When Tim returned to the editorial room after lunch that day the managing editor summoned him to his office.

“I’ve got an assignment that is somewhat different from your usual run of things,” explained Carson, “but I’m sure you’ll enjoy it. The Southwestern railroad is speeding up the time of its midnight mail. The new schedule calls for an average speed of fifty-one miles an hour. The superintendent of this division has invited me to send a reporter on the first trip tonight. How would you like to ride the cab of the mail down to Vinton?”

“I’d like it, Mr. Carson,” replied Tim. “I’ve always wanted to ride in the cab of a fast train.”

“You’ll have your chance tonight,” smiled the managing editor, “for if I know anything about train schedules the mail is going to throw the miles up her stack when she hits her stride.”

Carson telephoned the railroad offices that Tim would ride the cab that night.

“You’d better go down to the station about eleven o’clock,” said the managing editor. “You’ll get your pass at the ticket office. Then go down to the roundhouse and get aboard the engine there. The engineer and conductor will be expecting you. This is quite an event for the railroad people and I want to give them a good yarn. I’ll send Ralph to Vinton this afternoon in the Good News and he’ll wait there and bring you home in the morning. One of the staff photographers will be at the station to take flash-lights when the mail pulls out.”

“I’ll finish my aviation column for tomorrow,” said Tim, “and then get some old clothes for I don’t imagine it will be any too clean on the engine.”

When Ralph returned from an assignment he was told to take the Good News and fly to Vinton, there to await the arrival of Tim on the midnight mail.

Tim accompanied his flying companion to the airport and helped him wheel the Good News out of the hangar.

“Traveling on a train will seem kind of slow compared to the Good News,” suggested Ralph.

“I don’t know about that,” replied Tim. “The mail’s new schedule is a hair raiser and they’ll have to pound the steel pretty hard to make their time. It won’t be any picnic, I can tell you that.”

Ralph, satisfied that the motor was thoroughly warm and ready for its task, waved at Tim.

“See you in the morning,” he called. Then he whipped the Good News across the field and streaked into the southwest.

Tim watched the plane until it disappeared before he turned to the car which had brought them from town. On his way back to the city he drove leisurely, thoroughly enjoying the sweetness of the spring afternoon.

The road swung onto a viaduct that spanned the myriad rails of the Southwestern. A transcontinental limited was pulling into the long station, feathery puffs of steam drifting away from the safety valve. The train came to a stop, porters swung their stools down on the platform and the passengers descended. The engineer dropped down from the cab and started oiling around the iron speedster of the rails.

There was something thrilling, fascinating about it and Tim looked forward with high interest to his trip that night. He drove on up town, returning the car to the garage.

After dinner alone he walked to his room, found a suit of coveralls and an old cap and bandanna handkerchief. These he rolled up and wrapped in paper. That done he sat down for an hour of reading the latest aviation journals and at eight o’clock he set his alarm clock for ten-thirty and laid down for a nap.

The next thing Tim knew the alarm was ringing steadily and he roused himself from the deep sleep into which he had fallen. He washed his face and hands in cold water and felt greatly refreshed, ready for whatever the night might have in store in the way of adventure.

On the way to the station Tim stopped at an all night restaurant and enjoyed a platter of delicious country sausage. Then he continued his walk toward the railroad yards.

The reporter descended the steps from the viaduct and entered the brightly lighted station. It was two minutes to eleven when he walked up to the ticket window and introduced himself. The agent on duty handed him his credentials and told him the shortest way to the roundhouse.

Tim left the station and its glow of light. Outside the night air was cool and he pulled his leather jacket closer around him. Great arc lights gleamed at intervals in the yard and a chugging switch engine disturbed the quiet.

Three blocks from the station was the roundhouse with its countless chimneys and numberless doors. Tim picked his way carefully over the switches, skirted the yawning pit that marked the turn-table and entered the master mechanic’s office at the roundhouse.

