CHAPTER VIITHE UNINVITED SPECIAL
“Doesn’t it beat the everlasting band how little sense some folks have?”
Dick and Larry, in much-worn corduroys and lace-boots, and each with a furled red signal flag under his arm, were tramping down the construction track of the Little Ophir Extension. On their right the brawling torrent of the Tourmaline swirled over and among its boulders, and across the canyon, and half-way up its steep acclivity, ran the partly completed grade of the Overland Central.
“Just let it soak in,” Dick went on wrathfully. “Right here in the middle of the fight with the O. C., when every hour may be worth a thousand dollars to our company, we’ve got to stop dead and entertain a bunch of Big Money from New York! It makes me sick!”
“Sick is right,” Larry agreed; and his wrath, if not so teeth-gnashing, as you might say, as that of the general manager’s son, was no less hostile to the intrusions of Big Money—in fact, since he was the son of a workingman, it was rather more hostile than less. But of that, more in its place.
“Somebody ought to have stopped ’em,” Dick went on. “If I’d been in the chief’s place, I’d have dumped a fewmaterial cars over the right-of-way down in the valley so they couldn’t get by with their old special.”
“I guess it couldn’t be helped,” Larry grumbled. “I’ll bet your father said and did everything he could to keep this junketing party from butting in on us; and now, as long as they’re coming, we’ve got to make the best of it. I only hope there aren’t any women along. Thatwouldbe the limit!”
There was reason for all this impatient faultfinding. Early that morning a wire had come notifying the chief of construction that a special train, bearing Vice-President Holcombe, a committee of directors, and a number of guests, was coming over the uncompleted Extension, and immediately the two juniors of the engineering staff, Dick and Larry, had been sent afoot down the canyon to post themselves at the two points where there was the most danger from the Overland Central’s blasting and the flying rocks.
One of these danger points was just at hand, and Larry volunteered to drop out and stand guard over it.
“You’ll have time to make the big rock cutting at the Cascades,” he told his fellow flagman; and accordingly, Dickie Maxwell resumed his tramp alone.
By this time the special train, consisting of a big, heavy “Pacific-type” passenger engine, a dining-car and a Pullman combination sleeping and observation car, was well on its way up the canyon, rolling and lurching around the curves, and behaving itself, on the rough, unsurfaced track, much like a cranky ship in a seaway. On the fireman’s box in the high locomotive cab an audaciously pretty girl of fourteen or fifteen—a girl with resolute brown eyes and lips that could “register”anything from a jolly laugh to the scornful poutings of a spoiled only daughter—clung desperately to the window sill to keep from being dumped into the fireman’s shovel in the bumpings and lurchings.
This girl was the daughter of the vice-president of the Nevada Short Line, and she had insisted upon having a ride on the engine when the train had halted at the canyon-portal water tank. Since the vice-president himself had made the request, Bart Johnson, the grizzled engineer of the 1016, could only grin sourly and say, “Why, sure, Mr. Holcombe!” and wipe his hands on a piece of waste so that he could help Miss Daughter up the high steps.
For some miles of the rocketing race up the canyon the pretty passenger had nothing to do but to hang on and make believe that she was enjoying the scenery. But as the train was rounding one of the jutting mountain spurs just below a place where the river tumbled in a series of cascades from bench to bench in its bed a thing happened; several of them, in fact.
First, there was a burst of yellowish dust from a point up ahead on the opposite canyon side, followed by an upspouting of big and little rocks and a jarring thunder crash. Next, a boy with a red flag bobbed up on the track; and the girl, being a girl, shrieked and clutched for fresh handholds when the air-brakes were suddenly clamped on and a stop was made.
A minute later the flag boy had climbed to the cab. His business was with Bart Johnson, the grizzled engineer, and he despatched it briefly.
“Better back down a few car-lengths,” he advised. “There’ll be more of the blasting pretty soon, and youcan’t run by until it’s over; likely to get a rock on top of you if you try it.” Then, as the train began to move back out of the danger zone, he wheeled upon the girl perched upon the fireman’s seat. “Now, then,” he said, scowling at her, “I’d like to know whatyou’redoing up here on this engine, Bess Holcombe!”
