I sure had to be quick about obeying that "get-aboard" order of Mr. Norcross's. Kirgan had jerked the throttle open the minute the word was given. I missed the forward end of the car, and when the other end came along my grab at the hand-rod slammed me head over heels up the steps. Kirgan was holding his whistle valve open, and the guarding strikers in the yard gave us room and a clear track. By the time we had passed the "limit" switches we were going like a blue streak, and I could hardly keep my balance on the back platform of the day-coach.

You can guess that I didn't stay out there very long. The night was clear as a bell and pretty coolish, with the stars burning like white diamonds in the black inverted bowl of the sky. It was mighty pretty scenery, but just the same, after Kirgan had fairly struck his gait on the long western tangent, I clawed my way inside. It was a lot too blustery and unsafe on that back platform.

The major and Mrs. Sheila were sitting together, near the middle of the car. I staggered up and took the seat just ahead of them, and the major asked me if Mr. Norcross was on the engine. I told him he was, and that ended it. What with the rattle and bang of the coach, the howling of the speed-made wind in the ventilators, and the shrill scream of the spinning wheels, there wasn't any room for talk during the whole of that breath-taking race to the old "Y" in the hills beyond Banta.

Knowing, from what Mr. Norcross had said, the point at which we were going to side-track and wait for the special and the wild engine, I grew sort of nervous and worked-up after we had crashed through the Banta yard and the day-coach began to sway and lurch around the hill curves. What if the special had been making better time than the boss had counted upon? In that case, we'd probably hit her in a head-ender somewhere on one of those very curves. And with the time we were making, and the time she'd be making, there wouldn't be enough left of either train to be worth picking up.

A mile or so short of the "Y" siding I went up ahead and handed myself out to the forward platform to see if I couldn't get a squint past the storming engine. I got it now and then, on the swing of the curves, but there was nothing in sight. Just the same, it was mighty scary, and I took a relief breath so deep that it nearly made me sick at my stomach when I finally realized that Kirgan had shut off and was slowing for the stop at the farther switch of the old "Y."

What was done at the switch was done swiftly, as men work when they have the fear of death gripping at them. If the special should come up while we were making the back-in, the result would be just about the same as it would have been if we had met it on the curves.

The jerking tug of the self-preservation instinct is pretty strong, sometimes, and I tumbled off the steps of the car as it was backing in around the western curve of the "Y." Our picked-up fireman was at the switch, setting it again for the main line. With our own engine silent, I could hear a faint sound like the far-away fluttering of a safety-valve. We were not ten seconds too soon. The special was coming.

Mr. Norcross, who was still in the engine cab, shot an order at Kirgan.

"Fling your coat over the headlight, and then be ready to snatch it and get off!" he shouted. "If they see it as they come up, it may stop them!" Then, catching a glimpse of me on the ground: "Break the coupling on the coach, Jimmie—quick!"

As I jumped to obey I understood what was to be done. The fireman at the switch was to let the special go by, and then the boss—just the boss alone on the engine—was to be let out on the main track to put himself between the chaser and the chased. It was a hair-raising proposition, but perhaps—just perhaps—not quite so suicidal as it looked. With skilful handling the interposed engine might possibly be kept out of the way by backing, and its warning headlight shining full into the eyes of the men in the 416's cab would surely be enough to stop them—if anything would.

I got the coupling broken on the car to set our engine free before the distant flutter noise had grown to anything more than a humming like that of an overhead swarm of angry bees. Kirgan was standing on the front end, with his coat thrown over the headlight, ready to jerk it off and jump when he got the word. Out at the switch, our fireman was keeping out of sight so that the engineer of the special shouldn't see him, and maybe get rattled and stop. As usual, the boss had covered every little detail in his instructions, and had remembered that the sight of a man standing at a switch in a lonesome place like this might give an engineer a fit of "nerves" and make him shut off steam.