The master mechanic, old Tom Johnson, was checking over the schedule of the mail with Fred Henshaw, who was to pull the mail.

“What do you want?” growled Johnson when he saw Tim standing in the doorway.

“I’m from the News,” replied Tim. “The superintendent wanted a reporter to ride the mail tonight.”

“What’s your name?” asked the master mechanic.

“Tim Murphy.”

“Oh, so you’re the flying reporter,” smiled Johnson as he got out of his chair and shook hands with Tim. “I’ve read a lot about you. Glad to know you. Meet Fred Henshaw. He’ll give you a few thrills tonight.”

Tim and the engineer shook hands.

“We won’t go as fast as you do by plane,” smiled the engineer, “But we’ll go places.” “I’m looking forward to the trip,” said Tim. “It will be a real experience.”

The telephone rang and the master mechanic answered.

“The dispatcher says the mail will be in on the advertised,” he said. “That gives us a break for the test run.”

Henshaw nodded and motioned for Tim to accompany him into the roundhouse.

Electric lights high up under the roof tried vainly to pierce the shadows which shrouded the hulking monsters of the rails as they rested in their stalls. There must have been fourteen or fifteen locomotives in the roundhouse, some of them dead; others breathing slowly and rhythmically, awaiting their turn to be called for service on the road.

At the far end of the roundhouse there was a glare of light as hostlers finished grooming the 1064 for its run that night on the mail.

The 1064 was the latest thing the Southwestern boasted in the way of fast-passenger motive power. It was capable of hauling sixteen all-steel Pullmans at seventy miles an hour and was as sleek and trim as a greyhound.

The engineer took his torch and made a final inspection to be sure that everything was in readiness for the test run. Then he extinguished the torch, threw it up into the cab, and motioned for Tim to follow him.

The little engineer scrambled up the steps and swung into the cab. Tim followed but with not nearly as much grace.

The fireman was busy with a long firehook and the glow from the open door of the firebox lighted the cab with a ruddy brilliance. When the iron doors of the firebox slammed shut and the fireman straightened up, the engineer introduced his fireman, Harry Benson.

Introductions completed, the engine crew fixed a place for Tim on the seat behind the engineer.

Henshaw looked at his watch. It was eleven forty-five. He stuck his head out the window and looked at the turn-table. It had been swung into place ready for the 1064 to steam out of the house.

Harry Benson started the bell ringer, Henshaw released the air and opened the throttle a notch. The 1064 came to life, steam hissed from its cylinders, the drivers quivered and moved slowly in the reverse motion. The 1064 slid out of the roundhouse, rocked a little as it went over the turn-table and then eased down the darkened yards until it came to a stop near the end of the long train shed.

At eleven-fifty a penetrating whistle came through the night to be followed several minutes later by the blazing headlight of the westbound mail.

The long string of mail cars came to a halt in front of the station, the engine which had brought them in was cut off, and steamed down the yard on its way to the roundhouse. A lantern at the head end of the mail signalled for the 1064 to back down and Henshaw set the engine in motion again.

With a delicate handling of the air he nosed the tender of the 1064 against the head mail car. The work of coupling the engine to the train was a matter of seconds. Then Henshaw tested the air. It worked perfectly and the midnight mail was ready to continue its westward race across the continent.

The interior of the cab was lighted by a green-shaded bulb just above the gauges on the boiler. The sides were in the shadows and there was no reflection to bother the engineer as he stared into the night.

The conductor ran forward along the train and handed a sheaf of order tissues into the cab. Henshaw and his fireman read them together to make sure that they understood every order.

“Slow order for that new bridge at Raleigh is going to hurt,” was the only comment the engineer made as he climbed back on his box.

Mail trucks rumbled along the platform as extra crews hastened the work of unloading and loading the mail. Then they were through. The mail was ready for the open steel.

The conductor’s lantern at the back end of the train flashed in the “high ball” and Henshaw answered with two short, defiant blasts of the whistle.

