“Then it’s below the bridge that we’ll have to look for it!” groaned the driver, “for I’m sure that is the only place where it could have broken away. Jim went the length of the train before we cleared out of Wastover town, and the car was all right then, and being downgrade until the bridge, there would be no pull on the couplers, can’t you see?”
Mike nodded, and now his gaze went searching along that bewildering network of bars and crossbars, almost as if he expected to find the missing car stuck somewhere halfway down. In reality he was trying to see the water, but could not as yet, because the valley was so narrow and deep that the river was not visible until they were close on to the bridge.
“What is that?” cried Mike, in a tone of horror, as with slackened speed the engine went slowly out on to the bridge, and every man of them all was craning his head downwards to get a better view of the river, swollen now with melting snows.
“It is the car! Holy Mary, have mercy on the women!” groaned the driver, who was a good Catholic when he remembered to be anything at all, and then he put his head down on the side of the cab and burst into tears like a woman. But Mike Walford gave him a fierce push and bade him reverse his engine.
“Slip back to the bank, man, and stop. I’m going down there to find my wife, and you can do your howling while I am gone,” he said, with brutal sternness, which was the only way he had of hiding his own pain.
“You’ll never be for swimming out in such a current?” objected the driver. “It will be murder and sooicide all in one, for where you go the boys will be sure to follow.”
“If my wife is down there I am going to get her out, dead or alive,” replied Mike; and there was that in his tone which made the other feel that he dared say no more.
The engine retreated slowly to where the land, rising in an embankment, gave it a little shelter from the wind. There it stopped, and the little band of volunteers scrambled down and, falling into line behind their leader, made their way down the steep slope to the water’s edge.
“I will swim out first with a rope,” said Mike, who had a serviceable hatchet slung at his waist; “then one of you can follow when I’ve got the rope fixed, and we will chop an opening at the end of the car that is out of water, and pray God we are not too late!”
There was a murmur which sounded like “Amen”, and then the men scrambled downwards for a few moments in silence.