.007 pushed out gingerly, his heart in his headlight, so nervous that the clang of his own bell nearly made him jump the track. Lanterns waved or danced up and down before and behind him; and on every side, six tracks deep, sliding backward and forward, with clashings of couplers and squeals of hand - brakes, were cars more cars than .007 had dreamed of. There were oilcars, and haycars, and stockcars full of lowing beasts, and orecars, and potatocars with stovepipe ends sticking out in the middle; cold storage and refrigerator cars dripping icedwater on the tracks; ventilated fruit and milk cars; flat-cars. with truck wagons full of market-stuff; flatcars loaded with reapers and binders, all red and green and gilt under the sizzling electric lights; flatcars piled high with strong scented hides, pleasant hemlock-plank, or bundles of shingles: flat-cars creaking under the weight of thirtyton castings, angle irons, and rivetboxes for some new bridge; and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of boxcars loaded, locked and chalked. Menhot and angry-crawled among and between and through and under the wheels; men took flying jumps through his cab, when he halted for a moment; men sat on his pilot as he went forward, and on his tender when he went back, and regiments of men ran along the tops of the box-cars beside him, screwing down brakes, waving their arms and saying curious things. He was pushed forward a foot at a time; whirled backwards, his rear-drivers clinking and clanking, a quarter of a mile; jerked into a switch (yard switches are very stubby and unaccommodating), bunted "Tweren't even a decent sized hog," he said. shote."-Page 147. "Twere a into a Red D, or Merchant's Transport car, and, without any hint of the weight behind him, started up again. As soon as his load was fairly on the move, three or four cars would be cut off, .007 would bound forward, only to be held hiccupping on the brake. Then he would wait a few minutes, watching the whirled lanterns; deafened with the clang of the bells, giddy with the vision of the sliding cars, his brakepump panting forty to the minute, his front coupler lying sideways on his cow-catcher, like a tired dog's tongue in his mouth; and the whole of him covered with half burnt coal-dust. ""Tisn't so easy switching with a straight-backed tender," said his little friend of the roundhouse, bustling by at a trot. But you're comin' on pretty fair. 'Ever see a flyin' switch? No? Then look at me." 66 He was in charge of a dozen heavy flat cars. Suddenly he shot away from them with a sharp "I'hut!" a switch opened in the shadows ahead; he turned up it like a rabbit, as it snapped behind him, and the long line of twelve-foot-high lumber jolted on into the arms of a full-sized road loco, who acknowledged the receipt with a dry Break 'em in half, Dutchy!" cried Poney. howl. "My man's reckoned the smartest in the yard at that trick," he said. Gives me cold shivers when another fool tries it, though. That's where my short wheel-base comes in. Like as not you'd have your tender scraped off if you tried it." .007 had no ambitions that way, and said so. “No? Of course this ain't your regular business, but, say, don't you think it's interestin'? Have you seen the yard-master? Well, he's the greatest man on earth, an' don't you forget it. When are we through? Why, kid, it's always like this, day an' night--Sundays and week days. See that thirty-car freight slidin' in four, no, five tracks off? She's all mixed freight, sent here to be sorted out into straight trains. That's why we're cuttin' out the cars one by one." He gave a vigorous push to a west-bound car as he spoke; and started back with a little snort of surprise, for the car was an old friend an M. T. K. box-car. "Jack my drivers, but it's Homeless Kate! Why, Kate, ain't there no gettin' you back to your friends? There's forty chasers out for you from your road, if there's one. Who's holdin' you now?" "Wish I knew," said Homeless Kate. "I belong in Topeka, but I've bin to Cedar Rapids; I've bin to Winnipeg; I've bin to Newport News; I've bin all down the old Atlanta and West Point, an' I've bin to Buffalo. Maybe I'll fetch up at Haverstraw. I've only bin out ten months, but I'm homesick, I'm just achin' homesick." "Try Chicago, Katie," said the switching-loco; and the battered old car lumbered down the track, jolting: "I want to be in Kansas when the sunflowers bloom." "Yard's full o' Homeless Kates an' Wanderin' Willies," he explained to .007. "I knew an old Fitchburg flat-car out seventeen months; an' one of ours was gone fifteen 'fore ever we got track of her. Dunno quite how our men fix it. 