It was--possible. Just possible. But to figure once in how many times a vista would have opened for a single second so one engineer could see the light of another would stagger a multiplying machine. Chance? Well, yes, perhaps. But there were no suggestions of that nature that night under the despatcher's lamp at the Wickiup, with the storm driving down the pass as it drove that night; and yet at Peace River, where the clouds never rested, that night was clear. Blackburn, getting up, steadied himself on his feet. "Go in there and lie down," said Callahan to him. "You're used up, old fellow, I can see that. I'll take the key. Don't say a word." "Not a word, Blackburn," put in Bucks, resting his big hand on the despatcher's shoulder. "There's no harm done; nobody knows it. Bury the thing right here to-night. You're broke up. Go in there and lie down." He took their hands; started to speak; but they pushed him into Callahan's room; they didn't want to hear anything. All the night it stormed at the Wickiup. In the morning the Irving Special, flying toward Chicago, was far down the Platte. Number One was steaming west, deep in the heart of the Rockies; Blackburn lay in Callahan's room. It was nine o'clock, and the sun was streaming through the east windows when Fred Norman opened the office door. Fred could do those things even when he was sickest. Have a hemorrhage one day, scare everybody to death, and go back to his trick the next. He asked right away for Kit, as he called Blackburn, and when they pointed to Callahan's door Fred pushed it open and went in. A cry brought the operators to him. Blackburn was stretched on his knees half on the floor, half face downward on the sofa. His head had fallen between his arms, which were stretched above it. In his hands, clasped tight, they found his watch with the picture of his wife and his baby. Had he asked, when he first went into that room that night--when he wrestled like Jacob of old in his agony of prayer--that his life be taken if only their lives, the lives of those in his keeping, might be spared? I do not know. They found him dead. The Nightman's Story BULLHEAD His full name was James Gillespie Blaine Lyons; but his real name was Bullhead--just plain Bullhead. When he began passenger braking the trainmaster put him on with Pat Francis. The very first trip he made, a man in the smoking car asked him where the drinking water was. Bullhead, though sufficiently gaudy in his new uniform, was not prepared for any question that might be thrown at him. He pulled out his book of rules, which he had been told to consult in case of doubt, and after some study referred his inquirer to the fire-bucket hanging at the front end of the car. The passenger happened to be a foreigner and very thirsty. He climbed up on the Baker heater, according to directions, and did at some risk get hold of the bucket--but it was empty.