ull speed. At the same instant Tischer's
headlight swung into view, half blinding them with its glare.

"What is that following us?" asked Bucks.

"It's the fast mail," said Halkett.

Guilford turned livid and caught at the hand-rail.

"S-s-say--are you sure of that?" he gasped.

"Of course: it was an hour and thirty-five minutes late, and we are on its
time."

"Then we can't stop unless somebody throws us on a siding!" quavered the
receiver, who had a small spirit in a large body. "I told M'Tosh to give
the mail orders to make up her lost time or I'd fire the engineer--told
him to cut out all the stops this side of Agua Caliente!"

"That's what you get for your infernal meddling!" snapped Halkett. In
catastrophic moments many barriers go down; deference to superior officers
among the earliest.

But the master spirit of the junto was still cool and collected.

"This is no time to quarrel," he said. "The thing to be done is to stop
this train without getting ourselves ripped open by that fellow behind the
headlight yonder. The stop-signals prove that Hawk and the others are
doing their best, but we must do ours. What do you say, Halkett?"

"There is only one thing," replied the superintendent; "we've got to make
the Irishman run ahead fast enough and far enough to give us room to stop
or take a siding."

The governor planned it in a few curt sentences. Was there a weapon to be
had? Danforth, the private secretary, roused from his nap in the wicker
chair, was able to produce a serviceable revolver. Two minutes later, the
sleep still tingling in his nerves to augment another tingling less
pleasurable, the secretary had spanned the terrible gap separating the car
from the engine and was making his way over the coal, fluttering his
handkerchief in token of his peaceful intentions.

He was charged with a message to Callahan, mandatory in its first form,
and bribe-promising in its second; and he was covered from the forward
vestibule of the private car by the revolver in the hands of a resolute
and determined state executive.

"One of them's comin' ahead over the coal," warned James Shovel; and
Callahan found his hammer.

"Run ahead an' take a siding, is ut?" he shouted, glaring down on the
messenger. "I have me ordhers fr'm betther men than thim that sint you. Go
back an' tell thim so."

"You'll be paid if you do, and you'll be shot if you don't," yelled the
secretary, persuasively.

"Tell the boss he can'