It is conceivable that he would have used a strong figure, but the depravity of things inanimate took the word out of his mouth. There was a tearing crash to the rear; a shock as if a huge projectile had overtaken them; and the flying locomotive came to earth like an eagle with a mangled wing. It was a broken axle under the tender; a tested steel shaft which had outlived the pounding race across the mountains only to fall apart in the last level mile of the home stretch. Jeffard clambered down with the enginemen, and saw defeat, crushing and definite, in the wreck under the tender. But the big engineer was a man for a crisis. One glance at the wreck sufficed, and the fireman got his orders in shot-like sentences. "Up with you, Tom, and give her the water,--both injectors! Drop me the sledge, and get the pinch-bar under the head o' that couplin'-pin when I drive it up. Give her a scoop 'r two o' coal--'nough to run in with. By cripes! we'll beat 'em yet!" The minced oath came from beneath the engine, and was punctuated by mighty upward blows of the sledge hammer on the coupling-pin, whose head was rising by half-inch impulses from its seat in the footplate. Jeffard saw and understood. The engineer meant to cut loose from the wreck and finish the run without the tender. "Use me if you can," he offered. "What shall I do?" "Climb up there and help Tom with that bar. If we can pull this pin we're in it yet." Jeffard laid hold with the fireman, and together they pried at the reluctant pin. It yielded at length, but when the engineer had disconnected the water and air hose and mounted to his place in the cab, the roar of the oncoming passenger train was ajar in the air. "You stay with the wreck, Tom, and flag it!" was the final command; and then to Jeffard, as the engine shot away from its disabled member: "How much time have you got to have?" "I don't know. It depends upon how much those fellows have found out, and how drunk my partner is. At the worst, a minute or two will serve." It was still to be had, but in the very yard a thrown switch intervened, and the small margin vanished. The passenger train was in, and Jeffard saw defeat again; but he dropped from the locomotive and ran up the yard, forgetting in the heat of it that he had elided two meals in the twenty-four hours. The final dash brought its reward. He took the first vehicle that offered and reached the principal hotel in time to see Garvin and his keepers descend from a carriage at the entrance. "Yes, sir; in one moment. Those three fellows who came in just now? They've gone up to their room. Be with us over night?" Thus the hotel clerk in answer to Jeffard's gasping inquiry. To whom the proletary, fighting desperately for some semblance of equanimity:-- "I--I'll be here indefinitely; no, I have no baggage; I'll pay in advance. Can you give me the room next to these men? The crazy one is my partner, and I'll be responsible for him."