Five minutes passed, and Grant, who held a watch in his hand, glanced at the engineer as the blaze whirled like a comet along the clean-cut edge of a dusky bluff.
“You’ll have to do better,” he said.
“Wait till we have got her warmed up,” said the man, who stood quietly intent, his lean hand on the throttle. “Then you’ll see something.”
Grant sat down on a tool-locker, took out his cigar-case, and passed it to Breckenridge who sat opposite him. Breckenridge’s face was eager and there was an unusual brightness in his eyes, for he was young and something thrilled within him in unison with the vibration of the great machine. There was, however, very little to see just then beyond the tense, motionless figure of the man at the throttle and the damp-beaded face of another forced up in the lurid glare from the furnace door. A dim whiteness lashed the glasses, and when Breckenridge pressed his face to one of them the blaze of radiance against which the smoke-stack was projected blackly only intensified the obscurity they were speeding through.
Still, there was much to feel and hear—the shrill wail of the wind that buffeted their shelter, the bewildering throb and quiver of the locomotive which, with its suggestion of Titanic effort, seemed to find a response in human fibre, pounding and clashing with their burden of strain, and the roar of the great drivers that rose and fell like a diapason. Perhaps Breckenridge, who was also under a strain that night, was fanciful, but it seemed to him there was hidden in the medley of sound a theme or motive that voiced man’s domination over the primeval forces of the universe, and urged him to the endurance of stress, and great endeavour. It was, for the most part, vague and elusive; but there were times when it rang exultingly through the subtly harmonious din, reminding him of Wagnerian music.
Leaning forward, he touched Grant’s knee. “Larry, it’s bracing. The last few months were making me a little sick of everything—but this gets hold of one.” Grant smiled, but Breckenridge saw how weary his bronzed face showed in the dim lantern light. “There was a time, two or three years ago, when I might have felt it as you seem to do,” he said. “I don’t seem to have any feeling but tiredness left me now.”
“You can’t let go,” said Breckenridge.
“No,” and Grant sighed, “not until the State takes hold instead of me, or the trouble’s through.”
Breckenridge said nothing further, and Grant sat huddled in a corner with the thin blue cigar-smoke curling about him. He knew it was possible he was taking a very heavy risk just then, since the homesteaders might have changed their plans again; and his task was a double one, for he had not only to save the stock train, but prevent an encounter between his misguided followers and the cavalry. So there was silence between them while, lurching, rocking, roaring, the great locomotive sped on through the night, until the engineer, turning half-round, glanced at Grant.
“Is she making good enough time to suit you? Perry’s siding is just ahead, and we’ll be on the Bitter Creek trestle five minutes after that,” he said.