Page:Frank Packard - On the Iron at Big Cloud.djvu/171

 "They have not," agreed Carleton, and the bitterness of his soul was in his words.

Everybody was right.

The general passenger agent was right—the scenic grandeur was beyond compare, and he made the most of it in booklets, in leaflets, in pamphlets, and in a score of pages in a score of different magazines.

The others were right—the Devil's Slide was everything that the ethics of engineering said it shouldn't be. It was neither level nor straight. In its marvelous two miles from the summit of the pass to the canon below, its nearest approach to the ethical was three percent drop. There wasn't much of that—most of it was a straight five! It twisted, it turned, it slid, it slithered, and it dove around projecting mountain-sides at scandalous tangents and with indecent abruptness.

Chick Coogan swore, with a grin, that he could see his own headlight coming at him about half the time every trip he made up or down. That, of course, is exaggerating a little—but not much! Coogan sized up the Devil's Slide pretty well when he said that, all things considered, pretty well—there wasn't much chance to mistake what he meant, or what the Devil's Slide was, or what he thought of it. Anyway, be that as it may, Coogan's description gave the division the only chance they ever had to crack a smile when the Devil's Slide was in question.

They smiled then, those railroaders of the Rockies, but they'll look at you queerly now if you mention the two together—Coogan and the Devil's Slide. Fate is a pretty grim player sometimes.