He realized that he was taking an awful chance, and he had taken it on his own responsibility. At any point the pilot might crash into some fallen monarch of the forest.
The heat came up into his face in a suffocating wave. Ralph was forced to draw back into the cab. He had been wise enough to close the forward and first side window on his side of the locomotive. Embers—flaming and white-hot—began rattling against the glass.
A ball of fire—the torn-away top of some coniferous tree—hurtled overhead, barely missing the smokestack, and fell flaming and smoking upon the firemen’s side of the boiler. The varnish began to smoke. Stilling leaped through the front window, ran along the board, and kicked the flaming bush off the locomotive.
The fire was sweeping closer and closer to the right of way. Ralph realized at last that he was driving into, not through, a belt of smoke and flame.
Ahead, and across the valley, the forest had ignited closer to the rails. The farther they went, the greater the danger.
This discovery was made too late, however. Ralph realized that it would be worse than ridiculous to stop and try to back out of the fire zone. The flames were being swept nearer and nearer to the tracks. He opened wide his throttle again and the Flyer drove at increased speed into whatever fate had in store for them.
The headlight seemed utterly quenched now by the glare of the fire. Smoke swirled into the cab and filled their lungs. Choking and coughing, the detectives cowered on the deck. The fireman on duty at the furnace could scarcely see what he was about. Stilling, the other fireman, could see no more than Ralph could ahead of the locomotive.
Had the strikers or the ruffians employed in secret by Andy McCarrey imagined this situation they could easily have derailed the Midnight Flyer. Any obstacle on the track would have brought the fast train to grief. But if the forest fire was started by McCarrey’s order, he expected that the fire itself would halt the trains on the division. His object, at most, was to throw the trains out of schedule, rather than to wreck the trains.
The Midnight Flyer’s arrival at the basin of Shadow Valley a little ahead of her schedule, if anything, and the fact that Ralph Fairbanks was willing to take a chance overcame the conspiracy of the strike leaders. 202 came through the danger area without much hurt. The crew and detectives on the locomotives suffered the most. The train was a vestibule train for its entire length and the doors were kept closed. Such little heat and smoke as entered the ventilators was of small consequence.
In a few minutes the locomotive pilot burst through the far side of the smoke-cloud. The headlight beamed along the rails again. The forest here lay untouched by fire on either side of the right of way.