"Ben came down at the word he whispered--for they'd two of 'em blowed up in the north--and they sent out another man. Hadn't got up the hill when the engine exploded and blew the poor devil to hell! I asked Tyrrell what his friend had told him, but he kept it to himself until he could get his time. It's the fumes, boy--they blow up like brandy--and old No. 9 is sour! "She'll likely blow up, too. But how can we fix her with these ignorant Mexican mechanics? You should have been over at Aguas the day they fired the Americans. "'No more _Americanos_!' says Madero. 'Let 'em all out and hire Mexicans! The national railroads of Mexico must not be in the hands of foreigners.' "So they fired us all in a day and put a Mexican wood-passer up in the cab of old No. 313. He started to pull a string of empties down the track, threw on the air by mistake, and stopped her on a dead-center. Pulled out the throttle and she wouldn't go, so he gave it up and quit. "Called in the master mechanic then--a Mexican. He tinkered with her for an hour, right there on the track, until she went dead on their hands. Then they ran down a switch-engine and took back the cars and called on the roadmaster--a Mex. He cracked the nut--built a shoo-fly around No. 313 and they left her right there on the main track. Two days later an American hobo came by and he set down and laughed at 'em. Then he throws off the brakes, gives No. 313 a boost past the center with a crowbar, and runs her to the roundhouse by gravity. When we left Aguas on a hand-car that hobo was running the road. "Ignorantest _hombres_ in the world--these Mexicans. Shooting a gun or running an engine, it's all the same--they've got nothing above the eyebrows." "That's right," agreed Bud, who had been craning his neck; "but what's that noise up the track?" The master mechanic listened, and when his ears, dulled by the clangor of the shops, caught the distant roar he turned and ran for the house. "Git up, Ed!" he called to the roadmaster. "They're sending a wild car down the cañon--and she may be loaded with dynamite!" "Dynamite or not," mumbled the grizzled roadmaster, as he roused up from his couch, "there's a derailer I put in up at kilometer seventy the first thing yesterday morning. That'll send her into the ditch!" Nevertheless he listened intently, cocking his head to guess by the sound when it came to kilometer seventy. "Now she strikes it!" he announced, as the rumble turned into a roar; but the roar grew louder, there was a clash as the trucks struck a curve, and then a great metal ore-car swung round the point, rode up high as it hit the reverse and, speeding by as if shot from a catapult, swept through the yard, smashed into a freight-car, and leaped, car and all, into the creek.