d the flat below Silver Bar
Canon I had her well set and flying like a scared wolf. The train was
shaking from side to side like a ship at sea, and we were skipping past
the foothills so fast that they looked like fence posts. The cab shook
so that my fireman couldn't stand to fill the fire-box, so he dumped the
coal on the floor and got down on all fours and shoveled it in. No. 38
seemed to know that she was wanted to hold down my job, and quivered
like a race horse at the finish. We made up the lost time in the first
100 miles, and got to Beaver Canon with a few minutes to spare.

"It was when I slowed her up a bit in the canon that I noticed something
the matter with her. She dropped her steady gait and began to jerk and
halt. The fire-box clogged and the steam began to drop, and when I
reached a fairly long piece of road in the dark and silent canon, she
refused to recover. She spit out the steam and gurgled and coughed, and
nothing that I could do would coax her along. I told the fireman that
the old girl was quitting us, and that we might as well steer for new
jobs. He did his best to get her into action, but she was bound to have
her own way. She kept losing speed every second, and wheezed and puffed
like a freight engine on a mountain grade, and moved about as fast.
Finally, we came to a corner of a sharp turn, almost at the mouth of the
canon, and then No. 38 gave one loud, defiant snort and stopped. "'She's
done for now,' I said to the fireman, and we got out of the cab with our
lanterns.

"The cylinder-heads were almost opposite a high rock at the turns. Well,
when we got there, what do you think we saw? Not a hundred yards ahead
of the mouth of the canon, and as plain as day in the moonlight, was a
pile of rocks on the track. On either side was a bunch of half a dozen
masked men, with Winchester rifles half raised. Ten rods further on were
a dozen or more horses picketed at a few cottonwood trees.

"Well, you bet your life we couldn't get back to that train too quick.
It was not midnight, and in two minutes we had the crew and passengers
out with enough guns and revolvers to furnish the Chinese army.
Passengers, in those days, and in that country, carried guns. When the
robbers saw that the train had stopped they started forward, to be met
by a rattling fire. One of them dropped, but the rest ran for their
horses and got away.

"Now, then, you can't tell me that there isn't something in an engine
besides