Two miles back of the halted freights there was a disused saw-mill spur, not over a hundred feet long, to be sure, but it would serve. Maxwell’s decision was made instantly.
“Back up, both of you, until we can get in on Crawford’s spur,” he ordered; and as the conductor started to run to the rear; “Don’t waste time doing that! Whistle for ’em, you blockhead!” and he made impatient motions as of an engineer pulling the whistle-lever.
The first-section engineer, leaning from his cab window, heard, saw, and understood. Three shrieks of his whistle were answered by three of the hoarse bellows from the rear, and the two long freights began to pound heavily in the reverse motion up the grade.
“Push ’em, Bascom!” shouted Maxwell, as his own engine crept up after the retreating first section. “We’ll go in at Crawford’s and let ’em by.”
The two miles to the passing point, worried out slowly at the pace set by the laboring freights, seemed to stretch themselves out into ten. Sprague was looking at his watch.
“Sixteen miles yet, you say, and we have an hour and twenty minutes in which to make them. That looks as if we were still margined well enough to pull through.”
“I guess so,” said Maxwell. The laboring freights were at last backing around the curve from which the saw-mill spur branched off, and again the red-headed fireman was on hand with his switch-key. Luckily the unused lock did not refuse to work, and presently the light rails of the abandoned spur were buckling and bending ominously under the Nine-fifteen, as Bascom trundled the wild train out upon them.
Almost immediately the whistles screamed again, and the two freights slid away down the grade. “’Right!” yelled the red-headed one, shifting the rusty switch again; and once more the race was resumed.
When the Nophi smelter stacks came in sight in the vista opened up by the flying swing around the mountain of approach, four watches were out.
“We’re nearly an hour to the good yet,” cried Benson.