And Barnes Tracy edged away and leaned back to where the shadow hid his face. And John Mallers, turning from the pleading of the current, stared gloomily out of the window across the yard shimmering under the double relay of arc lights; and young Giddings, who couldn't stand it--just _couldn't_ stand it--bending on his stool, shook with gulping sobs. The others knew nothing of the heartbreaking in the little clicks. But they all knew the track--knew where the trains would meet; knew they could not by any possibility see each other till they whirled together on the curve of the Cinnamon cut or on the trestle west of it and they waited only for the breaking of the suspense that settled heavily over them. Ten, twenty, thirty, forty minutes went, with Martin Duffy at intervals vainly calling. Then--as the crack opens in the field of ice, as the snow breaks in the mountain slide, as the sea gives up at last its dead, the sounder spoke--Rat River made the despatcher's call. And Martin Duffy, staring at the copper coil, pushed himself up in his chair like a man that chokes, caught smothering at his neck, and slipped wriggling to the floor. Carhart caught him up, but Duffy's eyes stared meaningless past him. Rat River was calling him, but Martin Duffy was past the taking. Like the man next at the gun, Barnes Tracy sprang into the chair with the I, I, D. The surgeon, Giddings helping, dragged Duffy to the lounge in Callahan's room--his Chief was more to Giddings then than the fate of Special 326. But soon confused voices began to ring from where men were crowding around the despatchers' table. They echoed in to where the doctors worked over the raving Chief. And young Giddings, helping, began, too, to hear strange things from the other room. "The moon--" "The _moon_?" "The MOON!" "_What?_" Barnes Tracy was trying to make himself heard: "The moon, damn it! MOON! That's English, ain't it? _Moon._" "Who's talking at Rat River?" demanded Benedict Morgan, hoarsely. "Chick Neale, conductor of Third Eighty; their train is back at Rat River. God bless that man," stammered Barnes Tracy, wiping his forehead feverishly; "he's an old operator. He says Bob Duffy is missing--tell Martin, quick, there isn't any wreck--quick!" "What does Neale say?" cried Doubleday with an explosion. Tracy thought he had told them, but he hadn't. "He says his engineer, Abe Monsoon, was scared by the moon rising just as they cleared Kennel Butte," explained Tracy unsteadily. "He took it for the headlight of Special 326 and jumped from his engine. The fireman backed the train to Rat River--see?"