“I guess I’ve got a right to be here, if I want to, Dick Maxwell!” was the pert reply. “Youdon’t own this engine.”
“No; if I did, you’d hike back into the train, mighty quick—only you haven’t any business being there, either.”
“My-oh!” scoffed the pretty one, looking him up and down. “How we engineers do pile on the nice, large dignities, don’t we? I’m here because Daddy said I might. Now what have you got to say?”
“Oh, nothing, I suppose. But, just the same, this is no place for a girl—in this canyon, I mean.”
“Why isn’t it?”
“You’ve just seen one reason. With those O. C. people blasting on the other side of the river, it’s as much as ever we can do to get a car-load of material in without having it blown up—to say nothing of a junketing train of excursionists!”
The girl made a mocking little grimace.
“Your general manager fatherdidtry to make us give the trip up,” she admitted. “But old Mr. Hazzard and some of the others insisted that there couldn’t be any danger. Is there any danger, Dick?”
“Huh—I should say danger! We’ve had three material trains wrecked—one of ’em right up there in that next curve ahead—and any amount of narrow escapes, besides. Those fellows over there don’t care ahoot what they do to us, so long as they get their track into Little Ophir ahead of ours. Are there any more women on this train?”
“Lots of ’em.”
Dick made no comment on this additional devastating fact. After the blasting stopped the special crept on, and at the end of a short mile a halt was made to pick up another flag boy, namely, big-muscled, curly-headed Larry Donovan.
“Who is this?” asked the girl as Larry was climbing to the cab.
“My ‘bunkie,’ Larry Donovan,” Dick made answer. “We’re both ‘cubs’ in the engineering squad. Mr. Ackerman sent us down here to watch for your train.”
When Larry swung up to the cab it was to tell Johnson that the firing on the O. C. grade above had stopped, and that it was safe to go on. After the train got in motion, Dick took Larry by the shoulders and twisted him forcibly around to face the pretty girl.
“Bess,” he said, “this is my chum, Larry Donovan, and he’s a heap better fellow than he looks. Larry, this is Bess Holcombe—you needn’t shake hands, either of you, if you don’t want to.”
Larry’s face turned a dull red under its sunburn. As yet, he had small use for girls, pretty or otherwise; and if he had had, the joking introduction, and the fact that Miss Bess Holcombe’s father was vice-president of the company, would have made him take refuge in workman gruffness. What he mumbled in reply was a sort of sour “Please’ t’ meet you,” and the way he said it made the “pleased” part of it the merest figure of speech.
“Donovan?” said the girl sweetly; “that is—er—a Germanname, isn’t it?” Miss Bess Holcombe never missed a chance to make an embarrassed boy still more embarrassed, if she could help it.
“No,” Larry blurted out; “it’s Irish.” And then he turned his back on her and began to talk to Bart Johnson, telling him where he was to run slowly, and what he was coming to around the curves ahead.
“Dear me!” said the girl, in an aside to Dick, “what a bear of a boy! He’s—he’s a workingman, isn’t he?”
Dick bridled at once.
“See here, Bess,” he frowned; “down in Brewster, or back in New York where you live, you can draw all the little, no-account social lines you want to. But up here in the mountains a man’s a man, according to how well he holds up his end in the day’s work. Larry’s father is a crossing watchman in Brewster, if you want to know—though he was one of the best locomotive engineers the company had before he lost an arm sticking to his engine to keep a train-load of passengers from going into the ditch—and Larry earned his way through High School by working nights in the company shops. If you think that’s anything against him, you’ve got to fight it out with me.”
The girl’s laugh showed a mouthful of pretty teeth.
“You needn’t be so spiteful about it,” she retorted. “I’m not going to quarrel with your—‘bunkie?’—was that what you called him?” Then: “What are we stopping here for?”
The answer set itself out in action. As the big engine slowed down, Larry dropped from the step and ran on to disappear around the next curve in the canyon. Presentlyhe came in sight again to give the “come-ahead” signal.