I had just finished uncoupling the day-coach and the boss was easing our engine ahead a bit to make sure that she was loose, when the car-door opened behind me and the major and Mrs. Sheila came out in the front vestibule. It was Mrs. Sheila who spoke to me, and her voice had borrowed some of the big terror that I had seen in her eyes while she was sitting in the office at Portal City.

"Where—whereabouts are we, Jimmie?" she asked.

I didn't get a chance to tell her. Before I could open my mouth the black shadows of the crooked valley beyond the switch were shot through with the white, shimmering glow of a headlight beam, and a second later the special flicked into view on the curve of approach.

When we first saw it, the engine was working steam, and she was running like a streak of lightning. But as we looked, there was a short, sharp whistle yelp, the brakes gripped the wheels, the one-car train, with fire grinding from every brake-shoe, came to a jerking stop a short car-length on our side of the switch, and a man dropped from the engine step to go sprinting to the rear. And it was plain that neither the engineer nor the man who was running back saw our outfit waiting on the leg of the old "Y."

Kirgan was the first one to understand. With a shout of warning, he jumped and ran toward the stopped train, yelling at the engineer for God's sake to pull out and go on. Back in the hills beyond the curve of approach another hoarse murmur was jarring upon the air, and the special's fireman, who was the man we had seen jump off and go running back, and who, of course, didn't know that we had our man there, was apparently trying to reach the switch behind his train to throw it against the following engine to shoot it off on the "Y."

By this time the boss was off of our engine and racing across the angle of the "Y" only a little way behind Kirgan. He realized that his plan was smashed by the stopping of the special, and that the very catastrophe we had come out to try to prevent was due to happen right there and then. Whatever our man waiting at the switch might do, there was bound to be a collision. If he left the points set for the main line, the wild engine would crash into the rear end of the stopped special; and if he did the other thing, our engine and coach standing on the "Y" would get it.

"Get the people out of that car!" I heard the boss bellow, but even as he said it the pop-valve of the stopped engine went off with a roar, filling the shut-in valley with clamorings that nothing could drown.

Two minutes, two little minutes more, and the sleep-sodden bunch of men in the special's car might have been roused and turned out and saved. But the minutes were not given us. While the racing fireman was still a few feet short of the switch the throwing of which would have saved the one-car train only to let the madman's engine in on our engine and coach, and our man—already at the switch—was too scared to know which horn of the dilemma to choose, the end came. There was the flash of another headlight on the curve, another whistle shriek, and I turned to help the Major take Mrs. Sheila off our car and run with her, against the horrible chance that we might get it instead of the special.

But we didn't get it. Ten seconds later the chasing engine had crashed headlong into the standing train, burying itself clear up to the tender in the heart of the old wooden sleeper, rolling the whole business over on its side in the ditch, and setting the wreckage afire as suddenly as if the old Pullman had been a fagot of pitch-pine kindlings and only waiting for the match.

If I could write down any real description of the way things stacked up there in that lonesome valley for the little bunch of us who stood aghast at the awful horror, I guess I wouldn't need to be hammering the keys of a typewriter in a railroad office. But never mind; no soldier sees any more of a battle than the part he is in. There were seven of us men, including the engineer and fireman of the special, who were able to jump in and try to do something, and, looking back at it now, it seems as if we all did what we could.

That wasn't much. About half of the people in the sleeping-car—six by actual count, as we learned afterward—were killed outright in the crash or so badly hurt that they died pretty soon afterward; and the fire was so quick and so hot that after we had got the wounded ones out we couldn't get all of the bodies of the others.

As you'd imagine, the boss was the head and front of that fierce rescue fight. He had stripped off his coat, and he kept on diving into the burning wreck after another and yet another of the victims until it seemed as if he couldn't possibly do it one more time and come out alive. He didn't seem to remember that these very men were the ones who had been trying to ruin him—that at least once they had set a trap for him and tried to kill him. He was too big for that.

