"Twin Buttes!" he gurgled. "And, say, it's a wreck! We've hit something
right slap in the middle of the yard! Let's make a break for the scene
of the confliggration till we see who's killed!"
Blount followed the ranchman's lead, but shortly lost sight of the
burly figure in the crowd of curious passengers pouring from the hastily
opened vestibules. Seen at closer range, the accident appeared to be
disastrous only in a material sense. The heavy "Pacific-type" locomotive
had stumbled over the tongue of a split switch, leaving the rails and
making a blockading barrier of itself across the tracks. Nobody was
hurt; but there would be a delay of some hours before the track could be
cleared.
Finding little to hold him in the spectacle of the derailed locomotive,
Blount strolled on through the railroad yard to the station and the
town. He remembered the place chiefly by its name. In his boyhood it had
been the nearest railroad forwarding-point for the mines at Lewiston,
thirty miles beyond the Lost Hills. Now, as it appeared, it had become a
lumber-shipping station. To the left of the railroad there were numerous
sawmills, each with its mountain of waste dominated by a black chimney,
screen-capped. For the supply of logs an enormous flume led down from
the slopes of the forested range on the south, a trough-like water-chute
out of which, though the working-day was ended, the great logs were
still tumbling in an intermittent stream.
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