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Beside the few chance visitors I have named there were city friends occasionally, figures quite unknown to the village, who came preceded by the steam-shriek of the locomotive, were dropped at the gate-posts, and were seen no more. The owner was as much a vague name to me as to any one.
The latter thereupon made a model locomotive, but entertained doubts as to its safety. Oliver Evans, of Philadelphia, patented a "steam waggon" in 1782. William Murdoch, the friend and assistant of Watt, made a model in 1787 which drew a small waggon round a room in his house in Cornwall.
Whirling on his hind legs, and again flinging himself desperately on the ground, only to fail, come to his feet with the clinging burden once more maddeningly in place, and go again through a maze of fence-rowing and sun-fishing until suddenly he straightened out and bolted down the slope like a runaway locomotive on a downgrade.
The locomotive siren emitted a blast that almost deafened Ned. The monster ground to a stop. Tom swung himself half out of the cab window beside the controller. "Who's that?" he yelled. Then he saw Ned below him. "Who is that fellow?" "No friend of yours, Tom, I believe," returned his financial manager in a shaking voice. "Where's Rad? Rad!" Tom shouted at the top of his voice.
And in the locomotive shops I found women working on drill-press machines with ease and skill. Just as I came up to one operator, she lifted an engine truck-box to the table and started drilling out the studs. She had been at the work only a month, and explained her skill by the information that she was Swedish, and had always worked with her husband in their auto-repair shop.
A man sprang to the footboard of the freed locomotive, jerked the throttle open, stayed at the levers long enough to hook up to the most effective cut-off for speed, and jumped for his life. Dawson was deliberate, but not slow-witted.
Ladies were his favorite pursuit, if not his prey. But Elder Smith's wife proved unapproachable by language of tongue or eye. Talking to her was like talking to a lay figure with vocal and locomotive organs.
What a fury of transitions, of motives, of melodies! You rest peacefully on the lilies and the roses, and suddenly a thought a terrible, splendid, irresistible thought swoops down upon you like a locomotive, and bathes you in hot steam and deafens you with its whistle. Read Maupassant, dear girl; I insist on it." Lysevitch waved his arms and paced from corner to corner in violent excitement.
The rivals, morbidly suspicious of each other, taciturn to the point of unfriendliness, had indeed chartered a locomotive not jointly by intention, but because of provoking necessity. There was but one engine to be had. It is safe to say that while they travelled many sore and turbulent miles in close proximity to each other, neither felt called upon to offer or to demand an explanation.
In a short time the elephants sounded, and without more ado the panther forsook its cover and dashed straight at Thompson, seizing this large elephant by the shoulder joint, and hanging on like a bull-dog with teeth and claws. Away went Thompson through the tangled rose-bushes, tearing along like a locomotive!
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