won't get it," said Neighbor, roughly. "Go back on your run. If McNeal don't behave, report him to me, and he'll get his time."
It was a favorite trick of Neighbor's. Whenever the old fireman got to "bucking" about his engineer, the master-mechanic threatened to discharge the engineer. That settled it; Dad Hamilton wouldn't for the world be the cause of throwing another man out of a job, no matter how little he liked him.
The old fellow went back to work mollified; but it was evident that he and McNeal didn't half get on together. The boy was not much of a talker; yet he did his work well; and Neighbor said, next to Foley, he was the best man we had.
"What's the reason Hamilton and McNeal can't hit it off, Foley?" I asked one night.
"They'll get along all right after a while," predicted Foley. "You know the old man's stubborn as a dun mule, ain't he? The injectors bother Georgie some; they did me. He'll get used to things. But Dad thinks he's green – that's what's the matter. The kid is high-spirited, and seeing the old man's kind of got it in for him he won't ask him anything. Dad's sore about that, too. Georgie won't knuckle to anybody that don't treat him right."
"You'd better tell McNeal to humor the old crank," I suggested; and I believe Foley did so, but it didn't do any good. Sometimes those things have to work themselves out without outside help. In the end this thing did, but in a way none of us looked for.
About a week later Foley came into the office one morning very much excited.
"Did you hear about the boy's getting pounded last night – Georgie McNeal? It's a shame the way these fellows act. Three of the strikers piled on him while he was going into the post-office, and thumped the life out of him. The cowardly hounds, to jump on a man's back that way!"
"Foley," said I, "that's the first time they've tackled one of Dad Hamilton's engineers."
"They'd never have done it if they thought there was any danger of Dad's getting after them. They know he doesn't like the boy."
"It's an outrage; but we can't do anything. You know that. Tell McNeal to keep away from the post-office. We'll get his mail for him."
"I told him that this morning. He's in bed, and looks pretty hard. But he won't dodge those fellows. He claims it's a free country," grinned Foley. "But I told him he'd get over that idea if he stuck out this trouble."
It was three days before McNeal was able to report for work, though he received full time just the same. Even then he wasn't fit for duty, but he begged Neighbor for his run until he got it. The strikers were jubilant while the boy was laid up; but just what Dad thought no one could find out. I wanted to tell the old growler what I thought of him, but Foley said it wouldn't do any good, and might do harm, so I held my peace.
One might have thought that the injustice and brutality of the thing would have roused him; but men who have repressed themselves till they are gray-headed don't rise in a hurry to resent a wrong. Dad kept as mute as the Sphinx. When McNeal was ready to go out the old fireman had the 244 shining; but if the pale face of his engineer had any effect on him, he kept it to himself.
As they rattled down the line with a long stock-train that night neither of them referred to the break in their run. Coming back next night the same silence hung over the cab. The only words that passed over the boiler-head were "strickly business," as Dad would say.
At Oxford they were laid out by a Pullman special. It was three o'clock in the morning and raining hard. Under such circumstances an hour seems all night. At last Dad himself broke the unsupportable silence.
"He'd have waited a good bit longer if he had waited for me to talk," said the boy, telling Foley afterwards.
"Heard you got licked," growled Dad, after tinkering with the fire for the twentieth time.
"I didn't get licked," retorted Georgie; "I got clubbed. I never had a chance to fight."
"These fellows hate to see a boy come out and take a man's job. Can't blame 'em much, neither."
"Whose job did I take?" demanded Georgie, angrily. "Was any one of those cowards that jumped on me in the dark looking for work on this engine?"
There was nothing to say to that. Dad kept still.
"You talk about men," continued the young fellow. "If I am not more of a man than to slug a fellow from behind, the way they slugged me, I'll get off this engine and stay off. If that's what you call men out here I don't want to be a man. I'll go back to Pennsylvania."
"Why didn't you stay there?" growled Dad.
"Why didn't you?"
Without attempting to return the shot, Dad pulled nervously at the chain.
"If I hadn't been fool enough to go out on a strike I might have been running there yet," continued Georgie.
"Ought to have kept away from the post-office," grumbled Dad, after a pause.
"I get a letter twice a week that I think more of than I do of this whole road, and I propose to go to the post-office and get it without asking anybody's permission."
"They'll pound you again."
Georgie looked out into the storm. "Well, why shouldn't they? I've got no friends."
"Got a girl back in Pennsylvania?"
"Yes, I've got a girl there," replied the boy, as the rain tore at the cab window. "I've had a girl there a good while. She's gray-headed and sixty years old – that's my girl – and if she can write letters to me, I can get them out of the post-office without a guardian."
"There she comes," said Dad, as the headlight of the Pullman special shone faint ahead through the mist.
"I'm mighty glad of it," said Georgie, looking at his watch. "Give me steam now, Dad, and I'll get you home in time for a nap before breakfast."
A minute later the special shot over the switch, and the young runner, crowding the pistons a bit, started off the siding. When Dad, looking back for the hind-end brakeman to lock the switch and swing on, called all clear, Georgie pulled her out another notch, and the long train slowly gathered headway up the slippery track.
As the speed increased the young man and the old relapsed into their usual silence. The 244 was always a free steamer, but Georgie put her through her paces without any apology, and it took lots of coal to square the account.
In a few minutes they were pounding along up through the Narrows. The track there follows the high bench between the bluffs, which sheer up on one side, and the river-bed, thirty feet below the grade, on the other.
It is not an inviting stretch at any time with a big string of gondolas behind. But on a wet night it is the last place on the division where an engineer would want a side-rod to go wrong; and just there and then Georgie's rod went very wrong indeed.
Half-way between centres the big steel bar on his side, dipping then so fast you couldn't have seen it even in daylight, snapped like a stick of licorice. The hind-end ripped up into the cab like the nose of a sword-fish, tearing and smashing with appalling force and fury.
Georgie McNeal's seat burst under him as if a stick of giant-powder had exploded. He was jammed against the cab roof like a link-pin and fell sprawling, while the monster steel flail threshed and tore through the cab with every lightning revolution of the great driver from which it swung.
It
