He caught quickly at the straw of hope. "Then we need not say
good-by?"

"No; let it be _auf Wiedersehen_," she said; and he stood aside to
allow her to join her party.

Two hours later, when Adams was reading in his section and Winton was
smoking his short pipe in the men's compartment and thinking things
unspeakable with Virginia Carteret for a nucleus, there was a series
of sharp whistle-shrieks, a sudden grinding of the brakes, and a
jarring stop of the Limited--a stop not down on the time-card.

Winton was among the first to reach the head of the long train. The
halt was in a little depression of the bleak plain, and the train-men
were in conference over a badly-derailed engine when Winton came up.
A vast herd of cattle was lumbering away into the darkness, and a
mangled carcass under the wheels of the locomotive sufficiently
explained the accident.

"Well, there's only the one thing to do," was the engineer's verdict.
"That's for somebody to mog back to Arroyo to wire for the
wreck-wagon."

"Yes, by gum! and that means all night," growled the conductor.

There was a stir in the gathering throng of half-alarmed and
all-curious passengers, and a red-faced, white-mustached gentleman,
whose soft southern accent was utterly at variance with his manner,
hurled a question bolt-like at the conductor.