Page:Cy Warman--The express messenger and other tales of the rail.djvu/239

 SCRAPTOMANIA

VERY man who has railroaded for a single day on the Rio Grande, has heard of John Jones,—"Scrappy" Jones they called him. If there is such a disease as scraptomania then John Jones had it, good and hard. He began at the bottom as helper in the machine shops and industriously fought his way up the ladder until he became a full-fledged locomotive engineer. There is scarcely a flag station on the entire system that has not at some time or another been his battlefield.

The most interesting feature in the history of Jones is the fact that he never sought a fight, or fought for the "fun of it," as most fighting characters do. I knew him intimately, worked with him many a day, and it seemed to me that he had fights thrust upon him in nearly every instance. When he was "hostler" at Salida