Horace heard in his ears the station-master’s words: “She’s gotter get along mighty lively to keep ahead of the Express from Philadelphia.”
“Mighty lively—mighty lively,”—the words rang through his brain to the time of thundering car-wheels.
He knew where he stood. He had made three-quarters of the straight mile. He was three-quarters of a mile, then, from the little station. His overcoat was off in half a second. Many a time had he stripped, with that familiar movement, to trunks and sleeveless shirt, to run his mile or his half-mile; but never had such a thirteen hundred yards lain before him, up such a track, to be run for such an end.
The sweat was on his forehead before his right foot passed his left.
His young muscles strove and stretched. His feet struck the soft, unstable path of cinders with strong, regular blows. His tense forearms strained upward from his sides. Under his chest, thrown outward from his shoulders, was a constricting line of pain. His wet face burnt. There was a fire in his temples, and at every breath of his swelling nostrils something throbbed behind his eyes. The eyes saw nothing but a dancing dazzle of tracks and ties, through a burning blindness. And his feet beat, beat, beat till the shifting cinders seemed afire under him.
That is what this human machine was doing, going at this extreme pressure; every muscle, every breath, every drop of blood alive with the pain of this intense stress. Looking at it you would have said, “A fleet, light-limbed young man, with a stride like a deer, throwing the yards under him in fine style.” All we know about the running other folks are making in this world!
Half-way up the track Horace stopped short, panting hard, his heart beating like a crazy drum, a nervous shiver on him. Up the track there was a dull whirr, and he saw the engine of the express-train slipping down on him—past the station already.
The white mists from the marshes had risen up over the embankment. The last rays of the sunset shot through them, brilliant and blinding. Horace could see the engine; but would the engineer see him, waving his hands in futile gestures, in time to stop on that slippery, sharp grade? And of what use would be his choking voice when the dull whirr should turn into a roar? For a moment, in his hopeless disappointment, Horace felt like throwing himself in the path of the train, like a wasted thing that had no right to live, after so great a failure.
As will happen to those who are stunned by a great blow, his mind ran back mechanically to the things nearest his heart, and in a flash he went through the two weeks of his life. And then, before the thought had time to form itself, he had brought a red silk handkerchief from his breast, and was waving it with both hands, a fiery crimson in the opal mist.
Seen. The whistle shrieked; there was a groan and a creak of brakes, the thunder of the train resolved itself into various rattling noises, the engine slipped slowly by him, and slowed down, and he stood by the platform of the last car as the express stopped.