P. Walton's lips were still half parted in their strange, curious smile. A deafening roar was in his ears—the pound of beating trucks on the fish-plates; the creak and groan of axle play; the screech of crunching flanges; the whistling wind; the full-toned thunder now of the exhaust—and reverberating back and forth, flinging it from butte to butte, for miles around in the foothills the still night woke into a thousand answering echoes.
Meanwhile, back in Big Cloud, things were happening in the super's office. Spence, the despatcher, interrupting Carleton and Regan at their nightly pedro, came hastily into the room.
"Something's wrong," he said tersely. "I can't get anything west of here, and——" He stopped suddenly, as Mulligan, flabby white, came tumbling into the room.
"He's gone off his chump!" screamed Mulligan. "Gone delirious, or mad, or——"
"What's the matter?" Carleton was on his feet, his words cold as ice.
"Here!" gasped the engineer. "Look!" He dragged Carleton to the side window, and pointed up the track—the 229, sparks volleying skyward from her stack, was just disappearing around the first bend. "That's—that's the two-twenty-nine!" he panted. "P. Walton's in her—drove me and Dalheen out of the cab with a revolver."
For an instant, no more than a breathing space, no one spoke; then Spence's voice, with a queer sag in it, broke the silence:
"Extra Thirty-four left Spider Cut eight minutes ago."
Carleton, master always of himself, and master always of the situation, spoke before the words were hardly out of the despatcher's mouth:
"Order the wrecker out, Spence—jump! Mulligan, go down and help get the crew together." And then, as Spence and Mulligan hurried from the room, Carleton looked at the master mechanic. "Well, Tommy, what do you make of this?" he demanded grimly.