trees as straight as the proverbial die, gave them scine reassurance.

It was only when we crossed a short trestle over a brook-and this with a change in the note of our chug-chug,that the Rushville people gained courage once more.

Someone was remarking how one saw no birds here, when the train came to an abrupt halt. It was 9:35 by the watch, and right at the heart of the mountains, the Half-Way House, really just one-third the entire distance, greeted,-log cabins round about it among the firs of the forest.

The train must stop here ten min

Ahead, now, the real peak was opening and travelers aboard were growing anxious.

Somehow a strange feeling, that was not "mountain sickness," was over all of us, as again we felt the thrum and the chug that meant ascent from the Half-Way House. We were climbing, approaching, entering, cloudland; we we were scaling the roof of the world!

Like Marco Bozzaris, of whom we proclaimed in our school days, we were ready, almost, to cry Excelsior!

But, that ride to the top was still to take long, so long, in fact, as to make a tale in itself!

arrival of east-bound California Express.

"This that I'm telling you about is mebby a year or so before you'd done any firing for Mahalie. But Sands was conductor and I was opening switches and setting out torpedoes to crack and expecting to be superintendent soon,

same as now.

"On the card we had then, it was fixed so as we come along through the pass here about sunset and got down into Del Sur nice time for a good supper at Renza's place before bedtime.

"It got so bad that every time me and Mahalie and the fireman started down off o' here I most generally rode the engine if we had to head in over yonder in the valley-why, one or other of us would just remark, 'Bull, or no bull?' And the fellow that bet 'Bull' was winning right along. We sure did hit lot of them.

"Old Zeke, he wasn't caring a whole lot, because his cattle are all springpoor, and they're worth a heap more to him just then after we hit them than they are while they're alive. Every

Courtesy of Brother W. B. Starr.

"All going along fine that spring. No new track-gangs out. No soft spots to speak of, except one that put a squirt of coal-ashes and water square up into Mahalie's eye while he ran one day. No slow orders of any account, and everything going along on time till old Zeke Ballard drove two thousand head of his cattle over from the Tres Hermanes country and turned 'em loose to feed right down yonder where you see the sun shining on both sides of the track on the open ranges.

"That sure flagged us. It commenced right then, and it soon got so that about all the spare time anybody had at the end of the run was took up sassing back cautious on 1178's and stock reports.

one we killed was triple-extract, highpedigree patriarch when it showed up in the killed-stock claims. We were all all catching thunder for not going through 'em on time, and catching more thunder for going through 'em and hangin' 'em up on both sides of the headlight.

"But so far, mind you, we were only trimming the rough edges of the big bunch. The main tent hadn't opened.

"So far the herd had all been grazing on the south side of the track, but close! That close that you'd always get the good, musky smell of them, whether you got any of the bunch or not. And blamed if Mahalie didn't seem to like it up to a certain point, and that's the day we first found the

herd split and grazin' on both sides of the track.

"I could see, right then, that it worried Jim a lot. But being's I was about as green about such things then as you could be now, if you tried, I didn't get the full meaning of it till Jim give me a clear hunch.

"I was settin' close up behind Jim on the seat-cushion that evening when we turned the point of rocks down yonder and headed for that narrow lane between the two halves of the split herd. It set me up high with a jump when I saw what was ahead and us speeding into it at a fifty-five clip. "Looked to me that Jim was a lot slow about getting to the whistle-cord that run around above his head. knowing him like I thought I did, I stuck my mouth close up against his ear and says above the roar of the engine:

So,

"I'll just give 'em a scare back with the whistle, Jim,' and I had my hand stretching on the whistle-cord to let 'er go plenty.

"He snapped his fingers tight on my wrist and held my arm stiff in the air. "Le' go!" he says. If you pull that whistle I'll drop you out of the window!'

"Did I let go? Sure, I let go. You know Mahalie, don't you? There ain't a mean bone in his body; but if he says let go-why, just let go!"

"Green ?" jeered Sunny. "Green? Oh, no, you wasn't green, Hutton. You must have been the original blue and yallow that the green's all made. from!

"Didn't you ever know that a split herd would close up on an open whistle both ways, like the Red Sea pinched the children of Pharaoh?

"Why, you never would 'a' got done hittin' 'em!"

"Aw, the children of-don't I know it?" demanded Hutton. "Didn't I just say that Jim told me? 'Course I know now that they'll back away and watch a train run through quiet, same as if they owned it; when a whistle

will set 'em all crazy and milling fair on the middle of the track.

"Well, Mahalie, he just reached out quiet, after he'd fixed me sensible, and he shoved the throttle close shut, which he'd just opened out a few seconds before as we struck the flats. He let her drift full and free.

