He jerked his axe out of the log, drove it deep into the top log toward the end, and by using the haft to cling to, crawled toward the rear of the load and looked down at the caboose coupling.  The top log was a sixteen-foot butt; the two bottom logs were eighteen footers.  With a silent prayer of thanks to Providence, Bryce slid down to the landing thus formed.  He was still five feet above the coupling, however; but by leaning over the swaying, bumping edge and swinging the axe with one hand, he managed to cut through the rubber hose on the air connection.  “The blamed thing might hold and drag the caboose along after I’ve pulled out the coupling-pin,” he reflected.  “And I can’t afford to take chances now.”

Nevertheless he took them.  Axe in hand, he leaped down to the narrow ledge formed by the bumper in front of the cabooses—­driving his face into the front of the caboose; and he only grasped the steel rod leading from the brake-chains to the wheel on the roof in time to avoid falling half stunned between the front of the caboose and the rear of the logging-truck.  The caboose had once been a box-car; hence there was no railed front platform to which Bryce might have leaped in safety.  Clinging perilously on the bumper, he reached with his foot, got his toe under the lever on the side, jerked it upward, and threw the pin out of the coupling; then with his free hand he swung the axe and drove the great steel jaws of the coupling apart.

The caboose was cut out!  But already the deadly curve was in sight; in two minutes the first truck would reach it; and the caboose, though cut loose, had to be stopped, else with the headway it had gathered, it, too, would follow the logging-trucks to glory.

For a moment Bryce clung to the brake-rod, weak and dizzy from the effects of the blow when, leaping down from the loaded truck to the caboose bumper, his face had smashed into the front of the caboose.  His chin was bruised, skinned, and bloody; his nose had been broken, and twin rivulets of blood ran from his nostrils.  He wiped it away, swung his axe, drove the blade deep into the bumper and left it there with the haft quivering; turning, he climbed swiftly up the narrow iron ladder beside the brake-rod until he reached the roof; then, still standing on the ladder, he reached the brake-wheel and drew it promptly but gradually around until the wheel-blocks began to bite, when he exerted his tremendous strength to the utmost and with his knees braced doggedly against the front of the caboose, held the wheel.

The brake screamed, but the speed of the caboose was not appreciably slackened.  “It’s had too good a start!” Bryce moaned.  “The momentum is more than I can overcome.  Oh, Shirley, my love!  God help you!”

He cast a sudden despairing look over his shoulder downward at the coupling.  He was winning, after all, for a space of six feet now yawned between the end of the logging-truck and the bumper of the caboose.  If he could but hold that tremendous strain on the wheel for a quarter of a mile, he might get the demon caboose under control!  Again he dug his knees into the front of the car and twisted on the wheel until it seemed that his muscles must crack.