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AT A CROSSING OF THE RAILROAD AROSE A CHORUS OF YELLS AND CURSES
rottenly away. His breath came in hard gasps, choked with fruitless words. "Oh, dear God in Heaven — the train — Thou knowest — the — the train "
Babbling his futile prayer, Andy dragged himself to the bank, nausea shaking him with the effort of the movement. The blood from his gashed forehead trickled into his eyes; the mud of his fall smeared him into an unearthly, goblin thing; but, at last, he was somehow at the top of the ravine and running, with ludicrous, sprawling lunges, toward the shack. Thru the mist, the doorway yawned agape on shattered hinges. The car was gone !
He swayed under the shock of realization. How long had he lain there like a log in the ravine? Was it too late? The rails led his thoughts out into the darkness, toward the bridge, where, at this very moment, the fast mail might be lying, a tortured cripple of steel and iron, below the traitor bridge; or, worse to think of still, it might be speeding on to its doom, unsuspecting.
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Out of the darkness along the rails came a clatter of grinding wheels, and the black bulk of a freight crawled into his vision, like a great, ugly slug, toiling painfully on its earthly errands along the path of a Pegasus. Andy drew a sudden breath thru quivering lips and felt, with the new hope, new courage flogging his sick body into false strength. There had been no wreck — yet. He plunged into the doorway of the shack and emerged with his lineman 's tools.
Five moments later, the operator in the top of the telegraph tower at the junction, ten miles down the line, heard a faint clicking of his receivingkey and reached a bored hand for his pad and pencil. As his ears interpreted the stammering sound, his fingers galvanized into life. He leaned forward, tense, watching the struggling key; then whirled about and bent above his own, clicking a message over and over so urgently that the sparks danced from the wires. At last the muscles of his face relaxed. He listened to the snap and crackle of his answer and, drawing a long breath