Page:McClure's Magazine volume 10.djvu/30

216 torn from my hold on the window and slammed over against the boiler; and having passed this most uncomfortable place, she flies on, rolling and roaring down the mountain. All this time the engineer has n't moved an eyelid, nor the fireman interrupted for an instant the steady pendulum-like swing of the fire-door and the scoop-shovel. How do they do it? Oh, it's easy after you get used to it.

Fifteen minutes afterward, in the siding, with switches locked, waiting for the flyer, nobody seems to remember that we have done anything in particular.

At first I had considered the locomotive as far too complicated a machine for me ever to understand, but gradually I learned its various parts; and when I found that nearly all the engineers and firemen had risen from brakemen like myself, I took heart and hoped that some day I might sit on the right side, to be spoken to with some slight deference by the officials and stared at in open-mouthed admiration by the small boys at the country stations.

Old Tom Riley was a man to whom I looked up as the epitome of railroad knowledge. Pie frequently hauled our train. He was so old that the top of his head was perfectly bald; but he had a great mop of gray beard, with a yellowish streak from the chin down, an evidence of many years of tobacco-chewing and unsuccessful efforts to spit to windward.

He was supposed to be the oldest engineer anywhere about, and said himself that his "first job railroadin' wos wipin' the donkey engine in Noah's ark." He was a good-natured, jolly old fellow, a great practical joker, strong and rough as a bear, but as well pleased apparently when the joke was on himself as any other way. He had been so long at the business that he knew all sorts of tricks by which to get himself out of tight places, so that it was seldom indeed that the "super" had the pleasure of hauling Tom on the carpet for a violation of the rules.

One night we were a little late, so that we barely had time to make the siding for a following passenger train; and, to make matters worse, when we were about half way there Tom said he smelt something hot; so he stopped, and found his main crank-pin about ready to blaze up. The oil-cup had stopped feeding; so he deliberately took it out, filled the hole with tallow, screwed in the cup, called his flag, and started again, very late.

Simmons came up over the train and said he guessed he'd leave a flag at the bottom of the hill, to hold No. 6 till we got in.

"No, no," says old Tom; "don't ye never drop off no flag to give yourself away, git called ter the office, an' all hands git ten days."

"You can't get to the switch on time," said Simmons.

"Course not. I ought ter be there in twenty minutes, an' I'll be lucky if I git there in twenty-five."

"Well, then, I'll have to drop off a flag, or they'll git our doghouse."

"Now, here, Simmons, I'll tell ye what you do: you go back in the doghouse, an' don't you see nothin' that's goin' on; only git up in the cupola an' watch out good an' sharp that yer train don't break in two. I'll git ye inter the switch time enough, so Six'll never see yer tail lights."

Simmons, knowing his man, at last agreed, and after he had got safely housed, Tom handed me his long oil-can, and told me to go back on the step of the caboose and oil first one rail and then the other.

"Let the oil run about a car-length on one rail, an' then do the same the other side; repeat the dose once, an' come ahead agin," said Tom.

I did so, and just as we were pulling in to the side track, we heard the exhaust of the passenger engine as she came clipping along for the hill; presently we could tell by the sound that she had struck the grade, then—cha-cha-ch-r-r-r cha-ch-r-r-r.

"Oho!' says Tom, "are ye there? Grind away, my boy. I guess old Tom'll git in an' git the switch locked before you git up here all right."

He did, too. Long before the passenger engine got by the oil we were comfortably smoking our pipes in the switch; and when she went sailing by her engineer shouted something that we couldn't catch, but to which Tom replied:

"Go ahead, sonny; you're all right."

Next day, as Tom was doing a little packing in the roundhouse, the engineer of Six came up to him and said:

"Riley, was that you in Snyder's when I went by last night?"

"Yes," says Tom. "A little late, wa'n't ye?"

"Late? I sh'd say so. I never saw Snyder's so slippery as 'twas last night. I used half a box of sand. How'd you git there?"