This point was a big summer resort place and had several hotels. There was a junction here, too, with a small line, and a Y. Of course, at this hour of the night the station was practically empty save for the station workers and the few people who wished to board the Flyer.
The workers, however, were increased in number by men whom Ralph, looking out of the cab window, marked as Mr. Adair’s operatives. Each important station along the entire division was now guarded by railroad detectives. Ralph hoped he might see his friend, Zeph Dallas. The latter’s queer telegram had been sent from this station. But he observed nobody who looked at all like the tall and gawky Zeph.
He got the conductor’s sign and rolled out of the Shadow Valley Station exactly on the dot of the scheduled time. That alone was an achievement, although Ralph well knew that the hardest part of the run was ahead.
“Gee, Boss!” joked one of his crew, “I bet if you’d known you were going to hold the lever on this old mill you would have given us a little more time between here and Oxford, eh?”
Ralph laughed good-naturedly. It was true the cook had to drink his own broth. But when making up the schedule in the Rockton train dispatcher’s office, the young fellow had been confident that under ordinary conditions the Midnight Flyer should hit the stopping point on the nick of time. Provided, of course, west-bound freight kept off the express train’s time.
Through Shadow Valley there were several places where the going was hard. Ralph knew this quite well. But he had got the “feel” of the big eight-wheeler now and he believed that it could show even greater speed than it had ever recorded.
When they pulled out of the station he did not let the train merely coast down the first grade. He opened her throttle wide and she began to rock gently on the perfectly ballasted rails. The firemen began to exchange glances—they could not exchange speech at this speed—and realized that poor old Byron Marks had never got such speed out of the engine.
Ralph, of course, was taking a chance. The grade really called for brakes; but this was no ordinary situation. He realized that if he was to make time at all, anywhere within the next fifty miles, it must be right here.
“Shadow Valley.” Well named by some old pioneer with a poetic slant to his brain. When the moon shone the black reflections of cliffs and trees lay across the right of way of the railroad like blankets of black velvet.
The locomotive headlight cut these shadows like the stroke of a scimitar. Yard by yard the clear-way was revealed to the engineer as the train plunged down the slope. He was taking a chance—a big chance—Ralph knew, in opening the engine up in this way. Especially now that there had been threats made against the road by the strikers and their sympathizers.