ile a minute.
And Casey, believing he might do well to slow up gradually, lightly put
on the brake. But it did not hold. He tried again. The brake had broken.

He stood at the wheel, his eyes clear now, watching ahead. The train
down in the valley was miles away, not yet even a black dot in the gray.
The smoke, however, began to lift.

Casey was suddenly struck by a vague sense that something was wrong with
him.

"Phwat the hell!" he muttered. Then his mind, strangely absorbed,
located the trouble. His pipe had gone out! Casey stooped in the hole
he had made in the gravel, and there, knocking his pipe in his palm, he
found the ashes cold. When had that ever happened before? Casey wagged
his head. For his pipe to go cold and he not to know! Things were
happening on the U. P. R. these days. Casey refilled his pipe, and, with
the wind whistling over him, he relit it. He drew deep and long, stood
up, grasped the wheel, and felt all his blood change.

"Me poipe goin' cold--that wor funny!" soliloquized Casey.

The phenomenon appeared remarkable to him. Indeed, it stood alone. He
measured the nature of this job by that forgetfulness. And memories
thrilled him. With his eye clear on the track that split the gray
expanse, with his whole being permeated by the soothing influence of
smoke, with his task almost done, Casey experienced an unprecedented
thing for him--he lived over past performances and found them vivid,
thrilling, somehow sweet. Battles of the Civil War; the day he saved a
flag; and, better, the night he saved Pat Shane, who had lived only to
stop a damned Sioux bullet; many and many an adventure with McDermott,
who, just a few minutes past, had watched him with round, shining eyes;
and the fights he had seen and shared--all these things passed swiftly
through Casey's mind and filled him with a lofty and serene pride.

He was pleased with himself; more pleased with what McDermott would
think. Casey's boyhood did not return to him, but his mounting
exhilaration and satisfaction were boyish. It was great to ride this
way!... There! he saw a long, black dot down in the gray. The train!...
General Lodge had once shaken hands with Casey.

Somebody had to do these things, since the U. P. R. must reach across
to the Pacific. A day would come when a splendid passenger-train would
glide smoothly down this easy grade where Casey jolted along on his
gravel-car. The fact loomed large in the simplicity of the Irishman's