Page:Arthur Stringer - Gun Runner.djvu/347

 late. But he acted subconsciously, automatically. He knew what was coming, even before the wheel-flanges dropped from the rail-end and lunged and shook and pounded along the sleepers. He braced himself and held tight, as the girl was doing—praying, all the while, that the rushing thing of steel would not overturn.

But a forward wheel gave way, under the strain, and the car-floor suddenly dipped under them, dipped and bowed until the axle locked against a cross-tie with a jolt that sent the great hulk careening sideways, where it raised and rolled over in the yellow sand, ponderously, indignantly, like an ill-treated animal.

McKinnon caught the girl as she fell on him, with a sharp out-swinging motion. But he swung and tumbled her free of the car, away from the menace of the toppling cartridge-boxes. Then he rolled over on his face, and crawled to the girl's side, on all fours, with the grit of yellow sand between his teeth and the choking smart of the dust-cloud still in his gasping lungs.