After we had got out all the victims we could reach, there was still one more left who wasn't dead; we could hear him above the hissing of the steam and the crackling of the flames, screaming and begging us to break in the side of the car and kill him before the fire got to him. Kirgan had found an axe in the emergency box of our day-coach, and was chopping away like a madman.

The minute he got a hole big enough, the big master-mechanic dropped his axe and climbed down into the choking hell where the screams were coming from. Our fireman picked up the axe and ran around to the other side of the wreck where Jones, the engineer of the special, and his fireman were trying to break into the crushed cab of the 416.

The old major, the boss, and I stood by to help Kirgan, and the minute his head came up through the chopped hole we saw that he needed help. He had pried the screaming man loose, somehow, and was trying to drag him up out of the smoking furnace. It was done, amongst us, some way or other. Kirgan had wrapped the man up in a Pullman blanket to keep the fire from getting at him any worse than it already had, and as we were taking him out the blanket slipped aside from his face and I saw who it was that the master-mechanic had risked his life for. It was Hatch, himself, and he died in our arms, the major's and mine, while we were carrying him out to where Mrs. Sheila was tearing one of the Pullman sheets that I had got hold of into strips to make bandages for the wounded.

With the chance of saving maybe another one or two, we couldn't stay to help the brave little woman who was trying to be doctor and nurse to half a dozen poor wretches at once. But she took time to ask me one single breathless question:

"Have they found him yet?—you know the one I mean, Jimmie?"

"No," I said. "They're digging away at that side now," and then I ran back to jump in again.

Though the fire was now licking at everything in sight, Kirgan, who had taken the axe from our fireman, had managed to cut some of the car timbers out of the way so that we could see down into the tangle of things where the cab of the 416 ought to have been. There wasn't much left of the cab. The water-gauge was broken, along with everything else, but in spite of the reek of smoke and steam we could see that Hogan and his fireman were not there. But down under the coal that had shifted forward at the impact of the collision we could make out the other man—the murder-maniac—lying on his back, black in the face and gasping.

That was enough for the boss. It looked like certain death for anybody to crawl down into that hissing steam-bath, but he did it, wriggling through the hole that Kirgan had chopped, while two or three of us ran to the little creek that trickled down on the far side of the "Y" and brought back soaking Pullman blankets to try to delay the encroaching fire and smother the steam-jets.

I couldn't see very well what the boss was doing; the smoke and steam were so blinding. But when I did get a glimpse I saw that he was digging frantically with his bare hands at the shifted coal, and that he had succeeded in freeing the head and shoulders of the buried man, who was still alive enough to choke and gasp in the furnace-like heat.

Kirgan stood it as long as he could—until the licking flames were about to drive us all away.

"You'll be burnt alive—come up out of that!" he yelled to the boss; but I knew it wouldn't do any good. With Collingwood still buried down there and still with the breath of life in him, the boss was going to stay and keep on trying to dig him out, even if he, himself, got burned to a crisp doing it. Loving Mrs. Sheila the way he did, he couldn't do any less.

It was awful, those next two or three minutes. We were all running frantically back and forth, now, between the wreck and the creek, soaking the blankets and doing our level best to beat the fire back and keep it from cutting off the only way there was for the boss to climb out. But we could only fight gaspingly on the surface of things, as you might say. Down underneath, the fire was working around in front and behind in spite of all we could do. Some of it had got to the coal, and the heavy sulphurous smoke was oozing up to make us all choke and strangle.

Honestly, you couldn't have told that the boss was a white man when he crawled up out of that pit of death, tugging and lifting the crushed and broken body of the madman, and making us take it out before he would come out himself. We got them both away from the fire as quickly as we could and around to the other side of things, Kirgan and Jones carrying Collingwood.

The poor little lady we had left alone with the rescued ones had done all she could, and she was waiting for us. When we put Collingwood down, she sat down on the ground and took his head in her lap and cried over him just like his mother might have, and when the boss knelt down beside her I heard what he said: "That's right, little woman; that's just as it should be. Death wipes out all scores. I did my best—you must always believe that I did my best."

