The Right of Way 221 



up ahead. It was a substance that could 

 not be bent or broken or diverted, so 

 it did its fatal work. The mighty engine, 

 weighing more than twoscore tons, slid 

 from the rails and there was such a bump- 

 ing, and pounding and ripping of ties and 

 crashing of glass as even the old engineer, 

 who had been in more than one wreck be- 

 fore, had never seen. For four hundred 

 feet, the long train pounded over the road- 

 bed, the locomotive and two of the forward 

 cars going upon the ties, and then it came 

 to a dead stop, halted upon the prairie 

 hundreds of miles from any wrecking train 

 or other relief, ignominiously halted by the 

 Thundering Herd. 



Bennie and Mr. Bennett picked them- 

 selves up from the cab-floor and saw that no 

 bones were broken. Although they had 

 been terribly shaken up, yet they had 

 miraculously escaped without any serious 

 injury. Their first common impulse was to 



