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Updated: July 10, 2025
"This" it was for him to make known, yet in so doing he might betray himself and the purpose of his coming, and so undo every hope and plan he had made. There was no Toomey to help him now no devoted ex-trooper and friend to back him. Engineer, fireman, conductor, and brakemen, every man of the crew had to be at his post as the freight panted away up the winding mountain road.
The brakemen out on their box-cars, the miners up in their diggings, the lonely homesteaders in the sand hills of Yucca and Kit Carson Counties, begin to think of Denver, muffled in snow, full of food and drink and good cheer, and to yearn for her with that admiration which makes her, more than other American cities, an object of sentiment.
A camp of tramps hurried up from nowhere, and generously volunteered to help the crew. So the brakemen, armed with coupler-pins, walked up and down on one side, and the freight-conductor and the fireman patrolled the other with their hands in their hip-pockets.
At night, when heavily loaded coal trains rumbled past, the brakemen heaved large chunks of coal over the fence. The widow awoke whenever a train passed. When one of the brakemen threw a chunk of coal he shouted and his voice could be heard above the rumble of the coal cars. "That's for Mike," he cried.
He is responsible for their comfort also, and must be an animated information bureau, loaded with facts about every conceivable thing connected with travel. The brakemen are his assistants, and stay with him to the end of the division; the engineer and fireman, with their engine, are cut off at the end of their division also.
Carter had picked up the cans and had gone forward to have the milk thawed out at the boiler fire. Some of the brakemen had cleared away the snow by now and there was an open passage to the outside world. The keen kind blew in, and the pale, wintry sunshine lighted the space between the baggage cars. Mr. Snubbins grinned in his friendly way at the two girls.
Dave swung down from the caboose and looked round in the dim light for the stockyards engine that was to pick up his cars and run them to the unloading pens. He moved forward through the mud, searching the semi-darkness for the switch engine. It was nowhere to be seen. He returned to the caboose. The conductor and brakemen were just leaving. "My engine's not here.
Seeing that Ben, dull, heavy, and uncomprehending, was staring stupidly about him, not knowing what to do; seeing that even Cullin was melting at sight of the grief in Shiner's face; seeing the sympathy in the eyes of the bluecoats and the shame in those of the brakemen, Toomey turned loose on his adversary, and Toomey, when fairly started, could talk to the point.
No matter that the youthful editor's "Associated Press" consisted of baggage men and brakemen, or that the literary matter contributed to the Grand Trunk Herald was chiefly railway gossip, with some general information of interest to passengers, the little three-cent sheet became very popular.
It was like a general entering into elaborate preparations for a battle. The two soldiers who were to act as engineers, those who were to play brakemen, and the man who was to be fireman, had their work carefully mapped out for them.
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