says he
knows he plowed up fifty yards of gravel with his face before he
stopped--and he looked it. They both went home on 201."

Lidgerwood was examining the cross-ties, which were cut and scarred by
the flanges of many derailed wheels.

"You have no notion of what did it?" he queried, turning abruptly upon
McCloskey.

"Only a guess, and it couldn't be verified in a thousand years. The '95
went off first, and Clay and Green both say it felt as if a rail had
turned over on the outside of the curve."

"What did you find when you got here?"

"Chaos and Old Night: a pile of scrap with a hole torn in the middle of
it as if by an explosion, and a fire going."

"Of course, you couldn't tell anything about the cause, under such
conditions."

"Not much, you'd say; and yet a queer thing happened. The entire train
went off so thoroughly that it passed the point where the trouble began
before it piled up. I was able to verify Clay's guess--a rail had turned
over on the outside of the curve."

"That proves nothing more than poor spike-holds in a few dry-rotted
cross-ties," Lidgerwood objected.

"No; there were a number of others farther along also turned over and
broken and bent. But the first one was the only freak."

"How was that?"

"Well, it wasn't either broken or bent; but when it turned over it not
only unscrewed the nuts of the fish-plate bolts and threw them away--it
pulled out every spike on both sides of itself and hid them."

Lidgerwood nodded gravely. "I should say your guess has already verified
itself. All it lacks is the name of the man who loosened the fish-plate
bolts and pulled the spikes."

"That's about all."

The superintendent's eyes narrowed.

"Who was missing out of the Angels crowd of trouble-makers yesterday,
Mac?"

"I hate to say," said the trainmaster. "God knows I don't want to put it
all over any man unless it belongs to him, but I'm locoed every time it
comes to that kind of a guess. Every bunch of letters I see spells just
one name."

"Go on," said Lidgerwood sharply.

"Hallock came somewhere up this way on 202 yesterday."

"I know," was the quick reply. "I sent him out to Navajo to meet
Cruikshanks, the cattleman with the long claim for stock injured in the
Gap wreck two weeks ago."

"Did he stop at Navajo?" queried the trainmaster.

"I suppose so; at any rate, he saw Cruikshanks."

"Well, I haven't got any more guesses, only a notion or two. This is a
pretty stiff up