from sea level at Duran up to twelve thousand feet on Chimborazo
and down to ten thousand at Quito on the other side the range. And
it was so dangerous that the trains didn't run nights. The through
passengers had to get off and sleep in the towns at night while the
train waited for daylight. And each train carried a guard of
Ecuadoriano soldiers which was the most dangerous of all. They
were supposed to protect the train crews, but whenever trouble
started they unlimbered their rifles and joined the mob. You see,
whenever a train wreck occurred, the first cry of the spiggoties
was 'Kill the Gringos!' They always did that, and proceeded to
kill the train crew and whatever chance Gringo passengers that'd
escaped being killed in the accident. Which is their kind of
arithmetic, which I told you a while back as being different from
ours.

"Shucks! Before the day was out I was to find out for myself that
that ex-conductor wasn't lying. It was over at Duran. I was to
take my run on the first division out to Quito, for which place I
was to start next morning--only one through train running every
twenty-four hours. It was the afternoon of my first day, along
about four o'clock, when the boilers of the Governor Hancock
exploded and she sank in sixty feet of water alongside the dock.
She was the big ferry boat that carried the railroad passengers
across the river to Guayaquil. It was a bad accident, but it was
the cause of worse that followed. By half-past four, big
trainloads began to arrive. It was a feast day and they'd run an
excursion up country but of Guayaquil, and this was the crowd
coming back.

"And the crowd--there was five thousand of them--wanted to get