The Valley of the Giants

by Peter B. Kyne

For a moment Bryce clung to the brake-rod, weak and dizzy from the effects of the blow when, leaping down from the loaded truck to the caboose bumper, his face had smashed into the front of the caboose. His chin was bruised, skinned, and bloody; his nose had been broken, and twin rivulets of blood ran from his nostrils. He wiped it away, swung his axe, drove the blade deep into the bumper and left it there with the haft quivering; turning, he climbed swiftly up the narrow iron ladder beside the brake-rod until he reached the roof; then, still standing on the ladder, he reached the brake-wheel and drew it promptly but gradually around until the wheel-blocks began to bite, when he exerted his tremendous strength to the utmost and with his knees braced doggedly against the front of the caboose, held the wheel.

The brake screamed, but the speed of the caboose was not appreciably slackened. “It's had too good a start!” Bryce moaned. “The momentum is more than I can overcome. Oh, Shirley, my love! God help you!”

He cast a sudden despairing look over his shoulder downward at the coupling. He was winning, after all, for a space of six feet now yawned between the end of the logging-truck and the bumper of the caboose. If he could but hold that tremendous strain on the wheel for a quarter of a mile, he might get the demon caboose under control! Again he dug his knees into the front of the car and twisted on the wheel until it seemed that his muscles must crack.

After what seemed an eon of waiting, he ventured another look ahead. The rear logging-truck was a hundred yards in front of him now, and from the wheels of the caboose an odour of something burning drifted up to him. “I've got your wheels locked!” he half sobbed. “I'll hold you yet, you brute. Slide! That's it! Slide, and flatten your infernal wheels. Hah! You're quitting—quitting. I'll have you in control before we reach the curve. Burn, curse you, burn!”

With a shriek of metal scraping metal, the head of the Juggernaut ahead took the curve, clung there an instant, and was catapulted out into space. Logs weighing twenty tons were flung about like kindling; one instant, Bryce could see them in the air; the next they had disappeared down the hillside. A deafening crash, a splash, a cloud of dust—

With a protesting squeal, the caboose came to the point where the logging-train had left the right of way, carrying rails and ties with it. The wheels on the side nearest the bank slid into the dirt first and plowed deep into the soil; the caboose came to an abrupt stop, trembled and rattled, overtopped its centre of gravity, and fell over against the cut-bank, wearily, like a drunken hag.

Bryce, still clinging to the brake, was fully braced for the shock and was not flung off. Calmly he descended the ladder, recovered the axe from the bumper, climbed back to the roof, tiptoed off the roof to the top of the bank and sat calmly down under a manzanita bush to await results, for he was quite confident that none of the occupants of the confounded caboose had been treated to anything worse than a wild ride and a rare fright, and he was curious to see how Shirley Sumner would behave in an emergency.

Colonel Pennington was first to emerge at the rear of the caboose. He leaped lightly down the steps, ran to the front of the car, looked down the track, and swore feelingly. Then he darted back to the rear of the caboose.

“All clear and snug as a bug under a chip, my dear,” he called to Shirley. “Thank God, the caboose became uncoupled—guess that fool brakeman forgot to drop the pin; it was the last car, and when it jumped the track and plowed into the dirt, it just naturally quit and toppled over against the bank. Come out, my dear.”

Shirley came out, dry-eyed, but white and trembling. The Colonel placed his arm around her, and she hid her face on his shoulder and shuddered. “There, there!” he soothed her affectionately. “It's all over, my dear. All's well that ends well.”