him over on his side as the brake-shoes locked, the
angry grind and crunch of the wheel tires, and the screech of skidding
drivers.

He dragged himself out and crouched again on the running board. Behind
him, like a wriggling snake, the coaches swayed and writhed crazily,
swinging from side to side in drunken, reeling arcs. A deafening roar
of beating flanges and pounding trucks was in his ears--and shriller,
more piercing, the screams of the brake-shoes as they bit and held. He
turned his head and looked down the right of way, and his eyes held
there, riveted and fascinated. Two hundred yards ahead was the worst
twist on the Slide, where the jutting cliff of Old Piebald Mountain
stuck out over the precipice, and the track hugged around it in a
circle like a fly crawling around a wall.

Beezer groaned and shut his eyes again. They say that in the presence
of expected death sometimes one thinks of a whole lot of things.
Engineer Beezer, in charge of Number One, the Imperial Limited, did
then; but mostly he was contrasting up the relative merits of a
workbench and a throttle, and there wasn't any doubt in Beezer's mind
about which he'd take if he ever got the chance to take anything again.

When he opened his eyes Old Piebald Mountain was still ahead of
him--about ten feet ahead of him--and the pony truck was on the curve.
But they had stopped, and Dave Kinlock and a couple of mail clerks were
trying to tear his hands away from the death grip he'd got on the
handrail. It was a weak and shaken Beezer, a Beezer about as flabby as
a sack of flour, that they finally lifted down off the running board.

There was nothing small about Regan--there never was. He came down on
the wrecking train, and, when he had had a look at the 1016 and had
heard Kinlock's story, he went back up to the construction camp, where
Beezer had been outfitted with leg and arm bandages.

"Beezer," said he, "I didn't say all horse doctors wouldn't make
jockeys--what? You can have an engine any time you want one."

Beezer shook his head slowly.

"No," said he thoughtfully; "I guess I don't want one."

Regan's jaw dropped, and his fat little face puckered up as he stared
at Beezer.

"Don't want one!" he gasped. "Don't want one! After howling for one
for three months, now that you can have it, you don't want it! Say,
Beezer, what's the matter with you--h'm?"

But there wasn't anything the matter with Beezer. He was just getting
conval