Gertrude was much too full of the magnitude of things to care to talk, but she was finally moved to ask another question.

"Are we really running along on the rails just like any well-behaved train? It seems to me we must have left the track quite a while ago."

Brockway laughed. "You would know it, if we had. Do you see those two little yellow lights away out ahead?"

"Yes; what are they?"

"They are the switch-lights at Corral Siding. Take hold of this lever and blow the whistle yourself; then it won't startle you so much."

Gertrude did that, also, although it was more trying to her nerves than all that had gone before. Then Brockway showed her how to reduce speed.

"Push the throttle in as far as it will go; that's right. Now the reversing-lever—both hands, and brace yourself—that's it. Now take hold of this handle and twist it that way—slowly—more yet—" the air whistled shrilly through the vent, and the song of the brake-shoes on the wheels of the train rose above the discordant clangor—"that will do—turn it back," he added, when the speed had slackened sufficiently; and he leaned forward with his hand on the brake-lever and scanned the approaching side-track with practised eyes.

"All clear!" he announced, springing back quickly. "Pull up this lever again, and give her steam."

Gertrude obeyed like an automaton, though she blenched a little when the small station building at the Siding roared past, and in a few seconds the 926 was again bettering the schedule.

"How fast are we going now?" she asked, when the engine was once more pitching and rolling like a laboring ship.

Brockway consulted his watch. "A little over fifty miles an hour, I should say. You will be quite safe in calling it that, anyway, when you tell your friends that you have run a fast express train."

"They'll never believe it," she said; "but I wouldn't have missed it for the world. What must I do now?—watch the track?"

Brockway said "Yes," though, with all his interest in other things, he had not omitted that very important part of an engineer's duty from the moment of leaving Arriba. After a roaring silence of some minutes, during which Brockway gave himself once more to the divided business of scanning the rails and 

 Prev. P 33/106 next