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"Did he say he came in on Two-three?" he asked. "He did." "Well, that's odd devilish odd! I was on that train, and I rambled it from one end to the other which is a bad habit I have when I'm trying to kill travel-time. Gridley isn't a man to be easily overlooked. Reckon he was riding on the brake-beams? He was dirty enough to make the guess good.
This is due in a large measure to the fact that it is a division terminal, and at all division terminals train crews must reckon with that element in our leisure class which declines to pay railroad fare and elects to travel on brake-beams rather than in Pullman sleepers.
The listless applause that had greeted them in the parade showed that. Then, with a howl, half-sullen, half-ferocious, Vienna trundled old Niagara to the reservoir, stuck her intake pipe deep in the water, and manned her brake-beams. To the surprise of the onlookers her regular foreman took his station with the rest of the crew. Uncle Brad Trufant, foreman emeritus, took command.
I had made the coupling without a scratch to myself, and it wasn't long before I became bolder, and jumped on and off of the foot-boards and brake-beams like any other lunatic. That all four of us were not killed is nothing short of miracle. By a dint of hard work we succeeded in getting a train made up for Chaminade, and all that was now needed was an engine and crew.
Men were running out of the burning house, throwing armfuls of goods right and left. The "Hecla" was a-straddle of the well, and rows of men were tossing at her brake-beams. "Give her tar, give her tar!" yelled the man behind, craning his thin neck. Todd lashed at the horse and sent him running down the slope.
That night, in the holds of many vessels and on the brake-beams of many trains pulling away from the city, emissaries who once were slaves of the Automaton were fleeing the city in every direction. When Zita and her father arrived at Brent Rock, Locke was still working at his new gas-gun. Eva was in the library, but when she heard the voices in the hallway she ran to welcome them.
"Hecla" was coming! Four horses were dragging it, and two-score men were howling along with it, some riding, but the most of them clinging to the brake-beams and slamming along through the dust on foot. A man, perched beside the driver, was bellowing something through a trumpet that sounded like: "Goff-off-errow, goff-off-errow, goff-off-errow!"
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