“Another place where the O. C. has been doing a lot of shooting,” Dick explained, “and Larry went to see if it would be safe for us to try to pass.” Then he did a bit of the “gruff and workmanlike” on his own account. “You don’t know what a nuisance it is to have this junketing train of yours lugged up here in our way when every minute of our time is worth a million dollars!”
“Why, Dick! you almost make it sound as if we were unwelcome!” was the girl’s quick protest.
“You are; just about as unwelcome as a Dakota blizzard in the middle of July. There isn’t anybody on the force, from the chief down, who has any time to waste on the social dewdabs, or for carting you people around on a sight-seeing tour. How long are you going to stay?”
“Gracious! I don’t know! If your chief makes it as chilly for us as you’re trying to make it for me, I shouldn’t suppose we’d stay five minutes! I’m sureIshouldn’t.”
“Well you might as well know it just as it is, and I wouldn’t shed any tears if you should tell your father. Nobody else will tell him, of course; but I’m giving you the raw facts.”
“I should say you are!” said the girl with a toss of her head. “You don’t seem any more like the Dick Maxwell I knew when we were at Lake Topaz last summer than——”
“Maybe I’m not,” Dick broke in. “This is a man’s job up here.”
“Well, supposing it is; is that any reason why we shouldn’t come and look on, if we want to?”
Dick despaired of ever being able to make a mere girl understand, but he did his best.
“I should think you’d know without being told. Here we are, in the hottest part of a hot fight with the O. C., with everything cluttered up and in the way, and with everybody working twenty-six hours out of the twenty-four, trying to get somewhere. And right in the thick of it we’ve got to stop and find room for a train of joy-wagons, and let the work go to pot while we’re being nice to a lot of Big Money bosses!”
Somewhat to Dick’s disappointment, the girl took this wrathful outburst with perfect calm.
“I like your Larry Donovan much better than I do you, Dickie Maxwell,” she remarked coolly. “He may have been thinking all these things you’ve been saying, but he was at least polite enough not to slap me in the face with them.”
“You bet he was thinking them,” said Dick sourly. “Any fellow would.” Then, as the train slowed around a curve so short that it made the wheel flanges shriek in protest: “Pine Gulch, our headquarters camp, is just ahead. If you’ve got as much good sense as I thought you had last summer, you’ll try to persuade your father not to ask us to take this train any farther up the canyon.”
At the Pine Gulch stop the two boys—Larry had been riding the front platform of the dining-car since he had flagged for the last point of hazard—stood aside and looked on while the inspection party debarked and was met by Mr. Ackerman; met and welcomed, of course,as Large Money, when it happens to own a lot of railroad stock, must be.
“Just the same,” Dick said to Larry, “I’ll bet the chief is saying things to himself.”
“I guess so,” Larry returned. “I wouldn’t blame him. What are they going to do now?”
The “what” explained itself in due course. Preparations were making to place the excursion train upon the only available and already crowded side-track—which meant that it was going to stop at Pine Gulch, for the present, at least.
“That’s good, as far as it goes,” Dick admitted morosely. “If only they won’t ask to be chased up to the working ‘front,’ maybe we’ll have some little chance. Let’s go over to the mess tent and see if Dogsy’s saved us anything to chew on. It’s away past noon.”
While they were eating, the boys saw the excursionists—there were something like a score of them, including the girl and four women—climbing the steps of the dining-car in response to a white-jacketed waiter’s summons. On the high track opposite the little park-like valley in which the headquarters camp lay, a laboring O. C. engine, pushing a couple of flat-cars loaded with men and steel rails, was storming up the grade.
“More steel going to the O. C. front,” Dick commented.
“Yes,” Larry agreed; “and I’ll bet they’re laughing in their sleeves right now over our new handicap. Did you tell that girl some of the things she ought to know?”
“I sure did; and I hope I rubbed it in hard enough so that she’ll tell her father.”
Larry’s grin was handsomely appreciative.
“You’re one great little old diplomat, Dick. Sufferingcats! I wouldn’t have thought of a dodge like that in a hundred years. Here’s hoping it makes ’em turn around and go back home where they belong. I’ll say we haven’t any special use for ’em up here in this canyon.”
