Page:Cy Warman--The express messenger and other tales of the rail.djvu/159

Rh looked with their white faces where the moon light fell and dark recesses where the shadows were. To the right, beyond the river, the falls of Chipeta leaped from the rocks five hundred feet above the roadbed and tumbled into the water below; while to the left Curicanti's needle stood up among the stars.

It was not the time of year for rocks to fall, for rocks only fall in the spring, and this was summer, but the unexpected is hardest to avoid; and now, for some unaccountable reason, a great rock, whose wake was afterward followed for more than a mile up the mountains, came down with the speed of a cannon ball, and striking the Rockaway just forward of the air pump, cut her clear from her tank and shot her into the river with poor "Noah" North underneath her. The swift current brought the lucky Irish engineer out of the cab, however, and at the next bend of the river threw him out on a rock. The parting of the air hose set the automatic brakes, which, as the train was on a down grade, were already applied lightly, and—the track being uninjured—the train stopped before the second car had passed the point where the engine left