Page:Cy Warman--The express messenger and other tales of the rail.djvu/241

229 "Say," said Jones, rolling his thumb and twirling his watch chain about it, "are you going to back up?"

"Yes, when I get ready," was the reply, and Jones made straight for the engine. As he climbed up on one side the driver mounted from the other, and, snatching up a hand hammer, raised it above Jones's head and warned him to keep off his engine. I held my breath as Jones continued to climb and the engineer stood ready to brain him. When the hostler, who appeared not to have heard the warning, had gained the deck, he twisted the hammer from the grasp of the engineer, threw it back into the coal tank, backed the engine from the table, set the air brakes, and leaped to the ground. He had missed a fight here simply because the engineer weakened, and yet Jones was wholly in the right. Once when he was firing a passenger engine they stopped at Cleora, only two miles from the end of the run; the engineer abused Jones and Jones thumped him. The driver told the conductor that he would not run the engine in with that fireman, whereupon Jones gave the driver another