Page:Cherokee Trails (1928).pdf/279

 The crowd broke, clearing the track, and the agent, flapping his arms in terrified signal to stop, went galloping down the road to meet the train. The engine came to a stop, Tom Simpson standing at the horse's head, hand on its bridle, with nicely calculated thrill for all beholders, about five feet from the wagon, the engineer leaning haughtily out of the cab, crabbed as if he regretted there was anything in law or morals which restrained him from making a mess of the whole affair.

It was beneath his station to speak to a man so low as a driver of a bone wagon, or any wagon whatever, there being a deep jealousy among railroad engineers against all people who guide the course of anything that moves on wheels. Not so the conductor, who came jogging forward in that little goat-trot peculiar to passenger train conductors, the gesticulating agent with him. The agent was almost wordless at this awful sacrilege in blocking the way of Number Five, or Five, as he called it, which was a prince among railroad trains in his eyes, although only a little plug of three coaches to everybody else. But there was that granger with his load of bones, blocking the way to the water tank and the station, and the agent and conductor were as vindictive against him as if the train had a thousand miles to go to get to its journey's end instead of a hundred yards.

"Git to hell out o' there! git—tohellout o'there!" the conductor ordered, spacing his words farther as they ran out to the end of his command. "Don't stand there holdin' up this train!"

"Oh, very well," said Tom, understanding the horse's