It was a problem which, to the inquisitive mind of the lad, required an immediate solution, so he faced east again and plodded along the track in the gathering night. A short distance away he came to a spot where tracks showed that the train had halted.
It was in a narrow canyon between two towering peaks, and, just off the south rail, lay a great rock. Around it were the footprints, and also the deep indentations of a crowbar, which had evidently been used by the trainmen in prying the boulder off the steel highway.
“They came pretty near stopping here all night!” Alex mused, looking over the ground. “That rock certainly would have stopped them good, and, at that, some of the crew might have been taken away on a car door!”
There was no doubt that a terrible wreck would have taken place had the train struck the obstruction while running at full speed. But, because of the steep grade and the heavy train, the momentum had not been great, and the watchful engineer had seen the rock in time to prevent trouble.
“I wonder how that rock got on the track, in the first place?” the boy muttered. “Doesn’t seem as if it could have fallen from that summit. If it had, it would have been broken into bits.”
“I just believe some one put it there,” was the conclusion, as he examined the ground. “I reckon some rough neck wanted to tip the train off the track!”
This conclusion, hastily formed though it was, led to other insistent questions. If the boulder had indeed been placed on the track by human hands, where were the ruffians who had done it? Had they hidden in some of the cars, or “on the rods,” and gone on with the train? Were they still in that vicinity?
“I think I’d better be getting back to the boat,” the boy muttered, a vision of bandits and train robbers peering out at him from the rocks presenting itself. “If there are any Jessie James persons about here, we boys would better keep together.”
Alex gave a parting poke at the great rock and turned around to look over the country to north and south. There was little to see. On each side of the tracks loomed a wall of rock. But, a short distance to the east, the right-of-way curved off to the south, following a ledge of rock which led downward. Straight ahead there was a dip, the earth falling away from the tracks and exposing a vista of wild canyons and rugged and forbidding crags.
As the lad turned he saw a red gleam in the canyon straight ahead. It was not the glow of the sunset. It was too late for that. Besides, the canyon was considerably lower than the floor of the pass, so the latest rays of the sun would not have reached it at all. The landscape darkened as he looked, and directly he saw leaping flames and figures passing to and fro in front of the blaze.