Brockway said "Yes," though, with all his interest in other things, he had not omitted that very important part of an engineer's duty from the moment of leaving Arriba. After a roaring silence of some minutes, during which Brockway gave himself once more to the divided business of scanning the rails and burning sweet incense on the altar of his love, she spoke again. "What is that we are coming to, away out there?" she asked, trying vainly to steady herself for a clearer view. "The lights of Red Butte," he answered, relaxing his vigilance for the moment at the thought that his little side-trip into the land of joy would so shortly come to an end. "No, I don't mean those!" she exclaimed, excitedly; "but this side of the lights. Don't you see?--on the track!" Brockway allowed himself but a single swift glance. Half-way between the flying train and the station the line crossed a shallow sand creek on a low trestle. On both sides of the swale, crowding upon the track and filling the bed of the creek, was a mass of moving forms, against which the lines of glistening rails ended abruptly. At such a crisis, the engineer in a man, if any there be, asserts itself without reference to the volitional nerve-centres. In the turning of a leaf, Brockway had thrown himself upon the throttle, dropped the reversing-lever, set the air-brake, and opened the sand-box; while Maclure, seeing that his substitute was equal to the emergency, woke the echoes with the whistle. A hundred yards from the struggling mass of frightened cattle, Brockway saw that the air-brake was not holding. "Don't move!" he cried; and Gertrude cowered in her corner as the heavy reversing-lever came over with a crash, and the great engine heaved and buckled in the effort to check its own momentum. It was all over before she could cry out or otherwise advertise her very natural terror. The moving mass had melted away before the measured approach of the train; the trestle had rumbled under the wheels; and the 926 was steaming swiftly up to the station under Brockway's guidance. "Have you had more than enough?" he asked, when he had brought the train to a stand opposite the platform at Red Butte. "Yes--no, not that, either," she added, quickly. "I'm glad to have had a taste of the real danger as well. But I think I'd better go back; it's getting late, isn't it?" "Yes. Mac, we resign. Sorry I had to put your old tea-kettle in the back-gear; but the air wasn't holding, and we didn't want any chipped beef for supper. Good-night, and many thanks. Don't pull out till I give you the signal." They hurried down the platform arm-in-arm, and Gertrude was the first to speak. "Didn't you think we were all going to be killed?" "No; but I did think I should never forgive myself if anything happened to you." "It wouldn't have been your fault. And I've had a glorious bit of distraction; I shall remember it as long as I live."