Page:Cy Warman--The express messenger and other tales of the rail.djvu/152

140 she was put back on the run as soon as a few slight injuries were repaired, for it was no unusual thing in those days, where the track was not fenced in, to plough up a herd of cattle on a run like this. In fact, a railroad track seems to be a favorite place for cattle to sleep and deaf people to walk. The 107 went along for a week or more and her crew had begun to think well of her, when she disgraced herself by breaking both parallel rods,—those bars of steel that tie the wheels together,—and with the broken ends whipped her cab into splinters before the fireman could crawl over her high boiler-head and shut her off; for the engineer had both legs broken, and from the ripped and riddled deck was unable to reach the throttle, though the fireman said he tried, standing on the two stubs of his broken legs.

When the "scary-lookin devil," as Baldy Hooten had called her, had gone to the shops and her driver to the hospital, the trainmen and enginemen began to discuss her from a super stitious standpoint. Not one railroad employee in a dozen will admit that he is the least little bit superstitious, but watch them when they see