Kitabı oku: «The Nerve of Foley, and Other Railroad Stories», sayfa 5
To cover those sixty miles in better than fifty minutes was like picking them off the ponies; and the Five-Nine breasted the Morgan divide, fretting for more hills to climb.
The Five-Nine – for that matter any of the Sky-Scrapers are built to balance ten or a dozen sleepers, and when you run them light they have a fashion of rooting their noses into the track. A modest up-grade just about counters this tendency; but on a slump and a stiff clip and no tail to speak of, you feel as if the drivers were going to buck up on the ponies every once in a while. However, they never do, and Georgie whistled for Scarboro' junction, and 180 miles and two waters, in 198 minutes out of McCloud; and, looking happy, cussed Mr. McWilliams a little, and gave her another hatful of steam.
It is getting down a hill, like the hills of the Mattaback Valley, at such a pace that pounds the track out of shape. The Five-Nine lurched at the curves like a mad woman, shook free with very fury, and if the baggage-car had not been fairly loaded down with the grief of McWilliams, it must have jumped the rails a dozen times in as many minutes.
Indeed, the fireman – it was Jerry MacElroy – twisting and shifting between the tender and the furnace, looked for the first time grave, and stole a questioning glance from the steam-gauge towards Georgie.
But yet he didn't expect to see the boy, his face set ahead and down the track, straighten so suddenly up, sink in the lever, and close at the instant on the air. Jerry felt her stumble under his feet – caught up like a girl in a skipping-rope – and grabbing a brace looked, like a wise stoker, for his answer out of his window. There far ahead it rose in hot curling clouds of smoke down among the alfalfa meadows and over the sweep of willows along the Mattaback River. The Mattaback bridge was on fire, with the McWilliams Special on one side and Denver on the other.
Jerry MacElroy yelled – the engineer didn't even look around; only whistled an alarm back to Pat Francis, eased her down the grade a bit, like a man reflecting, and watched the smoke and flames that rose to bar the McWilliams Special out of Denver.
The Five-Nine skimmed across the meadows without a break, and pulled up a hundred feet from the burning bridge. It was an old Howe truss, and snapped like popcorn as the flames bit into the rotten shed.
Pat Francis and his brakeman ran forward. Across the river they could see half a dozen section-men chasing wildly about throwing impotent buckets of water on the burning truss.
"We're up against it, Georgie," cried Francis.
"Not if we can get across before the bridge tumbles into the river," returned Sinclair.
"You don't mean you'd try it?"
"Would I? Wouldn't I? You know the orders. That bridge is good for an hour yet. Pat, if you're game, I'll run it."
"Holy smoke," mused Pat Francis, who would have run the river without any bridge at all if so ordered. "They told us to deliver the goods, didn't they?"
"We might as well be starting, Pat," suggested Jerry MacElroy, who deprecated losing good time. "There'll be plenty of time to talk after we get into Denver, or the Mattaback."
"Think quick, Pat," urged Sinclair; his safety was popping murder.
"Back her up, then, and let her go," cried Francis; "I'd just as lief have that baggage-car at the bottom of the river as on my hands any longer."
There was some sharp tooting, then the McWilliams Special backed; backed away across the meadow, halted, and screamed hard enough to wake the dead. Georgie was trying to warn the section-men. At that instant the door of the baggage-car opened and a sharp-featured young man peered out.
"What's the row – what's all this screeching about, conductor?" he asked, as Francis passed.
"Bridge burning ahead there."
"Bridge burning!" he cried, looking nervously forward. "Well, that's a deal. What you going to do about it?"
"Run it. Are you McWilliams?"
"McWilliams? I wish I was for just one minute. I'm one of his clerks."
"Where is he?"
"I left him on La Salle Street yesterday afternoon."
"What's your name?"
"Just plain Ferguson."
"Well, Ferguson, it's none of my business, but as long as we're going to put you into Denver or into the river in about a minute, I'm curious to know what the blazes you're hustling along this way for."
"Me? I've got twelve hundred thousand dollars in gold coin in this car for the Sierra Leone National Bank – that's all. Didn't you know that five big banks there closed their doors yesterday? Worst panic in the United States. That's what I'm here for, and five huskies with me eating and sleeping in this car," continued Ferguson, looking ahead. "You're not going to tackle that bridge, are you?"
