Page:Frank Packard - On the Iron at Big Cloud.djvu/216

 enough to lift a valve joined in. Dark forms began to run in the direction of the shops, and then the bell in the little English chapel uptown took a hand in the clamor. The alarm was unanimous enough and general enough when it came, there was never any doubt about that, but the fire must have got a pretty stiff start before it broke through the windows to fling its first challenge at the railroad men.

Gilleen and the rest of the yard crew were on the run for the scene when Gleason's voice, bawling over the din, halted them.

"Clean out three, four an' five, an' get 'em down to the bottom of the yards, an' look lively!" he yelled. "Leave that string of gondolas on six till the last. Jump now, boys! Eat 'em up!"

Oil-spattered floors and oil-smeared walls are a feeding ground for a fire than which there is no better. The flame tongues leaped higher and higher throwing a lurid glare down the yards, and throwing, too, as the wind caught them up and whirled them in gusts, a driving rain of sparks that threatened the long, dark lines of rolling stock, for the most part choked to the doors with freight—freight enough to total a sum in claim-checks that would blanch the cheeks of the most florid director on the board of the Transcontinental.

With Gleason in command, Gilleen and his mates went at their work heads down. There wasn't anything fancy or artistic about the way they banged those cars to safety—there wasn't time to be fussy. Behind them the south end of the shops was already a blazing