rc-star of the tower light on
Breezeland Inn into view. He turns to Guilford, who has fallen limp into
one of the platform chairs.

"In five minutes more we shall pass Agua Caliente," he says. "Will you
kill the Irishman, or shall I?" Guilford's lips move, but there is no
audible reply; and Bucks takes Danforth's weapon and passes quickly and
alone to the forward vestibule.

The station of Agua Caliente swings into the field of 1010's electric
headlight. Callahan's tank has been bone dry for twenty minutes, and he is
watching the glass water-gage where the water shows now only when the
engine lurches heavily to the left. He knows that the crown-sheet of the
fire-box is bare, and that any moment it may give down and the end will
come. Yet his gauntleted hand never falls from the throttle-bar to the
air-cock, and his eyes never leave the bubble appearing and disappearing
at longer intervals in the heel of the water-glass.

Shovel has stopped firing, and is hanging out of his window for the
straining look ahead. Suddenly he drops to the footplate to grip
Callahan's arm.

"See!" he says. "They have set the switch to throw us in on the siding!"
In one motion the flutter of the exhaust ceases, and the huge ten-wheeler
buckles to the sudden setting of the brakes. The man standing in the
forward vestibule of the Naught-seven lowers his weapon. Apparently it is
not going to be necessary to kill the engineer, after all.

But Callahan's nerve has failed him only for the moment. There is one
chance in ten thousand that the circumambulating side track is empty; one
and one only, and no way to make sure of it. Beyond the station, as
Callahan well knows, the siding comes again into the main line, and the
switch is a straight-rail "safety." Once again the thought of his
motherless child flickers into the engineer's brain; then he releases the
air and throws his weight backward upon the throttle-bar. Two gasps and a
heart-beat decide it; and before the man in the vestibule can level his
weapon and fire, the one-car train has shot around the station, heaving
and lurching over the uneven rails of the siding, and grinding shrilly
over the points of the safety switch to race on the down grade to Megilp.

At the mining-camp the station is in darkness save for the goggle eyes of
an automobile drawn up beside the platform, and deep silence reigns but
for the muffled, irregular thud of the auto-car's motor. But the beam of
the 1010's head