"We are, and right off. If there's any of your huskies want to drop out, now's their chance," said Pat Francis, as Sinclair slowed up for his run.
Ferguson called his men. The five with their rifles came cautiously forward.
"Boys," said Ferguson, briefly. "There's a bridge afire ahead. These guys are going to try to run it. It's not in your contract, that kind of a chance. Do you want to get off? I stay with the specie, myself. You can do exactly as you please. Murray, what do you say?" he asked, addressing the leader of the force, who appeared to weigh about two hundred and sixty.
"What do I say?" echoed Murray, with decision, as he looked for a soft place to alight alongside the track. "I say I'll drop out right here. I don't mind train robbers, but I don't tackle a burning bridge – not if I know it," and he jumped off.
"Well, Peaters," asked Ferguson, of the second man, coolly, "do you want to stay?"
"Me?" echoed Peaters, looking ahead at the mass of flame leaping upward – "me stay? Well, not in a thousand years. You can have my gun, Mr. Ferguson, and send my check to 439 Milwaukee Avenue, if you please. Gentlemen, good-day." And off went Peaters.
And off went every last man of the valorous detectives except one lame fellow, who said he would just as lief be dead as alive anyway, and declared he would stay with Ferguson and die rich!
Sinclair, thinking he might never get another chance, was whistling sharply for orders. Francis, breathless with the news, ran forward.
"Coin? How much? Twelve hundred thousand. Whew!" cried Sinclair. "Swing up, Pat. We're off."
The Five-Nine gathered herself with a spring. Even the engineer's heart quailed as they got headway. He knew his business, and he knew that if only the rails hadn't buckled they were perfectly safe, for the heavy truss would stand a lot of burning before giving way under a swiftly moving train. Only, as they flew nearer, the blaze rolling up in dense volume looked horribly threatening. After all it was foolhardy, and he felt it; but he was past the stopping now, and he pulled the choker to the limit. It seemed as if she never covered steel so fast. Under the head she now had the crackling bridge was less than five hundred – four hundred – three hundred – two hundred feet, and there was no longer time to think. With a stare, Sinclair shut off. He wanted no push or pull on the track. The McWilliams Special was just a tremendous arrow, shooting through a truss of fire, and half a dozen speechless men on either side of the river waiting for the catastrophe.
Jerry MacElroy crouched low under the gauges. Sinclair jumped from his box and stood with a hand on the throttle and a hand on the air, the glass crashing around his head like hail. A blast of fiery air and flying cinders burned and choked him. The engine, alive with danger, flew like a great monkey along the writhing steel. So quick, so black, so hot the blast, and so terrific the leap, she stuck her nose into clean air before the men in the cab could rise to it.
There was a heave in the middle like the lurch of a sea-sick steamer, and with it the Five-Nine got her paws on cool iron and solid ground, and the Mattaback and the blaze – all except a dozen tongues which licked the cab and the roof of the baggage-car a minute – were behind. Georgie Sinclair, shaking the hot glass out of his hair, looked ahead through his frizzled eyelids and gave her a full head for the western bluffs of the valley; then looked at his watch.
It was the hundred and ninetieth mile-post just at her nose, and the dial read eight o'clock and fifty-five minutes to a second. There was an hour to the good and seventy-six miles and a water to cover; but they were seventy-six of the prettiest miles under ballast anywhere, and the Five-Nine reeled them off like a cylinder-press. Seventy-nine minutes later Sinclair whistled for the Denver yards.
There was a tremendous commotion among the waiting engines. If there was one there were fifty big locomotives waiting to charivari the McWilliams Special. The wires had told the story in Denver long before, and as the Five-Nine sailed ponderously up the gridiron every mogul, every consolidated, every ten-wheeler, every hog, every switch-bumper, every air-hose screamed an uproarious welcome to Georgie Sinclair and the Sky-Scraper.
They had broken every record from McCloud to Denver, and all knew it; but as the McWilliams Special drew swiftly past, every last man in the yards stared at her cracked, peeled, blistered, haggard looks.
"What the deuce have you bit into?" cried the depot-master, as the Five-Nine swept splendidly up and stopped with her battered eye hard on the depot clock.
"Mattaback bridge is burned; had to crawl over on the stringers," answered Sinclair, coughing up a cinder.
"Where's McWilliams?"
"Back there sitting on his grief, I reckon."
