as engaged with the Hercules 0001. Tom did not think any
harm would come to Koku, and he knew that the giant would enjoy
immensely a free foot in such a wild country. The two young fellows,
dressed in working suits of overall stuff, spent long hours in the cab
of the electric locomotive. Their try-outs had to be made for the most
part on sidetracks and freight switches, some miles outside
Hendrickton, where the invention would not be in the way of regular
traffic.

Speed on level tracks had been raised in one test to over ninety-five
miles an hour and Mr. Bartholomew cheered wildly from the cab of a huge
Mallet that paced Tom's locomotive on a parallel track. No steam
locomotive had ever made such fast time.

But Tom was after something bigger than this. He wanted to show the
president of the H. & P. A. that the Hercules 0001 could drag a load
over the Pas Alos Range at a pace never before gained by any
mountain-hog.

Therefore he coaxed the electric locomotive out into the hills, some
hundred or more miles from headquarters. He had to keep in touch with
the train dispatcher's office, of course; the new machine had often to
take a sidetrack. Nor was much of this hilly right-of-way electrified.
The Jandels locomotive had been found to be a failure on the sharp
grades; so the extension of the trolley system had been abandoned.

But there was one steep grade between Hammon and Cliff City that had
been completed. The current could be fed to the cables over this
stretch of track, and for a week Tom used this long and steep grade
just as much as he could, considering of course the demands of the
regular traffic.

The telegraph operator at Half Way (merely a name for a station, for
there was not a habitation in sight) thrust his long upper-length out
of the telegraph office window one afternoon and waved a "highball" to
the waiting electric locomotive on the sidetrack.

"Dispatcher says you can have Track Number Two West till the
four-thirteen, westbound, is due. I'll slip the operator at Cliff City
the news and he'll be on the lookout for you as well as me, Mr. Swift.
Go to it."

Every man on the system was interested, and most of them enthusiastic,
about Tom's invention. The latter knew that he could depend upon this
operator and his mate to watch out for the western-bound flyer that
would begin its climb of the grade at Hammon less than half an hour
hence.

The electric locomotive was coaxed out across the switc