e reversing lever over into the back
notch, and with a single yank he wrenched the throttle wide. There was
nothing of the craftsman in engine-handling about Sammy Durgan at that
instant--only hurry. The engine, from a passive, indolent and
inanimate thing, seemed to rise straight up in the air like an aroused
and infuriated beast that had been stung. With one mad plunge it
backed crashing into the buffer plates of the express car behind it,
backed again, and once again, and the tinkle of breaking glass sort of
ricochetted along the train as one car after another added its quota of
shattered window panes, while the drivers, slipping on the rails,
roared around like gigantic and insensate pinwheels.

Sammy Durgan snatched at the cab frame for support--and then with a
yell he snatched at a shovel. A masked face showed in the gangway.
Sammy Durgan brought the flat of the shovel down on the top of the
man's head.

The gangway was clear again. There was life for it yet! The train was
backing quickly now under the urgent, prodding bucks of the engine.
Sammy Durgan mopped at his face, his eyes warily on the gangways.
Another man made a running jump for it--again Sammy Durgan's shovel
swung--and again the gangway was clear.

Shovel poised, lurching with the lurch of the cab, red hair flaming,
half terrified and half defiant, eyes shooting first to one gangway and
then the other, Sammy Durgan held the cab. A minute passed with no
renewal of attack. Sammy Durgan stole a quick glance over his shoulder
through the cab glass up the track--and, with a triumphant shout, he
flung the shovel clanging to the iron floor-plates, and, leaning far
out of the gangway, shook his fist. Strewn out along the right of way
masked men yelled and shouted and cursed, but Sammy Durgan was beyond
their reach--and so was the express company's safe.

"Yah!" screamed Sammy Durgan, wildly derisive and also belligerent in
the knowledge of his own safety. "Yah! Yah! Yah! 'Twas me, ye
bloody hellions, that turned the trick on ye! 'Twas me, Sammy Durgan,
and I'll have you know it! 'Twas----"

Sammy Durgan turned, as the express car opened, and Macy, the
conductor, hatless and wild-eyed, appeared on the platform.

"'S'all right, Macy!" Sammy Durgan screeched reassuringly. "'S'all
right--it's me, Sammy Durgan."

Macy jumped from the platform to the tender, jumped over the water
tank, and came down into the cab with an avalanche of coal. H