. We are just coming to Blackwood Hill and I knew I could
never make Blackwood Siding with the train. So I uncoupled and ran to
the Blackwood tank for water. We are all right now. Couple us up. If I
hadn't got water, we should have been hung up here till we got another
engine."

"Even so," retorted Francis, "you needn't have been all night about
it."

"But when we started back there were about ten million buffaloes on
the track. If I had been heading into them with the cow-catcher I
shouldn't have been afraid. But I had to back into them, and if I had
crippled one it would have upset the tender."

"Back her up," commanded Francis curtly, "and pull us out of here."

Meantime there was much excitement at the despatchers' office in
Medicine Bend over the lost train. It had been reported out of White
Horse Station on time, and had not reported at Blackwood. For hours
the despatcher waited vainly for some word from the bridge timbers.
When the train reported at Blackwood Station, the message of Francis
explaining the cause of the tie-up seemed like a voice from the tombs.
But the strain was relieved and the train made fast time from
Blackwood in. About nine o'clock in the morning it whistled for the
Medicine Bend yards and a few moments later Bucks ran upstairs in the
station building to report for assignment.

CHAPTER XV

He found Baxter needing a man in the office, and Bucks was asked to
substitute until Collins, the despatcher who was ill, could take his
trick again. This brought Bucks where he was glad to be, directly
under Stanley's eye, but it brought also new responsibilities, and
opened his mind to the difficulties of operating a new and already
over-taxed line in the far West, where reliable men and available
equipment were constantly at a premium.

The problem of getting and keeping good men was the hardest that
confronted the operating department, and the demoralization of the
railroad men from the life in Medicine Bend grew steadily worse as the
new town attracted additional parasites. When Bucks, after his return,
took his first walk after supper up Front Street, he was not surprised
at this. Medicine Bend was more than ten times as noisy, and if it
were possible to add any vice to its viciousness this, too, it would
seem, had been done.

As was his custom, he walked to the extreme end of Front Street and
turning started back for the station, when he encountered Baxter, the
chief despatcher. B