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the Rover boys reached the head of the train they found an excited crowd beginning to collect. The locomotive of the express had cut into the last freight car a distance of several feet, smashing a number of boxes and barrels and likewise the headlight of the engine. Nobody had been hurt, for which everybody was thankful. But the engineer of the express was very angry.

"Why didn't you send a man back with a flag or put a torpedo on the track?" he demanded of the freight train conductor.

"Did send a man back," was the answer, "but he didn't go back far enough—hadn't time. This happened only a few minutes ago."

"You can't expect me to stop in a hundred feet," growled the engineer. As a matter of fact he had not stopped in many times that distance.

"Well, I did what I could," grumbled the freight conductor.