The Nerve of Foley Part 6

"Ought to have kept away from the post-office," grumbled Dad, after a pause.

"I get a letter twice a week that I think more of than I do of this whole road, and I propose to go to the post-office and get it without asking anybody's permission."

"They'll pound you again."

Georgie looked out into the storm. "Well, why shouldn't they? I've got no friends."

"Got a girl back in Pennsylvania?"

"Yes, I've got a girl there," replied the boy, as the rain tore at the cab window. "I've had a girl there a good while. She's gray-headed and sixty years old--that's my girl--and if she can write letters to me, I can get them out of the post-office without a guardian."

"There she comes," said Dad, as the headlight of the Pullman special shone faint ahead through the mist.

"I'm mighty glad of it," said Georgie, looking at his watch. "Give me steam now, Dad, and I'll get you home in time for a nap before breakfast."

A minute later the special shot over the switch, and the young runner, crowding the pistons a bit, started off the siding. When Dad, looking back for the hind-end brakeman to lock the switch and swing on, called all clear, Georgie pulled her out another notch, and the long train slowly gathered headway up the slippery track.

As the speed increased the young man and the old relapsed into their usual silence. The 244 was always a free steamer, but Georgie put her through her paces without any apology, and it took lots of coal to square the account.

In a few minutes they were pounding along up through the Narrows. The track there follows the high bench between the bluffs, which sheer up on one side, and the river-bed, thirty feet below the grade, on the other.

It is not an inviting stretch at any time with a big string of gondolas behind. But on a wet night it is the last place on the division where an engineer would want a side-rod to go wrong; and just there and then Georgie's rod went very wrong indeed.

Half-way between centres the big steel bar on his side, dipping then so fast you couldn't have seen it even in daylight, snapped like a stick of licorice. The hind-end ripped up into the cab like the nose of a sword-fish, tearing and smas.h.i.+ng with appalling force and fury.

Georgie McNeal's seat burst under him as if a stick of giant-powder had exploded. He was jammed against the cab roof like a link-pin and fell sprawling, while the monster steel flail threshed and tore through the cab with every lightning revolution of the great driver from which it swung.

It was a frightful moment. Anything thought or done must be thought and done at once. It was either to stop that train--and quickly--or to pound along until the 244 jumped the track, and lit in the river, with thirty cars of coal to cover it.

Instantly--so Dad Hamilton afterwards told me--instantly the boy, scrambling to his feet, reached for his throttle--reached for it through a rain of iron blows, and staggered back with his right arm hanging like a broken wing from his shoulder. And back again after it--after the throttle with his left; slipping and creeping carefully this time up the throttle lever until, straining and twisting and dodging, he caught the latch and pushed it tightly home, Dad whistling vigorously the while for brakes.

Relieved of the tremendous head on the cylinder the old engine calmed down enough to let the two men collect themselves. Rapidly as the brakes could do it, the long train was brought up standing, and Georgie, helped by his fireman, dropped out of the cab, and they set about disconnecting--the engineer with his one arm--the formidable ends of the broken rod.

It was a slow, difficult piece of work to do. In spite of their most active efforts the rain chilled them to the marrow. The train-crew gave them as much help as willing hands could, which wasn't much; but by every man doing something they got things fixed, called in their flagmen just before daybreak, and started home. When the sun rose, Georgie, grim and silent, the throttle in his left hand, was urging the old engine along on a dog-trot across the Blackwood flats; and so, limping in on one side, the kid brought his train into the Zanesville yards, with Dad Hamilton unable to make himself helpful enough, unable to show his appreciation of the skill and the grit that the night had disclosed in the kid engineer.

The hostler waiting in the yard sprang into the cab with amazement on his face, and was just in time to lift a limp boy out of the old fireman's arms and help Dad get him to the ground--for Georgie had fainted.

When the 244 reached the shops a few minutes later they photographed that cab. It was the worst case of rod-smas.h.i.+ng we had ever seen; and the West-End shops have caught some pretty tough-looking cabs in their day.

The boy who stopped the cyclone and saved his train and crew lay stretched on the lounge in my office waiting for the company surgeon.

And old Dad Hamilton--crabbed, irascible old Dad Hamilton--flew around that boy exactly like an excited old rooster: first bringing ice, and then water, and then hot coffee, and then fanning him with a time-table.

It was worth a small smash-up to see it.

