United States or Turks and Caicos Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Through the window Irene saw a stretch of wheat-fields, a red- clay embankment, a wrecking-car, a group of earth-stained laborers leaning on their picks and shovels, and something lying beneath a sheet on bare ground. Hastily opening her purse, Irene took out a roll of bills amounting to a hundred dollars and pressed it into the woman's hand. "Keep it," she said, huskily.
"Now I work for M'sieur Cardigan; so, M'sieur, I will have zee switchengine weeth two flat-cars and zee wrecking-car. Doze dam trash on zee crossing M'sieur Cardigan does not like, and by gar, I take heem away. You onderstand, M'sieur? I am Jules Rondeau, and I work for M'sieur Cardigan. La la, M'sieur!" The great hand closed over Sexton's collar. "Not zee pistol no, not for Jules Rondeau."
He waited not for a confirmation from his new master but proceeded to direct operations like the born driver and leader of men that he was. With his late employer's gear he fastened to the old castings and the boiler, lifted them with the derrick on the wrecking-car, and swung them up and around onto the flat-cars. By the middle of the afternoon the crossing was once more clear.
The crew had been used to receiving orders from Rondeau, and moreover they were not aware of his recent action; hence at his command they ran the switch-engine out of the roundhouse, coupled up the two flat-cars and the wrecking-car, and backed down to the crossing. Upon arrival, Jules Rondeau leaned out of the cab window and hailed Bryce. "M'sieur," he said, "do not bozzer to make zee derrick.
I have here zee wrecking-car all you need; pretty soon we lift him off zee crossing, I tell you, eh, M'sieur Cardigan?" Bryce stepped over to the switch-engine and looked up at his late enemy. "By whose orders is this train here?" he queried. "Mine," Rondeau answered. "M'sieur Sexton I have tie like one leetle pig and lock her in her office. I work now for M'sieur." And he did.
The passengers had been removed. A wrecking-car had come up from down the line. A telegrapher was setting up a little instrument on a box by the roadside. A lineman was climbing a pole to connect his wire. A track boss with a torch and a crew of men were coming up from an examination of the line littered with its wreck. I hardly know what happened in the next few minutes.
By utilizing the steel derrick on the company's wrecking-car, this task was completed by noon, and after luncheon the mogul backed up the main line past the switch into the Laguna Grande yards; whereupon the switch-engine kicked the two flat-cars and the wrecking-car out of the yard and down to the crossing, where the obstructions were promptly unloaded.
"If you will take a bit of help from an outsider, I think we needn't wait for the wrecking-car," he said to the dubious trainmen. "It's bad, but not so bad as it looks. What do you say?" Now, as everyone knows, it is not in the nature of operative railway men to brook interference even of the helpful sort.
"Some folks are one thing, and some are another; but you're in luck, kid. They push a wrecking-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' sawedged track that's liable to jounce ye a little.
"Somebody run over can't get them out," he said, as they swung on board the wrecking-car and started.