ttached, was waiting on track Six. Ford
went down, looked the gift horse in the mouth, and had the running gear
of the car overhauled under his own supervision before he would give
Olson the word to go, pressing the night car inspectors into service and
making them repack the truck journals while he waited.

"I'm taking no chances," he said to Frisbie; and truly it seemed that
all the hindrances had been carefully forestalled when he finally
boarded the "01" and ordered his flagman to give Olson the signal. Yet
before the one-car train was well out of the Denver yards there was a
jolting stop, and the flagman came in to report that the engine had
dropped from the end of an open switch, blocking the main line.

Ford got out and directed the reenrailment of the 1016, carefully
refraining from bullying the big Swede, whose carelessness must have
been accountable. It was the simplest of accidents, with nothing broken
or disabled. Under ordinary conditions, fifteen minutes should have
covered the loss of time. But the very haste with which the men wrought
was fatal. Enrailing frogs have a way of turning over at the critical
instant when the wheels are climbing, and jack-screws bottomed on the
tie-ends do not always hold.

Eight several times were the jack-screws adjusted and the frogs clamped
into position; but not until the ninth trial could the perverse wheels
be induced to roll workmanlike up the inclined planes and into place on
the rails. Ford looked at his watch when his special was free of the
switches and Olson was speeding up on the first long tangent. With the
chase still in its opening mile, Mr. North's lead had been increased
from seven hours to eight.

Leaving Denver on the spur of the moment, Ford had necessarily left many
things at a standstill; and his first care, after he had assured himself
that the race was fairly begun, was to write out a handful of telegrams
designed to keep the battle alive during his enforced absence from the
firing line. The superintendent's desk was hospitably unlocked, and for
a busy half-hour Ford filled blank after blank, steadying himself
against the pounding swing of the heavily ballasted car with a
left-handed grip on the desk end. When there remained no one else to
remind, he wrote out a message to Adair, forecasting the threatened
disaster, and urging the necessity of rallying the reconstructionists on
the board of directors.

"That ought to stir him up," he said to hims