The one sweep of the rod which caught Georgie's arm had broken it in two places, and he was off duty three months. But it was a novelty to see that boy walk down to the post-office, and hear the strikers step up and ask how his arm was; and to see old Dad Hamilton tag around Zanesville after him was refres.h.i.+ng. The kid engineer had won his spurs.

The Sky-Sc.r.a.per

We stood one Sunday morning in a group watching for her to speed around the Narrows. Many locomotives as I have seen and ridden, a new one is always a wonder to me; chokes me up, even, it means so much. I hear men rave over horses, and marvel at it when I think of the iron horse. I hear them chatter of distance, and my mind turns to the annihilator. I hear them brag of s.h.i.+ps, and I think of the s.h.i.+p that ploughs the mountains and rivers and plains. And when they talk of speed--what can I think of but her?

As the new engine rolled into the yards my heart beat quicker. Her lines were too imposing to call strong; they were ma.s.sive, yet so simple you could draw them, like the needle snout of a collie, to a very point.

Every bearing looked precise, every joint looked supple, as she swept magnificently up and checked herself, panting, in front of us.

Foley was in the cab. He had been east on a lay-off, and so happened to bring in the new monster, wild, from the river shops.

She was built in Pennsylvania, but the fellows on the Missouri end of our line thought nothing could ever safely be put into our hands until they had stopped it _en route_ and looked it over.

"How does she run, Foley?" asked Neighbor, gloating silently over the toy.

"Cool as an ice-box," said Foley, swinging down. "She's a regular summer resort. Little stiff on the hills yet."

"We'll take that out of her," mused Neighbor, climbing into the cab to look her over. "Boys, this is up in a balloon," he added, pus.h.i.+ng his big head through the cab-window and peering down at the ninety-inch drivers under him.

"I grew dizzy once or twice looking for the ponies," declared Foley, biting off a piece of tobacco as he hitched at his overalls. "She looms like a sky-sc.r.a.per. Say, Neighbor, I'm to get her myself, ain't I?"

asked Foley, with his usual nerve.

"When McNeal gets through with her, yes," returned Neighbor, gruffly, giving her a thimble of steam and trying the air.

"What!" cried Foley, affecting surprise. "You going to give her to the kid?"

"I am," returned the master-mechanic unfeelingly, and he kept his word.

Georgie McNeal, just reporting for work after the session in his cab with the loose end of a connecting-rod, was invited to take out the Sky-Sc.r.a.per--488, Cla.s.s H--as she was listed, and Dad Hamilton of course took the scoop to fire her.

"They get everything good that's going," grumbled Foley.

"They are good people," retorted Neighbor. He also a.s.signed a helper to the old fireman. It was a new thing with us then, a fellow with a slice-bar to tickle the grate, and Dad, of course, kicked. He always kicked. If they had raised his salary he would have kicked. Neighbor wasted no words. He simply sent the helper back to wiping until the old fireman should cry enough.

Very likely you know that a new engine must be regularly broken, as a horse is broken, before it is ready for steady hard work. And as Georgie McNeal was not very strong yet, he was appointed to do the breaking.

For two months it was a picnic. Light runs and easy lay-overs. After the smash at the Narrows, Hamilton had sort of taken the kid engineer under his wing; and it was pretty generally understood that any one who elbowed Georgie McNeal must reckon with his doughty old fireman. So the two used to march up and down street together, as much like chums as a very young engineer and a very old fireman possibly could be. They talked together, walked together, and ate together. Foley was as jealous as a cat of Hamilton, because he had brought Georgie out West, and felt a sort of guardian interest in that quarter himself. Really, anybody would love Georgie McNeal; old Dad Hamilton was proof enough of that.

One evening, just after pay-day, I saw the pair in the post-office lobby getting their checks cashed. Presently the two stepped over to the money-order window; a moment later each came away with a money-order.

"Is that where you leave your wealth, Georgie?" I asked, as he came up to speak to me.

"Part of it goes there every month, Mr. Reed," he smiled. "Checks are running light, too, now--eh, Dad?"

"A young fellow like you ought to be putting money away in the bank,"

said I.

"Well, you see I have a bank back in Pennsylvania--a bank that is now sixty years old, and getting gray-headed. I haven't sent her much since I've been on the relief, so I'm trying to make up a little now for my old mammie."

"Where does yours go, Dad?" I asked.