While the crew went up to register, two big four-horse trucks backed up to the baggage-car, and in a minute a dozen men were rolling specie-kegs out of the door, which was smashed in, as being quicker than to tear open the barricades.
Sinclair, MacElroy, and Francis with his brakeman were surrounded by a crowd of railroad men. As they stood answering questions, a big prosperous-looking banker, with black rings under his eyes, pushed in towards them, accompanied by the lame fellow, who had missed the chance of a lifetime to die rich, and by Ferguson, who had told the story.
The banker shook hands with each one of the crews. "You've saved us, boys. We needed it. There's a mob of five thousand of the worst-scared people in America clamoring at the doors; and, by the eternal, now we're fixed for every one of them. Come up to the bank. I want you to ride right up with the coin, all of you."
It was an uncommonly queer occasion, but an uncommonly enthusiastic one. Fifty policemen made the escort and cleared the way for the trucks to pull up across the sidewalk, so the porters could lug the kegs of gold into the bank before the very eyes of the rattled depositors.
In an hour the run was broken. But when the four railroad men left the bank, after all sorts of hugging by excited directors, they carried not only the blessings of the officials, but each in his vest pocket a check, every one of which discounted the biggest voucher ever drawn on the West End for a month's pay; though I violate no confidence in stating that Georgie Sinclair's was bigger than any two of the others. And this is how it happens that there hangs in the directors' room of the Sierra Leone National a very creditable portrait of the kid engineer.
Besides paying tariff on the specie, the bank paid for a new coat of paint for the McWilliams Special from caboose to pilot. She was the last train across the Mattaback for two weeks.
The Million-Dollar Freight-Train
It was the second month of the strike, and not a pound of freight had been moved; things looked smoky on the West End.
The general superintendent happened to be with us when the news came.
"You can't handle it, boys," said he, nervously. "What you'd better do is to turn it over to the Columbian Pacific."
Our contracting freight agent on the coast at that time was a fellow so erratic that he was nicknamed Crazyhorse. Right in the midst of the strike Crazyhorse wired that he had secured a big silk shipment for New York. We were paralyzed.
We had no engineers, no firemen, and no motive power to speak of. The strikers were pounding our men, wrecking our trains, and giving us the worst of it generally; that is, when we couldn't give it to them. Why the fellow displayed his activity at that particular juncture still remains a mystery. Perhaps he had a grudge against the road; if so, he took an artful revenge. Everybody on the system with ordinary railroad sense knew that our struggle was to keep clear of freight business until we got rid of our strike. Anything valuable or perishable was especially unwelcome.
But the stuff was docked and loaded and consigned in our care before we knew it. After that, a refusal to carry it would be like hoisting the white flag; and that is something which never yet flew on the West End.
"Turn it over to the Columbian," said the general superintendent; but the general superintendent was not looked up to on our division. He hadn't enough sand. Our head was a fighter, and he gave tone to every man under him.
"No," he thundered, bringing down his fist, "not in a thousand years! We'll move it ourselves. Wire Montgomery, the general manager, that we will take care of it. And wire him to fire Crazyhorse – and to do it right off." And before the silk was turned over to us Crazyhorse was looking for another job. It is the only case on record where a freight hustler was discharged for getting business.
There were twelve car-loads; it was insured for eighty-five thousand dollars a car; you can figure how far the title is wrong, but you never can estimate the worry that stuff gave us. It looked as big as twelve million dollars' worth. In fact, one scrub-car tink, with the glory of the West End at heart, had a fight over the amount with a sceptical hostler. He maintained that the actual money value was a hundred and twenty millions; but I give you the figures just as they went over the wire, and they are right.
What bothered us most was that the strikers had the tip almost as soon as we had it. Having friends on every road in the country, they knew as much about our business as we ourselves. The minute it was announced that we should move the silk they were after us. It was a defiance; a last one. If we could move freight – for we were already moving passengers after a fashion – the strike might be well accounted beaten.
Stewart, the leader of the local contingent, together with his followers, got after me at once.
"You don't show much sense, Reed," said he. "You fellows here are breaking your necks to get things moving, and when this strike's over if our boys ask for your discharge they'll get it. This road can't run without our engineers. We're going to beat you. If you dare try to move this stuff we'll have your scalp when it's over. You'll never get your silk to Zanesville, I'll promise you that. And if you ditch it and make a million dollar loss, you'll get let out anyway, my buck."