"We went sailing, quick and quiet as a bald eagle on the down swoop, straight into that little old lane through the herd stretchin' out for a mile down both sides of the pike.

"It was a red sea, all right, tossin' and moanin' and all frothed up as you looked at it, with a kind of a foaming of Texas long horns and scattered white faces. And we shot half-way through it with the track as straight and clear as them two streaks on your face.

"Just when it's beginning to look like it's all over and good for us, there's a little yellow-back yearling comes tearing out of a gap in the herd 'way on ahead. He plants himself square in the middle of the track and stands there, head up, watchin' us come at him.

"The second Jim saw him scuddin' like a sunstreak out of the foam of horns, he set the air gentle and begun slowing down.

"The little cuss took to friskin' and jumpin' 'round; runnin' ahead some, and always wheelin', to stand square in the middle with his head down and tail up a waving, watchin' us come.

"Jim pinched down, pinched down, till we're fair stopped with the yearling holding the right of way.

"Why, you purty little rascal!' says Jim, glancin' at his watch besides, you're as yellow and sassy as a fresh gold nugget!'

"And with that he stops complete, slides down the gangway steps, and runs ahead. He grabbed the stubborn little chap by one ear and spanked him with the gauntlet of his loose glove while he led him off the track and turned him loose in the herd. Then Jim come back and climbed on, grin

nin' sociable to himself, and he pulled out quiet as he could and got away. "The hull thing looked so soft and mushy to me that "

"Mushy! Mahalie?" exclaimed Sunny Acre.

"Eh?" said Mahalie, rousing with a drowsy smile from his nodding at the cab-window. "What? Do you

see

them coming, from your side, down below? Two' must be having a hard time of it."

"Not yet, Jim," replied Hutton. "It was Sunny taking your name in vain. We're just gassing."

Lowering his voice, he continued:

"No, it wa'n't exactly mushy, for I wouldn't 'a' gone out on foot among 'em for the price of the train. But I wasn't expectin' Jim to do it, some way."

"It was the biggest, safest play you ever saw from the train," declared Sunny quite positively.

"Well," conceded Hutton, "mebby it was. Let that go. We went through them, all right, and passed 'em again coming back that night while they're all safe bedded down.

"Next trip west, two days later, Mahalie pulls us again. It's a hard-luck trip from start to finish; engine 707, and she lost time all the way up the mountain til Mahalie got desperate and made one of them spurts against hard luck that nobody ever knows how he makes.

"Then, just to soak it in, it looked, he got an order that read like this:

For Whitewater.

To C. & E. No. 1.

No. 1, Sands, Eng. 707, will wait at Delilah until six twenty-five (6:25) p. m., for Extra 934, east, Dale.

"Stabbed us to help a stock-extra, because they thought Mahalie couldn't do any better than make Delilah, at the best, against the cattle-train, where's he had to kill time after we left here to keep inside the order.

"I could see he was boilin' when we rounded the point of rocks down yonder, and, ridin' up behind him like 1 was, I mebby oughtn't to said what I

did, when I'd took a quick look ahead.

"Well,' I says, close to his ear, there's your golden calf again, Jim!' And there it stood, all right, in the gap of the herd.

"He never said a word to me, but I see the red run up the back of his neck like the glow above a hot stack at night.

"He let us roll on for a piece at about a sixty clip, and the yearling danced and pawed a little and scampered on and stopped. It lowered its purty little head and waved its yellow flag and held square to the middle, same as before.

"Then, quick as a shot, Jim reached for the throttle, and I heard him say, grittin' through his teeth, to himself: "Now, I'll just see how high I can knock you!"

"I wouldn't hint that you ain't seen 'em go up, Sunny. But you didn't see that one go up!

"Near as I could make out, while I was holding my breath and watching over Jim's shoulder, that one went straight up after he left the slant of the pilot. He sailed ahead for a second or two, heels up and flag flying, and when he come down he landed fair in the top of Mahalie's smoke-stackplugged it tight as a bottle, and his hind legs sticking straight up as we

run.

"Jim's fireman had just swung the door open, covering his holes that Jim tore in the fire when he ripped open, and I guess you know what we got in the cab.

"The whole mess of smoke and steam that Jim was pouring through her come bulging out of the fire-door before Jim could shut off. And, even then, it wasn't much better till he stopped and we were fair smoked out of the cab.

"We run ahead and climbed up on top around the stack. Sands come tearing ahead and climbed up, too.

"When he sees what we got and Jim a-tuggin' at it, he's that rattled that he reaches out and tries to take hold of it with his ticket-punch.