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Updated: May 12, 2025
Ten seconds later the special stood motionless, with its pilot pointing out over the Minkskill bridge. President Vanderveer had not recognized the panting, coal-begrimed, oil-stained young fireman who had so mysteriously boarded his car while it was running at full speed; but Eltje knew his voice.
The two leaders were still abreast; but Rod had obtained the inside position, and if he could keep up the pace the race was his. Eltje Vanderveer's face was pale, and her hands were clinched with the intense excitement of the moment. Was her champion to win after all? Was her bit of blue ribbon to be borne triumphantly to the front? Inch by inch it creeps into a lead.
You see this is his first race, and experience goes a long way in such affairs. Still, he rides well, and it wouldn't surprise me to see him make a good third at the finish." Eltje smiled as she answered, "Perhaps he will finish third; but it would surprise me greatly to see him do so."
It was therefore a great surprise, even to his friends, when, on the very day before the race meeting, he entered his name for the event that was to result in the winning or losing of the Railroad Cup. It would not have been so much of a surprise had anybody known of his conversation, a few weeks before, with Eltje Vanderveer, the railroad president's only daughter.
"I should think, papa, that you would be glad to have anybody on the road who can do such splendid things as Rod can," said Eltje, warmly. "I'm sure if I were president, I'd promote him at once, and make him conductor, or master of something, instead of trying to get rid of him. Why, it's a perfect shame!"
This car had just returned from the extended western trip on which it had started two months before, when Rod was seeking employment on the road. As neither Eltje nor her father had heard a word concerning him in all that time, they now plied him with questions.
She was a few months younger than Rod, and ever since he had jumped into the river to save her pet kitten from drowning, they had been fast friends. So, when in talking of the approaching meeting, Eltje had said, "How I wish you were a racer, and could win our cup, Rod," the boy instantly made up his mind to try for it. He only answered, "Do you?
When he finished his story Eltje exclaimed: "I think it is perfectly splendid, Rod, and if I were only a boy I would do just as you have done! Wouldn't you, papa?" "I am not quite sure that I would, my dear," answered her father, with a smile.
He always had fallen on his feet; and, though this was the worse fix in which he had ever found himself, he had faith that he would come out of it all right somehow. His heart was already so much lighter since he had learned from Dan that some of his friends, and especially Eltje Vanderveer, still believed in him, that his situation did not seem half so desperate as it had an hour before.
Several of them fell to the floor, and Rod was good-naturedly picking them up when he was startled by the sound of a clear, girlish voice that he knew as well as he knew his own, directly behind him. He turned, with a quickly beating heart, and saw Eltje Vanderveer. She was walking between her father and Snyder Appleby.
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