"I'm here to obey orders, Stewart," I retorted. What was the use of more? I felt uncomfortable; but we had determined to move the silk: there was nothing more to be said.
When I went over to the round-house and told Neighbor the decision he said never a word, but he looked a great deal. Neighbor's task was to supply the motive power. All that we had, uncrippled, was in the passenger service, because passengers must be moved – must be taken care of first of all. In order to win a strike you must have public opinion on your side.
"Nevertheless, Neighbor," said I, after we had talked a while, "we must move the silk also."
Neighbor studied; then he roared at his foreman.
"Send Bartholomew Mullen here." He spoke with a decision that made me think the business was done. I had never happened, it is true, to hear of Bartholomew Mullen in the department of motive power; but the impression the name gave me was of a monstrous fellow; big as Neighbor, or old man Sankey, or Dad Hamilton.
"I'll put Bartholomew ahead of it," muttered Neighbor, tightly. A boy walked into the office.
"Mr. Garten said you wanted to see me, sir," said he, addressing the master mechanic.
"I do, Bartholomew," responded Neighbor.
The figure in my mind's eye shrunk in a twinkling. Then it occurred to me that it must be this boy's father who was wanted.
"You have been begging for a chance to take out an engine, Bartholomew," began Neighbor, coldly; and I knew it was on.
"Yes, sir."
"You want to get killed, Bartholomew."
Bartholomew smiled, as if the idea was not altogether displeasing.
"How would you like to go pilot to-morrow for McCurdy? You to take the 44 and run as first Seventy-eight. McCurdy will run as second Seventy-eight."
"I know I could run an engine all right," ventured Bartholomew, as if Neighbor were the only one taking the chances in giving him an engine. "I know the track from here to Zanesville. I helped McNeff fire one week."
"Then go home, and go to bed, and be over here at six o'clock to-morrow morning. And sleep sound; for it may be your last chance."
It was plain that the master-mechanic hated to do it; it was simply sheer necessity.
"He's a wiper," mused Neighbor, as Bartholomew walked springily away. "I took him in here sweeping two years ago. He ought to be firing now, but the union held him back; that's why he hates them. He knows more about an engine now than half the lodge. They'd better have let him in," said the master-mechanic, grimly. "He may be the means of breaking their backs yet. If I give him an engine and he runs it, I'll never take him off, union or no union, strike or no strike."
"How old is that boy?" I asked.
"Eighteen; and never a kith or a kin that I know of. Bartholomew Mullen," mused Neighbor, as the slight figure moved across the flat, "big name – small boy. Well, Bartholomew, you'll know something more by to-morrow night about running an engine, or a whole lot less; that's as it happens. If he gets killed, it's your fault, Reed."
He meant that I was calling on him for men when he absolutely couldn't produce them.
"I heard once," he went on, "about a fellow named Bartholomew being mixed up in a massacree. But I take it he must have been an older man than our Bartholomew – nor his other name wasn't Mullen, neither. I disremember just what it was; but it wasn't Mullen."
"Well, don't say I want to get the boy killed, Neighbor," I protested. "I've plenty to answer for. I'm here to run trains – when there are any to run; that's murder enough for me. You needn't send Bartholomew out on my account."
"Give him a slow schedule and I'll give him orders to jump early; that's all we can do. If the strikers don't ditch him, he'll get through, somehow."
It stuck in my crop – the idea of putting the boy on a pilot engine to take all the dangers ahead of that particular train; but I had a good deal else to think of besides. From the minute the silk got into the McCloud yards we posted double guards around. About twelve o'clock that night we held a council of war, which ended in our running the train into the out freight-house. The result was that by morning we had a new train made up. It consisted of fourteen refrigerator-cars loaded with oranges, which had come in mysteriously the night before. It was announced that the silk would be held for the present and the oranges rushed through. Bright and early the refrigerator-train was run down to the ice-houses and twenty men were put to work icing the oranges. At seven o'clock McCurdy pulled in the local passenger with engine 105. Our plan was to cancel the local and run him right out with the oranges. When he got in he reported the 105 had sprung a tire; it knocked our scheme into a cocked hat.
There was a lantern-jawed conference in the round-house.
"What can you do?" asked the superintendent, in desperation.
"There's only one thing I can do. Put Bartholomew Mullen on it with the 44, and put McCurdy to bed for No. 2 to-night," responded Neighbor.
