“Van Lew, suppose you and Jefferis take the women out of the way for a few minutes, while we are making the transfer,” he suggested quietly.  “There are enough of us to do the work, and we can spare you.”

This left Flemister unaccounted for, but with a very palpable effort he shook himself free from the spell of whatever had been shackling him.

“That’s right,” he assented briskly.  “I was just going to suggest that.”  Then, indicating the men pouring out of the relief train:  “I see that my buckies have come up on your train to lend a hand; command us just the same as if we belonged to you.  That is what we are here for.”

Van Lew and the collegian walked the three young women a little way up the old spur while the wrecked train’s company, the living, the injured, and the dead, were transferring down the line to the relief-train to be taken back to Red Butte.  Flemister helped with the other helpers, but Lidgerwood had an uncomfortable feeling that the man was always at his elbow; he was certainly there when the last of the wounded had been carried around the wreck, and the relief-train was ready to back away to Little Butte, where it could be turned upon the mine-spur “Y.”  It was while the conductor of the train was gathering his volunteers for departure that Flemister said what he had apparently been waiting for a chance to say.

“I can’t help feeling indirectly responsible for this, Mr. Lidgerwood,” he began, with something like a return of his habitual self-possession.  “If I hadn’t asked you to come over here to-night——­”

Lidgerwood interrupted sharply:  “What possible difference would that have made, Mr. Flemister?”

It was not a special weakness of Flemister’s to say the damaging thing under pressure of the untoward and unanticipated event; it is rather a common failing of human nature.  In a flash he appeared to realize that he had admitted too much.

“Why—­I understood that it was the unexpected sight of your special standing on the ‘Y’ that made the passenger engineer lose his head,” he countered lamely, evidently striving to recover himself and to efface the damaging admission.

It chanced that they were standing directly opposite the break in the track where the rail ends were still held apart by the small stone.  Lidgerwood pointed to the loosened rail, plainly visible under the volleying play of the two opposing headlights.

“There is the cause of the disaster, Mr. Flemister,” he said hotly; “a trap set, not for the passenger-train, but for my special.  Somebody set it; somebody who knew almost to a minute when we should reach it.  Mr. Flemister, let me tell you something:  I don’t care any more for my own life than a sane man ought to care, but the murdering devil who pulled the spikes on that rail reached out, unconsciously perhaps, but none the less certainly, after a life that I would safe-guard at the price of my own.  Because he did that, I’ll spend the last dollar of the fortune my father left me, if needful, in finding that man and hanging him!”