Page:Cy Warman--The express messenger and other tales of the rail.djvu/167

Rh at a lively gait,—too lively to make jumping for Jakie less hazardous than dying at his post. This statement is made as a fact, and not to insinuate that Jakie was shy on "sand," for he was not. He was an old-timer on the hill, and had his own engine under complete control. He could stop her in three telegraph poles, but the other engine would surely play leap-frog with him if he did; so how to stop them both was a problem which Jakie had to solve inside of five seconds. He told his fireman to jump, but the fireman, for the first time in his life, refused to take Jakie's signal. If he jumped on his side he would smash up against a rough rock wall, and on the other side it was at least three-quarters of a mile to the bottom of the gulch; so the fireman elected to die with the engineer, and have the whole matter settled in one issue of the Huerfano County Cactus. These arrangements were made by the engineer and fireman in much less time than it takes to tell the tale.

It was not necessary for Jakie to slow down in order to allow the wild engine to come up with him; she was coming up at every