We were running first in, first out; but we took care to always have somebody for 1 and 2 who at least knew an injector from an air-pump.
It was eight o'clock. I looked into the locomotive stalls. The first – the only – man in sight was Bartholomew Mullen. He was very busy polishing the 44. He had good steam on her, and the old tub was wheezing as if she had the asthma. The 44 was old; she was homely; she was rickety; but Bartholomew Mullen wiped her battered nose as deferentially as if she had been a spick-span, spider-driver, tail-truck mail-racer.
She wasn't much – the 44. But in those days Bartholomew wasn't much; and the 44 was Bartholomew's.
"How is she steaming, Bartholomew?" I sung out; he was right in the middle of her. Looking up, he fingered his waste modestly and blushed through a dab of crude petroleum over his eye.
"Hundred and thirty, sir. She's a terrible free steamer, the old 44; I'm all ready to run her out."
"Who's marked up to fire for you, Bartholomew?"
Bartholomew Mullen looked at me fraternally.
"Neighbor couldn't give me anybody but a wiper," said Bartholomew, in a sort of a wouldn't-that-kill-you tone.
The unconscious arrogance of the boy quite knocked me, so soon had honors changed his point of view. Last night a despised wiper; at daybreak, an engineer; and his nose in the air at the idea of taking on a wiper for fireman. And all so innocent.
"Would you object, Bartholomew," I suggested, gently, "to a train-master for fireman?"
"I don't – think so, sir."
"Thank you; because I am going down to Zanesville this morning myself and I thought I'd ride with you. Is it all right?"
"Oh yes, sir – if Neighbor doesn't care."
I smiled. He didn't know who Neighbor took orders from; but he thought, evidently, not from me.
"Then run her down to the oranges, Bartholomew, and couple on, and we'll order ourselves out. See?"
The 44 really looked like a baby-carriage when we got her in front of the refrigerators. However, after the necessary preliminaries, we gave a very sporty toot and pulled out; in a few minutes we were sailing down the valley.
For fifty miles we bobbed along with our cargo of iced silk as easy as old shoes; for I need hardly explain that we had packed the silk into the refrigerators to confuse the strikers. The great risk was that they would try to ditch us.
I was watching the track as a mouse would a cat, looking every minute for trouble. We cleared the gumbo cut west of the Beaver at a pretty good clip, in order to make the grade on the other side. The bridge there is hidden in summer by a grove of hackberrys. I had just pulled open to cool her a bit when I noticed how high the backwater was on each side of the track. Suddenly I felt the fill going soft under the drivers – felt the 44 wobble and slew. Bartholomew shut off hard and threw the air as I sprang to the window. The peaceful little creek ahead looked as angry as the Platte in April water, and the bottoms were a lake.
Somewhere up the valley there had been a cloudburst, for overhead the sun was bright. The Beaver was roaring over its banks and the bridge was out. Bartholomew screamed for brakes; it looked as we were against it – and hard.
A soft track to stop on, a torrent of storm water ahead, and ten hundred thousand dollars' worth of silk behind – not to mention equipment.
I yelled at Bartholomew and motioned for him to jump; my conscience is clear on that point. The 44 was stumbling along, trying, like a drunken man, to hang to the rotten track.
"Bartholomew!" I yelled; but he was head out and looking back at his train, while he jerked frantically at the air lever. I understood: the air wouldn't work; it never will on those old tubs when you need it. The sweat pushed out on me. I was thinking of how much the silk would bring us after a bath in the Beaver. Bartholomew stuck to his levers like a man in a signal-tower, but every second brought us closer to open water. Watching him, intent only on saving his first train – heedless of saving his life – I was really a bit ashamed to jump. While I hesitated, he somehow got the brakes to set; the old 44 bucked like a bronco.
It wasn't too soon. She checked her train nobly at the last, but I saw nothing could keep her from the drink. I caught Bartholomew a terrific slap and again I yelled; then, turning to the gangway, I dropped into the soft mud on my side. The 44 hung low, and it was easy lighting.
Bartholomew sprang from his seat a second later, but his blouse caught in the teeth of the quadrant. He stooped quick as thought, and peeled the thing over his head. But then he was caught with his hands in the wristbands, and the ponies of 44 tipped over the broken abutment.
Pull as he would, he couldn't get free. The pilot dipped into the torrent slowly; but, losing her balance, the 44 kicked her heels into the air like lightning, and shot with a frightened wheeze plump into the creek, dragging her engineer after her.
