Cy Warman

“ Up near the engine the express messenger sat on a little iron safe. Upon either hip he wore a heavy six-shooter, and across his lap lay a Winchester rifle. He was as nearly contented and happy as men may reasonably hope to be on this earth. The refreshing breeze that came to him was sweet with the scent of summer. The hills were green and his heart was glad. But his heart was not in the hills. That very Sunday morning he had given it into the keeping of the Warden's daughter as they walked without the walls of the gray prison down by the junction. ”

“ At times he found himself at the bottom of a deep gorge, and again at the top of a steep bluff, and saw before him a black and apparently bottomless abyss. There was no moon, but the friendly stars would guide him. Pike's Peak, standing high against the sky, showed him where the east was, while the Greenhorn range rose rough and abrupt to the west. But when he had been upon his journey less than an hour, a gray cloud hung like a heavy fog on the hills and shut out all the light from the heavens and obscured the earth. ”

“ Great spruce trees were uprooted, the track, with the cross ties still hanging to the rails, was ripped up, and the rails, bending like wire, wound about the rolling débris and clogged the cañon. Then the welling flood would fill the whole gorge, and roll on with such a mass of bridge timber and fallen trees pushed in front of it, that you could see no sign of water as the flood bore down upon you, but only a tangled mass of rails and ties and twisted trees. ”

“ The mysterious message is no longer a mystery. When Miss Morgan saw, or rather heard, your mistake, she endeavored to convince you that you were in error, but failed. Despairing, she left the building. She was almost wild with grief and alarm. I saw her face as she hurried down the stair, and it was the face of a mad woman. I read it wrong, and returned at once to you to learn the cause of her distress. I heard you call Eastcreek and ask for the special,—your last message that day,—and heard the answer 'Gone' and saw you fall. ”

“ The day dawned grudgingly, the darkness seemed reluctantly to leave the earth, the sun remained behind the dark clouds, from which the rain continued to fall in torrents. At noon the rain ceased, the sun came out, meadow larks carolled free in the blue above, but the hapless Wakalona lay fettered in a rain-soaked tent. The story of her capture was kept a profound secret, for the Indians knew that the United States army officers would interfere if they learned that the Princess was to be put to death. In the darkness of their ignorance they believed that they were doing their duty. ”

“ Up through this narrow, crooked cañon a narrow-gauge railroad ran to Silver Cliff. Silver Cliff at one time had thirty thousand people, then thirty hundred, and now not more than thirty people live there, unless their business compels them to do so. It produced some silver, a sensational murder, one Congressman, and petered out.
When the flood had gone a mile in the main cañon, and picked up eight or ten rail road bridges and all the dead timber in the gulch, it presented a rolling front twenty-five feet high and reached from hill to hill. ”

“ Both the engineer and the fireman were much interested in the bare-headed passenger, who seemed about as happy as a man can get and live. He took note of every move made by the engineer, smiling when the engine blew off steam, and frowning when the driver handled the throttle or lever in a rough or careless manner. ”

“ Only, she remembered that her teacher, the brakeman, had said something about another world beyond the sky, but he was still in this world and she was loath to leave it; and so she sat all through the long summer day with her hands locked over her knees, rocking to and fro, half crooning and half moaning:—
'When the great red sun is half in the sky
And half in the earth, then the dead must die.'
"She knew that she was counted among the dead by her people, and if she returned to them she would be drowned in this river when the sun went down. ”

“ The other driver only shoved the throttle lever in, braced himself, and awaited the shock.
A man who has never lived up to what he thought his last moment on earth, and survived to tell about it afterward, can never know how much business one can transact, in his mind, during that moment in which he waits and listens for the swish of the scythe. But one does not always review his past life at such a moment; often he wastes time thinking upon a mere trifle. ”

“ The rattle and noise of the heavy wagons made it impossible for the freighters to hear the roar of the flood, and, as they were coming down the cañon, they had their backs to it, and so were overtaken in a narrow place. Some of the men, leaping from their wagons, scrambled up the steep hill out of the way of the water, while others took to the tall trees, but when the flood came, the stoutest trees in the gulch went down like sunflowers in a cyclone's path, and the luckless freighters mingled with the horses and wagons and were washed away. ”

“ It was one of those clear moonlight nights that make every peak and pinnacle on the mountain ranges stand out as clear and distinct against the cold sky as they do in the daytime; a moon that shames the headlight, and shows the twin threads of steel running away off yonder and meeting and going on together where the darkness begins. ”