After dinner the two boys went over to the field office, and upon approaching it they found that the chief had company. So they waited at the door. Mr. Ackerman’s caller was a member of the sight-seeing party; a thin, frock-coated little gentleman with graying “toothbrush” side-whiskers, sort of angry eyes, and a high, rasping voice.
“That’s Mr. Oliver Hazzard, chairman of the Executive Board in New York,” said Dick, behind his hand, and Larry nodded complete understanding.
There wasn’t anything of a private nature about the conversation that was going on in the field office. The frock-coated gentleman was insisting that the special train be taken on to the real building “front,” and the chief engineer was deferentially and respectfully interposing one objection after another—apparently without the slightest success.
“Do you mean to say that you are building a railroad that isn’t fit to be used, Mr.—ah—Ackerman?” came in the high, irritable voice. “This Extension is costing us a mint of money, and it is—ah—presumably designed to carry passengers. In view of that fact, I see no reason why we should not be permitted to—ah—inspect it.”
“I have given you the facts, Mr. Hazzard,” was the sober reply. “The track, in its present incomplete condition, is not safe for your Pullman to run over. If you and the men of your party will be content to go up on aflat-car, with one of the lighter construction engines——”
“Nothing of the kind, Mr. Ackerman—nothing of the kind! We can leave the dining-car here, if you insist upon it; but we shall go in our own car in comfort, as we expect our patrons to do after the road is completed.”
Larry, who was watching the big chief out of the corner of his eye, saw the harassed official’s shoulders lift in a little shrug of impatient discouragement.
“Of course, if you order it, I have nothing more to say,” he yielded. Then, stepping to the door, he asked a question of the two boys. “Where is Goldrick? Have either of you seen him since dinner-time?”
Dick answered for both.
“No, sir; I don’t think he has been here since the special came in.”
“No matter; you two will do as well. Find Brannigan, and tell him to take the 717 and go out ahead of the special as a pilot. You go along and flag him past the danger spots. I don’t need to tell you to be careful. If you see anything at all to make you think it won’t be safe for the special to follow, one of you must run back and flag us at once.”
Having their orders thus detailed for them, Larry and Dick hastened to find Brannigan, the wizened little Irishman who handled the 717 on the material trains. The engine itself was standing, steamed up, on a short spur track at the lower end of the little yard, and the engineer and fireman were in the cab.
Dick climbed to the footboard to pass the chief’s verbal order along, while Larry set the switch for the engine—which was headed up-canyon—to back out onthe main track. As they were making the shift they saw Bart Johnson, on his huge passenger-puller, preparing to cut the dining-car out of the special train; and as the 717, with the two boys in the cab, passed on up the line to begin the piloting, the special, reduced now to the big engine and the Pullman, was ready to follow.
For a few miles nothing exciting happened. Now and again, Larry and Dick, hanging out of the cab window on the danger side, could hear above the racket of the engine the niggling chatter of the air-drills on the Overland Central grade above and opposite; but this was a signal of safety. So long as the drills were going there would be no blasting.
“I’ve been wondering if that girl and the women are back there in that Pullman,” Larry said, in one of the safe stretches.
“You can bet to win that Bess Holcombe is there, at least,” Dick replied. “I knocked around a good bit with her last summer up at Lake Topaz, and she doesn’t know what it means to be scared of anything. Right nice girl, most of the time, though she can be awfully mean and nippy when she wants to.”
“Well, neither she nor the other women have any business in the place where we’re going,” Larry put in.
“That’s exactly what I told her. But, for that matter, none of these New York ‘look-sees’ have any business there.”
As it came about, there were no hindrances on the run up the canyon from Pine Gulch. After a few miles of the turnings and twistings in the echoing gorge, and past the great shale slide with its bulkheading of piles and planking, the canyon widened to become a high-pitched,upland valley; and at the upper end of this valley, where more of the “narrows” began, lay the actual working front.
Taking it for granted that he would have to pilot the special back to Pine Gulch after the visitors had made their inspection, Brannigan ran the 717 in on the lower end of one of the two side-tracks which were laid about half a mile below the cliff-sentineled upper gorge where the rockmen were drilling and blasting.
