ment to
bring it to pass.

"Don't," clicked Frisbie, from the other end of the long wire. And then
at the risk of giving it away to every operator on the line: "You're
doing yourself up. Let the president see for himself what he has let us
in for."

Ford's reply was short and to the point. "The order stands. There are
others besides the president to be considered. Good night."

"Well, we go to this here Siding Number Twelve, do we?" said Hector,
when they were clambering once more to the foot-plate of the 1012.

"Safely, I think," said the chief, adding: "You can't run fast enough
over this track to get into trouble anyway."

That was the way it appealed to Hector for the succeeding twenty miles.
When the track was not too rough to forbid speed, the cuts were too
numerous, and the big flyer had to be bitted and held down until some of
Hector's impatience began to get into the machinery. This shall account
as it may for what happened. A mile or two below Riley's, where the
lights were all out and the turmoil of the day of strikes had apparently
subsided, the canyon opened out into a winding valley, and when Ford
called across to Hector: "There are no rock cuts on this section, and we
are partly surfaced. You can let her out a little for a few miles," the
engineer took the permission for all it was worth and sent the
eight-wheeler flying down the newly-ballasted stretch.

Two long curves were rounded in safety, and the special was approaching
a third, when to Ford, track-watching even more anxiously than Hector, a
dull red spot appeared in the exact center of the white field of the
electric. For a moment it puzzled him, but the explanation came with a
vigorous shock an instant later. It was the oil-lamp headlight of the
freight!

Hector was huge enough to be slow, if bigness were a bar to celerity.
But no drill-master of the foot-plates could have brought the flying
train to a stand with the loss of fewer seconds. Happily, too, the
1012's electric headlight served as a danger signal seen from afar by
the engineer of the freight. So it chanced that the two great engines
merely put their noses together; and by the time Penfield came
scrambling over the coal with the inevitable query from the president,
the jolting stop was a thing of the past, and the train was in motion
again, following the freight, which was backing, at Ford's order, to the
nearest siding.

"No more hurry for us to-night, Hector," was the boss's