CHAPTER II.

HE night express was fifty minutes late al

Tready, and engine 783, waiting at the

Junction with her snow-plough set, was hissing and rumbling impatiently. The big brown building, embracing hotel and waitingrooms, ticket- and station-master's office, loomed up against the star-dotted sky. The switchlights gleamed in crimson, green, and dazzling white here, there, and everywhere along the glinting rails. Bleary lamps were burning in frost-covered windows, and tiny sparks fluttered from the pipe of the solitary biped on the platform, a burly man in the toil-stained garb of a locomotive engineer, a sturdy fellow who limped as he stamped up and down the creaking planks of the platform, his hands in his pockets, his eyes everywhere. To him came forth his fireman, splitting his mouth with a wedge of biliouslooking pound-cake. He strove to speak, but, finding articulation impossible, jerked backward his head and pantomimed the process of serving himself with a cup of comforting drink,-coffee, presumably, for he was fresh from the lunch-counter.

Come, swallow the rest of that grub, now, and be lively with your oil-can. We can't wait

two minutes after she once gets in. No," he continued, as the younger repeated his persuasive pantomime, “I had my tea at home, and that's enough. You'll die of over-eating, first thing you know. Do your best now. We've got an extra Pullman and a car-load of greenhorns to haul up to Butte this night of all others, and I'm betting it's snowing in the mountains now."

So saying, the engineer turned and gazed anxiously westward, where even the stars seemed blotted from sight, then quickly whirled about and bent his ear.

"

Coming at last," he muttered. "That's old Coyote's yelp for the cross-roads. Damned little wind for whistling has she left, either. No wonder No. 3's late, with nothing better than that limping carcass to drag it. She ought to be in the bone-yard,-ought to 'a' been there a year ago. But here's the beauty," said he to himself, as he turned and laid a loving hand on the massive driving-rod of the huge machine. "Lively, Scut," he added: "3's coming."

Scut was descending from the cab as a cat comes down a tree, backward. "What 'n 'ell they takin' recruits to Ransom for now?" he asked. "The war's over."

"It's to fill the gaps made when the war wasn't over, young man, and mighty hard they'll find it to fill some of 'em, too. Jim

Strang, that was killed at Cave Springs, was corporal with me in Bates's troop eight years ago, and there wasn't a better sergeant in all the cavalry. Lo loves a shining mark, or I'd

never got hit twice in one day."

"Would you go back to soldierin' if you could, Mr. Long?" asked the fireman, tilting up his long-necked can as he thrust the nozzle deep in between the spokes of a massive driver.

"I? Give me back the legs I had before the Sioux made a sieve of my skin, and it isn't the rail I'd be riding, but the best sorrel in Billy Ray's troop, and with the best office in it, and that's first sergeant."

"It's takin' chances to be in the cavalry these days," said he of the oil-can, listening to the low, far-away rumble of the coming train. "Do you see her head-light yet?"

"She isn't through the cut," was Long's answer. “As to taking chances, they've done nothing but take chances in that regiment ever since the war; yet there isn't a day of our lives we don't take chances, and bigger chances, right here on this mountain division."

A tall young fellow in travelling-cap and ulster had come out from the lunch-room and was strolling over towards the hissing engine. He stopped and listened as Long spoke, then seemed to be pondering over the words and looking to the engine-man for explanation.

"How do you mean?" asked Scut, pausing in his work and looking up. "We haven't had a hold-up' on the road for over a year."'

"Neither have we had a head-on collision, nor spreading rails, nor a plunge from a trestle, but they are only three of the things likely to occur any minute, especially when trains are running behind as we are to-night,—all on account of that one-eyed Coyote that's peeping at you down yonder."

It was the head-light of No. 3, just dawning on the view at Mile End Crossing, to which the engineer referred.

"Watch how slowly she comes," he added. "The old maid is about worn out. Here's the

girl that can shake that train up grade as though 'twas made of bandboxes. I'll bet you we make Butte by seven o'clock."

"I'll bet you don't, if you'll let me in," was the cool interjection of the young man ulsterclad; "for Butte's my objective point.”

"What do you know about it, or about railroading?" asked Long, suspiciously.

“As much as you did when you quit soldiering, and no more, wherein we have much in common, Mr. Long; but here's where the difference comes in. You quit soldiering to take to the railroad; I quit the road to take to soldiering."

Oh, I see. Then you're an officer?" queried Long, his accustomed lips framing the

little word "sir'' and almost resenting his enforced omission of the once familiar monosyllable. Long said "sir" to no one under the division superintendent now.

"I? Devil a bit," was the laughing answer. "I'm not even a lance,-not even a recruit. Man, I haven't signed my papers yet."

"Then take a fool's advice and don't sign them," interposed Long. "You've got no call to go soldiering. Such as you come in only when it's whiskey or women or cards.''

"Say it's all three, if you like," was the half-laughing answer. "I heard of you as one of the old cavalrymen at the barracks yonder," and the stranger nodded carelessly over his shoulder in the direction of the post, established long years before when the road was being built. "They sent me there by mis

take.

It's the cavalry I want, not infantry." The engineer looked the speaker over in surprise. Away down the track the head-light of the incoming train was growing bigger every moment, and the rumble of the bulky approach could be plainly heard.

You don't look like a man who had to take to soldiering," he said.

"Oh, I'm not,' was the prompt, goodnatured reply. "I do it simply because I've a hankering that way, and--no other," he added, under his breath. "Perhaps you can tell me something of the regiment at Ransom ?"