Presently the one-car special came along on the middle or main track, stopped opposite the side-tracked pilot engine, and the men of the sight-seeing party got off. There was some little emphatic talk, and then Mr. Ackerman came over to the 717.
“The gentlemen want to go on up to the rock cutting,” he said to Brannigan, who was standing in his engine gangway. “I’ve told them that it isn’t safe to take the Pullman and that heavy passenger machine any farther over the unballasted track. We’ll take the men of the party on an empty flat-car, and leave the women here in the Pullman. You know the track and what it will stand—and the grade—and Johnson doesn’t. Since you’ll have to push the flat ahead of you, I want you to go up and take Johnson’s engine and get the flat out of this string of loads.”
The switching problem thus set for Brannigan was not complicated, though it involved a number of movements. At its beginning the passenger locomotive and its car stood on the middle or main track. On the left was an open siding, connecting at both ends with the main track; and this siding was empty. On the right was the other side-track, also connecting at both endswith the main line. Upon this right-hand siding there were, first, at the lower end, Brannigan’s engine, the 717, and ahead of it a string of four cross-tie cars, the upper one of which had already been unloaded.
Under these conditions the first thing to be done was to side-track the Pullman on the left-hand, or empty, siding; next, to pull out the unloaded flat-car from the upper end of the other siding with the passenger engine, and to back it down upon the main track between the two sidings. When this should be done, the heavy passenger machine could be run ahead and backed down on the left-hand track to be recoupled to its Pullman; after which, Brannigan could take his own lighter engine, back it out to the main line over the lower switch, come up to a coupling behind the placed flat-car, and so be ready to push it on up to the rock cutting.
For the switching job Brannigan and his fireman crossed over and climbed upon the passenger engine, taking charge of it temporarily while Johnson and his fireman stood aside in the cab. Mr. Ackerman walked on up the track to where the men of the inspection party were waiting for the shift to be made. This left Dick and Larry alone in the cab of the 717, and since there was nothing further for them to do at the moment, they stayed there.
Out of the cab window they could look up ahead and see the various phases of the shift as they were made. Carefully Brannigan pulled the sleeping-car over the upper switches and backed it down on the left-hand side-track. Then he uncoupled and ran up to get the empty flat-car out of the other siding.
“I don’t much like the looks of that flimsy chock thatJohnnie Shovel stuck under the Pullman’s wheels for a ‘safety’,” said the mechanically minded Larry, looking across to the sleeping-car where Bess Holcombe had a window open through which she, also, was watching the switching operations. “I’ve a good notion to slip over there and stick in a bigger chunk of wood. That little tree-limb that’s there now wouldn’t hold anything on this grade.”
“It isn’t much of a ‘scotch’,” Dick admitted. “But I guess it’s all right; the air-brakes’ll hold her.”
Larry shook his head.
“I don’t like it,” he repeated. “This grade is a lot steeper than it looks, and there’s nobody on that car with those women but the negro porter. Ten to one he wouldn’t know enough to pull the cord and reset the brakes if the car should start to run away.”
“Pshaw! it isn’t going to run away,” said Dick easily; and then, with another look up ahead: “Say! something’s gone wrong with that big passenger-puller!”
Something had gone wrong; very wrong, indeed. Brannigan had coupled to the empty flat-car and was pulling it out as gingerly as if he were running over eggs instead of a hurriedly placed construction side-track. But for all his care the light rail had buckled and turned over beneath the ponderous “Pacific-type,” and the big locomotive was on the ground.
Both boys saw the small accident from their place at the 717’s cab window, and, naturally, their first impulse was to swing down and run up the track to help with the reënrailment. But it was just then that a much more shocking accident began to stage itself right before their eyes. As they were in the act of dropping from the717’s step, Larry grabbed Dick and pointed to the other siding.
“Look!” he yelled; “that Pullman’s getting away!”
There was no doubt about it. By some disastrous mischance the air-brakes had leaked and loosened their grip on the wheels; the inconsequent bit of wood that Brannigan’s fireman had thrust under a wheel had crushed to powder; and the heavy steel car with its human load was slipping away down the siding, gaining momentum as it went.
