Page:McClure's Magazine volume 10.djvu/190

376 GROSS NEGLECT OF A SMALL REPAIR. should have passed by some time ago at that rate of going, we judged that she had either slowed up or ditched herself, and Jack and I were arguing the advisability of asking permission to cut our engine loose and run down on the opposite track in search of her, when a chorus of "Here she comes!" from the crowd of passengers and countrymen who had gathered at the station called our attention to the track.

It was a strange and weird sight that met our gaze. The crowd stood silent and breathless as she passed. She had slowed down to about twenty miles per hour, and as she was hooked up to within one short notch of the center, the steam had gone down, and her cylinder cocks were open, and there was no perceptible exhaust from the stack, but only a slight phit! phit! from the cylinder cocks, as she loomed up in the dusk. Big, black, and indistinct she crept up to us, all hands drawing back as though she was something uncanny. Not a sound of whistle or bell heralded her approach; not a glimmer of light showed her the way; but like an apparition she appeared to us for an instant, and was gone; swallowed up in the night so quickly and silently that we could hardly believe our own eyes.

For an instant we stood like a lot of dummies, looking at the blackness where she had been; then Jack broke the spell by calling to the conductor to cut our engine off and open the switches, saying that as she was so nearly out of steam we could easily catch her and bring her back. So we crossed over and started after her, and this was a ticklish job. As we were backing, our headlight didn't show, while she had no lights at all, and no man could tell where she might stop or leave the track; so it was a case of guess. If we ran too slow, we might chase her for miles; or we might run into her unexpectedly at any moment, wrecking both tenders.

A brakeman and myself stood on the rear of our tender, holding lanterns aloft, and watching with all our eyes, while the conductor rode in my side of the cab, unconsciously ringing the bell as if to warn her not to get herself run down. We went carefully around the curve and up a slight grade, and—there she stood, spent, her picnicking done. We towed her back to the yard, I dumped what remained of her fire, and we went on.

Now what do you suppose caused that engine to run away? A weak throttle latch-spring, which had been reported over and over again, and which would have cost to replace probably from three to four cents! Of course it was attended to at once after this? Not at all. I ran her a year afterwards with the same flimsy spring, and I had a set of blocks made to chock her wheels, in order to prevent a recurrence of the adventure while she was in my charge. Why didn't I report it? I did, daily, until I got tired of doing so.

On the evening when she headed us, the hostler had cleaned her fire and backed her down into "the hole"; he was in a hurry,—that was his normal condition. He should have had two helpers, but didn't have any; so he shut her off, pulled the lever up on the center (approximately), and opened the cylinder cocks, thereby complying with the rules. Then he jumped off and went after another engine. The weak spring failed to latch the throttle shut, it worked open a little way, and being light, not yet coaled or watered, she crawled up out of "the hole" in spite of her open cylinder cocks, and started off down the yard. In cleaning the fire a spark had ignited the waste on top of the back driving-box. The blaze attracted the attention of my old friend Pop, who was oiling his engine and talking with a couple of firemen as she passed. Thinking that the hostler was taking her out to the coal-pockets, he shouted: "Hey! yer back drivin'-box is afire." As no one answered, they all looked carefully at her and saw that she was alone. A shout went up,—"That engine's runnin' away!" The fireman of a nearby switch engine leaped to the ground and sprinted after her. In the meantime old 96, having passed all the switches, and got upon the main track, was gaining speed with every revolution of her big drivers. The fireman touched the back of her tank with the tips of his outstretched fingers, and then with a derisive wiggle of her drawhead she glided away.

He was directly in front of the telegraph office when he realized that the race was lost, and rushed into the office, told the operator what had happened, and advised him to tell Wilson, eight miles away, to side-track her. Wilson got the message all right, and started on the run, As he opened the door, a meteor shot by, and glancing up the line, a faint glimpse of the back end of a tender with a big yellow 96 on it, disappearing round the curve in a cloud of dust, told him she had gone.