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Updated: May 21, 2025
Then he pushed the lever home, and it slid into place as if there had never been any impediment. The steam was shut off, but the lights of Pointsville flashed past them with the empty side-track on the left, and they were now flying along the single line of rails with the headlight of No. 6 growing brighter and brighter in front of them.
A telegraph office with a baggage-room attached occupied the middle of the low platform, a tall water-tank stood at the end, and three grain elevators towered high above a neighboring side-track. Facing the track, stood a row of wooden buildings varying in size and style: they included a double-storied hotel with a veranda in front of it, and several untidy shacks.
Run a few hundred yards up beyond the station, Knight. I'll jump off and have the switch thrown, and then you can back in on the side-track." They coasted slowly into Kingston, and passed the station. Andrews jumped off. Tom, hanging out from the cab, saw him talking with the switchman. The latter threw the switch and waved. "All right," said Tom. "Let her go back."
All went well enough early in the night, but, towards morning, whiskey had been smuggled aboard in sufficient quantity to start the devil of mischief, and finally, at Bluff Siding, just before reaching the Missouri bridge, overpowering the unarmed and perhaps sympathetic sentries at the car doors, and defying the orders of their sergeants, the half-drunken crowd swarmed out and made a swoop upon a saloon across the side-track.
When you're through with a car, side-track it and yank out the coupling. Like all philosophies, this one has its flaw. Once in a while your soul looks out of the window and sees some long-forgotten, side-tracked car beckoning to be coupled on again. If you try to go back and pick it up, you're done. Never look back, boy; never look back. Live ahead even if you're only living a compensation."
Then, while the whistle shrieked, ballast cars on a side-track and tall iron frameworks slipped by, and they ran out again into the silent waste. Prescott was conscious of a continuous jolting which shook him to and fro; he thought he heard a confused altercation among his companions at the end of the car, and the clang of wheels and the shaking rails rang in measured cadence in his ears.
Kurt heard rumbling in the distance. But they went beyond the station, across the track, and turned to the right. Kurt was soft-footed and keen-eyed. He just kept the dim shadows in range. They were heading for some freight-cars that stood upon a side-track. The dark figures disappeared behind them. Then one figure reappeared, coming back. Kurt crouched low.
The Doctor read his sermon with a pleasant, paternal interest: it was well argued from his premises. Here and there he dashed his pen through a harsh expression. Now and then he added an explanation or qualified a broad statement. But his mind was on the logical side-track, and he followed the chain of reasoning without fairly perceiving where it would lead him, if he carried it into real life.
The station agent was on the platform, waving his arms and yelling. Ahead of them, the leading freight car lurched as it struck the bend of the side-track; then the Texas rattled over the switch and out of danger with two yards to spare. Behind them, the freight car struck the closed switch, jumped it, ran off the track and turned over.
Gordonia, of the single side-track, had grown into a small iron town, with the Chiawassee plant flanking a good half-mile of the railway; with a cindery street or two, and a scummy wave of operatives' cottages and laborers' shacks spreading up the hillsides which were stripped bare of their trees and undergrowth.
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