So Prince was flung back to the operator at Fort Morgan, and that high-souled scion of the railway was sent out like a common delivery boy to take a message.  Prince waited in an agony of suspense for the report from the garage.  It was not favorable.  No man in town would go out on a wild goose chase into the plains on a night like that.  Awfully sorry, nothing doing.

“Take a gun and make them come,” said Prince, between set teeth.

“I’m not looking for trouble.  Your woman would freeze before they got there anyhow.”

“Send the sheriff,” begged Prince.

“He couldn’t get out there a night like this in time to do you any good.”

This was literally true.  For a second Prince was silent.

“Anything else?” asked the operator.  “Want me to run out and get you a cigar, or a bottle of perfume, or anything?”

“Then there is just one thing to do,” said Prince abruptly.  “I’ll have to flag the first train and get her aboard.”

“What!  You can’t do it.  You don’t dare do it.  It is against the law to flag a train on private business.”

“I know it.  So I am asking you to make it the railroad’s business.  I am warning you in advance.  Where are the fuses?”

The operator helplessly called up the superintendent once more.

“What the dickens do you want now?”

“It’s that nut on the line,” explained the operator.  “He wants something else.”

“Yes, I want to know where the fuses are so I can flag the first train that comes.  Or I will just set the tool house afire; that will stop them.”

“The fuses are in the lock box under the phone.  Break the lock, or pick it.  Let us know if you get in all right.  How the dickens did you get a woman out there a night like this?”

But Prince had no time to explain.  “Thanks, old man, you’re pretty white,” he said, and clasped the receiver on to the hook.  A little later, with the precious fuses in his pocket, he was fighting his way through the snow back to Connie, lying unconscious in the white blankets which no longer chilled her.

The waiting seemed endlessly weary.  Prince dared not sit down, but must needs keep staggering up and down the track, praying as he had never prayed in all his life, that God would send a train before Connie should freeze to death.  Stooping over her, he chafed her hands and ankles, shaking her roughly, but never succeeding in restoring her to consciousness though doubtless he did much toward keeping the blood in feeble circulation.

Then, thank God!  No heavenly star ever shone half so gloriously bright as that wide sweep of light that circled around the ragged rocks.  Prince hastily fired the fuse, and a few minutes later a lumbering freight train pulled up beside him, anxious voices calling inquiry.

With rough but willing hands they pulled the girl on board, and piled heavy coats on a bench beside the fire where she might lie, and brought out some hot coffee which Prince swallowed in deep gulps.  They even forced a few drops of it down Connie’s throat.  Prince was soon himself again, and sat silently beside Connie as she slept the heavy sleep.