When there seemed no chance left, and I could see the Limited a burning, blackened mass, and hear the cries of the injured, the engine started, missing like thunder, to be sure. Ben leaped in beside me and let in his clutch.
Once beyond the shanty our headlights ended in a whirling bank of snow, and the cold stabbed like a driven nail. But the engine was running better now.
How my side partner found the road, or how he kept that rickety piece of junk from chucking us down a ravine I’ll never know. But he did. Yes, by the grace of the Lord, he did.
Pitching like a ship in a storm, sinking now and then up to our hubs, we jounced on down that mountain. What everlasting miles of emptiness! What biting pain as our ears and hands and noses turned red, then white.
Once we heard the shriek of the Limited below us on the grade; once we saw the flash of her furnace door. Seconds turned into minutes; minutes into hours. Would we be in time? I set my teeth and prayed some more.
Ah, we had hit the last stretch and through the smother we could see the semaphore lights of Hastings station. Also the light in the building itself. Our car snorted and groaned as Ben fed it the gas, skidding to the edge of a precipice or flinging us half out of our seats, but we never thought of that.
And now came the wail of the Limited’s whistle, this time above us. Her headlight flickered across the cut, touching the station with uncertain fingers. The semaphore was set green.
I shivered, but not from cold. If only we had half a chance, but the everlasting snow—how it clung to our wheels! And under it our tire-chains spun gratingly in red clay which flecked the white of the road like blood.
Bearing down on Hastings station, gathering speed with each pound of her drivers, thundered the Limited. We were playing the passage of a minute against a pile of cross-ties—and the forfeit was death!
Now we reached the nearest point to the right-of-way, and as we jerked to a halt, a black figure appeared on the depot platform against the light. I saw the flash of a gun and heard a bullet sing past.