Page:Frank Packard - On the Iron at Big Cloud.djvu/46

 of us knows it. How's Number One and Two to-night?"

Spence studied for a moment before he answered: "Number One is forty minutes off, and Number Two's an hour to the bad."

Carleton groaned. The Imperial Limited West and East, officially known on the train-sheets as One and Two, carried both the transcontinental mail and the de-luxe passengers. Of late the East had been making pertinent suggestions to the Division Superintendent that it would be as well if those trains ran off the Hill Division with a little more regard for their established schedule. So Carleton groaned. He got up and put on his hat and coat preparatory to going home. "Look here," he said from the doorway, "they'll stand for 'most anything if we don't misuse One and Two. They're getting mighty savage about that, and they'll drop hard before long. You fellows have got to take care of those trains, if nothing else on the division moves. That's orders. I'll shoulder all kicks coming on the rest of the traffic. Good-night."

When Bunty left the office that night and walked home with his father, he had learned that there was another side to railroading besides the building and repairing of engines, and the delivery of magic tissue sheets to train crews that told them when and where to stop, and how to thread their way through hills and plains on a single-track road, with heaps of other trains, some going one way, some another. He understood vaguely and in a hazy kind of way that somewhere, many, many miles away, were men who sat in