Fred for a long time had the early trick. He came on at four in the morning and caught most of the through freights that got away from the River behind the passenger trains. There was no use trying to move them in the night trick. Between the stock trains eastbound and the both-way passenger trains, if a westbound freight got caught in the mountains at night the engine might as well be standing in the house saving fuel--there wasn't time to get from one siding to another. So Fred Norman took the freights as they came and he handled them like a ringmaster. When Fred's whip cracked, by Joe! a train had to dance right along, grade or no grade. Fred gave them the rights and they had the rest to do--or business to do with the superintendent or with Doubleday, Neighbor's assistant in the motive power. There was only one tendency in Fred Norman's despatching that anybody could criticise: he never seemed, after handling trains on the plains, to appreciate what our mountain grades really meant, and when they pushed him he sent his trains out pretty close together. It never bothered him to handle a heavy traffic; he would get the business through the mountains just as fast as they could put it at the Division; but occasionally there were some hair-curling experiences among the freights on Norman's trick trying to keep off each other's coat-tails. One night in July there was a great press moving eight or nine trains of Montana grassers over the main line on some kind of a time contract--we were giving stockmen the earth then. Everybody was prodding the Mountain Division, and part of the stuff came in late on Blackburn and part of it early on Fred, who was almost coughing his head off about that time, getting up at 3.30 every morning. Fred at four o'clock took the steers and sent them train after train through the Rat River country like bullets out of a Maxim gun. It was hot work, and before he had sat in an hour there was a stumble. The engineer of a big ten-wheeler pulling twenty-five cars of steers had been pushing hard and, at the entrance of the cañon, set his air so quick he sprung one of the driver shoes and the main rod hit it. The great steel bar doubled up like a man with a cramp. It was showing daylight; they made stop, and, quick as men could do it, flagged both ways. But the last section was crowding into the cañon right behind; they were too close together, that was all there was to it. The hind section split into the standing train like a butcher knife into a sandwich. It made a mean wreck--and, worse, it made a lot of hard feeling at the Wickiup.