"Don't move!" he cried; and Gertrude cowered in her corner as the heavy reversing-lever came over with a crash, and the great engine heaved and buckled in the effort to check its own momentum.
It was all over before she could cry out or otherwise advertise her very natural terror. The moving mass had melted away before the measured approach of the train; the trestle had rumbled under the wheels; and the 926 was steaming swiftly up to the station under Brockway's guidance.
"Have you had more than enough?" he asked, when he had brought the train to a stand opposite the platform at Red Butte.
"Yes--no, not that, either," she added, quickly. "I'm glad to have had a taste of the real danger as well. But I think I'd better go back; it's getting late, isn't it?"
"Yes. Mac, we resign. Sorry I had to put your old tea-kettle in the back-gear; but the air wasn't holding, and we didn't want any chipped beef for supper. Good-night, and many thanks. Don't pull out till I give you the signal."
They hurried down the platform arm-in-arm, and Gertrude was the first to speak.
"Didn't you think we were all going to be killed?"
"No; but I did think I should never forgive myself if anything happened to you."
"It wouldn't have been your fault. And I've had a glorious bit of distraction; I shall remember it as long as I live."
"Yes; you have actually driven a train fifty miles an hour," laughed Brockway, handing her up the steps of car Naught-fifty.
"I have; and now I shall go in and be scolded eighty miles an hour to pay for it. But I sha'n't mind that. Good-night, and thank you ever so much. We shall see you in the morning?"
"Yes." Brockway said it confidently, and gave a tug at the bell-cord, to let Maclure know they were safely aboard; but when the door of the private car had yawned and swallowed Miss Vennor, he remembered the President's probable frame of mind, and thought it doubtful.
When Brockway pulled the bell-cord, he meant to drop off and wait till the Tadmor came along--a manoeuvre which would enable him to rejoin his party without intruding on the President's privacy. Then that reflection about Mr. Vennor's probable frame of mind, and the thought that the late excursion into the fair country of joy would doubtless never be repeated, came to delay him, and he let the train get under way before he remembered what it was that he had intended doing. Whereupon, he scoffed at his own infatuation, and went into the Ariadne to chat with the Burtons until another halt should give him a chance to get back to the Tadmor.