e. I
don't mind train robbers, but I don't tackle a burning bridge--not if I
know it," and he jumped off.

"Well, Peaters," asked Ferguson, of the second man, coolly, "do you want
to stay?"

"Me?" echoed Peaters, looking ahead at the mass of flame leaping
upward--"me stay? Well, not in a thousand years. You can have my gun,
Mr. Ferguson, and send my check to 439 Milwaukee Avenue, if you please.
Gentlemen, good-day." And off went Peaters.

And off went every last man of the valorous detectives except one lame
fellow, who said he would just as lief be dead as alive anyway, and
declared he would stay with Ferguson and die rich!

Sinclair, thinking he might never get another chance, was whistling
sharply for orders. Francis, breathless with the news, ran forward.

[Illustration: "SINCLAIR WAS WHISTLING SHARPLY FOR ORDERS"]

"Coin? How much? Twelve hundred thousand. Whew!" cried Sinclair. "Swing
up, Pat. We're off."

The Five-Nine gathered herself with a spring. Even the engineer's heart
quailed as they got headway. He knew his business, and he knew that if
only the rails hadn't buckled they were perfectly safe, for the heavy
truss would stand a lot of burning before giving way under a swiftly
moving train. Only, as they flew nearer, the blaze rolling up in dense
volume looked horribly threatening. After all it was foolhardy, and he
felt it; but he was past the stopping now, and he pulled the choker to
the limit. It seemed as if she never covered steel so fast. Under the
head she now had the crackling bridge was less than five hundred--four
hundred--three hundred--two hundred feet, and there was no longer time
to think. With a stare, Sinclair shut off. He wanted no push or pull on
the track. The McWilliams Special was just a tremendous arrow, shooting
through a truss of fire, and half a dozen speechless men on either side
of the river waiting for the catastrophe.

Jerry MacElroy crouched low under the gauges. Sinclair jumped from his
box and stood with a hand on the throttle and a hand on the air, the
glass crashing around his head like hail. A blast of fiery air and
flying cinders burned and choked him. The engine, alive with danger,
flew like a great monkey along the writhing steel. So quick, so black,
so hot the blast, and so terrific the leap, she stuck her nose into
clean air before the men in the cab could rise to it.

There was a heave in the middle like the lurch of a sea-sick steamer,
and with it the Five