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In such a chaotic state of affairs, track and train troubles were the rule rather than the exception, and it was a Red Butte Western boast that the fire was never drawn under the wrecking-train engine.
Lidgerwood was recalling the last of these disappearances when the second wrecking-train, having backed to the nearest siding to admit of a reversal of its make-up order and the placing of the crane in the lead, came up to go into action. McCloskey shaded his eyes from the sun's glare and looked down the line. "Hello!" he exclaimed. "Got a new wrecking-boss?" The superintendent nodded.
"We'll hold the siding until Dawson shows up with the wrecking-train," was the superintendent's reply, "He ought to be here before long. Where are Miss Brewster and her friends?" "They are all up at the bonfire. I'm having the Jap launder the car a little before they move in."
The draftsman was on the engine of the wrecking-train, and he dropped off to join the superintendent. "Not so bad for my part of it, this time," was his comment, when he had looked the wreck over. Then he asked the inevitable question: "What did it?" Lidgerwood beckoned him down the line and showed him the sprung rail.
"Not here or with you," said the owner of the Wire-Silver; and he had turned his team and was driving away when Gridley's shop foreman came up to say that the wrecking-train was ready to leave. Lidgerwood found a seat for himself in the tool-car on the way back to Angels, and put in the time smoking a short pipe and reviewing the events of his first day in the new field.
Hello, Fred" this to Dawson, who had at that moment let himself in through the deserted outer office "we were just talking about your boss, and wondering how he got here from Copah on Two-three without my seeing him." "He didn't come from Copah," said the draftsman briefly. "He came in with me from the west, on the wrecking-train.
Wherefore, it was not until the following morning that he was able to leave the head-quarters station, on the second wrecking-train, bringing the big 100-ton crane to reinforce McCloskey, who had been on the ground with the lighter clearing tackle for the better part of the night.
That will fetch him." The men of the derrick gang were righting the last of the derailed box-cars, and the crew of the wrecking-train was shifting the cripples into line for the return run to Angels. "We'll be going in a few minutes," said the master-mechanic, taking his foot from the wheel-hub. "Do you want to meet Lidgerwood?"
A crew was got together at Medicine Bend, and a wrecking-train made up with a gang of bridge and track men and despatched to the scene of the disaster. The operating department was so ill equipped to cope with any kind of a wreck that it was after midnight before the train got under way.
At seven o'clock, just as Lidgerwood was finishing the luncheon which had been sent up to his office from the station kitchen, Train 203 pulled in from the east; and a little later Dawson's belated wrecking-train trailed up from the west, bringing the "cripples" from the Little Butte disaster.
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