"Boys, we've got to stop that train," said Joe, speaking rapidly but calmly.
"But how do we know which way it is coming from?" asked Roy, who did not show half as much pluck now as he did while he was struggling with the mate on board the White Squall.
"We don't know," answered Joe. "It's our business to find out. Art, you go back along the way we have come, and I'll go ahead. Roy, you stay here and be ready to signal either way in case anything happens to us and we don't succeed in stopping the train. Raise your lamp as high in the air as you can and lower it suddenly. That's 'down brakes' on the Mount Airy road, and I suppose the signal is the same the world over. At any rate an engineer with half sense will understand it. Off we go now. Don't be reckless of headers, Art, but speed along lively."
[Pg 267]
In two seconds more my master and Arthur Hastings were hurrying away in different directions, and Roy, having carried his wheel across the ditch and placed it against the face of the bluff, was sitting on the rock with his lamp in his hand. In another two seconds Joe and I whirled around a sharp bend and were out of sight of everybody.
That was the wildest and most reckless run I ever undertook, for my master did not by any means follow the advice he had given Arthur Hastings. When Joe Wayring went into a thing he went in with his whole heart. I went ahead faster that I had ever been driven before, but a tricycle could not have run with more steadiness. Joe did not need the whole road-bed to travel in as he would if he had attempted a fast gait a week before, but held me firmly in one track. I could plainly see the way for a short distance in front of me, catch the glimmering of the wet rails on each side, and hear the faint "swishing" sound made by the rubber tires as they spurned the ground under them; but all on a sudden this sound ceased—or, rather, it gave way to a very low rumble,
[Pg 268]
 such as I had never heard before. The high bank on the left sank out of sight; the gurgling of the stream far below became a roar; solid walls of blackness surrounded us on all sides, relieved only by that little streak of light in front; and to my inexpressible horror I discovered that we no longer had the firm road-bed beneath us. We had left it, and were rushing with almost breathless speed over a trestle-work whose height could only be guessed at. An eight-inch plank nailed to the timbers between the tracks was our pathway. It was plenty wide enough for Joe, now that he had "mended his style of riding," if the plank had only been on the ground, and he had had daylight to show him where he was going; but there was plenty of room for accident. Suppose the plank should not extend entirely across the trestle, which was so long that I began to wonder if there was any other end to it! Or what if a tire should come off? Such accidents sometimes happen to the most careful bicyclists, and when I pictured to myself Joe Wayring lying stunned and bleeding among those timbers, and in danger of
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 slipping through into the rocky bed of the stream beneath while I toppled over the edge—when I thought of these things, I shivered so violently that my nickel-plated spokes would have rattled if they had not been tangent and tied together.
As for Joe Wayring, there was not the faintest exclamation from him to show that he realized his danger, although I knew well enough that he couldn't help seeing it. If his nerves had not been in perfect health, something disastrous would surely have happened. He struck the plank and passed over thirty feet of its length before he had time to take in the situation. Once started along the trestle he had to go on; there was no help for it. The light from the lamp was all thrown ahead, and an effort to dismount in the darkness might have resulted in a disabling fall among the timbers with me on top. Then what would become of the train, if it approached from the direction in which he was going? Plainly his only chance was to keep in motion; and Joe not only did that, but he laid out extra power on the pedals, and sent me
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 ahead with increased speed. The rails looked like two continuous streaks of light, and the timbers passed behind with such rapidity that they presented the appearance of a solid floor. So great was our speed that by the time I had thought of all this, and become so badly frightened that I would have tumbled over if my momentum had not kept me right side up, that low rumbling sound ceased as suddenly as it had begun, the graveled road-bed, trodden smooth in the middle, shot into view and came rushing under the wheels, two high bluffs came out of the darkness and shut us in on both sides, and the trestle and its terrors were left behind. At the same instant, as if by a preconcerted signal, a bright light appeared far up the track, which at this point was perfectly straight, and another still nearer. The first was from the headlight of the approaching train, and the second was emitted by a lantern in the hands of a man who seemed to be searching for something, for he held his light first toward one rail and then toward the other. He was moving away from us.
"It's the track-walker," gasped Joe, as he
[Pg 271]
 sounded his bell; and those were the first words I had heard him speak since we left the rock. "Suppose I had run onto him while I was scooting along that narrow plank! I'd be dead now, sure."
The moment the man with the lantern heard the bell he faced about; but, to my surprise, he did not appear to be at all alarmed. The orders he straightway began shouting at us showed conclusively that he was used to wheelmen and their methods.
"Git aff the track, ye shpalpeen," he yelled, frantically flourishing his lantern in the air. "Don't ye see the kyars coming forninst ye, an' haven't I towled ye times widout number, that if ye gets killed ye can't get no damages from the company? Will yees git aff the track?"
"Stop that train," shouted Joe, in reply. "There's an obstruction on the track just beyond the trestle."
