"That's true, lad," nodded the engineer gravely.

"Anything the matter especially?"

"Oh, a little extra care on my mind and under the weather a bit besides," sighed Griscom.

"Can I help you in any way?" inquired Ralph.

"No, lad--we must all bear our own troubles."

The next day Griscom did not report for duty at train time. A man named Lyle was put on extra duty. Ralph did not know him very well nor did he like him much. He understood that he was a fine engineer but that he had been warned several times for drinking.

As he came into the cab, Ralph noticed that his eyes were dull and shifty, his hands trembled and he bore all the appearance of a man who had been recently indulging in liquor to excess.

As soon as they were out on the road, Lyle began to drink frequently from a bottle he took out of his coat. He became more steady in his movements, and, watching him, Ralph saw that he understood his business thoroughly and was duly attentive to it.

After the wait at the city, however, Lyle came aboard of the locomotive in quite a muddled condition. He was talkative and boastful now. He began to tell of the many famous special runs he had made, of the big salaries he had earned, and of his general proficiency as a first-cla.s.s engineer.

He ordered full steam on, and by the time they were twenty miles from the city he kept the locomotive going at top notch speed. There was a tremendous head on the cylinders and they ran like a racer. Frogs and target rods were pa.s.sed at a momentum that fairly frightened Ralph, and it was a wonder to him the way the wheels ground and bounded that they always lit on the steel.

Lyle took frequent drinks from the bottle, which had been replenished.

His eyes were wild, his manner reckless, almost maniacal. As they pa.s.sed signals he would utter a fierce, ringing yell. Ralph crowded over to him.

"Mr. Lyle," he shouted, "we are ahead of time."

"Good," roared the mad engineer, "I'm going to make the record run of the century."

"If any other train is off schedule, that is dangerous."

"Let 'em look out for themselves," chuckled Lyle. "Whoop! pile in the black diamonds."

"Stop!" almost shrieked Ralph.

Of a sudden he made a fearful discovery. A signal had called for a danger stop where the Great Northern crossed the tracks of the Midland Central. Unheeding the signal, Lyle had run directly onto a siding of the latter railroad and was traversing it at full speed.

"Stop, stop, I say--there's a car ahead," cried Ralph.

Lyle gave the young fireman a violent push backwards and forged ahead.

Chug! bang! A frightful sound filled the air. The locomotive had struck a light gondola car squarely, lifting it from the track and throwing it to one side a ma.s.s of wreckage. Then on, on sped the engine. It struck the main of the Midland Central.

Ralph grabbed up a shovel.

"Lower speed," he cried, "or I will strike you."

"Get back," yelled Lyle, pulling a revolver from his pocket. "Back, I say, or I'll shoot. Whoop! this is going."

Ralph climbed to the top of the tender. He was powerless alone to combat the engineer in his mad fury. A plan came into his mind. The first car attached to the tender was a blind baggage. Ralph sprang to its roof. Then he ran back fast as he could.

The young fireman lost no time, dropping from the roof between platforms. As he reached the first pa.s.senger coach he ran inside the car.

Pa.s.sengers were on their feet, amazed and alarmed at the reckless flight of the train. The conductor and train hands were pale and frightened.

"What's the trouble?" demanded the conductor, as Ralph rushed up to him.

"A maniac is in charge of the train. He is crazed with drink, and armed. Who of you will join me in trying to overpower him?"

None of the train hands shrank from duty. They followed Ralph to the platform and thence to the top of the forward coach. At that moment new warnings came.

CHAPTER XXVII

A NEW MYSTERY

"Danger," shouted Ralph. "Quick, men. Do you see ahead there?"

Down the rails a red signal fuse was spluttering. It was quite a distance away, but they would reach it in less than sixty seconds if the present fearful speed of the train was kept up.

"Hear that?" roared the conductor in a hoa.r.s.e, frightened tone.

Under the wheels there rang out a sharp crack, audible even above the roar of the rushing train--a track torpedo.

Ralph ran across the top of the forward car. As he reached its front end, Lyle turning discovered him.

He set up a wild yell, reached into the tender, seized a big sledgehammer lying there and braced back.

The young fireman was amazed and fairly terrified at his movements, for Lyle began raining blows on lever, throttle and everything in the way of machinery inside of the cab.

Past the red light, blotting it out, sped the train, turning a curve.

Ralph antic.i.p.ated a waiting or a coming train, but, to his relief, the rails were clear. Ahead, however, there was a great glow, and he now understood what the warnings meant.

The road at this point for two miles ran through a marshy forest, and this was all on fire. Ralph gained the tender.

"Back, back!" roared Lyle, facing him, weapon in hand. "She's fixed to go, can't stop her now. Whoop!"

With deep concern the young fireman noted the disabled machinery.

Half-way between centers, the big steel bar on the engineer's side of the locomotive had snapped in two and was tearing through the cab like a flail, at every revolution of the driver to which it was attached.

Just as Ralph jumped down from the tender, the locomotive entered the fire belt--in a minute more the train was in the midst of a great sweeping ma.s.s of fire. The train crew, blinded and singed, retreated.

Ralph trembled at a sense of the terrible peril that menaced.

Lyle had drawn back from the lever or he would have been annihilated.

Then as the fire swept into his face, he uttered a last frightful yell, gave a spring and landed somewhere along the side of the track.

The young fireman was fairly appalled. Such a situation he had never confronted before. The cab was ablaze in a dozen different places. The tops of the cars behind had also ignited. Ralph did not know what to do. Even if he could have stopped the train, it would be destruction to do so now.