delay Francis, followed by Bucks,
started along the running boards for the head end of the train.

The conductor found his train intact; but when he reached the head end
he could find neither engine, tender, nor crew. All had disappeared.
Running down the ladder of the head box-car, the conductor examined
the draw-bar for evidence of an accident. The coupling was apparently
uninjured but the tender and engine were gone. Francis, more upset
than Bucks had ever seen him, or ever afterward saw him, walked
moodily back to the caboose. What humiliated him more than the strange
predicament in which he found himself was that he had trusted to a
subordinate and gone to sleep in his caboose while on duty.

"Serves me right," he muttered, knitting his brows. "Brakeman," he
added sternly, "take your lantern and flags and get out behind. The
minute the buffaloes get across the track, go back two hundred yards
and protect us. I will watch the head end. While these buffaloes are
crossing they will be protection enough. Soon as it is daylight we
will find out where we are."

The snow continued falling and the buffaloes drifted south with the
storm, which was squally. Every moment, as the sky and landscape
lightened, Francis, whom Bucks had followed forward, expected to see
the last of the moving herd. But an hour passed and a second hour
without showing any gaps in the enormous fields. And the brighter the
daylight grew, the more buffaloes they could see.

Francis stormed at the situation, but he could do nothing. Finally,
and as hope was deserting him, he heard the distant tooting of an
engine whistle. It grew louder and louder until Bucks could hear the
ringing of a bell and the hissing of the open cylinder cocks of a
slow-moving locomotive. Gaps could now be discerned in the great herds
of buffaloes, and through the blowing snow the uncertain outlines of
the backing engine could dimly be seen. Francis angrily watched the
approaching engine, and, as soon as it had cleared the last of the
stumbling buffaloes on the track, he walked forward to meet it and
greeted the engineman roughly.

"What do you mean by setting my train out here on the main track in
the middle of the night?" he demanded ferociously, and those that knew
Pat Francis never wanted to add to his anger when it was aroused.

"Don't get excited," returned Dan Baggs calmly, for it was the
redoubtable Baggs who held the throttle. "I found I was getting short
of water