“I don’t know how you did it, and there’s no time for explanations now; but I think, Holman, you’d better leave Rafferty behind.”
“And have the whole crew quit, too? It’s no use, Carleton, he’s got to go. That’s all there is to it.”
Carleton shook his head doubtfully. “I don’t like the idea of you two getting up there together. There’s no need of you going, and you’d better not go. You don’t know the man; if you think he’ll forget——”
“You’re wrong, I do. I told you so before; anyway, it’s too late now—we’re off. Here’s Spence with the orders.”
Before Carleton could reply, Holman had grabbed the tissue and was running for the train. As he swung himself into the cab of the engine and handed Hurley, the driver, his orders, Rafferty climbed in from the other side.
At sight of Holman, Rafferty hesitated and half turned around in the gangway to go back to the caboose; but Holman reached out and caught his arm.
“Stay where you are, Rafferty,” he said quietly. And during the nerve-racking thirty-mile run to Eagle Pass no other words passed between them. Sometimes in the mad slur of the locomotive as she hit the tangents their bodies touched; that was all.
Holman, by virtue of railroad etiquette, had climbed to the fireman’s seat and once or twice he had glanced around at the great bulk of the man behind him, at the grim, set features, at the eyes that would not meet his, and wondered at his own temerity in inviting a physical encounter. And what good had it done? Was Carleton right after all? Perhaps. And yet behind the stubbornness, the self-will, the purely physical, there must be the other side of the man. If he could only reach it—only touch it. He had touched it. His appeal for the injured.
Hurley was eating up the miles as only a man at the throttle of a wrecker with clear rights could do it. A long scream from the whistle that echoed through the mountains above the pounding, deafening rush of the train brought Holman back to his immediate surroundings. Another minute and they had swung round the curve and thundered over the trestle that made the approach to the Pass.
Half a mile ahead of them up the track they saw the horror. Hurley latched in his throttle and began to check. As the brake-shoes bit into the tires, Holman slipped off his seat and faced Rafferty. There was a curious look in the other’s eyes, and Holman understood. Understood that here Rafferty was his master—and knew it. So this was the meaning of it. This was how he had touched the other’s better nature! Rafferty had cunningly seized the opportunity of placing him at an even greater disadvantage than before. For an instant he hesitated as he bit his lip, then he canceled the personal equation. “Go ahead, Rafferty,” he said quietly, answering the unspoken challenge, “you’re better up in this sort of thing than I am. You’re in charge.”