She choked again at that, and said: "There is no hope?" and he said: "I'm afraid not. He was dying when I got to him."

I tried to swallow the big lump in my throat and turned away, and so did everybody else but the major, who went around and knelt down on the other side of Mrs. Sheila. The wreck was blazing now like a mighty bonfire, lighting up the pine-clad hills all around and snapping and growling like some savage monster gloating over its prey. In the red glow we saw a man limping up the track from the west, and Kirgan and I went to meet him. It was Hogan, the missing engineer of the 416.

He told us what there was to tell, which wasn't very different from the way we'd been putting it up. They—Hogan and his fireman—hadn't suspected that they were carrying a maniac until after they had passed Bauxite and Collingwood had told them both that what he wanted to do was to overtake the special and smash it. Then there had been a fight on the engine, but Collingwood had a gun and he had threatened to kill them both if they didn't keep on.

"I kep' her goin'," said the Irishman, "thinkin' maybe Jonesy'd keep out of my way, or that at the lasht I'd get a chanst to shut the 'Sixteen off an' give her the brake. He kep' me fr'm doin' it, and whin I saw the tail-lights, I pushed Johnnie Shovel off an' wint afther him because there was nawthin' else to do. Johnnie's back yondher a piece, wid a broken leg."

Just then Jones, the special's engineer, came up, and he pieced out Hogan's story. The wire to Bauxite had warned him that a crazy man was chasing him and overrunning stop-signals. He had thought to side-track the chaser at the old "Y" and that was what he had stopped for.

Thereupon the three of us went after the crippled fireman, and when we got back to the "Y" with him it was all over. Collingwood had died with his head in Mrs. Sheila's lap, and the boss, fagged out and half dead as he must have been, was up and at work, getting the wreck victims into our day-coach, which had been backed up and taken around to the other leg of the "Y" to head for Portal City.

When it came time for us to move Collingwood, Mrs. Sheila pulled her veil down and walked behind the body, with the good old major locking his arm in hers, and that choking lump came again in my throat when I remembered what Collingwood had said to the boss the night he came to our office: "Sheila made her wedding journey with me once, when she was just eighteen. The next time she rides with me it will be at my funeral."

I guess there's no use stretching the agony out by telling about that mournful ride back to Portal City with the dead and wounded. We left the wreck blazing and roaring in the shut-in valley at the gulch mouth because there wasn't anything else to do; Kirgan and Jones and one of the firemen handled the engine and pulled out, while the rest of us rode in the day-coach and did what we could for the suffering.

At Banta we made a stop long enough to let the boss send a wire to Portal City, turning out the doctors and the ambulances—and the undertakers; and though it was after three o'clock in the morning when we pulled in, it seemed as if the whole town had got the word and was down at the station to meet us.

I couldn't see Mrs. Sheila's face when the major helped her off at the platform; her veil was still down. But I did hear her low-spoken word to the boss, whispered while they were carrying Collingwood and Hatch, and two of the others who were past help, out to the waiting string of dead-wagons.

"I shall go East with the body to-morrow—to-day, I mean—if the strikers will let you run a train, and Cousin Basil will go with me. We may never meet again, Graham, and for that reason I must say what I have to say now. Your opportunity has come. The man who could do the most to defeat you is dead, and the strike will do the rest. If I were you, I should neither eat nor sleep until I had thought of some way to take the railroad out of the hands of those who have proved that they are not worthy to own it."

I didn't know, just then, how much or little attention Mr. Norcross was paying to this mighty good, clear-headed bit of business advice. What he said went back to that saying of hers that they might never meet again.

"We must meet again—sometime and somewhere," he said. And then: "I did my best: God knows I did my best, Sheila. I would have given my own life gladly if the giving would have saved Collingwood's. Don't you believe that?"

"I shall always believe that you are one of God's own gentlemen, Graham," she said, soft and low; and then the major came to take her away.