Starbuck swung off before the switcher came to a stop, and joined the three who were waiting at the step of the caboose.
“Hell’s a-poppin’,” he said laconically. “Davis hasn’t got a single west wire that he can use. They all went out, blink, about twenty minutes ago.”
“What’s that?” demanded Maxwell. “Not all of them, surely!”
“Every blamed one—commercial wires and all. Can’t get a whisper out of anything west of Little Butte. He says it acts like a general ‘ground,’ and then again it don’t.”
The nattily dressed master mechanic had dropped from his engine-step to come and join the group at the caboose. Maxwell put him in possession of the blockading fact in a brief sentence.
“The wires are dead and we’ll have to bluff our way from siding to siding. Are you game for it, Bascom?”
The big man inclined his head. “I guess so,” he said.
“All right. Go to Little Butte for the first lap. There is nothing in the way between here and the junction. All aboard, gentlemen.”
The start was made briskly enough, but two miles beyond the yard-limits the caboose-car chucked noisily as Bascom slowed for the single-span bridge over the Gloria.
“Good Gad!” raged Maxwell, jumping up and jerking the air-whistle cord for full speed ahead. “If he’s going to slow up for every trestle we come to, we’ll never get anywhere!”