Now a runaway car on a crooked track, every mile of which is a down-grade, is about the deadliest thing that can ever happen on a mountain railroad. At sight of the moving Pullman the men of the excursion party, with Mr. Ackerman setting the pace, made a frantic dash to catch it. But they were too far away. And the two engine crews, busy with the derailed passenger machine, were still farther away.
“Oh, for pity’s sake!” Dick groaned. “There’s a split switch at the end of that siding—they’ll get out on the main line and get clear away, and everybody’ll be killed!”
But Larry, cooler-headed, still had some portion of his wits about him. He saw at once that there was no hope of trying to catch the runaway on foot. And it was not for nothing that his boyhood had been spent on and around locomotives with his engineer father, or that, as a shop and round-house helper, he had had more or less chance to learn the handling of engines under steam.
“Take a grip on yourself!” he shouted at Dick. “There’s only one chance—get over here and be ready to jump off and set the switch for me! We’re going to chase that car!” And taking Dick’s help for granted,he snapped the 717’s reversing-lever into the backward motion and let the air whistle into the relieving pipe of the tender brakes.
The engine responded quickly to the pull of the down-grade. Dick hung on the right-hand step, ready to drop off and run on ahead to the switch. Instead of a “three-way” where the two sidings came in together, there were two separate switches, one for each side-track; a “split” or safety switch for the left-hand lead, and an ordinary “cut-rail” for the right-hand. The Pullman had already gone out over the safety switch, its great weight crowding the split rail over as it passed. But the air brakes were still retarding it a little.
Larry saw Dick drop from the engine step, run for the switch, and jerk the lever over to the outlet position for the 717. He had a fleeting hope that Dick would stay where he was; one life was enough to be risked in the perilous chase ahead. But as the engine was passing, Dick swung on.
“Let’s go!” he cried; and Larry, releasing the brake, let the light engine shoot away in chase of the vanishing Pullman.
As both of the boys well knew, success hung upon the slenderest of chances. Would the slipping Pullman brakes hold long enough to enable them to overtake the derelict and couple on? Or would they let go entirely and so send the big car rocketing to certain destruction at a speed that the handlers of the pursuing engine would not dare to equal?
That remained to be seen. From much riding back and forth over the line on the material trains Larry knew pretty well what down-dropping speed could be taken,and he was giving the 717 every wheel-turn he dared on the uneven, crooking track. At the second reversed curve he got a glimpse of the runaway careening around the next curve ahead. It was enough to show him that the leaking brakes were still holding—partially.
“We’ll make it yet!” he shouted at Dick. Then: “Crawl out on the tender and look down at our coupling—see if the knuckle is open!”
This was vitally important. When a coupling is to be made, if either of the two knuckles of the standard car-coupler is left standing open the couplings will engage and lock when they come together. But if both the coupling on the Pullman and that on the 717 were closed, it would be impossible to make the coupling hitch at a mere touch in mid flight. And the touch would be all they could count upon in the mad chase.
Dick made his journey over the jumping, lunging tender, got his glimpse of the coupling drawhead, and came sliding back over the coal.
“It’s all right!” he reported; and Larry once more got a good breath—a breath of thankful relief that sent the tears to his eyes.
“Listen, Dick,” he gasped. “I’m praying that those brakes will hold till she gets on the bit of straight track at the big shale slide. I don’t dare try to catch her on these curves. Yell at me when you see the slide, and then hold your hair on. It’ll have to be there or nowhere!”
When Dick’s warning yell came, Larry stuck his head out of the cab window for one swift glance down the track. The runaway was just entering the half-miletangent at the slide, swaying and lurching like a drunken thing.
“Now!” he bellowed, and with a jerk at the throttle lever he added the pull of a hundred and eighty pounds of steam to the urgings of the down-grade.
