Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1913-06-29
Continued from page :

my daughter had been kidnapped" he said
huskily.
Il heard il at Drybone-I'm very sorry
answered Jesse. leaning out of the window
and nodding to Billings the conductor.
The 200 slowly moved her wheels, as if
stiff and sore, emitted raucous, stentorian
cough, a second one, then another and an
other, at shorter and shorter intervals, until
finally they fused into a continuous roar, and
once more the Pathfinder was flying east
ward. When Bland glanced backward the
motionless little group at the telegraph
station was blending with the buildings, and
soon the watertank itself shrank to mere
dot against the skyline and then melted into
invisibiitv.
The train had lost thirty minutes through
her mishap with the boulder. Jesse had
made up fifteen, and when he struck the
sixty-mile wide esplanade of the Little Ten
Pins he made up his mind to gather in the
other fifteen, if it was humanity possible.
He shouted his intention to Maxim, who
leaped to his arduous task of feeding the
ravenous NAV: then, alternately coaxing
and goading, now tossing her half pipe of
sand, now taking up his reverse notch, he
quickly had the locomotive straining to her
work. In few minutes, quivering from the
terrific energy stored within, and as if mad
dened by her drivers increasing demands
she was shooting through the sunset splen-
dor like an arrow from a cyclopean bow.
For twelve miles the finger of the speed
recorder trembled between 103 and 109-
shot up to 1l3-slowly declined to go Bland
did not glance at the instrument: like most
engineers, he preferred his own estimate
for speed is relative, not absolute But Max
i'm, swaying like drunken man,-for the
cab had now acquired peculiar, undulating
motion, like thing in flight, glued his eyes
to the dial.
At the lib squirt his face paled but he
made no demur this time: merely shot an adj
miring glance at the bumped, tense figure on
the engineer seat, one hand on the throttle,
one leg braced against the quadrant.
The hand on the throttle presently shifted
and cone of white light leaped from the
electric headlamp. At once a goblin dance
began ahead. Every familiar object put on
mask, stuck on shadow tail ten or twenty
times its height, magnifed its size, and curl
ously shifted from side to side in its swift
advance. Once a bulky form, straddling the
track, leaped into view like jack-in-t the
box. 1t looked like a boulder; but it was
too late for the brakes, too late to jump, too
late for more than an ejaculatory prayer.
Bland instinctively closed his eyes for the
crash into eternity. But no crash came, no
jar even; and when he opened his eyes a
desiccated tumbleweed was clinging to his
breast,-a fragment of the heap that some
wandering "dust devil had deposited on
the track. He smiled. There was still a
construction about his throat and chest; but
the old Fear, turning his blood to water, had
not attempted to seize him.
An hour passed. There were no signals
to scrutinize, no crossings to whistle for,
nothing to be watched except the rails for
ever shooting beneath the engine like quiv-
ering, endless belts. Hence a kind of cozi-
ness, even drowsiness, fell over Bland. The