"What for lookin' abstraction is it?" inquired the track-walker, incredulously.
"A big rock," replied Joe; and seeing at once that he had a stupid, and no doubt an
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 obstinate, man to deal with, he did not neglect to make preparations to stop the train himself. He promptly got me out of the way and detached the lamp; and when he bent over so that the light fell upon his face, I started in spite of myself. He was as white as a sheet.
"Aw! G'long wid ye now," said the track-walker. "Don't I be goin' down beyant there onct or twicst bechune trains iv'ry blessed day of me loife for three years an' better? An' don't I know—"
"I don't care what you have done during the last three years, or what you know," interrupted Joe, as he ran back to the track and signaled "down brakes" with his lamp. "There's a rock on the track—What are you trying to do, you loon?" exclaimed Joe, hotly, as the man made an effort to push him away and take his lamp from him. "Let me alone or I will report you. There'll be a wreck here in a minute more, and you will lose your place on the road."
Although the man didn't like the idea of allowing an outsider to interfere with his business, Joe's words had just the effect upon him
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 that the boy intended they should have, and after a little hesitation he began signaling with his own light. Between them they succeeded in attracting the attention of the engineer, who called for brakes, and stopped his train within a few feet of the place where Joe and the track-walker stood.
"What's the trouble?" he asked from his cab window; and while Joe was explaining, the conductor came up and listened. The latter looked first at my master and then at me, and presently said:
"You didn't ride across the trestle, of course."
"Of course I did," replied Joe, "I couldn't have got across any other way. I would have been afraid to walk that narrow plank in the dark. How high is it above the water?"
"Sixty feet in some places, and the trestle is just half a mile long," answered the conductor. "Here, boys, put that wheel into the baggage car. Young man, you come with me, and I will take you to Dorchester."
"That's where we want to go," said Joe, surprised to learn that he and his friends had
[Pg 274]
 been riding on the back track ever since they struck the railroad.
In obedience to the conductor's order I was hoisted into the baggage car, placed against a pile of trunks so that I could see through the wide-open door and the engineer pulled slowly ahead. I had little idea how far we had run after leaving the trestle, but we were fully five minutes in getting back to it, and much longer in crossing it. There seemed to be no bottom to the gulf it spanned. It was so deep that I could see nothing but the tops of the trees that grew in it. About the time we got to the other end of it the baggage-master, who had been leaning half-way out the opposite door, drew in his head long enough to remark to some one whom I took to be his assistant:
"There's a chap out there calling for brakes the best he knows how," and I straightway made up my mind that it must be Roy Sheldon. "This would be a bad place for an accident with such a trainful of passengers as we've got. There's the rock," he added, a moment later, "and it's as big as this car."
[Pg 275]
It wasn't quite as large as that, nor do I suppose it was even half as large as Rube Royall's cabin; but it was big and heavy enough to tax the strength of all the men who could get around it, including the engineer, fireman, conductor, all the brakemen, some of the passengers and two wheelmen. With the aid of levers and much lifting and pushing they got it started at last, and it went down into the gulf with a terrific crash. I heard the engineer say, as he climbed back into his cab, that if he had struck that rock going as fast as he usually did at that place, he would have demolished his train so completely that it would have taken a microscope to find the wreck.
"All clear," shouted the conductor. "All aboard. Pass along that other wheel."
"One moment, please. There's another man in our party who went down that way because we didn't know where to look for the first train," said Joe, waving his hand in the direction in which Arthur Hastings had disappeared. "He'll be back directly, and as we don't care to be separated, perhaps you had better leave
[Pg 276]
 us here. We're just as much obliged to you, however."
"Has the other man got a lamp? All right, Jake," said the conductor, addressing the engineer, "keep a lookout for another wheelman a mile or so down the road. That'll be all right. Pile in."
Joe and Roy went into one of the passenger cars, while the latter's wheel was placed at my side against the trunks. The first words he uttered were:
"It's just dreadful to think of, isn't it?"
"Not so much so as it might be," said I. "If I had broken Joe Wayring's head for him while he was driving me at top speed across that trestle, then you might have had something to talk about."
"We've enough as it is. I know it might have been worse, and some unknown villains meant it should be. Roy Sheldon showed the marks to the engineer as soon as he got out of his cab."
"What marks?"
"Why, the marks on the rock. The engineer called the conductor's attention to them,
[Pg 277]
 and together they made it up not to say a word about it in the hearing of the passengers for fear of frightening them."
"What in the world did the passengers have to be frightened about so long as Joe and I stopped the train and averted the disaster? They ought to be tickled."
"Well, they wouldn't be if they knew how that rock came to be on the track. You probably did not see the conductor when he threw some pieces of round wood over the brink into the ravine, but I did, and I know that they were the rollers that were used to bring that bowlder into place after it had been tumb............