Page:Frank Packard - On the Iron at Big Cloud.djvu/104

 the engineer. There was not a scowl, not even a grin on Burke's face, just an encouraging flirt of the hand—but the flirt was momentous. Wise and full of guile was Burke, for with that little act Spitzer, biblically speaking, girded up his loins and got his second wind.

They were well into the foothills now, and the right of way was an amazing wonder. Diving, twisting, curving, it circled and bored and trestled its way, and buttes, cañons, gorges and coulees roared past like flights of fancy.

The speed was terrific. To Spitzer it was all a wild, mad medley of things he had never known before, of things that had neither beginning nor end. The giddy slew as the big mountain racer hit the curves, the crunching grind of the flanges as for an instant she lifted from her wheel-base, the pitch, the roll, the staggering reel, the gasp for breath, the beat of the trucks, the whir of the racing drivers, the rush of the wind, the echoing thunder of the flying coaches behind—it was all there, all separate, all welded into one, a creation, new, vernal, life, the life of the rail, that beat at his eardrums and quickened the pounding throb of his heart.

At first, from time to time, Burke leaned over his levers to glance at the pressure gauge, but after a bit he crouched a little further forward in his seat and his eyes held on the track ahead where the beam of the electric headlight flooded the glittering ribbons of steel. He was getting what MacAloon or no other man had ever given him before—two hundred and ten pounds all the way. SPITZER was firing