The Prescott daily news., 1912-05-08

hold on the Trans-American in full career.
 It's smooth, swift flight became sud denly such a spasm of jars, shivers and thuds that Mallory cried:
 Were off the track"
 He was sent Hopping down the eisle like a bolster hurled through the car. He brought up with a sickening slam across the seat into which Marjorie had been Jounced back with a breath taking slam. And then Kathleen came flying backwards and landed in a heap on both of them.
 Several of the other passengers were just returning from breakfast and they Were shot and scattered all man beads had burst
 Women screamed, men yelled, and then while they were still struggling against the seats and one another, the train came to halt.
 Thank God. we stopped in tirne!" Mallory gasped, as he tried to disen- gage himself and Marjorie from Kath- leen
 The passengers began to regain their courage with their equilibrium. Little Jimmie Wellington had flown the whole length of the car. clinging to his wife as if she were Francesca da Rimini, and he Paolo, fitting through Inferno. The flight ended at the stateroOm door with such a thu1np that Mrs. Fosdick was sure a detec- tive had come for her at last, and with a battering ram.
 But when Jimmie got back breath enough to talk, he remembered the train-stopping excitement of the day before and called out:
 Has Mrs. Mallory lost that pup again?"
 Everybody laughed uproariously at this. People will laugh at anything or nothing when they have been frightened almost to death and sud denly relieved of anxiety.
 Everybody was cracking a joke at MarJorie's expense. Everybody felt a good-natured grudge against her for being such a mystery. The car was ringing with hilartty, when the DOT ter came stumbling in and paused at the door, with eyes all white, hands waving franticaily, and lips Tapping like flannel in a vain effort to speak.
 The passengers stopped laughing at Marjorie, to laugh at the porter. Ash ton sang out:
 Whats the matter with you. DOT. ter? Are you trying to crov?'
 everybody roared at this, till the porter finally managed to articulate
 T-t-t-train rob-rob-robbers!"
 Silence shut down as If the whole crowd had been smitten with paraly. sis. From somewhere outside and ahead came pop-9opping as of fire crackers Everybody thought. Re Volvers!" The reports were mingled with barbaric yells that turned the marrow fin every bone to snow.
 These regions are full of historic terror. All along the Nevada route the conductor, the brakemen and old travellers had pointed out scene after scene where the Indians had slalled the thirst of the arid land with white mans blood Ashton, who had tray. eled this way many times. had made himself fascinatingly horrifying the evening before and ruined several breakfasts that morning in the dining car, by regaling the passengers with stories of pioneer ordeals. men and women massacred in burning wagons. or dragged away to fiendish cruelty and obscene torture. staked out supine on burning wastes with eyelids cut oif, bound down within reach of rat. tlesnakes, subjected to every misery that human deviltry could devise.
 Ashton had brought his fellow pas sengers to state of ecstatic excit- ability, and. like many recounter of burglar stories at night, had tuned his own nerves to high tension.
 The violent stopping of the train. the heart-shaking yells and shots out side, found the passengers already apt to respond without delay to the ap- peals of fright. After the first hush of dread, came the reaction to panic.
 Each passenger showed his own panic in his own way Ashton whi.led round and round. like a horse with the blind staggers, then bolted down the aisle, knocking aside men and women. He climbed on a seat, pulled down an upper berth, and, scramhiing into 1t, tried to shut it on himself. Mrs. Whitcomb was so frightened that she assailed Ashton with fury and seizing his feet, dragged him back in-