way, and all afternoon Donkin had been chewing his lips over
his train sheet back in the despatcher's office at Big Cloud, until the
Directors' Special, officially Special 117, had become a nightmare to
him. Orders, counter orders, cancellations, new orders had followed
each other all afternoon--and now a new batch went out, as the
rehabilitated Special went out of Elk River, and Bob Donkin, with a
sigh of relief at the prospect of clear sailing ahead, pushed the hair
out of his eyes and relaxed a little as he began to give back the
"completes."

It wasn't Donkin's fault; there was never so much as a hint that it
was. The day man at Mitre Peak--forgot. That's all--but it's a hard
word, the hardest there is in railroading. There was a lot of traffic
moving that afternoon, and with sections, regulars, and extras all
trying to dodge Special 117, they were crowding each other pretty
hard--and the day man at Mitre Peak forgot.

It was edging dusk as old Pete Chartrand, from the Elk River platform,
lifted a finger to old Dan MacCaffery in the cab, and old Dan, with a
sort of grim smile at the knowledge that the honor of the Hill
Division, what there was left of it as far as Special 117 was
concerned, was up to him, opened out the 1608 to take the "rights"
they'd given him afresh for all there was in it.

From Elk River to Mitre Peak, where the right of way crosses the
Divide, it is a fairly stiff climb--from Mitre Peak to Eagle Pass, at
the canyon bed, it is an equally emphatic drop; and the track in its
gyrations around the base of the towering, jutting peaks, where it
clings as a fly clings to a wall, is an endless succession of short
tangents and shorter curves. The Rockies, as has been said, had been
harnessed, but they had never been tamed--nor never will be. Silent,
brooding always, there seems a sullen patience about them, as though
they were waiting warily--to strike. There are stretches, many of
them, where no more than a hundred yards will blot utterly one train
from the sight of another; where the thundering reverberations of the
one, flung echoing back and forth from peak to peak, drown utterly the
sounds of the other. And west of Mitre Peak it is like this--and the
operator at Mitre Peak forgot the holding order for Extra Freight No.
69.

It came quick, quick as the winking of an eye, sudden as the crack of
doom. Extra Freight No. 69 was running west, too, in the same
direction as the Directors' Spe