'Swap around, I guess. Anyway, I've done my duty. She's on her way to Kansas, via Chicago; but I'll lay my next boilerful she'll be held there to wait consignee's convenience and sent back to us with wheat in the fall." Just then the Pittsburgh Consolidation passed at the head of a dozen cars. "I'm goin' home," he said, proudly. But it was .007 who was backed down to the last six cars, and he nearly blew up with surprise when he found himself pushing them on to a huge ferry-boat. He had never seen deep water before, and shivered as the flat drew away and left his bogies within six inches of the black, shiny tide. After this he was hurried to the freighthouse, where he saw the yard-master, a smallish, white-faced man in shirt, trousers, and slippers, looking down upon a sea of trucks, a mob of bawling truckmen and squadrons of backing, turning, sweating, spark-striking horses. "That's shippers' carts loadin' on to the receivin' trucks," said the small engine, reverently. "But he don't care. He let's 'em cuss. He's the Czar-King-Boss! He says Please' and then they kneel down an' pray. There's three or four strings o' to-day's freight to be pulled before he can attend to them. When he waves his hand that way, things happen." A string of loaded cars slid out down the track, and a string of empties took their place. Bales, crates, boxes, jars; carboys, frails; cases and packages flew into them from the freight-house as though the cars had been magnets and they iron filings. Ki - yah! "Ain't it great ? " shrieked little Poney. A purple-faced truckman shouldered his way to the yard-master and shook his fist under his nose. The yard-master never even looked up from his bundle of freight receipts. He crooked his forefinger slightly and a tall young man, in a red shirt, lounging carelessly beside him, hit the truckman under the left ear, so that he dropped quivering and clucking on a hay-bale. "Eleven, seven, ninety-seven, L. Y. S. ; fourteen ought ought three ; nineteen thirteen ; one one four; seventeen ought twenty-one M. B., and the ten west bound. All straight except the two last. Cut 'em off at the junction. An' that's all right. Pull that string." The yard-master, with mild blue eyes, looked out over the howling truckmen at the waters in the moonlight beyond, and hummed : All things bright and beautiful, .007 moved out the cars to deliver them to the regular road - engine. He had never felt quite so limp in his life before. "Curious, ain't it?" said Poney, puffing on the next track. "You an' me, if we got that man under our bumpers, we'd work him into red waste and not know what we'd done, but-up there-with the steam hummin' in his boiler that awful quiet way. י. "I know," said .007. "Makes me feel as if I'd dropped my fire, an' was getting cold. He is the greatest man on earth." They were at the far north end of the yard, now, under a switch-tower, and looking down on the four-track way of the main traffic. The Boston Compound was to haul .007's string to some far-away northern junction over an indifferent roadbed; and she mourned aloud for the ninetysix pound rails of the B. & A. "You're young, you're young," she coughed. "You don't realize your responsibilities." 'Yes, he does," said Poney, sharply. "But he don't lie down under 'em." Then, with a side-spurt of steam, exactly like a tough spitting, "There ain't more than fifteen thousand dollars worth o' freight behind her anyway, and she carries on as if 'twere a hundred thousand-same as the Mogul's. Excuse me, madam, but you've the track She's stuck on a deadcentre again-bein' specially designed not to." The Compound crawled across the tracks on a long slant, groaning horribly at each switch; and moving like a cow in a snowdrift. There was a little pause along the yard after her tail-lights had disappeared; switches locked crisply and everyone seemed to be waiting. Now, I'll show you something worth," said Poney. "When the Purple Emperor ain't on time, it's about time to amend the constitution. The first stroke of twelve is "Boom!" went the clock in the big yard-tower, and far away .007 heard a full, vibrating Yah! Yah! Yah! A head light twinkled on the horizon like a star; grew an overpowering bla e and whooped up the humming track to the roaring music of a happy giant's song: The last defiant "yah! yah!" was delivered a mile and a half beyond the passenger depot, but .007 had caught one glimpse of the superb six-wheel-coupled racing locomotive who hauled the pride and glory of the road, the gilt-edged Purple Emperor, the millionaires' south-bound express, laying the miles over his shoulder as a man peels a shaving from a soft board. The rest was a blur of maroon enamel, a bar of white light from the electrics in the cars, and a flicker of nickel-plated handrail on the rear platform. "Ooh!" said .007. 66 Seventy-five an hour these five miles. Baths, I've heard; barber's shop, I know, because I've seen the coons; and a library and the rest to match. Yes, sir, seventy-five an hour! But he'll talk to you in the round-house just the same as I would. And I-cuss my wheel-base !