Page:Frank Packard - On the Iron at Big Cloud.djvu/101

 moments in everybody's life when they rise above themselves, above habit, above environment, above everything, if even for only a brief instant. A chance like this would never come again. If he could fire one trip maybe Regan would change his mind. Spitzer grasped at it frantically, despairingly.

"Burke, I can fire," he fairly screamed. "Give me a chance, Burke. I'll never get one if you don't."

Burke gasped for a moment like a man with his breath knocked out of him, then something like a dry chuckle sounded in his throat. No one knows but Burke what decided him. It might have been either of two things, or a combination of them both—Spitzer's pleading face, or the desire to take a rise out of Regan—Burke and Regan not having been on the best of terms since the last general elections. Be that as it may, Burke pointed at the squirming fireman.

"Take his feet," he grunted.

Together they lifted and dragged the stricken MacAloon out of the cab and to the ground. 1108, pulling Number One, had come to a stop abreast of them by now, and Burke shouted at the engine crew.

"Here!" he bawled. "Lend a hand!"

And as both men stuck their heads out of the gangway, he and Spitzer boosted the fireman up to them.

"Got cramps," explained Burke tersely. "You'll be able to fix him up in the roundhouse. Five minutes late, h'm? Well, hurry, you're clear. There's your 'go-ahead.' Pull out and let me get hold."

Burke turned to Spitzer, as 1108 slipped away from