The head car stopped on the brink. Running across the track, I looked for Bartholomew. He wasn't there; I knew he must have gone down with his engine.
Throwing off my gloves, I dove just as I stood, close to the tender, which hung half submerged. I am a good bit of a fish under water, but no self-respecting fish would be caught in that yellow mud. I realized, too, the instant I struck the water that I should have dived on the up-stream side. The current took me away whirling; when I came up for air I was fifty feet below the pier. I felt it was all up with Bartholomew as I scrambled out; but to my amazement, as I shook my eyes open, the train crew were running forward, and there stood Bartholomew on the track above me looking at the refrigerators. When I got to him he explained to me how he was dragged in and had to tear the sleeves out of his blouse under water to get free.
The surprise is, how little fuss men make about such things when they are busy. It took only five minutes for the conductor to hunt up a coil of wire and a sounder for me, and by the time he got forward with it Bartholomew was half-way up a telegraph-pole to help me cut in on a live wire. Fast as I could I rigged a pony, and began calling the McCloud dispatcher. It was a rocky send, but after no end of pounding I got him, and gave orders for the wrecking-gang and for one more of Neighbor's rapidly decreasing supply of locomotives.
Bartholomew, sitting on a strip of fence which still rose above water, looked forlorn. To lose the first engine he ever handled, in the Beaver, was tough, and he was evidently speculating on his chances of ever getting another. If there weren't tears in his eyes, there was storm water certainly. But after the relief-engine had pulled what was left of us back six miles to a siding, I made it my first business to explain to Neighbor, nearly beside himself, that Bartholomew was not only not at fault, but that he had actually saved the train by his nerve.
"I'll tell you, Neighbor," I suggested, when we got straightened around, "give us the 109 to go ahead as pilot, and run the stuff around the river division with Foley and the 216."
"What'll you do with No. 6?" growled Neighbor. Six was the local passenger, west.
"Annul it west of McCloud," said I, instantly. "We've got this silk on our hands now, and I'd move it if it tied up every passenger-train on the division. If we can get the infernal stuff through, it will practically beat the strike. If we fail, it will beat the company."
By the time we backed to Newhall Junction, Neighbor had made up his mind my way. Mullen and I climbed into the 109, and Foley with the 216, and none too good a grace, coupled on to the silk, and, flying red signals, we started again for Zanesville over the river division.
Foley was always full of mischief. He had a better engine than ours, anyway, and he took satisfaction the rest of the afternoon in crowding us. Every mile of the way he was on our heels. I was throwing the coal and distinctly remember.
It was after dark when we reached the Beverly Hill, and we took it at a lively pace. The strikers were not on our minds then; it was Foley who bothered.
When the long parallel steel lines of the upper yards spread before us, flashing under the arc-lights, we were away above yard speed. Running a locomotive into one of those big yards is like shooting a rapid in a canoe. There is a bewildering maze of tracks lighted by red and green lamps to be watched the closest. The hazards are multiplied the minute you pass the throat, and a yard wreck is a dreadful tangle: it makes everybody from road-master to flagmen furious, and not even Bartholomew wanted to face an inquiry on a yard wreck. On the other hand, he couldn't afford to be caught by Foley, who was chasing him out of pure caprice.
I saw the boy holding the throttle at a half and fingering the air anxiously as we jumped through the frogs; but the roughest riding on track so far beats the ties as a cushion that when the 109 suddenly stuck her paws through an open switch we bounced against the roof of the cab like footballs. I grabbed a brace with one hand and with the other reached instinctively across to Bartholomew's side to seize the throttle he held. But as I tried to shut him off he jerked it wide open in spite of me, and turned with lightning in his eye.
"No!" he cried, and his voice rang hard. The 109 took the tremendous shove at her back and leaped like a frightened horse. Away we went across the yard, through the cinders, and over the ties. My teeth have never been the same since. I don't belong on an engine, anyway, and since then I have kept off. At the moment I was convinced that the strain had been too much – that Bartholomew was stark crazy. He sat bouncing clear to the roof and clinging to his levers like a lobster.
But his strategy was dawning on me; in fact, he was pounding it into me. Even the shock and scare of leaving the track and tearing up the yard had not driven from Bartholomew's noddle the most important feature of our situation, which was, above everything, to keep out of the way of the silk-train.
