elf, bunching Adair's
telegram with the others to be sent from the first stop where the
Western Union wires could be tapped. Then he whirled around in the swing
chair and scowled up at the little dial in the end of the car; scowled
at the speed-recorder, and went to the door to summon the flagman.

"What's the matter with Olson?" he demanded. "Has he forgotten how to
run since he left the Plug Mountain? Climb up over the coal and tell him
that forty miles an hour won't do for me to-night."

The flagman picked up his lantern and went forward; and in a minute or
two later the index finger of the speed-recorder began to mount slowly
toward the fifties. At fifty-two miles to the hour, Ford, sitting in the
observation end of the car where he could see the ghostly lines of the
rails reeling backward into the night, smelled smoke--the unmistakable
odor of burning oil. In three strides he had reached the rear platform,
and a fourth to the right-hand railing showed him one of the car-boxes
blazing to heaven.

He pulled the cord of the air-whistle, and after the stop stood by in
sour silence while the crew repacked the hot box. Since he had made the
car inspectors carefully overhaul the truck gear in the Denver station,
there was no one to swear at. Olson bossed the job, did it neatly and in
silence, and no one said anything when the fireman, in his haste to be
useful, upset the dope-kettle and got its contents well sanded before he
had overtaken it in its rolling flight down the embankment.

Ford turned away and climbed into his car at the dope-kettle incident.
There are times when retreat is the only recipe for self-restraint; and
in imagination he could see the general manager's special ticking off
the miles to the eastward while his own men were sweating over the
thrice-accursed journal-bearing under the "01."

Now, as every one knows, hot boxes, besides being perversely incurable,
are the sworn enemies of high speed. At forty miles to the hour the
journal was smoking again. At forty-five it burst into flames. Once more
it was patiently cooled by bucketings of water drawn from the engine
tank; after which necessary preliminary Olson spoke his mind.

"Ay tank ve never get someveres vit dat hal-fer-damn brass, Meester
Ford. Ay yust see if Ay can't find 'noder wone." And he rummaged in the
car lockers till he did find another.

Unfortunately, however, the spare brass proved to be of the wrong
pattern; a Pullman, instead o