istless, huge, furious, an abrupt vision of chaos,
faces, rage-distorted, peering through smoke, hands gripping outward
from sudden darkness, prehensile, malevolent; terrible as thunder, swift
as lightning, the two engines met and passed.

"He's hit," cried Delaney. "I know I hit him. He can't go far now. After
him again. He won't dare go through Bonneville."

It was true. Dyke had stood between cab and tender throughout all the
duel, exposed, reckless, thinking only of attack and not of defence, and
a bullet from one of the pistols had grazed his hip. How serious was the
wound he did not know, but he had no thought of giving up. He tore back
through the depot at Guadalajara in a storm of bullets, and, clinging to
the broken window ledge of his cab, was carried towards Bonneville, on
over the Long Trestle and Broderson Creek and through the open country
between the two ranches of Los Muertos and Quien Sabe.

But to go on to Bonneville meant certain death. Before, as well as
behind him, the roads were now blocked. Once more he thought of the
mountains. He resolved to abandon the engine and make another final
attempt to get into the shelter of the hills in the northernmost corner
of Quien Sabe. He set his teeth. He would not give in. There was one
more fight left in him yet. Now to try the final hope.

He slowed the engine down, and, reloading his revolver, jumped from the
platform to the road. He looked about him, listening. All around him
widened an ocean of wheat. There was no one in sight.

The released engine, alone, unattended, drew slowly away from him,
jolting ponderously over the rail joints. As he watched it go, a certain
indefinite sense of abandonment, even in that moment, came over Dyke.
His last friend, that also had been his first, was leaving him. He
remembered that day, long ago, when he had opened the throttle of his
first machine. To-day, it was leaving him alone, his last friend turning
against him. Slowly it was going back towards Bonneville, to the shops
of the Railroad, the camp of the enemy, that enemy that had ruined
him and wrecked him. For the last time in his life, he had been the
engineer. Now, once more, he became the highwayman, the outlaw against
whom all hands were raised, the fugitive skulking in the mountains,
listening for the cry of dogs.

But he would not give in. They had not broken him yet. Never, while he
could fight, would he allow S. Behrman the triumph of his capture.

He