The suspense, if not the heat from the fire, brought the perspiration out on Ralph Fairbanks’ face as he leaned from the window. He shaded his eyes with his hand, trying to spy through the smother of smoke. The headlight’s beam was dimmed by the cloud. Now and then tongues of flame seemed to leap through it, as though reaching to lap the locomotive. Above and higher than the rumble of the train he now distinguished the roar of the conflagration. With it came the loud snapping of falling trees and explosions when dead timber burst from the heat of the fire that consumed it at the heart. He realized that he was taking an awful chance, and he had taken it on his own responsibility. At any point the pilot might crash into some fallen monarch of the forest. The heat came up into his face in a suffocating wave. Ralph was forced to draw back into the cab. He had been wise enough to close the forward and first side window on his side of the locomotive. Embers—flaming and white-hot—began rattling against the glass. A ball of fire—the torn-away top of some coniferous tree—hurtled overhead, barely missing the smokestack, and fell flaming and smoking upon the firemen’s side of the boiler. The varnish began to smoke. Stilling leaped through the front window, ran along the board, and kicked the flaming bush off the locomotive. The fire was sweeping closer and closer to the right of way. Ralph realized at last that he was driving into, not through, a belt of smoke and flame. Ahead, and across the valley, the forest had ignited closer to the rails. The farther they went, the greater the danger. This discovery was made too late, however. Ralph realized that it would be worse than ridiculous to stop and try to back out of the fire zone. The flames were being swept nearer and nearer to the tracks. He opened wide his throttle again and the Flyer drove at increased speed into whatever fate had in store for them. The headlight seemed utterly quenched now by the glare of the fire. Smoke swirled into the cab and filled their lungs. Choking and coughing, the detectives cowered on the deck. The fireman on duty at the furnace could scarcely see what he was about. Stilling, the other fireman, could see no more than Ralph could ahead of the locomotive. Had the strikers or the ruffians employed in secret by Andy McCarrey imagined this situation they could easily have derailed the Midnight Flyer. Any obstacle on the track would have brought the fast train to grief. But if the forest fire was started by McCarrey’s order, he expected that the fire itself would halt the trains on the division. His object, at most, was to throw the trains out of schedule, rather than to wreck the trains.