Page:Weird Tales Volume 8 Number 4 (1926-10).djvu/141

and peered into the dark ahead—and saw a long, straight line of racing lights.

"Another express, not a mile away!"

"Mike! for the love of God, look!"

"Look where?"

O'Connell looked.

"I see nothin'!" he shouted back.

"You see what?"

"I see nothin'!"

"Then look again!"

O'Connell looked again.

"I see nothin', I say—nothin' at all!"

"Michael O'Connell," muttered the engineer, "you're a liar!"

They pulled into Mansford on the stroke of 1. Hadden watched the other express disappear into the dark ahead, and climbed angrily from his cab. He had been assured an open track. He would see what they meant by blocking the Transcontinental.

But the stationmaster knew of no train ahead.

"I tell you, your track is clear," he repeated, "open and clear to the end of the run!"

"You can tell me and be damned!" swore Hadden. "I tell you it's not!"

Suddenly he climbed back into his seat. It was 1:05.

"We'll make it by 2," he said, opening her up. "God, I'm tired!"

Soon they were roaring on into the dark again—and suddenly the other express loomed up ahead, a ghostly vanguard.

"Mike!" yelled Hadden; "for the last time, look ahead!"

O'Connell looked once more.

"I see nothin'—nothin'!" he exclaimed. "Ferget it!"

"All right. Shut up!" sighed the chief, and was silent.

Now they entered Cleft Forest Valley and went thundering down a steep incline, filling the precipitous places with their clamor. And all at once, following with haggard eye the phantom express, Hadden saw it dive over a dizzy trestle, saw it shudder—saw it leave the rails and hurtle down, down, into abysmal darkness and utter destruction.

Then, like a man suddenly roused from a trance, he awoke to the horror of the situation. In an instant he did a dozen things, and O'Connell clung desperately to a stanchion while the swaying locomotive steadied itself to a grinding, jolting stop—just twenty feet from the yawning brink of the bridgeless chasm.

"The trestle must have been swept away by the storm—we're right at the edge of the gulch—it's a miracle—the engineer is all that saved us," came from the breathless crowd that poured out of the cars and collected about the scene.

Later, when Hadden and O'Connell were brought before an investigating committee they had nothing to say, and took their reward in silence.

And there the matter rested.