The engineer dusted the rails with sand, opened the throttle, and the 1064 settled down to its night’s work. With nine steel cars of mail to hold it down, the giant engine plunged out of the yards.

Over the switches they clattered, the cab rocking and reeling as they struck the frogs. They had a straight shot through the yards to the main line and Henshaw wasted no time in getting the 1064 into its stride.

They flashed past the outer signal towers and now only two twin ribbons of steel lay ahead of them. The mail was speeding down the right-hand westbound track. They would meet the eastbound trains coming down the left-hand pair of rails.

The needle on the speed indicator mounted steadily as Henshaw opened the throttle notch by notch. The 1064’s exhaust was a steady, deafening volley that made conversation impossible.

Block signals popped up in the searching rays of the headlight to disappear in the thunder of the train almost before Tim had time to read their signals. But the engineer saw them all and knew that the steel highway ahead of him was clear.

Harry Benson was busy feeding the fire. He swayed to and fro in the glare from the open firebox. First to the tender, then to the cab with a scoop of coal, then back to the tender for more coal.

By the time the mail was five miles out of Atkinson, Henshaw had the 1064 near the peak of its stride. They were rolling down the line at better than seventy miles an hour. It was a dizzy pace and the cab rocked and rolled over the steel.

Tim marveled at the easy grace of the fireman as he swung back and forth between the cab and the tender, feeding great shovels of coal into the hungry firebox.

The mail flashed through sleeping villages and past darkened farmhouses. The country through which they were speeding was sparsely settled and there were few grade crossings. Only occasionally did Henshaw reach for the whistle cord and send a sharp warning into the night.

Raleigh was their first scheduled stop and five miles this side of the city they slid down into a valley where a roaring stream rushed under the rails. A repair crew had been strengthening the bridge and had not quite completed their work. As a result the dispatcher had put out a slow order which called for a speed not in excess of thirty miles an hour over the bridge. Henshaw glanced at his watch and grumbled to himself as he pinched the mail down to comply with the orders. The air brakes ground hard on the wheels and Tim looked back at the train. Sparks were flying from every truck, cascading in showers along the right-of-way.

They rumbled over the bridge and Henshaw opened up again. Every minute counted and he rolled the mail into Raleigh at a lively clip.

There was no need to handle the mail as he would a crack transcontinental limited with extra fare passengers and a diner full of chinaware and Henshaw whipped the mail into the station and ground her down hard. They stopped with a jerk that jarred every bone in Tim’s body.

The doors of the mail cars were rolled open and the crew started tossing the pouches. Henshaw picked up his torch, lighted it, and dropped down to oil around while Benson pulled the spout down from the nearby water tank and gave the engine a drink.

High speed means lots of steam and steam means water and more water. Hundreds of gallons gushed into the tank on the tender and the fireman had just completed his task when they got the highball. He was still on top of the tender when Henshaw cracked his throttle and started the mail on another leg of its fast run.

The fireman scrambled down off the swaying tender, opened the firebox, and started throwing in coal like a man possessed. There was a slight grade out of the station at Raleigh and the laboring exhaust fairly pulled the fire out the stack.

Once over the grade the 1064 hit her stride and they rolled away along the foothills of the Great Smokies. This particular main stem of the Southwestern ran through the foothills for several hundred miles, finally finding a pass through which the rails continued their journey to the coast.

The running would be more precarious now and there was only one more stop and that for water at the village of Tanktown, a hamlet where a few railroad men made their home.

Tim was fascinated by the precision with which the great locomotive worked, with the confidence the engineer displayed in its handling and with the dexterity of the fireman as he fed fuel to the firebox.

On and on rushed the mail, the speed never under sixty miles an hour and sometimes well over seventy. Just before they plunged into the foothills they struck a stretch of ten miles of almost straight track with only one or two gentle grades.

