The big fellow was into the wind with the word. Bucks boarded four blocks away. Callahan, slamming down the window, took the key, and began calling Rowe. Rowe is the first station east of Jackson; it was now the first point at which the runaway coal-train could be headed.
"R-o R-o," he rattled. The operator must have been sitting on the wire, for he answered at once. As fast as Callahan's fingers could talk, he told Rowe the story and gave him orders to get the night agent, who, he knew, must be down to sell tickets for 59, and pile all the ties they could gather across the track to derail the runaway train. Then he began thumping for Kolar, the next station east of Rowe, and the second ahead of the runaways. He pounded and he pounded, and when the man at Kolar answered, Callahan could have sworn he had been asleep just from the way he talked. Does it seem strange? There are many strange things about a dispatcher's senses. "Send your night man to west switch house-track, and open for runaway train. Set brakes hard on your empties on siding, to spill runaways if possible. Do anything and everything to keep them from getting by you. Work quick."
Behind Kolar's O.K. came a frantic call from Rowe. "Runaways passed here like a streak. Knocked the ties into toothpicks. Couldn't head them."
Callahan didn't wait to hear any more. He only wiped the sweat from his face. It seemed forever before Kolar spoke again. Then it was only to say: "Runaways went by here before night man could get to switch and open it."
Would Bucks never come? And if he did come, what on earth could stop the runaway train now? They were heading into the worst grade on the West End. It averages one per cent. from Kolar to Griffin, and there we get down off the Cheyenne Hills with a long reverse curve, and drop into the cañon of the Blackwood with a three per cent. grade. Callahan, almost beside himself, threw open a north window to look for Bucks. Two men were flying down Main Street towards the station. He knew them; it was Ole and Bucks.
But Bucks! Never before or since was seen on a street of McCloud such a figure as Bucks, in his trousers and slippers, with his night-shirt free as he sailed down the wind. In another instant he was bounding up the stairs. Callahan told him.
"What have you done?" he panted, throwing himself into the chair. Callahan told him. Bucks held his head in his hands while the boy talked. He turned to the sheet asked quick for 59.
"She's out of Callendar. I tried hard to stop her. I didn't lose a second; she was gone."
Barely an instant Bucks studied the sheet. Routed out of a sound sleep after an eight-hour trick, and on such a night, by such a message the marvel was he could think at all, much less set a trap which should save 59. In twenty minutes from the time Bucks took the key the two trains would be together could he save the passenger? Callahan didn't believe it.
A sharp, quick call brought Griffin. We had one of the brightest lads on the whole division at Griffin. Callahan, listening, heard Griffin answer. Bucks rattled a question. How the heart hangs on the faint, uncertain tick of a sounder when human lives hang on it!
"Where are your section men?" asked Bucks.
"In bed at the section house."
"Who's with you?"
"Night agent. Sheriff with two cowboy prisoners waiting to take 59."
Before the last word came, Bucks was back at him:
To Opr. :Ask Sheriff release his prisoners to save passenger-train. Go together to west switch house-track, open, and set it. Smash in section tool-house, get tools. Go to point of house-track curve, cut the rails, and point them to send runaway train from Ogalalla over the bluff into the river.
Bucks.
words flew off his fingers like sparks, and another message crowded the wire behind it:
To Agt. :Go to east switch, open, and set for passing-track. Flag 59, and run her on siding. If can't get 59 into the clear, ditch the runaways.
Bucks.
"Ed," cried Harvey, "there's a runaway train from Ogalalla coming down the line in the wind. If we can't trap it here, it'll knock 59 into kindling-wood. Turn the boys loose, Ed, and save the passenger-train. Boys, show the man and square yourselves right now. I don't know what you're here for; but I believe it's to save 59. Will you help?"
The three men sprang to their feet; Ed Banks slipped the handcuffs off in a trice. "Never mind the rest of it. Save the passenger-train first," he roared. Everybody from Ogalalla to Omaha knew Ed Banks.
"Which way? How?" cried the cowboys, in a lather of excitement.
Harvey Reynolds, beckoning as he ran, rushed out the door and up the track, his posse at his heels, stumbling into the gale like lunatics.
"Smash in the tool-house door," panted Harvey as they neared it.
Ed Banks seized the axe from his hands and took command as naturally as Dewey.
"Pick up that tie and ram her," he cried, pointing to the door. "All together now."
Harvey and the cowboys splintered the panel in a twinkling, and Banks, with a few clean strokes, cut an opening. The cowboys, jumping together, ran in and began fishing for tools in the dark. One got hold of a wrench; the other, a pick. Harvey caught up a clawbar, and Banks grabbed a spike-maul. In a bunch they ran for the point of the curve on the house-track. It lies there close to the verge of a limestone bluff that looms up fifty feet above the river.