-Nine got her paws on cool iron and solid ground,
and the Mattaback and the blaze--all except a dozen tongues which licked
the cab and the roof of the baggage-car a minute--were behind. Georgie
Sinclair, shaking the hot glass out of his hair, looked ahead through
his frizzled eyelids and gave her a full head for the western bluffs of
the valley; then looked at his watch.

It was the hundred and ninetieth mile-post just at her nose, and the
dial read eight o'clock and fifty-five minutes to a second. There was an
hour to the good and seventy-six miles and a water to cover; but they
were seventy-six of the prettiest miles under ballast anywhere, and the
Five-Nine reeled them off like a cylinder-press. Seventy-nine minutes
later Sinclair whistled for the Denver yards.

There was a tremendous commotion among the waiting engines. If there was
one there were fifty big locomotives waiting to charivari the McWilliams
Special. The wires had told the story in Denver long before, and as the
Five-Nine sailed ponderously up the gridiron every mogul, every
consolidated, every ten-wheeler, every hog, every switch-bumper, every
air-hose screamed an uproarious welcome to Georgie Sinclair and the
Sky-Scraper.

They had broken every record from McCloud to Denver, and all knew it;
but as the McWilliams Special drew swiftly past, every last man in the
yards stared at her cracked, peeled, blistered, haggard looks.

"What the deuce have you bit into?" cried the depot-master, as the
Five-Nine swept splendidly up and stopped with her battered eye hard on
the depot clock.

"Mattaback bridge is burned; had to crawl over on the stringers,"
answered Sinclair, coughing up a cinder.

"Where's McWilliams?"

"Back there sitting on his grief, I reckon."

While the crew went up to register, two big four-horse trucks backed up
to the baggage-car, and in a minute a dozen men were rolling specie-kegs
out of the door, which was smashed in, as being quicker than to tear
open the barricades.

Sinclair, MacElroy, and Francis with his brakeman were surrounded by a
crowd of railroad men. As they stood answering questions, a big
prosperous-looking banker, with black rings under his eyes, pushed in
towards them, accompanied by the lame fellow, who had missed the chance
of a lifetime to die rich, and by Ferguson, who had told the story.

The banker shook hands with each one of the crews. "You've saved us,
boys. We needed it. There's a mob of five thousand