— I'd kick clean off the track at half his gait. He's the Master of our Lodge. Cleans up in our house. I'll introdooce you some day. He's worth knowin'! There ain't many can sing that song, either." .007 was too full to answer. He did not hear a raging of telephone-bells in the switch-tower, nor the man, as he leaned out and called to .007's engineer, "Got any steam?" "Nough to run her a hundred mile out 'o this, if I could," said the engineer, who belonged to the open road and hated switching. "Then get. The Flying Freight's ditched forty mile out, with fifty rods o' track ploughed up. No; no one's hurt, but both tracks are blocked. Lucky the wreckin' car an' derrick are this end of the yard. Crew'll be along in a minute. Hurry! You've the track." "Well, I could jest kick my little sawedoff self," said Poney, as .007 was backed, with a bang, on to a grim and grimy car like a caboose, but full of tools-a flat-car and a derrick behind it. "Some folks are one thing and some are another; but you're in luck, kid. They push a wreck ing-car. Now, don't get rattled. Your wheel-base will keep you on the track, and there ain't any curves worth mentionin'. Oh, say! Comanche told me there's one section o' saw-edged track that's liable to jump ye a little. Fifteen an' a half out, after the grade at Jackson's crossin'. You'll know it by a farm-house an' a windmill and five maples in the door-yard. Wind-mill's west o' the maples, an' there's an eighty-foot iron bridge in the middle o' the section with no guard-rails. See you later. Luck!” Before he knew well what had happened, .007 was flying up the track into the wide dark world. Then fears of the night beset him. He remembered all he had ever heard of landslides, rain-piled bowlders, blown trees, and strayed cattle; all that the Boston Compound had ever said of responsibility and a great deal more that came out of his own head. With a very quavering voice he whistled for his first grade-crossing (an event in the life of a locomotive) and his nerves were in no way restored by the sight of a frantic horse and a white-faced man in a buggy less than a yard from his right shoulder. Then he was sure he would jump the track; felt his flanges mounting the rail at every curve; knew that his first grade would make him lie down even as Comanche had done at the Newtons. He whirled down the grade to Jackson's crossing, saw the wind-mill west of the maples, felt the badly laid rails spring under him, and sweated big drops all over his boiler. At each jarring bump he believed an axle had smashed and he took the eighty-foot bridge without the guard-rail, like a hunted cat on the top of a fence. Then a wet leaf stuck against the glass of his headlight and threw a flying shadow on the track, so that he thought it was some little dancing animal that would feel soft if he ran over it; and anything soft underfoot frightens a locomotive as it does an elephant. But the men behind seemed quite calm. The wrecking crew were climbing carelessly from the caboose to the tender-even jesting with the engineer, for he heard a shuffling of feet among his coal and the snatch of a song, something like this: Oh the "Empire State must learn to wait, And the "Cannon-ball" go hang! 'Het a bit, ain't she?" the fireman ventured to suggest to the engineer. "She'll hold for all we want of her. We're most there. Guess you chaps back had better climb into your car," said the engineer, with his hand lightly on the brake lever. "I've seen men snapped off” But the crew fled back with laughter. They had no wish to be jerked on to the track. The engineer half turned his wrist and .007 found his drivers pinned firm. "Now it's come!" said .007, as he yelled aloud, and slid like a sleigh. For the moment he fancied he would jerk bodily from off his underpinning. "That must be the emergency-stop, Poney talked about," he gasped, as soon as he could think. "Hot box-emergency stop. They both hurt; but now I can talk about 'em in the round-house.” He was halted a few feet in the rear of what doctors would call a compound-comminuted car. His engineer was kneeling down among his drivers, but he did not call .007 his "Arab steed," or cry over him as the engineers did in the newspapers. He just bad-worded .007 and pulled yards of charred cotton waste from .007's axles and hoped he might some day catch the idiot who had packed it. Nobody else attended to him, for Evans, the Mogul's engineer, a little cut about the head, but very angry, was exhibiting, by lantern light, the mangled corpse of a slim blue pig. ""Tweren't even a decent sized hog,” he said. "Twere a shote." "Dangerousest beasts, they are," said one of the crew. "Get under the pilot an' sort o' twiddle ye off the track, don't they?" "Don't they?" roared Evans, who was |