Henshaw yelled at his fireman and Benson grinned and motioned for the engineer to open the throttle. The bar went back into the last notch and Tim felt the engine pulsate with new power. The needle on the speed indicator climbed to seventy-five and kept on. It paused at eighty and then went on up to eighty-three. They were bouncing around in the cab when the little air whistle which the conductor uses in signalling the engine peeped.

Henshaw waited until the conductor had signalled several times before he eased off on the throttle and they dropped down to the slow pace of sixty-five miles an hour.

“I guess we gave the boys behind a thrill,” yelled Henshaw and the fireman nodded as he straightened up to rest his weary muscles.

Once in the foothills where the grades were frequent and the curves tighter, their speed dropped below sixty miles an hour.

When they stopped at Tanktown for coal and water, they were seven minutes ahead of their schedule and Henshaw took ample time to touch up the journals and bearings of the great engine with liberal doses of oil.

The conductor ran forward.

“What’s the idea,” he demanded. “Were you trying to put us all in the ditch?” “Keep cool, keep cool,” grinned Henshaw. “Our orders were to make time and we made it.”

“Our orders didn’t call for eighty-three miles an hour,” sputtered the trainman. “Next time you try a stunt like that I’ll pull the air on you.”

“You’ll lose time if you do,” smiled the engineer. “You sit back in your mail cars and I’ll do the worrying about keeping the train on the rails.”

The fireman yelled that he was ready to go. Henshaw looked at his watch and climbed into the cab.

The whistle blasted two short, sharp calls and the flagman on the back end swung aboard. The mail sped on the last lap of its inaugural run on the new schedule.

Mile after mile disappeared behind the red lights of the last car. They were less than forty miles from the end of the division when they swung around a curve to see the rails ahead of them disappear in an inferno of flame.

Henshaw jammed on the air and leaned far out of the cab. Tim dropped down in the gangway and looked ahead. A small patch of timber through which the right-of-way passed was on fire, and a wall of flame barred their way.

The engineer pinched his train down to a stop about two hundred yards from the burning timber. Even at that distance they could hear the roar of the flames and feel the heat from the cauldron of fire.

“Looks like this is the end of your run,” said Tim.

“Don’t know,” replied the engineer. “We might make it.”

“Going to try and run the fire?” asked the fireman.

“Orders say to get the mail through to the west end on time,” said the engineer, “And orders are orders. What say, boys?”

“I say yes,” grinned the fireman. “The steel ought to hold us and we can coast through without much push or pull on the rails.”

“I’m riding the mail,” said Tim when the engineer turned to him.

“Then here we go,” decided Henshaw. He threw over the reverse lever and started backing away from the flames. When the 1064 was a mile from the burning timber he brought the train to a stop.

Mail clerks and trainmen had their heads out the doors, wondering what the engineer was going to do.

The conductor hurried up.

“We’ll have to stay here,” he told the engineer.

“Stay here? Well, I guess not,” replied Henshaw. “Orders say 'on time’ at the west end. If you’re going to stay with this train, swing on and make it snappy. We’re going to run for it.”

The conductor protested but the engineer set his train in motion and the conductor finally swung on one of the mail cars and climbed inside.

The 1064 picked up speed rapidly and they rolled down on the fire.

“Duck down behind the boiler when I yell,” said the engineer and Tim and the fireman nodded that they understood.

The distance between the pilot and the flames was decreasing rapidly. Tim slid off the box behind the engineer and clung to one side of the cab. The world ahead was a wall of fire that leaped toward the heavens. Tim heard the engineer yell and he ducked behind the head of the boiler.

The engine swayed sickeningly but held to the steel. There was the roar of the fire, the stifling heat that seemed to sear its way into his lungs, hot brands filled the cab and he felt his hair scorching in the terrific heat. Then the engine stumbled onto cool steel and they were through the burning timber and into the cool night air again.

Tim shook the cinders from his hair and straightened up. He looked for the engineer and found Henshaw industriously beating out tongues of flame which were licking around the window. Between flailing his arms at the fire he would stop momentarily to widen out on the throttle as the 1064 swung into her stride again.

