red-hot. Nobody noticed it. Regan's kindly,
good-humored face had the stamp of horror in it, and he pulled at his
scraggly brown mustache, his eyes seemingly fascinated by Donkin's
fingers. Everybody's eyes, the three of them, were on Donkin's fingers
and the key. Carleton was like a man of stone, motionless, his face set
harder than face was ever carved in marble.

It grew hot in the room; but Donkin's fingers were like ice on the key,
and, strong man though he was, he faltered.

"Oh, my God!" he whispered--and never a prayer rose more fervently from
lips than those three broken words.

Again he called, and again, and again. The minutes slipped away. Still
he called--with the life and death--the "seventeen"--called and called.
And there was no answer save that echo in the room that brought the
perspiration streaming down from Regan's face, a harder light into
Carleton's eyes and a chill like death into Donkin's heart.

Suddenly Donkin pushed back his chair; and his fingers, from the key,
touched the crystal of his watch.

"The second section will have passed Cassil's now," he said in a
curious, unnatural, matter-of-fact tone. "It'll bring them together
about a mile east of there--in another minute."

And then Carleton spoke--master railroader, "Royal" Carleton, it was up
to him then, all the pity of it, the ruin, the disaster, the lives out,
all the bitterness to cope with as he could. And it was in his eyes, all
of it. But his voice was quiet. It rang quick, peremptory, his
voice--but quiet.

"Clear the line, Bob," he said. "Plug in the round-house for the
wrecker--and tell them to send uptown for the crew."

Toddles? What did Toddles have to do with this? Well, a good deal, in
one way and another. We're coming to Toddles now. You see, Toddles,
since his fracas with Hawkeye, had been put on the Elk River local run
that left Big Cloud at 9.45 in the morning for the run west, and
scheduled Big Cloud again on the return trip at 10.10 in the evening.

It had turned cold that night, after a day of rain. Pretty cold--the
thermometer can drop on occasions in the late fall in the mountains--and
by eight o'clock, where there had been rain before, there was now a thin
sheeting of ice over everything--very thin--you know the kind--rails and
telegraph wires glistening like the decorations on a Christmas
tree--very pretty--and also very nasty running on a mountain grade.
Likewise, the rain, in a way rain has, had drippe