Above the roar of wheels sounded spatting reports of rifles.  Casey forgot to dodge into his gravel shelter.  He was living a strange, dragging moment—­an age.  Out shot the car into the light.  Likewise Casey’s dark blankness of mind ended.  His heart lifted with a mighty throb.  There shone the gray endless slope, stretching out and down to the black hills in the distance.  Shrill wild yells made Casey wheel.  The hillside above the cut was colorful and spotted with moving objects.  Indians!  Puffs of white smoke arose.  Casey felt the light impact of lead.  Glancing bright streaks darted down.  They were arrows.  Two thudded into the gravel, one into the wood.  Then something tugged at his shoulder.  Another arrow!  Suddenly the shaft was there in his sight, quivering in his flesh.  It bit deep.  With one wrench he tore it out and shook it aloft at the Sioux.  “Oh bate yez dom’ Sooz!” he yelled, in fierce defiance.  The long screeching clamor of baffled rage and the scattering volley of rifle-shots kept up until the car passed out of range.

Casey faced ahead.  The Sioux were behind him.  He had a free track.  Far down the gray valley, where the rails disappeared, were low streaks of black smoke from a locomotive.  The general’s train was coming.

The burden of worry and dread that had been Casey’s was now no more —­vanished as if by magic.  His job had not yet been completed, but he had won.  He never glanced back at the Sioux.  They had failed in their first effort at ambushing the cut, and Casey knew the troops would prevent a second attempt.  Casey faced ahead.  The whistle of wind filled his ears, the dry, sweet odor of the desert filled his nostrils.  His car was on a straight track, rolling along down-grade, half a mile a minute.  And Casey, believing he might do well to slow up gradually, lightly put on the brake.  But it did not hold.  He tried again.  The brake had broken.

He stood at the wheel, his eyes clear now, watching ahead.  The train down in the valley was miles away, not yet even a black dot in the gray.  The smoke, however, began to lift.

Casey was suddenly struck by a vague sense that something was wrong with him.

“Phwat the hell!” he muttered.  Then his mind, strangely absorbed, located the trouble.  His pipe had gone out!  Casey stooped in the hole he had made in the gravel, and there, knocking his pipe in his palm, he found the ashes cold.  When had that ever happened before?  Casey wagged his head.  For his pipe to go cold and he not to know!  Things were happening on the U. P. R. these days.  Casey refilled his pipe, and, with the wind whistling over him, he relit it.  He drew deep and long, stood up, grasped the wheel, and felt all his blood change.

“Me poipe goin’ cold—­that wor funny!” soliloquized Casey.