It was all over in a minute—in a second, as it seemed to Dickie Maxwell clutching for handholds as the 717 leaped backward around the final curve.With a rush and a roar the flying locomotive shot downthe straight lineupon the masterless Pullman. At the distance of a car-length Dick saw Bess Holcombe in the rear vestibule of the sleeper. She was clinging to the door jamb and trying to make her way out to the hand-rail. Madly he motioned her back, and as she disappeared the clashing touch was made.
With a rush and a roar the flying locomotive shot down upon the masterless Pullman
With a rush and a roar the flying locomotive shot down upon the masterless Pullman
With a rush and a roar the flying locomotive shot down upon the masterless Pullman
Larry Donovan thought that if he should live to be a hundred years old he should never again have such a keen thrill of agonizing suspense as that which came when he gently applied the engine brakes to put the coupling touch to the test. And when he found that he really had hold of the runaway and was checking its speed and his own, he came as near fainting as a healthy young athlete could and miss it.
“Oh, thank God!” he choked; and then: “Get back into that Pullman, Dick, and tell those women folks that it’s all right—they’re safe.”
The return run with the rescued car was quickly made, and Larry made it alone, leaving the driving step only once, to throw a few shovelfuls of coal into the firebox of the 717. The trial—the kind of trial he most dreaded—lay just ahead, and he was cudgeling his brain to find some way of dodging it, telling himself that he’d rathertake a whipping than to face the crowd of crazily grateful people who would probably pounce upon him when the engine and car reached the valley sidings.
As he was rounding the curve of approach to the valley, Larry saw Brannigan setting the lower switch to let him in on the open side-track. Quick as a flash the way of escape was suggested. Larry flung his cap out of the cab window, and upon reaching the switch he shut off the steam and brought the 717 to a stand.
“Climb up here, Mike, and take your engine,” he called to the little Irishman; “I’ve got to go back after my cap.” And in such simple fashion the dodge was made; for, after the dropped cap was found, Larry took to the woods, and was seen no more until long after the uninvited special had gone on its way back to civilization.
Late that evening, weary from a long tramp over the hills, he stole into camp at Pine Gulch to present himself at the chief’s office and to get what was coming to him.
“What you did this afternoon was a fine thing—a heroic thing, Larry,” said the grave-eyed chief, after a hand-grip which meant more than any words could express, “and I know you did it as a part of the day’s work, as any young fellow should. It was a man’s job, and you did it like a man. But what you did afterward.... Why didn’t you come on in with the car and let those people thank you, Larry?”
Larry’s face hardened.
“I didn’t want any of their thanks,” he said.
“Wait a minute,” interposed the chief soberly. “You want to make a success in life don’t you?”
“Why, yes, sir; that’s what I’m trying to do.”
“Well, being a good engineer, or a good anything, means that you must be a well-rounded man, Larry; approachable on the side of your human relations as well as capable on the technical side. You had a bit of contempt for those people to-day partly because you resented their coming here at a time when we could ill afford to entertain them, but partly, also, because you felt that you were not in their class. Isn’t that so?”
Larry hung his head and said nothing.
“That is where you are making your mistake,” the chief went on. “If you wish to be a really big man, you must get rid of that class consciousness that you have brought up with you from the shops and the train service. Big Money needn’t make its possessors any more or less human than other people, and it doesn’t, usually. Those people to-day were really hurt because you denied them the common human privilege of thanking you for a thing that was far beyond all thanks. Will you try to remember that?”
“Yes, sir; I’ll try,” said Larry, and he was sincere enough in making the promise.
But later, after he had escaped and had found Dick Maxwell, the class consciousness that Mr. Ackerman had spoken of rose up in all its poverty-pride and once more had its innings. Dick had ridden as far as Pine Gulch on the special train, out-going, and Bess Holcombe had told him that the men of the party were making up a purse for the rescuer of the runaway Pullman.
“They can keep their money,” said Larry sullenly; “I don’t want any of it,”—this after Dick had told him.
And—such is the perversity of poor human nature—on a night when he should have gone to bed thankfulthat the day had afforded him a chance to save life, he rolled himself in his blankets and turned his face to wall with a strange bitterness for a bedfellow and a feeling that perhaps, after all, he had made a mistake in leaving the Brewster round-house and his job of wiping engines.