But when, one hot afternoon in August, Baggs left Medicine Bend with a light engine for Fort Park, where he was to pick up a train-load of ties, he had no thought of making further pioneer railroad history. His engine had been behaving so well that his usual charges of inefficiency against it had not for a long time been registered with the roundhouse foreman, and Dan Baggs, dreaming in the heat and sunshine of nothing worse than losing his scalp to the Indians or winning a fortune at cards--gambling was another of his failings--was pounding lightly along over the rails when he reached, without heeding it, Goose Creek bridge. There were those who averred that after his experience with Iron Hand he always ran faster across the forbidden bridge than anywhere else. On this occasion Baggs bowled merrily along the trestle and was getting toward the middle of the river when the pony trucks jumped the rail and the drivers dropped on the ties. Dan Baggs yelled to his fireman. It was unnecessary. Delaroo, the fireman, a quiet but prudent fellow, was already standing in the gangway prepared for an emergency. He sprang, not a minute too soon, from the engine and lighted in the sand. But Dan Baggs's fixed habit of being behind time chained him to his seat an instant too long. The bulky engine, with its tremendous impetus, shot from the trestle and plunged like a leviathan clear of the bridge and down into the wet sand of the creek-bed. The fireman scrambled to his feet and ran forward, expecting to find his engineman hurt or killed. What was his surprise to behold Baggs, uninjured, on his feet and releasing the safety-valve of his fallen locomotive to prevent an explosion. The engine lay on its side. The crash of the breaking timbers, followed by a deafening blast of escaping steam, startled Bucks and, with Bob Scott, he ran out of the station. As he saw the spectacle in the river, he caught his breath. He lived to see other wrecks--some appalling ones--but this was his first, and the shock of seeing Dan Baggs's engine lying prone in the river, trumpeting forth a cloud of steam, instead of thundering across the bridge as he normally saw it every day, was an extraordinary one. Filled with alarm, he ran toward the bridge expecting that the worst had happened to the engineman and fireman. But his amazement grew rather than lessened when he saw Delaroo and Baggs running for their lives toward him. He awaited them uneasily. "What's the matter?" demanded Bucks, as Baggs, well in the lead, came within hailing distance. "Matter!" panted Baggs, not slackening his pace. "Matter! Look at my engine! Indians!" "Indians, your grandmother!" retorted Bob Scott mildly. "There's not an Indian within forty miles--what's the matter with you?" "They wrecked us, Bob," declared Baggs, pointing to his roaring engine; "see for yourself, man. Them cotton-woods are full of Indians right now."