The reporter turned to the fireman’s side of the cab. Benson was missing.

With a cry of alarm, Tim summoned the engineer from his side of the cab.

“The fireman’s gone!” he cried.

Both of them felt the hand of death grip at their hearts. Perhaps a lurch of the cab had thrown Benson out and into the flaming woods. There would have been no chance for his survival and they looked at each other with horror written in their faces.

The shock of the sudden tragedy left Tim speechless and the engineer climbed slowly back to his throttle. There was no joy in the cab of the 1064 over their victory with the flames for Henshaw had lost the best fireman he had ever had.

Tim was used to sudden shocks but the one of turning to look for the fireman and finding him gone was one that would remain with him through life.

The needle on the steam gauge wavered and started down as the 1064 made its heavy demands for power. Someone must keep the fire hot.

Henshaw glanced anxiously at his watch.

“We’re right on the dot now,” he shouted at Tim. “If you can throw the black diamonds for about thirty minutes we’ll go into the west end on time.”

“I’ll do my best,” shouted Tim above the noise of the madly working machinery.

A foot lever which operated a small steam engine opened the door of the firebox and Tim stepped on the lever. The heavy iron doors swung open and he looked into a white-hot pit. The fire was thin in spots and he picked up Benson’s scoop, set his legs for the pitch and roll of the cab, and swung a scoop of coal into the firebox. The first one went where he intended it but on the second attempt they struck a tight curve and most of the coal went up the engineer’s neck.

Henshaw laughed.

“Better luck next time,” he shouted encouragingly.

Tim took a fresh grip on the scoop and in less than five minutes had an even bed of coal scattered over the firebox.

There was something strange and mysterious about the woods being on fire and it troubled Tim, who sought some solution as he swayed from tender to firebox and back to tender. Here it was, the spring of the year, and that patch of woods afire. A campfire started by tramps might have spread, but Tim doubted that thought. Sparks from a passing train might have been the cause but for some reason, perhaps just a newspaperman’s intuition, he felt that there was something sinister behind the cause of the fire.

“Take it easy, we’re almost in,” shouted Henshaw as he pointed to the lights of Vinton as they swung around a curve.

Tim stuck his scoop into the coal pile and straightened up for the first time since he had taken the fireman’s place.

The muscles in his back ached and his arms were sore, but he felt that he had earned his ride. His thoughts still on the fire, he stepped over to the engineer’s side of the cab.

“Anything of special value on tonight?” he asked.

“Don’t know for sure,” replied Henshaw as he eased up on the throttle. “There were rumors back at Atkinson that there was a lot of specie aboard for some coast bank. Never can tell but the mail usually has a pouch or two of valuable mail.”

Tim was silent as Henshaw guided the mail through the maze of tracks that marked the east entrance of the yards at Vinton. Green and red lights blinked out of the night at them.

There was the hollow roar as they rumbled past long lines of freight cars on the sidings, the sharp exhaust of a laboring switch engine, the multiple lights of the roundhouse and finally the station itself loomed in the rays of their headlight.

At the far end of the big depot Tim could see another engine waiting to be hooked onto their train to continue the mail’s dash for the coast.

Henshaw cracked his throttle just enough to bring them in with a flourish and stopped his scorched string of mail cars at the station on time to the second.

When Tim dropped out of the cab he was astounded to see Colonel Robert Searle, head of the state police, striding toward him.

“Hello, Murphy,” said the officer, “what’s this I hear about you fellows running through a piece of burning timber?”

“That’s right, Colonel,” said Tim. “We struck a patch about forty miles down the line and it looked for a time like we weren’t going to get through. Then Mr. Henshaw, the engineer, decided to run for it.”

“You didn’t waste much time when you first stopped for the fire did you?”

“Not any more than we had to,” said the engineer. “The string of varnished cars was stepping on a fast schedule.”

“Then that explains why there wasn’t a million dollar robbery on this line tonight,” said the head of the state police.