Page:Weird Tales Volume 8 Number 4 (1926-10).djvu/140

A Five-Minute Tale

Once, twice, three times the station-clock's thin steel minute-hand had traced its monotonous circuit. Over in a corner of the big room several tired itinerants sat half-asleep. From behind the barred ticket window a telegraph instrument talked fitfully. Elsewhere silence, save when the main door swung narrowly to admit an occasional overcoated, sleeted figure—and a squall of zero air. The Transcontinental was late.

Boom! Out of the dark came a dull epic of sound. Boom! It spread through the air like fog. Boom! Twelve times, till the night was saturated with muffled reverberations.

Hardly had the last lifeless echo faded, when a series of piercing shrieks announced the long-awaited Transcontinental. A moment later she rolled into the shed, steaming and sheathed in ice.

Engineer Hadden stepped wearily from the cab and swung off up the platform, chafing his chilled hands together. The stationmaster ambled out to meet him, throwing shadowy circles from his swinging lantern.

"Open track ahead, Hadden. Orders to hit 'er up!"

Behind them the passengers were piling aboard. Hadden half turned.

"Dangerous business, hitting her up this sort of weather," he muttered, "but orders are orders!"

He climbed back into the cab. When the signal came, he opened the throttle. Swiftly the Transcontinental slid out of the shed.

Then he looked at his watch. It read 12:05.

"A straight stretch for eighty miles!" he exclaimed, and let her out.

The locomotive rocked and leapt ahead—now forty, now fifty, now sixty miles an hour.

"Mike!" he yelled, and the wash of air whipped the words back into the fireman's ear like pistol shots. "Mike, we make Mansford by 1."

"An hour?" screamed the latter. "An hour? Eighty miles? Man, yer dr-reaming!"

"Maybe I am," said Hadden grimly, giving her another notch.

On into the night they rushed, faster and faster, till it was all O'Connell could do to keep that dancing devil of a steam-gage needle up to where it belonged. Stripped to his red flannel shirt, he stood in the lurid glow of the fire-box stoking like a madman, while the ground reeled and swayed beneath him and the sky hissed dizzily over his head.

Firm on the little cab seat sat the chief, gazing fixedly ahead. He was tired and cold, and he thought how comfortable his little home would be, at the end of the run. He pictured Mary, his wife, waiting for him at the door—then the steaming supper—then sleep.

He yawned. He nodded.

On and on they roared, up grades, down inclines, over trestles, leaving behind them a long unbroken ribbon of echoes.

Suddenly Hadden jumped and rubbed his eyes. Then he stiffened