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The laborers were idling in the cut, enjoying the brief rest, taking advantage of Carson's momentary dereliction, for the last car had been filled. "I'll be rayported yet, begob!" Carson waved his hands, and the laborers dove for the flat-cars. When the last man was aboard, the engine coughed and moved slowly away. Carson climbed into the engine-cab, with a shout: "So-long bhoy!" to Trevison.
"But will that thing pull a train? Is that the notion?" "Notion! It's no notion it's a simple, mathematical certainty, my dear Griggs. In that Alcomotive it's run by vapors of alcohol, you know we have sufficient power to pull fifteen parlor cars, twelve loaded day-coaches, twenty ordinary flat-cars, eighteen box-cars, or twenty-seven "
For a long time his resentment wholly drowned itself in wonder at the puzzle of the engines, the mechanism of the dump-cars, the wondrous working of the small steam crane which lifted rails from flat-cars, and, as a strong man guided them, dropped them with precision at the time and place decided on beforehand.
Another locomotive whistled, and another train came through at top speed, and another, and another, train after train, train after train, till toward the last the trains were composed of passenger coaches, box-cars, flat-cars, dead engines, cabooses, mail-cars, wrecking appliances, and all the riff-raff of worn-out and abandoned rolling-stock that collects in the yards of great railways.
Upon this slender trail of steel there rolled one small, ungainly teapot of an engine which daily creaked and clanked back and forth at a snail's pace, screaming and wailing its complaint of the two high-loaded flat-cars behind.
The crew had been used to receiving orders from Rondeau, and moreover they were not aware of his recent action; hence at his command they ran the switch-engine out of the roundhouse, coupled up the two flat-cars and the wrecking-car, and backed down to the crossing. Upon arrival, Jules Rondeau leaned out of the cab window and hailed Bryce. "M'sieur," he said, "do not bozzer to make zee derrick.
"Now seriously, Christy, why should I go off on one of those dirty, hard, bumping flat-cars, on a freezing night in November " "It's moonlight," interrupted Christy, "and we must have your guitar to help with the singing." "We shall nickname you dig, if you don't come," declared Bob, who had danced up in the midst of the colloquy. "Now, how will you like that Dig Watson?"
Away up above were the roaring crucibles where the metal was fluxed; beneath ran the little flat-cars waiting for the ingots to be poured. Father saw me and waved his hand he always waved at me then I saw the superintendent coming through a big, square-faced man whom everybody feared. We kids used to think he was an ogre and ate little people.
At first all seemed confusion, but presently he was able to discern that method ruled. For he now observed that the laborers were divided into "gangs." Some were unloading the flat-cars, others were "assembling" a stationary engine near the wall of the butte. They had a roof over it, already.
The din of the day's quarrying was over the blasting and drilling, the creaking of the great cranes, the shouts of the foremen, the backing and shifting of the flat-cars hauling the heavy blocks of limestone. Down in the hotel office three or four of the labourers were growling and swearing over a belated game of checkers.
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