“But we can’t!” cried Collins.  “The wire is cut.  It wouldn’t help matters if it weren’t.  I thought when I saw your train we might risk sending the engine on alone.  But your engine is behind all these loaded cars.  No switch.  Oh, it is damnable!”

“Collins, there’s more domnable things than yez ever heerd of....  I’ll sthop Gineral Lodge!”

The brawny Irishman wheeled and strode back toward the front car of the train.  All the crowd,—­to a man, muttering and gaping, followed him.  Casey climbed up on the gravel-car.

“Casey, wot in hell would yez be afther doin’?” demanded McDermott.

Casey grinned at his old comrade.  “Mac, yez do me a favor.  Uncouple the car.”

McDermott stepped between the cars and the rattle and clank of iron told that he had complied with Casey’s request.  Collins, with all the men on the ground, grasped Casey’s idea.

“By God!  Casey can you do it?  There’s down-grade for twenty miles.  Once start this gravel-car and she’ll go clear to the hills.  But—­ but—­”

“Collins, it’ll be aisy.  I’ll slip through thot pass loike oil.  Thim Sooz won’t be watchin’ this way.  There’s a curve.  They won’t hear till too late.  An’ shure they don’t niver obsthruct a track till the last minute.”

“But, Casey, once through the pass you can’t control that gravel-car.  The brakes won’t hold.  You’ll run square into the general’s train—­wreck it!”

“Naw!  I’ve got a couple of ties, an’ if thot wreck threatens I’ll heave a tie off on the track an’ derail me private car.”

“Casey, it’s sure death!” exclaimed Collins.  His voice and the pallor of his face and the beads of sweat all proclaimed him new to the U. P. R.

“Me boy, nothin’s shure whin yez are drillin’ with the Paddies.”

Casey was above surprise and beyond disdain.  He was a huge, toil-hardened, sun-reddened, hard-drinking soldier of the railroad, a loquacious Irishman whose fixed grin denied him any gravity, a foreman of his gang.  His chief delight was to outdo his bosom comrade, McDermott.  He did not realize that he represented an unconquerable and unquenchable spirit.  Neither did his comrade know.  But under Casey’s grin shone something simple, radiant, hard as steel.

“Put yer shoulders ag’in’ an’ shove me off,” he ordered.

Like automatons the silent laborers started the car.

“Drill, ye terriers, drill!  Drill, ye terriers, drill!” sang Casey, as he stood at the wheel-brake.

The car gathered momentum.  McDermott was the last to let go.

“Good luck to yez!” he shouted, hoarsely.

“Mac, tell thim yez saw me!” called Casey.  Then he waved his hand in good-by to the crowd.  Their response was a short, ringing yell.  They watched the car glide slowly out of sight.

For a few moments Casey was more concerned with the fact that a breeze had blown out his pipe than with anything else.  Skilful as years had made him, he found unusual difficulty in relighting it, and he would not have been beyond stopping the car to accomplish that imperative need.  When he had succeeded and glanced back the station was out of sight.