“ A few years later, when the west-bound train stopped at a little bleak and dreary mountain town where I, having gone West, had elected to drop anchor, I looked out from the car window and saw Doc sitting close up to the crupper of an old sorrel horse that was hitched to an express wagon.
I went over to him at once, for I was lonesome. A mountain town is not a thing one is apt to love at first sight. ”

“ Every attempt made by the band to fire the station had ended in failure, and the Sioux were now preparing to storm the fort. It was hard for Bankers to keep quiet in the car while the agent sold his life so bravely and so dearly to the Sioux, but there were his wife and baby and the helpless schoolma'am, who had been persuaded by the Bankerses to come to this wild region, and he felt it his duty to protect them as best he could. Presently Bankers felt the stock car vibrate perceptibly, as though it were being rolled slowly along the rail. ”

“ What they found and failed to find, is well known to thousands of railroad men. It has become a part of the history of the road and of the West. There in the bed of the narrow stream, they found the outfit cars all in a heap. The stream—only eight or ten inches of clear water—was rippling through and around the wreck; but the locomotive was gone, and so was her driver, and so was the Dane. The men stared at one another, and when the fireman told them that the crazy inventor was on the engine, they were seized with a strange terror, and they all turned and scrambled up the bank. ”

“ The water at times will roll down in a solid wall ten or twelve feet high. There had been a cloudburst here, and suddenly the driver saw the sagging rails hanging over a deep ravine. The bridge was gone, and there was no possible show for them. "Jump!" he shouted, and the fireman leaped out into the prairie, and the engine plunged head first into the stream, now almost dry. The three or four outfit cars piled in on top of the engine, and filled up the gap, while the caboose, breaking her coupling, leaped over the wreck, and was thrown out on the plain beyond the washout. ”

“ If he could overlook her sex, and forgive her having been born a woman, she would be content to take whatever he had to offer her. "Ye gods," said the train-master to himself, "she makes me ashamed. She's as brave as she is gentle, and as brilliant as she is beautiful." ”

“ It is true that my child has not been killed, he said sadly, but she is dead. It is true that she still walks the earth, but she is dead to me and to all her people; and the great brave bowed his head in silent sorrow.
"Then I remembered having heard that an Indian who had lost his scalp was looked upon as one demented or dead, and I knew then what had happened to the Princess Wakalona.
"How best to break the news to poor McAlaster was a question over which I pondered on my way back to the camp. He was strong and sensible. ”

“ Jakie had barely fixed his feet comfortably among the oil-cans, when he was startled by the wild scream of a locomotive calling for brakes. One short, sharp blast, under these circumstances, signifies that the engineer wants to stop, but can't, and so publishes his embarrassment. Glancing back, Jakie saw the fireman shoot out at one window and the "prairie sailor" out at the other, leaving the locomotive free to chase Jakie's. Both engines were going at a lively gait,—too lively to make jumping for Jakie less hazardous than dying at his post. ”

“ By a sort of unwritten rule, the first trick man had stepped to the post of train-master when that industrious, but over zealous, officer had fallen; but, having no official notice of his appointment by the superintendent, he felt that he had no right to promote the men under him. The best he could do was to keep his trick, and look after the train-master's work beside. He had, of course,—being a despatcher,—the right to sign his own initials to all orders, prefixing the word "Acting" when signing as train-master. ”

“ The whistle valve had been forced open, and now the wild, ceaseless cry of the wounded engine drowned all other sounds, and made it impossible for the men to hear the cries of the imprisoned postal clerk. ”

“ Each was firm in the belief that he had seen a ghost, but he would never tell it,—not for his job.
The officials in the special train felt the resistance of the engine when the engineer shut off and reversed, and the general manager, turning to the superintendent, asked, with surprise: "When did you put in that siding?"
"What, back there? That's Coyote spur, and has been there for six months," was the reply.
"I know very well," said the manager, "where Coyote spur is, for we waited there fifteen minutes for No. 8 going down the other day, but we just passed a siding on the north." ”

“ As the inventor sprang upon the engine the fireman seized him, only to be hurled out over the coal tank by the desperate Dane. Having freed himself from the fireman, Hansen gave two sharp blasts—"off brakes"—and opened the throttle. The sudden jerk broke the train in two, four cars from the engine; and before the astonished engineer could reach the head end the engine was in motion. The mad driver knew enough to open the sand lever, and with a few exhausts the short train was moving so fast that the trainmen were unable to reach it. ”