“Truslow!” Captain Hinton bellowed at the three men left on the far side of the gorge.

Truslow, the leather bag in his hand, was the last man away from the barricade. As he crossed the bridge he kicked the planks aside, making pursuit difficult. A gun was fired from the far barricade, the smoke of its powder snatched instantly away by the breeze. The bullet struck a rail on the bridge and whined off across the river. Two dense plumes of smoke from the burning boxcar and tender were drifting low and acrid above the North Branch.

“Fuse is lit!” Medlicott shouted and began clawing his way up the gorge’s side. Behind him a dribble of smoke spat and writhed from the lit fuse as it snaked down the slope toward the great heap of timber and brush stacked about the gunpowder.

“Hurry!” the Colonel shouted. A horse whinnied and reared. More men fired from the barricade, but Truslow was across the bridge now and well out of effective revolver range. “Come on, man!” Washington Faulconer shouted. Truslow still had his leather bag, just as all Hinton’s men had similar bags. Faulconer must have known from the heavy bags why his order to withdraw had been so long ignored, but he chose to say nothing. Sergeant Medlicott, muddy and damp, scrambled out of the gorge and fumbled for his stirrup just as the smoking fuse darted into the pile of brush. Sergeant Truslow hauled himself into his saddle, and Faulconer turned away. “Let’s go!” He led his men off the railroad’s embankment. The fire in the gorge had to be quickening, for thick smoke was writhing about the trestle’s lattice, though the gunpowder had still not exploded. “Come on!” Faulconer urged, and behind him the horses scrambled and slipped on the muddy slope until, at last, they were concealed from the train by foliage and, though a few random bullets ripped through the leaves and twigs, none of the Legion’s men was hit.

Faulconer stopped at the crest and turned to look back at the stricken train. The fires in the boxcar and tender had spread to the cars and the erstwhile passengers, wet and miserable, now clambered up the wet slope to escape the danger. The long passenger cars served like funnels in which the heat roared fierce until the windows cracked open and released billowing gusts of flame that licked into the driving rain.