"
"You are the dramatic conclusion to that story," retorted Miss Brewster,
reproachfully. Whereupon she immediately wrenched the conversation aside
into a new channel by asking how far it was to the canyon portal.
"Only a mile or two now," was Lidgerwood's rejoinder. "Williams has
been making good time." And two minutes later the one-car train, with
the foaming torrent of the Timanyoni for its pathfinder, plunged between
the narrow walls of the upper canyon, and the race down the grade of the
crooked water-trail through the heart of the mountains began.
There was little chance for speech, even if the overawing grandeurs of
the stupendous crevice, seen in their most impressive presentment as
alternating vistas of stark, moonlighted crags and gulches and depths of
blackest shadow, had encouraged it. The hiss and whistle of the
air-brakes, the harsh, sustained note of the shrieking wheel-flanges
shearing the inner edges of the railheads on the curves, and the
stuttering roar of the 266's safety-valve were continuous; a deafening
medley of sounds multiplied a hundred-fold by the demoniac laughter of
the echoes.
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