t night something was happening west of the range.

"It is curious," mused Callahan, as Morrison, the head operator, handed
him some McCloud messages--"curious, that we get nothing from Sleepy
Cat."

Sleepy Cat, it should be explained, is a new town on the West End; not
only that, but a division town, and though one may know something about
the Mountain Division he may yet be puzzled at Callahan's mention of
Sleepy Cat. When gold was found in the Pilot range and camps grew up
and down Devil's Gap like mushrooms, a branch was run from Sleepy Cat
through the Pilot country, and the tortoise-like way station became at
once a place of importance. It takes its name from the neighboring
mountain around the base of which winds the swift Rat River. At Sleepy
Cat town the main line leaves the Rat, and if a tenderfoot brakeman ask
a reservation buck why the mountain is called Sleepy Cat the Indian
will answer, always the same, "It lets the Rat run away."

"Now it's possible," suggested Hughie Morrison, looking vaguely at the
stove, "that the wires are down."

"Nonsense," objected Callahan.

"It is raining at Soda Sink," persisted Morrison, mildly.

"What?" demanded the general superintendent, pulling his pipe from his
mouth. Hughie Morrison kept cool. His straight, black hair lay
boyishly smooth across his brow. There was no guile in his expression
even though he had stunned Callahan, which was precisely what he had
intended. "It is raining at Soda Sink," he repeated.

Now there is no day in the mountains that goes back of the awful
tradition concerning rain at Soda Sink. Before Tom Porter, first
manager; before Brodie, who built the bridges; before Sikes, longest in
the cab; before Pat Francis, oldest of conductors, runs that tradition
about rain at the Sink--which is desert absolute--where it never does
rain and never should. When it rains at Soda Sink, this say the
Medicine men, the Cat will fall on the Rat. It is Indian talk as old
as the foothills.

Of course no railroad man ever gave much heed to Indian talk; how, for
instance, could a mountain fall on a river? Yet so the legend ran, and
there being one superstitious man on the force at Medicine Bend one man
remembered it--Hughie Morrison.

Callahan studied the bulletin to which the operator called his
attention and resumed his pipe sceptically, but he did make a
suggestion. "See if you can't get Sleepy Cat, Hughie, and find out
whether that is so."