He found the hand-car standing on the track in front of the railway station, and beside it the operator awaiting his coming with the greatest impatience, for it was an hour since they had separated.
“Where have you been and what have you been doing all this time?” he asked. “I had nearly given you up, and was going home, when a fellow brought this car along with word from Mr. Watkins that it was for your use. Then I knew things were moving all right. But what has kept you so long?”
“Some unexpected business,” answered Myles, evasively, as they jumped on the car, and, hanging a lantern in the forward end, began to turn the cranks that set it in motion. Myles’ thoughts were still too unpleasant and too full of his recent mortification for him to care to talk, and he found relief in the active exertion necessary to propel the car. It furnished an ample excuse for silence, but his companion wondered at the tremendous energy with which he toiled.
They rolled quickly out of the railroad yard, and in a few minutes were beyond the limits of the town. Faster and faster they flew over the ringing lines of steel. Now they roared like a train of cars through a stretch of dark forest, then they skirted the base of a tall mountain, and again skimmed the edge of some deep valley lying black and mysterious far beneath them. They sped round sharp curves, rattled noisily over bridges that spanned swift rushing streams, rumbled over the hollow arches of culverts, and every now and then plunged through the breathless blackness of echoing tunnels. As they were on a down grade their speed increased with each turn of the cranks, until they seemed fairly to fly, and the wind of the their own progress nearly took away their breath as it whistled keenly past them.
Occasionally they caught the gleam of a charcoal-burner’s fire, sometimes close beside the track and again far up on a mountain-side or glowing like an angry eye from the depths of a ragged ravine; but these vanished almost as soon as seen. Once they were stopped by a red light swung furiously across the track but a short distance ahead of them. Somebody was waving the danger signal, and their iron-shod brake was applied so vigorously that a train of sparks flew hissing from it. As they came to a stand-still two rough-looking fellows stepped within the circle of light thrown by their lantern and demanded to know who they were and what was their business. They were members of a guard posted by the strikers to see that no one left or entered Mountain Junction during the night.
