While the plucky fireman crept along the top of the freight-cars to keep from being blown bodily through the air, Sinclair, with every resource that brain and nerve and power could exert, was struggling to overcome the terrible headway of pursuer and pursued, driving now frightfully into the beaming head of No. 1.

With the Johnson bar over and the drivers dancing a gallop backward; with the sand striking fire, and the rails burning under it; with the old Sky-Sc.r.a.per shivering again in a terrific struggle, and Burns twisting the heads off the brake-rods; with every trick of old Sinclair's cunning, and his boy duplicating every one of them in the cab of No. 1--still they came together. It was too fearful a momentum to overcome, when minutes mean miles and tons are reckoned by thousands.

They came together; but instead of an appalling wreck--destruction and death--it was only a b.u.mp. No. 1 had the speed when they met; and it was a car of coal dumped a bit sudden and a nose on Georgie's engine like a full-back's after a centre rush. The pilot doubled back into the ponies, and the headlight was scoured with nut, pea, and slack; but the stack was hardly bruised.

The minute they struck, Georgie Sinclair, making fast, and, leaping from his cab, ran forward in the dark, panting with rage and excitement.

Burns, torch in hand, was himself just jumping down to get forward. His face wore its usual grin, even when Georgie a.s.sailed him with a torrent of abuse.

"What do you mean, you red-headed lubber?" he shouted, with much the lungs of his father. "What are you doing switching coal here on the main line?"

In fact, Georgie called the astonished fireman everything he could think of, until his father, who was blundering forward on his side of the engine, hearing the voice, turned, and ran around behind the tender to take a hand himself.

"Mean?" he roared above the blow of his safety. "Mean?" he bellowed in the teeth of the wind. "Mean? Why, you impudent, empty-headed, ungrateful rapscallion, what do you mean coming around here to abuse a man that's saved you and your train from the sc.r.a.p?"

And big d.i.c.k Burns, standing by with his torch, burst into an Irish laugh, fairly doubled up before the nonplussed boy, and listened with great relish to the excited father and excited son. It was not hard to understand Georgie's amazement and anger at finding Soda-Water Sal behind three cars of coal half-way between stations on the main line and on his time--and that the fastest time on the division. But what amused Burns most was to see the imperturbable old Dad pitching into his boy with as much spirit as the young man himself showed.

It was because both men were scared out of their wits; scared over their narrow escape from a frightful wreck; from having each killed the other, maybe--the son the father, and the father the son.

For brave men do get scared; don't believe anything else. But between the fright of a coward and the fright of a brave man there is this difference: the coward's scare is apparent before the danger, that of the brave man after it has pa.s.sed; and Burns laughed with a tremendous mirth, "at th' two o' thim a-jawin'," as he expressed it.

No man on the West End could turn on his pins quicker than Georgie Sinclair, though, if his hastiness misled him. When it all came clear he climbed into the old cab--the cab he himself had once gone against death in--and with stumbling words tried to thank the tall Irishman, who still laughed in the excitement of having won.

And when Neighbor next day, thoughtful and taciturn, heard it all, he very carefully looked Soda-Water Sal all over again.

"Dad," said he, when the boys got through telling it for the last time, "she's a better machine than I thought she was."

"There isn't a better pulling your coaches," maintained Dad Sinclair, stoutly.

"I'll put her on the main line, Dad, and give you the 168 for the cut-off. Hm?"

"The 168 will suit me, Neighbor; any old tub--eh, Foley?" said Dad, turning to the cheeky engineer, who had come up in time to hear most of the talk. The old fellow had not forgotten Foley's sneer at Soda-Water Sal when he rechristened her. But Foley, too, had changed his mind, and was ready to give in.

"That's quite right, Dad," he acknowledged. "You can get more out of any old tub on the division than the rest of us fellows can get out of a Baldwin consolidated. I mean it, too. It's the best thing I ever heard of. What are you going to do for Burns, Neighbor?" asked Foley, with his usual a.s.surance.

"I was thinking I would give him Soda-Water Sal, and put him on the right side of the cab for a freight run. I reckon he earned it last night."

In a few minutes Foley started off to hunt up Burns.

"See here, Irish," said he, in his off-hand way, "next time you catch a string of runaways just remember to climb up the ladder and set your brakes before you couple; it will save a good deal of wear and tear on the pilot-bar--see? I hear you're going to get a run; don't fall out the window when you get over on the right."

And that's how Burns was made an engineer, and how Soda-Water Sal was rescued from the disgrace of running on the trolley.

The McWilliams Special

It belongs to the Stories That Never Were Told, this of the McWilliams Special. But it happened years ago, and for that matter McWilliams is dead. It wasn't grief that killed him, either; though at one time his grief came uncommonly near killing us.

It is an odd sort of a yarn, too; because one part of it never got to headquarters, and another part of it never got from headquarters.

How, for instance, the mysterious car was ever started from Chicago on such a delirious schedule, how many men in the service know that even yet?

How, for another instance, Sinclair and Francis took the ratty old car reeling into Denver with the gla.s.s shrivelled, the paint blistered, the hose burned, and a tire sprung on one of the Five-Nine's drivers--how many headquarters slaves know that?

Our end of the story never went in at all. Never went in because it was not deemed--well, essential to the getting up of the annual report. We could have raised their hair; they could have raised our salaries; but they didn't; we didn't.

In telling this story I would not be misunderstood; ours is not the only line between Chicago and Denver: there are others, I admit it. But there is only one line (all the same) that could have taken the McWilliams Special, as we did, out of Chicago at four in the evening and put it in Denver long before noon the next day.

A communication came from a great La Salle Street banker to the president of our road. Next, the second vice-president heard of it; but in this way:

"Why have you turned down Peter McWilliams's request for a special to Denver this afternoon?" asked the president.

"He wants too much," came back over the private wire. "We can't do it."

After satisfying himself on this point the president called up La Salle Street.

"Our folks say, Mr. McWilliams, we simply can't do it."

"You must do it."

"When will the car be ready?"

"At three o'clock."

"When must it be in Denver?"

"Ten o'clock to-morrow morning."

The president nearly jumped the wire.

"McWilliams, you're crazy. What on earth do you mean?"

The talk came back so low that the wires hardly caught it. There were occasional outbursts such as, "situation is extremely critical," "grave danger," "acute distress," "must help me out."

But none of this would ever have moved the president had not Peter McWilliams been a bigger man than most corporations; and a personal request from Peter, if he stuck for it, could hardly be refused; and for this he most decidedly stuck.

"I tell you it will turn us upside-down," stormed the president.

"Do you recollect," asked Peter McWilliams, "when your infernal old pot of a road was busted eight years ago--you were turned inside out then, weren't you? and hung up to dry, weren't you?"

The president did recollect; he could not decently help recollecting.

And he recollected how, about that same time, Peter McWilliams had one week taken up for him a matter of two millions floating, with a personal check; and carried it eighteen months without security, when money could not be had in Wall Street on government bonds.

Do you--that is, have you heretofore supposed that a railroad belongs to the stockholders? Not so; it belongs to men like Mr. McWilliams, who own it when they need it. At other times they let the stockholders carry it--until they want it again.

"We'll do what we can, Peter," replied the president, desperately amiable. "Good-bye."