tro!

Bradley started on the run for the next car ahead; and, subconsciously,
as he ran, he felt the speed of the train quicken. But that was
natural enough--they had been crawling to the summit of Mitre Peak,
and, over that now, before them lay a four-percent grade to the level
below, one of the nastiest bits of track on the division, curves all
the way--only Bull Coussirat was hitting it up pretty hard for a
starter.

In the next car the same scene was repeated--the smell of powder smoke,
the blue haze hanging listless near the roof out of the air currents;
the crouched, terrified foreigners, one with a broken wrist, dangling,
where a bullet had shattered it. Pietro, Berserker fashion, was
shooting his way through the train.

Bradley went forward more cautiously now, more warily. Strange the way
the speed was quickening! The cars were rocking now with short,
vicious slews. He thought he heard a shout from the track-side
without, but he could not be sure of that.

Through the next car and the next he went, trailing the maniac; and
then he started to run again. Stumbling feet, trying to hold their
footing, came to him from the top of the car. With every instant now
the speed of the train was increasing--past the limit of safety--past
the point where he would have hesitated to use the emergency brakes, if
there had been any to use--a luxury as yet extended only to the
passenger equipment in those days. The Polacks, the Armenians, and the
Swedes were beginning to yell with another terror, at the frantic
pitching of the cars, making a wild, unearthly chorus that echoed up
and down the length of the train.

Bradley's brain was working quickly now. It wasn't only this madman
that he was chasing fruitlessly. There must be something wrong, more
serious still, in the engine cab--that was Heney, and Carrol, the other
brakeman, who had run along the top.

Bradley dashed through the door, and, between the cars, jumped for the
ladder and swarmed up--the globe of his lamp in a sudden slew shivered
against the car roof, and the flame went out in a puff. He flung the
thing from him; and, with arms wide outspread for balance on his
reeling foothold, ran, staggered, stumbled, recovered himself, and sped
on again, springing from car to car, up the string of them, to where
the red flare, leaping from the open fire box in the cab ahead,
silhouetted two figures snatching for their hold at the brake-wheel on
the front end