g lit the cab as it shot past, and he saw Cameron leaning
from the cab window, with face of stone, his eyes riveted on the
gigantic drivers that threw a sheet of fire from the sanded rails.

"Jump!" screamed Ben, useless as he knew it was. What voice could live
in that hell of noise? What man escape from that cab now?

One, two, three, four cars pounded over the split rails in half as many
seconds. Ben, running dizzily for life to the right, heard above the
roar of the storm and screech of the sliding wheels a ripping, tearing
crash, the harsh scrape of escaping steam, the hoarse cries of the
wounded cattle. And through the dreadful dark and the fury of the babel
the wind howled in a gale and the heavens poured a flood.

Trembling from excitement and exhaustion, Ben staggered down the main
track. A man with a lantern ran against him; it was the brakeman who had
been back with the torpedoes; he was crying hysterically.

They stumbled over a body. Seizing the lantern, Ben turned the prostrate
man over and wiped the mud from his face. Then he held the lantern
close, and gave a great cry. It was Andy Cameron--unconscious, true, but
soon very much alive, and no worse than badly bruised. How the good God
who watches over plucky engineers had thrown him out from the horrible
wreckage only He knew. But there Andy lay; and with a lighter heart Ben
headed a wrecking crew to begin the task of searching for any who might
by fatal chance have been caught in the crash.

And while the trainmen of the freights worked at the wreck the
passenger-train was backed slowly--so slowly and so smoothly--up over
the switch and past, over the hill and past, and so to Turner Junction,
and around by Oxford to Zanesville.

When the sun rose the earth glowed in the freshness of its June
shower-bath. The flyer, now many miles from Beverly Hill, was speeding
in towards Omaha, and mothers waking their little ones in the berths
told them how close death had passed while they slept. The little girls
did not quite understand it, though they tried very hard, and were very
grateful to That Man, whom they never saw and whom they would never see.
But the little boys--never mind the little boys--they understood it, to
the youngest urchin on the train, and fifty times their papas had to
tell them how far Ben ran and how fast to save their lives. And one
little boy--I wish I knew his name--went with his papa to the
depot-master at Omaha when the flyer stoppe