"We charged the boys a dollar a head per trip. One free drink included. That paid--paid like--Paradise. They liked the motion. O'Grady was engineer, and another man sort of tended to the rope engine when he wasn't otherwise engaged. Those cable-cars run by gripping on to the rope. You know that. When the grip's off the car is braked down and stands still. There ought to have been two cars by right--one to run up and the other down. But O'Grady had a blamed invention for reversing the engine, so the cable ran both ways--up to Bow Flume and down to the saloon--the terminus being in front of our door. A man could kick a friend slick from the bar into the car. The boys appreciated that. The Bow Flume Palace Car Company earned twenty on the hundred in three months, besides the profits of the drinks. We might have lasted to this day if O'Grady hadn't tinkered his blamed engine up on top of Bow Flume Hill. The boys complained the show didn't hum sufficient. They required railroad speed. O'Grady ran 'em up and down at fourteen miles an hour; and his latest improvement was to touch twenty-four. The strain on the brakes was terrible--quite terrible. But every time O'Grady raised the record, the boys gave him a testimonial. 'Twasn't in human nature not to crowd ahead after that. Testimonials demoralise the publickest of men. "I rode on the car that memorial day. Just as we started with a double load of boys and a razzle-dazzle assortment of drinks, something went _zip_ under the car bottom. We proceeded with velocity. All the prominent members of the company were aboard. 'The grip has got snubbed on the rope,' says O'Grady quite quietly. 'Boys, this will be the biggest smash on record. Something's going to happen.' We proceeded at the rate of twenty-four miles an hour till the end of our journey. I don't know what happened there. We could get clear of the rope anyways at the point where it turned round a pulley to start up hill again. We struck--struck the stoop of the 'Wake Up an' Git Saloon'--_my_ saloon--and the next thing I knew was feeling of my legs under an assortment of matchwood and broken glass, representing liquor and fixtures to the tune of eight thousand. The car had been flicked through the saloon, bringing down the entire roof on the floor. It had then bucked out into the firmament, describing a parabola over the bluff at the back of the saloon, and was lying at the foot of that bluff, three hundred feet below, like a busted kaleidoscope--all nickel, shavings and bits of red glass. O'Grady and most of the prominent members of the company were dead--very dead--and there wasn't enough left of the saloon to pay for a drink. I took in the situation lying on my stomach at the edge of the bluff, and I suspicioned that any lawsuits that might arise would be complicated by shooting. So I quit Bow Flume by the back trail. I guess the coroner judged that there were no summons--leastways I never heard any more about it. Since that