Page:Cy Warman--The express messenger and other tales of the rail.djvu/79

Rh into the water, and found the sand firm enough to hold a man up, and some of the passengers said the men were crazy, and would not believe the tale they told. What wonder then, if these men, who were there only a few minutes  after the wreck, doubted this story, that men  laugh to-day when the enterprising newsboy  points out the place where the engine went down and disappeared in the sand?

The railway officials, however, did not doubt the story, and they came and dug and drifted, prospected, and ploughed around in the desert sands all night and all the next day. After the bridge had been rebuilt they went at it in earnest. For days and weeks and months they worked away, digging and sounding in the sand, and when thousands of dollars had been expended they gave it up. The lost locomotive has never been found.