FAST TIME DOWN ECHO CANYON
George had yelped excited, and awed. Terry looked. He was only in time to see the four cars reared high in the air, leaving the track and with a great jump landing, askew, to plunge end over end down the side of the gulch, while the ties and rails sailed in all directions.
They evidently had struck a tie, at last. A minute more, and with whistle open but throttle closed, and the brakeman and Pat scampering from brake to brake, and the scattered section-men gaping, the train rolled triumphant and breathless into Echo City.
The crash of the wreck had been heard. Men ran up track at best speed; down jumped Paddy and the brakeman, and ran, too; with a “Come on, quick!” George legged to see, and Terry panted after.
The wreck was half a mile back; a crowd had already gathered around it—were laughing and whooping, and no wonder: for here were the two Dutchmen, sitting on the bank of the ditch, one of them smoking his pipe, and both well dazed but unharmed. They had been aboard, after all!
“An’ for why didn’t yez set the brakes?” Pat was storming. “Did yez want to kill us all?”
“We knowed noddings,” said the man with the pipe. “Why didn’t you wake us oop, to tell what the troubles vas?”
“Then why didn’t yez say yez were aslape, so we’d wake yez up before wastin’ all the steam by whistlin’ to no use?” raged Pat. “Now look at the ties an’ rails an’ four good cars fed to yez, an’ the Cintral Paycific tryin’ to bate us into Ogden!”
The two Dutchmen really had been fast asleep on a load of ties; and as they had said, they “knowed noddings” about any “troubles” until they found themselves landed with a thump upon this bank!