Page:Cy Warman--The express messenger and other tales of the rail.djvu/161

Rh up slowly, and "Noah's" body floated to the surface and was taken back to Salida and buried. It would be absurd to say that the railroad company was in any way responsible for the accident, but it gave Mrs. North five hundred dollars to start in business for herself.

Engine the 107 was not rebuilt for a long time and was never again employed in passenger service. The foreman in one of the repair shops wrote to Philadelphia and learned that the 109 was completed on Thursday and the 107 on Friday. As I said a while ago, railroad employees are not superstitious,—they will all tell you so,—much less railway officers; but it is a fact to-day that a new locomotive or a locomotive that has been rebuilt is never taken out on the Denver and Rio Grande on Friday. No order was ever issued forbidding it, but it came to be one of the unwritten rules of the road,—a sort of Monroe doctrine that is always respected.

And now after a dozen years,—after all that has been related here, which includes only what the writer remembers,—the tank and cylinders of the 107 are rusting in the scrap heap at Salida,