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The four men, puffing from their long run, took the corners of the little car and dragged it to the tracks. Fuller started them with a shove, then scrambled aboard. "I sent the agent riding back to Marietta," panted Murphy. "At Etowah," replied Fuller, "they have an engine the Yonah. It belongs to the iron works. If it isn't up at the mills we'll take it." "Has it steam up?" asked Murphy.
The Yonah would hurl itself from the track, and end in a steaming, smoldering ruin. Yet the two men kept their thoughts to themselves and said nothing. Caution at that moment might mean that they would lose the race. It was better to lose in a wreck than to lose by delaying. The Yonah it was a light engine fairly danced upon the rails.
On level track they could go five or six miles an hour; on the upgrades, two of them walked while the other two poled. At the top of the last grade before they came to Etowah, they looked down and saw the Yonah a mile away, upon the turn-table. The locomotive was being turned for its trip up the branch to the iron works! "Give a push!" yelled Fuller. "In another minute we're lost."
When, at last, they did glide up to the station, Fuller learned that the alleged Confederate train bearing powder to General Beauregard had left but a few minutes before. Great was the amazement when he announced that the story of the leader was all a blind, invented to cover up one of the boldest escapades of the war. But now Fuller was obliged to leave the faithful "Yonah."
Arriving there, and learning the adventurers were but twenty minutes ahead, they left the "Yonah" to blow off, while they mounted the engine of the Rome Branch Road, which was ready fired up, and waiting for the arrival of the passenger train nearly due, when it would have proceeded to Rome.
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