LITMIR.BIZ

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and, gaining speed with every rail they traveled, spelt death and destruction to the Imperial Limited, if they ever reached her. The men at the top of the grade were yelling their lungs out and waving their arms in frantic warning.

      The train started with a jolt that threw Bunty back on the seat. For an instant the big drivers raced like pin-wheels, then they bit into the rails, and aided by the grade, Number Two began to back slowly down the hill.

      Bunty picked himself up, his little frame shaking with dry sobs. The freight-cars had gained on him in the last minute, and had nearly reached him. Again he leaned over for the throttle, and hanging grimly to it, pulled it open another notch, and then another, and ​then wide open. 901 took it like a frightened thoroughbred. Rearing herself from the track under her two hundred and ten pounds of steam, she jumped into the cars behind her for a starter with a shock that played havoc with the passengers' nerves. Then she settled down to travel. The Devil's Slide is two miles long, and some pretty fair running has been made on it in times of stress; but Bunty holds the record—it's good yet—and Bunty was only an amateur!

      It was neck and neck for a while, and there was almost a pile-up on the nose of 901's pilot before she began to hold her own. Gradually she began to pull away, and by the time they were half-way down the hill the distance between her and the truant freight-cars was widening. The speed was terrific.

      Pale and terror-stricken, Bunty now crouched on the driver's seat. Time and again the engineer's whistle in the cab over his head signaled, now entreatingly, now with frantic insistence. But Bunty gave it no heed; his only thought was for those cars in front of him that were always there. He cried to himself with little moans.

      There was a sickening slur as they flew round a curve. 901 heeled to the tangent, one set of drivers fairly lifted from the track. When she found her wheel base again, Bunty, shaken from his hold, was clinging to the reversing-lever. He shut his eyes as he pulled himself back to his seat. When he looked again, he saw the freight-cars hit the curve above him, then slew as they jumped the track and, with a crash that ​reached him above the roar and rattle of the train, the booming whir of the great drivers beneath him, go pitching headlong down the embankment.

      Bunty rose to his knees, and for the first time looked out of the side window, to find a new terror there as the rocks and trees and poles flashed dizzily by him. He turned and looked behind. A man was clinging to the hand-rail of the mail-car, and another, lying flat, was crawling over the coal heaped high on the tender. Bunty dashed the tears from his eyes; he was no "fraidy" kid. He stood up, and holding on to the frame of the window, staggered toward the throttle. As he reached for it, 901 lurched madly, and Bunty lost his balance and fell headlong upon the iron floor plate of the cab. Then it was all dark.

      Number Two pulled into Big Cloud that night ten hours late, and it brought Bunty. His father and Carleton and Spence and the shop-hands were on the platform. From the private car, which carried the tail-lights, an elderly gentleman got off with Bunty in his arms. The men cheered, and while the master mechanic rushed forward to take his son, the super and Spence drew back respectfully.

      "Mr. Regan," said the old gentleman, with tears in his eyes, "you ought to be pretty proud of this little lad."

      Regan tried to speak, but the words choked somehow.

      The old gentleman swung himself back upon the car. "Good-by, Bunty!" he called.

      ​And Bunty, from the depths of the blanket they had wrapped around him, called back, "Good-by, sir!"

      When Bunty was propped up in bed, his father told him how the express messenger had stopped the train and carried him back into the Pullmans.

      Bunty listened gravely. "Yes," he said, nodding his head; "they was awful good to me, and the man that tooked me off the train told me stories, and then I told him some, too."

      "What did you tell him?" Regan asked.

      "Oh, 'bout trains and shops and presidents and directors and—and lots of things."

      "Presidents and directors!" said Regan, in surprise. "What did you tell him about them?"

      "I told him what you said—that they was fools, and you knew, 'cause you'd seen them."

      Regan whistled softly.

      "And," continued Bunty, "he laughed, and when I asked him what he was laughing at, he gived me a piece of paper and told me to give it to you, and you'd tell me."

      Regan groaned. "Guess it's my time all right," he muttered. "Where's the paper, Bunty?"

      "He putted it in my pocket."

      Regan drew the chair with Bunty's clothing on it toward him, and began a hurried search. He fished out a narrow slip of paper and unfolded it on his knee. It was a check for one thousand dollars payable to Master Bunty Regan, and signed by the President of the road.

      "If a Man Die"

       Table of Contents

      Layout 2

      ​

      III

      "IF A MAN DIE"

      East and West now, the Transcontinental is double-tracked, all except the Hill Division and—that, in the nature of things, probably never will be. If you know the mountains, you know the Hill Division. From the divisional point, Big Cloud, that snuggles at the eastern foothills, the right of way, like the trail of a great sinewy serpent, twists and curves through the mountains, through the Rockies, through the Sierras, and finally emerges to link its steel with a sister division, that stretches onward to the great blue of the Pacific Ocean.

      It is a stupendous piece of track. It has cost fabulous sums, and the lives of many men; it has made the fame of some, and been the graveyard of more. The history of the world, in big things, in little things, in battles, in strife, in sudden death, in peace, in progress, and in achievement, has its counterpart, in miniature, in the history of the Hill Division. There is a page in that history that belongs to "Angel" Breen. This is Breen's story.

      It has been written much, and said oftener, that men in every walk of life, save one, may make mistakes and live them down, but that the dispatcher who falls once ​is damned forever. And it is true. I am a dispatcher. I know.

      Where he got the nickname "Angel" from, is more than I can tell you, and I've wondered at it often enough myself. Contrast, I guess it was. Contrast with the boisterous, rough and ready men around him, for this happened back in the early days when men were what a life of hardship and no comfort made them. No, Breen wasn't soft—far from it. He was just quiet and mild-mannered. It must have been that—contrast. Anyway, he was "Angel" when I first knew him, and you can draw your own conclusions as to what he is now—I'm not saying anything at all about that.

      Where did he come from? What was he before he came here? I don't know. I don't believe anybody knew, or ever gave the matter a thought. That sort of question was never asked—it was too delicate and pointed in the majority of cases. A man was what he was out here, not what he had been; he made good, or he didn't. Not that I mean to imply that there was anything crooked or anything wrong with Breen's past, I'm sure there wasn't for that matter, but I'm just trying to make you understand that when I say Breen had the night trick in the dispatcher's office here in Big Cloud, I'm beginning at the beginning.

      Breen wasn't popular. He wasn't a good enough mixer for that. Personally, it isn't anything I'd hold up against him, or any other man. Popularity is too often cheap, and being a "good fellow" isn't always a license for a man to puff out his chest—though ​most of them do it, and that's the high sign that what I say is right. No, I'm not moralizing, I'm telling a story, you'll see what I mean before I get through. I say Breen wasn't popular. He got the reputation of thinking himself a little above the rank and file of those around him, stuck-up, to put it in cold English, and that's where they did him an injustice. It was the man's nature, unobtrusive, retiring—different from theirs, if you get my point, and they couldn't understand just because

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