Bradley dashed through the door, and, between the cars, jumped for the ladder and swarmed up--the globe of his lamp in a sudden slew shivered against the car roof, and the flame went out in a puff. He flung the thing from him; and, with arms wide outspread for balance on his reeling foothold, ran, staggered, stumbled, recovered himself, and sped on again, springing from car to car, up the string of them, to where the red flare, leaping from the open fire box in the cab ahead, silhouetted two figures snatching for their hold at the brake-wheel on the front end of the forward car--Heney and Carrol. And as Bradley ran, a thin stream of flame spurted upward from the cab, and there came faintly, almost lost in the thunder of the train, the bark of a revolver shot--and the two figures, ducking instantly, crouched lower. And then Bradley stood beside the others; and Heney, that no man ever called a coward, clutched at Martin Bradley and shouted in his ear: "For God's sake, Martin, what'll we do? The throttle was wide at the top of the grade when he threw Bull Coussirat off. We saw it from the cupola. It's certain death to make a move for him!" But Bradley made no answer. Tight-lipped, he was staring down into the cab; and a livid face stared back at him--the face of the man that he had stopped to look at as they had pulled out of Big Cloud--Pietro--the face, hideously contorted, of a maniac. And on the floor of the cab, stretched out, wriggling spasmodically, Reddy MacQuigan lay upon his back; and Pietro half knelt upon him, clutching with one hand at the boy's throat, pointing a revolver with the other at the roof of the car. Wild, crazy fast now, the speed was; the engine dancing ahead; the cars wriggling behind; the yellow glimmer of the caboose shooting this way and that like a pursuing phantom will-o'-the-wisp; and from beneath the roofs of the cars rose that muffled, never-ending scream of terror from the Polacks, the Armenians and the Swedes--rose, too, from the roofs of the cars themselves, for some were climbing there. It was disaster absolute and certain not a mile ahead where the track in a short, murderous curve hugged Bald Eagle Peak, with the cañon dropping a thousand feet sheer down from the right of way, disaster there--if they ever got that far! But Bradley, though he knew it well enough from a hundred runs, was not thinking of that. In a calm, strange way there seemed to come one more analogy between Mrs. MacQuigan's life and his--this human thing that looked like a gorilla was choking her son to death, the son that was making a home for her as she had dreamed he would do some day, the son that was all she had to depend upon. Mrs. MacQuigan's son--his little girl. Both out!