e upward
climbing Carbonate train, and all would end.

In unreasoning misery, he did the only thing that offered: ran blindly
down his own embankment, hoping nothing but that he might have one
last glimpse of Virginia clinging to the hand-rail before she should
be lost to him for ever.

But as he ran a thought white-hot from the furnace of despair fell
into his brain to set it ablaze with purpose. Beyond the litter of
activities the octopod was standing, empty of its crew. Bounding up
into the cab, he released the brake and sent the great engine flying
down the track of the new line.

In the measuring of the first mile the despair-born thought took shape
and form. If he could outpace the runaway on the parallel line, stop
the octopod and dash across to the C. G. R. track ahead of the
Rosemary, there was one chance in a million that he might fling
himself upon the car in mid flight and alight with life enough left to
help Calvert with the hand-brakes.

Now, in the most unhopeful struggle it is often the thing least hoped
for that comes to pass. At Argentine, Winton's speed was a mile a
minute over a track rougher than a corduroy wagon-road; yet the
octopod held the rail and was neck and neck with the runaway. Whisking
past the station, Winton had a glimpse of a white-mustached old man
standing bareheaded on the platform and gazing horror-stricken at the
tableau; then man and station and lurching car were left behind, and
the fierce strife to gain the needed mile of lead went on.

Three miles more of the surging, racking, nerve-killing race and
Winton had his hand's-breadth of lead and had picked his place for the
million-chanced wrestle with death. It was at the C. G. R. station of
Tierra Blanca, just below a series of sharp curves which he hoped
might check a little the arrow-like flight of the runaway.

Twenty seconds later the telegraph operator at the lonely little way
station of Tierra Blanca saw a heroic bit of man-play. The
upward-bound Carbonate train was whistling in the gorge below when out
of the snow-wreaths shrouding the new line a big engine shot down to
stop with fire grinding from the wheels, and a man dropped from the
high cab to dash across to the station platform.

At the same instant a runaway passenger car thundered out of the
canyon above. The man crouched, flung himself at it in passing, missed
the forward hand-rail, caught the rear, was snatched from his feet and
trailed through the air l