the dark
hall, down the stairs, and across the street on a noiseless run for
the railroad yard.

The air was chill and the sky clear, with a moon more than half to the
full. "Lord, what a night to ride!" exclaimed Whispering Smith,
looking mournfully at the stars. "Well planned, well planned, I must
admit."

The men hastened toward the yard, where lanterns were moving about
the car of the train-guards near the Blue Front stables. The
loading board had been lowered, and the horses were being carefully
led into the car. From a switch engine behind the car a shrill
cloud of steam billowed into the air. Across the yard a great
passenger engine, its huge white side-rod rising and falling slowly
in the still light of the moon--one of the mountain racers,
thick-necked like an athlete and deep-chested--was backing down for
the run with the single car almost across the west end of the
division. Trainmen were running to and from the Wickiup platform. By
the time the horses were loaded the conductor had orders. Until the
last minute, Whispering Smith was in consultation with McCloud, and
giving Dancing precise instructions for the _posse_ into the Cache
country. They were still talking at the side door of the car,
McCloud and Dancing on the ground and Whispering Smith squatting on
his haunches inside the moving car, when the engine signalled and
the special drew away from the chute, pounded up the long run of the
ladder switch, and moved with gathering speed into the canyon. In the
cab Charlie Sollers, crushing in his hand the tissue that had
brought the news of his brother's death, sat at the throttle. He had
no speed orders. They had only told him he had a clear track.

CHAPTER XXVII

PURSUIT

Brill Young picked up a trail Sunday morning at Tower W before the
special from Medicine Bend reached there. The wrecked express car,
which had been set out, had no story to tell. "The only story," said
Whispering Smith, as the men climbed into their saddles, "is in the
one from the hoofs, and the sooner we get after it the better."

The country around Tower W, which is itself an operating point on the
western end of the division, a mere speck on the desert, lies high and
rolling. To the south, sixty miles away, rise the Grosse Terre
Mountains, and to the north and west lie the solitudes of the Heart
range, while in the northeast are seen the three white Saddle peaks of
the Missions. The cool, bright sunshine of a far and