Once in the foothills where the grades were frequent and the curves tighter, their speed dropped below sixty miles an hour.
When they stopped at Tanktown for coal and water, they were seven minutes ahead of their schedule and Henshaw took ample time to touch up the journals and bearings of the great engine with liberal doses of oil.
The conductor ran forward.
“What’s the idea,” he demanded. “Were you trying to put us all in the ditch?” “Keep cool, keep cool,” grinned Henshaw. “Our orders were to make time and we made it.”
“Our orders didn’t call for eighty-three miles an hour,” sputtered the trainman. “Next time you try a stunt like that I’ll pull the air on you.”
“You’ll lose time if you do,” smiled the engineer. “You sit back in your mail cars and I’ll do the worrying about keeping the train on the rails.”
The fireman yelled that he was ready to go. Henshaw looked at his watch and climbed into the cab.
The whistle blasted two short, sharp calls and the flagman on the back end swung aboard. The mail sped on the last lap of its inaugural run on the new schedule.
Mile after mile disappeared behind the red lights of the last car. They were less than forty miles from the end of the division when they swung around a curve to see the rails ahead of them disappear in an inferno of flame.
Henshaw jammed on the air and leaned far out of the cab. Tim dropped down in the gangway and looked ahead. A small patch of timber through which the right-of-way passed was on fire, and a wall of flame barred their way.