There was nothing to do now save watch the wild
runaway and pray, for of all the mad runaways in a mad world, a
loaded logging-train is by far the worst.
For an instant after realizing his predicament, Bryce Cardigan was
tempted to jump and take his chance on a few broken bones, before the
train could reach a greater speed than twenty miles an hour. His
impulse was to run forward and set the handbrake on the leading
truck, but a glance showed him that even with the train standing
still he could not hope to leap from truck to truck and land on the
round, freshly peeled surface of the logs without slipping for he had
no calks in his boots. And to slip now meant swift and horrible
death.
"Too late!" he muttered. "Even if I could get to the head of the
train, I couldn't stop her with the hand-brake; should I succeed in
locking the wheels, the brute would be doing fifty miles an hour by
that time--the front truck would slide and skid, leave the tracks and
pile up with me at the bottom of a mess of wrecked rolling-stock and
redwood logs."
Then he remembered. In the wildly rolling caboose Shirley Sumner rode
with her uncle, while less than two miles ahead, the track swung in a
sharp curve high up along the hillside above Mad River. Bryce knew
the leading truck would never take that curve at high speed, even if
the ancient rolling-stock should hold together until the curve was
reached, but would shoot off at a tangent into the canyon, carrying
trucks, logs, and caboose with it, rolling over and over down the
hillside to the river.
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