down on the special was busy shinning up a telegraph pole to cut in his instrument and place the scene of the fire in communication with the dispatcher and other points on the division.

“I’m going to have that fellow telegraph for our fingerprint expert to meet you at Atkinson,” said the colonel. “You boys fly back home, write your stories, and bring him back. It will save hours over the best train connections he could make, and he may be able to read a surprising story if there are any fingerprints on these empty oil cans.”