He opened the window and then shouted, "Look, look! This car's all alone. Look off there."
Away ahead of us, but a little over to one side, we could see a bright spot moving along and little bright dots in back of it. I knew it was the brightness thrown by a headlight and the lights showing through car windows. It was our train scooting along around the mountains. Our car kept slowing down very easy sort of, as if there was nothing pulling it or holding it back either. I knew the feeling, because I had been on that car when it was like that before. It went slower and slower and slower and then the wheels sounded different—sort of hollow, kind of. Then the car just crawled along and at last it stopped.
"Look down," Westy said; "I can't see the ground. Do you hear water rushing?"
I looked out of the window and down, down, down, till I couldn't see anything but just the dark. But I could hear water way down there.
"We're on a high bridge," I said.
Just then the wind blew strong and it brought the noise of that train near again. And it shook the bridge, too, ever so little.
Westy said, "Roy, we're a couple of hundred feet up. You know just how the water in Black Gully sounds up near Temple Camp. That's over two hundred feet."
"What happened, do you suppose?" I asked him.
"Coupling broke, I guess," he said. "Let's have one of those lifters from the stove."
We dropped one of the iron lifters and listened to hear it fall. But all we could hear was a little splash, away far down.